Love Monkey (13 page)

I give Julia a look.

“Yes,” I say.

“I have to find baby formula,” she says. “The guy, the
kid
, he tells me it's over here, but he don't say where over here. I been looking for ten minutes.”

“I don't know where that is,” I say.

“You what?”

A kid in a red vest comes by wielding a price gun. He's moving as if he's on wheels.

“That's him,” says the lady. “Excuse me! Excuse me!”

The kid hears nothing. Get out of his way. He's got a price gun.

I stick a hand out.

“Tom Farrell, regional sales,” I say. “Jerome?”

The kid stops short, bewildered, as though I've read his mind instead of his name tag. “Yeah?”

“Can you help this nice lady? She needs baby formula.”

“It's over—”

“Jer
ome
. What's your last name, Jerome?”

“Carns?” Now he looks scared. I've got his last name.

“Do me a favor,” I say. “Take her there and show her. I'll remember you when I'm doing the Christmas bonuses.”

The kid, it is plain, has never gotten a Christmas bonus in his life. Of course, he probably never will.

“This way,” says the kid, and darts down an aisle.

“Thank you,” says the lady, kissing her fingertips.

Julia is smiling at me.

“That,” she says, “was
awe
some.”

We go back to the office and get an elevator to ourselves. I take up a strategic position in one corner, my hands behind my back. She is in the far corner. I want to grab her. She wants to be grabbed. There are security cameras. We stand our ground, smiling at each other. After a while we start trading funny faces. The ditzy girl. The
Sling Blade
guy. The fainting duchess. The skeezy pickup artist. Ding. The door opens.

“ 'Bye!” she says and skips out. She literally skips out. And she trips a little, over nothing. “Did I mention,” she says, “that I dance?”

I go back to my cubicle but I don't call. When it's about time to leave, I simulate a rush to begin my madcap bachelor weekend, when in fact my slate is bare except for a planned Friday evening at the apartment of Karin and Mike, formerly autonomous human life forms who now say things like, “
We
don't like those kinds of movies” (about
Boogie Nights
), “
We
've never heard of them” (about Radiohead, or any other band since the Thompson Twins), and (late last year) “
We
're pregnant.”

The phone. Her name on the LED readout.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” she says.

“Have a great weekend,” I say.

“You too…” she says.

“I heard that ellipsis,” I say.

“I was just wondering,” she says, “if you'd care to have brunch on Sunday.”

And my ever-uneasy mind settles into a nice little hum of contentment.
She was just wondering if I'd care to have sex on Sunday.

“How about Cafe Frog?” I say.

“Around noon?” she says.

“I'll see ya there,” I say.

I look at my watch: first down, forty-two and a half hours of sweet anticipation to go.

T
he day of. I'm springing out of bed at eight, flinging open the blinds. Sex is doing a drum solo in my veins. My pulse goes: “sexSEX sexSEX sexSEX.” Wash the face (sex). Brush the teeth (Sex). Take a shower (SEX! SEX! SEX!). Get dressed in a way that says: I am not trying for sex in any way. Jeans (sniff carefully—do they smell sexy?). Clean T-shirt. Ragged go-to-hell long-sleeved shirt over that. Unbuttoned. Casual like. Cologne? Don't. Well, maybe just a little. Dab, dab. Sniff, sniff. Too much! I stick each earlobe under the faucet. Which gets water running down my neck and into my shirt. But better to smell like nothing than to smell like a guy who wears jewelry.

Get there a little late. She's later. Cars whooshing by on the drizzle-covered streets. Ten minutes late. Fifteen. I just stand on the corner glowering, thinking, If she stands me up this time, I'll…I'll forgive her quickly and go back to telling her how beautiful she is. She can do anything she wants to me. She should not be allowed to realize this. But I won't need to hide myself from her much longer. After today, things will be different. I will have a freshly minted girlfriend. And New York—waterlogged, filthy-puddled, unnecessarily cool-yet-humid April New York? New York will be minty fresh. So will I. Knowing this girl, it's like a soul gargle. All that emotional plaque is coming off.

She's here. Disentangling herself from the backseat of a taxi.

“Sorry sorry sorry sorry!” she says. “It's really hard to get a cab in the rain.”

“Not a problem,” I say, cheek-kissing her.

“Shall we?” she says.

And in we go. We're looking over our menus when she gives me the once-over.

“So,” she says, “this is what you look like on weekends.”

“How do I look?” I say.

“You still look pretty good,” she says.

There is a slow unfurling in my lap. We eat slightly more quickly than is necessary, talking about nothing.

“So what do you want to do?” I say. “There's a flea market across the street.” Shopping for things other people have thrown away. Yeah,
that's
why we're here.

“I'm actually kind of tired,” she tells her plate.

“Wanna take a nap?”

“I could take a nap,” she says to her shirt.

Blood leaving my brain. It's needed elsewhere.

“Check?” I tell the waiter.

Walk slow,
I tell myself as I lead her back to my lair. Just lollygagging. Strolling. Admiring the flowers popping up in the little caged patches of grass around the trees. Overdressed people walking home from church. Suckers. They believe in God. I believe in hot little dancers.

No hurry at all.
Four blocks.
(Baby carriages are so slow. Pass them.) Just taking in the day. (This hand-in-hand couple sauntering down the sidewalk like they own it. Let's just take a detour into the street. Splash through this puddle here.) Yeah, I could spend hours just wandering aimlessly. (This jogger is practically going backward, let's just squeeze between him and the brownstone, oops, scraped some skin off the elbow, that's okay.)
Three blocks.
Such a
lovely day to be outdoors. (I thought Rollerbladers were supposed to be speed addicts. Yet we seem to be catching up to this guy in the skintight racing suit.)
Two blocks.
Yes, me and my girl here are just lingering in the afternoon (tripping over dogs and children).
Last block.
Did everyone on the Upper West Side take six Valiums with their coffee or is today National Slo-Mo Day?

Carefully, carefully. I don't put my arm around her waist. I don't kiss her at the red light. We just look straight ahead, stepping around puddles. On Broadway Love is still in business. Up the four flights to my apartment. And.

She sits on the couch. I go to the stereo. Put on
Murmur.
And though I hate to be one of those their-first-album-was-their-best guys, in this case it happens to be true. Except for “Radio Free Europe,” which is the worst song but also the first, so I always skip it.

“I
love
this album,” she says, closing her eyes.

“Michael Stipe was so much more interesting when he was speaking in tongues.”

“I
know
. ‘This One Goes Out to the One I Love?' Please.”

I sit next to her. Reasonably close. Chummily close. I don't touch. I just listen.

Michael say: “Rest assured this will not last.”

“ ‘Pilgrimage' is such a great song,” she says.

“Best song on the album?”

“ ‘Perfect Circle,' ” she says.

“I was hoping you'd say that,” I say. “You know, I never heard this album till freshman year of college.”

She just looks at me.

And I'm remembering a particularly loud show I once watched on my employer's sister organization, the Argument Channel. It was called the
Gaffe Guys
. It was a political news wrap-up that played clips of elected officials making comments they would later regret.
Whenever the show caught an inappropriate remark, there would appear superimposed on the screen a giant red balloon with the word “GAFFE!” on it. One of the Gaffe Guys said a gaffe is defined as the moment when a politician in desperate evasion of the truth accidentally reveals what he truly believes.

Forgive me, Father, for I have gaffed. A thought, a disturbing thought: this must be some kind of
old
ies album to her. Is Michael Stipe her
Sinatra
?

“Wanna see some pictures?”

“Yeah!” she says.

All part of the plan. I keep my pictures in purposeful disarray: they're all in the envelopes they came in, jumbled in a haystack on one of my bookshelves. I don't put my pictures in albums. If I did, one could leaf through them and notice that the date stamps over the last few years could—not frequently—raise issues of girlfriend overlap. All of which is behind me now. When things are set with Julia, the (exceedingly rare) problem I had with other girls will vanish. The most beautiful woman in the world is here on my couch. Waiting.

I take the three harmless envelopes I placed atop the stack last night with lust aforethought. Despite the (really almost nonexistent) overlap thing, it proved depressingly easy to find envelopes that were entirely girlfriendless.

I show her some aww-shucks pictures of me playing with my friends' babies. Me at my friends' weddings. Me clowning in a two-horned Norseman's helmet like the one Elmer wore in “What's Opera, Doc?” Me in black tie. All pictures carefully selected to say: I am fun but dependable, popular and loved, well traveled and full of surprises. It takes the entire length of the CD and then some to get through them all. We're hearing the fourth track again when I return from putting the pictures back in the bedroom.

“That was fun,” she says. “Like,
Tom Farrell: The E! True Hollywood Story
.”

Michael say:
Talk about the passion
.

And then the kissing begins.

And then the touching begins.

And then the undressing begins.

I know when I unbutton her shirt. The bra. It isn't a bra meant for wearing. It's a bra for removing. Sex bras are always brand new, lacy, and red or black. (In advanced scenarios, they can be white. Only the really clued-in girl knows the effect a white bra has on a man. The first bra we ever see is usually white: mom's. In the olden days, underwear was federally required to be white. Thus every white bra brings back that first accidental glimpse while mom was getting dressed, or that heart-stopping debut glance in the forbidden underwear drawer.) This one is bright, wicked scarlet.

“Did you wear this hot bra for me?” I say.

She laughs. “But I don't match!” she says.

“Let's see,” I say. Zip. Lime green.

I take it slow. She stops for a second.

“Your kisses are so soft and gentle,” she says.

I smile.

I use the R.E.M. record for rhythm. Work on one erogenous zone per song. But I can't. That's four minutes. Hell. By the time “Perfect Circle” comes on, I'm taking her into my arms and carrying her into the bedroom. Well. I'm stumbling a bit. It's awkward, carrying a girl, you know? Plus I almost crack her head on the doorjamb.

I toss her on the mattress. She turns over and waits, lying hotly on her tummy in her hot underwear. Look at her. Her panties should carry a warning tag: “Caution: The Girl You Are About to Enjoy Is Extremely Hot.”

This is going to be incredible. This is going to be like nothing else
has ever been. Except. You know how everyone thinks they have a good sense of humor, are good drivers, and are good in bed? When there's a break in the conversation at a party, I can never think of a good joke. I was in three non-minor traffic accidents before I turned twenty-five. And—

B
ut that was almost four months ago. Today is the day of her dance recital. I'm up early. I don't want this day. Can we skip over to the next day, please?

I piece myself together uncertainly. “Suave,” says my shampoo. “All-purpose solution,” says my contact lens cleaning fluid. “Total control,” says my styling gel. “Cool,” says my antiperspirant. I am not living up to the expectations of my toiletries.

I picture me sitting next to him in the front row, all civil like. Then I picture him getting in a seething jealous rage over me and yelling at Julia and squealing off into the night in his two-cylinder 1986 Hyundai Muskrat, sending Julia caroming neatly into my arms.

At the flower store for the long stemmed. Would red be sending a signal? I get yellow, the rose of caution, the rose that goes slow. The rose that reminds me of her yellow coat. The guy talks me into getting a glass vase to go with. Very schmancy. Whole thing costs me sixty-eight bucks. I don't care.

She told me I could stay overnight at her parents', so I pack a pair of shorts and a T-shirt to sleep in and a change of underwear, and while I'm in my underwear drawer…heh, heh, what have we here? Hello, my latex friends. (These guys could use a quick splotch of Endust too.) Never hurts to have one (or five!) of these around, does it? I pick up a couple, start to put them in my bag. Then I put them back in the drawer: what if she found them on me? Might look a tad presumptuous. On the other other hand, what are the odds that this intensely non-nosy person is going to go rootling around in my stuff? I start to put them in the bag. Then I think: being caught without a rubber is the last thing I should worry about. Back in the drawer they go.

On the subway I sit with my giant bouquet concealing the hard-on in my lap. Women look at me approvingly. Nod, smile. A guy bringing pretty flowers to his lady. I make a mental note:
good way to meet women?
All I have to do is shell out sixty-eight dollars every Saturday and ride the subway all day. Of course, if anyone asks, they're for my mother.
No, it's not her birthday. It's just…because.

“Beautiful flowers,” says one woman on the platform in Grand Central. A blonde, nice eyes. Okay, she's fifty. This is the most action I've had all week.

So I leave New York and take the train into America. CBS-watching America. JCPenney America. Souvenir-plate America. Daytime TV America. Bumper-sticker America. SUP R STOP N SHOP America. Salad bars and lawn mowers. Lyme disease and strip malls.

On my headphones I'm revving for the challenge: Radiohead's
OK Computer
. This would be really hot sex music. Then I remember her telling me she loved that album. Or maybe she's been loved to that album. I try not to think about it. I fail.

I'm replaying my favorite Julia moments. The time in Swift's when we were looking at the jukebox and she was looking for “Rikki
Don't Lose That Number” for some reason and my arm discovered her waist and I pulled her to me and kissed her hair. “Mmm,” she said. “You do smell
nice
.” I mentally ran through the list of things that had been on or near my body that day. Shampoo. Conditioner. A little Ivory soap for the pits. Deodorant. Trying to reconstruct my smell.

That time at Russian Samovar. It was eleven. We were both in a good mood. We did lemon-vodka shots, horseradish, coconut, watermelon. We did a lot of shots. She hadn't eaten. We told each other secrets and then messed around in the cab. She wouldn't come up to my place so I sent her onward. Later she told me that when the cabbie was dropping her off at her place, she quietly leaned over and upchucked in the backseat. She was too embarrassed to tell him. She was a puke scofflaw. I told her that from now on I wanted her to think of me every time she puked. She laughed.

That time after the National Book Critics Circle Awards. The evening promised to be dull, and for once something lived up to expectations. The ceremony took place in a grim little high school–sized auditorium down at the NYU law school. I hadn't read any of the books. I didn't see anyone I knew at the after party. And book people are ugly little trolls. I fit right in there. But I left early and called her from a pay phone on a windy Monday night unfairly cold for mid-March. She was still at work. She was about to get out. Was she up for a drink? She was. I told her to meet me at this sleek bar on West Forty-eighth called Mystery. It's one of the few vaguely cool places near where we work. She stood me up. I waited there for half an hour thinking, Should I call her cell phone? But I didn't have a quarter. I'd have to go to the bar. Beg one of the glamazon waitresses for change. I'd look like an idiot. I'd look like a guy who'd been stood up. Forty-five minutes. Nobody wants to look like what he actually is. Finally I got some nerve, got some change. Called my home machine. Got this message.

Adorable. Poetry. My anger just slid right off me. I got her on her cell.

“The bar's kind of hard to find,” I say. “There's a sign. But it's a small sign. The rule in New York is, if you want lots of customers, hide your bar.”

“I'm such an idiot,” she says, sounding really nervous. “I can't believe it.”

“Shhh, sweetie,” I say. “It's all right. Meet me outside. Southeast corner of Forty-eighth and Eighth. My mistake for picking such an obscure place.”

Five minutes later I'm standing at the southeast corner of Forty-eighth and Eighth. There's a parking garage there. It's freezing. It's the middle of March! It's the endless winter of '01. Where is she now? I look across Eighth. I look across Forty-eighth. I wrap my scarf around my neck. I put my gloves on. Something makes me turn around, toward the Forty-eighth Street entrance of the garage.

She's sneaking up prettily behind me on tiptoe in the yellow coat that is much too thin for the weather. She has a cartoon look on her face. I'm Elmer. She's Bugs.

The expression on her face.
Caught! Foiled! Oh no!
I grab her in a bear hug and I pick her up off her feet and I hold her as tight as I can and we twirl. She laughs and laughs. Folks, tonight's happiness
scores are in. Every other guy in the world is competing for second place.

G
et off the train in South Norwalk. She's not on the platform. She's downstairs, wearing glamour-girl Hollywood oversized bug-eye black shades and a denim dress, the kind with no zip up the back (I check). You just throw it on over your head, on your bare skin. She's not wearing a bra. She looks incredible. She looks like the encyclopedia of sex.

“Hi,” she says and laughs her half laugh. Julia is big on nervous laughter. It fills in all the spaces for her, spackles over the perpetual mild embarrassment of existence. She reaches up to give me a sister peck on the cheek. Mwah.

Only then does she notice what I'm holding. The giant glass vase is all wrapped up in cellophane and there are little extraneous sprays of supporting-act flowers and the whole package looks mighty impressive.

“Oh,
my,
” she says. And she laughs her nervous laugh.

“Found these on the train,” I say.

“Oh my,” she says, her sentences getting shorter.

“Really,” I say, “it was just lucky someone left them there.”

At her house I meet the parents (dad sullen, mom breathlessly emotive) and the brothers (know-it-all seventeen-year-old, deeply confused college junior). You can tell this is a family that has seen more fights than Madison Square Garden. More circuses too.

“Look at those!” says mother. “
Very
hoity-toity. Where did you get them?”

“Oh, these? Found 'em on the train,” I say. Aren't I charmingly self-deprecating? But I'm thinking, Should have brought something for the mother.
Always bring something for the mother.
Unless Julia's
the kind of girl who specifically dates guys calculated to irritate the maternal unit.

The younger brother slouches into the room, the teen who just got into Wisconsin: Al. Al doesn't say much.

They've laid out a real spread for me: iridescent blue-green plastic throwaway plates, matching cups. The full bounty of the Oscar Mayer aisle, an archive of luncheon meats. The plastic forks and knives are translucent, ostentatiously heavy, as if to say, this is
quality
disposable flatware. And to drink: they've got six liters of popular carbonated beverages. Most of them are caffeine free. This is okay. My blood is surging, my nerves are frying in a pan of butter, my hormones are ringing like a gong as one message chug-a-chugs through my power grid: JuliaJuliaJulia. As addictive as java, and worse: not only do I need her when I get up every morning, I need her when I go to bed every night.

We eat spiced ham and pimiento loaf and make small talk with the grandmother and the aunt, who just showed up. They're both proud, wide women with grooves carved into the rubber of their faces. Julia therefore will look like this in thirty years. So it's no big thing if I don't wind up with her. Right? This is what I keep telling myself. It must be true.

The mom (“Call me Charlotte!”) fusses, getting ice, grabbing bottles of soda, deplasticizing more processed meats. She is largely implied throughout the meal. Occasionally her voice ricochets in from the Formicaed kitchen. At one point she sits and eats a rolled-up piece of bologna, but then she disappears again on a mysterious errand.

The dad sits at the head of the table chewing. He says nothing.

After lunch we go over the family albums and make fun of Julia's large high school hair. There's a loud Frankenstein's-monster thump on the door.

Brother Gary, the college student, answers. “Hi, Duane,” I hear.

Hi,
Duane.
Normally the only time I wish ill on anyone is when reading my college alumni notes.

There's a lot of Hi, Duaneing going around the house. He is not unknown here. In fact he acts as if he has been here hundreds of times.

The Duane goes to kiss Julia; she gives him her cheek and an awkward little rub on the back. No making out in front of me, at least.

Duane is tall, five inches taller than me. A storky dork, all elbow and knee. I suppose girls would say he's dreamy to look at, but let's break him down, shall we? He has nondescript brown hair and blue eyes and a fiercely nonhumorous face, a face the texture of meat loaf. And he has an earring; not an interesting one. It looks like the little circular paper clip they put your new key on when you get a key made. What kind of heterosexual man wears an earring in 2001? He's wearing blue jeans and a green T-shirt, sneakers. Your basic auto-mechanic look.

He's getting the check-in cheek kiss from the auntie and the grammy and the mommy, another casual, “Hi, Duane,” from the dad, as if he's a welcome presence instead of the prince of darkness. They are treating him like the son-in-law. I'm the son-out-of-law, the son out of luck.

Duane and I size each other up.

“Tom Farrell,” I say.

He glares. “What kind of name is that?”

“It's, um, Irish.”

Drunken potato-eating bricklayer,
say his eyes.

“What's your last name?” I say.

“Feinberg,” he says, aggressively.

Uh-oh. A Jew. He's probably pretty smart. And funny. And his dad was probably a cardiothoracic surgeon instead of an air-conditioner repairman.

The brothers are asking Duane to go play Frisbee. As if they've done it a hundred times before.
They're all friends.

“You wanna play Frithbee?” Duane asks.

Let's see, do I want to play Frisbee with the guy who is having sex with my woman? No, not particularly. I have not played Frisbee in years. Possibly I might toss more than my share of wobblers, and I try not to do anything I'm not good at around a girl.

Duane does not subscribe to this philosophy; for instance, he speaks despite having nothing to say. Conversation involves a certain amount of treading water until your wit window opens. With him it's all treading water: the traffic, the weather, what time he got up, what he had for lunch (matzoh ball thoup at his mother's; she's having a delayed Pathover, apparently). He is a boring guy, precision measured and custom fit for a boring suburb, a guy built to serve one purpose: to be a dodgeball target.

“Where you from?” he says.

“Rockville, Maryland,” I say.

I gracefully allow him a response window. He has nothing to say, though.

“Where you from?” I say.

“Pithcataway,” he says.

“I'm sorry?”

“Pithcataway. New Jerthey.”

“I love New Jersey town names,” I say. “Ho-Ho-Kus? Weehawken?”

She laughs.

“When you look at the map, they're all absurd. Were their founding fathers a bunch of DKEs hunched over pitchers of Schlitz? There's probably a town called Dicksmawken or Tu-Tu-Tuchus.”

Julia throws her head back and laughs. Duane gives her a sharp look. That's right, buddy. Deal yourself right out of this game.

“Actually,” Duane says, “they're Native American named. Not a joke to them.”

The look on his face is blank, earnest, serious. How many unfunny Jews have you ever met? Not counting the pros, the ones
who go moping down the street in their all-black look-at-me-I'm-Jewish costumes.

We all look at the mom's fiftieth birthday party pictures. Julia's hot in a deep V-neck sleeveless top, giving a shy toast or mugging with her brothers. In every picture Duane lurks buffoonishly in the background, always with the same expression on his face: I am Stable, I am Sober, I have a two by four up my Sphincter.