Engaging Men (10 page)

“Nah. I’m beat,” Justin said. After a few moments, he finally looked up at me, probably because I was hovering over him, anxiously trying to figure out a way to get him out of the apartment. It wasn’t so much the fact that Kirk was coming over. After all, Kirk had accepted Justin’s presence in my life, albeit grudgingly. It was just that I was absolutely appalled at the idea ofjustin discovering my plot to win Kirk’s pledge of undying love.

“What’s up?” he asked, studying me with concern.

“Nothing!” I protested, completely blowing my cover.Then I glanced up at him from where I had begun to pick at a nonexistent piece of lint on the sofa. “It’s just that…Kirk’s coming over.”

“Oh yeah?” he replied with some measure of surprise. It wasn’t that Kirk never came over, it was just that we spent more time at his place. Probably because of my roommate factor, but I feared mostly because of my (or should I say “our,” meaning Justin’s and my) clutter factor. Kirk had a decided distaste for the disorder Justin and I so willingly chose to live in, and when he was here, he couldn’t help but point out the problems that resulted from irregular removal of recyclables (I had an increasingly bad habit of saving all the newspapers, magazines and trade papers I never seemed to get around to, in the hope that I would, one day, get around to them) and accumulation of other people’s irretrievables (You-know-who was responsible for that). I couldn’t help but agree with Kirk.There was something wrong with living with six lamps, three sofas and a stack of newspapers and magazines that rivaled the periodical room of the New York Public Library.

“Anyway, I was gonna cook him dinner.”

This got a raised eyebrow.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing,” he replied, turning his attention back to the TV. But I knew he was thinking of the time I threw a dinner party for all our friends, which was nothing short of disaster. Thank God, Justin had come to the rescue and pulled together a quick pasta fagioli. For a guy from the Midwest who was a mixture of every ethnicity except Italian—English, French and even a dash of some sort of Scandinavian—he certainly had a way with Italian cuisine. It was as if he had inherited the Italian gene that I hadn’t.“You need help?” he asked as I continued to stand there looking at him uncertainly.

“Not exactly…” I began, not sure how to tell him that I simply needed him to go away. “What’s CJ. up to tonight? You haven’t seen him in a while,” I hedged. C J. was Justin’s best male friend, who somehow managed to be married, successful, and yet still one of the coolest people I knew. He was vice-president of an independent record label that had found phenomenal mainstream success and yet still managed to maintain its indie roots. Though C.J. lived in Westchester now, he often came in on weekends when one of his bands was scheduled to play.“Maybe he’s in town tonight. Isn’t that new band he signed supposed to play CBGB’s?”

Finally Justin got it.“Oh, I see,” he said, his gaze falling on the table, where the candles from his weekend with Lauren were still strewn.“You want to be alone…with Smirk.”

“Smirk” was what Justin called Kirk when Kirk wasn’t around. It wasn’t that Justin didn’t get along with Kirk. He just despised everything Kirk stood for: material success, technological innovation.The future. I had to forgive Justin for it—being an East Villager before the dot.com gentrification, I was on the same wavelength. Sort of.

“Do you mind?” I said, hoping he would suddenly find some other venue for his slacker revue tonight.

“Nah.” He shrugged.“I’ll just watch the game in my room.”

So much for getting him out of the apartment. I had forgotten about the Yankee game. There was no way I could hide my embarrassing little ploy now, I thought, heading for the kitchen to tackle my next project: domestication. It wasn’t that I couldn’t cook at all—I make a mean marinara—it’s just that I stuck pretty much to those things which wouldn’t kill anyone if I messed them up. But if I was going to make Kirk pine for the woman he could possibly lose, I had to tackle something a guy like Kirk could understand: meat.

I headed for the fridge, where I had stacked a package of perfectly cut—or so said the butcher at Lenny’s Meats—perfectly thick and perfectly frightening sirloin steaks. I wasn’t a veggie or anything, I just was a little afraid of foods that had the capability to inadvertently poison me if undercooked. I put the steaks carefully on the counter, wondering just how long I had to grill them on the George Foreman (a Christmas present from Sonny that I had yet to take out of its original packaging) to destroy any of that malicious bacteria I seemed to know way too much about for a woman with such limited culinary experience. Fortunately, my mentor in man-catching, Michelle, had loaned me her copy of Cooking With Style, which, despite the suspiciously bright platter of vegetables that graced the cover, had a section on grilling.

Flipping the book open, I was amazed at how easy it all seemed. Six minutes for each side? No problem. Knowing that timing was everything, I set the asparagus to steaming and tossed the potatoes in the microwave. This was easy, I thought, laying the steaks on the hot grill just as the buzzer rang.

“I’ll get it!” I yelled, running for the intercom, though Justin hadn’t budged from the couch.

“Hey, it’s me,” came Kirk’s voice as I pushed the listen button. I depressed the door buzzer with something like dread. Then I immediately went to the front door and waited, as if by greeting him at the door I could protect him from my own madness—or Justin’s all-knowing gaze. When I heard him ascend the third flight, I stepped into the hall.

“Hey,” I said, as he approached.

“Hey, Noodles,” he said, his face creasing into a smile that made me feel guiltier and guiltier. Clearly I wasn’t cut out for this level of subterfuge.

He kissed me, his eyes roaming over my face as if he could see the deceit there. And there must have been something in my expression because he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” I said quickly, turning and leading him down the narrow hall toward the living room.

“Hey, Captain Kirk, what’s up, man?”Justin said with a wide grin from his—semipermanent, I hoped—position on the couch.

I felt Kirk stiffen with tension beside me. Though Kirk had been forced to accept the fact of Justin’s presence in my life from day one, it was clear he didn’t always approve of Justin’s seemingly carefree lifestyle.Justin must have sensed this, as he seemed to revel in his slacker ways in Kirk’s presence. But Justin did make some attempts to bond, I suppose. Like the whole Trekkie thing. When Justin discovered Kirk was a fellow Star Trek fan, he took great delight in rehashing the finer plot points of what he considered the Great Episodes, while Kirk couldn’t get past the way Justin took the good captain’s name in vain every time Justin greeted him.

“Justin,” he said with a curt nod. And while I was pointedly rolling my eyes toward Justin’s room in a silent message that I hoped said, Time for you to go, Justin was gazing happily at Kirk as if he was his new best friend.

And apparently he was, judging by the way Kirk’s own eyes lit up when he spied the television screen. “Is that the Yankee—Red Sox game?” he said, swiftly leaving my side and planting himself cozily beside Justin on the couch.

Oh, brother. Now how was I going to get Justin the hell out of here?

I decided that the best I could do at the moment was hit the kitchen. After all, I had bigger things to tackle at the moment. Like meat.

I headed for the kitchen, where those bloody red steaks still sizzled.Thank God I had asked the butcher to cut an extra steak. It looked like I would be cooking for three.

I can do this, I thought, when I had nipped all the nicely browned steaks and began placing the freshly steamed asparagus on a serving platter and pulling the baked potatoes out of the microwave. Studying my handiwork, I realized I was practically a Domestic Goddess.

Once the six minutes designated for side two were up, I pulled one of the steaks off the grill and cut into the middlejust to make sure they were good and cooked and I wasn’t about to poison myself, my best friend and my, um, future husband. Red juice rushed out, sending a shiver through me. There was no way we could eat these like this, I thought, my head filled with visions of dancing microbes.That cookbook couldn’t have been right…

I threw the steak back on and closed the lid on the George Foreman, just as the intercom buzzed.

“I’ll get it!” I said, rushing for the intercom with an anxious glance at the sofa. Kirk continued to stare at the TV, unfazed. Justin, on the other hand, looked over at me, his eyes narrowed.

Hands trembling, I pushed the talk button, praying my beloved roommate wouldn’t betray me now. “Yes?”

“Flower delivery,” said a voice with a thick Spanish accent. I glanced over at the couch. Now I had Kirk’s attention, I realized. But the thrill of victory was quickly squashed by the look on Justin’s face as he sat back, folding his arms across his chest. He knew what I was up to. With a quick don’t-you-dare-say-a-word glare that I hoped Kirk didn’t pick up on, I headed for the door and swung it open.

Only to discover the deliveryman holding what looked like some sort of flower bush. A very large flower bush. “What the—” I stopped myself, glancing back into the living room, where Kirk and Justin looked on. Where are my roses? I wanted to scream but couldn’t for obvious reasons.

“Flowers for Miss—” the man began, studying the order slip he clutched in his free hand. “DiFranci?”

I sighed. A florist who couldn’t even get a name as easy as DiFranco right obviously hadn’t been the best choice for this ridiculous plan of mine. Correction, Michelle’s. Why had I listened to her anyway?

As I stared at that large pink bush, I realized this screwup by Murray’s had left me with a way out of this ridiculous scheme. “There must be some kind of mistake,” I began. “I didn’t order a…a…plant.”That was the truth, right? I had ordered roses. One dozen long-stemmed ones. At $54.95.

A frown creased the man’s features. Lifting the order slip closer to his face, he squinted at it. “Miss, the order here says I am to deliver these flowers to Miss Angela DiFranci?”

“I’m sorry but, I can’t accept—” I glanced back when I realized that Kirk now stood at the end of the hall. Of course, Justin stood just behind him, the smirk on his face even more pronounced now.

“What’s going on?” Kirk asked. “Is there a problem?”

“Mmm, nothing. Just go back to your game. I think they have the wrong apartment.”

“No, miss. It says right here that I’m to deliver these flowers to Miss Angela DiFranci, three-forty-seven East Ninth Street, apartment three-B.” Then, squinting at the slip, he said, “The order was placed by—”

“Okay, okay,” I said, grabbing the offending plant and pulling some cash out of the pocket of my jeans to silence my plant-wielding nemesis.

God knows how many singles I handed the guy, because with a wink and a smile, he disappeared before I could even ask for pruning directions. I only prayed that this bush I was now the proud owner of wasn’t any more expensive than the roses I had ordered. And that Kirk would at least get some of the secret romance they had been intended to invoke.

“Hey, is that an azalea?”Justin said as I walked toward them, wondering how I was going to carry on in the face of this…madness. “I love azaleas. My mom used to grow them back in Oak Park when I was kid.”

So much for romance.

“What’s the card say?” Kirk asked as I set the offending plant carefully on the coffee table.

“Yeah, what does it say?”Justin said, clearly curious as to what my little game was.

Curious myself, I opened the card. At the words printed there, I felt my perfectly ridiculous plan take a turn for the worse.“Best wishes for a speedy recovery. Love, Sam and Stella.”

“Who’re Sam and Stella?” Kirk asked.

Wouldn’t I like to know.

As it turned out, I made an (almost) complete recovery from the azalea fiasco. After dining on asparagus, potatoes and roast chicken (ordered up from BBQ when the meat had been rendered inedible by excessive overcooking), Kirk and I retreated to my room, leaving Justin to the azalea, which he was so taken with, he even moved some of the heaps of books he kept on the windowsill to make room for the latest addition to our happy little home. And while Kirk and I were languishing in bed, cozily watching a rerun of Seinfeld, the phone rang.

Kirk immediately looked at me, his brow creased. “Who the hell is that?”

Shrugging, I reached for the receiver. Late-night calls were not uncommon for me, though Kirk didn’t know that. After all, he didn’t spend enough time at my place to know my habits.

“Hello?” I said tentatively.

“Were you never going to call me back?”

“Josh!” I exclaimed. “I’m sorry, I’ve been, uh, busy,” I said. “So, uh, how are you?” I asked, not daring to look over at Kirk, who was probably wondering why Josh was calling me at— quick glance at the clock—11:47 p.m. But Josh’s and my friendship was such that we could call each other at any hour of the day for a consult on anything from the dangers of medical mismanagement (Josh was in insurance, now that he had given up his acting career) to the pitfalls of auditioning (because somehow Josh still had lots of career advice on the career he had himself given up).Though the late-night calls had all but ended since he’d moved in with Emily, he still sometimes resorted to them when he couldn’t get in touch with me otherwise.

“Didn’t you get my messages?” he asked.

“Yes, yes. I did. That’s, uh, wonderful news.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not every day a man finds the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with,” he said smugly. Then, as if to console me that 7 hadn’t been that woman, he continued, “But I want you to know, you’re the first person I told— after Emily’s family, of course.”

Some consolation.Who else would Josh have told? He didn’t speak to his parents anymore (years of therapy had shown him that they had not only damaged him in the past, but would prove even more damaging to his future), and I was probably one of the few friends Josh had left now that he had thrown his whole life over for Emily.