The Old Man in the Club (19 page)

“I was going by what you said. Anyway, yes, I see how that could be a problem,” Tamara allowed. “So what did you tell them?”

“I told them I met you at the movies, that you wanted to buy a car from one of my lots and that I was taking you to see a car you were interested in when we were leaving Vanquish.”

“What?” Tamara said, leaning back. “How the hell did you come up with
that
story?”

“I have no idea. I was panicked and it started coming out. I had to make it seem like it was strictly business.”

“Well, how did I know where you live?” she inquired.

“I told them I mentioned that I lived in this building but I wasn't sure how you found out my unit number or how you got up there.”

“Ran out of lies, huh?” She smiled.

“Ran out of good ones.”

The drinks came.

“Why didn't you tell me you were going to be with Daniel and Danielle?” Tamara wanted to know.

“Because I don't have to tell you what I'm doing. I'm glad we met and I have enjoyed the time we've spent together. But I don't want either of us to get into thinking we have to be accountable to the other. That creates problems.”

“But I'm not used to dealing with men like this,” she said. “If you had just said, ‘My children are coming over,' I wouldn't have knocked on your door. I wouldn't have felt like you were out with someone else. So,
you
created this problem.”

“Yeah, that's one way to look at it.” Elliott sipped his Scotch. “The other way is that you don't come over someone's house unannounced. Period.”

Tamara laughed. “Okay, okay,” she said. “You're being a chauvinist about this. You can come to my house anytime you want. You don't have to ask me. But you want to be in control because you have a dick.”

Elliott smiled. “Not because I have a dick. Because I have a
big
dick.”

The morning came and Elliott asked Tamara, “Are you going to go with the program and lie to my kids for me?”

“You think you're slick, don't you?” she asked.

“What?”

“You ask me to do something for you after you've sexed me up. You know right now I'll do any damn thing you ask me.”

Elliott smiled and pulled the covers over their naked bodies. They got beyond the talk of Daniel and Danielle. And when it was time for Tamara to go home, she said, “You can't send me out on the streets like this.”

“Like what?”

“Tipsy and horny.”

Elliott smiled. “That would be irresponsible of me, wouldn't it?”

And so he took her upstairs with him. “You socked it to me again,” she said about their encounter. “Isn't that how people your age speak? ‘Sock it to me'?”

“You'd be surprised. We also use terms like, ‘Stomp it out' and ‘Beat it up.' Aren't those phrases you twenty-somethings use?”

“Did you bring Nikki back here Friday night?”

“No, I didn't,” Elliott said. “And how do you know her?”

“We're in the same sorority,” Tamara said. “I don't know her that well, but we met in a chapter meeting and became friends on
Facebook. Glad we did. I wouldn't know you were dating her, too.”

“There you go. Not dating her. We met out for a drink. That's it. And that's all I'm saying about it.”

Tamara did not like it, but she accepted Elliott's position. He had her body feeling too good to argue with him. They lounged around until after 9 a.m. She wanted morning sex.

“I hate to disappoint you, but I don't like morning sex most of the time,” he said. “I usually wake up not feeling sexy. My stomach is a little unsettled. My energy level isn't that high. Not all mornings, but most. That's why I try really hard to please you at night so in the morning you're still feeling it.”

“I do still feel it, and I guess that's the issue,” Tamara said. “I feel so good that I want some more.”

Elliott shook his head as his cell phone rang. It was Lucy.

“My ex-wife,” he said to Tamara. “I've got to take this.”

He answered and put Lucy on hold. “I'm going to go,” Tamara said. “Take your call. But you owe me some more. I'll call you later.”

Tamara got dressed and Elliott walked her to the elevator before rejoining the phone call with his ex-wife.

“Hey, Lucy, what's going on? You don't call me, so something must be up.”

“I wanted to talk to someone who knows me and can give me some honest insight. You're that one person.”

“I am?” Elliott said. “Okay. Go.”

“Well, I heard that you had a visitor last night who is our kids' age,” Lucy said.

“Oh, boy. They told you about that?” Elliott said. “Why?”

“I'm their mother, that's why,” she answered. “But that's not the point. They told me that she has an interest in you and seems to be attracted to older men. I get that, to some degree. I mean, you're twelve years older than me. But that's not why I called.

“I'll be fifty in four weeks…and I don't have anything to hold on to.”

“What?” Elliott said. “You have your children, who are great, great kids. I'm sure you're referring to Danielle going to London and Daniel back to Michigan. But that's the way it's supposed to be: You do your job as a parent and the kids flourish and go on with their lives. You've got to look at the bigger picture.”

“The picture I see is pint-sized,” Lucy said.

“You have your health, right?” Elliott said. “That's a big one. You know how many people wish they felt like you feel and look like you look? Those are blessings. I'm not picking on you when I say this, but people's problems, I believe, stem from quickly identifying all that you
want
but not focusing on the great things that you
have
.

“And what is it exactly you want? The kids will be gone. What do you want?”

“I need someone in my life,” she said.

“You mean you
want
a man in your life,” Elliott asserted. “I'm guessing you don't
need
one.”

“Want? Need? What's the difference? I don't have anyone,” Lucy said, “and I'm about to be fifty years old.”

“So why don't you get one?” Elliott asked.

“If it were that easy or that simple, I wouldn't feel as I do,” she answered. “It's different for men, especially in Atlanta, than it is for women.”

“I'm going to sit down for this one,” Elliott said. “How is it different?”

“Are you kidding me? You don't know?” she said. “Well, I'm gonna tell you. First of all, for a man your age, you can still attract a woman in her twenties, thirties, forties and fifties. That's just about four decades of women. I know there aren't a lot of twenty-somethings
interested in a sixty-one-year-old man. But the more you raise that age, the more the number of women you could have increases.

“And society is okay with a nice-looking man in his sixties with a twenty- or thirty-something-year-old woman. And men your age with women in their forties is the norm.

“Meanwhile, if I go out and meet a twenty-five-year-old kid, there's hardly any way he would be interested in me or interesting enough for me to be interested in him. Why would a young man want a fifty-year-old woman? And then the women who do date younger men are labeled as ‘cougars.' So it's not set up for society to accept an older woman with a younger man.

“So there's that and then there are also so many single women in Atlanta that it's a competitive landscape,” Lucy added. “Let's say the man is thirty-eight. That's still twelve years younger than me. What's the incentive to consider me when he has countless women his age and younger, all the way into the early twenties? It's just a tight situation for women my age.”

“I wish I had an answer,” Elliott said. “What I will say is that there may be a lot of women here, but not all of them are quality women. I can attest to that.”

“How much dating have you been doing?” Lucy thought for a second about not going there, but she could not hold it in.

“As much as I like,” he responded.

“Well, you're single so you can do what you want,” she said, trying to sound unconcerned. “But for women here, not only are the numbers against us, but the quality of the men here is weak, too. Lots of professional men, educated men—but they either already have a woman or wife, are arrogant because they know they are in such demand or they are just weird.”

“I tell you what's weird,” Elliott said.

“What?”

“Me talking to my ex-wife about dating,” Elliott said. “That's very weird.”

“I guess it is, huh?” she said. “Well, through everything, you're the person who knows me the best. And, believe it or not, the person I trust the most.”

“How ironic is that?” Elliott said. “Truth be told—since we're being transparent—I can say for sure no one knows me better than you. Since we've been divorced, it's been hard to fill the void. I can't even lie. But…I guess it is what it is.”

“I am able to call you about this because I know you will be honest with me,” Lucy said. “I need an honest perspective.”

“We've been divorced about three years,” Elliott said. “You telling me you haven't met anyone worth your time?”

“Let me tell you,” she began, “it took me a while to get back out there. Then I met probably every kind of loser in this city. I met the liar who cannot tell the truth about anything, from where he lives to where he works to what he has done in his life. Pathetic. I met the married man who chases women as if he is single. I met the arrogant guy who believed the world spun on his axis. I met the good-looking guy who could not stay out of the mirror. I met an ugly guy who had money and thought that made him cute.

“I met a very nice guy who had no personality. I met a successful guy who was socially retarded. I met a guy who was ideal, except he was an alcoholic. I met a guy who was awaiting sentencing on armed robbery. I met the honest guy who was upfront about what he wanted from me: sex on the first date. I met the life of the party whose life was in shambles: no car, ‘in between' jobs, living with his cousin. I met the guy with five kids by four women…with
another child by another woman on the way. I met the guy who actually seemed really nice, but he had no manners; would not open the door for me, would talk with food in his mouth, would play with his cell phone at the dinner table.

“I'm not done. I met the guy who wanted to marry me after one conversation. Another guy said we should move in together, even though we didn't even know each other's last names. Still another guy asked me for a loan three days after meeting me…”

“Damn,” Elliott said. “My first reaction is: You get around.”

They both laughed.

“No, some of these guys I met in the same night,” Lucy said. “You know how you go to an event and mingle. Well, I would meet three or four of these guys in one night and learn about them through conversation. It's crazy. And I know I pointed out that it's men in Atlanta like this. But I talked to my friend Cynthia in D.C., and she says the same thing about men there. And Candice says the same about men in Chicago and told me her sister, Tanya, says that about men in Houston. It's all over the place.

“But the one thing women in Atlanta complain about more than women anywhere else is the gay man who is undercover, Elliott. That's the one that makes us all comfortable staying home and watching
Scandal, The Newsroom
or
Breaking Bad.
You have any idea how many women I have met who have encountered this?”

“I've heard this from a few women, too,” Elliott said. “It's crazy.”

“And that's one of the reasons it's so lopsided here, women-to-men,” Lucy added. “So many men are gay or bisexual or whatever. They use women to hide who they really are. And believe me when I tell you this: Many women here are petrified because of that.”

Elliott wanted to tell her about Henry, but he could not muster the nerve. Not at that moment. There was venom in how Lucy
spoke of the “down low brothers,” and he did not want to set her afire with the news that someone she thought was straight actually was the kind of man of which she spoke. So, he kept it to himself, although he would eventually tell her the truth about Henry.

“Are you telling me there has not been one ‘normal' guy you met in three years?” Elliott said.

“Well, it's been only about two years because I couldn't even think about being on the dating scene for a year after you moved out.”

“After
you
insisted I move out, Lucy,” Elliott asserted.

“Well, one of us had to move. I couldn't be around you. I—”

“Yeah, I know,” he interrupted.

“So, in the two years or so, I met one guy who seemed like a man I could be interested in,” she said. “He was fun and smart and a gentleman. Honestly, he reminded me of you. Maybe that's why I was interested in him.”

“Hmmm,” Elliott said. “What happened?”

“He lived in New York,” she said. “That's too far away. I never understood how people could do long distance relationships. I don't know…I'm not built for it. I didn't like it when you went on speaking events for the Innocence Project. I guess I'm needy in that sense. But at least your trips were for a day or two. To be with someone you grow to care about, but he lives in another city? That's too much.”

“You've got to have a trust in that person that is strong,” Elliott said. “I have two guys I know whose wives live in separate cities. Three, in fact. One guy lives in Chicago and his wife lives in D.C. Another guy lives in Atlanta and his wife works for Disney in Orlando. And this other brother lives here and his wife in Dallas.”