Slightly Single (23 page)

But I can’t.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” I say, and I can hear the note of panic in my voice.

Panic.

“I think I’m having a panic attack,” I tell Buckley.

He picks up my hand and squeezes it. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“I don’t know…” I look at his face. I look out the window, at the tiles and the lights and the other cars.

“It’s okay, Tracey. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I feel like something bad is going to happen.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I think I might…” I look at him again. His face is so kind, and I want to tell him, but he’ll think I’m crazy.

I’m not crazy.

Mental note: Stop doing this.

“You think you might…what?” Buckley nudges gently.

“Die,” I say in a small, strangled-sounding voice. “I think I might die. I feel like I’m going to die. Or something.”

“You’re not going to die.”

“I know.” I exhale a shaky breath. “But I can’t quite get my brain to believe that. It wants to freak out.”

“Has this happened to you before?”

“The other night. The night I called Will, from the bar. When I was with you.” I’m trying to focus on what we’re saying, so that I won’t panic. If we could just get out of the tunnel…“And before that, too. A few times.”

I can’t believe this whole bewildering, humiliating
Girl, Interrupted
deal is happening to me in front of Buckley—not that he seems to mind.

“What triggers it?” he asks earnestly.

“I don’t know,” I say, not really hearing his question.

Don’t think about being in the tunnel. Don’t think about the tunnel collapsing and water crashing in. Don’t think about drowning. Don’t.

The bus lurches a little.

I gasp.

Buckley squeezes my hand. “It’s okay, Tracey,” he says. “I’m with you.” And after a while, it is okay.

The bus comes out of the tunnel.

The panic subsides.

And Buckley is with me.

“T
racey! Ohmygod! You look like Cindy Crawford!” Raphael shrieks on Wednesday afternoon when I meet him on the corner of Madison and Forty-eighth. We’re having lunch today.

“Shut up, Raphael,” I say through clenched teeth as several construction workers eating lunch on some nearby steps turn around, check me out and obviously conclude that I look nothing like Cindy Crawford.

“No, really! I love the hair slicked back like that. What’d you do?”

“I sweated like a pig all the way over here, so I just pulled it back with a clip I had in my pocket.” A clip that happens to belong to Sonja. I forgot to give it to Buckley to give to her. Oh, well, her loss. It’s a nice clip.

“Oh, Tracey, stop,” Raphael says, draping his arm around me. “You look trés chic. I love the outfit.” I have on a plain black linen sheath that actually does look pretty good on me this summer. Last year it was too snug in the hips and kept riding up.

“You look trés chic, too,” I tell Raphael.

“Do you think? Oh, yawn,” he says, looking down at his outfit. He’s got on sunglasses with pink lenses, cropped khaki pants and some kind of vest without a shirt beneath it. Office wear, Raphael style. “I’m so ready for fall clothes, Tracey. Bright-colored sweaters are going to be all the rage.”

“Really? Black is always all the rage with me.”

“Mark my words, Tracey, you’re going to be wearing colors one of these days,” Raphael says.

“I doubt it.” I take out my pack of cigarettes and put one between my lips.

“So hurry up and tell me,” Raphael says, stealing a cigarette from my pack and taking my lighter out of my hand. “How was the wedding, Tracey?”

“It was great,” I say as he lights my cigarette, and then his. We both inhale. “We were late getting there and we missed half the ceremony, but not the best part.”

“The vows! Did you cry, Tracey?” Raphael wants to know as we sidestep a puddle left over from this morning’s thunderstorm. The sun is out now, and it’s a steamy summer day in the city, as usual.

“I cried,” I admit. “But just a little.”

“I always cry at weddings. When I have my com
mitment ceremony, Tracey, I’m going to be a mess. I’ll probably collapse on the floor from all the emotion.”

“When you have a commitment ceremony, Raphael, I’m going to collapse on the floor from shock.”

“Tracey!”

“Raphael. Come on. You’re just not a one-man man.”

“That’s because I haven’t met Mr. Right yet.” We stop on the corner of Fifth and wait for the orange Don’t Walk to change to a white Walk. “Are we still having sushi at that place on Forty-sixth, Tracey?”

“Definitely.” Sushi is slimming.

“What was the food like at the reception?”

“It was delicious, Raphael. There were theme stations. A fondue station. A raw bar station. A potato station. Oh, and by the way, Buckley said to thank you for ditching me because he had a great time.”

“Tracey! I didn’t ditch you!” Raphael looks horrified. “I would never ditch you.”

“Sure you wouldn’t.” I pretend to be pissed.

“Please don’t be angry, Tracey! I had forgotten all about the wedding and I had already told Wade I’d go with him to Quogue, and—”

“It’s okay, Raphael. I forgive you. How was Quogue?”

“It was fabulous, Tracey. Kate and Billy came out and joined us for dinner. Wade cooked. He made a spectacular seafood risotto. I thought it was a little heavy on the oregano, but Kate really liked it.”

“What about Billy?”

He shakes his head. “Tracey, you’ve met him, right?”

I nod.

“What did you think?” he asks ominously.

“That I’d expect nothing less from Kate. I don’t know him well, but from what I saw, he’s superintelligent. Drop dead gorgeous. And rich as—”

“Tracey, I hate to say it, but Wade thinks he’s an ass.”

“Really?” Having never met Wade, it’s hard to say whether this bombshell is meaningful or not. Maybe Wade thinks everyone is an ass.

We’ve made it to the restaurant. Every table is taken, but we manage to find two seats at the sushi bar.

“What did
you
think of Billy?” I ask Raphael as we wipe our hands with the hot, steaming wet towels the waitress has brought on a tray.

“To be honest, Tracey, I thought he was hot.”

“Please. You think everyone is hot.”

“I don’t think he’s hot,” Raphael says in a stage whisper behind his hand, motioning toward the portly, unshaven businessman slurping miso soup on the seat to his right.

“That’s a first.” I place my hot towel on the tray and pick up my menu.

“Speaking of hot, Tracey, did Buckley come out to you on Saturday night?”

“No!”

“Oh.” Raphael looks disappointed as he surveys the á la carte list.

“Raphael, Buckley can’t come
out
because he isn’t
in,
because he isn’t gay.”

Raphael gives a maddening shrug.

“Trust me, Raphael. He’s straight.”

“How do you know? Have you slept with him?”

“Absolutely.”

Raphael drops his menu.

The portly soup slurper retrieves it for him.

Raphael thanks him with a kittenish giggle, then whispers to me, “You know, there is something enticing about him in a rugged, manly kind of way.”

“Raphael, are you on crack?”

He gets back to the business at hand, clearly stunned as he asks, “You’ve slept with Buckley?”

“Yep.” I nod vigorously. “In the same bed. Twice.”

“Tracey! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it was no big deal. Unlike you, Raphael, I can share a bed with an attractive man with no sex involved.”

“Tracey! I can do that.”

“Only if the attractive man happens to be a blood relative, Raphael.”

He nods in unabashed agreement. “Tracey, I haven’t got all day here—” Which is bullshit, since Raphael is known at
She
for his three-hour lunches “—so hurry and tell me, when did you sleep with him?”

“The first time was last week, after we went out. I drank too much and slept it off at his place.” That sounds suitably tamer than the stark, smelly, spewing, sobbing reality. “The second time was Saturday night, after the wedding. It was so hot when we got back to the city, and so late…and I don’t have air conditioning. So when he told me I should stay over, I took him up on it.”

“And nothing happened between you.”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Tracey, I rest my case,” Raphael says with his best smug Camryn Mannheim imitation. “He’s just not ready to come out of the closet.”

“Raphael, I have a boyfriend.
That’s
why nothing happened with Buckley. We’re just friends. The whole night was completely platonic.”

And I’m telling the complete and utter truth…

Except for one thing.

At one point, we were on the dance floor at the wedding. One minute, we were doing the Electric Slide. The next, the DJ had gone into a slow dance.

It was this old song, “I Could Not Ask For More,” by Edwin McCain. I told Buckley that I loved it, and he grabbed my hand and pulled me into his arms, saying, “Then let’s dance.”

Everyone else was slow dancing…the bride and groom, Yvonne and Thor, Latisha and Anton.

Buckley and I had already danced a few slow songs—but it was different music. Jazzier. Like “The Way You Look Tonight” and “Summer Breeze.” We
danced to those songs like I danced to them with my father and my uncle Cosmo at the anniversary party—jaunty steps, spinning turns, body contact limited to one arm around each other’s waists, the opposite elbow bent, hands clasped.

This was different.

This was romantic.

Buckley just kind of wrapped his arms around me and held me close and we swayed with full body contact.

The way you do when you’re in high school.

Rather, the way everyone else did when I was in high school. I was hardly ever asked to dance back then.

The thing about slow dancing with Buckley—aside from the fact that it became, let’s just say,
obvious
he’s at least mildly attracted to me—was that for a few minutes, I almost forgot that he wasn’t my boyfriend. And when the song was over and I remembered, I found myself wondering what it would be like if he was.

Because Buckley is always so nice to me.

And Will…

Well, sometimes, he’s not.

But that’s because Buckley and I barely know each other. Will and I are in a relationship, and all relationships have problems.

Anyway, after that slow dance, the DJ played the Tarantella. Naturally, Brenda and Paulie made sure everyone joined in. After that, Buckley and I were
right back to being platonic, and the mood lasted for the rest of the night.

We were especially platonic the next morning when I left for home and Buckley left for his Rollerblading date with Sonja.

I pick up one of the small pencils in a cup on the glass-topped counter to begin marking the boxes next to my choices. I opt for sashimi, which is slices of raw fish without rice. I’m down another two pounds and I’m determined to lose more before I see Will on Saturday.

“Did I tell you I’m going to see Will this weekend?” I ask Raphael after we’ve handed our orders to one of the guys behind the counter.

“No! Tracey, that’s great!”

“I hope so.”

“Uh-oh. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I say quickly. “It’s just that Will has been kind of distant since he left…and I’m worried things won’t be the same when I see him again.”

Actually, I’m worried that things
will
be the same.

But I don’t want to admit that to Raphael.

Or even to myself.

I have to make things work with Will.

I’m not ready to let go.

I’ll never be ready to let go. I love him.

After lunch, I go back to the office. Jake’s left a yellow Post-it note stuck to my computer screen. It says
See Me.

I go into his office.

“You’re back,” he says, not looking up from the yellow legal pad he’s writing on.

“I’m back.”

“I need you to make sure you keep your lunches to an hour, Tracey.”

I check my watch. I was gone an hour and ten minutes. “Sorry,” I say.

He nods.

He’s been like this with me ever since the chocolate episode last week. I don’t think it helped that I called in sick the next day. In fact, when I got back on Friday, he barely spoke to me all morning.

I guess he didn’t believe my story about getting food poisoning from some bad clams. That seemed like a viable excuse to me. People get sick from raw seafood all the time.

Now Jake says, “I need you to run an errand for me.”

“Okay…”

“I need you to go over to the Orvis store and pick up something I ordered. They just called and said it came in.”

“Okay.”

Another personal errand.

Latisha and Yvonne keep telling me I should stop doing stuff for him. They’re going to give me a hard time when they find out about this. Brenda would understand, but she’s off in Aruba on her honeymoon.

“I already gave them my credit card number over
the phone,” Jake says. “So it’s paid for. All you have to do is pick it up.”

“Okay.”

He doesn’t even say thanks as I head out the door.

As I walk over to Orvis, smoking a cigarette, I think about the upcoming visit with Will. He hasn’t called me yet, but I’m sure he will tonight. He’d better, because I’m working for Milos tomorrow and Friday.

When I reach the store and the salesman retrieves Jake’s order, I’m stunned.

It’s an enormous fly fishing pole.

The kind of fly fishing pole you can’t carry down a Manhattan street without attracting the undivided attention of every oversexed construction worker, leering flyer hawker and various other forms of urban low-life.

The giant phallic prop I’m lugging is not lost on any of them. I get a flurry of lewd comments, assorted kissing noises, a couple of butt pinches, and an incoherent marriage proposal from a guy wearing a plastic visor and a sandwich board.

By the time I get back to my building, I’m livid.

I march toward Jake’s office carrying the fishing pole.

Yvonne is just coming out of her cube. She takes one look at me and summons Latisha.

“This can’t be happening,” Latisha says, gaping. “This can’t be happening.”

“Oh, it’s happening,” I say, forging onward.

“Girl, you’ve got to put him in his place.”

“That’s what I’m going to do.”

“Are you going to quit?” Yvonne asks.