The Idea of Him (20 page)

27

Can't Climax Yet

“This class is confusing me more than it's helping,” I told Tommy as we walked down the hall during the break. What with that image of my marriage on a hospital gurney moving toward the morgue, a Texan punching out my husband, and bright red Twizzlers up my thigh, I hadn't been listening to anything the professor was telling us. I was tuned in enough to hear him regaling the class with his epic, surely exaggerated stories of working with people called Marty and Francis. I couldn't possibly talk to Tommy about any of this; he always maintained, as he did the first night we met, that he didn't want to know about my husband. That meant he still didn't even know that I was married to Wade Crawford and
Meter
. Instead I kept the conversation neutral and focused on the class. “I don't know how much to follow Heller's rules and how much to ignore them.”

“You'll see, everything he says will sink in; you need to have some structure within which to write,” Tommy answered sympathetically. “Then you can go off and break all the rules.”

“Then what's the point of taking this class, if poetic license ultimately drives what I'm going to end up with?” The inherent contradiction of screenwriting rules was getting to me. “I'm writing very well this week. Scenes are coming out of me, senses blazing like you said, and I'm putting them in some kind of order, I guess.”

“Well, you're learning from my fuckups at least.” He laughed a little and pinched the back of my hip as he pushed me along. “This is the cathartic year you realize you were barking up the wrong tree, because you weren't writing what you know. Now that you're writing a great, unrequited love story, filled with longing and desire like your fucked-up story with James, it's going to be a mad dash to the finish. Only remember this: killing the shark means you are going to have to figure out if they get together.

“Maybe they don't. Maybe your protagonist has this image of what she wants him to be, and she's holding on to that, but it isn't something that's real. So think about that one. Everyone does that; key is to figure out if the love is real or an illusion or an idea of something we want. Let's get you a coffee, and a little sweet treat.” His grabbed my ass way too fiercely as he said that.

As we turned the corner on the second-floor landing, we saw a janitor rolling a huge rubber garbage can with mops, sprays, rags, and garbage bags hanging off his cart away from the closet where the cart was kept.

“I think you and I need some time alone to discuss your plot.” Now Tommy was kissing my neck openly against the wall just around the corner. “Oh, yeah, also add to that”—more mauling the skin on my neck—“your characters. They need work too.”

“Tommy. Stop.” I started rubbing the red out of my neck. “It's so bright out here. With everyone . . .”

“The two of us and a janitor is everyone?” He started up again, this time with his hand halfway up the back of my shirt.

“No, I mean it.” I was laughing now as he tried to put his fingers underneath the front of my bra. “You have to be more discreet. We can't do this. Really.”

“Oh, really,” he replied playfully, mocking my serious tone. “I don't think so . . .”

As soon as the janitor had pushed his loaded cart into a vacant classroom, Tommy grabbed my arm tightly, pulled me into the dark cleaning closet, and wrapped his body around mine. “God, you are so sexy tonight,” he said, slipping one hand down the back of my pants and one down the front in the ammonia-filled darkness.

Before he got anywhere, I yanked his arms out, but I couldn't help but smile. “Not now. Not here.”

“C'mon. It'll be fun. You won't be sorry, I promise.” He stopped pushing and kissed me deeply instead. I wondered about what Jackie said about the thirtysomething-and-under generation and if he'd watched a porn movie about a sexy janitor lady in a university cleaning closet.

As he got more intent on having his way, by holding my arms tight against the wall as his tongue explored every inch of my mouth, all the sexy nonsense was not working for me. Not one bit.

I was way too distracted: I was horrified about Max hitting my husband, and my marriage falling apart terrified me even more. I didn't make enough money to support anything like our current life. My mind raced to places I could move. Of course we couldn't afford our apartment and a second one. Could I rent a tiny apartment in a good enough neighborhood to ensure a good public school for the kids?

“Tommy, hold off. It's not exactly conducive to . . .”

“I think it's hot.” He started at me again.

If I was going to do this for real, it had to be
out there,
not
in here
in a closet
.

“What's with you?” Tommy asked. “Lemme just . . .” His tongue went at my breasts.

I couldn't enjoy his touch.
Especially now.
Wade would blow a gasket once he found out about Tommy, which would just complicate a separation agreement. I didn't need
she was having an affair
added to my family curriculum vitae.

I let out a little confused moan. None of this was working; I didn't want Wade in my head while I was trying to
not
get off with Tommy.

“Come on, baby, that's right,” Tommy purred, mistaking my anguish for ardor.

I pushed him away a little. “Class is starting. C'mon. We can't do this.”

“Yes, we can,” he said, kissing my neck and reinserting his hand at the top of my jeans, inching down. “I want you to go all the way. Here. Now.”

I momentarily relented a few inches, but the ticktock of my insane life kept swirling in my head.

“We . . . have . . . to . . . stop . . .” It took all my strength to pull Tommy's hands up and out of my pants. Even if Wade strayed from time to time, I still felt sick about my own infidelity, which I was definitely experiencing in Technicolor now. My unconsummated affair with Tommy felt like a crime.

“I know you want this,” he whispered.

Morality aside, this was ridiculous. I was not going to climax, standing up, in the dark, in a strange place at New York University, amid the smell of institutional ammonia in a dank closet.

“You're so hot,” he whispered again.

I was feeling anything but.

“I'm sorry. It's the ammonia.”

“We got all the time in the world, you know.” Tommy finally relented. “But when you do find yourself ready, you're going to get seriously mauled.”

I opened the door of the janitor closet slowly; the last thing I needed was to get caught by a student in our class. Most of them were milling around the door of our classroom down the hall.

“Tommy, let me leave; you get us coffee.”

Instead he started at me again.

I pecked his forehead in the most chaste manner I could. “Let me leave first and get everyone facing the other direction, then you look down the hall and leave when it's clear, okay?”

“Yes, ma'am.” His blue eyes sparkled at me as he fixed the worn-out collar of his flannel shirt and tucked the tail into his jeans. He was combing down his ruffled-up hair as I snuck out of the closet.

 

“DRIVE FAST, BUT
safely,” I whispered to Tommy on the way uptown from class.

He parked the motorcycle outside a Walgreens pharmacy on Twenty-Seventh Street and Tenth Avenue, four blocks north of my apartment. I would walk the rest of the way. There wasn't much chance anyone I knew would see me in west Chelsea after the dinner hour, but I still wanted to play it safe.

“See you tomorrow?” I asked. We'd planned to spend some time on his script. The bright fluorescent lights from the drugstore were shining in my eyes and killing the nonexistent romance.

He looked up at the skyscrapers lighting the city sky. “I have a busy week. We might have to wait until the next class.”

The next class was simply too far away. Before this, I hadn't wanted Tommy touching me. Now all my mental and physical desire seesawed in his direction, like a turbocharged bipolar mood swing.

“You sure?” I pleaded. “You helped me so much with my script. I owe you.”

“Yeah. Positive.” It was clearly no big deal to him not to see me until class. He slammed his foot down on the pavement, braced the kickstand, and flipped his visor up. It was almost a challenge. His body was saying,
You gotta problem with that?

Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. First he couldn't get enough of me fast enough and now he wasn't even interested? I know he was pissed that I wouldn't close the deal but maybe just some people are more okay with cheating and some aren't. I felt he should be patient with me.

“You sure you're sure?” I teased, with a note of desperation. He understood me so well; he was so intimate with my past and stories, and he should just know I couldn't rush into things but I needed him.

Rationality was not ruling my emotions here. It didn't make sense to me he was backing off only because I selfishly didn't want him to back off. I, like Wade, was close to zero fuel, and in no position to fully understand where and how Tommy had hit his limit with my rejections. “I could really help with your script, and we can talk things through, about everything . . .”

“I get it. I got it loud and clear. And I'm not ready for script help.”

This man had spent so much energy pulling me into him. Now he was definitely pulling away. I could feel my eyes burn, but I wouldn't let him know that or see any tears. “But you've helped me so much. Listen to what the class said, and so much of it is thanks to you. They really like it, and Heller told me to keep going on the same track,” I said. “Like we planned, I just want to pay you back and focus on your script this time. Can't we just . . .”

My heart ached as if Tommy were the love of my life and I'd just this very instant lost him—neither of which was remotely true. However, a woman in a failing marriage who is hanging on to the idea of some secondary guy, and what he will do to save her, feels crazy enough to flail herself all over the nearest train tracks Anna Karenina style. Believe me, I know. That's exactly where I was that night.

“Jesus, Allie. Chill. I've got so much work to do, on my own. That's all.” Usually he joked about how much he wanted to steal time with me. No way was I waiting a full week for more of this. Right then and there, in front of the Chelsea Walgreens at ten minutes past ten, I realized the fulcrum of this relationship had tipped into unbalanced territory. He looked down the avenue. “I'll text you.”

Which only meant one goddamn thing: I was going to put myself in a position to get hurt. Love junkie reporting for duty.

28

Simmering Situations

For my presence under the bright lights of the Tudor Room the next day, I had only to blame the following: a semi-to-fully-self-destructive side rearing its ugly but exciting head. That morning, Wade had demanded we meet at the Tudor Room to discount the stories in the
New York Post
's Page Six gossip page that Wade was badly hurt by Max's powerful fist, the headline reading
TEXAN TWO-PUNCH.
A
Post
reporter always hovered at the bar of the new hot place to check out who was seated where in the room and with whom.

“It must be the Tudor Room,” Wade had demanded. “Because we must keep up appearances and I need to show everyone I'm just fine thank you. Why is this so important? Because I'm fucked, that's why. Totally fucked right now.” I knew this lunch had nothing to do with our marriage ending or his dalliances. No budging Wade on the locale, and needless to say it was impossible to explain to him that I didn't want to bump into Tommy O'Malley organizing the wine cellar during our lunch and why that might prove awkward.

As though I were preparing for battles to be waged on every front, I'd carefully chosen some good fashion armor: a tight skirt, black suede platform pumps, a go-to lacy Tory Burch blouse with a long black cardigan cinched by a four-inch-thick belt with a silver buckle. I conjured up a little “I'm important too” attitude to get me from door to table. Walking in, I knew I looked all right, even though everything went very all wrong.

Just as I walked into the restaurant trying hard to act like I was feeling just fabulous, my phone rang. Seeing the number, I froze for a second: James. I spun around and found a small leather chair by the high windows, away from the bar, away from the lunch area, and away from the cloying maître d', Georges.

I sat down and clicked on my phone.

“Hey. How's your father? How are you?”

“I'm okay, Allie. It's just a waiting game. Definitely not a fun time. You know he and I were never close and he was such an ass to me my whole . . .”

“Don't say that now, James. I know better than anyone what a cold guy he could be, but just let's keep it neutral while he's in the hospital. It's bad karma. When can I come help? What can I do?”

“I was hoping to come into Manhattan to see you. I'm sorry I haven't called, because I'm worried about how you sounded last time we talked. Your marriage certainly sounded like it sucks.”

“I'm fine.” I pressed him. “Your dad's dying. This is about you, not me.”

“Well, I've been seeing everyone from high school and just sitting in this depressing family area at the end of the hall for a big long waiting game.”

My eyes wandered up the paned glass windows that framed the restaurant and I wondered if everyone inside felt like they were in a fishbowl. I did. It seemed wrong that I was sitting here in this pressurized New York restaurant and not sitting with James up in Massachusetts in the hospital waiting room. Georges came over to tell me that Wade's office had called and he was still in a meeting. While James talked about people who were visiting, I laid my head back against the hard, cold glass behind me, remembering the moment a dozen years ago in our early twenties when I'd told James that I'd met this editor named Wade. It was the moment I clearly made the choice to move from James, my real love, to Wade, the husband and father replacement I psychologically lusted after.

 

“SO, ALLIE, WHO'S
the lucky big-city guy these days?” James had demanded across the beer bottles a dozen years back.

“Well, we've barely started anything, but he's something to contend with, put it that way.”

He let out a gust of air and wiggled his eyebrows at me, telegraphing
have fun selling out,
before tipping a long draw of beer into his mouth.

“I'm not
selling out,
” I hemmed. “I'm not.” I said again, in case he didn't hear me.

James shook his head and laughed. “You said that, not me. Tell me about this
guy
.”

“I don't know where it's going exactly, James. He's just some editor guy. I don't know. He takes me to a lot of parties. Do we have to . . .”

James set his beer down on the table so hard that it foamed up and spilled out the top. “That's just great, Allie. I'm so happy that you found someone
important
to share your life with.” He looked off toward the bar and signaled the waiter for the check.

“What is your problem?” I slapped him on the arm. “You're the one crisscrossing the globe, sleeping with God knows what. I can't even have a potential boyfriend?”

“You've always had boyfriends, Allie. Busloads of boyfriends.” He looked me straight in the eye. “This one just seems . . .”

I turned my hands up, empty of excuses. “It's a whole situ-fucking-ation, if you want to know the truth.” I was starting to get a little angry myself. If James wanted me as more than a friend, it was his job to express that, but it wasn't fair to belittle the life I was trying to piece together.

“You know what? Forget it, I'm only here for two days before I head overseas; it's not . . .” He had stopped talking as the waiter dropped the check.

By the time we'd left the restaurant, James had found ways to lighten the situ-fucking-ation by poking fun at my description of Wade, and it made me feel like we were simply two pals who knew each other better than anyone. Sexual tension pervaded the evening; he'd paid the bill, held my coat, and opened doors (without swinging them pranklike in my face for once in our lives) as if we were on a real date. When we were back in my exposed brick, little studio on West Eighty-Third Street, I decided to get a couple more beers. But as I reached my kitchen area, the refrain was pounding throughout my body.
If not now, when?
We had to do it again, it had been so long since that night in the Jeep. I was, after all, a grown-up now. And I was about to get serious with another man, for Christ's sake.

“Allie,” James had said suddenly in a very sexual tone. “What are you doing? Come over here.”

Hands firm on the side of the kitchen sink, arms rigidly holding my shaking body up, eyes closed tight, I broke into a huge smile because I didn't even need to look at him to read him. This time I really wanted it to happen and knew it would. One big problem: the fluorescent light above was so bright it was practically buzzing. We were about to make love in a room lit for surgery.

I turned and walked across the room and snapped off the light, and then back to the sink, where I began to feel my knees shaking. I bit down hard on my lower lip as I sensed James moving silently, closing the space between us until I could feel his breath on my neck.

With my eyes closed, and holding steady for fear of crumbling to the floor . . .

“Oh God,” I whispered, “I swear I don't know how to make love.”

“I swear you do,” he said. “We already did it once, so I know you do.”

“That was so long ago, it wasn't like . . .”

He just answered, “It was to me.”

He pushed his body close behind me and reached around my hips, placing both his hands between my legs. With each hand on the inside he gently pulled my legs apart and grabbed onto my inner thighs as he pushed himself up against my back. I braced my hands against the sink and let my head roll to one side as he began to kiss my neck.

“Oh, no,” I whispered.

His fingers were now inching down the zipper on my pants as he carefully and slowly opened the top of my jeans. I put my hands on his as he ventured farther inside, half holding him back, half guiding him along.

“Don't you dare stop me,” he said into my ear and then licked it.

I arched against his chest. “I'm not, I'm just a little . . .”

“What? You don't want this?” He wet his finger and slid it down my pants, slowly outlining me.

“This is just . . .” I took a deep breath in. At least he was behind me, and I didn't have to look him in the eye. “ . . . a little crazy.”

“I'm about to make you a lot crazier.”

Minutes later we were on the floor, and he was on his knees yanking my jeans off. I lay back feeling everything all at once: relief that we were doing this, fear that we were doing this, total excitement that we were doing this. As I listened to his exquisite moans, I knew how much I really wanted this. I'd waited so long since that time in the cold Jeep with the swirling snow illuminated outside by the parking lot lights.

The smell of sex was then weighing heavily in the air around us, with James's sweat dripping down the sides of his naked body, and the two of us rolling around in a frenzy on my dusty, hard wood, walk-up floor . . .

 

“ALLIE? YOU THERE?”
James's voice bellowed from the phone in the corner of the Tudor Room. “Did you hear what I said about running into Neal and Charlie?”

“I did. So weird.” I hadn't focused on one word, I was so lost in that moment years before on my sweat-drenched floor and why I hadn't taken that path.
Fuck. Why hadn't I taken that path? Why was I so impatient to get married with James off and gone just after we did make love for real?
I quickly asked, “Can I come up for a day to sit in the waiting room with you? Would that be helpful?”

“Not right now, especially since Clementine couldn't come. That just wouldn't . . .”

Clementine wasn't with him so I wondered why an old friend couldn't support an old friend. “James. Why the hell can't I be there? It's me talking. I'm just trying to be there for you and . . .”
And maybe rekindle something in your hour of need . . .

“No, it's too much here. I'm so happy to talk to you and focus on how you are. But with my family here, I just want to focus on them, so it will just frustrate me . . . Anyway, Allie, I gotta go. Just checking in.” And he hung up.

 

ONCE HE SAW
me over on the chair behind his podium, Georges the maître d' threw his arms in the air as if I were the Queen of Sheba. “Oh, Mrs. Crawford, you look divine.” He ran over to me and pulled me up. “Why your husband would keep a woman like you waiting is beyond explanation.” He glanced at his table chart on the lit lectern he presided over. “Let's see, with this beautiful woman here, that changes things . . .” He tapped his pen on his forehead. It took me a minute to focus as I was reeling a bit from the James call and the choices I made that maybe weren't the right ones.

“Georges.” I read the table chart upside down. “Changes things how? Are you giving Wade a nicer table because his wife is here or a less important table because he's not dining with a CEO?”

“Are you kidding? You come here and I arrange the room around
you
.”

This guy was such a pretentious, disingenuous fool—acting like I was so important when he had enabled Wade's affair with Jackie, I assumed, among others. At the corner banquette, a B/B+ table, Murray swiveled his head and spotted his prey.

“Allie!” he barked. “I've been meaning to call you all morning.”

“What's up, boss?” I said as I scanned the room. No Tommy.

“Svetlana. You know her.”

I thought about my husband's hand way too intimately grabbing her hip bone. “Yes, I know Svetlana.”

“Well, there's a problem,” Murray said.

I thought about my husband's two teeth flying across my living room.

“You know what, Murray? I sensed there was a problem. Call me a genius but . . .”

“We need to do something with her film; the preopening reviews are just going to kill her and sink her. It makes the festival look lame when such a high-profile model tanks. We need to showcase it a little more.”

“But, Murray, her film sucks. We are all about
quality not glitz,
remember you saying that?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” He didn't give a hoot that I'd nailed him. “Showcase the girl. Okay? Ask Delsie Arceneaux's people to do it on CNBB? It'll make a long list of things move a lot smoother. I promise you. I don't need Max Rowland breathing fire up my asshole.”

“I think we just witnessed in my living room that that isn't a safe idea.”

Murray focused his gaze across the room in Delsie's direction. She was wearing a springtime violet Valentino jacket with a see-through blouse underneath, having an extremely intense conversation with the secretary general of the UN and, from what I could see, about to crawl on the table on all fours.

As I stood up to leave, Murray motioned for me to sit down again. “And do me a favor, between us.”

“What, Murray?”

“Stop asking your husband all those questions about Max Rowland. It's no good for you. Just stay out of it.”

He whisked me off with a flick of his hand. Well, that was revealing: one more dot to connect. He and Wade were talking about the fact that I was asking difficult questions. I was a party to these jerks getting their way for long enough. With Wade now twenty minutes late, I perused the room and stewed over the fact that the Vulgarians in this place made their cash on the backs of actual workers like me. And with a salary ratio of a million to one. A simmering rage began to work its way up the back of my neck as I walked away from Murray.

Now Max Rowland, at the regular table next to mine, was right back in the thick of questionable activity, lecturing some rapt investors with a little Texas twang. “If y'all consider how energy intensive your businesses are, you should really be hedgin' more. I have close relationships with people close to the leader of Kazakhstan and I could give you some very confidential information on that pipeline.” Recidivism rates probably aren't recorded for the likes of Max, but they say it's common for all criminals to return to a life of crime.