A Clean Slate (18 page)

B
en called the next morning before I left for Cole's. “Hey, I forgot to tell you something last night,” he said, as if we talked on the phone all the time. “Tony Poppin came out of the closet.”

“No!” I yelped, so surprised that I couldn't even be annoyed at Ben's casual tone.

Tony Poppin was another analyst at Bartley Brothers who had long been suspected of being gay. Not that anyone would have been upset or particularly put out by this, but because he rarely dated, was always dressed impeccably and had season's tickets to the opera, he was forever a source of office speculation. Was he or wasn't he? I'd never chimed in on this topic, of course, given my gaydar history, but everyone else liked to give their best guess. He did talk on the phone
all
the time, some people said, and he was forever taking classes on cooking with truffles and
flower arranging. But others pointed out that he always showed up at the Christmas party with a gorgeous female date, and so the questions would start again. It's sad, really, that this was such a topic of conversation at Bartley, but let's face it, most corporations are simply big high schools.

After that conversation about Tony, Ben started calling nearly every day, sometimes a few times a day, and our chats were always just that—chats. We gossiped about people at Bartley, told stupid little stories from our day (Ben being mistaken for the Bears quarterback while on the El; me getting a heel stuck in a street grate outside Cole's building) and reminisced about some of the great times we'd had together (the Halloween party we had two years ago; the time we got upgraded to first class flying home from Paris).

I didn't tell Laney how often Ben and I were talking. I'd told her about that night at Angelina's, of course. I'd called her as soon as I walked in the door, and we analyzed that encounter for a solid two hours. But I was embarrassed about how easily I'd let Ben slip back into my life after he'd dumped me on my birthday and helped to send me into a depression. Actually, I now considered it a bit of a bonus that I couldn't remember the breakup or the depression, because how upset about something can you be when you have absolutely no memory of it? But I knew Laney remembered for me, and although I loved her for it, I couldn't betray her by telling her that I was talking to the enemy all the time now. And enjoying it.

And so it became weirder and weirder. A few weeks went by during which I told Laney very little about my days or how I was filling them. Since we'd met, I'd rarely kept anything from her, and although I didn't think she suspected anything now, our time together became strained. I felt awkward for hiding something from her, and over and over, maybe in response to my holding back, she insisted that this
memory gap had gone on long enough and I needed to do something about it.

“I'm serious, Kell,” she said on the phone one day, “you've got to see a doctor.”

She'd called me at Cole's. I had a booker on hold on the other line, and Cole gesturing to me to help him with something.

“I can't talk about this right now,” I said, glad I hadn't told her much about my pesky headaches. In fact, I had another one right then, and I didn't relish a lecture from Laney.

“You're going to have to face this.”

“Yes, I know. You've told me.”

“At least go see Ellen Geiger again.”

“Why? So I can pay her over a hundred dollars to tell me nothing?”

“You haven't given her a chance.”

“I gave her a chance all summer, and I'm doing better now without her. I'm fine!” I looked over to see Cole making a face at me.

“I've got to go, Lane.” I clicked over to the booker before she could say anything else.

Meanwhile, it was so much more enjoyable to talk to Ben or meet him for coffee (that's all we'd done; no physical contact), and I actually began feeling closer to him than Laney.

My life began to take on a surreal slant. Here I was living in my new apartment, as I still called it in my head, having coffee and marathon phone calls with my ex-boyfriend, and, at the same time, avoiding contact with my best friend who'd just nursed me out of a five-month downward spiral. I felt guilty. So guilty. But I just wanted to have a good time. I didn't want to worry about those five months or why I couldn't remember them, or anything else, for that matter. The fact was, Ben was simply more fun to be with.

Strangely, even Cole had become more fun than Laney. During the lingerie shoot, he let me take the test shots and
then a few frames every hour or so. He hovered behind me, offering encouragement and whispering instructions about what I should be seeing, how the photo should look. I brought coffee in the mornings from Katie's, and we talked about what
we
would be working on that day.

I knew that I was really hitting some kind of stride in my life during the two days when the studio was filled with lingerie models dressed in a few strips of lace. You'd think I would have been insecure, maybe going to the bathroom to check the size of my gut and comparing it to the concave abdomens of the models, but I didn't. I ate fat-ridden muffins while watching them lie in sexy poses over a black-velvet-covered box. I chatted with them while they were naked in the dressing room. Not once did I consider myself deficient compared to them. That's the whole point, I guess—I didn't compare myself to them at all.

It probably had something to do with the fact that I'd lost weight, but it was more than that, more than just body image. There was some sense of contentedness about the way my life was going. For the first time in a long time I was excited to go to work in the morning. I could hardly wait. It seemed that so many parts of my new life were falling into place, a good place.

Except for the Laney part.

 

Well, to be honest, there was one other piece of my life that wasn't so spectacular, either—my evenings. My nights were a little lonely. It wasn't as if I had no options. Laney called every day, and almost every time, she offered to “take” me to a movie that night or to come over with some Chinese food. The strange thing was that the more she offered, the more I backed away. I had to work late, I told her. Cole was such a slave driver, he was keeping me overtime. But the truth was that things had grown so awkward between Laney and me that I actually preferred my lonely apartment.

I had the occasional cup of coffee with Ben after work, but I was always sure to end it after an hour or so, no matter how hard we were laughing, no matter how many times he flashed his bedroom eyes. As much as I wanted to have sex with him (and I really,
really
wanted to), I didn't want it to progress to the point where I had to make a decision about our relationship. Also, I found myself overly conflicted about the subject of Therese. On one hand, I felt strangely ashamed. What was she doing while we had coffee and yammered on the phone? Did she even know? It was technically Ben's problem, not mine, but I couldn't help but have a little sympathy for the girl. And yet on the other hand, if he really had made a mistake by breaking up with me, shouldn't he break up with
her
now? I didn't ask Ben these questions, because I guess I didn't want to know. I didn't want to be culpable for keeping him away or breaking them up when I wasn't sure if I was ready to recommit to him. I didn't want to think about what a shit he was for seeing someone other than his current girlfriend. I just wanted to keep laughing, to keep having fun with him for an hour or so at Katie's Coffee. So I kept it short and was always back at my apartment by seven or eight o'clock, the rest of the evening stretching out ahead of me.

Jess and Steve were barely back from their honeymoon and busy moving into their new place, so I couldn't go out with them. I did call a few analysts that I used to work with at Bartley Brothers, but they were all at a conference in Tahoe, one that I would have attended if I still worked there. Not even my two-freckled guy had visited me again.

On one Thursday night, when I could have been out with Laney at a trendy new wine bar she wanted to try, I decided to take a bath. The tub in my new apartment was rather large, with two armrests cut into it. I started the water and rooted around under my sink until I found some paper packages of aloe vera bath salts. I didn't remember buying them. Prob
ably a gift from Laney when she'd stopped by over the summer. I poured a whole package into the bath, making it a milky, foaming green. Lighting a few candles, I set them on the countertop. I dragged a boom box out of my bedroom closet and put on an Eric Clapton CD. Then I turned out the lights, stripped and slid into the steaming bath.

It was perfect and soothing. For about five minutes. But then I started to feel sweaty and red-faced, and Eric's guitar sounded screechy rather than melodic. I took a sip of the wine I'd brought in with me. I slid deeper into the tub.
Deep breaths,
I told myself.
Just relax.
All I could think about, though, was what I would do with the rest of the night. It would be, what, maybe eight-thirty by the time I got out of the tub? There'd be hours and hours with nothing to do, since I rarely went to bed before eleven. Maybe I should call Ben and see what he was doing tonight. But if I did that, wouldn't I be looking for Ben to save me from myself, the same thing I'd done when I'd ordered him to give me a ring or else?

I squirmed around in the tub, willing myself to just calm down and enjoy the heat. What was wrong with me? Why couldn't I loosen up for two frickin' seconds?

Even though it never worked, I tried the meditation breathing again. I hadn't listened to those tapes in God knows how long, but I could hear the instructor's voice—
Breathe in, breathe out, focus on your breath.
I made myself do it. I made myself stay in the bath, in the heat, in the foamy water. And pretty soon, I started to relax. A little. Actually, my body still felt like leaping out of the tub, but my mind was slowing down, and so I made myself stick with it.
Breathe in, breathe out, focus on your breath. Let all other thoughts slide away.
It started to work. The image of Ben faded. The thought of Laney's overly concerned face took a back seat. I pushed away any inklings about Cole or his many secretive talks on the phone as of late. Dee popped into
my head once, but I wouldn't let myself get hooked in. I let her float away.

And pretty soon there was just me. Finally. Just me in the tub, surrounded by suds. I could actually see myself, even though I had my eyes closed. This must be good. Possibly I'd tapped into some Zenlike avenue of introspection. I might be the first Westerner to master this technique. I'd probably be invited to give self-help seminars around the world.

I stayed with it, breathing deeply, seeing myself in the tub. But as I did so, I started to notice something. Something off. It had to do with my hair. I concentrated, and I could see that my hair was not the shiny caramel color with the cute style that Lino had given it, and it was not in a twist on top of my head, the way I'd done it before I'd gotten in the bath. Instead, it was dull and lifeless and long, the ends floating in the green foam. I looked closer and saw that my face looked different, too. Almost gray, my cheekbones too sharp in my face. And my eyes were open. Dull and staring straight ahead, as if there was no thought behind them, no hope or happiness or optimism.

My face, the one I was seeing now, scared me. I tried to sit up in the tub. I tried to stop my Zenlike breathing. I didn't need to give self-help seminars, I just needed to get out of this bath. But the image stayed there—strong now—and I couldn't seem to move. It was as if the bath were a tomb from which I couldn't escape. The coffee in my stomach made me feel nauseous. I needed to take some Tums, some Advil,
something.
Strangely, I could feel my legs twitching under the water, but I still couldn't get them into any kind of concerted motion that would get me out of the tub. I couldn't stop seeing myself. What was wrong with me? Why was I just staring ahead like that, at nothing? I tried to stay calm and think of something else. Maybe if I could replace the image of myself, I could get out of this state. I tried to instill new topics in my head—my new job, Ben, my
mother in L.A.—but my face, that sad, dull face, stayed right there, and something about it was drawing me in.

It was me sometime over the summer, I realized. Sometime during those horrible months. And I was thinking how there was no hope. No hope for what? What was I so distraught about? It was partly about Ben—I could feel that now. And it was partly about getting fired from my job. And of course, there was Dee. But there was something more, too. What was it? The two-freckled man, the one with the dark hair. It had something to do with him.

I finally wrenched myself away from the image and sat up so violently in the bath that lime-green water surged over the edge and splashed on the bathroom floor. I shook my head and blinked like crazy. I was here. What the hell was that? What had happened? It was like the flash I'd had of the two-freckled man, but this one had been about me. The me I didn't want to be anymore. The me I was running from.

T
hat image stayed with me all night and all the next morning. Over and over, I saw my drawn face just above the bathwater, my vacant eyes, my lifeless hair snarling and floating around my head like Medusa's snakes. It was Friday, a day I used to long for when I worked at Bartley Brothers, but now I worried about what I would do with my weekend, whether that woman in the bath would come back to me.

That day, Cole was taking portfolio shots for a few models sent over by a local agency. The idea was to build up the books of these models, make it appear as if they had more experience than they actually did, and so we worked hard to change the set, the models' looks, the lighting, anything to make it seem as if the photos weren't taken at the same time. Luckily, all the activity took me out of my head, and by noon I'd exorcised that awful image of myself.

“Kelly,” Cole said to me after lunch. “Why don't you take a few here? You might bring a different look to the shot.”

“Sure. Great. Just one second.” I had my arms full with a huge fan that we'd used with the last model.

“Hurry up, Kelly. I want this done.”

I glanced over at Cole. He hadn't snapped at me like that since before the William shoot, but all day he'd been tense.

I stepped behind the tripod and smiled at Tracy, the model. She had stunning ebony skin and wore a khaki dress unbuttoned almost to the waist, with stiletto heels. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, her eye makeup dramatic—a sexy working-woman look. The fact that she was fifteen wouldn't show up on camera, but it kept freaking me out, the age of these girls. I'd always envisioned models as sophisticated women drinking cosmos in Manhattan, but the Snapple-slurping fifteen-and sixteen-year-olds in the studio that day were actually the norm. Most of them hadn't even gone to a prom yet, and they were all making more money than me.

“Tracy, can you turn around and look at me over your shoulder?” I said.

Cole had been shooting her in some stern, businesslike poses, but she had a playful side that came out between shots—a cute smile, a girlish giggle—and I thought we might use some of that personality to even out the austere outfit and makeup.

She turned her body to face the back wall and swung her head around.

“Chin down,” I instructed her. “Small smile. A little bigger. There you go.”

Tracy responded well to me, and it took only five minutes to shoot off a roll of twenty-four.

“Good work, Kelly,” Cole said when I was done. His face was serious, though, different than his goofiness of the last week, and I wondered if he'd lost that assignment he'd been hoping for.

The studio phone rang then. I dashed across the room to answer it.

“Hey, hon.” It was Laney. “How's that boss of yours? Still cute?”

I glanced at Cole across the room. He was talking to the head of the agency, looking nervous. “He's okay.”

“Say hi for me. Anyway, I wanted to tell you about this memory-loss Web site I found on the Internet. You really need to check it out. From your symptoms, you could have a medical problem, or it could even be psychiatric.”

“Well, I'm definitely crazy right now,” I said, trying to ignore her ominous tone and hold on to the good feeling I'd gotten from taking the shots of Tracy.

“You know, it's nothing to ignore. We've really got to figure this thing out.”

“Mmm-hmm,” I said, doing my best Ellen Geiger imitation. “Well, now's not the time.”

“You can't keep putting this off, Kell.”

“Yes, I can!” My voice was raised. One of the moms who was passing by looked at me in alarm, but I couldn't stop. “I can do what I want with my life, and right now I want to enjoy it. I'm an adult for Christ's sake!”

Silence on the other end.

“I'm sorry.” I sighed. “I'm working here, and there's a lot to do.”

“I'm just trying to help, you know.”

“I know, and I'm sorry. Like I said, it's just crazy around here. That's all.” That wasn't all, of course. There was much more—something else that was going on with Laney and me—but now wasn't the time to talk about it.

After another silence, Laney said in a small voice, “Well, do you want to come to Gear's gig tonight?”

I was meeting Ben for a drink after work, and I really didn't need a whole night of Laney mothering me, but I felt so bad for snapping at her. “Sure. Where is it?”

“The Metro. They're the opening band.”

“Meet you there at nine?”

She paused. “You don't want to get dinner first?”

“I'm actually having drinks with some people from Bartley Brothers.” That was true. Sort of.

“Okay,” Laney said. “See you at nine.”

 

Cole wrapped up around four. He asked me to run to the photo shop to drop off the day's film and pick up the rolls from the lingerie shoot. The shop was about ten blocks away in the Loop, and I decided to walk, since it was one of those Indian summer days in late October, at least sixty degrees. The trees in the city were practically bare now, but I liked them better that way because I could see the sky through the branches—royal-blue and growing darker. The city had that buzzy Friday afternoon feel to it, like everyone was on the verge of something wonderful. I hadn't been plagued by a headache for a few days, and I felt light on my feet, happy.

Cars streamed by me as I crossed Michigan Avenue, shouts of laughter as the doors to the bars opened and closed. I took my time walking to the shop, glad that I wasn't working at Bartley Brothers right now, where leaving the office before seven at night was frowned upon.

“Hey, Nate,” I said, greeting the balding store owner as I walked into the photo shop.

“Happy Friday,” he said. “I've got your stuff in the back.”

He disappeared through the rear door of the shop, and I busied myself by playing with point-and-shoot cameras on display.

“Here you go.” Nate swung through the back door again. “Fifteen rolls.”

I glanced down at the sheet where Cole made me record every film delivery. “Lingerie shoot—fourteen,” it said.

“I think that's one too many,” I told Nate.

He counted through them again, looking at the labels
with Cole's name on it. “I've got fifteen. Why don't you go through them?”

This was what Cole required me to do, anyway—briefly review each roll to see if any photos needed obvious redeveloping. I peeled back the flap on the first envelope, flipping through the shots, then moving on to the next and the next. Lots of women in very little undies looking mostly gorgeous and ridiculously thin.

When I'd gotten to the eighth roll, another from the lingerie shoot, I suddenly remembered why there was an extra one. My roll was in this bunch—the roll I'd finished at the park that day that Ben had shown up, the one that held ten mystery pictures. I'd brought it in with Cole's film, and somehow I'd forgotten. Maybe because of Ben and Laney and everything that'd been going on lately, or maybe I just wanted to forget.

I paid Nate, pocketed the receipt for Cole and was out the door and back on the street. Now the crowd on the sidewalk seemed pushy and rude instead of giddy and fun. The cars honked over and over, exhaust hanging thick in the air.

What was in my roll of film? What was on those pictures? I kept my feet pounding, heading back toward Cole's. In my hands I had a glimpse of the last few months, but I wasn't sure I wanted to see it.

Yet I knew I had to look. I stopped and sat on a concrete bench. A woman sitting there with a host of stuffed plastic bags sniffed as if I was really putting her out, then finally scooted over to give me more room. I had to flip through a few more rolls of broads-in-thongs before I came to the one that was mine. I could tell before I even opened it because it was thicker than Cole's. I always got doubles.

I tapped the unopened packet of photos on my leg. A bus pulled up, brakes squealing, and the plastic-bag lady heaved herself up and onto the bus, leaving me alone.

I finally turned the envelope over and slowly slid the flap
open, watching the glue stretch into thin threads before snapping. I lifted the smaller envelope from inside. Another second went by before I removed the stack of photos.

I breathed out, quick and heavy, when I saw the top one. It was me, just me by myself. I raised it closer to my face, recognizing the Van Gogh print behind my head and the mustard-yellow of the walls. It was my town house, and I stood in the same spot I always did when I took an automatic shot of myself. I believed in taking photos for posterity, even if they were of me, alone. In this particular photo, my hair was like it used to be—longer, light brown, pulled back in a shiny ponytail with short bangs in front. I had on a big smile, full makeup and a V-neck black dress. When had this been taken?

I looked at the bottom righthand corner, and sure enough, I'd turned on the date function of my camera. May 3. My birthday. I could tell from the light in the room that it was early evening, which meant I'd taken this photo after I got fired but before Ben and I went out for dinner.

I flipped to the next picture. It was a shot of the living room and dining area of my town house, and the date was the same. I'd bought flowers and placed them on the polished dining room table. The place was spotless and gleaming. I'd probably cleaned, waiting for Ben to come over, wondering whether he would propose there, at our future home, or if we would go out to dinner. I couldn't remember taking the picture, and yet seeing it was as depressing as watching an alcoholic stand outside a closed liquor store.

I quickly moved to the next one and then the next and the next. What the hell?

They were all similar in a way. They were all of Ben. But he hadn't posed for these shots. They looked like surveillance photos—an out-of-focus shot of him leaving his apartment; Ben kissing Therese on the street; Ben pushing through the doors of the Bartley Brothers building on Madison; Ben buying something at an outdoor fruit market in the
Loop. I could tell that I'd used my 200 mm lens for most of them, that I'd been rather far away when I'd taken these. I'd been following Ben around, stalking him in a sense, just as he'd told Laney. Damn.

 

When I got back, I heard the low rumble of male voices as I took the elevator up to Cole's studio. I wondered about the type of people he hung out with, eager to forget what I'd seen in those photos. The elevator opened, and I stepped into the room, the voices clearer—and both familiar.

“She's brilliant,” Cole said, “really brilliant.”

“I know that,” the other man said. “I'm sure I know better than you.”

I froze. Oh, God. I did know that voice. It was Ben.

I hurried down the steps and looked to the right, and there, standing over Cole's butcher-block table, were Ben and Cole. Ben's arms were crossed—his defensive pose. Cole looked a little more loose, a little more amused.

“Hello, Kelly Kelly,” Cole said, and I saw Ben's eyes narrow at his use of the nickname.

“Ben,” I said, wrapping the plastic bag tight around the photos as if he could see through it to those surveillance pictures of him. I stuffed the bag deep into Cole's beanbag chair and walked toward them. “What are you doing here? I thought we were meeting at the bar.”

“Yeah, well, I thought I'd come pick you up, see what you've got going on over here.” He cast a disdainful glance around Cole's studio and raised his eyebrows as if to say,
You could do better.

“Look, mate,” Cole said. “We're working, so we'll see you later, okay?”

“I'll just hang out and wait.”

“Sorry, doesn't work like that,” Cole said. “This is a private studio.”

“Yeah, thank God it's not open to the public,” Ben said.

It was Cole who looked pissed off and defensive now.

“Okay,” I said in a loud voice. I grabbed Ben by the arm and propelled him toward the elevator. “I'll meet you at the bar in half an hour, all right?”

“Sure, sure,” he said. He leaned down, as if to kiss me, but I turned it into a quick hug and practically pushed him into the elevator.

“What a prat,” Cole said when the doors closed. “You're not serious about that guy, are you?”

 

Ben and I sat on stools in the dim light of Trattoria No. 10, or “T-10” as it was called by the Bartley Brothers employees. It was an Italian restaurant and bar, housed in the belly of a building on Dearborn Street, a place I'd been with Ben a million times. Ben hadn't mentioned his visit to Cole's studio, and aside from telling him to call next time before he stopped by, I had let it go. I just wanted to enjoy myself.

“Another one?” Ben said, pointing to my nearly empty wineglass.

“You bet.” What the hell? I'd been drinking merlot, the heavy red sinking through my stomach and into my limbs.

Ben lifted himself off the stool and walked a few feet away to catch the bartender's attention. I started to think again about those photos I'd taken of him. Did he know? Was that why he'd told Laney I was stalking him? Or was it just my constant appearance on his doorstep in my pajamas? Whatever the answer, I wasn't going to tell him now. No way. It made me feel guilty knowing about those photos if he didn't, but to admit that I'd been following and photographing him would change the tenor of our time together. I'd revert to psycho status in an instant.