Milkrun (9 page)

Whoa.

Slow down, cowboy.

His thumb is getting dangerously closer to my, um, “femininity,” as Cupid authors would call it.

I don't think so.

On the stage, one of the characters is dying. A song is in progress.

Why doesn't he sing along with it? Sing, Jonathan, sing!

I pull his antsy hand back toward my knee.

He starts kissing my ear.

The gray-haired woman is sobbing quietly. Her shoulders heave.

“You're so sexy,” he slobbers into my ear.

Please. “Watch the play.”

“I've seen the play,” he whispers. “I'd rather watch you.”

Then you should have invited me to dinner like a normal guy.

He starts kissing my neck.

I squirm out of his grasp.

He puts his hand back on my thigh.

On stage they're singing about true love.

“True love/Fits like a Lycra glove,”
Jonathan sings along.

If only Jon was wearing cement mittens, maybe he'd keep his hands to himself. True love? What the hell is that?

We continue to play tug-of-war for the rest of the show. When I push away his hand, he goes for my neck. When I move my head, he goes back to my thigh. This asshole deserves an Oscar for Persistence, if not for Worst Date.

After the show, he holds the door open for me, then takes my arm as we walk out of the theater, once again the perfect gentleman. Maybe I won't annul the marriage just yet.

“Did you enjoy the play?” he asks.

“Very much,” I reply.

We step down the stairway onto the cobbled street, and he puts his arm around my waist. “The problems people face are incredible—homelessless, poverty, drug abuse. It's a tragedy, really,” he explains.

A man in ragged jeans and a dirty green sweatshirt blocks our path. “Spare some change?” he asks.

Jon ignores him.

He is so going to have to invest in a huge three-carat to make up for this night. I slowly, purposefully take out a ten, and stick it in the guy's jar.

I want to give him only five, but I only have a ten. It's not as if you can ask a homeless guy for change, and I
really
want to make my point.

“Aren't you noble,” Jonathan comments snidely.

We make small talk in the car.

“I heard that they reduced ticket prices of
The Apartment
in New York to make it more accessible,” I say. Wendy told me that.

“Why would they do that?”

All righty then.

He pulls up in front of my house and puts the car into Park. “Let's sit outside for a minute.”

“Okay,” I say. Now I know as well as the next woman that this really means “Let's fool around.” Okay, I admit it, I'm fickle. At this point, I still haven't decided to completely discard him. On the plus side, he
is
Jonathan Gradinger,
Dr.
Jonathan Gradinger. He has a BMW, he's hot, he's older, and he still has most of his hair. On the minus side, he's a creep who will never see the irony of spending two hundred dollars on a play about homeless people.

This time he does not open the car door for me. We sit on a bench outside my apartment building. Suddenly I feel a wetness soaking through my legs. Unfortunately, it isn't the I-really-want-to-fool-around kind of wetness. It's a wet bench. Damn. Sam will kill me if I stain her gray tube dress.

When I try to stand up, Jonathan throws his lips at my face.

I say throw in the literal sense. Jonathan does not kiss me. I will not degrade the verb “to kiss” by using it to describe his affront.

His upper lip is nowhere near mine, his tongue getting in the way of everything, and I'm not quite sure what is going on with his bottom lip.

I push him away. “I have to go.” Sigh. I'm going to have to give him back the three-carat ring.

“But it's early!”

Thankfully it's Thursday and I can use work as an excuse. “I have an early meeting.” I decide to not be a bitch; after all, he's still Jonathan Gradinger. He may have some hot friends. “Thanks for the play.”

“My pleasure. I'm sorry you have to get up early. I was really enjoying myself.”

I'm sure you were. “Good night,” I say, taking out my keys and unlocking the front door.

It turned colder, that's where it ends.
I wish I could tell him that
we'd still be friends.
But he's no Danny Zukoe.

A pervert I can handle. A lack of sensitivity we can workshop. But a bad kisser? I don't think so.

At least I know why he's still single.

“S
HE HAD NEVER FELT SUCH
strong stirrings. As he pressed his hard, ripped chest against her, her nipples tightened. She realized she didn't want to wait any longer. She was wet and ready. She pushed aside her white panties and shifted herself on top of him. With a single deep thrust, he filled her with his surging manhood.”

It's hard to concentrate on where to put commas when my work reminds me of where other stuff should go. Although after the week I had, the idea of sex completely grosses me out. First Creepo-Jon on Thursday, and then Supercreep on Friday. Coffee will help me concentrate.

I manipulate my way through the maze of cubicles to the dingy kitchen, and open the cupboard to grab my…My mug's gone.

I should check in the dishwasher, a last-minute desperate measure since I know my cup's not there; my washing technique extends to occasionally rinsing it out in the sink.

Where
do
they keep the dishwasher?

Aha!

No. No. No! My mug's not there.

Why would someone take my mug? Actually, it's Sam's mug, but she hasn't noticed it's missing yet, so theoretically it's mine. It has a cute polar bear on it, and it's mine, mine, mine, and now some office thug has stolen it. Maybe once I find it, I should lace it with a laxative. That way, I'll find out who could do such a vile act by the number of visits she makes to the bathroom. Now I have to go and take someone else's mug. I really,
really
hate when this happens.

“Morning, Jackie,” says Julie, the other
True Love
copy editor. Although she's very serious, she's one of the few copy editors I actually don't hate—she's not one of Helen's groupies.

“Morning, Julie. How are you?”

“Good, you?”

“Good, good.”

“Jackie, I've been meaning to ask you something.” Her arms are crossed in front of her chest, puffing her black blazer.

Here I am expecting, “Do you capitalize after a colon?” Or even better (since this would solicit my professional opinion and therefore affirm the notion that I have one), “Do you prefer an em dash or an en dash?” Instead, she says, “Can I fix you up with my brother?”

“Huh? Your brother?”

“Yeah, I think you're his type.”

I'm not sure exactly how she's come to this decision since
I
don't even know what type I am. But she nods with affirmation, so I ask, “What type am I, exactly?”

“Small, curly hair, cute, outgoing, smart.” And to think I always had so much trouble defining myself in magazine quizzes.

“How do you know he's
my
type?” Does this mean my type is short with curly hair like me? Or is my type skinny and bony like Julie?—assuming, of course, that her brother looks like her. At this point I am extremely hopeful; if she can define my type, it will certainly save me a lot of time on bad dates in the future.

“You don't think my brother, Tim, would be your type?” she says, huffed. “He's a great guy.”

Fashion Magazine Fun Fact # 3: stay clear of guys described as great. “He's a great guy” is the masculine equivalent of “She's got a great personality.”

As much as I was considering it before (which was virtually nil due to the fact I never even knew that Julie had a brother—in fact, it always surprises me whenever a person I've been acquainted with for a while suddenly emerges as having a
life,
this reaction probably sprouting from too much editing of paper-people), the chance that I will ever date Julie's short, curly haired bony brother with the great personality has now dwindled into nonexistence.

It's not that I have anything against short, curly haired, bony guys with great personalities, particularly if they're my type, but I will not, let me emphasize
not,
date a guy who has the same name as my dad. Too weird. Too Freudian. How could I whisper his name in his ear? How could I scream his name in ecstasy? In anger, maybe—that is, scream his name, not whisper in his ear. Not that I'm ever angry at my dad. I'm only angry at my mom, sometimes, though I can never figure out why. No Freud there, either.

“Actually,” I tell Julie, “I just started seeing someone.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

 

Time for my second cup. Coffee breaks remind me of recess, except there aren't any cute guys at work to pretend to ignore. There aren't even any not-so-cute guys. Of the two hundred Cupid employees, one hundred and sixty-seven are women. Thirty-five of these women are pregnant. Weekly Lamaze classes are conducted on the third floor.

This pathetic female-male ratio unfortunately results in a low potential for making male friendships. So where else am I supposed to make male friends so that they can fix me up with their friends? It's not like I can saunter up to a guy at a bar and say, “Hi, wanna be my friend?” Andrew would actually be an excellent male friend, but I haven't seen him since the movie fiasco. I thought maybe he'd be at Orgasm on Friday, but no, he was probably off frolicking with his Sweet Valley Twin.

Friday night…

Instead of talking to Andrew, I had to spend the entire night avoiding E-reek. It turns out he's not royalty at all, just some Euro guy with a lot of money. Natalie was not impressed. She insisted we ignore him, which drove him crazy, so he kept sending over fancy vodka shots, which Nat kept refusing, which I kept drinking. Well, someone had to. Obviously Nat's indifference threw E-reek into a seizure of love, once again proving the bitch theory, Fashion Magazine Fun Fact # 4: men want you more when you don't want them. (This fact is different from fact number two where you're supposed to remain aloof in order to snare your man; fact number four warns you of the possibility that overcoolness on your part might lead to potential stalkers.) Take Jonathan, for instance. We went out only once, six days ago, and already he's called seven times. I've had four hang-ups and three messages.

Saturday: “Hey, love. (Love? Aren't we a little too familiar, here?) It's Jon calling. Call me. Call me.”

Sunday: “Hello, dear. (Dear? What am I, over forty?) It's me. It's me. Just calling to see how your weekend was. Call me back. Call me back.”

Tuesday: “Hi, sexy. (Sexy's good, but from him? Ew…) Want to catch a flick this weekend? Call me back soon. Call me back soon.”

I know I should be a big girl and call him back to tell him I'm not interested, but then I'll have to listen to him…twice. However, if I ignore him enough, eventually he'll go away. His messages remind me of a Doublemint commercial.

Thank God for call display.

Well, at least he wasn't at Orgasm. After six rounds of E-reek's courtship, in my hazy state of mind I might have let it slip that I thought he was a creep. Or I might have gone home with him. I'm talking about Jonathan, of course. Not E-reek. Although in my condition, who knows?

I did spot one bleached-blond hottie, a definite potential boyfriend, or at least a potential let's-get-it-on guy. He was wearing New York rimmed dark glasses and one of those ski sweaters with a beige stripe running across the chest, which are still sexy despite them being so 1996. He sat on a bar stool talking to two other guys, and I decided to try my look-over-right-now telepathic powers on the off chance they might work.

Like I said, it was an off chance.

At about two, Nat and I decided to call it quits and head home. Her Jetta was parked in my lot again, since I live so close. We chatted noisily as we headed through the side streets to my house. About three minutes into our walk I noticed a guy in a jean jacket and jeans lurking about a half a block behind us.

“…I know E-reek's cute,” Nat was saying, “but I could barely understand anything he said. Maybe if he could make me a princess, or at least an heir to something, but…”

A block later, the guy was still behind us.

“Nat,” I whispered, “there's a guy behind us that's really creeping me out. At the corner let's switch to the other side of the street.”

“Is it Jon?”

“No, he's more of a telephone stalker, not a physical one. I don't know who this guy is.”

I could see her face turning white even under her perfectly applied MAC foundation. We crossed.

“Okay, now let's pretend we're tying our shoes.”

“We don't have laces,” she whispered. True, I thought, staring at my knee-highs. Why wasn't I wearing a solid pair of Sketchers? Why, why?

We fidgeted with the heels of our boots.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

I figured that by ten he would be gone. But no, he was crossing the street.

“Shit,” Nat whispered. She motioned to the nearest building. “Let's pretend we live there,” she mouthed. “I can't run in these things.”

We moved as fast as our boots would allow, the sound of our heels cracking against the sidewalk. When we reached the white high-rise, Natalie opened the glass door and marched inside. I picked up the phone, struggling to decide on a number to dial.

“Dial something already!” Natalie hissed. I dialed one-two-three-four-five, hoping someone nice lived at my old Hotmail account code.

“He's going to walk by any second,” Natalie moaned.

Why isn't it ringing? Please ring!

Suddenly, the stalker walked past the door. He peered inside, then continued down the street.

“That was crazy,” Nat said as we stared into the empty blackness. Empty for a second, anyway. Because suddenly Supercreep reappeared in front of us, this time with his pale blue jeans around his knees, holding what I'm assuming was his surging manhood. “Do you believe?” Nat cried.

I whipped my head away, and grabbed the phone again. This time I tried my answering machine code: five-four-three-two-one. I know, I know, I'm not the most original.

Ring, ring.

“Don't look! Don't look!” Natalie whispered frantically, but I could see his reflection in the inside door, and he was just…going at it.

Ring, ring.

“I don't believe this is happening,” I whispered. “We have to do something.”

Suddenly he “finished,” did up his pants, and walked away.

“Hellooooo?” said a very groggy, very annoyed voice from the nice people who lived at my answering machine. I hung up.

“Ew…” I said, pointing to the gift he had left us in the form of a white lump on the sidewalk.

“I think I'm going to be sick,” Nat said.

We waited until we saw a harmless-looking couple walk by, and then ran hysterically into the street to beg them to walk with us home.

Nat slept on my couch because she was too freaked to drive home alone. “What if he creeps into my car and attacks me while I'm driving? What then?”

We woke up Marc and Sam, forcing Marc to look out the window to make sure he wasn't outside.

“You guys should never have walked home alone,” Marc criticized.

“So it's our fault?” I asked. “It's our fault that some guy's a perv?”

Marc shrugged. “I only meant that you should be more careful. Did you at least get a good look?”

“Don't be disgusting. I didn't want to look down there.”

“I meant at his face. You know, to identify him.”

“Oh. No, I didn't.”

“Maybe I should carry some sort of weapon,” Natalie piped up. “Like Mace. Or a gun. Something that would really scare a guy away.”

“Do you think this is Texas?” I commented. “We can't just go around shooting people.”

“You should have just ran outside and told the guy you wanted to get married, that you're looking for a serious commitment. That always seems to scare them off,” Sam answered, shooting a sarcastic smile at her boyfriend. We all ignored her.

“Do you at least remember what he was wearing?” Marc asked.

“Yeah, a jean jacket and jeans.” Natalie said. “Do you believe? You're not supposed to wear a jean jacket and jeans together. What a fashion faux pas.”

Then we ignored
her.
Then she actually had a half-decent idea—to take a self-defense course. So, yesterday at work, I spent half the day on the Net researching our options. It seems that most classes are all female and are led by male martial arts teachers. I could learn all kinds of cool moves like how to kick a guy where it hurts and poke his eyes out, without offending the teacher.

Because I spent so much of yesterday surfing the Net, I have fallen more than slightly behind in my work. It's just so hard to focus. I've started to see commas in my sleep, like when you play too much Tetris and start to mentally insert your pencil holder into that space between your bulletin board and the wall. Today I will work through lunch on this week's manuscript,
For the Love of a Cowboy.