The Sweet Edge (2 page)

“Do you want me to flag down a cab?”

Stella bristled. “There’s no escaping you.”

Campbell was leaning against a storefront window and smoking. “Why do you want to escape me?”

“You’re rude.”

“I bought you a drink.” Campbell pushed forward slightly, paused and then leaned against the window again.

“You did not buy me a drink.” Stella’s voice was loud.

“I thought I did.” Campbell looked genuinely perplexed.

“You must have forgotten while you were cheating a good man out of a good tip.”

“You drank cheap vodka.”

“Fuck. Don’t you have somewhere to go? Are you homeless?”

“Not homeless. Park Avenue condo.”

“Well, why don’t you go there?” Stella turned and headed down the street. The subway stop was two blocks away. It was chilly out but Stella didn’t mind. She liked the cold. It always seemed like she running a few degrees warmer than others.

Stella walked around the people on the street wondering if they were leading exciting and rich lives or if they were struggling like her. She stopped at a newsstand and surveyed the magazines. She picked up the Atlantic Monthly, flipped through it and then spotted a Vogue with Natalie Portman on the cover. Natalie was in pink with impossibly long lashes. Stella touched the cover with a sudden flash of longing for beauty. Stella tightened the scarf around her neck and mentally calculated whether or not she could afford to buy a magazine.

“If I skip breakfast for two days…” Stella added up the cost of yogurt, cereal and bananas in her head.

“Can I get the Harvard Business Journal and whatever magazine this young lady wants?” Campbell was standing solidly but he was speaking slowly.

Campbell smiled. “If I stand upright, I can’t speak very well and if I talk well then I can’t stand upright.”

“Are you following me?” Stella picked up the Vogue.
The man is bonkers but if he buys me a magazine,
thinks Stella
, who cares
?

“Yes.” Campell said the word as if in slow motion.

“Is that it?” The man in the newsstand asked with heavily accented English.

“Is that it?” Campbell looked at Stella.

Stella nodded and hugged the magazine to her chest. “Thanks,” said Stella quietly.

“Am I still rude?” Campbell handed a twenty dollar bill to the cashier.

“Yes.” Stella stared openly at Campbell.

The cashier rings up the purchases on the cash register and takes the twenty dollar bill.

“Keep the change,” says Campbell.

The cashier nodded and then shoves his hands in his pockets and bobs his head to the Arabic music playing from the silver boombox on the counter.

“So nice of you to allow him to keep the change.”

“I’m making up for being an ass.” Campbell leaned slightly to the right and then
grabbed the newsstand counter.

“You all right?” The cashier doesn't look happy.

Stella reached out and grabbed Campbell’s right arm. “Come on,” she said.

Campbell leans into Stella’s arms. “You have such soft arms,” Campbell mumbles.

“Are you saying I’m fat?”

Campbell looks alarmed and then shakes his head. “Maybe chubby.”

“That’s alright. You can say I’m fat. Chubby. Whatever makes you happy. I’ve made peace with my body. I will never be Natalie Portman. She was shockingly thin in the Black Swan movie.”

“Beautiful.”

“Yes, she was.”

“No. You are beautiful.” Stella looks into Campbell’s dark eyes.

“Wow, you are really drunk.”

“Just a little.”

“Maybe we can get you a cab.”

Stella guided Campbell to the edge of the sidewalk. She held up her left arm to flag a cab. Several drove past them. Campbell started nudging his nose against Stella’s neck.

“What’s your name?” asked Campbell.

“Stella.”

“Oh, that’s right. Street Car Named Desire. My name’s Campbell. Campbell Royce.”

“How do you do Campbell?” Stella was still waving her arm valiantly.

“My girlfriend broke up with me tonight. By text. And then she unfriended me on Facebook. She never showed up for dinner.”

“Sorry to hear that.” Stella pushed herself forward to alleviate the heaviness of Campbell. He looked slender but his body seemed sinewy with muscle. He was allowing his body to relax against Stella. She could feel his heat and could smell a spiciness on his skin muted by the sour smell of alcohol.

“I bought her a coat for two grand.”

“Two grand could pay for one and a half months of rent for me.”

“Cheap vodka.”

“Yes, we’ve already established this. I drink cheap vodka.”

“She used my credit card. I had to cancel it.”

“You gave her a credit card?”

“I had to cancel it.” Campbell was breathing in Stella’s ear. She could smell the slightly acrid smell of vodka on his breath.

Stella waved her arm again when she saw a yellow taxi approaching. The taxi stopped and Stella rushed forward with Campbell dragging on her side. The taxi driver did not look happy. “Is he alright?” asked the French accented Haitian driver. Stella looked at the name plate. Pierre.

“Hi, Pierre. He’s drunk. He lives on Park Avenue. Not sure of the exact address but my friend Campbell here can give you details.”

“You come as well.”

“No, I don’t live on Park Avenue.”

“You come or I don’t take him.”

Campbell moaned. “Where am I going?”

Stella sighed. “Did you hear that Campbell? I have to escort you. Damn it.”

“Damn it!” Campbell exclaimed.

“You just get drunker by the minute. Alright, where do you live Campbell?”

“Park Avenue.”

“Where exactly on Park Avenue?” Stella was losing patience. Her strong drive to be a nice person was losing ground.

“Twee, twee, sax.”

“Great. Now you’re starting to sound like a kid. You heard the man. Three three six.”

“You come?” asked the taxi driver.

“Yes, yes. You better pay for my cab ride home Mr. Royce.”

“Yep. I got money.”

“Beautiful.”

Campbell leaned his head back against the seat but was still gripping Stella’s arm. He found her warm and yielding. Stable. Campbell decided she wasn’t attractive. Her features didn’t look quite finished. It was as if an artist got bored in penciling in her face. It was not a felicitous blending of skin, hair and eyes. But there was something comforting about her face. She was a good person. Campbell understood that the moment he walked into the restaurant.
Good people in Manhattan are a rarity
, thought Campbell. Or maybe good people were rare in his career, his world. Stella was gripping the magazine tightly. He had watched her staring at. She looked reverential. Campbell wanted to yank it and yell that it was only a magazine not a deity. But maybe it was. Kristin worshipped beautiful things including her image.
Why did women get so tangled up in the surface of things?
Campbell wondered.

The taxi stopped in front of a gilded and ornate building. The doorman rushed out and opened the taxi door.

“Hello, Mr. Royce.” The doorman was short, squat and his maroon cap could barely contain his curly, cushiony hair.

“Mr. Royce is drunk,” said Stella. “He’s all yours.”

“Certainly, come along Mr. Royce.” The doorman pulled Campbell out of the cab.

“Twenty-five dollars.” Pierre was staring at Stella expectantly.

“Campbell!” Stella hollered.

The doorman turned around. Campbell had his arm slung around his shoulders.

“I need money for the cab.”

“Right. Right.” Campbell pulled out his wallet and handed Stella a hundred dollar bill.

"It’s twenty five.” Stella held her blonde hair down with her hand. The wind had kicked up.

“Keep the change.”

“How kind.” Stella’s tone was sarcastic. “So glad to be done with you.”

“Bye, Ms. Cheap Vodka.”

It was Thursday. Stella didn’t mind Thursdays. She didn’t work at the restaurant on Thursdays. She had only the transcribing job, which meant she had the entire evening free. She considered napping or a reading a book but pushed away thoughts of wasting time. She needed to write. She was only a quarter done with her book. Since arriving in New York she had had many failed starts at writing. Stella was aiming for literary and profound. Big mistake. Nothing seemed good enough. Everything she wrote seemed trite, inflated, boring. Jane laughed at her.

“Stop trying to be Steinbeck. Just fuckin’ write. Entertain yourself. I know you read romance novels. You sneak em’ in. Like chocolate bars at a Weight Watchers meeting. Embrace trash. Write trash. Trash is rarely boring. Write for the woman sitting in an airport or the woman who sorts laundry before driving her kids to soccer games. That shit sells. And you need money. New York is expensive and you got big loans for going to that snotty girl’s school.”

“Wellesley is a women’s college not a girl’s school.”

“Who cares? All I know is that there were no boys there.”

“Women perform better when men aren’t around.”

“Yeah, but what do you do with your libido?”

Stella had sighed. “Wellesley isn’t on the moon. Men are around. Plenty of men around.”

“Did you date any of them?”

“…no…”

“Why not?”

“I’m not good with men.” Stella wanted to sound vague. Ambiguous. In actuality, Stella had to accept that men were not attracted to her. She didn’t have a single date in high school or college. There were a few men when she first moved to New York City but every attempted start at a relationship failed miserably. Stella didn’t think she was ugly but she was far from being perfect.
Did only perfect people find love?
She wondered.

Her book was about a spectacular looking American woman learning English in Italy and her quest for finding true love. Stella made the main character radiant. Devastatingly attractive. That’s what women wanted to read about. Pretty women and handsome, successful men. Stella understood that the main character was not her and could never be her. Women tend to be insecure. Female readers don’t want the hero to fall for a plain girl because what mysterious power would such a woman possess to get a handsome man to fall in love with her? It would have to be something so amazing that most women could not attain it. Having a beautiful heroine made things easy. It was a shortcut to emotional connection. It was also escapism. Stella thought she looked like most women. A size twelve, attractive and of average height. Stella was not a genetic freak or a fanatic about health. She had chocolate croissants for breakfast, Lean Cuisines for lunch, Chinese for dinner and wine for dessert. She walked as much as she could but did not love exercise. She snuck romance novels in bed, poured over the fashion magazines and read about celebrity news on the internet. When she wasn’t working she wrote about beautiful people in wonderful places.

Coleman, Marks, Ryder and Johnson was a medium sized law firm in the financial district. Most of their work centered on securities. Stella’s job was to transcribe board meeting minutes and other high level meetings for the law firm’s clients. The work was boring, the pay was mediocre but Stella got to see Ben. Ben was a junior attorney with an Oxford education who did a lot of pro bono work for Amnesty International and the ACLU. He was also handsome. Like Jon Hamm in
Mad Men
handsome. Stella recognized that Ben could be the hero in her book. If Ben lived in feudal Europe he would be a knight. A knight that would scoop Stella up and protect her. Stella knew there was no chance Ben would ever choose her but she liked fantasizing about him even if ultimately it became tortuous.

“Are you done with Box It?”

Stella looked up at Gwen. Gwen was the chief paralegal at the firm. She had tight skin from what looked like far too many botox injections and always wore stiletto heels. She was married to one of the partners and only worked because she truly enjoyed bossing people around.

“Almost.” Stella stared at her computer screen.

“Well, what’s the hold up?”

“I was having some audio problems but the transcript should be done shortly.” Stella looked at Gwen as sweetly as possible.

“Well, hurry it up.” Gwen click clacked away in her Manolo Blahnik’s.

Stella sighed. She realized she had spent too much time thinking about Ben and not enough time working. She had been doing Google searches on Ben. She had found an article written about him in an Idaho newspaper. Ben was a golden boy from Twin Falls. The entire article talked about his illustrious education and career. Local boy done good. Stella could not find a flaw with Ben.

“What ya working on?”

Stella turned and blushed. “Oh, hi Ben.”

“How are you today Stella?” His voice was warm and silky.

“Good. Real good. Thank you.”

“I saw Attila nipping at your heels. She can be frustrating.”

“Gwen is Gwen,” said Stella.

“Well, have a good day. See you tomorrow.”

Stella put the headphones on her ears and closed her eyes. She allowed herself a few seconds to linger over Ben’s voice before she hit play on the audio.

She left the law firm at 4:00 PM and called Jane. Jane picked up the phone on the third ring.

“Allo.”

“Jane, it’s me.”

“Who’s me?”

“Jane, it’s Stella.”

“Oh, hello Stella.” Jane was feigning both amnesia and an English accent.

"I'm done for the day. Want to meet up?"

"Oh, I get the privilege of your presence?"

"Come on, Jane." Stella exhaled a long breath.

"Meet me at Franco's for dinner. I'm lusting for some manicotti."

"Alright see you at 7:00 PM. I have a few errands to run and I have to pick up my check from Lola's."

"Tata."

"Hugs."

Stella arrived at Lola's twenty minutes later. Some of the waiters were folding napkins into swans and a few were lining up silverware on the table. Stella walked through the kitchen to the back office. Kelly was sitting at the small desk sorting through receipts.

"Hey, came to pick up my check."

"Oh, well it's the popular girl."

"Huh?"

"Here's your paycheck and a little note from an admirer."

"What are you talking about?" Stella took the check that Kelly held out with an outstretched hand. There was a note attached with a paper clip. Stella opened the note that was written on heavy stock cream paper. She opened.

Dear Stella:

Thank you for getting me home safely. That was very kind of you. Please allow me to take you to dinner as a sign of appreciation. I acted horribly the other night. I would like to demonstrate that I can be civil and gentlemanly. Please call my assistant at 866-4902.

Yours, Campbell Royce.

Stella wasn't sure Campbell could be a gentleman. She thought about him and that night. He looked arrogant, confident. Roughly handsome. Dark hair, darker eyes and a fine stubble of whiskers shadowing his lower face. There was no hint of a youthful boy in him. Not like Ben. Campbell looked strong and stormy. Heathcliff walking the moors.

"Well?" Kelly was eyeing Stella with amusement.

"Just a customer I helped."

"How exciting."

"Not exactly. I'll see you tomorrow." Stella stuffed the letter into her coat.

Franco's was in Little Italy and Thursday night was all you can eat manicotti. It was one of the best deals in town. When Stella arrived Jane was drinking red wine and looking bored.

"Hello Jane." Stella leaned over and kissed her cheek.

"So glad to see you." Jane didn’t move but kept her hand on her wine glass.

"I'm starved. Did you order for us?"

"Oh, yes. Salad, garlic bread and manicotti on the way. Anything new with you?" Jane's red hair fell diagonally across her face.

"No…well…sort of."

Jane sat up straight. "What happened?"

Stella proceeded to tell Jane about Campbell, his drunkenness, the cab ride and the note. Jane clapped her hands in delight.

"This is so wonderful," said Jane.

"Really?"

"This is excitement. Something new in your life. All you do is work and work. This is what you need. A little adventure. Let's call now."

"It's 7:00 PM. I doubt the assistant is still in the office. Plus, I don't want to call. The man was not nice."

"Oh, who cares? Go for the nice meal. He'll probably take you somewhere posh."

"I'm not calling." Stella had made up her mind.

"I will." Jane grabbed the note from Campbell that Stella had set on the table. Jane pulled out her phone and dialed. She hit the speaker button.

Campbell's assistant answered on the second ring. "Razor Edge Financial. Margaret speaking."

"Hello, I'm Stella. I was supposed…"

"Yes, Stella. Thank you for calling. Mr. Royce was wondering if you were available for dinner on Saturday at 8:00 PM at Clair De Lune."

"Of course."

"Wonderful. Mr. Royce will send a car to pick you up. May I have your address?"

"Certainly. 15789 Avenue A."

"Great. Please call me if you have any questions."

"Thank you." Jane clicked the phone off. "It's done," she said. "You have a date on Saturday."

"It's not a date." Stella's voice sounded harsh but she was secretly thrilled. A night on the town. She couldn't remember the last time she went to a nice restaurant with a man.