The Late, Lamented Molly Marx (25 page)

Today I had planned to visit galleries with Brie and Isadora, as they were on the prowl for something large and sublime to hang on their naked living room wall and Brie wanted my advice. She’d called early this morning, however, to say that she needed to work. I couldn’t picture an afternoon alone with Isadora, a woman as relaxing as gridlock, so Saturday loomed like an unlined page.

Barry was off to San Francisco, attending a pep rally for plastic surgeons. He’d spent weeks prepping—cruising Gucci for a suit that said wildly hip yet Park Avenue, the location of his office. He’d gotten his hair cut exactly ten days before, so it wouldn’t look too freshly pruned. Barry wanted to be prime-time polished, ready to expound on his much-heralded weekend butt lift. (“A cheeky booty with zero squats!”
Vogue
had gushed.) He’d hesitated before accepting the speaking invitation, weighing glory against reality. Did he really want to share secrets with the rest of the profession? I believed the tiebreaker was a patient who’d offered to help him rehearse, numerous times, and curiously, always at night. I also believed she was an actress valued less for
her talent than for her juicy body parts, many of which have been rehabbed by Dr. Marx.

“Brie cancelled,” I said to Luke. “Something about a settlement meeting. How goes the drive to New Hampshire?” He was visiting his brother this weekend. I checked my watch. Eleven o’clock. “You must be in Massachusetts by now.”

“The trip’s not happening,” he said. “My nephew is celebrating his fourth birthday with strep.”

While I let the news wash over me, I said, “Poor kid,” with what I hoped was appropriate concern. Maybe Luke and I could see each other. It had been twenty-two days. Clarification. We’d
seen
each other—at meetings, for coffee, and once for lunch at Le Pain Quotidien—but we hadn’t been together in the way I’d grown to adore, more and more, for the past year or so. For the last three weeks, Luke had hosted Irish cousins who were enjoying Manhattan so much it appeared as if they were going to sleep on his couches until their green cards came through. On the second week of the Danny-and-Seamus show, Luke splurged on the St. Regis, a Manhattan convenience I recently learned that you can rent for an afternoon, not unlike a carpet shampooer. We wouldn’t be returning there soon, though. Not only did the room cost as much as a small painting, but on the way out I spied one of Kitty’s Girls, who may have been on a mission similar to my own. I vowed that never again, unless I was in the vicinity of a grizzly bear, would I cower terrified behind a tree, indoors or out. Hotels were out.

A few hours earlier, Annabel had been spirited away by Kitty, who wouldn’t be returning her until bedtime. They’d never spent a whole day alone together, and like many first dates, theirs began awkwardly when the name of the restaurant was revealed: Annabel had counted on Dunkin’ Donuts, not Fred’s at Barneys. But my daughter regained composure when she learned that her grandmother was also taking her to see the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park. As to the rest of the schedule, Kitty was sketchy, although I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d cram in an etiquette seminar for three-year-olds.

I’d already accomplished that day’s first order of business, finding piles of Barry’s credit card receipts and cell phone bills, which I intended to scrutinize later for evidence of philandering. Just then I was taking a break. I’d crawled back into bed, a
W
along with me, and had
finished reading a passionate diatribe, “The Fatted Calf: When You Can’t Fit into the Season’s Boots,” being thankful for a problem I didn’t have, when Luke called.

“What are you doing right now?”

“I’m in bed.” I did my best to purr.

“Really? What are you wearing?”

I looked at my XL T-shirt, left over from a breast cancer race-walk, hanging over saggy cotton boxers. “Not a thing. How about you?”

“Weekend grunge. I had coffee in Little Italy and I’m heading toward Chinatown.”

“What do you say to dim sum?” I said, feeling an energy surge. “Meet at Golden Bridge in an hour?”

“I say I prefer your buns to theirs.”

“Don’t tell me the blarney brothers finally left?” Either way, I could scurry downtown in less than hour. “Did New York run out of beer?”

“No such luck—they’re sleeping off last night,” Luke said. “I was thinking of a certain elite uptown address on Central Park West.”

Oh, really? I had gotten used to Luke’s place. I had, in fact, gotten very used to Luke’s place, where I knew the woodsy scent of his sandalwood soap, exactly how he folded and hung his thick gray towels, and where he kept his herbal tea, which I’d brew and take back into bed with us in tall pottery mugs, the steam curling my hair and warming my hands. Every time I stole an hour out of a workday to visit him, I’d play pretend, the R-rated edition. This was all too easy to do at Luke’s, where there was no evidence of a husband and child or, for that matter, another woman. We’d simply love and laugh, love and talk, love and snap the occasional photograph, after which I’d grab his digital camera and delete the naked evidence. When the tea grew cold, it was a private mental signal to gather my things, kiss him goodbye, and shut the door on this erotic compartment in my lascivious little mind and return to what I used to refer to as normal life.

The home I shared with my family was, however, a vault within a vault, strictly off-limits. I’d never invited Luke here and didn’t intend to start. I looked around. Barry’s dry cleaning hung on the back of the bedroom door, ready to be divided by genus and species. The potentially incriminating stacks of receipts and phone bills that I’d set aside
lay in a heap, awaiting review. On my dresser, in its simple sterling silver frame, Barry peered from our wedding photo. His dark brown eyes drilled into me.

“Molly, are you there?” Luke said. “I’d hate to think I’m boring you.”

“Just musing,” I said lightly.

“I worry when a woman muses. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“And that would be?” I always liked when he’d recite the daily specials.

“Us. That bed you’re in must be awfully lonely. And as I recall, the good doctor is in California and Annabel’s gone for the day.”

His voice was a challenge as much as a conscience-numbing anesthetic. I felt my resolve float away, revealing an emotion I could not name. Excitement? Happiness? Some sicko attraction to danger? I also briefly considered the state of my apartment, which would require a good twenty minutes of preening. Then there was the fact that I could use a shower, a shampoo, and, I dimly noted, a psychiatrist. But I said, “Be here in forty-five minutes.”

“I’ll pick up lunch,” he said, almost like a considerate husband.

I was snipping the stems off apricot roses bought in a sprint to the corner deli when the doorman rang. “Alfred Stieglitz is here to see you,” he said.

“Please send him up.”

Luke filled my doorway. The smile on his face—bashful with a raunchy glint—replaced my anxiety with an intimacy certified by a cool, coffee-flavored kiss, the kind that requires no breathing. He’d barely piled his jacket and scarf by the door when I led him around the corner to the living room and pulled him down into a wide chair, avoiding the one where I snuggled and read with Annabel.

Normally, I liked to memorize every caress Luke offered, all the better to replay later when I biked or walked or showered. My rule was that I fantasized about him only when I was alone, but I’d already broken one rule that day and was on to demolishing a second commandment—number seven of God’s top ten being long gone—as we moved to the rug and got down to basics.

Today, however, I couldn’t enjoy myself. I kept glancing at the
grandfather clock, half expecting to see Barry’s face staring back at me. Exactly seventeen minutes later, I looked at Luke with relief. We could get dressed now.

“The bathroom is down the hall,” I whispered as I pointed in the direction of Annabel’s chaste, sunny chamber with its flotilla of rubber ducks and bubble bath marketed to calm overtired, cranky children. When he disappeared, I ran into my own bathroom, stuffed my hair under a shower cap, and blasted the shower water as hot as it ran.

I was happily wielding my loofah until my skin turned pink when over the rush of water, I heard a noise. The bathroom door, which I’d been careful to close securely behind me, flew open. I shrieked so loudly that the intruder let out a primal scream as well. The glass surrounding the shower was steamed—I couldn’t see who’d entered. I did my
Psycho
bit again at an eardrum-shattering decibel.

“Calm down,” Luke said as he slipped in beside me. “Jesus, Molly, everything’s okay, it’s okay.” He held me to his chest as he deftly adjusted the water to a temperature below a rolling boil. “Are you trying to give yourself third-degree burns?”

Sort of
, I thought.

“And what’s that on your head?” Luke pulled off my protective purple plastic, gently pushed me under the nozzle, and started massaging shampoo onto my scalp. He ran his sudsy hands gently down my breasts, circling each nipple, and continued further south. I closed my eyes and tried to swim in the pleasure, but the clank of my colliding worlds was all I could feel. When the phone rang, dimly, in the bedroom, I was grateful.

“I better answer that,” I said, squirming, shampoo stinging my eyes.

“Can’t you let the machine take it?” he said as he held me close.

“It might be about Annabel.” Or Barry.

“Ah,” he said as he released his embrace. “Of course.”

Leaving soapy footprints behind me, I flew into the bedroom, gently closed the door, and reached for the phone on the fifth ring.

“Good, you’re there,” Brie said. “I’m so sorry about today and was thinking. I could finish up here by two and we could still meet, at least for a movie. I feel like a bad friend standing you up.”

“Gee,” I said, “I already decided to meet Annabel and Kitty later.”

“
Gee?
” Brie said. “You’re spending your holy me-time with Kitty? And wasn’t today all about her having Annabel alone for Kitty boot camp? Gee, pardon me, but I’m confused.”

“Well, when you cancelled …”

“Never mind. I’ll just stay here,” Brie said, with her usual good nature. “And let me say, you are very weird.”

When I returned to the bathroom, Luke was toweling off. The mood of merry seduction had vanished, and putting my arms around his waist did nothing to restore it.

“Listen, honey, do you want me to leave?” he asked as he pushed away my hands and began to walk toward the living room. “Be honest.”

That might have been the best idea of the day. Yet as I followed Luke, who was skirted in a towel, the V of his torso trim and hard, I also considered how often I’d craved time with him in New York measured not in minutes but in hours. Perhaps that day was a grave miscalculation, but I wasn’t ready to kiss Luke Delaney goodbye.

“What I’d honestly like now is lunch,” I said, and tried to produce my most bewitching smile. “Together. Here.” It had to be here, because who knew where Kitty might be lurking, Annabel in tow? “But first I’m going to wash out this shampoo and throw on some clothes. Why don’t you look through the Netflix and see if there’s anything you’d like to watch? They’re near the TV in the living room.”

He shot me a skeptical look. “Are you absolutely sure?”

“Please stay,” I pleaded. “Please.” Before he could answer, I left the room.

With each piece of clothing I put on, a bit of apprehension slipped away. When I walked out of my bedroom I wasn’t sure if Luke would be there, but he was, barefoot, in jeans and a sweater.

“
Notting Hill, Love Actually, and Sabrina
, the 1954 and 1995 versions—I see a pattern here,” he said, studying the movies.

“You were expecting
Smokey and the Bandit? Cannonball Run?
Maybe you’d prefer a cooking show? If we’re lucky, a luscious babe will make osso bucco in her negligee.”

He shuddered. “Just bring out lunch, woman.”

Relieved to hear him laugh, I returned with the sandwiches he’d brought and basked in the mundane as we drank an eight-dollar Trader Joe’s merlot and huddled under a moth-eaten afghan knit by my
mother. When the movie rolled, I cried where I always cried.
Seems to me that love is everywhere
, I lip-synched.
If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling that love actually is all around
. This minute, for me, it was.

When the movie ended, I leaned against Luke’s shoulder as we began to watch the Audrey Hepburn Sabrina. Ninety minutes later I opened my eyes. My head was in his lap.

“You snore,” he said. That I also drooled was evident, but he was polite enough to ignore it.

“What time is it?”

“Time for me to go,” Luke said. “I believe you said Annabel’s due in the early evening.”

“She won’t be here for another hour at least.” Kitty had said seven, but to be on the safe side, I’d want Luke out of the apartment by five-forty-five. We had twenty-five minutes. I began to kiss him.

Within minutes, our chemistry had kicked back into gear—we were taking pictures and enjoying the silk of each other’s skin—when I heard a key in the lock. Bolting upright, I smoothed my hair, which had air-dried into a halo of frizz. I walked quickly to the foyer as Luke deftly disappeared in the direction of my bedroom and Kitty let herself in with a key Barry had apparently given her.

“Mommy!” Annabel said, running into my arms. “See! I got a manicure.” She displayed her nails, each twinkling like a turquoise rhinestone.

“You’re a princess,” I said.

“Me too,” Kitty said, and in an oddly girlish gesture presented her long, French-manicured gel tips.

“Mommy, Mommy.” Annabel tugged at my sleeve. “Look what Kitty bought me!” She dumped a bag on the floor and pulled out a red feather boa, which she looped numerous times around her neck. It dragged to the floor. She resembled a very short Las Vegas showgirl.

“A lady needs accessories,” Kitty said. “I wanted her to come back with me for dinner, but when I mentioned lamb chops, she said absolutely not. What do you and Delfina feed this child?”