Eye Candy (4 page)

8

The apartment was smoky and sweet-smelling. The tangy aroma of pot. Lou and Ann-Marie were in a haze, too. Wrapped up together on the livingroom couch, her skirt high on her thighs, one of her bare legs draped over his. A dim light behind them pierced the fog like a distant lighthouse.

Ann-Marie giggled when she saw me. She had Lou's hand in hers and was holding it between her legs. Her hair was wet and frazzled.

She never used to get stoned before she met Lou. She never used to cook up big pans of lasagna and mountains of spaghetti marinara. She never used to go to metal concerts or Vin Diesel movies, either.

Ann-Marie had changed a lot, all on Lou's account, and I was happy for her, truly pleased to see her so glowing. She had been melancholy and depressed during the two years I roomed with her at NYU. No guys in her life. Unhappy because her older sisters were so good-looking and successful, and her parents treated her like she was some mutt they'd found in the pound.

The October they forgot her birthday, I wanted to drive out to Little Neck and strangle them both. Instead, I spent hours trying to get her to stop crying and tearing at her hair and pounding her forehead against the windowpane.

That was the year Ann-Marie decided she wanted a nose job for her birthday. I couldn't talk her out of it. Her nose is perfectly okay. Luckily, she couldn't afford it, and of course her parents wouldn't spend anything on her.

She was so unhappy with her looks, so unhappy over everything about herself, I sometimes had the feeling she'd like to crawl out of her skin completely, leave it behind the way a snake does.

After college, I didn't want to room with her. I wanted someone more stable, a little more fun, less depressed. I guess that makes me sound selfish. But I'd spent two years with Ann-Marie, and I knew we'd stay friends, so I started to make other plans.

But then she found this huge apartment on West Seventy-ninth Street that was actually affordable, mainly because she found a pretty good job as an assistant at a talent management agency in the Village. When she asked me to room with her, I couldn't say no.

Ann-Marie seemed a lot better these days. Being out of all the competition and pressure at NYU freed her, I think, lightened her up. She spent long hours at her job. She liked it because it was kind of glamorous.

The agency had a bunch of TV and music performers as clients—no huge stars, but a lot of names I recognized. Ann-Marie's job was mainly to act as Mom, to take care of them, to get them hotel rooms and make restaurant reservations for them, to be there for them when any problems came up on the road, to make sure there were food baskets in their rooms when they arrived, and whatever they wanted to drink. Occasionally she'd even buy cocaine for them, but we had to get Ann-Marie pretty wasted before she'd loosen up and talk about that part of the job.

So Ann-Marie was in a much better mood, a lot more steady. And when Luisa moved in, she helped, too, because she was just so off-the-wall and funny. And then someone at Ann-Marie's agency told her about
Meet-Market.com
, she met Lou, and the old, depressed and self-doubting Ann-Marie seemed to disappear completely.

She really did leave her old skin behind.

I tiptoed into the apartment, almost choking on the sweet-sour air. “Sorry to interrupt.”

Ann-Marie giggled again.

Lou had his head back on the couch. He raised it as I approached, squinting into the haze, struggling to focus his eyes. I saw the recognition on his face when he finally remembered who I was.

Whew. How stoned do you have to be to be that stoned? Why didn't they save some of it for tomorrow? But, hey, maybe I was just in a pissy mood because Jack turned out to be such a loser.

I had to pass by the couch to get to my room. The ashtray on the coffee table contained little charred specks, the remains of smoked joints. Several empty beer cans lay on their sides on the carpet beside the couch.

“How was . . . whatsisname? Jack?” Ann-Marie asked in a throaty, hoarse voice. She brought Lou's hand up to her face and stroked her cheek with it.

“You don't want to know,” I groaned.

“Tell us,” Ann-Marie insisted.

“No. Really. Let's not go there. He was pretty bad. I'll tell you tomorrow.”

I started past the couch. Lou was sitting up now, and he was staring at my breasts. Leaning over Ann-Marie to ogle my breasts. Not even trying to be subtle about it.

Ann-Marie giggled and leaned into him. Did she notice? Did she see how he was staring at me?

“Why don't you come sit down with us?” Lou asked, grinning. He patted the cushion beside him.

Ann-Marie giggled again and gave him a playful slap on the cheek. “Bad boy.”

“Goodnight,” I said, and, tripping over beer cans, I hurried to my room.

I closed the door carefully behind me and stood for a long moment in the darkness, catching my breath.

Ann-Marie had to notice Lou staring at my breasts like that. She had to see the way he looked at me.

Now I heard them moaning together, moaning in pleasure on the other side of the door.

Didn't she care?

9

I don't think about guys all the time. I do have a job, you know, as editorial assistant at FurryBear Press. We do the
FurryBear
picturebooks. You've probably seen them. They're even being developed by PBS as a cartoon series—or rather, there's an option on them.

I don't always work on FurryBear, however. Rita Belson, the other editorial assistant, and I work on other titles—individually, because we never could work together. She's such a bitch. You should have seen the look on Rita's face when Saralynn Palmer, our boss and the co-founder of FurryBear, gave me my own book series to work on. Rita practically had a stroke. After all, she's Saralynn's favorite.

People can get pretty childish working in children's publishing, and I don't mean that in a good way. One day last month I was thinking about my problems with Rita and about how competitive everyone was at FurryBear. And I remembered someone once said, “Children's books are a bunny-eat-bunny business.”

I think about that on the subway every morning on my way to work.

The picturebook series Saralynn gave me to work on is called
Wings to Imagination
. It's about all the winged creatures in the world, and about how birds fly thousands of miles every year when they migrate, and imagining what it would be like if we could do it, too.

I know, I know. It isn't like great literature—hell, it isn't even
FurryBear
—but it was flattering that Saralynn thinks I'm ready to edit a whole series. Especially since she gave the assignment to me in front of Rita.

So, I had other things to think about this week. Plus, my father had gallbladder surgery, and I spent one afternoon in Beth Israel visiting him and listening to him complain about getting old.

But yes, I did think about guys some of the time. I had dates to reminisce about. With Brad and Jack. And still one date to go—Colin O'Connor. I thought a lot about Colin and hoped he'd turn out to be nice. Or even someone I could be crazy about, the way Ann-Marie is crazy about Lou.

Saturday night, still cold, a half moon low in the purple sky over Central Park, I took a bus across town to Second Avenue.

There are bars up and down Second Avenue, sports bars, singles bars, old-timey bars and pubs, many of them with Irish names. But I knew Ryan's on the corner of Sixty-seventh Street from high school days. My Stuyvesant High friends and I used to meet there because the bartenders had a very lenient attitude about carding. It was basically a yuppie hangout, guys in suits three-deep at the bar after work, later giving way to the Dockers-and-Polo-shirt crowd.

Red bricks in front framed a big picture window filled with blinking red and green neon beer signs. Clusters of people leaned against the building, smoking furtively as if they were criminals, smoking quickly, without any enjoyment, getting it out of the way like a quick pee, so they could go back inside to rejoin their friends.

I was wearing a scoop-necked black top, long-sleeved and sheer, over a short, straight white skirt with a skinny, black belt. At the last moment, I thought maybe I was too dressed up for a bar date. So I took off my heels and slipped into a pair of flat, red sandals. And I pulled my hair back into a simple, schoolgirl ponytail.

I could see guys turn to stare at me as I made my way to the entrance to Ryan's. “Yo, are you looking for
me
?” a beefy guy in a blue and orange Mets hoodie shouted. Some other guys laughed.

I didn't turn around. I pushed open the door and stepped inside. That familiar beery smell. My eyes scanned the long, mahogany bar. A wall of shiny, clean glasses glimmered, suspended upside down over the bar. Two of the bartenders were women, wearing tight black tube tops with RYAN'S in white type across their chests.

A TV above the bar showed a Yankees game with the sound off, but no one seemed to be watching. The mostly well-dressed crowd was talking, tilting glasses to their mouths, laughing, hooking up.

Where was Colin?

I stepped away from the bar, side-stepped an aproned waiter holding a tray of glasses and empty bottles above his head, and peered down the row of dark green booths against the far wall.

Yes. A dark-haired guy in a black Polo shirt sat alone at a booth for two. Unsure, I nodded in his direction. He smiled and raised his beer bottle to me.

Nice smile, I thought, as I eased myself into the seat across from him. “Hi, Colin. Sorry I'm late.”

He cupped his ear. “Sorry. That woman has the loudest laugh on earth.” He pointed to the booth behind him, to a woman with her back turned, bright orange hair cascading down her shoulders.

“I just said ‘hi,' ” I shouted, leaning across the table.

The woman tossed back her head and laughed again.

He raised his bottle, a Corona with a lime. “Buy you a drink?”

“I'll have the same.”

He waved to a waitress, but she looked right past him. He shrugged and pushed the bowl of peanuts toward me. “Dig in. I love peanuts, don't you?”

“Well . . .”

“Ever fly First Class on American? They warm up the nuts. That's the best. Warmed-up nuts.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. Was that supposed to be like something dirty? He waved again to the waitress and this time got her attention.

He was definitely cute. Great smile, and blue eyes that were . . . I don't know . . . merry. They seemed to be seeing something funny all the time.

“Do you fly First Class often?” I asked.

“No. Never.”

We both laughed.

At the far end of the bar, the sound of shattering glasses. One of the bartenders must have dropped a tray. Wild applause and laughter.

Why do people always applaud broken glass?

“Do you travel a lot?” I asked, a little hypnotized by those blue eyes.

He shrugged. “From one room to the other. I have a pretty big apartment.”

The waitress brought my beer. I raised it and tilted it to his. “Cheers.”

“Are you a model?” he asked.

“Excuse me?” Had he forgotten what I said in my ad?

“I know a lot of models come here. You know. These bars get a reputation as a model hangout. That's why you see all these guys in designer suits. They think that'll impress the models. And of course, it
does
.”

He laughed. I didn't really think it was very funny.

“Is that why
you
come here?”

He laughed. “I came here to meet you.”

I took a long sip of my beer, eyeing him the whole time. “My dad wanted me to be a model. But I never wanted to. He sent me to a modeling school when I was twelve. But I hated it. I felt . . . you know . . . awkward.”

His eyes flashed. “Twelve is an awkward age.”

“Colin, are you laughing at me?”

He dropped his beer bottle to the table, just barely stopped it from toppling over. “Who's Colin?”

I swallowed. “Oops. You're not Colin?”

He reached his right hand out for me to shake. “My name is Shelly Olsen. Nice to meet you . . . ?”

“Lindy Sampson. But you're the wrong guy.” I turned to the bar. Now I recognized the guy at the end from his photo—Colin. He had dark hair and from this distance looked like Shelly.

“Thanks for the beer, but I made a mistake. I'm supposed to be meeting that guy over there.”

Shelly held on to my hand. “But he isn't as nice as me. Look at that cruel smile. That's cold. And look how tight those jeans are. I think he's gay, Lindy. Yeah, with those jeans, he's definitely gay. You'd better stay here with me.”

I laughed. “Very funny.” I slid out of the booth. What a stupid mistake. Embarrassing. Well, maybe it's something for Colin and me to laugh about.

“Sorry about the mix-up, Shelly.”

“No, wait. I like you. I mean . . .” He scribbled on the cocktail napkin and pushed it toward me. “My number. Call me, okay? I mean, really.”

I liked him, too, I realized. He was funny and cute. Sometimes mistakes are for the good, right?

I jammed the napkin into my bag. Then I hurried to the bar.

“I'm sorry—I just can't sleep with you on our first date!” Shelly shouted after me. People laughed. I laughed, too. Maybe I'd have a chance to pay him back someday.

“Colin, hi. I'm sorry. I made the stupidest mistake. I thought he was you!” I pointed to Shelly, who raised his bottle in a salute to us.

“Jeez,” said Colin. “He does look a little like me. Why is he grinning at us like that?”

“You know, I'm not sure.”

Up close, Colin didn't resemble Shelly that much. For one thing, he had a beard—or at least, his chin and cheeks were so stubbly, it looked like he'd have to shave two or three times a day. And he had that deep cleft in his chin I remembered from his photo. He was very handsome—broad forehead, strong chin. His eyes were dark brown, almost the same color as his short, wavy hair.

He wore a gray hoodie over his faded jeans, and I immediately felt overdressed again.

Maybe he saw how uncomfortable I felt because he smiled and said, “You look just like your photo, Lindy. No, much better. Would you like to go somewhere quieter and grab some dinner?”

So that's what we did. We found a Japanese place across the street and shared big platters of sushi and drank way too much sake, and talked—mainly about movies. Because Colin was really into movies, all kinds, Jackie Chan Hong Kong films, and old black-and-white films, and foreign films from all over. He told me he hangs out at the Walter Reade, the little movie theater at Lincoln Center that shows foreign films and undiscovered directors, and at the Film Forum downtown. And we talked about animation. Colin is really into animation, Japanese
anime,
new computer graphics techniques, and old Looney Tunes cartoons.

Whew! It was like taking a full-semester film course at dinner. But I loved it because I like movies, too. And it was just exciting to be around someone who cared about something so much.

Well, I liked Colin a lot. I was sorry to see the evening end. But it was two a.m. and I started to yawn. He held my arm as we stepped out to the street to find a taxi. I felt wobbly, kind of dizzy. The sidewalk seemed to tilt up and down. I leaned against him for support.

How much sake did I drink?

A lot, I guess. Because taxis went by, and we were kissing. I thought I would fall if he didn't hold me up. But he slid his arms around me and held me and I don't know how long we were standing there at the curb, kissing, my hands around his neck.

Did someone whistle at us from outside the bar across the street? I heard cars honking and another taxi rolled by. But I needed to be held, and I needed to be kissed.

Are you the guy, Colin? Are you the guy?

The question in my mind as I opened my mouth to him. Not really thinking at all, so warm from the sake and from his strong arms around me.

And then we were pressed together in the back of a taxi. I could see the black leather cap on the head of the driver as he leaned over the wheel, coffee cup in one hand, Mets game on the radio, and . . . where were we going?

Colin's apartment, all white walls and high ceilings and a tall
Casablanca
movie poster on one wall, Bogart and What's-her-name in a clinch, and another poster, all Japanese lettering and a samurai with raised sword. No time to admire the posters because I'm in his bedroom. Did he undress me or did I? My head swimming, not really trashed, but happy.

And we make love, kissing furiously the whole time. We don't know each other's bodies, but it isn't awkward. His bristly cheek brushing mine, his eyes wide as if in amazement. Yes, it feels good, even when I look up at him when it's over and wonder who he is and where I am, and how did this happen to me?

Are you the guy? Are you?

He nuzzles his scratchy face into my neck. “That was nice,” he whispers.

Nice. Yeah.

He wants me to stay all night. He holds on as if he won't let me leave. But I want to go home. To think? No. To sleep.

We make a plan to meet tomorrow afternoon in the Village. He kisses my hands. So romantic.

Am I really doing this? Do I know anything about him? Does he think I'm just another Internet screw? Eye Candy. I put myself online to get laid.

Is that what he thinks?

Well, I'm all for the new technology.

He put me in a taxi and I bounced through the park to the West Side. I fumbled in my bag for money to pay the driver. And lurched out onto the sidewalk, the air warmer, almost stuffy, suddenly, or was it just me?

I wasn't tired or dizzy any longer. I felt totally wired.

Into the building. I jabbed the elevator button, eager to get upstairs and tell Ann-Marie about Colin. If she was asleep, I'd wake her up. I knew she'd be so happy I found someone I liked.

It took the car a long time to come down. The doors opened and the two gay guys from apartment six stepped out, walking Snapsy, their miniature poodle.

I said hi to Snapsy and jumped into the elevator. It's funny, I know all the dogs' names in the building, but I don't know any of the people's names. I guess that's a New York thing.

I found the apartment dark. Ann-Marie wasn't home. Probably out with Lou. And Luisa was at work.

I stepped into my bedroom and checked the phone machine. One message. I recognized the voice immediately:

“Hi, Lindy, this is Jack Smith. Listen, I had such a
great time last Saturday, you know, at the play and
everything. I thought maybe I'd catch you at home and
we could . . . see each other maybe next week. So . . .
I'll try you again and—”

I jumped, startled, when the phone rang before the message had ended. This must be Jack, trying again, I thought. Calling this early in the morning?