Mike, Mike & Me (8 page)

“That.”

I debated the wisdom of pushing it with another
what?
I knew damn well what he was talking about.

But in case I didn’t, he added helpfully, “New York.”

“Oh. That.”

“You really want to live here forever, Beau?”

Uh-oh. I so knew this was coming.

“Yeah,” I said promptly, with the hometown pride of a Trump. “I really do. I love this city. It feels like the center of the universe.”

“So does L.A.”

“No, it doesn’t. It’s only the center of the entertainment industry. Which, if you think about it, Mike, really has nothing to do with you, so I don’t know why you—”

“It has something to do with
you,
Beau. I mean, think about it. You’re building a career in television. You should be in Hollywood.”

Damn, it was hot. I stuck out my lower lip in an attempt to blow the hair that was plastered to my sweaty forehead, but it didn’t budge.

“I don’t want to be in Hollywood, Mike,” I told him resolutely, sidestepping what looked like a heap of rags on the sidewalk.

I realized it was a human being only when it snarled at me.

“Whoa, Dude, chill out,” Mike said, hustling me past.

Dude? Chill out? Who was he, Keanu Reeves in
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure?
I opened my mouth to inform him that things might be different on the West Coast, but here in New York, we didn’t call the street people Dude, nor did we advise them to chill out.

But Mike was still speaking, and what he was saying was, “That’s disgusting.”

“What’s disgusting?” I looked around.

Truth be told, there were plenty of disgusting things to be seen in this neighborhood at this hour. Hookers, overflowing trash cans, discarded syringes.

“The dude,” Mike said with a shudder.

Oh. Right. The dude.

“He was filthy. And he stunk.”

“Yeah.”

I was accustomed to the homeless now, just as I was accustomed to the noise level, the crowds, the lines, the waits, the astronomical cost of living.

I was also accustomed to getting what I wanted.

I didn’t want to leave New York. And I wanted Mike to be there with me.

“See, it isn’t like that on the West Coast.”

“What, there are no homeless? Come on, Mike. I know they’re there. They’re everywhere.”

“They’re there, yes, but you don’t have to step over them every time you go someplace.”

“That’s because you have to be in a car every time you go someplace.”

“What’s so bad about that?”

“Nothing. I guess. If you like that sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing? Driving?”

“I don’t know, Mike…I guess I just think it’s really overrated.”

“Driving?”

“L.A.”

Since I was still in a musical mood, I sang a few bars of Billy Joel’s “Say Goodbye to Hollywood.”

Hint, hint.

“Very funny,” Mike said. “I’m being serious.”

“So am I. I don’t want to move across the country.”

“I’m not sure I do, either.”

“But the East Coast is home for you.”

“Not at the moment.”

“You know what I mean. You’re from here. You’d be coming home.”

“I’m not from Manhattan. I’m
from
Long Island. There’s a big difference.”

“Why don’t you just see how you do with your job interviews, Mike?” I asked him in what I hoped wasn’t too pleading a tone. “You have great opportunities here. And if you hate living in the city, you—
we
—can always commute from the suburbs.”

“What, you mean like Jersey?”

“God, no. I was thinking Westchester.”

“There are beaches in Jersey.”

“Oh. Well then, maybe Jersey,” I conceded, having forgotten his newfound affinity to sand and saltwater.

“Yeah. I need to have the ocean nearby,” said Mike, who had grown up a stone’s throw from Jones Beach, yet never dreamed of catching a wave until he moved to la-la land. “I can’t live without beach access.”

The riff from “Surfin’ USA” replaced the Jerome Robbins score running through my head.

“Well, you already know that Long Island has great beaches,” I assured him.

“I don’t want to go back to the Island. I spent the first eighteen years of my life trying to get
off
the Island.”

You can take the boy off the Island
…I thought, trying not to grin at the pronounced accent he had tried so hard to lose. Mike’s “off” was still “oh-awf,” just as “coffee” was “cohawfee.” When I first met him, I had a hard time understanding what he was saying half the time. Now I was used to it, but still found it charming.

Not charming enough to want to move with him to Long Island and develop an accent of my own, though.

“The Jersey shore has great beaches, too,” I pointed out, much to my own surprise. I mean, what was I doing? I didn’t want to live in Jersey. I wanted to live in New York.

“Yeah. I guess Jersey wouldn’t be so bad. Because I know I couldn’t deal with the city in the summer.”

I attempted to shove aside images of sidewalk cafés in the West Village and Shakespeare in Central Park and the Farmer’s Market in Union Square. Eating hot dogs and watching the Bronx Bombers play at historic Yankee Stadium. Italian ices from street vendors, fireworks over the Statue of Liberty, sunning on a blanket in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow on a Sunday afternoon.

I’d miss all of that if I had to live in Jersey.

Then again, anything was better than
Californ-eye-yay,
per the
inside-outside-USA
sound track in my head.

I mean, deep down I knew that I wasn’t always going to have things exactly my way. If a compromise was what it would take to make our relationship work, then a compromise it would have to be. Because if Mike left, I’d miss
him
a hell of a lot more than anything New York had to offer.

The suburbs were better than nothing. I had to make him see that we could be happy here. Or at least in a thirty-mile radius of here.

“Great,” I said with a
there, it’s settled
gusto.

“Mmm,” he said with a maddeningly noncommittal
nothing’s settled
ambivalence.

But I, in my newfound The Donald mode, needed to seal the deal.

“You know, maybe we should go apartment hunting this weekend,” I suggested casually as we waited on a corner for a traffic light to change.

“Don’t you think apartment hunting is still a little premature, Beau? I don’t even have a job here yet.”

“You’ll get one sooner or later. And I’ve been checking out the ads in
The Voice
lately just to see what’s out there. I saw a bunch of Manhattan sublets that start in September, which would give me time to give notice so Valerie can find a new roommate. Then we can sublet until spring and move out to—”

“Whoa, wait a minute. Why would
you
have to give notice? I thought we were talking about an apartment for
me. You
already have a place.”

“I do, but…” I took a deep breath and faced him. “I thought maybe we would move in together.”

“You did?”

I nodded.

The light had changed, but neither of us moved. I was afraid to even let out the breath I was holding, much less take the plunge off the curb, and Mike appeared to be rooted to the spot in sheer horror.

This was not good.

This was also not what I was expecting.

“We never talked about moving in together, Beau.”

“I know…but I just kind of figured we would.”

“You just kind of figured that we would…what? Talk about doing it? Or you just kind of figured that we would do it?”

“I just kind of figured that we would talk about doing it,” I lied, thinking that this wasn’t going as well as it should be. “I figured since you were moving here, and you would need a place to live, it would make sense for us to get a place together.”

“Oh,” he said. Just,
oh.

Rhymes with
no.

And
go.
As in,
Go away and leave me alone, you clingy girlfriend you.

“It’s just that rents are so expensive, it’s hard to make a go of it without a roommate.”

“That’s my point. In L.A., you can rent a—”

“And if you’re going to have a roommate,” I cut in, not caring that in L.A. you can rent a freaking oceanfront house for the price of a bagel with lox, “I’m the perfect candidate. I don’t smoke, I don’t hog the remote and I don’t leave the toilet seat up.”

Splat
. Another cute quip fallen flat as seventies hair.

“You already have a roommate,” Mike pointed out.

“I know, but I’d rather live with you. Valerie smokes, hogs the remote and leaves the toilet seat up.”

“Valerie leaves the toilet seat up?”

“Only when she vomits,” I conceded.

Still, he failed to crack a smile.

“The thing is, Beau, moving in together is a huge step.”

“I know. But we’ve been going out forever, and…”
And I just assumed forever was in our future, as well
. But I was suddenly afraid to tell him that, because I was afraid, for the first time, that he might not feel the same way.

“Living together is different. That’s a huge commitment.”

“I know.”

“I just don’t think I’m capable of that yet.”

“Yet? So you will be…soon?”

He hesitated. “I don’t know.”

“You mean, you might not ever be ready?”

“I don’t know, Beau!” He sounded exasperated.

No, this wasn’t going as well as it could be. In fact, if it were going any worse, you might call it a breakup.

“I don’t know what to say, Mike.”

“I don’t either. But I’m being honest.”

We walked on in silence for a good five minutes.

I felt sick inside. All I wanted was to be home. Alone. So that I could cry in my bed.

But Mike was staying with me, and Valerie was probably there, and I knew I would be trapped once I got there.

About as trapped as I felt out here on the street with Mike.

The crowd had thinned now that we were getting away from the theater district. If we headed over to Eighth Avenue and up a few more blocks, we might even be able to catch a cab uptown. I said as much to Mike.

“You want to go right home? I thought you wanted to eat first.”

“I’m not hungry anymore.”

“Well, we can go get a drink and talk.”

“About not moving in together?” I asked tartly.

He shrugged. “Whatever. Never mind. I’m beat. Let’s get a cab and go back to your place and just go to sleep.”

And we did.

nine

The present

I’
m curled up on the couch in the family room watching David Letterman and eating lo-carb coffee-mocha ice cream straight out of the container when I hear a key in the back door.

“Beau?” Mike calls, his wing tips tapping across the ceramic tile in the kitchen. “You still up?”

“Down here,” I call, and mute the volume on the television remote.

I hear a jangling sound as he tosses his keys on the counter and a thud as he drops his briefcase on the floor by the door. The refrigerator door opens and closes and he comes down, a bottle of Poland Spring in hand.

“Hi,” I say, making room for him on the couch by my feet.

He plants a quick kiss on my forehead. I can smell the city on his clothes and liquor on his breath. Not a lot, and I actually kind of like the smell. Plus, it explains the kiss. He’s always affectionate when he’s had a drink or two.

“Sorry it’s so late,” he says, plopping down on the couch and twisting the plastic top off his water. “I missed the 9:52 train by three minutes and I had to wait an hour for the next one.”

“That stinks.” I watch David Letterman silently asking Demi Moore something that’s making her squirm and laugh.

“Yeah. How are the boys?”

“Asleep, finally.”

“Did they give you a hard time about going to bed?”

“Do they ever
not
give me a hard time about going to bed?”

He shrugs and guzzles some water. “What did you do all day?”

“Played the world’s longest game of Candyland. Cleaned up a zillion spills. Changed diapers.”
Answered an e-mail from the ex-love-of-my-life.
“Mikey had a playdate with Chelsea. After she left, we went to the park and played in the sandbox until Josh stole some kid’s metal shovel and hit Mikey over the head with it.”

He winces. “Ouch. Why is he so bad these days?”

“You mean naughty.”

“No, I mean
bad.
Violence is bad. Poor Mikey. Do they even make metal sandbox shovels these days?”

“Apparently, they do. Either that or it was a valuable antique, which now has an indentation the shape of Mikey’s skull.”

“Great. Was he okay?”

“After the bleeding stopped, he was fine. Oh, and Tyler has another yeast infection. I called the doctor, and he called in a prescription. After we picked it up, we had dinner at McDonald’s, then I took them over to the pool to cool them off before bed.”

“That sounds fun.”

I bite back a sarcastic remark. Whenever I mention going to the town pool, Mike seems to envision me lounging in the sun with a trashy novel and a piña colada while strapping cabana boys hover at my beck and call.

The reality is reminiscent of a female baboon I saw at the Bronx zoo when I was chaperoning Mikey’s class trip last year. I felt for my primate counterpart. I really did. There she was, looking miserable in the hot sun while her newborn nursed voraciously and two other small baboons were draped around her, clinging and squirming.

So much for evolution. Take away the fur, give the older two baboons whiny voices in which to beg for more, more, more snack-bar crap, throw in last summer’s outdated tankini, a body of overchlorinated water that smells faintly of urine, and the town’s entire noncommuting population splashing about, and there you have it: my daily pool experience.

“Yeah. Fun,” I tell Mike, who apparently misses my ironic inflection, because he still looks pretty damn wistful.

He chugs down more Poland Spring and tells me about his evening, which sounds businesslike and boring, but beats wrestling three perpetually protesting kids into and out of car seats, fast-food restaurant booths and wet bathing suits.