“The lady has decided,” he says, placing his plastic on the counter.
Lady? “How much?” I ask.
“My treat.”
“Thanks.” Sounds good to me.
“Ready?”
“But of course.”
Sugar…vodka…lemon…mmm.
“Ready?” he asks again.
“Yup.”
Sugar…vodka…lemon…mmm.
He motions to two empty seats along the bar.
I will not ask if he’s heard from Jeremy. I will not ask if he’s heard from Jeremy. I will not ask if he’s heard from Jeremy.
We sit down.
“So what’s new with you?” he says.
“Not much,” I answer. “Have you heard from Jeremy?” Damn.
“No, not since he left for Thailand. You guys still together?”
Uh-oh. Suddenly tears are dripping into my mouth and I’m tasting a weird lemon/sugar/vodka/salt concoction. I will never mention Jeremy’s name again. If I absolutely have to think about him, I will use an abstract symbol, like Prince did. From now on he is “
I cover my eyes with my hand so that maybe Andrew won’t realize I’m crying. I feel like that kid in the second grade who used to cover his nose with one hand while he picked it with the other. Except we all knew what was going on.
Andrew, of course, knows what’s going on. He puts his arm around me and I start to cry right into his chest. I’m probably making a huge wet stain on his gray shirt, and my mascara is going to be all over my face, making me look like as if I’m in the middle of exams and haven’t slept in weeks, only periodic naps at the library between several cups of black coffee—
His chest is awfully hard.
Okay, so he’s no Ethan Hawke, but he’s certainly cute, and an MBA from Harvard will make him even cuter. I can seduce him tonight and we could have wild, passionate animal sex and then we’ll wake up smiling in each others arms and go for breakfast, strolling hand in hand along the river—
He smells very, very good.
He smells like
I absolutely cannot have a wild affair with anyone who wears
I’m not supposed to think that out loud, am I?
I know I’m supposed to want to meet someone else with whom I can have a healthy relationship, but in all reality, I would be perfectly content to use the other person to get Jeremy to want me back.
Sigh. I know. I’m hopeless.
I pull myself away from Andrew. “I’m really sorry. I should go fix myself up.” A wet stain is smack in the center of his shirt.
“No problem.” He scribbles something down on a matchbook. “Call me if you ever want to talk, okay?”
“Thanks.” I am becoming increasingly mortified by this entire experience.
What a nice guy.
I push the washroom door open to ten women unreservedly checking themselves out in the overhead mirrors. I’m not sure what it is about ladies’ rooms at bars, but women become animals. They fiddle with their breasts and wedgies, and line up their makeup like ammunition along the sink. Case in point: a woman in a short snakeskin skirt pulls a full cosmetic bag out of her purse, empties it along the porcelain, and retrieves her eyelash curler.
I look at myself in the mirror. Instead of appearing smoky, my Cosmo eyes look as if someone rubbed a dirty ashtray around them.
“Excuse me,” I ask the snake-woman. “Any chance you have any eye-makeup remover?”
“Of course, honey,” she says. (She’s a lot older: hence the “honey.” There is a distinct difference between “hon,” which Natalie likes to use, and “honey.”) “Here’s a cotton ball, too, honey.”
“Thanks.” I practice smiling into the mirror. I smile again and again until it looks fake and evil. Maybe I’ll become the bitch. Guys love the bitch.
I push my way back out the door and head back to the bar.
“One Sex on the Beach, please.” Sitting on a stool, I try to stop myself from swerving back and forth with annoyance. A blow-dried blonde twirls her hair and bends over so that the suit she’s talking to has to look down her shirt. The three men on the other side of me call out numbers, rating the women as they walk by. A man with sagging skin vocally calculates a nine and a half for the brunette sitting four stools down. She’s wearing a long skirt with a slit up to her armpit. His face looks like a rotting peeled grape; his eyes are like raisins. When he says eight, I think he might be referring to me. I’d like to pour my drink over his head, drama-queen-like, but I decide to stare him down instead. After all, a drink’s a drink, not to be wasted, but to get us wasted. I stare at him until his skin turns into dots of brown and then into specks of orange, as if I’ve been sitting too close to the TV.
Why am I here? Why am I not at home watching TV? It’s almost eleven and I could be watching “L and O” with Sam. The blow-dried blonde’s giggles sound like recorded sitcom laughter. I hate Orgasm, I hate Boston, and I hate Natalie. Where is Natalie?
Wait.
Is that who I think it is?
Jonathan Gradinger?
Foxy Jonathan Gradinger?
Foxy Jonathan Gradinger who grew up in Danbury and played Danny Zukoe in our high school’s rendition of Grease when he was a foxy senior and I was an eager freshman? I sat in the front row for three nights straight because he was such a fox. Jonathan Gradinger’s picture, cut out from the playbill, was taped to the inside of my locker, right up there beside my poster of Kirk Cameron. My five-section binder was covered with sprawls of Jackie Gradinger, Jacquelyn Gradinger, Fern Gradinger, Fern Jacqueline Gradinger, and Fern Jacquelyn Norris Gradinger. I knew Jonathan’s schedule by heart and would casually happen to be walking behind him on the fourth floor staircase between second and third period, just as he was going from chemistry to trig. So what if my English class was in the basement? Thankfully he had been way too cool to notice some crazed groupie trailing after him.
It’s getting hot in here. My chills are multiplying! Grease lyrics hurl through my head. I sip my Sex on the Beach and think of lightning.
From the back it looks like him. He’s wearing a button-down shirt that looks like the type of shirt Jonathan Gradinger the fox would wear.
I’d know the back of that head anywhere.
He just needs to turn a bit to the left…a bit more…a little bit more…why is that wench distracting him? He’s walking away! Stop! Stop!
I try sending him telepathic messages. “Turn around. Turn around right now. Turn around right now, foxy Jonathan Gradinger. Fall madly in love with