Read The Lonely Hearts Club Online
Authors: Brenda Janowitz
“Let’s do it,” I say. I’m not entirely sure what I’m suggesting—the ad or the offer to move in with Max?
“Do you want to do the honors?” he asks and turns the computer my way.
I write an e-mail back to Cobra, explaining my usual stipulations for having an ad on the blog—they have to match the color scheme of the blog (or lack thereof, I should say), they have to allow me to create my own tagline, and they don’t get final approval. I click
SEND
.
“Then that’s it,” Max says.
“I guess so.”
We’re kissing and we’re kissing and it’s like we don’t even notice that a band is here to play.
I feel a pair of eyes on me and I look across the room.
“What’s wrong?” Max murmurs into my ear. Chills go down my spine and I have to close my eyes for a second just to take it all in.
“I think that guy’s staring at me,” I say, and then bury my face in Max’s chest. It’s like I’m a child, making myself invisible by simply closing my eyes.
“Which guy?” Max asks and turns around. But by then, the guy’s right next to us.
“Hey,” he says to me. “Do I know you?”
“I don’t think so, man,” Max says and turns his back on him.
But he doesn’t walk away. “Are you Jo Waldman?” the guy asks and puts his hand on my arm.
“No,” I say. “You must have me confused with someone else.”
Max grabs my hand and we make our way to the bar. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the guy typing away on his cell phone.
“Hey, you are!” he says, walking over to the bar. “You’re the Lonely Hearts Club girl! I’m VelvetUnderground98.” He’s holding his cell phone up so I can see—it’s the Lonely Hearts Club Web site.
I turn back to the bar as quickly as I can. Max puts his arm protectively around me as we wait for the bartender to get our drinks. Max throws a bill down on the bar as the bartender slides two beers our way.
But I feel like I can’t turn around. I don’t want to be questioned again. And I can sense that Max feels it, too. Like we’re being watched. Like someone knows something that we don’t know. I have to get out of there.
The guy calls out to me and I turn around. He’s now got a bunch of Google images up on his phone. They’re of me. All me.
I grab Max’s hand and we make our way toward the back of the club. I push open the door, the secret one that most people don’t know about. I push it open and Max and I run through. We hold hands as we run up the steps—a tiny, narrow iron staircase—and make it up to the rooftop.
“Are you okay?” Max asks, once we’re out in the damp night air.
“I just needed to breathe,” I say.
“I know what you mean,” he says.
We walk to the edge of the roof and look out at the city skyline. It’s beautiful up here, looking uptown at the city—a mess of light and sound and energy. Max takes my hand and I give it a squeeze.
“Hey,” he says. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
“What?”
“Yeah,” he says. “You’re that girl. That girl from that Web site.”
“You must have me mistaken with someone else,” I say, catching on.
“No,” he says. “It’s definitely you. You’re the one who’s sworn off love.”
“Why yes,” I say, as prim and proper as I can muster. “You’ve caught me. I’m the anti-love girl.”
“That’s too bad,” he says. “Because I really want to kiss you.”
“Well, I really want to kiss you, too.”
“Too bad you’ve sworn off love.”
“Too bad.”
“Do you think maybe I could convince you otherwise?” he asks, leaning into me.
“Oh,” I say. “I don’t know. I really, really meant it when I said that I didn’t want love.”
“Well, that’s a problem,” he says. “Because I really, really meant it when I said that I wanted to kiss you.”
“Then we seem to be at an impasse,” I say. Our faces are inches apart and I can feel his warm breath on my face.
“Indeed.”
I can’t help but smile and Max smiles back at me. I wonder for a second who’s going to break character first—if he’s going to give in and just kiss me, or if it will be me who can’t take it anymore. But then he puts his hand on my cheek and we both lean in at the same time to kiss. I melt into him and memorize the moment. His smell, the sounds of the city, the way he presses my body into his. Is there anything sexier than kissing on a Manhattan rooftop?
I really don’t think so.
“Didn’t I tell you to answer my landline?”
“I didn’t even know people still used landlines,” I say. “Chloe, you are totally retro.”
“When I get back I’m going to have, like, a million messages!” Chloe says. “I thought you were going to text me my messages? That was part of the payment for letting you stay there rent-free, you know.”
I send Chloe a text:
Telemarketer. You may be a winner!
“Cute,” Chloe says. “I wanted to check in on you.”
“I’m fine,” I say, watching Max get settled in, putting the Chinese food on the kitchen counter, looking for plates. “How are you?”
“I’m more worried about you,” Chloe says. “Have you burned my apartment down in a rage yet?”
“Not yet,” I say, watching Max as he uncorks a cheap bottle of wine. Will I ever tire of just staring at Max?
“Well,” Chloe says, “that’s good to know. Are you listening to me? Earth to Jo. You sound like you’re somewhere else.”
I was. If only I could tell her about it. I make myself more present for our call. “How’s California?” I ask. And then, not waiting for an answer, “How’s your boss? Please tell me you’re not sleeping with your boss.”
“My boss?” Chloe asks. “Ew, gross. No, I’m not sleeping with him. We’re working our asses off here, trying to get things set up so we can come home.”
“I miss you,” I say.
“I miss you, too,” she says.
Neither of us says anything for a second. We both let it sink in. It sucks having your best friend across the country. Even if you still haven’t told her the single most important thing that’s been happening to you lately, a girl still needs her best friend.
“The music scene out here is sick,” Chloe finally says.
“That’s cool,” I say. “See any bands I’ve heard of?”
“Nope,” she says. “Totally different from the scene we’re used to. It’s kind of cool to go to a rock club and feel completely anonymous, you know?”
And I do know what she’s talking about. She once told me that anytime she walks into a downtown rock club, she thinks everyone is staring at her, whispering behind her back that she’s the girlfriend of that drummer who OD’d and died. No matter how many times I tell her that that’s not the case, there’s no convincing her. It’s hard to prove a negative.
“It’s great to lose yourself in music,” I say, and Chloe agrees with me. “Do you bring the people from your office?”
“No,” she says, reading my mind like she always does, “I don’t bring my
boss
to hear music. I am
not
sleeping with my boss.”
“I wasn’t trying to infer you were,” I say, but I’m lying. I was totally trying to figure out if she was going to seedy clubs (read: places with flowing alcohol) with her married boss.
“Liar,” she says.
I look at Max, and he’s got plates and wineglasses set up and ready to go. He holds a wineglass out for me to take. I smile back at him and say to Chloe, “You have no idea.”
Facebook comment from SexMachine:
Saw you on NY1—make this happen! #LonelyHeartsClubBall
Response from SeattleScene:
I didn’t see it—what’s happening?!
Response from SexMachine:
Jo’s planning a huge party to get all of us together! #LonelyHeartsClubBall
Facebook comment from Pianosoundslikeacarnival:
A party? See, Jo, I knew you weren’t serious. I’m almost relieved.
The day’s a total blur. I can’t tell the difference between the Plaza, the Pierre, or the St. Regis—they’ve all melted into one uber-glamorous memory. It doesn’t help that I’m totally sleep deprived. Tending to the blog all day, and then seeing Max all night, has turned out to be very tiring.
But I can’t give either one up.
Barbie’s on total overdrive. It’s like wedding planning is her crack. She’s bouncing and smiling and squealing all day long. More so than usual, I mean. Which is amazing, seeing as she visited all of these venues already with her own parents. She’s only showing my parents again today as a sort of accommodation. Clearly, Andrew’s told her how left out my mother feels where the wedding plans are concerned.
We talk to all of the wedding planners, tour the ballrooms and bridal suites, and even taste the food at the St. Regis, but I can tell by the look on my mother’s face that it’s not enough. She knows that she’s been excluded, and that this is all just for show. She knows that even though she and my father will be paying the tab for half the wedding, Barbie’s mother will be deciding everything. They won’t be asked their opinion on anything, not in a way that actually matters, anyway. They’ll just be handed a bill. A very, very large bill.
I grab my mother’s hand as we leave the last hotel (the Plaza? the Pierre? Who can remember at this point?) and walk toward the car. She squeezes back, and I know that she needed that.
“Do you want to come with us for dinner?” my mother asks.
I do not want to come for dinner. I want to get back to the loft and meet up with Max, which was my plan. It was the thing that got me through the day, knowing that he’d be waiting for me. I have no desire to drive all the way out to Long Island for a long, drawn-out dinner where I’ll have to hear Barbie squeal about the curtains at the Plaza versus the plush carpeting at the Pierre. Or the elevators at the St. Regis.
“I’m sure she has plans,” my father says.
“Right,” my mother says. “You probably have plans. You don’t want to come all the way out to Long Island.”
But watching my mother smile, even though I know she really wants to break down and cry, is really more than I can bear.
“No plans,” I say, and my mother smiles. For real this time.
“I’m concerned about you channeling all of your creative energy into something so negative,” my father says. We’re at Dominick’s for dinner after a very long day of shopping various New York City hotels for Andrew and Barbie’s wedding. Has he been waiting all day to say this to me? Is this what I have to look forward to for the duration of the meal? I take a bite of an onion roll as I consider my father’s statement.
“Forget about that,” my mother says. “Who’s going to want to marry you if you stand for the opposite of love?”
“I’m not really all that interested in getting married,” I explain.
My mother shakes her head no, as if she’s not buying this. Not at all. Not for even one minute. “You were never one of those little girls who went through an ‘I hate boys’ stage,” my mother says. “Never thought that they had cooties or that they were gross. You were always pretty boy-crazy, even when you were in the crib. When men would come by and look at you, you’d always coo and smile at them.”
“I don’t think that boys have cooties now, Mom,” I say. “I just think all men are evil.”
“Now is not really the time to go through such a phase,” my mother says to me. “Now is the time to be concentrating on things like getting married. Not obsessing over why men are evil.”
“I don’t care about getting married,” I say, starting the same conversation we’ve had thousands of times before. “What I want is—”
“Mad, burning, passionate love,” she finishes for me. “I’ve heard the speech before.”
“There’s nothing wrong with what I want for myself,” I say.
“Can you register at Tiffany’s for mad, burning, passionate love?” she asks.
“This isn’t the issue,” my father interjects, putting his wineglass down on the table. “The issue is you putting all of your energy into this uncontrolled rage. Something so negative. We’re worried about you, Pumpkin.”