The Girl in Times Square (27 page)

Sometimes Spencer was completely withdrawn into himself. When Lily was sick, she had barely noticed. She just wanted a human being to sit by her side. But since she had finished treatment, she noticed it more.

He was better during the week. She couldn’t figure it out. He was much less moody during the week than he was on Sundays. Lily decided to press PAUSE on
Roxanne.

“Why are you so quiet? It’s funny, no?”

“It is.”

Lily raised her eyebrows.

“What? It’s funny. I’m laughing on the inside.”

She pressed. “Yes, but why on the inside?”

“Just am, that’s all.”

“But you’re not just quiet, you’re…morose.”

“Hmm.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“So there is something to talk about then?”

Slowly Spencer turned his head in her direction. Lily became acutely flustered under his detective stare. “Lily-ANNE,” he said,
“don’t use my methods of interrogation on me. They won’t work.”

She faltered for a moment, then regained her speech. “Spencer, I can’t help noticing that sometimes you’re just not yourself.”

“Wrong, Lily. This
is
myself. It’s the other me that’s not me. This is the actual me. Sullen, quiet. Morose.”

“When I was sick, I didn’t see it.”

“You were sick. You hardly saw anything.” Spencer wasn’t looking at Lily; he was looking at his stemmed and knuckled hands.

“I don’t believe this is really you.”

“Believe it.”

“I don’t. I think this is you being upset about something.”

“I’m not in the least upset.”

“Is it trouble at work?”

Spencer smiled. “No, it’s not trouble at work.” He turned to her. “Look, I appreciate it, you taking an interest. But please—don’t worry about me. Let’s just watch our movie.”

But Lily wasn’t going to give up. He wasn’t angry yet, she had a little rope. Light cajoling wasn’t working. She was going to try self-pity. “You don’t have to be here, Spencer, you know, if you don’t want to. I’m fine now. It’s not like before. I’m okay to be alone, I can take care of things, take care of myself. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

Spencer rubbed his face. “What’s this about? Did I just mention your brother and not realize it?”

“No, no, really. You don’t have to pretend. If you want to be somewhere else, you don’t have to sit here with me. I mean, what’s the point, really?”

“We like our comedies.”

“When we laugh, yes!”

“Lily, you spent four months watching comedies and not laughing. You’ll understand, I
know
you will, if I don’t laugh for just one Sunday.”

“It’s not that. It’s…” But Lily didn’t know what it was.

“Spencer, what’s bothering you? Come on, tell me. You helped me so much, please tell me.”

“Nothing to tell.”

“Do you want to be alone?”

“That’s the last thing I want.”

When in the world did it happen? Lily told herself that it was inevitable that after days and weeks and months of Spencer calling her, sitting alone with her, shopping with her and for her, eating with her, it was inevitable; there would be something seriously wrong with her, in fact, if she didn’t start to feel a slight anticipation ahead of hearing his voice or seeing his face. He was like a habit now, a good friend, like Paul. And she cared so much for Paul, how could she not care at least as much for Spencer, who spent all that time with her when she was sick? It was gratitude, that’s what it was.

Except…Lily didn’t feel a quickening somewhere in her cancer-addled capillaries when Paul called or didn’t call, and she didn’t slightly hold her breath so she could hear Paul better, and she didn’t study Paul’s face for new feelings, and she never tried to make Paul laugh and feel dissipated when he didn’t.

Oh my God, Lily thought. What’s happening to me? I’m barely a survivor yet. My Hickman chest scar hasn’t healed yet. I barely have tufts of hair on my head. It’s the chemicals. VePesid has affected my brain. I’ve gone partially deaf in one ear, fuzzy in one eye, and I can’t smell anything. The shapes of the mystery that form in my head are the product of drugs, the shapes that form these completely inappropriate unrequited idiotic sensations of Spencer are just a product of the kindness that he has shown me, of the care that he has given me, and of the fear that when I’m truly better, he will leave and not come back.

I’m sick in the head. Maybe I need that cancer survivor group after all. Where is Joy? Where is Marcie? Where is Dr. D?

She wanted to call Spencer, so he could set her straight. What’s
happening to me, Lily wanted to ask him, and have him look at her calmly like always and say, “Lily-Anne, I have no earthly idea what you’re going on about.”

But she knew for certain there was something terribly wrong with her when she could no longer bring herself to call his beeper just to say hello, or to ask if he was going to be in the neighborhood to have lunch, or what movie he wanted her to rent. Lily realized there was something terribly wrong when she wanted to go see
The Whole Nine Yards
at Union Square, and could not call and casually ask Spencer to go with her.

She called Rachel instead. Rachel Ortiz, the advisor to the habit-forming.

When Paul and Rachel came over, they got drunk on margaritas in Lily’s apartment, and listened to Tori Amos, or Enya, or something else equally lugubrious and bleak, and kept crying to
her
, instead of the other way around. Paul just broke up with Ray, and Rachel was having a hard time with TO-nee. Oh, they kept saying, licking the words around their salt-rimmed lime-filled glasses, we want love, we want love, we want Love!

“Not me,” Lily said. “I don’t need Love. I have Spencer.”

And Rachel laughed, and Paul laughed, and they punched her on the arm and made more margaritas and told her she was
so
funny, and that her apartment smelled awfully of turpentine and gesso, and Lily didn’t want to talk about it with them anymore, but Lily didn’t see what was so funny, what was so worthy of laughter.

Spencer was impenetrable. There was not a single thing he did or said that could be interpreted in any way other than the proper, courteous, appropriate Spencer way, which was—I am here. To talk, to watch a movie, to eat. If you want to walk, let’s go. If you want soup, I’ll get it for you. Central Park? Sure. Palm Court, absolutely. You want me to move beds out of rooms, or help you stretch your canvas, I’ll do that, too. You want me
to call you after your blood work? Sit on the couch with you on Sundays? Here I am. Lily studied him with her artist’s eye so intensely, trying to decipher other meanings, other expressions, other thoughts, that one time, she must not have been paying attention to what he was saying, because he put his finger under her chin.

“What in the world are you thinking?” he asked.

She came out of it. “What?”

“You’re not even answering my question.”

“What am I thinking?”

“You’re stalling for time.”

“No, no. Oh, nothing, nothing at all.”

“Ah, now you’re evasive.” Spencer grinned. “Must have been something pretty bad, Lil. Was it about Keanu?”

This is what Lily meant—in his G-rated world, she was a cancer patient. Somebody’s sibling. A witness in an investigation. She could be a man calling him about a horse.

Not
one-hundred-
percent impenetrable. One Sunday evening, they had just finished watching
A Fish Called Wanda
, and Spencer got up to get a drink while Lily stretched and remained on her stomach on the couch. He stood in the archway between the kitchen and the living room, a Coke in his hand. Lily caught his face in the reflection in the fifty-inch plasma TV, when he didn’t think she was looking at him. Spencer was looking at her, and not just at her, but particularly at her hips as she lay on her stomach, in her black leggings, legs slightly apart, splayed head-down on the couch. Lily’s heart hammered in her chest, and she lay there longer than necessary, trying to see the contours of his expression. Then he said, “Did you want something before I go?”

She sat up. “No, no. I’m fine.”

Was she mistaken? Was it too vague for the dark reflection of the intention of his gaze at midnight on Sunday?

The following Sunday he came to watch
It Happened One Night.

Lily was in her studio. He knocked on Amy’s door.

“Hey,” she said. “Come on in. I’m just finishing up.” She was painting the ice rain on the windowsill. She was wearing her low-rise black leggings, and a cropped yellow tank top. Her stomach was exposed. She had on no bra.

Spencer came in. “What’s going on here? It’s
freezing.
”

“I have to keep the windows open. It’s that turpentine,” Lily said innocently, taking a drink from a can of Coke. “Would you like a sip?”

“Of turpentine?”

Ha. Lily was very cold indeed in her little tank top. She might not have had big breasts, but she knew her nipples were plenty big.

Spencer noticed.

Lily knew he noticed because as he took the can of Coke from her hands that were near her breasts, he didn’t say anything, he just raised his eyes to her, and that’s when she knew, and her breath stopped in her chest when she saw his eyes. A beat went by. Then another. Carefully Spencer said, “You might want to close the windows. It’s chilly in here.”

Lily went to close the windows, trying to suppress her ear to ear delight. After putting on a cardigan, she settled into her side of the couch, like always, and he into his, but watching a simple movie was less simple and was greatly improved by its newly acquired lack of simplicity. Something about Spencer looking at her breasts hit Lily right in the stomach with its delicious pleasure. He had always put up such a stoic, sexless front. But this Spencer might just be a man!

She knew what it was. She knew exactly what it was. It was the new weight. It was the Milanos and Krispy Kremes, where they had settled between her skin and her bones, in her shoulders, on her chest, it was the vanilla ice cream on her breasts, Chunky Monkey ice cream on her thighs, on her hips, all round, all around.

Soo Min, Hannah, Dana were right. Perhaps even Spencer
was not immune to the creme custard sways of hips, the roundness of buttocks, softness of thighs, stretched-out calves, eager nipples pushing out through sheer cotton, bring it on, baby, where is the cheesecake, where’s the butter and the marmalade? Maybe when I get enormous he won’t be able to keep not just his eyes off me. And so Lily ate and ate voraciously, and when she went shopping she didn’t buy just fleece sweatshirts from the Gap like before, but velour H. Starlet snug sexy sweats from Bloomingdales for $120, that were sooo low rise with silk stitching—kind of like how Lily would describe herself. When she put them on, the top triangle of her black thong showed, the tops of her newly returned round buttocks showed. She shopped thoroughly at Victoria’s Secret, at LaPerla, at Sak’s lingerie department. Lily needed a new apartment for all the g-strings, all the lacy, see-through bras she was buying.

She put mousse in her hair to spike it up, and balm and gloss on her lips, and lots of it, as if she were a thirteen-year-old at a roller skating rink, hoping to catch the eye of the sixteen-year-old, standing in the corner with his teenage buddies. She put lotion on her body, to make it softer, to make it smell nice so when he sat on the couch he could smell her. She found a pair of jeans to
die
for in Bergdoff’s. When Spencer schlepped in one Thursday at eight, changed into his Levi’s and his Yankees baseball jersey and his Yankees cap, and saw Lily with her new high-heeled boots and her new jeans, with her reddest lips, her blackest mascara, and newly gelled clumpy hair, he stood looking at her as if he were in the wrong apartment. “Where are we going?” he said after a moment.

“Odessa,” Lily stammered.

“Oh, okay. I thought for a sec I’d forgotten something. Are you going clubbing after I leave here, Lil?” Spencer said, smiling. “Did that good old Rachel finally fix you up?”

Her low-slung spirits just slung lower, Lily mumbled something incoherent in return, and dinner was a silent affair, after which he dropped her back home and without a note in his voice said
cheerfully, “Have a really good time tonight. You deserve to have some fun.”

Just great, just friggin’ great.

Lily started, ever so slowly, to get a following. The same people came every Saturday to see if she had anything new. She started to think about her week—Sundays, she was in the studio, painting before Spencer came. Mondays and Wednesdays she traveled the breadth of Manhattan, sketching possible subjects and objects into her book. Tuesdays after the hospital, she had lunch with Spencer, and then painted at home. Thursdays she sketched Brooklyn, because she was with Grandma. Fridays and Saturdays, she rendered the sketches into acrylics or watercolors, or oil pastels. Very rarely did she do an oil on canvas, though she loved them best. They just took too long and never dried, but they did always sell first, giving her the idea that she simply wasn’t charging enough for them—but here was the thing, no matter how much she charged, they always sold, and they sold first.

Would Lily consider painting live nudes on oil on canvas? Would she consider painting the Serengeti plain for a baby’s nursery? What about a woman naked and very pregnant? A wife and a husband making love on their tenth wedding anniversary?

On oil on canvas from memory Lily painted Spencer’s face. From memory his whole person. His hands first, knotty and tense, she noticed them right after the eyes for expression and the lips for
movement. Spencer was standing next to his desk and the phone was to his ear. He was looking right at Lily, not smiling. He was not a smiler. He had strong white teeth. He had a great smile. He just didn’t smile much.

He was standing wearing gray slacks, a black belt, a white shirt open at the collar, a thin black tie loosely on. His clothes were loose, too, he was slim; Spencer, who looked as if he ran twice around the damned reservoir three times a week. Lily painted him with compact deltoids under his white shirt, and biceps and pecs. He was all in shades of black and white except for his lips and eyes, for which she procured blues and reds, and gave dye to his eyes and mouth. The artist in her appreciated the esthetics of both. His mouth was—from an artist’s perspective—a perfect human mouth. A sharp line of the plump seagull on top, sitting on a plump bowl at the bottom, a Cupid mouth like a wrapped gift from God. With slight shame Lily realized how well she knew Spencer’s lips, how etched they were in the place in her heart from which she painted. His eyes deep-set, open wide, day blue, but relentless—a bloodhound’s eyes, framed by his thin black-rimmed glasses. Lily gave Spencer thick wavy hair, because his long hair meant no sickness in her. She gave his face stubble and cheekbones and a set square jaw and an exposed, large forehead. She was embarrassed at the care she took in painting him.

“This is not me,” Spencer said to her when he saw the picture. “I’ve never looked this good. Where are the bloodshot eyes, the bags under them, the pale face, the coffee stains on the tie – and my shirt is pressed, come on! This is definitely art, not life.”

“Who is going to want to buy you if I draw you the way you are?” Lily said teasingly. “I’m trying to make a living here.”

On the street on Saturday, she refused to sell it, even though she was offered a thousand dollars for it(!).

Spencer came by, looked at the picture of himself standing inclined on an easel. “I told you no one wants to buy me.”

“That’s because you’re not for sale,” Lily replied.

Just then a woman walked by looking. “How much is that doggie in the window?” she asked, pointing at Spencer.

“Sorry, display only, not for sale.”

The woman shrugged at Spencer, then did a double take, first at the painting, then back at him. Spencer shrugged himself. “Picture’s better, right?”

“She is obviously very talented,” said the woman, walking away.

“
Nice
,” said Spencer, turning to Lily.

It doesn’t do you justice, Lily wanted to say, busying herself with counting her money.