Spygirl (26 page)

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“So, what's going on with your rocker boyfriend?” she asked.

“Oh, I don't know, I think he's a little too one-note for me.”

“That's funny. He's too one-note. Good comedy,” Linus offered, slapping me on the back. I whacked his hand.

“He was supposed to call me last night, but he didn't, which I guess I was sort of glad about, although now I'm a bit annoyed. He spends every Sunday at O'Connor's.” O'Connor's was a shabby locals’ bar in lower Park Slope that had been co-opted by younger hipsters thanks to its cheap beer and ass-kicking jukebox.

“I was at O'Connor's last night, actually,” Renora said, excited.

“Really?” I said. “Do you remember a blondish-haired guy tall, maybe six foot three …”

“Honestly, as I was saying, my memory isn't so good now, but—”

“He probably would have been wearing skating sneakers, and his friend Jeb would have been there, too.”

Renora paused. “Jeb. Jeb sounds familiar. I think I spoke to a guy named Jeb who had a friend.” She seemed embarrassed as she recalled being there with her friend Beth and having two guys start talking to them about their band.

I blanched.

“But it might have been Jeb more than Dan doing it,” Renora added hopefully.

“Ha!” Linus cackled, bending over from the strain of his own busting gut. “Wouldn't it be funny if Amy didn't hear from her boyfriend this weekend because he was off hitting on Renora? Ha-ha-ha.” I wanted to get out of there. Fast.

“Here—” Renora was fishing in her pocket for something—a flyer for their show they'd given her. When she handed it to me, I wanted to drop it and run. But I knew it was the one. How many red flyers cut out to look like an old train boarding pass were circulating Brooklyn? I saw the flash of red in her shaking hand and I heard her saying, “Is that it?” as I turned back into the hallway.

“I—I'm not sure. I'm not sure what the band is called.” I ran down the hall, down the stairs past the elegy for “broke-ass bitches,” and around the block to Twenty-first Street, just to calm down. Everything was falling apart.

Dan e-mailed me later that day. I didn't write him back. He asked if I was angry with him. I didn't respond to that, either. Nor did I respond to several phone messages. I busted him for hitting on Renora, on a night when we were supposed to see each other.

Plus he annoyed me anyway. At least I had my Cake party to look forward to and distract me from the daily front-page articles in
The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal
, and yes, even the
Post
and the
Daily News
about the Norrsken death. Every time I thought about it, my heart skipped a beat.

Before meeting Jeremy, I went back to Brooklyn to change. There was a message from Dan. “Amy, is everything okay? I feel like you're blowing me off. Sad. Dan.” I felt a momentary pull of guilt. Then I got religion and deleted it.

Sometimes I would have to wait for the car while my driver prayed. “He is praying,” Mussah would tell me. “Just wait one minute.” At the back of the tiny storefront was a door leading out to the rear with four strips of cloth partly covering the door. I could see Moez and some other drivers, side-by-side, kneeling, their heads touching the ground, only to raise them and bring them back down to the ground again. Their lips moved quickly.

Afterward, on the car ride, I talked to Moez. I had my standard questions. “So, where are you from?”

“Tunisia. Casablanca.”

“Wow. Like
A Night in Tunisia.”

“I don't understand.”

“You know, Miles Davis.”

“Meles Davees? ”

“Oh, it was a stupid thing I said. So, what's it like there?”

“It is beautiful. It is a peaceful way of life. I live very well there. My family live very well. We have many property, you know, one on the sea. I go to the beach every day, with my friend, you know. We have a house in the country. It is a beautiful country, not like New York. New York is great in some way, you know, but it is not easy
way of life. My country is beautiful.” He told me he was born to a French mother and an Italian father. His parents were artists and wanted to raise their children somewhere remote and magical.

The first five minutes in the car were usually awkward. Then I'd ask him questions and he'd talk the rest of the way: about how his mother wanted him to move back home, how his sister was getting married and wanted him to come for the wedding but he didn't know if he could afford it. Clinton Fresh Food, my destination, was appositely on Clinton Street, a former bastion of heroin-dealing that was now a trendy refuge. He pulled a Polaroid out of the glove compartment and handed it to me. “It is new,” he said. “I bought today. Automatic, you know.”

“Cool. Take my picture,” I said, handing him back the camera and squishing myself back into the corner of the car, smiling. He fumbled with it. The flash detonated, making me wince. Then he held the picture and I leaned over the front seat and we watched. The gray rectangle turned into an oozy orange and yellow-gray A humanlike form emerged, and finally there appeared a picture of me, leaning back awkwardly, something akin to a Mona Lisa smile across my face. Moez was grinning, too, as he handed me the snapshot.

“You can keep it,” I said, getting my money out to pay him.

“No, no,” he said, pushing my money away. He looked at me intently and insisted, “No money. This picture is enough.” There was an awkward moment when I handed him the photo back. My thumb was still on the picture when he put his finger over the far corner. I briefly imagined his scruffy cheek brushing mine. Then, seeing Jeremy waiting for me out the window, I turned away, opening the door. “Bye, Moez. See you soon.”

After dinner (I told Jeremy I needed to get
something
out of the deal), we got to the Cake party around
eleven.
It was at Spy.

The place was teeming. It was like the nerd version of the Playboy Mansion. Boys looked overwrought and scrawny. The girls, in their requisite tube tops and the occasional bustier, still had the emaciated A-cup New York look. Crowded into a sunken bar space facing the entrance, hundreds of people were watching the stage, where we could see unclad figures moving in front of a silvery scrim hung around the back of the stage. A woman in a pink-and-white French maid's outfit and a purple wig danced around with a sign that read,
SEE THE ANNUAL CAKE STRIPTEASEATHON.

Jeremy seemed entranced. “Let's go check this out.” He grabbed my hand and guided me through bumping and grinding girls and ogling boys to the front of the stage, where I was practically kissing the toes of a heavyset Asian girl swinging her bra over her head to the tune of “I Shook You All Night Long.”

“She's got balls,” I whispered to Jeremy.

“Maybe that's why she's still wearing the rest of her outfit,” he retorted. “Take it all off!” he screamed at the stage, cupping his hands around his mouth for an extra-blunt effect. Soon the whole crowd was chanting, “Take it off! Take it off!” The girl pulled off her skirt to reveal huge white underpants, which she threw into the crowd. After she got offstage, other nervous amateurs took turns pseudo-pole-dancing and taking off their shirts and the occasional bra. Nobody else took took it all off, despite Jeremy's not-so-subtle entreaties. After half an hour, Jeremy, bored with the exposure level, went to get us scotch-and-sodas, and the emcee came out to announce that it was time to let the boys have their turn. The lights onstage went out and a black light showed a fluorescent blue male figure in a white suit with no shirt and no shoes. Girls were whistling and catcalling like construction workers. “Yeah, baby, take that shit awfff!” “You know it! Show us what you got!” Under the white suit he was wearing a zebra-striped G-string. Even still, I was sort of enjoying this segment of the show. The white stripes
expanded and shrunk as the mystery guy squatted and swung his butt around in front of the crowd. Just when the soundtrack, Journey's “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’,” kicked into the raucous guitar riff, he turned around and the stagelights sprung on him.

“Holy shit!” I screamed, just as I felt Jeremy squeezing my elbow. It was Evan, looking pleased with himself and snapping the banana hammock like it was way too close to coming off. “Let's get out of here,” I commanded Jeremy, grabbing my scotch and downing it in seconds.

When we got outside, I gulped the fresh air, hoping it would clear my mind of the memory.

“Are you sure it was him?” Jeremy asked.

“I see the guy every day. Believe me, I would rather
not
have recognized him.” I would have done anything, anything to erase the memory of Evan in his zebra schlong sling from my mind.

TWENTY             

On a windy day in late September, I walked out of the office to get my lunch with Wendy at the early hour of eleven. She and I had been getting hungry earlier and earlier. “Sometimes I think, to myself, fuck lunch by noon, I want to start dinner by then and just keep on eating,” she confessed.

“I know,” I said, nodding in sympathy. But when we got to the Twenty-One deli, there were a dozen people who apparently had the same idea, along with unforgiving stomachs and sharp elbows.

“Fuck this,” Wendy said. “I can't wait this long.” She left to get a gyro from a food cart on the corner of Twenty-fourth, and I
waited. And waited. And waited. The construction crews in the area were going into our deli and ordering meals for their whole crews. They read out scribbled shorthand clutched in meaty black fists. “Dat's two eggs sandwich, one with lettuce, one without, an everything bagel with ham, turkey, Muenster, pickles, onions …” The other people in line groaned, spat, and yelled at the deli guys, “Ey! Let's move!” Then they stepped up and read
their
laundry lists. I pulled a bag of Funyuns off the rack and ate them while I was waiting. I read the
Post.
I took a Mr. Goodbar for dessert. I was blinded by hunger, shoplifting snacks with a low-blood-sugar-induced lack of inhibition. Just when I was about to give up on my hot pastrami with caramelized onions, Russian dressing, tomatoes, cheddar, and hot peppers, it was my turn. In between the deli counter and the cash register I inhaled my whole sandwich.

I didn't want to go back to the office yet, so I walked around to the Flatiron Building and sat in the park where Broadway and Fifth Avenue intersect. My paychecks, $1,000 every two weeks— veritable riches compared to my publishing salary—seemed to vanish just as quickly every month. I now spent an entire paycheck just on rent, versus the $500 I had shelled out on monthly living with my druggie ex, Ben. Utilities, plus food, plus the newly introduced supposedly money-saving Metrocard, plus day after day of Starbucks indulgences mysteriously sucked another $600 monthly. That left me a mere $400 a month for “entertainment.” Buying bottled water on the corner all summer, no matter how healthy, had added up. So did five-dollar drinks, and those were the cheap ones. Cass and I tried to spend more time at Niagara. In the interest of free liquor, we suffered unwanted attempted pickups from loser boys and craved, fruitlessly, a successful and attractive suitor to take us off Stuart's dole. Still, I had been abstinent—unkissed— since Dan.

The single beacon of free will in the hamster wheel of my life
was fulfilled by one thing—my discovery of Napster. After a shallow early-learning curve, I'd downloaded more than five hundred songs onto my computer. Unlike my financial status, love life, and profession, Napster represented wish-fulfillment in its most extreme form. I could satisfy my every musical desire; I could decide I wanted to hear Cyndi Lauper's theme to
Goonies
and, minutes later, I was transported into memories of fifth-grade crushes and eighties kitsch. The recipe was simple—identify a craving, no matter how oblique (a live “Wire” cover by My Bloody Valentine) and, moments later,
boom.
I was rocking out motionlessly at my desk.