When the Messenger Is Hot (7 page)

Nadine calls Josie to report that
the gentlemen were enraptured
, and that she gave Hayes her address and Hyman her numbers in New York and Philly. Hyman calls at the crack of dawn the next morning, before her train back to school, asking her out for a date the next time she comes to New York. Josie picks up a copy of
People
magazine at Penn Station and discovers an article about Hyman's mother, an actress who had been famous in the sixties and then kind of disappeared and later wrote a tell-all book about her subsequent life as a Turkish porn star. Naturally, Josie runs out to buy the book, which she reads with a certain amount of guilt. She feels like she's cheating. She realizes she is going to have moments when Hyman is going to tell her things that she already knows and that she is going to lie. She does not realize that she probably started lying to Hyman before brunch was over. Josie finishes the book in one evening and identifies with Hyman's mother on account of her being in love with a brilliant film director to whom she feels intellectually inferior. Josie isn't really sure if Hyman's mother feels less inferior at the end of the book or not, it seems like she just feels glad not to be a Turkish porn star anymore.

Josie receives a letter from Hayes two days after her return to Philly, a letter that says things like
it was very nice to meet you
and
I would be honored if you would agree to dine with me when you return to New York
. Josie does not feel attracted to Hayes, but feels that she should. A few days later Hayes calls Josie
to follow up the letter
and Josie agrees to meet him for lunch but feels like telling him to bring a resume. Josie wishes that Hyman would call her in Philly to use words like
honor
, but he does not call until she gets back to New York, at which time he invites her to an opera opening, an opening of an
innovative
production of
Carmen
. Hyman takes some time to explain about the innovation and about opera in general before Josie, the daughter of a soprano, who has seen quite a few operas in her short life, who has seen quite a few performances of
Carmen
, politely says, Yes
I know the story of
Carmen, without any additional information that would possibly convey to Hyman that she knows anything at all. She does not want to be seen as pretentious. She does not want to seem like Hyman. In fact Hyman is certainly not thinking Josie is pretentious. Hyman is thinking about what he can
contribute
. Josie says she has to go and is a little bit late to meet Hayes, who has been waiting at the restaurant for twenty-five minutes even though Josie is really only about seven minutes late. Hayes is holding a single rose.

Josie does not normally have two dates in one day. Men like her, but her experience is such that more than one date per day can be confusing. Plus, she just doesn't like that many guys. So it doesn't often come up. Josie feels a little guilty about having lunch with Hayes knowing that she likes Hyman. Hayes asks Josie a few questions about the bank but Josie doesn't have much to say about it that's interesting to her except that the guys in accounting stumble in hungover a lot. Hayes is looking more for an interest in finance. Josie says her interest in finance is limited to having a little. Hayes laughs very loudly, a
ho ho ho
kind of fakey laugh. Josie blurts out that she's not looking for anything serious right now and just wants to concentrate on
graduating and getting a good job
, which isn't true. Josie wants to concentrate on Hyman. Hayes says he understands but looks like he doesn't, asks if he can write her again. Josie says sure.

Josie picks out a black angora sweater and a long skirt to wear to the opera. Hyman, in rumpled corduroys, takes her out for Thai food for dinner. She has never had Thai food before, not even on a long layover in the Bangkok airport. Again, she leaves out the Bangkok information which might possibly lead to some world-traveling/informed sort of conversation, which Josie is more capable of than she realizes, accepting her underachievement, and Hyman orders a variety of dishes for them to share, happy to educate. Josie has had just about all the education she feels she needs, what with the ninth semester she's finishing up now, and would just as soon sample the Thai food and then decide whether or not she likes Thai food without so much education, but overall she is highly impressed that Hyman is so intelligent and especially how that reflects on her. Josie and Hyman share the usual bit of first-date family history and Josie enjoys that his family (divorce, actors, pornography) is even more exotic than hers (divorce, musicians, manic depression). Hyman wastes no time mentioning his mother's recent tell-all with unhesitating disdain. Josie pretends she had no idea about the book but asks why it bothers him. Hyman says,
It's just so sordid
. Left out of the tell-all was the information that in high school, Hyman's mother, in an effort to help Hyman become a man (due to an unusually large head, which he claims only to have
grown into
later, a questionable occurrence) at the late age of sixteen, arranged for him to be deflowered by one of her Turkish colleagues. Josie doesn't really know what to say about this but she's thinking maybe Hyman lost those twenty SAT points on the definition of
sordid
. Hyman mentions over spring rolls that when they lived in Turkey there was no TV and that there wasn't anything to do but read or fuck, and
There was only so much reading, ha
. Josie says,
No TV?
and wonders aloud how she'd ever live without
Days of Our Lives
and Hyman grimaces and says,
Oh you didn't just say that!
clutching his heart as though he has just been stabbed and says television is
odious
and that he would never allow his children to be
brainwashed by our spurious culture
. Josie writes off ever having kids with Hyman but says nothing and they walk to Lincoln Center after dinner and Josie explains her theory of happiness and weather, how if a person can be happy in the winter then they must be truly happy in spite of gray, gloomy weather, that in the summer you might not know if you're naturally happy because it's easy to be cheerful on a beautiful day. Hyman laughs and puts his arm around her.
You are wonderful
, he says. Hyman kisses her before they even get to
Carmen
and asks her to be his date for a wedding he
doesn't approve of
the following weekend in Philly. Josie agrees to the date but asks him about the disapproval and Hyman says they're just
not on the same level. What level is that
, Josie asks, and Hyman says,
An intellectual level
. Josie says,
Is that next to ladies lingerie?
and Hyman says,
Clever
, and gives Josie a squeeze but doesn't laugh.

Hyman comes to Philly for the date wearing an Armani suit, which impresses Josie but seems uncharacteristic given his disdain for all things bourgeois, until they take the train to the wedding in Cherry Hill. Hyman introduces Josie to the couple at the reception as his
friend
but proceeds to try to make out with her over dessert, which public display of affection has never been her thing even under the influence of limitless free champagne. Josie tries to join the conversation with the intellectual/nonintellectual bride and groom but remains largely without comment. During a long and heated discussion about race relations during which Josie mostly remains silent (at one point, referring to the participants in the discussion/everyone present at the wedding being very very white, she says,
What do any of us really know about race relations?
to which Hyman says,
You're so cute
and kisses her on the head). Josie's uncertainty about which one of the newlyweds is on the lower level of intellect serves only to suggest that this particular uncertainty is not going to work in her favor with Hyman long-term. Hyman tries to sleep over at Josie's apartment and Josie says,
Not this time
. Josie doesn't have any particular rules about when she sleeps with someone but after only two dates is feeling uncertain that Hyman is interested in anything other than sex as a goal, and Josie has other goals in mind. Josie has graduation coming up.

She skips the ceremony. Graduating in December with the other underachievers seems anticlimactic to her. She will put in her forwarding address and wait to receive her
communications degree
in the mail. Josie just wants to go home. She does not yet realize that living in a two-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side with a manic-depressive opera singer and her husband may not be the best environment for her to begin her new life. Things go all right for a while. The opera singer and the husband are figuring that Josie will move out as soon as she gets a job. Josie is figuring that she will move out in about a year after she's saved a little money. It will be about a month before all involved realize that they are not figuring on the same things.

Hyman, over the course of eight days, gives Josie a series of increasingly odd Hanukkah presents. Josie is not expecting presents and wouldn't have the first idea what to buy someone after two dates anyway. On the first day he gives her dark chocolate Hanukkah gelt. Josie is impressed by the fact that he's found dark chocolate Hanukkah gelt until he comments that
dark chocolate is just better
, which seems, in spite of being an opinion Josie shares, too definitive. Someone in the world, she thinks, likes milk better. On the second day he gives her a miniature cactus and on the third day he gives her a packet of multivitamins. On the fourth day he gives her a pair of earrings shaped like tiny telephones and explains his feeling that now that she's moving back to New York she needs to have some
style
. Josie will never wear these earrings, not even just to please Hyman. But she will wear the socks he gives her on the fifth day, the socks with tiny terriers on them (they won't show much under her jeans), and she will wear the stockings he gives her on the sixth day, the stockings with the Chinese pattern on them (they won't show much under a long skirt, although Hyman will tell her
they're meant to go with a mini
), but she will not wear the fishnets Hyman gives her on the seventh day, not even
in private
as Hyman is hoping, and she will definitely not wear the rhinestone “Boy Toy” belt he gives her on the eighth day, not even/especially when provided with the argument that
Madonna gets the joke
. Madonna probably does, but Josie thinks she's not so sure about Hyman.

New Year's Eve is spent riding around in a limousine going to parties at the apartments of aging movie stars with Hyman and his father and his father's French model/Ph.D.-candidate girlfriend of approximately the same age as Josie but with a well-developed indifference. At three in the morning the couples return to Hyman's father's apartment for a bottle of Cristal and to listen to a recording of Hyman's new
piece
, a piece Hyman has spent the last three years on, twenty-three excruciating minutes of some kind of vaguely musical collage (bits and pieces from existing operas, subway trains, screams, and blaxploitation films) entitled “Red Vines, Jerky and String Cheese, a fugue” (provoking a loud
Hoo Hoo! Oh, perfection!
from Hyman's father and a smirk from his girlfrend). Josie, from a musical household/Manhattan, is more than familiar with classical music as well as with noise and is certain that this
piece
far more closely resembles the latter, is certain that she could not have lived through this
piece
if it were twenty-four minutes long, endures the
piece
silently to the continued guffaws from Hyman's father, to the nods of understanding from the French girlfriend, with only a blank stare on her own part, in this case unbeknownst to Hyman, because it is all she can do to conceal her utter hatred of this pretentious near-half hour of garbage, only to suffer through the
piece
once again after cries of
Brilliant!
from Hyman's father and once again after that to
catch all the nuances
. Josie can think of no more painful way to spend sixty-nine minutes of her life (plus commentary) and is grateful only that the Cristal continues to flow. Hyman tries to fool around with Josie in the limo on the way back to her apartment, but it's only eight blocks away and the Cristal/piece have eliminated any desire.

Josie meets Nadine for a New Year's Day champagne brunch on the East Side.
Hayes begged me to let him come
, Nadine says with a guilty laugh.
But I hear someone else is smitten with you as well. I don't know, Nadine
, Josie says.
I don't think I'm smart enough for him
. Nadine rolls her eyes and says,
Please! Hyman's a dear friend but someone needs to shove those SAT scores up his ass already. You can't be taking that intellectual nonsense seriously
. Josie admits that she is and explains about the
piece
and says,
There isn't enough champagne on the entire West Side to make that tolerable
. Nadine groans and says,
Well we're on the East Side now, darling
, and orders another round of mimosas.
I'm going to call that bonehead up and tell him to move to the back of the line!
Josie says,
It's a short line
, and in dispute Nadine points out a cluster of cute waiters looking her way and tells Josie she's as bright as anyone she knows and that if Hyman doesn't see that he's a
fool
. Josie always feels a little stronger after champagne with Nadine in the morning.

Josie goes on a job interview for a network news station and, fairly certain that she will get the job, goes to visit Hyman for the weekend in Boston, where he teaches music. Josie asks how cold it is there and he tells her not to worry about it, that if he can help it they'll be spending the weekend indoors. Josie and Hyman still haven't had sex, but they have been doing a lot of other stuff. Josie and Hyman do spend some time out of doors, and it is cold, and Josie eventually decides that they should spend the rest of the weekend indoors, even if it means consenting to the sex, because Hyman wears a terrible navy blue polyester knit hat, a hat that Josie thinks does not reflect any sense of
style
, a hat that he left in the last taxi and which hat, a hat seen on the seat after Hyman's exit from the taxi, a blue polyester knit hat that Josie thought better of retrieving, to no avail because it was replaced the following day with a red polyester knit hat for $3.99 in front of Tower Records. Hyman says,
I lose a lot of hats
. Josie thinks,
Not enough
.