Just Friends (15 page)

Jack looked at his watch. He’d give anything for the phone to ring and someone to invite him out for a long oblivious lunch. He ground out two more sentences, spell-checked what he had written so far today, printed it out in several different typefaces to see which looked more impressive, and allowed his computer to tell him how many words he had written today (163). Maybe he’d feel more sparkling when he’d had something to eat.

In the kitchen he began to compile a sandwich—ham, cheese, dill pickle, mustard, a couple of shots of Tabasco—while his mind tussled with a complex calculation. Suppose he wrote two hundred words a day: that was a thousand a week, which meant that, allowing for vacations and other interruptions, it would take him another—Jesus!—two
years
to finish. He’d be thirty-four, halfway through his whole life! And would he do it? If he was honest, his productivity in the last two years had been unimpressive: one story, a flurry of showy but forgettable magazine articles and a couple dozen reviews. (“But who gives a shit about reviews these days?” Leo’s sardonic voice echoed in his ear.)

Jack carried his sandwich into the living room, popped open a can of lemon soda and turned on the TV. It was important to keep abreast of popular culture. He could hardly work while he was eating, could he? For five fascinated minutes he watched an overweight young woman in cowboy boots confess to sex addiction. A man in a toupee, dressed as if for the golf course, coaxed detail after salacious detail from her until she broke down in sobs, provoking the bovine studio audience into applause. Public executions must have been like this, Jack reflected as he surfed the channels—the same mixture of titillation, boredom, and careless cruelty. He began to formulate a theory about cultural maturity, whereby contemporary America could be said to have roughly the same mental age as medieval Europe, before being distracted by a quiz program in which blindfolded newlyweds were cross-examined about their partners’ domestic and sexual preferences. Jack shook his head sorrowfully and flicked onward. Sometimes he wondered why he bothered with literature. If this was what the masses wanted, he’d be better off in Hollywood, prostituting his talent as a sleazy screenwriter. Oh, look!—
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
. Jack slumped back contentedly.

He was halfway through the show, and had just stuffed the rest of his sandwich into his mouth, when the phone rang. With a rhinoceros snort at this interruption, Jack levered himself out of his chair, zapped off the sound, and sidled across the room, keeping his eyes on the screen. He picked up the receiver.

“Yeah?” Uh-oh. It looked like Buffy was in trouble with some creepy guy with red eyes.

“Hi! Is Freya there?” It was a man’s voice. He pronounced her name
Fryer
.

“No,” mumbled Jack, still chewing.

“Will she be home tonight?”

“Guess so.”

“Okay, I’ll try later. Tell her Max called, willya?” He hung up.

Five minutes later, exactly the same thing happened, except the man was called Norman. Jack felt a flicker of irritation. He was not Freya’s secretary, after all; he had work to do. As soon as he’d found out what had happened to Buffy he’d—

Damn it! The phone again. Didn’t these people have the courtesy to wait for the commercial break? A man called Lucas claimed to be calling from his “limo.” Freya certainly had some tacky friends.

“Who are you, by the way?” asked Lucas. “Not her husband, ha ha?”

“I’m—I
live
here.” Jack was indignant.

“Oh . . .” The voice was full of innuendo. “You the gay one?”

“No!”

Jack slammed down the phone. How could a man work with such interruptions? He turned back to the television screen, where the shot of an overjoyed woman in pristine tennis whites was swiftly eclipsed by a close-up of a tampon package. Terrific. On top of everything else, he’d missed the climax of the show.

He switched off the television and returned to his office in a sour mood. Freya’s things cluttered his space—dresses hanging hither and yon, bottles of face stuff clogging the edge of a bookshelf, her perfume in the air. She’d even put some damned flowers on the windowsill—irises, were they? Gladioli? Tall purply things anyway, the kind you’d see in a wishy-washy watercolor. A man needed order if he was to work efficiently, with everything plain and shipshape; this wasn’t a hair salon. Suddenly Jack caught sight of a sprawl of magazines under the bed and let out a hiss of outrage: she’d stolen his
New York Review
s! How did she know he wouldn’t need to refer to one of the articles? He could have wasted hours of valuable time searching for them. She’d even left half of them folded inside-out. Jack snatched them up angrily, noticing that some of the pages had been defaced by scribbles and circles. A loose piece of paper fluttered to the floor, probably one of those tedious promotional inserts. He stooped to pick it up and carried it over to his desk.

It was the draft of a letter. As he began to read, a smile of glee spread across his face. It seemed that Freya was on the hunt for a new boyfriend to torment.

To:———-
From: Freya c/o [email protected]
Subject: Dating

I saw your ad in the New York Review of Books. If you are interested in having dinner this weekend with a tall [attractive crossed out, slim crossed out], blonde, professional woman [35 crossed out, 33 crossed out, 29 crossed out] in her thirties, then contact me and convince me why we should meet. Telephone evenings only, email
midnight to 7a.m. only
.

PS. If a man answers the phone, that’s my roommate. [He’s just a friend crossed out.] [He’s my brother crossed out]. He’s gay.

Jack smashed his fist on the desk. He seized her stupid flowers and wrung their necks like so many chickens, then tossed the corpses into his wastepaper basket. How dared she give out his e-mail address to a bunch of lonely-heart losers? How could she contaminate his computer, sacred repository of his most precious thoughts and ambitions, with her tawdry billets-doux? Who was she calling gay? He paced the small room, kicking shoe boxes out of his way. She’d even given out his telephone number, which was not only insanely dangerous but meant that he’d be the one fielding the crazy calls long after she’d moved out. How selfish could you get?

When the phone rang again, he let out a roar and charged into the living room like a bull into the ring. He snatched up the receiver and shouted into it.
“She’s not here!”

“. . . Jack? Is that you?” A man’s voice. “It’s Michael Petersen. You feeling okay?”

“Fine, fine.” Jack forced out a genial chuckle. “In another world, I guess. Writing is so absorbing.”

“Pardon me for interrupting the great work, but I wanted to get your address. There’s some mail I need to send over to Freya.”

Jack dictated his address in a labored, grudging tone. Just because you were at home in the daytime, people assumed you weren’t really working and could be interrupted by any manner of trivial queries. Why couldn’t the guy call Freya and interrupt
her
work? “Freya’s here most evenings,” he said pointedly, “if you require further information.”

“Thank you.” Michael was equally formal. Then he continued, sounding rather aggrieved, Jack thought, “I guess you two must be enjoying each other’s company.”

“Enjoying?”
Jack practically spat the word. He was about to launch into a savage diatribe about Freya, when he had a brainstorm. The sheer beauty of it made his scalp tingle. He would persuade Michael to
take her back!
With Freya out of the apartment, he could take showers whenever he wanted, read the sports pages in peace, fill the place with beautiful girls whom he could ravish in rotation. Jack could barely restrain a shout of hysterical joy. With difficulty, he modulated his voice to a persuasive molasses drawl.

“How could anybody not enjoy being with Freya? She’s such a good companion, so much fun, so . . . helpful. But you know what?” His tone became solemn. “I’m worried about her.”

“Oh?”

“She’s not herself. She looks sad and lonely. I think she’s missing you.”

“Really.” Michael’s voice was unaccountably cold.

“Oh, she pretends. She smiles. But underneath”—Jack paused for pathos—“underneath, her heart is breaking.”

“Good,” said Michael.

Good?
Whoa, there. Who was writing this script?

“Allow me to tell you what happened in my apartment on Monday.” Michael clipped his words with vicious precision, a prosecuting attorney in action.

Jack listened in awed silence. It seemed that Michael’s mother had suffered some kind of nervous breakdown following a bizarre encounter with Freya in Michael’s apartment. Mrs. Petersen had since checked into the Plaza and was consoling herself with shopping and room service, at Michael’s expense. There was worse to come.

“Six
inches
?” Jack repeated, when Michael reached the final catastrophe of his story. “That’s—that’s terrible.” Unfortunately, a guffaw escaped him as he pictured a finicky, besuited Michael revealing an expanse of executive hosiery and hairy calf.

“Obviously you find Freya more amusing than I do,” said Michael. “Some of those suits cost a thousand dollars apiece. I’m thinking of suing her.”

“Good idea.” Jack’s tone was robust. “Not that I don’t adore Freya, but I admit she can be pretty headstrong. It’s always the same with women: they’re wonderful creatures, until you try to live with them.”

“I don’t know what happened to Freya,” Michael said plaintively. “She was so sweet at the beginning.”

Sweet?

“Then suddenly everything about me was stupid or wrong. If Freya doesn’t have the whip hand in every situation, she breaks out in antisocial behavior. That’s what the couple therapist said, anyway.”

Couple therapist!
Jack couldn’t wait to tease Freya about that one.

“So you think that the, uh, trouser-shortening was a symbolic act of emasculation?” Jack could barely keep a straight face. “Or could it be a cry for help?”

But it seemed that Michael was not as dull-witted as Jack imagined. “Don’t think you can patronize me, Jack Madison, just because you have a private income and call yourself a writer. I’m telling you, Freya’s a disturbed person. She has severe relationship problems. You want to watch out.” With that, he hung up.

Jack returned to his desk, chafing at Michael’s remarks. How come these office clones always thought they were God’s gift? Jack turned on his computer and pulled up the file he’d been working on. The reason he called himself a writer,
actually
, was because he wrote. If it hadn’t been for these ceaseless interruptions—all Freya’s fault—he could have written an entire chapter by now. Or two. Now, let’s see: the ship was in the harbor . . .

Jack’s eyes strayed to Freya’s letter. “Convince me why we should meet”—how typical of her lofty manner. He pitied the poor sap who fell for that line. A thought struck him. At least three men had ignored Freya’s instructions to telephone in the evening: What if the e-mailers had done the same? What if there were some replies she hadn’t seen yet? Jack scented revenge. Eagerly, he began tapping keys, then clicked the mouse.

Eureka!

To: Freya c/o [email protected].
From: Tomcat
Subject: Dating

Hi, babe! Couldn’t wait till midnight. How did you know blonde is my favorite color!!! I am six feet tall, rugged, around forty, with my own funeral parlor business. I adore fur, long legs, oysters, and dead bodies (just joking!!!). I can meet you any time, any place, anywhere this weekend. Let’s make music!

Tom

Jack flipped in fascination to the next e-mail.

Dear Ms. Penrose,

Your message saved me from the brink of suicide. My wife left me last Christmas. She took the apartment and all my money, and turned my children against me (Lois 7, Elijah 6, Tiffany 5, Clinton 4). I lost my job due to severe depression and alcohol dependency, though I’m hardly ever violent. I need the love of a good woman. Please meet me.

Lenny

PS. Maybe we could meet in the park and go for a walk with my dog Burton, as I cannot afford to go out to dinner.

Poor guy. Jack clicked again.

Dear Freya,

I’m afraid my ad misled you. The truth is, I am a gay man who needs a female companion for business events three or four times a year. I am civilized, educated, good-looking, and this is a straightforward, no-strings offer. You sound perfect for my purposes. I would pay all your expenses. If you needed a special dress for a particular occasion, I would buy it for you—or you could borrow one of mine! Christopher