Waking Beauty (21 page)

“Allison Penny?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Here you go.” He handed me the arrangement, smiled politely, and skedaddled.

I ripped the cellophane open with my teeth and fished out the enclosed card:
Allison, We need to talk. Call me. 555-4083
. I realized that the flowers must have come from Fraser, and that he actually thought we had something to jaw about. What a galoot. Oh, well, at least this time I didn’t have to hunt for a vase. I set the daisies on the kitchen table and put the card face up at the base of the container where it was certain to be seen by Virginie.

8    

“Hey
.”

“Hi.” I was hoping that Nathan would make an appearance on the patio, and he didn’t disappoint. “How are you?”

“I’m okay,” he said. “I just thought I’d see if you’d heard from Allison, how her father was doing and whatnot.” He seemed unusually ill at ease.

“I spoke to her today. He’s a bit better,” I said. “Still unconscious, but the vital signs are improving.”

“Oh, that’s great!”

“Well—”

“I mean, not ‘great’—the man’s in a coma—but you know, it’s good that he’s better—I mean, slightly better—um, improving, that is.”

“Yeah.” I had no idea how endearing Nathan could be when nervous.

“Anyway…” He looked as if he was about to bolt, but this time I wasn’t going to let him get away so fast.

“So,” I said, “Allison told me you’re quite the film buff.”

“That’s true, I am.”

“She said you do reviews.”

“Yeah. Occasionally I’ll do a piece for the dailies. But mostly I review—well, and also sometimes do columns or interviews—for
Savoir-Vivre
.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“It’s just a dinky little bimonthly.”

“I’ve seen that paper. It’s good. Good writing.”

“It is pretty good.” He didn’t take a seat beside me as usual, but he did lean back and rest against a barrel full of flowers—white tulips that were past their prime and hanging on by a breath. The slight intrusion caused half a dozen of them to completely drop their petals, leaving the ramrod stems bare. “Oops,” he said, surveying the damage and readjusting his position. He looked unduly embarrassed.

“I love tulips,” I said. “Especially the white ones.”

“Yeah, they look good in the dark. Or they did until I sat on them.”

I laughed. “So when you’re not taking care of the plants here, you work at a video store, right?” I sensed a blush, but I couldn’t really tell in the dim light of the patio.

“Yeah,” he said. “At Art & Trash. It’s, uh—it pays the bills.”

“You know, I popped in there the other day, on Saturday. I think I saw you.”

“Yeah, I was there Saturday.”

“You were watching that Bruce what’s-his-name documentary.
Chop Suey
.”

“Bruce Weber. And you were looking for Antonioni’s
Love in the City
.”

“Right.”

An exchange of shy smiles acknowledging the mutual recognition.

“But you didn’t have it,” I said.

“Not at the store, no. But I have it at home.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. On VHS. I could bring it on Friday, and lend it to you if you like?”

“Or maybe I could come over sometime and watch it?”

“Um, sure. Really? I mean, yeah, if you want to.” He looked confused, almost suspicious.

“How about tonight? After work.”

“Tonight? Oh…um—”

“We don’t have to. Sorry. I didn’t—”

“No, it’s okay. I was just—”

“It’s kind of late—”

“No. It’s not too late, it’s just, um, it’s just that my place is, well, it’s a bit of a pit. Not exactly designed for entertaining. Pretty much a dump actually.”

“I’m sure you’re exaggerating. I bet it’s fine.”

He laughed. “It isn’t really.”

“Well, if you don’t want me—”

“No, I do, it’s just—”

“I’m sure it’s fine. And even if it’s not, I don’t care. Honestly.”

“Listen,” said Nathan, “this isn’t some kind of a joke, is it?”

“Joke? No. What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“So, tonight it is?”

“Tonight it is.”

He was not exaggerating. The place was a dump. A tiny fart of a bachelor apartment on the twenty-second floor of a dilapidated high-rise in the pawnshop and biker gang district.

Grim.

“Well, this is it,” said Nathan, flicking on the overhead light (a bare bulb dangling dangerous from a bulge of escaped ceiling wires). “My crumble abode.”

I was relieved to find that the fetid stench in the hallway ended abruptly when we stepped inside the apartment. “It’s not so bad,” I lied. But it was bad. One small room that served as bedroom, living room, dining room, and office, crammed with plastic milk cartons and Salvation Army castoffs. Nothing matched. The cracked plaster walls were painted (long ago) in sick apricot; the milk cartons were orange, scuffed and stuffed full of books, videos, and DVDs; the sofa was an abomination of floral velveteen sheen in purples, grays, and black; the computer desk/kitchen table was fake wood-grain with rusted chrome legs; the computer chair was chocolate brown; the unmade bed—a double mattress and baby-blue box spring in the corner on the floor—had a burgundy duvet, two faded pillows (one pink, one beige), and a threadbare sheet with green and yellow stripes. The only apparent nod to decor was a large shrink-wrapped movie poster for
Young Frankenstein
, hanging outside what I assumed to be the bathroom. Other than that, the only objects that appeared to have been purchased new, or purchased at all (i.e., not dragged out of a Dumpster), were a snazzy wide-screen-format television set and a gleaming DVD player.

“Do you want me to take off my shoes?”

“Don’t be absurd.” Nathan got down on his knees in the corner where the stereo and TV were and started mucking around with an octopus of cords all leading to one stressed outlet. He unplugged something, plugged in a standing lamp, then switched off the overhead bulb. Better. “Um, sorry about the noise,” he said. Annoying techno music vibrated through the south wall of the apartment:
Ging-gda-ging-gda-ging-gda-ging. Ging-gda-ging-gda-ging
. “My neighbor’s a crack whore.”

“Seriously?” I laughed. “Is she really?”

“He
. I suspect so. From what I’ve seen. I try to avoid going over there, usually don’t ask him to turn it down unless it’s really late.”

“That’s understandable.”

“So…would you like something to drink?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

A counter separated the main room from a galley kitchen. Sad linoleum. Gruesome wallpaper. Evil lighting. I followed Nathan into the teeny green space.

“Let’s see…” He opened a double cupboard above the sink. It was almost entirely full of videotapes. One tenth of the shelf space was devoted to foodstuffs: instant oatmeal, Ichiban noodles, Kraft macaroni and cheese. He pulled out a dusty bottle of Jack Daniels.

“Unfortunately, all I have is bourbon. Or I have Wink if you prefer nonalcoholic?”

“Bourbon’s fine, thanks.”

He opened the bottle and sniffed it. “On the rocks or neat?”

“Rocks, please.”

He opened the fridge. Inside was a tiny tin freezer in critical need of defrosting. The four walls were thick with bulging ice, leaving a space just big enough for the one ice-cube tray contained therein (the cubes were covered with a half-inch of crusty snow). He tried to slide it out, but the thing was wedged in tight, frozen in place. He pulled harder. A squeaking sound, but the tray barely budged. I noticed there were a couple of shriveled green peas and what looked like a pubic hair suspended in the left wall of ice.

Nathan blushed. “Guess it’s time to defrost.”

I laughed. “Don’t worry about it. I can take it straight.”

“No, it’s okay. I got it.” He yanked harder. “Pass me that screwdriver.”

I handed him the tool and he went at the ice. A mad crunching sound as he chipped violently until the tray was
free. “There we go. Piece of cake.” He wiped some sweat off his curiously shaped forehead and rinsed the tray under the tap to clear off the frost.

“I love it when you’re defrosting,” I said, “and you get to the point where you can wedge a butter knife between the bottom of the freezer and the coating of ice that covers it, and the whole chunk comes away in one freezer-shaped piece.”

“I love that moment!” he said, fishing two tumblers out of the dish rack. “It’s so satisfying. Better than bubble wrap.” He cracked the cubes and poured the bourbon. “Sorry. I don’t really have proper glasses.” One tumbler had a
U-Bet Chocolate Syrup
logo on it; the other was plain blue, but smacked of gas station giveaway. He handed me the plain one.

“Thank you.”

“Cheers.”

We clinked and sipped. “Antonioni,” said Nathan, moving past me into the living room. “Have a seat. Make yourself comfortable.” He set his drink down on one of two upended milk cartons that served as a coffee table and began looking for the tape.

I perched on the hideous velveteen sofa (comfortable it was not) and watched Nathan hunt for the movie.
Ging-gda-ging-gda-ging-gda-ging. Ging-gda-ging-gda-ging
, went the music from next door.

“Unfortunately, they’re not in any particular order,” he said, scanning the shelves. He seemed nervous. Distracted.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Take your time.”

He went back into the kitchen to search. I got up and started nosing around, looking at all things Nathan. His shoes: five nearly identical pairs of Adidas lined up by the front door, the tops all sloping outward off the heels from the odd way he walked. His books: one milk carton full of dead authors—Nabokov, Lawrence, Austen, Greene—and half a dozen more cartons crammed with film tomes:
The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock; The Cinema of Ken Loach; Digital Babylon: Hollywood, Indiewood and Dogme 95; Easy Riders, Raging Bulls;
Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, and Future; Tokyoscope: The Japanese Cult Film Companion; Peckinpah: The Western Films: A Reconsideration; Movie Love: Complete Reviews
, etc. His desk was heaped with notebooks and magazines and yellowing newspaper clippings and at least half a dozen tubes of cherry Chapstick. My attention was drawn to a couple of hand-scrawled quotes stuck to his computer monitor: “Photography is truth. Cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.”—Jean-Luc Godard; “‘Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,’ which I saw on an Italian movie poster, is perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies.”—Pauline Kael.

“You know, it’s not really an Antonioni flick,” Nathan called out, sounding like his head was deep in a cupboard. “It’s actually a bunch of different segments directed by different people. Um, Fellini, Dino Risi, Lizzani, Lattuada…Maselli, Zavattini.”

“I love it when you speak Italian,” I said. I was right behind him now. Close. He wheeled around, shocked at my proximity. He was holding the video.

“Found it,” he said, blushing.

“Good,” I said, noticing, under the harsh fluorescent light, three barely visible freckles on Nathan’s lips. We stood there smiling at each other for a long moment.
Ging-gda-ging-gda-ging-gda-ging
, went the trance music from next door. I wanted to lunge but couldn’t seem to move. There was a buzz of electricity crackling between us. A surge of heat spread from my solar plexus through the rest of my body, and I could hear Nathan’s breath getting faster and heavier.
Ging-gda-ging-gda-ging-gda-ging
, and my heart a mad hammer as we stood there suspended. Then my mouth said, “Kiss kiss bang bang…” And a moment later we were in a lip lock, and don’t ask me how it happened or where the tape Nathan had been holding got to, because I have no idea. All I know is that we ended up groping our way into the main room and crashing down on the mattress in the corner.

“One sec,” said Nathan. His glasses were askew on his nose
and jabbing into my face. He plucked them off and chucked them on the floor—they skidded halfway across the room. We resumed clutching. Bourbon tongues. Hungry hands. Delirious dizzy goodness for who knows how long until I whispered, “Let’s get undressed,” at which point Nathan pulled away and sat up and said, “Hang on. Can we just pause for a moment here?” I noticed then how different he looked without his glasses, the eyes smaller and more tired.

“What?”

He sighed deeply. “It’s just—well, before we—um, I’d just like to know what the deal is. I mean, is this some kind of joke or what?”

“It’s not a joke. Why do you keep saying that?”

“Because…Well, I realize that this may be hard to believe, but it’s not every day that gorgeous young women invite themselves over to my apartment—and then want to stay and get naked once they’ve seen it.”

“Well…maybe it should be.”

“Oh, yes, I agree, it should. Absolutely. But it isn’t, trust me. So either this is some kind of elaborate joke for which you’re presumably being compensated, or you’re a supremely misguided con woman, or else you’ve recently escaped from a mental institution and you’re about to get all Glenn Close on my ass.”

I laughed. “I’m a friend of Allison’s, we’ve been pals since we were tykes. Don’t you trust her judgment?”