Are you the guy, Colin? Are you?
“But I’m through with the others. When they call, the answer is no.”
In the bedroom, my phone rang.
My mouth dropped open. Ann-Marie and I stared at each other.
I strode stiffly into my room and hesitated in front of the phone. Finally, I picked it up and clicked it on. “Hello?”
“Please don’t say no,” a voice said.
12
Dad? Is that you? You sound funny.”
“I’m on my cell. Do you believe it? I’m walking down Twelfth Street.” He was shouting. He cleared his throat.
“You got a cell? Dad, you never go anywhere. Why do you need a cell?”
“Everyone has them now.”
“But what are you going to do with it?”
“Talk to you, of course. I wanted to ask—”
“How’s the gallbladder thing? You better?”
“It only hurts when I laugh. Ha ha. I’m fine. It’s eight o’clock at night and I’m out walking around like a human.”
“I can’t hear you too well. You keep going in and out. What kind of phone did you get?”
“It doesn’t flip. They tried to sell me one that flips. But why should a phone flip?”
“You got the cheapest one, huh? Well, why did you call?”
“Don’t hang up on me. Please don’t say no. I want to take you out for your birthday on Monday.”
Monday?
“Dad, I completely forgot. Do you believe I completely forgot my birthday?”
Silence on his end. And I understood it.
My birthday hasn’t been a happy date since I was ten. That’s because it’s also a horrible anniversary. The day my mother died.
And the truth is, she died because of my birthday.
When I turned ten, we still had the big town house duplex apartment in the Village. I don’t remember that day too well. My mind is jumbled with pictures—like bright color snapshots—of red and white balloons and streamers, party hats and a pile of wrapped presents, and then . . . the crowd in the street and the cake box, the white cardboard cake box smashed, the yellow icing oozing out.
Most of what I know about that day comes from what my dad told me later, not from memory. Twelve kids were invited to the party, and my grandparents, and a magician. The Great Amazo. Why do I remember his stupid name?
Mom picked up the cake at Greenberg’s bakery and was rushing home. She started across Christopher Street and didn’t see the taxi. She was hit and killed half a block from the apartment. Crushed like the cake.
So you can see why I might forget my birthday. You can see why birthdays were not exactly occasions I remembered with great fondness. Dad tried to make them nice when I was a kid. He tried to be brave. And of course I had a Sweet Sixteen, all girls and giggles and loud singing and doing and redoing our hair, with the memories pushed to the background like sad music in another room.
But I could still hear it.
Dad was so busy running his chain of camera stores. I really needed a mom. Aunt Rebecca tried to step in. But it was such a chore for her, such hard work to help me with my French homework or take me shopping for summer clothes. I knew she was only doing a favor for her brother.
When the boys started coming around, I didn’t know how to handle it. They told me I was beautiful. I stared at the faces of models in Vogue and other magazines. Was I beautiful like them?
One friend insisted I was a perfect double for Heather Graham. I looked in the mirror and couldn’t see anyone but me.
In high school, I just felt too tall and gangly. My arms and legs looked so skinny to me, like broomsticks. But I was aware of people looking at me, boys watching me in the halls.
What was I supposed to do about looking the way I did?
I needed a mom to explain, to guide me through it all. I couldn’t talk about it with Dad. And it was hard to talk about it with my friends.
I know, I know. I should feel lucky to be tall and blond. Ann-Marie tells me how lucky I am nearly every day.
But sometimes I just feel so awkward. Like people are judging me because . . . because I stand out.
Boo hoo, right?
Ann-Marie never lets me get away with feeling sorry for myself. And she’s right.
But I feel sorry for myself on my birthday, and I have good reason. It’s been fourteen years. I still dream about that smashed birthday cake oozing yellow icing onto the street. And I still miss Mom.
“Sure, I’ll go out to dinner with you Monday night, Dad.”
“You will?” Such surprise in his voice.
“Yeah, why not? As long as we don’t talk about birthdays.”
“I can’t believe my little girl is twenty-four. Hear me sighing. Sigh, sigh.”
“You’re still young, Dad. You’ve got your whole life behind you.”
“Oh, now you’re using my jokes?”
“Yeah. Pretty sad, huh?”
“Well . . . I think if you . . .”
“I’m losing you, Dad. You’re breaking up. You shouldn’t have bought the cheap phone. Dad? Hey, Dad?”
“Oh, did you want coffee, too?” Rita Belson pulled the cardboard coffee container from a paper bag and set it on her desk. “Sorry. I should have asked.”
“It’s okay,” I muttered.
We’d been working together for over a year, and I think maybe in all that time she’d brought me coffee once or twice—both times, not what I’d ordered.
Hostile?
Yes, Rita was hostile. And she didn’t make much effort to cover it up.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and I could have used a cup of coffee. I’d spent most of the day writing letters to authors and publishers and printers, boring stuff about contracts and payments and publishing schedules.
Children’s publishing is not all bunny rabbits and FurryBears, believe me.
Rita made a big deal of sifting through her stack of phone messages before sitting down at her desk to drink her coffee. She gets a lot of calls, most of them personal. She seems to have a lot of guys calling her, and she talks to them all every day.
We share a room with four gray-walled cubicles. Across from us sit Edith, a little gray-haired woman who answers the phone, and Brill, Saralynn’s lanky, blond, efficient, and always fashionably dressed assistant. That means Rita and I are side by side, so I can hear every word she says on the phone.
And a lot of it is about the “great sex” she had the night before.
Whew.
Of course, when Saralynn enters the room, Rita suddenly becomes all business on the phone. She usually pretends she’s discussing a manuscript with an author. I guess her many admirers understand what she’s doing.
Saralynn never catches on. Rita has Saralynn totally snowed.
Rita isn’t bad-looking. I can see why guys find her attractive. For one thing, she has a great body, and she shows it off well, mostly in designer stuff—TSE cashmere sweaters and scoop-necked T’s; short, pleated skirts over dark stockings; a gray pinstriped Armani suit that’s to die for.
She has straight, black hair down to her collar around an oval face, big blue-gray eyes, a sexy smile with one dimple in her right cheek, and a little nip of a nose, cute as a button, obviously not her original.
“Good job on this Pioneer Girl manuscript, Rita.” Saralynn walked quickly into the room and set the stack of pages on Rita’s desk. “The ending really works now.”
Rita glanced at me before she turned to Saralynn. “Oh, thanks. It didn’t work at all when Charlene sent it in. And the middle was a mess. I had to rewrite the whole thing. I didn’t want to send it back to her again for a third revision, so I just stayed up all night and rewrote it myself.”
“Well, it’s excellent now,” Saralynn said.
I had a tremendous urge to jump up and scream at her: “Don’t you realize Rita says that about every manuscript she works on? How can it be that every single manuscript is a mess that Rita has to co
mpletely rewrite herself? She stays up all night every time and saves the author’s work single-handedly?”
It’s total bullshit, but Saralynn eats it up.
Saralynn turned to me, her smile fading. “Lindy, I need to speak to you about Pioneer Girl II. I read it last night. It still isn’t there. You’ve got a great beginning and a pretty good ending—but there’s no middle. Nothing happens for pages and pages. The covered wagon is stuck in a ditch and the whole story just stops.”
“I know,” I said lamely. “I want to talk to Charlene about it, but she doesn’t answer her phone.”
Charlene Nola Watson is the series author. She hates to revise. I’m sure she screens her calls and doesn’t pick up when she hears it’s me.
“Well, email her then,” Saralynn suggested, like I’m a two-year-old who wouldn’t think of email without being told. “Both of these manuscripts are supposed to go over to Random House on Friday, and only one is ready.”
Rita’s, of course.
Saralynn turned and swept back to her office down the hall.
Rita had a huge grin on her face. She made no attempt to hide her delight. I wanted to grab that little nub of a nose and pull it out to its original length.
“Lindy, if you’d like me to take a look at the manuscript . . . ,” she sang.
Luckily, my phone rang before I could tell her what I’d like her to do with the manuscript. “FurryBear Press. This is Lindy.”
“Lindy, hi. It’s me.”
At first I didn’t recognize the voice. Was it one of the guys from the Internet?
“Just wanted to see if you’ve gotten any more threatening calls.”
Oh. Tommy Foster.
“Tommy, I . . . didn’t know you had my number at work.”
“Well, I added a lot of Ben’s contacts to my file. You know. In case I needed to contact some of his people. I’m just following up on last night, Lindy. If you’re busy . . .”
“No. It’s okay. Thanks, Tommy. I’m fine. I mean, no other calls.”
“Good. I thought it might be a one-time thing. You see any of the guys you met on that Web site?”
“Well . . . I’m going out with a guy Saturday. But I didn’t meet him online. And, to be honest, there’s another guy . . . well . . . I kind of like him.”
Tommy didn’t reply. I heard someone say something to him. A police radio blared in the background. “I’d better go. You’ve got my number, right, Lindy?”
“Thanks, Tommy.” He clicked off before I could say goodbye.
In the next cubicle, Rita was talking to one of her guys. “What are you going to wear? No, not that. No, don’t wear that. Listen to me. They won’t let us in if you wear that.”
Where does she find all these men?
I set the phone back in its base. Nice of Tommy Foster to call. I probably shouldn’t have bothered him in the first place.
I took a deep breath and let it out. It had to be someone playing a stupid joke—right?
13
Do you like to dance?”
“Yeah. I go to clubs sometimes,” I said. “You know. Downtown.”
She let go of her coffee cup and reached across the table to touch my hand. “We could go dancing tonight.”
“No, not tonight.”
Her smile faded but her eyes were still lit up. She brushed back her long hair. It was dark brown with blond streaks in it. She put her hand over mine. “It’s still early. How come you don’t want to go dancing tonight?”
“I strained my back,” I said.
“How?”
I snickered. “I don’t want to say.”
She got my meaning. She laughed. “Poor boy. I could rub it for you. I used to do massage. I’m licensed and everything.”
This was starting to get interesting.
I took a real chance with this one. Her photo was so dark and out-of-focus in her ad, I thought maybe she was ugly or something. I mean, why put such a bad picture in your ad unless you’re trying to hide something?
But her name was Chloe, and I’m a sucker for French names like that. At least, I think it’s French. Her ad said she liked to cook, and dance, and stay out all night and be really evil, if provoked.
I remembered her ad word for word.
“Five Things You’ll Find in My Bedroom: ‘Happiness with four exclamation points.’ ”
That’s pretty clever, don’t you think? I mean, it got my attention.
“Music That Gets Me in the Mood: ‘Music.’ ”
That’s all it said. Just “Music.” Ha ha. Chloe knew how to write good copy. I was getting a woody just reading her ad.
So I decided to overlook the bad photo and take a chance. She didn’t turn out too bad. I mean, she’s no beauty. Her face is kinda long and rectangular. And even with the blond streaks, her hair is bad news.
But she has nice eyes, very warm and inviting. And lovely, pale white skin, like a swan, and smooth as baby skin. I wanted to touch it. I could barely keep my hands away. All through dinner, I kept staring at her throat— the smooth skin just glowed.
I don’t think she noticed my stare. She kept talking and laughing and reaching over to touch my hand. Yeah, she talks too much. But she has a soft, sort of whispery voice, so I didn’t mind it. No matter what the fuck she’s yammering about, she whispers it like she’s telling you intimate secrets.
What was she talking about?
I wasn’t really listening. Something about her sister. She has an audition for one of the ballet companies in town. Chloe is really jealous because she always dreamed of being a ballerina, too. But the sister has all the talent.
Maybe I should get the sister’s phone number. Ha ha.
I like the little, skinny dancers who walk with their backs so straight and their toes out. Sometimes I see the ballet dancers walking in groups near Lincoln Center, probably going to class or something, and I get so hot just watching their little asses and thinking about them in their tights. And out of their tights.
I listened to what Chloe was saying about her sister. And I tried to picture the sister, a hot little thing with really powerful legs from all those ballet workouts, powerful legs that would be so good in bed. Stamina, that’s what she’d have, the sister. You couldn’t wear her out, I’ll bet.
And I really did want to get the sister’s number. I’m sure she didn’t have to put an ad on a Web site to get guys. But how can you ask?
Besides, Chloe wasn’t bad, whispering like that and touching my hand all the time, like she just couldn’t wait to get to my bod.
What else did we talk about? The stock market, believe it or not.
She said she got some stocks as a present when she graduated from college. And at first, they went way up, but she didn’t sell them, and now they’re way down, but maybe starting to go back up, and she doesn’t know what to do.
Who gives a shit?
That’s what I wanted to say. But, of course, I smiled and pretended to listen, all the while staring at that beautiful, shimmery skin, that long, fine neck like a swan. Yeah, a swan. She reminded me of a fine, delicate swan. Until she stood up, that is. But that didn’t happen until after dinner.
“What do you do?” she asked me, sliding a french fry into her mouth. She didn’t wear lipstick or anything. Her lips were nearly as pale as her skin.
Maybe she was hoping I was a stockbroker. Then we could spend the rest of the goddamn night talking about her fucking stocks.
Okay, okay. I get a little tense when women go on and on about things I’m not into. And did she really want me—a total stranger—to tell her what she should do about her stocks?
Maybe she was just making conversation. That’s what I told myself and it helped calm me down. After all, she was really sexy. I watched her sliding those french fries between her lips, and I started to feel something.
The night had a lot of promise. I like to think that every time. I know I don’t sound it, but I’m a real optimist.
“So answer the que
stion.” She grinned at me. “What do you do?”
“Promotions,” I said, thinking quickly. “I’m promotion director for a PR firm.” Did that make any sense? I hoped so. It sounded good to me.
She tossed back her head, as if I’d said something funny.
I stared at her long, smooth neck. I wanted to sink my teeth into her throat. Like a vampire. Like a fucking vampire.
Vampires exist, you know. And maybe I’m one of them. Maybe that’s what I need. To bite deep into Chloe’s soft, white throat and drink. Maybe that’s what I need to satisfy myself.
Nothing else works. I admit that.
Maybe that’s why . . . maybe that’s why . . . maybe that’s why . . . what?
I can’t even think straight. My brain isn’t working. The cogs are jammed or something. Thinking about her throat, about drinking her blood.
Am I crazy?
Am I fucking crazy?
“What do you promote?” Chloe sips her coffee.
“Well . . . right now . . . shoes.”
“Shoes?”
“Yeah. We have this shoe client. Very hot right now. Merrell. I’m doing some things with Merrell shoes.”
What made me think of that? I guess because I bought a pair of Merrell shoes yesterday. They’re very hip. At least, I bought them in a hip shoe store, one of those little dumpy places in SoHo where the store is about as big as a shoe box, and the sales guy, tattooed and pierced like some kind of primitive species, said they were a good choice.
“I know their shoes,” Chloe says. “I’ve tried them on.”
Like, hot shit, babe. Could we talk about stocks some more?
I pay the check. She pulls a couple of twenties from her wallet and offers to pay her half. No way. I push her hand away. She seems so grateful.
And what do you do, Chloe?
Did I forget to ask? Or did she tell me in that cute, whispery voice and I just forgot to listen?
We’re out of the restaurant and facing Union Square Park. A steamy, damp night, a hot wind blowing newspapers and other trash around on the sidewalk. No moon or stars. They’re covered by thick, low clouds.
I hold Chloe back as a bicycle delivery boy, tall bags of Chinese food in his basket, roars past. You’ve got to watch out for these delivery guys. They don’t care if they knock you down and injure you for life. I mean, what do they care as long as they get the Chinese food where it’s going, nice and hot?