“Wait. Wait. What? Is he living here?” Zak had arrived home from Berkeley. He had graciously waited to question me, until he saw Pierre go, whistling, into the shower.
I shrugged.
“He has hair products in the bathroom. His towel is hanging from our hook. And let me just show you something.” Zak led me to the closet, and flung it open.
Pierre’s vacuum was neatly stowed inside.
“I found it this morning. Focus!”
I feigned ignorance. “It’s just for a couple of days until Annie’s friend leaves. I was by myself, and their apartment was really crowded.”
Zak looked at me with extreme suspicion. I wasn’t really lying. Pierre was still paying rent downstairs, but he was frustrated with his living situation.
“Welcome to the club,” I’d told him, when he’d complained that his apartment wasn’t big enough for three people. Annie and Pierre already had an odd relationship, given that they had become roommates while Annie was engaged to Pierre’s younger brother. The idea had been that Pierre would move out when his brother moved in. The brother had subsequently dropped Annie for a fraternity, and was now rarely heard from. Pierre and Annie had never been interested in dating each other, but had ended up stuck platonically together, due to a rent deficit. As a result of this, a friend of Annie’s had moved into Annie and Pierre’s living room. Now, the friend, whom Annie had met during a brief period at an organic farming collective, never left the house. She was supposedly looking for a job, but she was scared of the subway, and so she just sat around in sweatpants, meditating. According to Pierre, she was also doing a colon cleanse. Pierre had already disliked her, but her constant descriptions of wheatgrass enemas put him over the edge.
So, Pierre LaValle, most never on my List of Nevers, slept in my apartment. Late at night, I’d crawl into Vic’s bed, where he was sleeping, and snuggle into his waiting arms. I’d stay there until I felt too squished to remain (this alone ought to have told me something), and then I’d crawl back to my hut. In the morning, we’d drink our coffee, kiss a clandestine good-bye in the stairwell, and go off separately to our days.
I had a feeling, though, that Pierre was looking for a more conventional life than he let on, one in which his tattoos would be hidden under a button-down shirt, his wife would wear an apron, and he would be greeted with a peck on the cheek after work. A Leave It to Beaver life. Maybe that was why we weren’t sleeping together. Maybe Pierre didn’t believe in premarital intercourse. Or maybe we had to be officially dating in order to have sex. I knew that Pierre was not the most casual person in the world, but I hadn’t expected him to keep his pants on. We were playing house, and it was strangely like it had been when I was a kid. More kissing and groping, but still. We hadn’t even played I’ll Show You Mine, If You Show Me Yours. If anyone had been witnessing our weird affair, they’d have thought Pierre was gay. He wasn’t. He was just Pierre.
Though I hadn’t told him about my yes policy, I was sure that Vic had, and I knew enough about Pierre to know that he would not have been impressed by it. He was the kind of guy that wanted to look wilder than he was. I, on the other hand, was considerably wilder than I looked. It wasn’t like I was doing the things I did in order to prove a point. I just wanted to have a life, to grow, and to hopefully learn about love in the most interesting way possible. This was how it had turned out.
Other than our nights together, Pierre and I still didn’t have anything in common. He still vacuumed at 5:00 in the morning, though now he was doing it in my apartment instead of his own. His shoes were neatly polished and lined up next to the door. Somehow, though, we’d gained a certain tenderness in our dealings. He came up to my apartment with freshly inked tattoos, holding a tube of ointment, and I slathered his back with it. I found myself kissing him on the forehead. He called me “sweetheart,” in a tentative tone, and then smiled. When I came home one day and found a letter from the Playwright, who’d become an actual friend, Pierre was sitting at my kitchen table, next to the letter, beating something with his whisk and looking jealous. Jealous! Maybe Pierre was becoming my boyfriend. We walked down India Street together one day, holding hands.
Unfortunately, this was the day that Vic came home, and she happened to get out of a cab just as we passed. She said nothing, just gave us both a death glare, and dragged her bag into the house, denying offers of assistance.
Later that night, after Pierre had quietly moved his towel and shoes back to his own apartment, Vic chewed me out, but since she was unwilling to admit her real reason for being angry, the chewing was muzzled.
“I can’t believe you and Pierre, grrrrrrr…”
“I’m sorry. What else can I say?”
“Be sorry for yourself! He’s not good enough for you!”
“Why are you so mad?”
“Because you’re debasing yourself!”
“I’ve debased myself before, and you weren’t this mad.”
“Not with Pierre!”
“What’s wrong with Pierre?”
“He’s Pierre!”
“Can you be more specific?”
“You don’t even want him!”
“We’re adults, Vic,” I said.
“You’re children! You’re totally irresponsible! I can’t be responsible for you!”
“Who are we being irresponsible toward?”
Vic glared. “He’s Pierre!”
“I know he’s Pierre. It’s established. We were attracted to each other.”
“You never have been before.”
“Haven’t you ever suddenly been attracted to someone? Someone you thought you didn’t even like?”
I knew she had, given that I’d watched her through two years of various boyfriends, and that even now, her current boyfriend was someone she’d initially dismissed as being too short and too preppy.
“Not when that someone was Pierre!”
“Do you want to date Pierre?”
“Of course not! I’ve lost respect for both of you!”
“I’m really sorry, Vic, what can I tell you?”
“Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr,” said Vic, and slammed her bedroom door, as loudly as paperboard could slam.
“What’s wrong with Vic?” asked Zak, who had arrived about the time that Vic, by the sound of it, had begun throwing her furniture. At least Zak didn’t have a crush on Pierre.
“I kind of had a small affair with Pierre. For the last couple of weeks.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping he wouldn’t bang a castiron skillet on my head.
“You what?” said Zak.
“Pierre,” I said.
“Pierre LaValle,” repeated Zak, looking appalled.
“Yes.”
“But you can’t stand Pierre.” Zak was wearing the most dumbfounded face I’d ever seen. I decided that I wouldn’t mention that Pierre and I had made out in Zak’s bed. Zak would probably not react favorably to this news. Even though I had washed his sheets.
“Something came over us.”
“So, like, are you going to sleep with every man in the entire city? Because, you know, I think you kind of have our neighborhood covered.”
“I’m not sleeping with every man in the city. I didn’t sleep with Pierre. We just kissed a lot.”
“Pierre is low, even for you, the most willing woman in the world.” Zak’s dislike of Pierre ran deep.
“What do you mean, even for me?”
“Do you want me to make a list of your personal lows?”
“I don’t have any regrets.”
“You will about Pierre.”
“You just don’t like him.”
“Neither do you! Doesn’t he kiss with his jaw clenched? Never mind, I don’t want to know.”
Nope, I definitely wouldn’t mention that Pierre had stayed in Zak’s room for a week. At least Zak was still speaking to me. He was planning to move out, though, and had been since the beginning of our living together. He was going back to the Bay Area. This was so
mething I was very carefully not thinking about, because every time I did, I cried.
For the next week Vic radiated nonstop fury, and had loud and long phone conversations behind her closed bedroom door. They were in Chinese. My name was the only thing that was in English, and so it was fairly obvious what she was saying about me. The conversation was punctuated with lots of tongue clicking and the infuriated phrase, also in English, “oh no, she didnnnnn’t.”
But I had. I knew I had. Alas. Soon, I’d be alone with Vic and her fury, and that was not a happy thought. She’d probably strangle me in my sleep, and I fully deserved it. I started looking at the classified apartment listings.
OF COURSE, I MET A GUY while I was reading the classifieds. The apartment listings were like my pornography, especially since my roommate situation was getting worse by the minute. I’d read every ad, dreaming of natural light, eat-in kitchens, and ample closet space. Complete wishful thinking. The only thing that I could actually afford was the closet itself. I might have been able to hang a hammock from some of the closets listed, but even so, I didn’t think I could afford the hardwood floor those closets were bound to come with. It wasn’t like I even wanted to move to Manhattan, as that seemed beyond the realm of possibility. I just wanted to move to someplace like Park Slope. Ha. In Park Slope, I could afford my hut, if I pitched it on the Promenade.
I wanted to start over in a new apartment, with new roommates. Begin again. Minus the misery of unrequited adulation. Erase the fact that I’d made out with my roommate’s crush. Take Big White Cat and run to new digs. Maybe with just one roommate: myself. I was clearly hard enough to live with, without adding other personalities into the mix. I’d been poring over the classifieds, but there was nothing appealing anywhere. Rather, there was plenty that was appealing, and nothing that I could afford.
“Are you looking for a place?” said someone, and I looked up. The guy who was talking to me was a tall, skinny redhead with freckles and pale blue eyes. He was about thirty, and as normal looking as it was possible to be. Button-down shirt. Nice trousers. Carrying a portfolio. He looked like an ad for Banana Republic.
“Maybe,” I said. “But I’m having a hard time finding anything good.”
“I have exposed brick,” he said. “Really exposed. And wood floors.”
Anyone who had never lived in New York City would not understand the profound desirability of the exposed brick wall. It was not something that could easily be explained. We were willing to pay hundreds of dollars more per month for something that bred dust, mold, and little hidey holes. At the sublet I’d lived in, prior to my apartment in Greenpoint, mice had surged forth from the walls all night long, driving Big White Cat, who had an elephantlike fear of rodents, insane. One terrible night, Vic and I had baked an apple pie. After we’d taken the pie out of the oven, we’d discovered that what we’d thought had been whole-grain flour had actually been white flour laced with mouse droppings. We fed the pie to someone who shall remain nameless, because even now, I have not confessed to this extreme misdeed. Let it be said that this someone was being incredibly annoying at the time. Still, no one really deserves mouse shit pie, and I am officially sorry.
Anyway, after two years of living mouse-free, I was back to thinking about the romance of exposed brick. The guy on the train shot up wildly in my estimation. Normally, I wouldn’t have even noticed him. He was neither beautiful nor bizarre. He was a normal white boy. Not typically on my radar at all.
“How’d you get it?” I asked, with some reverence. Most apartments in Greenpoint, including my own, were drywall disasters full of cockroaches and leaks. The nice ones were never moved out of. Yeah, there were great loft spaces still to be had in the neighborhood, but they were not for rent. People had bought them years before, and were waiting for the neighborhood to become desirable. The neighborhood south of us, Williamsburg, had just been voted the hippest place in the entire universe, and we were beginning to reap the benefits of refracted cool. Rents were rising, and those cool buildings were beginning to go for ridiculous sums.
“I have a friend,” he said. “Would you like to see it? I mean, I’m not trying to be weird or anything. I just thought maybe you’d like to have a tour of what’s out there.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Great!” The guy burst into a smile. He handed me a business card. “Call me.”
The card was for a design firm, and the guy was a graphic designer. He was friendly. He had no visible perversities. He lived in my neighborhood. I wasn’t too attracted to him, not at first glance, but he seemed so nonthreatening and easy to deal with that I dialed his number happily. After the Pierre problems, ease in handling seemed like exactly what I needed.
We made plans to meet at his apartment the next day, and I rejoiced. I was not only going outside the building, I was going outside the block! I was going to the outskirts of Greenpoint, to an apartment that abutted the East River, and the guy was going to cook me dinner! It was very promising.
“DO YOU WANT TO TRY OUT THE BRICK?” It was the next day, and the Designer was motioning that I should sit against the wall. He didn’t have any furniture. Apparently the brick had gotten him overbudget. The apartment was beautiful, yes, but it was naked. All he had was a computer and a computer chair.
“Lean against it,” he said, watching me. “Feel the texture of the bricks. Doesn’t that exposed brick feel great against your spine?”
I leaned. I felt. I wondered if I’d misjudged the Designer.
“A sofa is on the way,” he said, and then sat down on the floor in lotus position and offered me a glass of wine. Glass? Not actually. A Dixie Cup. Well, I could deal with that. I didn’t have wineglasses, either. I looked around the corner. Yes, a jug. All very familiar to me. The computer was enormous and intimidating, however, and it was playing a selection of blues CDs.
“When does it arrive?” We’d already been through the typical conversation topics and discovered that we had almost nothing in common. The Designer was very nice, but he had a tendency to look intensely at me and nod, like a bobble-head doll. He had no conversation starters up his sleeve, either. He’d have been perfectly pleased to stay silent, nodding forever, as far as I could tell, with the exception of the occasional outburst about exposed brick.
“In about five minutes,” said the Designer, looking at his watch. I tried to start two conversations, then gave up and started singing along with the CD, which had become Ray Charles. The Designer nodded, in seeming contentment. We sat for five minutes, and finally, there was a knock at the door. “There it is.”
The Designer opened the door to two equally normal-looking, if sweat-drenched, guys. They did not look like delivery guys. They looked like software designers. Which, in fact, was what they were. The Designer was borrowing their couch for the night. They both flashed him the thumbs-up when they left. They thought I didn’t see, but I did. Kind of sweet, I thought.
I got up and went to look at the Designer’s books, which were still in boxes. “How long have you lived here?”
“One, two, oh, I guess it’s three years now,” he said, as though there was nothing odd about living in an apartment for three years without furnishing it at all.
The Designer seemed to have a collection of books of love poems. I asked what he liked about them, and he came over, looking very excited. He pulled out a book of Neruda.
“I love Neruda!” I said, relieved that we’d now have a topic.
“I haven’t read the book.” He opened it to the frontispiece, and showed me an inscription. “I like the handwritten stuff,” he said. “You know, love stories that got donated to the Salvation Army.”
Apparently, the Designer would thumb through these books of secondhand poems, looking for inscriptions dedicating sonnets to people who were no longer adored. He liked that they’d been tossed out among the fondue makers, blenders, and leftovers of marriages. He liked to think of love relegated to curbside pickup, put into cardboard boxes with old
lingerie and cat scratching posts. It made him feel as though his own life was maybe not so dismal, as though other people gave their love away, as well, as though other people had not understood its value. Love poems. Inscriptions vowing forever. Just paper in the end. The Designer was replete with other people’s failures.
“Do you have any of your own?” I asked, thinking maybe that was what had started him on this strange collection.
“Any what?”
“Any books given to you by old girlfriends?”
“Oh, I don’t have any old girlfriends.” He sounded cheerful enough about this, despite its inherent sadness.
“How is that possible?” He had to be thirty.
“I used to be bigger. Much, much bigger. My whole life, I was, I guess you’d say, ‘morbidly obese.’ That’s not a very nice phrase, though. Three hundred and sixty-one pounds was my top weight. Or thereabouts. I stopped weighing myself. Want to see a picture?”
He rummaged in a book box, until he found a 1970s-era photo of a poor little kid in a cowboy hat, standing in a sprinkler. The kid was wide. Very, very wide. He was clutching the kind of inner tube that is supposed to go around your waist, but it was clear this one wasn’t going to.
Did this mean that the Designer was a virgin? Yes, it probably did. That was a terrifying prospect. I’d never understood the appeal of sleeping with virgins. I knew some men who’d isolated this category as their number one object of pursuit. First footprints on the moon, or something. Planting the flag at the North Pole.
No woman would do such a thing. We wanted to arrive sometime after about four or five explorers had already been there, and built a fire. We were willing to attempt to train men who were bad lovers, but we were not really willing to start from scratch. Not even when we were ourselves inexperienced. We didn’t want a lost man. Men were lost enough. Besides, if something turned out to be askew, we wanted to have someone to blame. If you were the first, you could only blame yourself.
“I just decided, enough was enough,” said the Designer. “One day, I stopped eating anything that made me happy.” He nodded at me a few more times.