Love Monkey (17 page)

W
rong. Same fucking day.

T
he obligatory birthday party in the back room at Langan's. We're only supposed to have the room until nine, at which time we give way to a group of rowdiness-starved Wall Streeters who have apparently hired a belly dancer for some PG-13 fun. I pinged practically everyone in my e-mail address book. Those who show up bring people I don't know. Who are these people?

I wade into the crowd with false frivolity, counterfeit mirth.

There are about seventy guests. My view of a party is, you should invite a lot of people you barely know, who will arrive and see a lot of other people you barely know, and start to believe that you must be really popular, and if everyone thinks you're really popular,
aren't
you, kind of? I e-vited 140 people, including some people whose business cards I obtained at parties for the express purpose of inviting them to my party so they in turn would invite me to their parties.

So I could meet girls.

Liesl is my date for the party. Gave me a present and everything: a paperback novel. I have no intention of reading it. I've already seen the movie. Ten minutes after we arrived, she found a half-German guy to talk to. They're sitting over there comparing schnitzel recipes or discussing lederhosen or lebensraum. She's supposed to be decorating me. I need arm candy, arm
armor
, to defend myself when Julia shows up. Luckily everyone is buying me balm for my Julia-flayed nerves, and every glass of don't-give-a-shit goes down easier than the last one. Everything looks so much prettier in the haze, don't you think?

A well-rounded figure is surging past at a speed that suggests you could easily wind up with Rockport tracks up the back of your shirt if you tried to stop him. The most dangerous place in New York is between a thirsty hack and the bar. I reach out into the center of the blur and hook him by the elbow.

“Eli!” I say. “Great to see you!”

“Tom!” he says. “Happy birthday! Get out of my way!”

Trailing behind off his left paw is Hillary, looking more stunning than ever. She just smiles and nods. And they slip away in search of succor.

This is when Rollo shows up, his eyes crinkly with hilarity. He glides smiling through the cacophony as if to the sound of a standing ovation only he can hear. All at once I am struck by a deep and abiding love for his scandal-loving smile, his buzzing tabloid heart.

“Hail,” I say, doing something extremely vague with my hand that resembles a wave, a salute, and an obscenity. “Thou wobbly knight of the dark arts.”

“Buy us a drink, lad, I'm skint,” he says. “Your shout.” I'm well lit, but even I can tell he's soaked to the gills. It's evident by the way we sway in harmony. Beautiful, isn't it?

“My shout? That's not my shout. Here's my shout: YOU CHEAP FUCKING BASTARD.”

I laugh at my own line. This gets me some worried looks.

“Your day, you pay,” Rollo says.

“That's in England,” I say. “This is an entirely different country now. We won the war. It was in all the papers.”

“Come on, boy, what was it Shakespeare said? For a taste of your whiskey, I'll give you some advice.”

“That was Kenny Rogers.”

“Right,” he says. “Shakespeare, Kenny Rogers. Pair of hacks, scribblers, ink monkeys like us. Let's toast 'em.”

“Serving girl,” I say, giving a slow overhead wave to a classic Manhattan drinks duchess in a leotard and a leather skirt. Waitresses are the royalty of this town: they're great looking, they're dumb enough to be inbred, everyone's afraid of them, and they make more than any three hacks I know. Too late I remember hearing that waitresses put Visine in your drink to give you the shits if you mistreat them, but isn't a good colonic going for $150 in your better spas?

“That's it, Bingo, some happy juice for the pair of us,” Rollo says.

“Don't you make a lot more than me?”

“Got a wife, haven't I?”

“Whose fault is that?”

“Come on, don't be such a tit.”

The girl makes her way through the crowd, gives me a nasty look.

“My lovely,” Rollo says, winking hard. “How do you do? And when will you do it to me?”

She waits, looking as if she wishes she had some gum to snap.

“The gentleman is celebrating the anniversary of his birth,” he says, “and has agreed to defray expenses. Two double gins on ice. And what're you having, Zimbo?”

“Gin and tonic,” I say. “Shaken, not stirred. With a maraschino cherry.”

“And one for yourself,” Rollo tells the girl as she turns around. She tosses him a coy little smile over her retreating shoulder.

“That all it takes?” I say.

“The world was built on money and bollocks, Zembla,” he says. “One or the other will do.”

I turn around to check the door again, rising to tippytoes. Nothing, although I do spot an out-of-focus version of Liesl. Is she talking to
two
guys? Crazy tabloid headlines crash through my brain. “HEARTLESS WENCH IN JOYLESS BAR.” “FLOOZY FRAULEIN FORSAKES FLOUNDERING FELLA.” Who invited unauthorized men to my fiesta?

“Looking for that special someone?” Rollo says. “Been overrun by cupid's tank? You look like a dog who wants to bury his boner. Who is it then?”

“Your wife.”

“You don't mock a man's wife,” he says. “The Geneva Convention specifically forbids torturing captives of a hostile nation.”

“Is your wife beautiful?” I say.

“She's a trophy wife,” he says. “A Westminster Kennel Club trophy.”

“Tell me,” I say. “Always wanted to know. Why do men get married? I know why women get married—all the home decorating and picking out baby clothes—but why do men get married?”

“Why indeed?” he says. “Why walk the plank? Why run away to join the two-ring circus? Better dead than wed, we used to say when we were tadpoles. Tell you, son, I was in the army, and that's exactly what getting married is: there's no privacy, you get orders barked at you all day long, and you get about ten inches of space to hang up all your clothes.”

“So why'd you sign up then?”

“Because it drove me absolutely barking mad to think of her shagging anyone else. Marriage quiets the lunatic voices. It's that or become a serial killer, I'm afraid.”

The waitress comes back. She hands Rollo two highball glasses and a 120-proof smile.

“Bellisima!”
he cries, and tosses off the first drink. “Take this one whence it came, and bring me its twin,” he says.

She gives me a G and T but stiffs me on the cherry, which, by the way, I really did want. After momentary consideration of whether to tip her, I fork over the industry standard and get no eye contact in return. She does leave a full bowl of peanuts on the mahogany drink-resting shelf. I scoop up a handful of dinner. “Want some?” I say. A confirmed sighting of Rollo eating would earn much newsroom marveling.

He raises an eyebrow. “I do not take food with my meals,” he says.

“Uh-huh,” I say through my munching. “Tell me a joke.”

“Sadist and a masochist go out on a date,” Rollo says. “The masochist says, ‘Aren't you going to hit me?' The sadist says, ‘No.' ”

“Funny,” I say, my eyes lashed to the door. “Tell me one I don't know.”

“I know this,” he says. “You're looking for that copygirl.”

“Where'd you hear that?” I say, trying to read a message in the white pinstripes of his suit jacket, like chalk body outlines, racing up to his lapels, splitting to run away at weird angles.

“How d'ya think I fucking know?” He's rapping his emphasis finger on my collarbone. “My solid [tap] gold [tap] sources [tap],” he says.

“Rollo,” I say, putting my drink down and clutching his lapels to make the chalk stripes stop moving, “you don't have sources. What you have is imagination.”

“Isn't it obvious in every glance and sigh?” he says.

“Rollo,” I say. “Who told you this?”

“Dearie,” he says, “nothing transpires at Langan's without my knowledge. I'm here every night. I was here the night you met her. Valentine's Day, wasn't it?”

“I thought I saw you down the bar,” I say. “I assumed you were unconscious.”

“Good reporters blend into the surroundings,” he says.

“You were blending into a coma. I've seen geraniums that moved more.”

He lifts a witchy index finger to his forehead. “The third eye,” he says. “It's always open.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Or Ciaran the bartender told you.”

He ignores this. The mystique of the hack legend. No one must know how he knows what he knows, because if they did, they could cut out the middleman. “So will you be seeing this young sweetie tonight?” he says.

I shrug. “She has a boyfriend. It's a long story.” Actually, it isn't, though, is it? It's a short story. It's a fucking
haiku
:

secrets over drinks
some sweaty naked Twister
enter lisping putz

“You are unschooled in the seducer's arts,” Rollo says. “Here, write this down,” he says, knowing that I, like him, like all hacks, have a notebook on me at all times.

I'm taking notes at my birthday party. There are times when my life seems a little weird, even to myself.

He pauses, puffs out his cheeks, empties his drink, and slams it on the shelf. Now he's talking at the speed of drink.

“Tell her how you feel. But she musn't feel threatened.”

“She musn't,” I say, looking around, hoping Shooter isn't hearing any of this. But Shooter is doing shots at the bar. With three blondes and a redhead.

“Tell her this. Start out by saying, ‘Look, it's obvious you're not going to marry him.' ”

“Is it?” I say.

“You'll be confident. She wouldn't be going round with you if she wanted to marry this chump, would she? You'll tell her, ‘I know this must be difficult for you.' You'll ask her, nicely, ‘What can I do to help you make a decision?' Make sure you tell her, ‘I'm not going to rush you.' Underline that.”

I underline.

“Give her
safe
. Give her se
cure
.”

Write, write.

“Don't be negative. Be supportive. Act as if you're with her and it will happen,” he says. “Act like a boyfriend and you'll become one. Make it easy for her.”

“That easy?” I say.

“That easy,” he says. “And one thing more,” he adds, pulling my ear close to his flammable breath. “Girls like having smutty propositions murmured in their ears.”

“Right.”

“To the bog for me. Another drink will be required upon my return.”

“Will any of this work?” I call after him.

“A great load of bollocks, all of it,” he roars, over the heads of the crowd. “Of course it'll work.”

As he walks away I notice for the first time that Rollo looks a little like my father. A guy who took with him whatever advice fathers are supposed to give sons.

Check the watch. 9:15 and she's not there. At 9:21 she remains absent. At 9:25 there is no sign of. And 9:27. And 9:28. And 9:29. She's not coming. Another routine rejection. I've been cut down more than Michael Jackson's nose.

That's when Brandy shows up. She isn't alone.

“Tom,” she says. “This is Katie Swenson.”

Former coworker of Bran's. She recently quit the intensely
competitive, back-stabbing world of TV news to…go to law school. But. Cute cheeks, streaky Cameron Diaz butterscotch hair, Midwestern honesty, like my mom. (Ugh. Make a note not to think of Mom when I think of Katie.) I like Katie. I also like Bran, and this way if I flirt with one I get to fire up the other one's competitive streak. Perfect. When it comes to relationships, scratch a girl and find a combat-hardened field marshal.

“Did you bring me a present?” I ask Bran.

“No,” she says. “But Katie did.”

“Oh?”

“Got it right here in my bag,” Katie says. “Voilà.”

It's a pack of tarot cards.

“Let me tell your fortune,” she says. “It'll be fun.”

I put down my drink.

A guy I know named Doug is standing there saying he doesn't get psychics.

“Like, take TV psychics. If they're really good, they tell you things like, you've just lost a family member/a job/a boyfriend. Things you already knew. For this I'm supposed to pay four ninety-five a minute? What good is that? Tell me what Cisco's going to do in the next six months.”

“But maybe we can tell you something you didn't know about yourself,” Katie says. “Tell ya what I'm gonna do. Let me read your aura.”

She takes my left hand and peers into it. Strokes it a bit. Then she does the same with my right hand. Possibly she is flirting with me. She really is a tasty package. She's got hair like summer and a voice like three
A.M.

“You're facing this huge obstacle,” she says. “And you're not sure whether to confront it. But you will. And at first it will seem like a disaster. But after a while it'll get much better.”

I feel a drop of sweat on my forehead. I look at Doug, a TV writer whose idea for a wacky show—it's about a bunch of slackers who keep plotting to steal from each other the talking urn o' ashes of Kurt Cobain, who razzes them every time they do something stupid—just got rejected by MTV, Comedy Central, and even Showtime.

“What about this guy?” I protest. “He's got obstacles. Everyone's got 'em.”

“Okay, I'll tell you what's in your refrigerator,” Katie says.

“What?” I say.

“Mmmm. Muh. May. Mayonnaise,” she says.

“What are you? The oracle of Hellman's?”

“Well?” she says.

“That is so dumb. Because everyone has mayonnaise in their refrigerator. Except me.” I'm still rattled, though. She got the obstacles, right off. Her next remark could reveal my masturbation habits.