There's Cake in My Future (21 page)

“Hi, Greg, I’m Mel.”

“Do you want to go to my house and have sex?” he squeaks at me.

I close my eyes and shake my head a bit. I must have heard that wrong. “Excuse me?”

“Since you were asking my dad’s gardener to have sex, I’m thinking you’re pretty desperate. I’m kind of desperate too, so I figured, you know…”

I left the Home Depot so fast I looked like I was being chased by a giant tidal wave.

Twenty-six

Seema

“Your penis was larger than this,” I say authoritatively to Scott that Saturday night.

“You’re wrong,” Scott argues, slightly out of breath.

“I’m right,” I insist. “You’re not looking at it from the right angle.”

“How many angles are there?” Scott whines. “And besides, a different angle won’t make it smaller.”

“Yes, it will,” I insist. “You’re several feet from it. If you got up close like me, you’d see it needs to be bigger.”

Scott finishes securing a large engagement ring that’s been cracked in half onto a navy blue canvas, then steps down from his ladder and walks over to where I am standing, in the center of his living room. He knits his brows as he stares at the big penis sculpture in the center of his dark blue canvas. He scrutinizes the picture on the digital camera I hold in my hand. It’s a picture of
Chode,
one of his installations stolen from the art gallery last week. “You’re right. It was bigger before,” Scott concedes.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him sympathetically.

“It’s also the wrong shade of red,” Scott says, exhaling a worried sigh.

I look at the picture again, and debate, “Oh, I think that part’s fine.”

Scott shakes his head. “Right now it’s not red. It’s pink.”

“Penises can be pink,” I say to him reassuringly.

“In real life, they can be. But in my last version of this piece, it was bright red.”

I look at the picture again. Scott leans over my shoulder to stare at it for the millionth time. I don’t mean to, but I inhale the sweet scent of his cologne as he debates, “Well, maybe it could be pink.”

As I hand Scott his camera, all I can think is,
What is that scent? It’s new. Oh, he smells good tonight.

Scott shakes his head as he looks at the camera’s screen. “No, I gotta redo it. It’s gotta be red.”

“It’s fine now,” I assure him. “Just keep going.”

Scott shakes his head. “I want the piece to be angry.”

“Oh, I think you have a pretty angry penis there,” I joke. “Seriously. If you think it’s big enough, move on and focus on the broken promises section in the back left.”

“Nope,” Scott says, rushing over to a massive bookcase filled with a variety of sculptures—everything from penises of assorted sizes to butterflies to guillotines to wedding cakes. “I can’t move on until I think it’s perfect,” Scott says. He puts his camera down and pulls two penises from a shelf. “Pick one. How big should we go?”

“The piece is called
Chode
. Go as big as you can.”

Scott scrutinizes both penises. “What do you think the ideal size penis is?” he asks me out of the blue.

“Excuse me?” I ask him back, shocked by the question.

Scott looks up from the penises. “The ideal. Women say size doesn’t matter, but of course it does. So what’s the ideal?”

“I don’t know.” I stammer. “What’s the ideal breast size?”

“Thirty-six C,” he answers without hesitation.

I look down at my boobs. How the Hell did he know that? I look up to see Scott smirking at me. “If you guess my weight, I’m leaving,” I warn him.

“One hundred and two. Soaking wet,” he lies, shooting me a teasing smile.

That was definitely flirting. I’m sure of it.

“Take these,” Scott says, handing me the two penises.

I am clearly not thrilled to be holding these. As he backs away from me, I say to him “I don’t see why you can’t just—”

“Smile!” Scott says to me brightly. Then he lifts up his digital camera and snaps.

“Oh, you did NOT just take a picture of me holding penises.”

Scott turns the camera around to see the shot. “Well, I don’t have kids, and it’s important to get a good shot for Christmas cards.” He shows me the picture—a candid of me talking to him, and holding a penis in each hand. “Look at it as a composition. Which is better?”

I look at the digital shot and concede, “The smaller of the two.”

Scott nods. (I’m getting better at this whole art thing.)

He takes the slightly smaller of the two penises from me, grabs a small can of bright red paint from a corner, flips open the top, gets a brush from another section of his studio, and begins placing and painting the centerpiece of his work.

I can’t get that other penis out of my hands fast enough. I practically throw it back onto the shelf. “Yuck.”

Scott laughs. “You’re acting like you’re holding a snake. Wait … forget I said that.”

“Yeah,” I agree. “Too easy, even for you.”

I walk over to my glass of wine on his kitchen counter and take a sip.

It’s Saturday night, and we are in his loft downtown. I always like being here: it feels like a completely different world, even though it’s just in another part of the city. The loft itself is basically a giant room—sort of like an apartment with no walls. (Except for the bathroom—obviously he has walls for a bathroom. He’s not that eclectic and bohemian.) The apartment, and the building, could not even vaguely be described as a starving-artist-looking kind of place: the living room/bedroom/art space is gigantic, with amenities like polished hardwood floors, high-end lighting fixtures, and floor-to-ceiling windows with amazing views of the city lights.

Scott has divided the mammoth space to make a distinct area for each part of his life. When you first walk in, you’ll notice his installations, and other artwork: they take up what would normally be a living room.

To the left of the “living room” is his “bedroom.” Which in this case is just a mattress thrown on the floor with a nightstand on each side of the bed: to the left of his bed is an electric blue nightstand resembling a clown’s head, and to the right of the bed is a bright canary-yellow nightstand that he’s had since he was four years old. A bright red dresser rests against the wall, with a pile of clean laundry lying on top, waiting to be folded. (Or, in Scott’s case, waiting to be leafed through and thrown on.)

The living space to the right looks like a fraternity boy’s idea of a bachelor pad. A four-thousand-dollar red leather sofa, a glass coffee table with a shelf in the middle to display coffee table books (or in his case postcards from all the cities he’s traveled to), and a monstrously large sixty-five-inch plasma TV mounted on his brick wall.

The kitchen takes up the back of his cavernous apartment. It is ultra modern, with black granite countertops, stainless steel Sub-Zero appliances, and checkerboard black-and-white linoleum flooring. It’s very pretty—my idea of a perfect kitchen. And right now, it is the perfect backdrop for enjoying my glass of wine. I take a sip as I watch Scott continue to paint his penis. “So, have you heard from Nic?” he asks me.

“She sent a few e-mails,” I tell him.

“How’s it going?”

I laugh. “Well, let’s see. The e-mail she sent me yesterday began with: ‘Greetings from the newlywed, the nearly dead, and the overfed!’ ”

Scott laughs. “Yeah, she doesn’t seem like the cruise ship type.”

“No,” I agree. “Apparently, earlier in the week, she met a crew member with the name tag ‘Charon.’ Which she found either really funny or really depressing…”

Scott laughs again. “Charon? Like the ferryman who gets paid to take people down the River Styx and into Hades?”

I’m visibly impressed. “Well, look at you. I had no idea who Charon was. And apparently no one else on the boat did either, because she made a ‘Boat to Hell’ joke that just withered on the vine and died.”

Scott smiles at my story as he continues to paint. “She’ll be home soon. How’s Mel?”

“Oh, God,” I exclaim. “On a rampage. Don’t get me started.”

Scott looks up from his work and makes eye contact with me just long enough to let me know to continue.

“She’s a complete nut job,” I declare, shaking my head. “We got her stuff out last night, which was great. But then she woke up this morning after all of two hours of sleep to research the newest ways to meet men. It’s like she’s on a mission with this; she even wants to start online dating. And, get this, she wants me to do it too.”

I wait for a reaction from Scott. I’m curious about what he thinks of online dating. And, more important, what he thinks about me online dating. But he seems so focused on his work, I’m not sure if he even heard me.

After several silent seconds, I ask him, “So what do you think?”

“Of what?” Scott asks while brushing his penis.

“Of online dating. You didn’t say anything.”

“You’re telling me a story,” Scott says, as he pulls open a nearby bottle of blue paint. “There’s nothing for me to say. I’m listening.”

“Oh. Sorry. Let me rephrase: what do you think of online dating?”

Scott considers my question for a moment. “I’m not a fan. But it doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is what she thinks.”

“Do you think I need to get online?” I ask him.

Please say “No.” Please make it sound like that’s the most ridiculous idea you’ve ever heard. Tell me something—anything—to hint to me that I don’t need to go out looking because you’re right here.

Scott looks up at me and locks his eyes with mine. It’s one of those moments that always make me yearn for him to lean in and kiss me. A moment where I nervously keep staring, because I don’t want to break away first and look like I’m not interested.

Scott shrugs. “If you want.”

If I want? What kind of an opinion is that?

But before I can get him to elaborate, his buzzer to get in the building goes off. Scott turns to it, a bit confused. “Hold that thought.”

Scott walks to his front door, and presses the button on his intercom. “Speak to me.”

“It’s Britney!” I hear a girl’s voice cheerfully yell on the other end. “I thought you could use some food!”

Scott quickly shoots me a nervous glance (or was that my imagination?) then presses the buzzer to let her into the building.

He turns to look at me. We make eye contact again. He says nothing.

“Should I go?” I finally ask him. “Give you guys time alone?”

“What? No,” Scott says, still by the door. Scott puts his hand on the doorknob, then stands there a moment, clearly debating his next move.

“Can you excuse me for a sec?” Scott says, opening the door and heading out.

I start to shout after him, “I really can go if you…”

“No. I’ll be right back,” Scott yells from the hallway.

And then there’s nothing but silence.

I look around his cavernous space. Twiddle my thumbs. Step up on my tiptoes. Bring myself down on the balls of my feet. Take a nervous drink of wine.

Man, it’s quiet. I’ve never noticed how quiet it is here. You’d think in a giant building of artists, there’d be a lot of noise on a Saturday night. But no. Just … awkward silence.

I slowly tiptoe across the room and toward his open front door. I’m not hearing anything from the hallway. Which probably means he’s not unhappy to see her. Or it means he’s kicking her out before she can see me.

I lean my ear toward the hallway, trying to pick up on any recon.

Still silence.

Maybe she doesn’t even know I’m here.

Or maybe she does know I’m here and came by to have a pissing contest, let me know he’s her man now, and that he won’t be making any more midnight phone calls to the likes of me.

That little blond bimbo bitch! I’ll bet that is what she’s trying to do! She’s just a controlling, manipulative little heifer who wants to eliminate his female friends one by one so she can …

“I can go,” I hear Britney say from down the hall. “I have friends waiting for me at Library Bar anyway.”

“At least have dinner with us,” Scott tells her. “Seema would love to see you.”

I quickly (and silently) run back to my spot near his work as the two of them continue walking down the hall.

I can still hear the two of them talking, and Britney continuing to apologize. “But I don’t want her to think I’m some weird possessive girl who just shows up unannounced like some bunny boiler.”

“She’s not going to think you’re weird. She loves you. Just come in,” Scott says.

He pushes his open door wider and walks in with Britney. Beautiful, blond, ridiculously happy to be alive Britney. Jesus Christ, where does he find women like this? She carries in two white plastic bags filled with white paper cartons, and Scott carries in a BevMo! bag.

“Seema, you remember Britney,” Scott says, as he closes the door and walks across the room to his kitchen.

“Hi,” I say, forcing my face to light up. “Good to see you again.”

“Hey girl!” Britney says to me brightly, walking up to me and giving me a big hug. “Sorry to intrude. I know you guys are working, so I thought I’d bring over some food. You know how he forgets to eat when he’s working.”

“Yeah. It takes a special kind of stupid to forget to eat,” I say without thinking.

Great. She’s bringing him food, and I’m calling him stupid.

Scott places the BevMo! bag on the counter, then opens his kitchen cabinet to get some plates. Britney puts the white bags on another part of his kitchen counter, and I smile awkwardly as I sniff the food. “That smells great,” I say. “Thai?”

“No, it’s this great little Japanese place we found on Third,” the perky little bitch tells me as she opens the correct drawer to retrieve his cutlery. “They have sushi, of course, but also a bunch of other interesting cooked dishes.” She turns to Scott. “Oh, baby, I brought you this beer I think you’ll like. It’s an IPA with double hops.”

Scott opens the bag, and pulls out a six-pack of bottled beer. “Oh, this looks cool. Do you guys want one?”

Yuck. I hate the kind of beer he drinks. “I’ll stick with the great wine you got me. Thanks.”

Yup. While you were out shopping for him, he was out shopping for me!