Why did I not care? Attraction trumped intelligence. Sticks and stones trumped bones. Some things just had to be chalked up to rules of the universe.
The most wonderful thing about him was his eyes. They were pale orange, a color I’d never seen before. They turned me into a kamikaze fly, cannonballing into amber. I could have looked at him for millennia and been perfectly happy without any reciprocity at all. That’s how appealing he was. That’s how appalling I was.
“Hi,” I squeaked.
“Want another drink?” His hand was warm on the back of my neck.
“Sure,” I said. At least, if I was drunk, I wouldn’t necessarily remember how stupid I was about to be.
“Don’t go away,” he said, close against my ear, and then he brought my fingertips to his lips. He smiled again, and began to wend his way through the masses.
I WAS STUNNED. WHAT EXACTLY was happening? Surely, I was misinterpreting something. Surely, I was misinterpreting everything. I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed that the world had suddenly developed a rosy glow. Nope. I could see Taylor across the room, drinking, in a crowd of laughter. He caught my glance, and looked questioningly at me. I shrugged, and waved reassuringly.
I was having a psychotic break.
I was just imagining that the Actor was hitting on me. He was, after all, an actor. What did actors do, except seduce the world? Maybe I’d been inadvertently caught in his seduction spotlight, while he’d been scanning the room for the real focus of his wooing. I gritted my teeth against the inevitable: I’d look over and see him draped against the bar, arm around a hot, blond actor. I got ready to pretend that I’d meant to be left alone. I went over my exit lines in my head, preparing to protest that I was fine, happy, having a wonderful time, thanks, but I should get back to Brooklyn, because, the trains! The G! I don’t have to tell you!
The Actor reappeared, a martini in one hand and a bourbon in the other. He hadn’t spilled a drop, and I was amazed. Another thing that caused me to be enamored of actors was that they had the ability to balance on anything, be it the high wire or the shoulders of clowns. They seemed so capable, so responsible, and so stable. All these things, I reminded myself, were the antithesis of actor personalities. Actors, I repeated silently, are neurotic. Actors are self-absorbed. They are performers. They never stop performing.
Unfortunately, I loved them. I was forever suspending myself from my disbelief and twisting in the wind, trusting their lines.
“To you,” he said. “It’s been too long.” He clinked glasses with me.
“To you, too,” I said, lamely, and he grinned.
“You can do a better toast than that. Aren’t you supposed to be a writer?”
“May you find joy, even in the darkest places,” I said, and then felt like an ass. “Not that this is the darkest place,” I clarified. “Not that I wish you dark places. Not that I think only bad things happen in the dark. Not that I’m an advocate of bright lights. I like lampshades. I like dimmer switches.”
Words, words, words. What cruel god had given me so many of them? I wanted to transform into someone who didn’t analyze her every syllable. I wanted to be a person who could accept flirtation without negation, a person who could drink her bourbon and flutter her eyelashes, and not tumble into tangential tarpits.
The Actor was squinting at me. He took a sip of his martini, and casually said:
“So, would it be fair to say you can’t stand a naked lightbulb, any more than you can a rude remark or a vulgar action?”
Horrors! He was quoting Tennessee Williams! He had turned me into Blanche DuBois! It served me right. I should never have said anything about darkness. Now I was relegated to being an aging Southern belle.
“I have absolutely no problem with vulgar actions,” I said, trying to save myself.
“You know what?” he said.
“What?” I replied, faintly.
“I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.” He placed a hand on my hipbone. I could feel my blood going effervescent.
Suddenly, I understood. Taylor had told the Actor to take pity on me: “She’s dating homeless guys, man, I think she’s losing it, can you just do me this one favor?”
I could see Taylor saying this. Though he was very entertained by the Year of Yes, he thought it was nuts.
“How much will you pay me?”
No, this was too much. I revised the Actor’s dialogue.
“Okay, but you owe me. This is hardship duty.”
That seemed more plausible. But was the Actor really so self-sacrificing? His hand curled around my hip, his fingers drumming gently on the bare skin between my skirt and jacket. I could feel my knees going weak.
Was it possible that he actually liked me? Maybe I’d finally worn the right outfit. Maybe I was dreaming. I was terrified that my untested heart was approaching a swift and brutal malfunction, all my theories of love revealed as false, all the willing life I thought I’d been living shown to be shallow. What if I didn’t know how to do this? What if it killed me? Until this moment, every man I’d met had been implausible in some key way. It hadn’t ever been a perfect fit. This was. Maybe this was. My drink splashed, and I looked down to discover that my hands were shaking.
Last call had been announced some time before, and people were dispersing. The Actor went to the bathroom. Nat “King” Cole blared over the speakers, that old dirge, “After the Ball Is Over.”
After the ball is over, after the break of morn,
After the dancers’ leaving, after the stars are gone,
Many a heart is aching, if you could read them all—
Many the hopes that have vanished, after the ball.
Clearly, the bartenders wanted to send a bunch of depressed drunks out into the night. The fluorescents blazed up.
I wanted this too much. What had happened to me? Exactly what I’d hoped would happen. Love. Exactly what I’d wished for when I’d blown out the Conductor’s candle.
Now, here I was, more vulnerable than I’d ever been in my life. Here I was, five seconds from falling. If I stayed any longer, my heart would be pushed pell-mell by emotion, and that would be the end of any ability I had to flee in any direction other than down. I’d only fallen in love once before, and it had been with the Hitchhiker, someone I’d never even kissed. I decided that I should go home. IMMEDIATELY.
I frantically gulped the rest of my third drink, and then choked as it burned down my throat. I stumbled to the door.
“Where’re you going?” asked the Actor, suddenly next to me again.
“Nowhere,” I said.
“No, I mean now.” He stroked my cheek with the back of his hand.
“Um. I don’t know.” I did know, of course, home, but Brooklyn was three trains away, and my resistance had just left without me. There it was, sprinting down the street.
“Want to share a cab?” There was no earthly reason we should share a cab. He lived in the East Village. My part of Brooklyn required the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge.
“Of course,” I said.
I could feel Taylor’s eyes burning holes in our backs as the Actor and I walked out the door together, but I refused to turn around. If there was bad news to be dispensed, I didn’t want to hear it. I’d spent the last several months forcibly prying my heart open, and now it seemed that it was stuck that way. So be it.
We didn’t say much in the cab, just sat close against each other, me nurturing a dark fantasy that the Actor would get out on Avenue A, pat my shoulder, and say, “Okay, thanks for the ride, see you.” Kiss me on the cheek, maybe.
I didn’t have enough money to pay for the cab ride home, so if he left me, I was going to feel ridiculous. Only once in my time in New York had I failed to pay for a cab ride, and there were extenuating circumstances. Namely, the cabdriver had informed me, as I got in to go to La Guardia, my suitcases packed for Christmas break, that his trunk was broken and that my luggage would need to ride in the backseat. Accommo
dating person that I was, I settled myself into the front. Apparently, there was an entire vocabulary of passenger/driver signals that I didn’t know about, and sitting in the front seat of a New York City taxi meant that:
The driver was entitled to reach one arm across to the passenger side and wedge his hand down your sweater, scooping up your left breast in a grip akin to that of a Wonderbra; and
When questioned as to motivation, said driver was entitled to say: “Because it was there?”; and
Said driver was also entitled to be enraged at your unwillingness to compensate him for the grope he’d gotten and, indeed, to complain that he also deserved a tip.
Since that experience, I’d been somewhat suspicious. Not suspicious enough to keep me from saying yes to dates with a couple of cabdrivers, but suspicious of the ears in the front seat, wary of what they would hearken to. The cabdrivers I’d gone out with had lots of stories about passengers who hadn’t cared what the driver heard. From the Actor and I, this driver heard nothing, unless he could translate the racing of my heart, the ringing in my ears, the heat that crept from the Actor’s side of the bench seat to mine.
The Actor took my hand. I could feel his thumb circuiting my palm. We were three drinks into intimacy, and onto affection. I willed my hand to stay open. I tried not to hold onto him too tightly. He paid the driver.
We got out of the taxi and made our way down the deserted street. I wasn’t assuming anything. Maybe he thought I lived here, too. I hadn’t exactly been clear. Maybe he thought I was walking him home, keeping him safe from muggers.
We passed the Russian baths, which I’d visited a few times, accompanied by Taylor. The baths were co-owned by a feuding duo, a Russian and a Turk, and they alternated nights. The rules changed every other day, and sometimes women weren’t allowed. When they were, I was delighted to put on the strange shower shoes and slog about in a mist of evaporated Alphabet City alcohol. I liked the community, the tattoos, the ancients, everyone equally undressed, everyone fallible. I liked to sit in the sauna and roast myself like a woodchip, balanced on beams that had balanced the buttocks of thousands. You could get drunk just sitting on a bench next to most of the people there. I liked to leap into the ice pool and watch the hungover shudder at my bravery. It was a great way to feel superior on a Sunday morning. Part of the allure of the baths, of course, was that I happened to know that they were next door to the Actor’s apartment, and had ideas about how I might look, exiting an afternoon of steaming and soaking, a vision of vigor, all of my pallid, English/Scottish heritage abolished. I’d always thought I might even run into the Actor inside, might accidentally be topless, might woo him like the Waterhouse painting of Hylas kneeling at the side of a pool full of naked chicks. Never mind that that story ended in a drowning.
We went into a bar, dark and rosy-curtained, and had a deep conversation, the details of which I hereby grant the Actor a reprieve from recounting. Not everything needs to be written down. It was long, and it was intense, and at the end of it, the Actor and I were sitting two inches apart, and he was leaning in, and he was saying, “I’d love it if you came home with me.”
He was holding both my hands tightly. If this wasn’t a legitimate offer, I didn’t know what was.
“Me, too,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
I leaned forward, drawing reserves of ballsiness from some unknown well, and kissed him on the mouth.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes,” meaning it more than I’d meant it in all ten months of my Year of Yes, meaning it more than I’d ever meant it before.
He wasn’t moving. I drew back, fearful.
The Actor stared into my eyes, with something that looked like wonder.
“Sometimes,” he said, “my life is so amazing.”
That was when I fell in love with him.
“HEY, YOU,” THE ACTOR WHISPERED, his eyes slitting open. I rejoiced. So familiar! So tender! So possible that he’d forgotten who I was, and was even now running an actor maneuver on me!
“You remember my name, right?” I couldn’t help myself.
“Maria,” he said, grinning. “I once met a girl…yeah, I think I know your name…Jesus! Are you okay?” He suddenly sat bolt upright. I’d forgotten about the nosebleed. He was out of bed, grabbing something that I hoped was a tissue, but which turned out to be a dirty sock. He pressed it to my nose, and pinched the back of my neck between two fingers. I felt brave, like a swaggering boxer, blinded by punches, collapsing in the corner of the ring, being ministered to by my coach. The room was spinning, ever so slightly, ever so slightly.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” He was rubbing my back.
I shrugged, and smiled weakly.
“I had such a good time with you last night,” he said. “Don’t bleed to death, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I could promise anything. “Bathroom?”
He looked both ways outside his bedroom door. The roommates had departed, but his cat was still home. He had a cat! Better and better! A friend for Big White! The cat meowed, then climbed my sheet-draped body and nestled into my neck.
“My roommates are all allergic,” he said, by way of excuse. The cat nuzzled my chin. “Clean up, and we’ll go to breakfast. Want to?”
It was so stunningly normal. It was not only normal, it was romantic. That was what blew me away. Could I have a normal existence? I never had before. A normal boyfriend? It had not occurred to me that I might actually find someone I could love in any way other than in vain. It had not occurred to me that functionality might be possible, that I could, conceivably, be half of one of those Sunday morning couples eating bagels and doing the New York Times crossword. I could give and receive affection in a healthful manner! I didn’t need to live in consistent dysfunction! Love! Love! Love!
I flung myself upon him, hugging and kissing him.
“Okay…” he said, raising an eyebrow at me. “It’s only scrambled eggs.” He was getting dressed.
But it was more than scrambled eggs! Much more! I was feeling radiant. An entirely new world had opened up in front of me, one with possibilities, one with shared enthusiasms and multiple orgasms.
I’d finally, after all these months of dating inappropriate candidates, be able to introduce someone to my family! I wanted to sing love songs, but brushed my teeth instead. Love was possible! I didn’t have to be alone forever, as I’d been beginning to think.
“Shit,” said the Actor, looking at his watch.
“What’s wrong?” Nothing, that was what.
“I’m late for something.”
I wasn’t paying much attention. I still felt like dancing. I grabbed him and lurched him into a little pseudo-tango.
“So, I can’t do breakfast,” he said. I was dipping him.
“That’s fine,” I said. “Want to have dinner tomorrow?”
“Yeah, that’s not going to work, either.”
“I’m free on Friday,” I said.
“You know, I’ll check my book, but…”
It occurred to me that I was, as usual, leading, and leading badly. I sat down.
“When will you be free?” I asked.
“Um…I’m not really sure. I mean, I’m actually pretty busy,” he said.
This conversation suddenly felt nauseatingly familiar.
“Me, too,” I said. “You’re not the only one! I mean, I’m busy, too, I have school, and work, and life, and writing, a whole play, I just started this play! I have things to do!”
“So, I don’t know,” he said. “Can we just play it by ear?”
“Sure,” I whispered. I could have given him his next line. I’d said it plenty of times myself. I felt like I’d written it.
“I’ll call you…” he said.
“Great!” I said.
“Great,” he said, sounding relieved. He picked up my atomic nectarine panties, looked at them with mild amusement, and handed them to me.
My nose started bleeding again.
br /> “Okay, then, see you!” I was practically running to the door.
“Do you need a tissue?” Drops of blood splattered onto the floor, like sealing wax closing a letter.
“Nope,” I yelped, staunching the blood with my bra. I made it to the hall before the tears fully overflowed, but I wasn’t fast enough. I had to endure the tremendous indignity of the Actor putting his arms around me in an attempt to comfort me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, and kissed my hair. What was wrong? I was the thing I always dreaded: the One-Night Misunderstand. I’d left a trail of tears behind me, too, and I knew it. I’d broken hearts, all the while thinking that I was being kind, that I was saving them from me. And now, here I was, standing in a strange hallway, in the arms of the man who’d done me in. I couldn’t even blame him. It was my own damned fault. Despite all my vows regarding actors, I’d fallen for him. And, despite what I’d thought the night before, despite the long and profound conversation we’d had in the bar, it seemed that he was so far from falling for me that the possibility hadn’t even occurred to him. For him, this was casual. This was meaningless. For me, this was my previously state-of-the-art heart hissing and smoking, sending off emergency alarums, and finally, wretchedly, breaking down entirely.
“I’m late,” I said, ridiculously. “That’s why I’m crying. It’s not because of you, or anything.”
“You’re late?” he said.
“For a very important date.” I sniffled. I had lost my ability to talk. All that was left was Alice in Wonderland. No time to say hello, good-bye, find me a fucking rabbit hole to dive down.
“Okay…” the Actor said. “I’ll see you around, Maria, okay? Don’t cry.”
And I would see him around. That was the worst part. He was no perfect stranger. He was someone that I regularly ran into at parties and plays. Every time I saw him, I knew, I’d be reduced to this again.