Now is not the time to bring up the summer stock thing. Maybe over lunch.
Or maybe I should just drop the whole idea.
I mean, following Will to summer stock—that seems kind of desperate, doesn’t it? Like I’m afraid that if he leaves New York, I’ll lose him. Like I have to go along to keep an eye on him, and make sure he doesn’t cheat on me.
But the thing is, there’s a good chance that that’s pretty much true.
Because maybe, in the back of my mind, I suspect that Will has cheated on me. It’s nothing he’s ever said or done, just a feeling I sometimes have. It comes and goes, so it could just be paranoia on my part. As Raphael always says, I’m not exactly the self-esteem queen.
I watch Will get dressed in jeans, a thick navy sweatshirt and sneakers. He combs his hair back into place after he pulls the shirt over his head, and turns to me.
“Ready?”
I nod and toss my magazine aside, grabbing my fleece pullover and black bag once again.
As we head out the door of his apartment, I reach for Will’s hand. He’s not big on affection—he says his family is on the cold side. Since my parents pretty much go around hugging everyone who crosses their path, I tend to stray into touchy-feely more often than I probably should. But Will is used to me by now, and gives my fingers a quick squeeze before releasing them to press the button for the elevator—something he could have done with his free hand, but maybe I’m just looking for reasons to be irked.
The truth is, I want Will to be as crazy about me as I am about him. Which I sometimes think he is—he just doesn’t know how to show it.
For example, there was a time, a few years ago, when he used to call me dear.
Ew.
You know what I mean? With him it was dear, instead of hon, or sweetie, or babe or any of the usual boyfriend-girlfriend pet names. Maybe he had good intentions, but it just bugged me, because it seemed like something an aging spinster schoolteacher would call a prize pupil. Yes, dear, you may go to the girls’ room, but be sure to come right back for the social studies quiz.
There was nothing remotely affectionate or romantic about it, and it just felt forced. I cringed every time he did it, especially when we were in public, and I wanted desperately to ask him to stop. Finally he did, on his own. Maybe he realized I never called him dear in return, or maybe it felt as unnatural to him as it sounded to me.
Naturally, as soon as he stopped, I missed it. At least it was something.
I wish he’d come up with some other endearment to call me, but I don’t know how to bring it up. I can’t just pop out with, “You know what would make me happy? If you called me Bunchkins or Sugar.”
Which actually wouldn’t make me happy, either. In fact, gag.
But you know what I mean. I just long for more, I guess, than we have. And now, with Will leaving, I feel this urgency, this need to establish our relationship more completely.
I suppose three years of going out is pretty established.
But I’m ready for more. I can’t help it.
When Will needed a roommate and placed an ad in the Voice, I was stung. I had hoped that maybe he’d consider us moving in together. In fact, I had finally worked up all my nerve to broach the subject with him one night after much input from Kate and Raphael—but before I could open my mouth, he told me about finding Nerissa.
So let’s take a step back and assess the situation as it now stands.
One gorgeous, buff, commitment-phobic actor blowing out of town.
One overweight, insecure, commitment-obsessed secretary left behind.
I just don’t have a good feeling about this.
But that doesn’t stop me from ordering the bacon cheeseburger with onion rings at the coffee shop around the corner from Will’s building.
And it doesn’t give me the courage to ask him if I can go with him.
Three
Raphael has a sprawling birthday party every year.
He always throws it for himself, and he always holds it at his apartment in the meat-packing district. A Manhattan Realtor or an optimist or a blind moron might call it a loft in a converted warehouse, but basically, there’s nothing converted about the place. It still looks and feels like a warehouse—a cavernous, dank, virtually windowless, virtually unfurnished place that not even Martha Stewart, armed with a glue gun and yards of chintz and rolls of Persian carpet, could transform into anything remotely homey.
But it’s a large dwelling, and in Manhattan, large dwellings are notoriously hard to come by. Raphael makes good use of his; he always invites everyone he ever met to his birthday parties, and he tells them to bring everyone they ever met.
According to Kate, who’s known Raphael a year longer than I have and has therefore been to his birthday parties before, the crowd is typically comprised of incredibly gorgeous, hip, fashionable gay males and their incredibly gorgeous, hip, fashionable straight female friends.
This year, because it’s a milestone birthday for Raphael, the crowd is expected to be even larger than usual, and also more gorgeous, more hip and more fashionable than usual.
Raphael told me that there’s always a theme.
Last year, it was a jungle theme. Buff men in loincloths and animal prints.
The year before that, it was a beach party. Buff men in Speedos.
This year, it’s an island theme.
Spot the trend? Raphael’s motifs are designed to allow for minimal clothing—not to mention maximum alcohol consumption by way of fun, fruity drinks.
This year, he’s rented fake palm trees. He wanted to have blazing tiki torches, but I talked him out of that one. His friend Thomas, who is a set designer for Broadway shows, created this shimmering blue waterfall and lagoon out of some kind of slippery fabric. Frozen cocktails are being served in fake plastic coconut cups.
I arrive almost two hours late, with Kate in tow. She’s the reason we’re tardy. She went to a salon to have her lip waxed shortly before the party was supposed to start, and we had to wait for the blotchy red swelling to go down.
Now, as we walk into Raphael’s jamming party, she tugs my arm and asks, “Are you sure I look all right?”
Actually, she doesn’t. In keeping with the island theme, she has what looks like a Hawaiian Punch mustache above her upper lip, despite her futile attempts to cover the welt with pancake makeup. The lighting in her apartment was so dim that I didn’t realize how much it shows until we were on the subway.
“You look fine,” I lie.
She cups a hand at her ear. “What did you say?”
“You look fine,” I shout, to be heard above the blasting Jimmy Buffet tune and the din of voices. “I just can’t believe you waited until just before the party to get your lip waxed. Why didn’t you do it earlier in the day, or yesterday? You know you always have a bad reaction to the wax.”
“I didn’t realize my mustache had come back in until tonight,” Kate shouts back. “I mean, what did you want me to do, show up here with five o’clock shadow? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me I had stubble when we were together this morning.”
“I didn’t notice, Kate. Guess I was too wrapped up in my own trauma.”
“How bad do I look?” She takes a few steps toward the television set and strains to catch a glimpse of herself reflected in the darkened screen.
“Tracey!” Raphael materializes with a shriek,