Faking It (17 page)

"You make time for me."

"That's different."

"How?" I asked more emphatically than the last time.

"We're not dating."

The reality of the words hit me like a wave and almost knocked me over. I had to look down in order to hide the disappointment in my eyes. I felt like I'd been smacked.

"What's the difference?" I asked.

"A love relationship is more work. It takes more time and energy. I love pleasing my clients, but sometimes it completely wears me out, both physically and mentally. Some of them are so needy. They've just been so neglected, either by themselves or their husbands or whoever. To go through all of that night after night, listening to them and touching them, and then have to attend to my girlfriend? Besides, what girlfriend would be so accepting of my line of work? How does she introduce me to her family?"

"Small business owner in the service industry?"

He cocked his eyebrow.

"Well come on, Dev, it's not like you face the same stigma as I would if
I
were an escort."

"Are you kidding?"

"From whom?"

"My family, for one. Most of them have stopped speaking to me because of my work. Hell, my father's convinced I'm nothing but a pimp and a drug dealer."

The information silently disturbed me, but I pressed on in a cold manner.

"But overall, you make out okay. I mean, I've seen you at work. You talk it up with everyone, whether they're in academia or advertising. I've seen you hand out your business cards with no shame. You represent yourself very well."

"I have a lot of confidence."

"And social support..." I muttered.

Devin frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's not fair," I said.

"What's not fair?"

"Men are
escorts
, but women are
hookers
. Men are
studs
, but women are
sluts
. Men are exonerated if caught in adultery, but women are stoned to death. Men are procreators, while women are used goods. No matter what, society shames women when it comes to sex, married or single, motherhood or--God help her--childless, in love or not. And virginity is a double-edged sword, too. A man's a champion if he loses his virginity; a woman's 'de-flowered.' Come on! We're pressured to lose it, but once we do, we're considered untouchable because we've 'given it up.' And then if we hold on to it, we're considered prudes, prisses, frigid, or simply freaks of nature. And still untouchable. Did you ever see the
Seinfeld
episode when Jerry dates the virgin? They made her timid as hell. And they labeled her:
Marla the Virgin
. How ostracizing can you get?"

He stared at his empty coffee cup, then looked up at me.

"What do you want me to say?"

"I want you to admit that you've got it made, buddy. No one calls you a prostitute. I mean, you don't even have to worry about getting arrested."

"That's because I don't go all the way with these women."

"Oh,
come on
, Dev! Just because you use a vibrator instead? They didn't buy Clinton's definition of sex either."

He smirked. I continued, unamused.

"...and don't get me started with domination and abuse. You don't have to worry about getting slapped around, berated, or being judged on every little speck of cellulite that shows or gray hair that appears on your head--"

"--but I do have to worry about women stalking or harassing me, or getting the shit kicked out of me from a husband or two. And all of the above has happened. Do you know you're the only person who's been to my apartment since I started working? I've moved twice and changed my phone number three times in the last two years. Hell, Devin's not even my real name..."

I raised my eyebrows at this confession. "It's not?" I asked, under my breath, somewhat bewildered, while he finished his rant.

"...so don't tell me about fair. We've all got a burden to carry."

"Then why don't you quit?"

He rolled his eyes. "Here we go..."

"No, I mean it. If it's that bad, then why don't you quit?"

"Because I love my work."

"Oh, that's right," I started, the sarcasm dripping off my tongue like saliva. "It's all about the women. You're Captain Orgasm, rescuing us from the villains of neglect and abandonment and lands of Uglisville and Bad Sex. And you get paid a shitload for this! You know, I'm starting to think that that's what you tell yourself to justify and hide the fact that you're afraid of a serious relationship."

"You think so."

"As Devin the Escort, you get to go on exciting dates. You show up with your cheap smiles and your Versace suits. Then, you haul ass outta there just as they start to get attached. No commitments, no sending roses the next day, no follow-up phone calls. No getting to the real you. Minimal investment, minimal risk. Do you honestly think these women aren't falling in love with you just because you tell them not to, just because you dictate it in writing? Trust me, they are--they're so hooked in and they're too afraid to either admit it or get out, because some desperate part of them is hoping you'll actually fall in love with them and leave the rest behind. You're naive if you think otherwise."

"I think they stay because they get something out of it. They get a payoff."

"And what about
your
payoff? Sure, you may dance around in your boxers, but have you ever told a woman how you really feel about art or your father or growing older or anything else? Have you ever let yourself be vulnerable to a woman, tell her, even show her you're scared or hurt or angry?"

"Oh, you're a fine one to talk. Look at
you
, Andi. You're one of those needy women!
You're my client
. 'Show me how to be a better lover, Devin.' 'Make me feel less self-conscious, Devin.' 'Men reject me, Devin.' 'I'm undesirable.' What, you think just because you didn't pay me money, just because our arrangement was more intellectual, that that makes you better than them? Maybe if you didn't act so goddamn smug and superior, you'd hold on to a man. And speaking of which, when was the last time
you
got laid by something not requiring batteries? For all your increased confidence and your new clothes and your trimmer body, I don't see any men banging down your door, or banging you, either. Why is that? Maybe your problem wasn't sex, Andi. Maybe it had nothing to do with your body or your upbringing. Maybe Andrew just wasn't that into
you
. After all, he married someone else, didn't he? So don't sit there and preach to me about my relationships until you get one of your own that lasts."

We both looked at each other, shell shocked.

Unable to refrain from crying, I stood up and ran out of the cafe, grabbing my jacket but forgetting my purse. Devin picked it up and ran after me, calling my name. I didn't want to stop, didn't want to look at him, but I needed my purse to get back to the Island. I stopped and turned around, but looked at the ground as I held out my hand.

"I'm so sorry," he said.

"Just give me the bag." I lifted my head enough to grab it from his hand, turned and walked away quickly, not looking back, while fumbling through my purse for a tissue. I heard him call out my name at least one more time, and then the indifference of Manhattan filled my ears yet again.

He was right, and I knew it. And yet, so was I; I was hooked in good, and I'd managed to fool myself along with everyone else.

I sat by the window on the train, leaning against it, crying, while all of Long Island ignored me.

How I miss New England in the fall.

Chapter Seventeen

T
HE NEXT MORNING, I FOUND A BOUQUET OF A SINGLE white rose surrounded by two dozen red roses at my doorstep, and a card:

Andi-

I sank lower than whale shit at the bottom of the ocean yesterday, and today my sorrow expands to the edges of the universe. Forgive me, please.

-Devin

His choice of metaphors was corny as hell. I couldn't help but smile, although my heart slumped in my chest. Later that day, I text-messaged him without abbreviating:
All is forgiven
.

What I didn't know was that he had canceled his client last night, and for the next two nights afterwards.

One of the roses wilted over the side of the vase. It was the first to be removed.

Chapter Eighteen

Three months later

J
ANUARY DAYS ARE GRAY DAYS. GRAY SKIES, GRAY grass, gray trees. Leftover gray rock-salt and sand litters the sides of gray roads, while mounds of dirty, gray snow linger in gray parking lots. The sun hides under its gray covers, in its own gray slump. Dark, empty gray mornings blend into dark, empty gray afternoons, which quickly fade into dark, empty gray nights.

January days are gray days.

It was on one of those days when I walked out of Penn Station and onto an uncharacteristically sparse

34
^th
Street

, on my way to this year's Language Arts Conference at the Hilton New York on

West 52
^nd
Street

and

6
^th
Avenue

. In addition to the paper I was presenting on the social rhetorical response of personal essays (I was part of a panel with Maggie and Jayce), I had secretly lined up three interviews: two with universities in the New England area, and one in San Diego. Even Mags didn't know that I'd spent Thanksgiving Break searching listserve databases for job postings and updating my curriculum vita, and Christmas break emailing CVs and returning phone calls from committee chairs to schedule interviews at the conference and checking out the universities' websites. Each potential position was for a writing program director. And with Mags' and my textbook set for release in the fall, my prospects looked promising.

Devin had come up with the book's title. We were walking in the MOMA one rainy autumn afternoon, looking at a Picasso painting, when I blurted,
Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth
.

"Where'd you hear that?" Devin asked.

"It's a Picasso quote, but I read it at the beginning of Chiam Potok's novel
My Name is Asher Lev
."

"Yeah, I know it's Picasso. Do you agree with it?"

"Sure do," I said.

"Why?"

"All art, be it writing, painting, film, dance, whatever, is a manipulation of time and space. It's an interpretation and a recreation of the facts, using various artifacts that point us in the direction of our personal truths."

"Not the artist's truth?"

"More so our own. For example: remember the Lad Tobin essay I told you about, the one about Pogo the clown scaring the crap out of him when he was five years old and his parents having to call off the rest of the birthday party? He couldn't actually remember the name of the clown, so he made one up. And remember Patricia Hampl's essay 'Memory and Imagination'? The Thompson piano book; Sister Olive who looked like an olive; Mary Katherine Reilly--all lies; all artifacts that point us to a more personal truth: in the first case, a child's trauma. In the second, envy and insecurity."

"But that's Tobin's trauma, yes? His truth. And Hampl's."

"Okay, now think of Donald Murray's 'Onions and Oranges' essay. Murray says that as we read someone else's story, fiction or non, we read--and consequently, we write--our own. In other words, all writing is autobiographical. Tobin's trauma with Pogo the clown takes me back to me shrieking and begging my mother to take me out of Debbie Doherty's birthday party because there were balloons all over the place and the kids were kicking and popping them. That's
my
truth."

"But was her name
really
Debbie Doherty?" he asked coyly.

I slid my eyes in his direction, cocking an eyebrow, as if to say,
wouldn't you like to know
.

He flashed his electric smile and winked. "You win this one."

We parked ourselves in front of a Jackson Pollock and stood still for a minute.

"How's the textbook coming along?" he asked, still looking at the painting.

"Mags is filling in some of the missing research and I'm doing revisions. We've also got to finish the introduction and the last two chapters."

"Hm."

We stared at the painting. Then he turned to me.

"What's the title?"

"This Book Sucks."

A guffaw escaped from him, echoed on the other side of the room, and drew irked expressions in our directions from wandering patrons. He covered his mouth quickly and stifled the rest of his laughter.

"Actually, we can't decide on a title. We vacillate from too stuffy and academic to too cutesy."

"Hm."

We moved to the next Pollock, stood, and stared at it in silence. He turned to me again.

"How about 'Truth, Lies, and Artifacts'?"

Do you know the satisfaction, the elation one gets when fitting the final piece into a jigsaw puzzle? It was absolutely perfect; it fit so well, completing the entire picture. There could be no other title. And I was mad as hell that I hadn't thought of it myself.

"You rat-bastard," I said under my breath, still looking at the painting.

"You're welcome," he replied. A proud grin pushed out the corners of his mouth as we turned to each other and locked into a gaze that revealed the kind of connection that happens between two people who know each other really well. Was it the connection of friends? Lovers? I couldn't be sure. I'd never had it before with anyone. Not even Andrew.

His goofy grin spread to my own face, and my eyes glistened. We kept looking at each other.

"What's your real name?" I asked.

He hesitated for a moment.

"David."

"David what?"

"David Santino."

He was Italian.

"Hm," I said.

We moved on to the next painting.

***

The holidays were Devin's busiest time of year; often he had two or three dates on the same day--an office Christmas party in the afternoon, a cocktail party in the early evening, and a play or ballet at night. One night during the week before Christmas, he called me at two o'clock in the morning.