Slightly Single (6 page)

“I’m not surprised. I can never hide anything from you, Buckley. You always have known me better than I know myself,” I say in mock seriousness.

He laughs.

Then he says, “You know, it really does seem like we’ve known each other awhile.” I realize he’s not kidding around.

I also realize he’s right. It does seem like we’re old pals. And it would be great, having a friend like Buckley. A woman living alone in New York can never have too many guy friends.

“Yeah, we should do this again,” I say to Buckley as the waiter brings our beers. “I love seeing movies on rainy weekend afternoons.”

“So do I. Almost as much as I love beer and cheddar-and-bacon potato skins.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

“Cheers.” He lifts his bottle and clinks it against mine.

We smile at each other.

Can you see it coming?

Well, I sure as hell didn’t.

He leans over and kisses me.

Yup.

Buckley—nice, sweet, noble,
gay
Buckley, leans toward me and puts his mouth on mine in a completely heterosexual way.

I’m too stunned to do anything other than what comes naturally.

Meaning, I kiss him back.

It only lasts a few seconds, but that’s slo mo for what could have been a friendly kiss topping off a friendly toast to transform into a romantic kiss. The kind of kiss that’s tender and passionate but not sloppy or wet. The kind of kiss that you feel in the pit of your stomach, in that quivering place where the first hint of arousal always flickers.

Yes, I am aroused by this kiss. Aroused, and stunned, and confused.

Buckley stops kissing me—not because he senses anything wrong, though. He merely stops because he’s done. He pulls back and looks at me, wearing a little smile.

“But…” I just stare at him.

The smile fades. “I’m sorry.” He looks around.

We’re the only people in the place, aside from the bartender, who’s watching a Yankee game on the television over the bar, and the waiter, who’s retreated to the kitchen.

“Was that not all right?” Buckley wants to know. “Because I didn’t think. I just felt like doing it, so I did it.” He looks a little concerned, but not freaked out.

I’m
freaked out. “But…”

“I’m sorry,” he says again, looking a shade less self-assured. “I didn’t mean to—”

“But you’re gay!” I tell him, plucking the right words from a maelstrom of thoughts.

He looks shocked. “I’m gay?”

At least, I thought they were the right words.

“Yes, you’re gay,” I say in the strident, high-pitched tone you’d use if you were arguing with a brunette who was trying to convince you she was blond.

“That’s news to me,” he says, clearly amused.

There he goes with that deadpan thing again. But this time it’s not funny.

“Cut it out, Buckley,” I say. “This is serious.”

“This
is
serious. Because I always thought I was straight. Maybe that’s why it didn’t work out with my girlfriend.”

He’s kidding again. At least about that last part. But maybe not about the rest.

Confused, I say, “I thought he was a boyfriend.”

“He was a girlfriend.
She
was a girlfriend.” He twirls his stool a little and leans his elbows back on the bar behind him. He looks relaxed. And definitely still amused.

I need to relax. I need a drink. I sip my beer.

“Tracey, I promise you I’m not gay.”

I gulp my beer.

“Why would I be on a date with you if I were gay?” he wants to know.

I sputter beer and some dribbles on my chin. I wipe it on my sleeve and echo, “A
date?
”

“Wait, you didn’t think this was a date?” he asks, brows furrowed. “I thought you asked me out.”

“Who am I, Sadie Hawkins? I asked you to go to the movies with me. Not as my date. I wanted you to date Raphael.”

“Who?” He looks around, then says, “Oh, Raphael. The guy from the party. You wanted me to date
him?
”

“Yes! You’re perfect for each other,” I say in true yenta fashion, though I suspect it’s a bit late for that now.

“Perfect for each other.” Buckley nods. “Except for the part about me not being gay.”

“Right.” I’m just aghast at this news, now that I’m positive he’s not teasing me.

I take another huge gulp of my beer, trying to digest the bombshell.

Physically, I’m still reeling from the kiss. I mean, he’s a great kisser.
Great.
And I realize how long it’s been since I’ve been kissed like that. Will and I never really kiss anymore. We just have sex—and like I said, even that doesn’t happen very often these days, and when it does, there’s no kissing involved and it’s blah.

Oh, hell. Will.

“I have a boyfriend,” I tell Buckley, plunking my beer bottle on the round paper coaster with a thud.

“You do? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t think to. It didn’t occur to me that you thought we were on a date.”

A date.

It’s just so incredible how the whole situation could’ve blown right by me. I guess I was so distracted by what’s going on with Will that I wasn’t paying enough attention to what was going on with Buckley. Rather, to what Buckley thought was going on.

I’ve cheated on Will. Completely by accident, but still, it’s cheating. And right here in his own neighborhood, in a bar that we sometimes come to together. What if someone had seen me here with Buckley? Kissing Buckley?

Again, I scan the bar to make sure nobody’s here besides the bartender, who isn’t paying the least bit of attention to us. The place is definitely deserted.

So I wasn’t caught cheating.

Will never has to know.

Still, I’m mortified.

I look at Buckley. He doesn’t look mortified. He looks amused. And maybe a little disappointed.

“So you have a boyfriend?” he says. “For how long?”

For a second, I don’t get the question. For a second, I think that what he’s asking me is how much longer do I expect to have a boyfriend. I bristle, thinking he just assumes Will and I are going to break up after being separated this summer.

Then I remember that he doesn’t know about that. His true meaning sinks in, and I inform him, “I’ve been with Will for three years.”

“That long? So it’s serious, then.”

Naturally, I’m all, “Yeah. Absolutely.
Very
serious.”

Well, it
is.

“You know what?” I hop off my stool. “I just remembered something I have to do.”

“Really?”

No. But I’m too humiliated to stay here with him any longer. Besides, that kiss really threw me.

Basically, what it did was turn me on, and I can’t go around being turned on by other men. I’m supposed to be with Will, and only Will.

I pull on my raincoat and fumble in my pocket for money. I throw a twenty on the bar.

“You’re really leaving? Just like that?”

“I just…I have to run. I can’t believe I forgot all about this thing….”

The thing being Will.

“Well, at least give me your number. We can still get together. I can always use another female pal.” He grabs a napkin and takes a pen out of his pocket.

Yes, he has a
pen
in his pocket. Dammit. How convenient for him.

“What’s the number?” he asks.

I rattle it off.

“Got it,” he says, scribbling it on the napkin.

No, he doesn’t. I just gave him my grandparents’ number with a Manhattan area code.

“Take this back,” he says, shoving the twenty at me. “This is on me. You’re not even going to get to eat any of the skins.”

“That’s okay. I’m not that hungry after all.”

He’s still holding the twenty in his outstretched hand, and I’m looking down at it like it’s some kind of bug.

“Take it,” he says.

“No, that’s okay. I can’t let you pay.”

“Why not? Really, I won’t think it’s a date if I pay,” he says with a grin.

That does it. I’m getting out of here.

He shoves the twenty into my pocket and I take off for the door, rushing out into the rain with my slicker open and my hood down.

I’m drenched before I get to the corner.

My first instinct is to rush right over to Will’s.

If I were in my right mind, I would stop, reconsider and go with my second instinct, which is to slink home on the subway, take a hot shower and crawl into bed—rather, futon.

Instead, I go with my first instinct.

In the lobby of Will’s building, I buzz his apartment.

Nerissa’s hollow voice comes over the intercom.

“It’s me,” I say. “Tracey.”

“Hi, Tracey,” says Miss Brit in her polished accent. “Will’s not here.”

He’s
not?

But he’s supposed to be here. Packing.

Well, maybe she’s lying.

No, that doesn’t make sense.

Maybe he had to run out for more strapping tape or a new marker.

“Do you know where he is?” I ask her.

“No, I don’t. I just got back from rehearsal. I’ll tell him you stopped by.”

No offer to let me come up and wait for him, I notice. Well, the apartment is pretty minuscule, and she probably doesn’t feel like hanging out with me until Will comes back from wherever he is.

But still, I have a right to be there if I feel like waiting for him. More right than she does, since Will’s name is on the lease, I think irrationally.

“See you later, Tracey,” she says breezily. Her
later
comes out “light-ah,” heavy on the “t.” Tracey is “trice-ee.”

“Yeah. Cheerio.”

I stalk back out into the pouring rain.

“Y
ou coming to lunch, Tracey?” Brenda asks in her thick Jersey accent, poking her long, curly, helmet-sprayed hair over the top of my cubicle.

“If you guys can wait two seconds for me to fax something to the client for Jake,” I tell her, not looking up from the fax cover sheet I’m filling out. “Otherwise go ahead without me and I’ll order take-out.”

“We’ll wait for you, hon,” Yvonne’s smoker’s rasp announces from the other side of my cube, just before I hear a telltale aerosol spurt as she sprays Binaca. She and my grandmother are the only two people I’ve ever seen use the stuff.

Then again, they’re probably about the same age, although Yvonne looks a lot younger. She’s tall and
super-skinny with a raspberry-colored bouffant and matching lipstick, which she re-applies religiously after every post-cigarette Binaca burst. Yvonne’s claim to fame, other than being secretary to the big cheese, our Group Director Adrian Smedly, is that she was once a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall. She likes to tell stories about the old days, dropping names of celebrities I’ve mostly never heard of—people who were famous back in the fifties and sixties.

She’s what my father would call a real character, and she would take that as a compliment.

What should have been a quick fax job turns into a dragged-out ordeal. All I have to do is send Jake’s memo over to the client, McMurray-White, the famous packaged goods company that makes Blossom deodorant and Abate laxatives, among other indispensable products. But for some reason, the fax machine keeps beeping an irritating error code.

I hate office equipment. Whenever I go near the fax machine, the copier, or the laser printer, the damn things apparently sense my uneasiness and jam.

This is not a good day. Earlier, I scalded my hand using the coffeemaker in the kitchenette adjacent to the secretaries’ bay. And just now, on my way out of the ladies’ room, I slipped on a patch of wet tile and went down hard on my butt. You’d think the extra padding there would have cushioned my fall, but now it’s killing me.

Jake comes up behind me as I try to force-feed the memo into the slot for the fiftieth time.

“Having trouble, Tracey?”

I turn around to see him wearing a smirk. By now I know that it’s nothing personal. That’s Jake’s usual expression, unless the client is around. Really. No matter what the circumstances, Jake finds something to smirk about. If I tell him his wife is on the phone, he smirks. If I tell him the NBC rep canceled tomorrow’s presentation, he smirks. If I tell him a document is being messengered over from his broker, he smirks.

Let’s face it: he’s the kind of guy I’d consider an asshole if he weren’t my boss. He leers at women behind their backs, laughs whenever somebody does something clumsy and—I’m starting to think—cheats on his wife, Laurie. That really gets me. They’ve been married a little over a year, and I’ve never actually met her, but she’s really sweet whenever I talk to her on the phone. Sometimes when she calls, Jake makes a face, rolls his eyes, and tells me to say he’s in a meeting. I always feel guilty when I do that, because Laurie is so disappointed, and it’s like she doesn’t even suspect I’m lying.

Meanwhile, lately, no matter how busy he is, he always takes calls from a woman named Monique. Supposedly she’s a friend of his. If you ask me, married men shouldn’t have friends named Monique. And something tells me Laurie doesn’t know Monique exists.

“Can you see me when you’re done with that?” Jake says, as the fax machine starts beeping an error
code again and latches on to the first sheet of the memo in a death grip.

“Can it wait until after lunch?” I ask, tugging the paper in a futile effort to free it from the machine.

“It’ll only take a second,” Jake replies. He adds, “Whoa, careful—don’t rip that or you’ll have to reprint it,” before he goes back down the corridor to his spacious office. A moment later, I hear the telltale thump of a small Nerf basketball hitting the wall behind the hoop above his desk. I can picture him sitting there, his polished black wingtip shoes propped on his desk, idly making shots.

Don’t get me wrong. He’s a busy guy with an important job, and he’s really good at what he does. But when he’s not in a high-powered meeting or working on a pitch or a presentation, Jake likes to kick back and have fun. He eats in the best restaurants in town. He orders stuff from the most expensive catalogues. He’s really into golf and tennis—gentlemen’s sports. I heard him on the phone the other day, ordering fishing equipment from Orvis that cost more than I make in a month. Lately, he’s been looking at property up in Westchester for a country house, and he says it has to have a private pond or stream so that he can fish.

“Hey, you need a hand with that?” Latisha asks, behind me.

I turn around, exasperated. “Thanks. And you guys should probably go to lunch without me, because Jake needs to see me after this. He says it’ll only take a second, but…”

“It’s okay, we’ll wait,” Latisha says, pressing a couple of buttons on the machine. The paper slides right out. Moments later, the machine is humming and my fax is going through without a problem.

“How’d you do that?” I ask her.

She shrugs. “I’ve been a secretary a lot longer than you have, Tracey.”

Secretary. I hate that.

Okay, it’s what I am. But it’s not what I meant to be, and it’s not what I plan to be for long. Though there’s a part of me that’s convinced that it’s better to be a secretary in Manhattan than an
anything
back in Brookside, I keep telling myself that it’s only a matter of time before I find something better to do. But for now, I’m stuck here at Blaire Barnett Advertising, working for Jake.

I smile at Latisha. “Thanks for helping me.”

“No problem.” She wags a finger at me in her sassy, don’t-give-me-any-crap way. “Now get into Jake’s office and see what that ol’ pain in the butt wants so you can come to lunch with us. We’re going for Mexican. Chips. Guac. Margaritas.”

I brighten. “Margaritas? At lunch?”

“Hell, it’s Friday.”

Yeah, it’s Friday. Will’s leaving in less than forty-eight hours. Sunday at this time, he’ll be on a train somewhere north of Albany.

“I definitely need a drink,” I tell Latisha. “A strong one.”

“Tell me about it. In case you haven’t been paying attention, my boys are in a major slump.”

Her boys would be the New York Yankees. She’s an obsessed fan. Has team memorabilia displayed all over her cube. The highlight of her life, according to Latisha and everyone who knows her, was a few years ago when her boss, Rita Sellers, gave her a couple of box seats for a World Series Game at the last minute. I know Rita, who is second in command in our account group, and there’s no way she did that out of the goodness of her heart. According to Brenda, there was practically a typhoon that night, the seats were out in the open, and Rita came down with some kind of stomach bug. Otherwise, Latisha would never have gotten those tickets.

As it was, she got to share the box with the mayor and with two of the Backstreet Boys. She got their autographs for her daughter, Keera, who was ten at the time. The Backstreet Boys’ autographs—not the mayor’s.

“Are you going to the game tonight?” I ask Latisha. “Maybe you can bring the team some luck.”

“I wish I was going. They’re playing in Seattle.”

“Oh.” Damn! I just got a paper cut on the edge of Jake’s memo. I stick my finger in my mouth and taste blood. Terrific.

Oblivious to my latest work-related injury, Latisha is saying, “But me and Anton will be in the bleachers on Sunday afternoon when they’re back home.”

Anton is Latisha’s boyfriend. I’ve only met him
once and he seemed nice, but from what I’ve heard from Brenda and Yvonne, he’s got
skank
written all over him. It’s obviously a dead-end relationship, but Latisha doesn’t seem to mind that it’s not going anywhere. She says she’ll get out when something better comes along, and that so far, nothing has.

“I know where I’ll be on Sunday afternoon,” I tell her. “Crying in my bed.”

“’Cause Will’s leaving?” She shakes her head. “He’ll be back in a few months, right?”

“Yeah.” I straighten the sheets of memo that have been faxed and pick up the confirmation sheet the machine has just spit out. “But a lot can happen in a few months, Latisha.”

“If you’re that worried, girl, you’d better get your ass on that train with him.”

I never told her that I attempted to bring up that very subject with Will a few weeks ago, and that he was so thrown by it that he avoided me for a few days afterward. He claimed he was just busy packing, but how complicated can it be to throw some shorts and T-shirts into a few boxes and ship them upstate?

“I can’t go with him, Latisha,” I say now, as though that’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. “I mean, what am I supposed to do? Pick up and leave my life for the entire summer?”

“That’s what I’d do if Anton ever tried to leave town without me.”

“What about Keera?”

“I’d bring her,” Latisha says. “It would do her
good to get away from her friends on the block. I don’t like what I’m hearing out of their mouths lately. I don’t trust any of them, and I don’t want her goin’ the way of my sister Je’Naye.”

Okay, so my troubles pale next to Latisha’s. She’s a single mother trying to raise an adolescent daughter in a rundown neighborhood where her teenaged sister was shot in a drug-related drive-by shooting a few years ago.

I sigh. “We both need a margarita, Latisha. Maybe a couple of margaritas. Let me go find out what’s up with Jake and I’ll meet you guys downstairs.”

“You got it.” She heads off down the hall, shaking her butt in her distinct walk. The way she dresses, you’d think she was built like Jennifer Lopez. She’s shorter and heavier than I am, but you don’t see her wearing black tunics. Today she’s got on a low-cut red V-neck shirt tucked into a beige skirt that hugs her hips and thighs.

I catch Myron, the mail-room guy, checking her out as she passes by him.

“Mmm-mmm,” he says, shaking his head. He stops pushing his package-laden cart and turns his head to keep watching her. “Damn!”

“Cool it, Myron,” she calls over her shoulder, but I know she’s loving it.

“Girl, you are lookin’ fine.”

“Mmm-hmm, and don’t I know it,” Latisha says smugly.

I wish I had half her confidence. But somehow, I
think that if I wore that clingy outfit Latisha has on, Myron would take one look and run screaming for cover.

I round the corner into Jake’s office. Sure enough, there he is, sprawled behind the desk taking aim at the basket overhead. The place is big enough for a couch, a couple of chairs, and four wide windows looking out over Forty-second street. My cube barely has room for my desk, my chair, my computer, and a framed eight-by-ten head shot of Will.

“What’s up, Tracey? Yesssss!!!!” Jake pumps his arms triumphantly as the ball sails through the hoop.

“You wanted to see me before lunch,” I remind him.

“Right. Two things.”

“Do you need me to write them down?”

“Nah.” He straightens in his seat and gestures for me to take the chair opposite.

I do, glancing at the framed wedding photo of him with Laurie. If you ask me, she’s way better-looking than he is. She’s a pretty, skinny, sophisticated-looking brunette. He’s a round-faced, reddish-haired frat boy type, and his cheeks still bear remnants of what must have been a nasty case of acne a few decades ago. Not that looks are everything, but I can’t help wondering why Laurie married him.

Then again, he can be charming when he wants to be. And he’s rich. Really rich. Apparently, he got a hot stock tip a few years ago, scraped together every cent he had, and it paid off big-time. Now he and
Laurie live in a big apartment in one of those nice doormen buildings in the east fifties off Sutton Place, and like I said, they’re looking for a weekend house up in Westchester.

I wonder if she’s happy. Laurie.

I wonder how long their marriage will last.

My stomach rumbles, and I wonder whether I should order the light sour cream and low-fat cheddar with my quesadilla, or go for full fat.

“First, I need you to find out what I do to get out of paying this parking ticket,” Jake says, handing it to me across the desk.

“Why?” I ask, glancing at it. “Was it a mistake? You weren’t illegally parked there?”

“No, I was,” he says. “But there were no legal spots available. And nobody pays these things. Just make some calls, check around and find out what I have to do to plead innocent, or whatever, and let me know.”

“Sure.” Guess he won’t be winning any Good Citizenship awards in the near future.

“The other thing is…” He clears his throat, like this is something big.

Oh, shit, now what am I going to be accomplice to? Next thing you know, I’ll be in the witness protection program and Will will never find me.

“How are you with creative thinking, Tracey?”

“Creative thinking?” I study him warily, wondering why he’s asking. Does he want an inventive way to dispose of a corpse?

“It depends on what you mean by creative,” I say.

“Okay, well, if you’re interested, I might have a fun little project for you. McMurray-White has come up with a new product, and it needs a name. So far, nothing they’ve come up with has clicked, and now they want our creative team to get on it. They’ve asked us for help brainstorming. But before I go any further, this is confidential.”