Lay the Favorite (22 page)

Over the passing months, even more miraculous than my continuing ability to keep my feelings to myself was the fact that Jeremy never bored me. Which confused me, because he was incredibly steadfast and rational—virtues I had always (wrongly) considered dull. But his moods, as constant as daylight, separated him from any other person I’d ever had or attracted into my life. My family, friends, ex-boyfriends, bosses, not to mention my lifestyle and the kinds of jobs I’d always gravitated toward, had one thing in common: precariousness. Jeremy’s dependability was so far removed from my life that I found him exotic.

Friends thought it was strange. I was after a cute Jewish kid from Pittsburgh who studied religion at Vassar, traveled from the Terai to the Himalayas, became fluent in Tibetan, and now daydreamed of returning home, buying the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
from Richard Mellon Scaife, getting control of the editorial page, and then announcing his candidacy for the Senate.

But for now, Jeremy was just a lowly cub reporter, and sometimes Otis and I tagged along while he did his reporting. Standing to the side of the double homicide-suicide crime scene, I watched him question the detective. Beside the smashed noses and bald heads of
the
Daily News
and
Post
reporters, Jeremy looked young and sweet, though his demeanor was just as aggressive. Wearing black corduroys and a frayed sweater, he took notes and names in his reporter’s notebook and it occurred to me that I had never met someone so ethical. Not once did I hear Jeremy tell a lie. He didn’t even exaggerate. When he was four years old, he helped himself to a pack of Hubba Bubba from the grocery store. It was the only time he ever stole anything and twenty-five years later he couldn’t repeat the story without blushing. His interest in social justice led him to journalism, which he viewed as a creative way to serve the community.

“Wow,” Jeremy once said, as he watched me prepare for a pay and collect. “You’re so quick at counting money.”

He found my gambling jobs intriguing even though, for a long time, he couldn’t grasp exactly what it was I did. Trying to understand, he bombarded me with questions, but I was so unaccustomed to articulating how the gamblers made money that everything I said sounded like gibberish.

“Okay, let’s take it a step back,” he said. “Tell me what
you
do. How do
you
make money?”

“I told you. I get the donuts.”

Unconvinced, he looked at me. “Is that code for something?”

“No. Every morning I get Boston creams. A limo picks me up.”

“But how come you go to doctors’ offices with thick rolls of money?”

“Because I’m paying and collecting.”

“Beth,” he said, switching to his professorial voice. “I’m going to ask you a question and don’t get mad. Will you please let me help you get health insurance?”

Practical, intelligent, kind, and adventurous, Jeremy certainly had a lot going for him. But, to be honest, his positive qualities weren’t what held my interest. What drove me absolutely crazy with determination was his extreme criticalness and aloofness. I never seemed to please Jeremy and it was hard to make him laugh. As our friendship developed, I don’t know how many times I pulled a newspaper from his face or stood in front of the television, blocking
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
, and demanded his attention.

On the night Jeremy presented Otis with his very own press pass, I went to sleep thinking, for certain, that he was the love of my life.

Then I changed my mind.

We were on the Q train during rush hour, standing clear of the closing doors, standing so close that if I’d lifted my nose, we could’ve kissed.

“I went on a date last night,” I said, over the stagnant smell of urine.

“How was it?” Jeremy said. He admired a young woman softly singing with her iPod.

“Fun,” I said, though it hadn’t been fun at all.

“Did he ask you to go home with him?”

Jeremy’s question took me by surprise. As much as we talked about flings, it was always me asking him about his love life. Until now, he had never asked about mine.

“No,” I said. “We had a late dinner and then he put me in a cab and I went home.”

He looked at me. His blue eyes shined against the monochromatic sludge of shoulder-to-shoulder beige raincoats.

“He put you in a cab? How’d you finagle that one?”

I knew there were things about me that got on Jeremy’s nerves. My intellectual shyness made it hard to have in-depth conversations. I had no interest in politics or current events. He often felt that I laughed
at
him, as opposed to with him, which was true. But it never occurred to me that he didn’t even find me worthy of cab fare. Something told me he would never have said that to his women friends from Columbia. As I was taught in elementary school, I took a deep breath and counted to ten. Not that it helped my anger subside.

“I didn’t have to finagle it, fuckhead.”

“Beth, calm down.”

“You’re an asshole. You really are.”

Jeremy sucked in his cheeks, hesitating before he spoke. “You’re taking it the wrong way.”

“No I’m not,” I said.

Off the Q and up the steps, back across the platform, trains rumbled overhead, and I dwelled on all the things I absolutely hated about Jeremy. At the apartment, I bad-mouthed him to Carolina. He called the next morning. I would’ve poked my eyes out if he hadn’t.

He asked that I meet him at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Eating our lunch on the museum’s steps, the smell of honey-roasted peanuts cooking from a nearby street cart, Jeremy didn’t bring up our subway tiff and I was glad. Watching him gently unwrap the snacks he had made for us, it occurred to me that I probably had taken his comment the wrong way. Interpreting it the way I had probably said more about me than it did about Jeremy.

“I had a vision while walking in the subway tunnel between Eighth and Seventh Avenue,” Jeremy said. “I pictured a mad gunman pulling a pistol out and pointing it at someone. Everyone ran, except for me.” He handed me a cupcake.

“You made these? For us?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Jeremy! I love them!”

“Well, why don’t you taste them first?” He continued with his story. “So, I kicked the gun out of the guy’s hand just as he shot it and I saved the other person. The gunman and I fell to the floor and I pried the gun from his hands. Then the cameras came and I was made a superhero. The mayor cut me a check for ten grand and I put it in savings.”

“You put money in savings even in daydreams?” I said.

An affectionate couple with a radio sat beside us. Overhearing the last licks of a Led Zeppelin rock block, I felt no desire to go inside the museum and admire still lifes with apples and oranges.

“It’ll be boring inside,” I said. “Let’s stay out here and talk about hopes and dreams.”

“We can’t,” Jeremy said. “There’s someone I want you to meet. Zoe. She’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“Zoe?” I said with a wince. Thinking if that was not the most obnoxious yuppie name on the face of this planet, I didn’t know what was.

“I think you’ll like her,” Jeremy said. “I hope you’ll like her.”

Then came Zoe, in newsboy cap, emerging from the windy afternoon with puckered kisses. I pulled myself to my feet as Jeremy introduced us. Like Jeremy, Zoe was underweight and lightly freckled. In the gray light of the winter sky, her northeast-pale complexion reminded me of oyster meat. Her teeth were sharp.

“Zoe’s in design,” Jeremy said, initiating conversation.

“Like, T-shirts and coffee mugs?” I said.

“Uhm … no,” she said.

“Beth has some great logo ideas for T-shirts,” he said to Zoe. Then to me: “Tell her about your ideas.”

I would never understand him, I thought. “I have no ideas,” I said.

Jeremy smiled numbly. An actor working alone. I did not sympathize.

“Beth works for a professional gambler,” Jeremy said to Zoe.

“Yikes,” Zoe said.

A prolonged silence followed. Zoe in design cocked her head to the side and brushed Jeremy’s bangs from his eyes. Something I’d wanted to do all day.

Goose-bumped from the cold, I untwisted the scarf from my throat and sank helplessly into my work chair. Bernard whirled an electronic nose-hair clipper inside his nostril. His long, loose cheeks wavered from the vibrations.

“I’m running away,” he said over the gadget’s faint buzz. “I’m getting the fat person’s surgery then I’m running away.”

Bernard had just returned from Curaçao, an island in the Caribbean, which he jetted off to every few weeks to work as a bookie-in-residence at Pinnacle, one of the most successful offshore sports books. During the visit, Bernard had made a mistake while setting odds for a college basketball game. At tip-off, the owner of Pinnacle angrily realized that if Columbia happened to beat Penn, a 26-point favorite, he would lose half a million dollars. At the first score of the game—2 to 0, Columbia—Bernard got so
scared he ran out of the place. Penn ended up winning by thirty, but the owner, infuriated with Bernard for leaving, punished him by moving him to the NASCAR department.

“NASCAR!” Bernard said, switching the clipper to the other nostril. “Trading NASCAR is, like, the biggest snub in the face ever! I can’t work for that guy anymore.”

But Bernard reveled in the carefree Caribbean lifestyle, and was looking for any excuse he could find to stay in Curaçao. So the plan he came up with was this: after undergoing gastric bypass surgery, he would open an offshore sports book of his own. In Curaçao, right down the street from Pinnacle’s headquarters. For an investment of six hundred thousand dollars, he had already secured computers, bandwidth, and a license. He’d rented a ranch house for the American employees, complete with a maid and cook.

“I’d like you to be part of the venture,” Bernard said. “Part of the team.”

I looked at Bernard as though I had just witnessed a lion jump through a hoop of fire. Life! One minute you’re lovesick and a little queasy from the early morning commute. The next, you’re offered a job in the Caribbean. Six grand a month, under the table, all expenses included.

With the mention of money, everything became possible again. It wasn’t Ipanema Beach, but I
was
getting closer. Immediately, I decided I’d buy the most expensive, shimmery Brazilian-cut bikini I could find to celebrate my good fortune. And as far as New York was concerned, I was happy to leave. More and more I saw the city not as a place where big dreams come true and no one sleeps, but as an exceptionally diverse prison under constant riot control. I hugged Bernard with the enthusiasm of a criminal who had just beaten a life sentence on a technicality.

“Aren’t you excited?” I said, sinking into his hot, soft body. “You’re going to be skinny! Why didn’t you tell me any of this earlier? Why are you so secretive? It’s not like you.”

“My mind-set’s a little different these days. It’s set on a ledge, my mind.” He talked quickly and looked anxious. I flattened myself
against the wall so Bernard had more room to pace the floor of our tiny office. “I don’t know if I’m going to make money, lose money. If I’ll be able to enjoy fat-free, sugar-free pudding. I haven’t told my wife that I’m going to Curaçao and I don’t think I’m ever going to.”

As the countdown started to his surgery date, Bernard called gambling clients. “I’m going to be the new MGM,” he said. “Anything you wanna bet, any amount, you bet with me. I’m gonna have the best, most juicy odds in the business.”

He blackened the boxes on his desk calendar. Ten more days until the new you. Nine more days until the new you.

It would be easy, here, to simplify my relationship with Jeremy by saying I was infatuated with him, he ignored me, and then all of a sudden, we fell in love. What’s missing in that narrative is that I never knew what he saw in me. But as the time grew closer for me to leave, we began quarreling like the lovers we weren’t and making up with impulsive kisses like the lovers we were slowly becoming.

“I am so fucking bored with the women I’m dating,” Jeremy said during an atypical moment of self-disclosure. “I could never be friends with them. All I do is compare them to you. I’m always interested in what you have to say.”

“Jeremy, that’s kind of weird,” I said, nervously, feeling that perhaps at some point I had accidentally misrepresented myself. “I’m not smart.”

“I don’t know why you say that,” he said, pulling me onto his lap. “Maybe you’re not book smart, but I don’t think book smart is appealing. You’re wise. Not about everything. But when you’re an old woman you’ll be wise about a lot of things.”

He made me feel intelligent and interesting! I loved him! We held hands along the river and through Chinatown’s dingy alleyways. At tables for four we sat side by side exchanging childhood stories and confessing every secret. I brought up the subject of my in-house stripping at Nightmoves. Beginning the conversation delicately
enough, I got a bit carried away while explaining the intricacies of performing for one of my favorite customers, a polio victim.

Finishing my story, I looked up from my shrimp dumplings just in time to see the blood race from Jeremy’s face.

“That, I feel, is very disgusting,” he said.

“You said you liked my detail-oriented stories,” I said.

“Well, not that one.”

“It’s not disgusting, Jeremy. If you ever got polio, wouldn’t you like to call someone and have them come over and hang out with you?”

“I just didn’t know that about you, Beth. I didn’t suspect that about you. But, I guess it’s always good to have your assumptions challenged.”

“Much better. I hated you and now I like you again.”

“It was insensitive, I’m sorry. I’m very confused by this whole topic. Let’s order more dim sum.”

And this was very typical of Jeremy and me. One second, love fest; the next, love dispossessed. Quick, fiery overreactions closely followed by apologies. No grievance that couldn’t be laughed or kissed away. I’d never felt as happy as I felt with Jeremy and the feeling wasn’t leaving. Three whole weeks of being romantic with the same person and the feeling was not leaving.