On the Verge Page 3

  “Wow,” says Tabitha, “you’re really glowing from it.”

  “It wasn’t that,” I say, “it was him.”

  “Who?” I put my hand on her shoulder. She is going to take this really hard.

  “Him.” I point up.

  “Him?” She’s confused, but then realizes. I know because her lip starts to quiver.

  Tabitha is on the verge of hysterics all throughout our tortellini salads. Apparently the real travesty is that she wore her Hermes scarf today and the great Prescott never got to see it. She keeps asking me the same questions.

  “Are you sure he was smiling at you?”

  “Our eyes met. If he was thirty years younger it could have been magical. Scratch that, it was magical anyway.”

  “You know, it’s her fault, don’t you?”

  “Is it?” I ask, knowing that the Big C is indeed the root of all evil.

  “Yes, she had me printing out all this stuff for her ‘supposed’ power lunch. Now, it’s common knowledge that unless it’s on my SchedulePlus, it ain’t happening. I suspect an afternoon tryst at the Marriot. It’s DKNY today, a dead giveaway. But she has to have these documents and she keeps making changes and what the fuck? Is she going to read them while her whoever is going down on her?”

  “Well, that’s probably how she got so far.”

  “Anyway, I’m just happy for you, Eve, even though you aren’t as big a fan as I am and it’s hard for me to be so charitable.”

  “Tabitha, you’re doing an admirable job.”

  “Thank you.” She is quiet for a while. I wonder if she’s going to be okay about this. I really want to tell her the rest of my story, it’s so rare that I have something juicy to tell her. This and the Prescott thing are almost too much. When it rains it pours.

  “So about the primate…” Now, that’s the Tabitha we love.

  “Yes,” I say, leaning closer, it’s not exactly lunch room gossip. “Where was I?”

  “The sex music on, he’s half naked and hairy.” She really does listen. I take a dramatic sip of my iced tea.

  “Right, so I am sort of wobbling in, because, let’s face it, I’ve had too much sake and I know it. ‘Hi,’ I say, because I’m kind of surprised, you know, and it’s not too often you walk into a room and find a half-naked hairy guy.”

  “Of course not,” Tabitha says, understanding, “but it’s dark?”

  “Well, the lights are dim, so I stand there like an idiot, the room is sort of spinning, you know, and, Tab, I’m kind of in the mood, despite the hair, the body’s pretty good and he does know how to order sushi.” She nods, not minding the “Tab” because she is so intrigued.

  “‘Do you want to sit down?’ He’s all Barry White like or maybe it’s the R&B, so I go over to the couch and sit on this little edge by his feet, he puts one in my lap and starts, well, touching me with it.” Tabitha looks slightly disturbed. “It was actually kind of nice. So I close my eyes to try to make everything stand still and next thing you know we sort of wind up on the floor. Hardwood.”

  “Nice, but, uncomfortable.”

  “Exactly. He pulls a blanket off the couch and puts it under me.”

  “Very thoughtful.”

  “So we’re kissing and he’s not a bad kisser. Except, I think he might have been kissing me to the rhythm of the music, although, all my impressions could be blamed on the sake—”

  “Even the hair?”

  “No, that was very—real. Next thing you know, some of my clothes are off—”

  “Of course you had the decency to get your unsightly hairs removed.”

  “Right. And the condom comes out—”

  “Where does it come from?”

  “Well, unfortunately it’s in another room.”

  “At least he wasn’t too prepared.”

  “Right, but I’m hoping that I don’t pass out while I’m waiting— I’m pretty drunk.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Right. So he gets back and you know we continued from where we were—”

  “How’s the hair playing into all this?”

  “Not bad, it’s actually sort of something to hold on to.”

  “In the absence of a headboard or say, a car seat.”

  “Right. Well, sort of. And I must say, he’s a great kisser, great with his hands, not shy about the things that matter.” We smile and nod at each other knowingly.

  “And the act?”

  “Not exactly memorable.”

  “Ick.”

  “Exactly, and I’m kind of surprised when he’s done.”

  “Because you’re not, um, satisfied?”

  “Precisely. So he looks at me and says ‘That was beautiful.”’

  “He did not?”

  “He did. You have to understand, he’s been saying stuff like this all night.”

  “Mother of God.”

  “So I realize that means he’s done, and in spite of myself I say, ‘Oh’.”

  “Just like that?” She giggles.

  “Yes, and I feel sort of bad because even in the dark, I can see he’s crushed, but you know, we’ve come so far and all, it seems a shame not to actually get it right.”

  “Of course, you were hoping to go on the journey with him.”

  “Right. So, I tell him what he can do and he does it and he does it well, and it works and we conk out on the floor and it’s a little awkward in the morning, but not too bad because he had to rush out, because he was late and we were both sort of rushing around and I couldn’t find my bra. But, it was fine.”

  “Did you kiss goodbye?”

  “Um.” I have to think about this one. “I think so, probably just on the cheek, it was all so rushed.”

  “How did you leave things?”

  “Give me a call.”

  “Do you want him to call?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  After giving it a lot of thought, I decide I don’t want him to call. I mean, I don’t need a dead-end relationship right now. At least I got my fix. It had been a long drought, but I just don’t know if I could stand to listen to him refer to himself all the time and watch me eat. Every time the phone rings, I take a moment to prepare my Zeke speech, but it’s never him.

  “Eve Vitali.” I answer my phone a week later. This time it’s Roseanne, one of my best friends from college.

  “Hey, Eve. What’s going on?”

  “Not too much. Just hanging out. Dodging phone calls from some guy.” Roseanne will appreciate this, as she is known for having sketchy encounters with what I like to think is a lower-caliber guy. I give her the details.

  “Oh, my God.” She is laughing over the hairy shoulders. “But at least he’s got a cool job. I’ve been meeting a bunch of convenience store workers up here.” Roseanne lives just outside of Hartford. She got a job in some random finance department right out of school. She’s been there for a year. She finished school in four years.

  “So how’s work, Ro?”

  “Well, it’s kind of boring.”

  “What? Finance? I can’t believe it.”

  “No, I’ve been giving some thought to what we talked about.”

  “Oh,” I say, trying to remember. Roseanne has an even better tolerance than I have. She’s Irish. “What do you mean?”

  “You know, about living together. Remember?”

  “Well, I don’t really want to move to Hartford.”

  “No, kookhead—” a classic Ro term of endearment “—I’m moving to New York.”

  “Really? Do you have a job?”

  “No, but I’m a woman in finance. I’ll get a job. Besides, I’ve got savings.”

  “Rent is pretty expensive.” I’m not sure why I’m not thrilled about this. I don’t know why I’m being held to a drunk promise I can’t even remember. I love Ro, really I do, but she’s from some cheesy town in Connecticut and besides, finance.

  “I know that I’m prepared, besides, aren’t you dying to move out? Isn’t this what you want?�
�� She makes a good point, it is time to move out of Victor and Janet’s house.

  “When were you thinking of moving down?”

  “Two weeks.” I swallow my iced cappuccino. “I can look for a job and an apartment at the same time. We can move in by November first.” It’s almost October.

  “It might take a while to get something.”

  “C’mon, didn’t you tell me that night that it’s all about being ready to just jump off the cliff and decide that you’re ready on the way down?” Did I say that? “Well, I’m ready. I want to go to movie premieres, hobnob with celebrities, make the big bucks.”

  “Ro, I think you need to be realistic.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. I will be, but if I don’t do this now, I may never do it and I want to. It’s good for you, too, it’ll light a fire under your tail.” My tail? How can Roseanne expect to move to New York when she can’t even say the word ass?

  “Well, okay.”

  “So do you think I can stay with you for a couple of weeks?”

  With that, it’s basically settled. Roseanne has made up her mind. She is moving down and I am moving out. I suppose I should see this as a good thing. Roseanne can be a lot of fun. She likes to party hard. While her taste in men can be a little, shall we say, juvenile, she’s a good person.

  There would be definite advantages to moving out. Commuting was taking a lot out of me. Once I move to the city, everything will be different. As it is, I spend an hour on New Jersey Transit. I live in Oradell, quaint but sickeningly suburban. My parents have a four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom house and three-car garage. My father owns a plumbing business and my mom is a part-time travel agent.

  I wish I could hate my parents, but they aren’t all that bad. I mean they seem perfectly contented with their suburban life. Although my mom gets great deals on airfares all over the world, they usually take their vacations to Florida. Their biggest concern about my job is that I don’t get benefits. I wish I had a worse childhood, sometimes, I think my childhood was too average to ever have the type of life I would want. Plus, I’m from Jersey. The stigma is unbelievably harsh. When I move into the city I will never again admit my roots. I will be rootless. Rootless is cooler.

  “How was work today?” My mother asks me this every day during dinner as she passes over whatever vegetable we’re having. One thing about my mother, she insists we eat together. Mom basically holds the family together with her chatter.

  “It was okay.” Living at home after college is a lot like being in high school. Every day your parents think that some tiny item of your day will catapult them back to the happier days of their youth. What they don’t understand is that the actual events I could possibly share with them (which excludes drinking, boys and general debauchery) have become as mundane as theirs. It’s tough.

  After dinner, I sit in the family room and watch my dad flip through the stations for a while. My mother asks me for help with the Bergen Record Crossword. It’s times like this when I know I need an apartment in the city. I finally go to bed when Leno comes on, but I can’t fall asleep. I guess what is concerning me is that I will lock myself into a situation with Ro and there will be no way out. I think I have a fear of commitment. In college, it took me a long time to declare journalism my major. I had to keep taking intro business classes to keep my parents happy. I skipped most of them and got passing grades, until it seemed to be apparent that I wasn’t going to be a stockbroker.

  Another issue is that now my life was going to be scrutinized by the likes of Roseanne. What if it just didn’t measure up? Did I care about her reporting to the crew from college about my New York life? Of course, a finance job couldn’t possibly live up to the excitement that was my high-powered publishing job. Ridiculous as I knew it was, I could always manage to impress people with working for Prescott Nelson Inc.

  The biggest thing would be breaking the news to Tabitha. She was weird about new people and I’m not sure what I had told her about Roseanne. I sometimes have a tendency to exaggerate stories when I think the parties involved will never meet. I’m sure I had done that with Roseanne. If they hung out would their impressions of each other in any way affect their impressions of me? But, I was getting ahead of myself. I probably never mentioned Roseanne, except in passing.

  “You mean the one who gave the guy a blow job in the bathroom of some dive?” Even over the blaring ambient music, she’s a little loud. I’ve waited a week to tell her. We are at a party for some female poet who just published a book. An old friend of the Big C’s. I break the news to her after we are both nicely toasted. Some obnoxious looking guy smirks at Tab at the reference to oral sex. She glares at him. “What? Is that a term you’ve never heard? Anyway, is this Rhoda girl gonna really come down?”

  “Roseanne. I forgot I told you that story. I think you’ll love her. She’s lots of fun.” Tabitha seems unconvinced, she puts some truffle pate on her plate. “Is the Big C coming?”

  “Probably for about ten minutes. I know she’s got her yoga class and then she is getting her eyebrows shaped. She rolled her eyes when she got the invite. This food is awful.”

  “She has always yearned for the bohemian lifestyle of a poet.”

  “Yeah, I think it’s just the word poet that the Big C likes. I think this one’s sort of an academic flake.” She looks over at the guest of honor, who already seems a bit drunk. She is surrounded by a group of people who are trying very hard to look sincerely fascinated as she describes her plans for a book tour. “She really should have worn a bra with those droopy boobies. The Big C will be validated.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. Let’s get another drink.” The bartender, Luis, is a really cute Spaniard who makes me a Kettel One gimlet. He likes Tabitha, so it’s pretty stiff.

  “So,” says Tabitha, eyeing our new friend as she speaks. “What does Ronda do? Finance, right? Fascinating,” says Tabitha, just as the annoying guy squirms his way over to me. I feel him standing a little too close. I don’t even have time to give Tabitha the red flag when she’s all over it. She glares at this poor sod.

  “Excuse me. Do you think she would ever want to talk to you?” I look at the guy sympathetically, he really is no match for her. “Okay, then.”

  He cowers away, cursing under his breath. Luis is impressed by Tabitha, although he can’t really understand the harshness of her words. She smiles at him. They begin to talk, well, shout over the music. The best part is the broken English and sign language that goes along with their communication. I can see Tabitha mouthing the word “fabulous.” When he has to make someone else a drink, Tabitha bombards me with questions about where “Rowena” and I are going to live.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Maybe you should live on Wall Street.” She never takes her eyes of Luis.

  “Tabitha, stop being so testy and go play conquistador with your new friend.”

  “He’s busy, serving.”

  “Well, I guess he better get used to it.” She glares at me.

  “This is the thanks I get?”

  “What, for saving me from the evil swine? You know you enjoyed that more than anyone. C’mon, if you’re good I’ll go make the excuses for the Big C’s absence for you.”

  “Well, I guess she really isn’t coming. It is two-thirty. She has an eight o’clock breakfast. She’s certainly not the spring chicken she used to be. It probably looks better for her not to show up. What a great image she cultivates.” Deep down Tabitha admires the Big C.

  “But, she’s not as good a friend as you are.”

  “All this flattery! I assume you want a car voucher?”

  “Well, I’d hoped to stay with you, but I forgot Thursday is Matador Night.”

  “Brilliant. Let’s do some kind of crazy Spanish shot and then you can put your spin on my dear employer’s absence. I guess this means no Krispy Kreme tonight.”

  “Well, I’m sure you can get some special sweet treat.” We motion to Luis who gives us a double shot that
looks a lot like a lemon drop. We clink our glasses and swallow down the tasty goodness.

  “Tabitha,” I say, swaying a little. “We will always go dancing.”

  “We rarely go dancing now.”

  “Well, you know like from that movie about the people in Seattle when she meets the guy from Spain and thinks she’s going to marry him.”

  “Whatever.” She looks around at the thinned-out crowd, the men who have been pretending to drink so they can schmooze, the love connections that have been made for the evening and then the classic Tabitha, “Oh the carnage!”

  “Do you want to live with us?” Perhaps, that wasn’t the best way to phrase it. Tab would never admit to wanting to live with us.

  “No.”

  “Well, at least be happy. It will be fun, a new place to hang out.”

  “I guess. I’ll have to.” She hands me the coveted voucher.

  “It’s true what they say.”

  “Which is?”

  “You are a queen among women.” I kiss her cheek.

  “Be gone!” She waves me away with a hand. “This party totally thinned out and I need to look ready before our little Latin friend makes other plans. Don’t incriminate me with Elizabeth.”

  “Oh, right, that’s her name.”

  “She uses lowercase, if you can imagine the obnoxiousness of it all.”

  “I can’t. Enjoy.” I wave to Luis. He comes over, kisses me and calls me something in Spanish. I call my car, which should be here in fifteen. Enough time for me to pee and make Tabitha’s excuses for the Big C. Lucky for me, the poet elizabeth is on line for the bathroom. Two birds with one stone.

  “You really shouldn’t have to wait on line, you’re the guest of honor.” (Now I know that seems like ass kissing, but I want to think that if anyone ever threw a party for me, I could avoid the whole bathroom line thing.) She laughs.

  “I think I might pee on the floor.”

  “Do you want a glass or something? I have a dance I like to do in these situations.”

  “I’ll try to hold it. Are you an artist, too?”

  “Yes,” I say, “I am a writer. I often freelance for Diana Milana’s magazine.” The great thing about these things is no one will remember specific facts the next day. “I know you two are old friends. She was really hoping to make it tonight, but we’ve got so much going on.”