The Accidental Virgin (11 page)

Thursday morning

T
he sun was singing. Birds were shining. Stacy rose smiling in her bed, stretched sleepiness out of her bones, and jumped into the shower. She had a lunch date, a hot prospect in the apartment next door, and a flurry of e-mail interest, all of which added up to imminent relief from her pending revirginization. Peace and joy in July. She couldn’t ask for more.

She dressed for the 90 degree heat in a freshly pressed eggshell linen dress, tea length and sleeveless. Not the sexiest item in her wardrobe, but one of the coolest and cleanest. With her hair in a bun, a single-strand gold necklace and bracelet, and off-white sling-backs, Stacy knew she was the picture of understated elegance. This was exactly the kind of Grace Kelly look that Charlie was a sucker for. She was locked, loaded, (bare) armed, and dangerous.

The walk to the subway was more like a skip. The ride, a float. She leered at handsome straphangers. Some leered back. Of course they did. She was in fine form. She was glowing. She was in demand. The spell she was under, this precious and rare mood, was almost like being in love.

Bursting with confidence, Stacy had no problem going into the greasy deli and ordering her suicide on a roll (“give me butter, and lots of it,” she said to the unibrow grill operator, who was too shocked by her attitude shift from squirrel to panther that he didn’t muster a single kissy sound). After making one quick stop (for a necessary lunchtime seduction prop), she sailed up the elevator of her building, ready (and
willing
) to face off with Janice in the endless debate over cotton panels for the Meshwear 2001 panty collection. Usually, these hotly battled conflicts made her age one year per minute of discussion. Today, she would shock them all. On this morning, she would give in. Forget cotton panels! Who needed them? Who cared about hygiene? Shouldn’t the women of America be free to breathe?

Stacy rounded the corner to her office, her feet light, shoes tappy. She could practically hear “It’s Not Unusual” by Tom Jones pounding along as she walked.

The beat stopped suddenly when Stacy found Fiona Chardonnay at her desk, literally breathing fire. Smoke poured out of her mouth in long streams. Stacy blinked a few times before realizing that Fiona was holding a cup of very hot coffee in her hands, under her chin.

“Exactly what did you do to Stanley Bombicci last night?” asked Fiona tartly. “He sent me an e-mail demanding significant changes in the agreement, and threatened to readjust the interest rates on the loan.”

“We had a romantic dinner,” said Stacy, her natural high taking a direct turn south. “Then we went to his apartment and made sweet, sweet love all night long.”

Fiona stood. Her heels, pointy and lethal, sunk into the carpet. “What does his apartment look like?” she asked, as if she knew every inch of it.

Stacy scrambled. What would Stanley’s home look like? She was drawing a blank.

She must have said the word out loud. Fiona squinted at her. “Blank?” she repeated.

“Black,”
said Stacy. “Lots of black. Furniture, countertops. Signed Erte posters, a six-foot-tall black marble sculpture of a female nude in the front hallway, a fridge full of champagne, caviar, pâté, apples, brie, whipped cream, baggies of hairy red pot, chocolate truffles.”

“That’s enough,” said Fiona. “You were under no obligation to this company to go home with that man, Stacy. And if it ever comes to it, I’ll deny in court that I asked you to go to dinner with him.”

“Why would it ever come to that?” asked Stacy. “Unless you tried to screw me over.”

“I would never do such a thing, Stacy,” she said. “You should know that much about me by now.”

Stacy knew nothing of the kind. Fiona had been generous with her, but Stacy had always wondered if she might have been wiser to refuse Fiona’s series of carefully offered bribes. Too late now, thought Stacy. If Fiona were plotting, there was little Stacy could do about it except pack up her things and walk out the door. That would be even more foolish, and premature.

Stacy said, “You’ve been reading my e-mails.”

“Call an escort service. That’s what I do,” said Fiona. “Or seduce some delivery man who doesn’t speak English.”

“Delivery man, no English. Got it.”

“Or just go to a bar,” said Fiona, draining her coffee and throwing the cup into the trash. “Only you could turn getting laid into a heroic quest.”

“I haven’t had a chance to get to a bar yet,” said Stacy. Somehow, picking up a man at a bar seemed even more desperate than advertising for one on line. Then again, she’d met Brian at a bar (when she was 28). With four extra years on her, she’d hoped to avoid bars this time around. At least on line you couldn’t take rejection personally. At a bar, there was no other way to take it.

“Tomorrow night, we are going out together,” said Fiona. “Put it in your Palm Pilot. I’ll expense it.”

Stacy said, “But my quest is over. Stanley and I —”

“Stanley’s apartment is an orgy of Swedish 1950s style. Eames everything. There isn’t a stick or stitch of black in all seven rooms.”

Stacy said, “He’s redecorated.”

“Since last week?” asked Fiona. “I was there on business. To finalize the deal.”

Stacy naturally assumed Fiona had slept with Stanley. Another step in his plan to corner Stacy? A revolting thought. “Friday night is wide open,” said Stacy.

“Good,” said Fiona. “We’ll get you all the sex you can handle.” Fiona smiled archly. “Now back to work. And don’t worry about Stanley.”

“You think it’s safe?” asked Stacy, mentally flipping through the pages of “The Night I Maimed and Disfigured Stacy Temple.”

Fiona said, “Of course it’s safe. He may give me a hard time, but he can’t back out at this point. The deal is secure.”

But that wasn’t Stacy’s concern. Fiona left her alone to contemplate the Harvard pornographer, which demolished her mood. Stacy snapped out of it by working. She focused on the dawning of a new age of corsetry, one created by thongs.com for the good of womankind. She was grateful to lose herself in a long list of assignments and phone calls. She heard from Janice that Taylor’s cramps were still acute. The faux lesbo would be absent today. Stacy could be thankful for that small gift. Time passed quickly.

Too quickly. She was late for her rendezvous with Charlie. She had to run, risking a sweat. He was also late, giving her a chance to gather herself. As she waited on the street in front of Genki Sushi, she did some simple math. Sixteen years ago, at age 16, Stacy had lost it, and, at last count, she’d had 16 lovers. One a year, not a bad average. To maintain it (and dispatch this revirginization business), she needed just one man. Just one. Surely, she could manage that. It was practically in the bag. As was her seduction aid for Charlie. Her purse dug into her shoulder with the extra weight. Where was he?

She looked at her watch again. Waiting for Charlie and standing alone on the street, Stacy felt a sharp drop in her confidence level. Or maybe it was the ill effects of the July heat (her linen dress had wrinkled miserably already). She took a deep breath and tried to focus. She recited a couple of aphorisms.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. From a tiny acorn grows the mighty oak.
Stacy closed her eyes and repeated the mantra, “I’m an acorn. I’m an acorn.”

“You’re definitely nuts,” said Charlie, suddenly at her side. “And I’m late.”

“For a very important date,” she said. “You don’t know how important.”

In greeting, Charlie kissed the top of her red head. His blond hair was too long, his skin impossibly tan (Charlie was her most outdoorsy friend; her nickname for him was “The Woodsman”). Stacy elbowed him in the ribs; he patted her shoulders. Very platonic and playful, as always. The trick would be to alter the chemistry slightly, turning it erotic.

“I’ve changed my mind,” she said, tilting her head at the sushi place. “It’s too nice a day to eat inside.”

“It’s ninety degrees with ninety-five percent humidity,” he said.

She reached in her purse and pulled out a bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild. She’d paid $100 for it — money well spent, she hoped.

“What’s this?” he asked. Charlie read the label and gasped. For his college semester abroad, he’d trained at the Cordon Bleu to become an enologist.

“Liquid picnic at Bryant Park?” she asked, batting her long lashes. “Or we can save this for another time.”

Charlie cradled the bottle in his hands as if it were a newborn babe. “No, no. The park sounds good.”

They walked to Bryant Park, the midtown rectangle of greenery attached to the rear of the New York Public Library. Along the way, Stacy primed the pump by telling Charlie about her misbegotten encounter with Taylor. He laughed. Not a good sign, she thought. Comedy just wasn’t sexy. Once in the park, they found a small spot in the shade among the lunchtime escapees. The man to their left had removed his suit jacket, shirt and tie and lay on a blanket, his dress shoes gleaming in the sun. A group of women to their right sat in a circle, trading bites of their sandwiches. Stacy lowered herself to the grass, not caring about stains on the Grace Kelly dress. She dipped into her tote for a corkscrew and two wineglasses wrapped in newspaper.

“Isn’t it illegal to drink in public?” asked Charlie as he poured.

“Why, yes,” she said, swirling her glass.

Charlie moaned when he took his first sip. Stacy’s heart pounded at the sound. He’d slept with nearly all of their female friends (now among the legion of his exes), and he’d received rave reviews. For the record, Stacy and Charlie had kissed once, barely, eons ago, back in college. It was a half lip mash at a Phish concert in Burlington, Vermont, that they’d driven six hours to see (back in the days when coolness was defined by the lengths one would go to in search of entertainment). She told him to stop. It had felt wrong. About five minutes later, he’d begun snogging with a hippie blonde from the Upper Valley who said “aboat” for “about” and “ouwa” for “hour.” Stacy had found her vexing and un-washed. Her tie-dye was passé. Charlie couldn’t have cared less. The two started kissing at the beginning of a “Reba” jam, and didn’t come up for air until the final notes an hour later. All the while, Stacy twiddled her thumbs, annoyed and dumbfounded that one song could last an eternity, only it seemed longer due to the tonsil hockey sideshow.

On the drive back to New York, Charlie had said that the girl (name of Willow) wasn’t nearly as liberated as she appeared, because she wouldn’t blow him behind the Green Party tent. Stacy had said, “What do you expect from a fourteen-year-old?” He’d been so angry at her comment (she’d never understood exactly what had pissed him off so much), he refused to speak to her for the last three hours of the trip.

Eventually, they patched things up and their friendship progressed as usual — chaste, platonic, mildly flirtatious. They stayed out of each other’s romantic lives, but talked every day. The unspoken assumption — that sex could destroy their beautiful friendship — remained untested for ten years. But the decade — the century, the millennium — was drawing to a close. It was time, ready or not, to see what damage sex could do.

As they reclined on the grass in Bryant Part, the pair quickly consumed half the bottle. Stacy, a lightweight, was drunk. Charlie, a heavyweight, didn’t show a ripple in his square-shouldered steadiness. She’d intended to ply him with alcohol. But now, in the hazy glow of wine and heat waves, she saw the true brilliance of the plan: Even if he stayed sober, she, in her tipsiness, would find the guts to lunge.

Charlie said, “Did you read that article by Gigi XXX? The one I sent you?”

“The one where she accused some poor woman of being delusional and pathetic for forgoing sex?”

“The very same, but I think her point was that the reader was avoiding love, along with sex.”

“The reader was me,” Stacy admitted.

Charlie feigned surprise. “I had no idea!”

Stacy pinched his bicep. “Do you think she’s right?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “She could have said the same thing about me, too. By having sex with women I don’t love, I’m avoiding an emotionally risky situation myself. But men can have sex for sex’s sake without guilt. Women can’t have casual sex without the afterglow of self-loathing. That’s why your revirgination project is failing. You think you’re in hot pursuit of casual sex but, by choosing the wrong partners, you’re making sure you won’t actually get it. Because if you did, you’d hate yourself.”

Stacy had her doubts about his theory. Luck had been against her, not her own subconscious. She said, “What if I were to choose a partner I already care deeply about?”

“How are you going to find someone like that in the next three days?”

Stacy smiled and said, “Drink up, sweetie.” She poured Charlie another glass.

He sniffed, swirled and sipped the vino. “The French reds are really…
blah, blah, blah.
” Stacy was sure he was saying something insightful and debonair, but her buzz, and her nervousness, impaired her hearing.

Like lightning, she made her move, plastering her lips against his. He pulled back and said, “What do you think you’re doing?” As he righted himself, his glass of wine spilled all over his white shirt. The red splotch looked like a knife wound.

To apologize, Stacy leaned in for another kiss.

With his two massive hands, he gripped each of her shoulders and held her back, her lips puckered five inches from his face. He said, “You’ve lost your mind.”

“I was planning on saying that — afterwards,” she declared. “Something like, ‘What was that about? I must have been temporarily insane. Let’s pretend it never happened.’ ”

He said, “It isn’t going to happen.”

“Certainly not here. I’m taking you back to my office. There’s a swell stairwell I’d like to show you.”

Charlie was adamant. “I’m not attracted to you,” he said.

“All evidence to the contrary,” replied Stacy, pointing at his pants. “If you’re not attracted to me, explain
that
.”