Toxic Bachelors (26 page)

“What happened?” She sounded worried.

“I just got out of bed and stubbed my toe on the night table, and the alarm clock fell on my foot. Now I'm not only tired and upset, I'm injured.” He sounded like a five-year-old about to burst into tears, and she repressed a giggle.

“You're a mess. Maybe you should go back to sleep.”

“No kidding. I've been suggesting that for the past half hour.”

“Don't be rude,” she chided him. “You know, sometimes you're very rude.”

“Now you sound like my mother. She always says things like that to me. Just how polite is it to send me tabloid clippings of me looking like shit, or when my clients go to jail? How rude is it to call me an alcoholic and tell how much she loves my ex-wife, although she cheated on me and dumped me, and then married someone else?” He was getting worked up again, as he got back in bed, and Maggie listened.

“That's not rude. It's mean. She says stuff like that to you?” Maggie sounded surprised, and sympathetic yet again. Although he was nearly yelling at her, he realized she was a sweet person. He had realized it the night they met. He just didn't have room in his life for someone like her. He wanted sex, glamour, and excitement. She was none of the above, although her figure was fantastic. But since she hadn't been willing to share her body with him, he had no way of knowing just how much fun it was. She had made him some silly speech about not doing things like that on a first date. And if so, with Adam, there would be no second. And now she was talking to him at nearly three A.M., and listening to him complain about his mother. She didn't even seem to mind, although his call to her had clearly been a booty call. She disapproved of that, and told him so, but she still hadn't hung up. “You shouldn't let her say things like that to you, Adam,” she said gently. Her mother had been mean to her too, and then one night, without saying good-bye, she was gone.

“Why do you think I have a headache?” Adam said, almost shouting again. “Because I bottle it all up inside.” He realized he sounded like a nutcase, and felt like one. This was phone therapy, without sex. It was the weirdest conversation he'd ever had. He was almost sorry he'd answered the phone, and yet not. He liked talking to Maggie.

“You shouldn't bottle up your feelings. Maybe you should talk to her sometime, and just tell her how you feel.” Adam lay in bed and rolled his eyes. She was a little simplistic in her point of view, but she was not without compassion. But she also didn't know his mother. Lucky for her. “What did you take for your headache?”

“Vodka and red wine at my mother's house. And a shot of tequila when I got home.”

“That's really bad for you. Did you take aspirin?”

“Of course not, and believe me, brandy and champagne are worse.”

“I think you should take aspirin or a Tylenol or something.”

“I don't have any,” he said, lying in bed and feeling sorry for himself. But in a weird way, it was nice talking to her. She really was a nice person. If she weren't, she wouldn't have been listening to him complain about his parents, and tell her all his woes.

“How come you don't have Tylenol in the house?” And then she thought of something. “Are you a Christian Scientist?” She had known one once. He never took any medicine, or went to the doctor. He just prayed. It seemed strange to her, but it worked for him.

“No, of course not. Remember. Tonight is Yom Kippur. I'm Jewish. That's what started this whole mess. That's why I had dinner with my parents. Yom Kippur. And I don't have aspirin in the house because I'm not married. Married people have things like that. Wives buy all that stuff. My secretary buys me aspirin at the office. I always forget to buy any for here.”

“You should go out and buy some tomorrow, before you forget again.” She had a childlike voice, but it was soothing to listen to. In the end, she had given him just what he needed. Sympathy, and someone to talk to.

“I should get some sleep,” he reminded her. “And so should you. I'll call you tomorrow. And this time I really will.” If nothing else, to thank her.

“No, you won't,” she said sadly. “I'm not fancy enough for you, Adam. I saw the kind of places you went that night. You probably go out with some pretty jazzy women.” And she was only a waitress from Pier 92. It had been an accident of fate that they had met atall, and yet another that he had left a message on her machine that night. Accident number three: she had called him back, and woken him up.

“You're sounding like my mother again. That's the kind of thing she says. She doesn't approve. She thinks I should have found another nice Jewish girl years ago, and remarried. And now that you mention it, the women I go out with are no fancier than you.” Their clothes were a little more expensive maybe, but whenever that was the case, they had been paid for by someone else. In many ways, although his mother wouldn't have agreed with him, Maggie was more respectable than they were.

“Then how come you never remarried?”

“I don't want to. I got burned once, badly in fact. My ex-wife turned out to be just like my mother. And I have no desire to try the experiment again.”

“Do you have kids?” She had never asked him the night they met, there had been too much going on. She hadn't had time.

“Yes. Amanda and Jacob, respectively fourteen and thirteen.” He smiled as he said it, and Maggie could hear it in his voice.

“Where did you go to college?”

“I can't believe this,” he said, amazed at himself that he was continuing to answer her questions. It was addictive. “Harvard. Undergraduate and law school. I graduated from law school magna cum laude.” It was a pompous thing to say to her, but what the hell, he couldn't see her anyway, and anything they said on the phone was fair game.

“I knew it,” she said, sounding excited. “I just knew it. I knew you'd gone to Harvard! And you're a genius!” For once, the appropriate reaction. He lay in bed and grinned. “That's amazing!”

“No, it's not,” he said more modestly this time. “A lot of people do it. In fact, much as I hate to admit it to you, Rachel the Horrible graduated summa cum laude and passed the bar on the first try. I didn't.” He was confessing all his weaknesses and sins.

“Who cares, if she was a bitch?”

“That's a nice thing to say.” He sounded pleased. Without even intending to, he had found an ally.

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't say that about your children's mother.”

“Yes, you should. I say it all the time. She is. I hate her. Well,” he corrected himself, “I don't hate her, I dislike her strongly.” It was a religious holiday after all. But Maggie was Catholic presumably. She could say it. “You're Catholic, aren't you, by the way?”

“I used to be. I'm not much of anything these days. I go to church and light candles sometimes, but that's about it. I guess I'm nothing. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a nun.”

“That would have been a terrible waste of a beautiful face and a great body. Thank God you didn't.” He sounded as though he meant it.

“Thank you, Adam. That was a nice thing to say. I really think you should go to bed now, or you're going to have a worse headache tomorrow.” He hadn't thought about it for the past half hour, while talking to her, but he realized suddenly, as he glanced at the clock, that his headache had gone away. It was four A.M.

“What about breakfast tomorrow? What time do you get up?”

“Usually around nine o'clock. Tomorrow I was going to sleep in. I have the day off from work.”

“Me too. On both counts. I'll pick you up at noon. I'll take you somewhere nice for brunch.”

“How nice?” She sounded worried. Most of what she wore belonged to her roommates. None of what she had had on the night they met had belonged to her, which was why the blouse was so tight. She had the biggest boobs in the house, but she said none of that to Adam. And he had guessed what she was worried about. A lot of the girls he went out with were in the same boat.

“How about blue jeans nice, or denim skirt nice? Or shorts nice?” He was trying to give her options.

“Denim skirt nice sounds good.” She sounded relieved.

“Perfect. I'll wear one too.” They both laughed, and he jotted down her address again, on the pad he kept next to his bed. Usually, when he wrote something down in the middle of the night, it was because one of his clients had been arrested. This had been a lot more fun. “Thanks, Maggie. I had a nice time tonight.” Nicer possibly than if he'd seen her. This way he had actually talked to her, it hadn't been about trying to seduce her, and he wasn't at all sure that brunch the next day would be about seducing her either. Maybe they would just wind up friends. They were off to a good start.

“I had a nice time, too. I'm glad you called me, even if it was a booty call,” she teased him.

“It was
not
a booty call,” he insisted, but she wasn't convinced, and neither was he. It had been a booty call, but came to a much better end. And his headache was gone too.

“Yeah, right.” Maggie hooted at him. “It was too. Anything after ten o'clock is a booty call, and you know it.”

“Who made up those rules?”

“I did,” she said, laughing into the phone.

“Get some sleep. If you don't, you'll look like hell tomorrow. No, I guess you won't. You're too young to look like hell, but I will.”

“No, you won't,” she said practically. “I think you're very handsome.”

“Goodnight, Maggie,” he said quietly. “You'll recognize me by the fat head I'll still have tomorrow.” Between her comments about Harvard and his good looks, he had begun to really like her. She made him feel like a million dollars, with or without a headache. It had been a nice end to a terrible evening. She had made it up to him for all the abuse he always endured on Long Island. “See you tomorrow.”

“Night night,” she said softly, and hung up. And as she got into bed and crawled under the blanket, she wondered if he'd actually show up. Guys did things like that. They made promises and then broke them. She decided to get dressed and wait for him anyway, just in case. But even if he didn't show up the next day, it had been nice talking to him. He really was a nice guy, and she liked him.

13

M
AGGIE WAS SITTING ON THE COUCH IN THE LIVING
room waiting for him the next day. It was nearly noon, and it was a gorgeous day. The first Saturday in October. She was wearing a denim miniskirt, a tight pink T-shirt she had borrowed from one of her roommates, and gold sandals. She had pulled her long hair straight back this time, and had tied a pink scarf around it in a long ponytail that made her look even younger than she was. This time, she had worn very little makeup. She had gotten the feeling that he thought she was wearing too much the night they met.

The next time she looked at her watch, it was five after twelve and he hadn't shown up yet. Everyone else in the apartment had gone out, and she was beginning to wonder if he really was going to come. Maybe not. She decided to give it till one, and if he didn't, she was going to go for a walk in the park. There was no point being depressed if it didn't happen. She hadn't told anyone, so no one was going to laugh at her if he stood her up. She was thinking about it when the phone rang. It was Adam, and she smiled the minute she heard his voice. Then just as quickly, she wondered if he was calling to cancel. It seemed weird that he was calling her, and not downstairs ringing the bell.

“Hi, how are you?” She tried to sound casual, so he wouldn't think she was too disappointed. “How's your headache?”

“What headache? I forgot, what number is your apartment?”

“Where are you?” She was stunned. He was coming after all. Better late than never, and it was only twelve-ten.

“I'm downstairs.” He was calling from his cell phone. “Come on down. I made a reservation for lunch.”

“I'll be right down.” She hung up and bounded down the stairs, before he could disappear or change his mind. It was rare in her life, and always had been, for people to actually do what they said. And he had.

She walked out her front door, and he was sitting there looking like a movie star in his brand-new red Ferrari. It was the one he had driven to Long Island the night before, which his entire family had politely ignored. His parents drove matching Mercedes, as did his sister-in-law and brother, his brother-in-law drove a BMW, and his sister didn't drive at all. She expected other people to turn their lives upside down, stop whatever they were doing, and drive her. As far as they were concerned, a Ferrari was so beyond the pale and so vulgar as to not even be worth discussing. But Adam loved it.

“Oh my God! Look at that car!” Maggie was standing there, looking at him, and jumping up and down on the sidewalk. Adam grinned while he watched her, and then opened the door and told her to get in. She had never seen anything like it, except in movies, and she was riding in it with him. She couldn't believe it. She wished that someone she knew could see them driving by. “Is this yours?” she asked him excitedly.

“No. I stole it.” He laughed at her. “Of course it's mine. Hell, let's face it, I went to Harvard.” They both laughed, and then she handed him a small package. “What's that?”

“A present for you. I went to the grocery store and got it for you this morning.” She had bought him a bottle of Tylenol in case he got another headache.

“That was nice of you,” he said, smiling at her. “I'll save it for the next time I see my mother.”

Adam drove through Central Park. It was a beautiful afternoon. He stopped on Third Avenue at a restaurant that had a sidewalk café and a garden. He ordered eggs Benedict for both of them, after she assured him that she liked them. She had never had them before, but they sounded good to her when he described them. Afterward, they sat at their table in the garden and drank wine, and when they finally left the restaurant, they went for a walk. She loved looking in the shop windows with him, and talking about the people he represented. He talked about his children, the demise of his marriage, and what an agony it had been for him, and then he talked about his two best friends, Charlie and Gray. By the end of the afternoon, she felt as though she knew everything about him, and she had cautiously told him some things about herself.