Second Best Fantasy (2 page)

could suck live for all I knew, anybody could sound great on a studio cut. She just had a presence that took over the room.

Little ringlets of long, ashy brown hair danced around her face when she spoke. She had eyes the color of granite, and they were extremely expressive, even from a distance.

I’d been watching her over someone’s shoulder, so even though I couldn’t always see her entire face I could tell when she was laughing, listening, or bored. She caught my gaze a few times, but didn’t give any recognition. This irritated me since most women couldn’t help at least flashing me a smile. Maybe she was what some lesbians call “terminally straight” and simply couldn’t be bothered with even a touch of politeness. Hurdling my fascination, I wrote her off as a snob, walked to the bar, and started to plan something witty to say to Joan that would set me aside from all others.

While sipping a double gin and tonic I socialized with people involved with the record labels and music publications.

They were giving me sideways glances, surely wondering how not one but two Phantom employees got into this gig. I talked with in-house artists, ghostwriters, customer service reps. They thought of my company the way I did: a fall back for them when the going got tough or the workload too enormous or on too tight a schedule.

That also meant they considered me an outsider. It was like when you went to a community college and hung out with university types. They thought they were somehow more real and you were just not good enough. I didn’t care too much for any of them and I loved my job. It was frustrating.

Despairing, I ordered another drink and made my way over to the crowd around Joan, the reason I’d come in the first place.

Standing around waiting my turn I pretended to read the track names on the back of the CD as if I didn’t own it and knew every lyric by heart. I would’ve cleaned up in a Rock and Roll Jeopardy round if Joan Orlean were the category.

Just as I was edging closer to Joan herself, ready to spout something poetic that didn’t resemble a dyke pick-up line at all, I felt a soft hand clasp mine and pull me out of the crowd. I looked up to 7

see who was attached to the mysterious hand, and saw Janine.

“What are you reading?”

Dumbly, I checked my hands for a book and found none.

“Excuse me?”

She repeated, “What are you reading right now? I mean, at home, what’s on your night stand with a bookmark sticking out of it?”

I decided to play along. Perhaps she wasn’t so much of a snob, or even straight for that matter.

“Gravity’s Rainbow,” I lied. Well written or not, I wasn’t about to admit to “White Oleander” when it had the birthmark of Oprah’s Book Club seared into its cover.

“Ah, a real masochist. I knew you were my kind of woman.”

Her unusual way to begin a conversation made me laugh.

She went on, “I saw you eying me. I was wrapped up in business talk and I have to convince my managers I’m hanging on their every syllable.”

“Sounds like hard work.” I found myself unable to talk to her and glance around the room at the same time. Her eyes had tiny yellow pinpricks of fire at the center of the pupils. Intensity gleamed from them, or maybe from her body, or maybe from her aura, I couldn’t decide which.

“I suppose you don’t have to do that at your job?” she joked.

“I try and avoid management whenever possible. Wouldn’t want them to see the real me, I might get fired as a result.”

“Why don’t you buy me a drink and let me try to uncover the real you for a while? I’m an excellent conversationalist.”

She slid an arm around my elbow and strolled as if we were in a park or on a deserted, dusky beach. We got to the bar and she ordered Dewar’s on the rocks; I should have guessed. I wished we were at a real bar instead of a catered, invitation-only party at a record store downtown. If this were an intervention from the Fates, they could have chosen a more comfortable atmosphere. Being single was rough at times, but when certain circumstances arose, I could count on my instincts if I was on my own turf.

We found a table away from the main area. We chatted 8

about Phantom Publishing and how I came to be in New York. I had told the story to so many nameless, faceless women, it was like a screenplay, well rehearsed. Yet something in her questioning persuaded me to be more open than I usually was with strangers. I told her about my writing and tiny publications here and there, surprised at my own candor. A writer is always willing to chew off an eager ear. Still, a certain reserve veiled the truth behind layers of mind only a few have managed to peel away.

I’d met maybe three true peelers in my life, and they were all refuse on the side of the long road of broken love my life had been for many years. Several more years convinced me that, potential or not, no woman would ever be worth baring my soul to. True love was too painful, I had learned that much. Yet, every time Janine touched my hand casually from across the table, another door flew open, and I wanted to tell her more.

“I have a few commitments here and need to hang around a while. Plus, I want to catch up with Joan, there’s been too much clamoring for us to talk much. What about you? I understand if you need to get out of here.”

“Are you trying to get me to leave? Concerned I’ll be ‘Too Much Trouble’?”

She blushed and looked shyly down at the table. “I didn’t think you knew who I was.”

“I don’t,” I said. “But I’m not opposed to trying to find out.”

Janine was from Long Island, but had recently acquired a place up in Brooklyn Heights. Apparently, the record label didn’t think that Janine Jordan and the Blue Is were a one hit wonder. I could work until I was seventy and never afford to even retire there in a one room rented condo, let alone own property. I was already living beyond my means in the village.

She said, “I love my new home, but never get to spend much time there. When I come to the city I live in hotels.”

I thought that may have been an invitation, but I couldn’t be sure. Even if it was, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to accept. It had been some time since I had met a woman that appealed to me both physically and intellectually. As much as I loved New York, 9

city women were one big breed and predominantly untrue.

There was something about Janine that was honest, and something else just a little bit sad. She intrigued me, and I couldn’t escape the novelty of being picked up by being asked about my tastes in literature. I was a little frightened of her. She was the sort of woman I would fall for if I allowed myself to.

But I wasn’t about to. I pegged her as probably bi, which I usually avoided. Not that I’d never overlooked it before, but it was usually in lieu of one-nighters. It dawned on me that I was afraid because I wasn’t viewing her as a one-nighter. I was watching her and thinking what it would be like to date her. That was a bad sign for me, my history was proof that relationships were largely not in my cards of fortune, despite love or even commitment. I’d tried both, and more than once.

So, as I listened to her speak I mentally switched gears to the low-down and dirty womanizer part of me, who thought it would be fun to fuck a singer. I was safer that way.

Later on, she introduced me to Joan Orlean. She was as mesmerizing in person as she was through my sub-woofer speakers. She looked tired, and said she was looking forward to the end of the tour, but that was eight months away. The three of us small-talked for a while, and, I have to admit, being close to the two of them and sensing that there had been at least one sexual encounter between them really turned me on. I thought I was blushing, so I excused myself and retreated to the bar, where I ran into Jan, who until that moment I had forgotten all about.

“Hey there, Maggie!”

“Hey Jan, let me buy you a drink?”

“Sure. I'm so glad you got in.”

We talked about Joan and the greatness of such a versatile singer. I talked to Jan for over an hour, but I wasn’t really listening. I hung out, pretending to stay because of Jan, but it started getting late, and I wondered if I shouldn’t just give Janine a polite handshake and go home. Another hour whooshed by, Jan went home to her husband and kids, and I still stayed. A combination of wanting to be in the same room with Janine and Joan and my alcoholic demon tugging at my sleeve 10

kept me chained to Avenue A Records. The drinks were getting to me, but hell, it was Saturday evening after all.

I thought I would move on after saying goodbye and go pick up someone I had no interest in at all, but that was just an attempt to fool myself. I had a feeling of impending doom; I knew I would run into the flames whole-heartedly and without care.

I felt as if I had been in that room sitting at the bar for days. I was spinning. I hated myself for having a heart that actually still functioned after so many years of broken glass in the roadway of my ill-fated love life. As always when I’d had enough to drink and on the verge of being honestly interested in someone, every ex I’ve had since I was fifteen came screaming into memory without remorse. One by one their faces rose up out of the dust in my mind like ancient phoenixes to remind me that, in the infamous wisdom of Led Zeppelin, “the soul of a woman was created below.” I was most certainly drunk and doomed, a disastrous combination.

While I was nursing another gin and tonic (I’d lost count ages ago) Janine came to retrieve me from the bar.

“Hey stranger, why so glum?”

She was still filled with energy, not enough time to travel back and forth to the well as I had, allowing me to sink within myself and brood.

“Life is a double edged sword, one of laughter one of pain…”

“Forever cutting the heart asunder.”

She finished my Dickinson quote without even so much as a flutter of eyelids.

Amazing.

“Well, truth is beauty…”

“Beauty truth.”

My turn. I couldn’t remember anyone ever being able to play this game so well since my ex-fiancé. That hurt, but was inspiring, nonetheless.

“Joan wants to go grab something to eat. Are you interested?”

Was I interested? Not in dining, that was for sure. I was 11

hungry, but the hunger in my loins was much more predominant. I remained silent, assuming it would be taken for a disgruntled ‘no’.

“I think I know what you need. Don’t let it worry you, Joan and I have been blowing each other off since we were little kids.”

She trotted away, exchanged a few polite words with Joan, and then went to a young guy in jeans and a T-shirt. They disappeared behind a row of CDs. Instinct told me she was making a “business transaction.” When she returned to me, I noticed for the first time her patchouli scent. I could drown in that smell. She took my hand and inserted a perfectly packaged eight ball of coke. She did indeed know what I needed. I was a drunk by trade, with marijuana as a comforting friend, but occasional recreational rich-kid drugs were a nice alternative.

“Well, well,” I said. “How do you know I’m not a cop disguised as a square with a straight job in publishing?”

“Because if you were, you wouldn’t have had to bribe Jack Kasper to get you in here tonight.” So she’d asked around. I was flattered but a little embarrassed.

“I think Joan would go home with you. Want to change up your date for the evening? I wouldn’t hold it against you.”

“Yes, but does Joan know Dickinson? Somehow I doubt it.”

“How do you feel about silent films? ‘Nosferatu’ is at the art theater down the street. Plays all night.”

She brushed a hand against my cheek and kissed me. I felt as if it lasted for eternity, and had that sensation of falling I knew all too well. I was about to complicate everything I had taken years and years to get under control. If thirty had been the luckiest year of my life, thirty-two was about to be my descent into the maelstrom.

* * * *

After the movie, we strolled around Tompkins Square Park and talked about the lack of biographical information available on Murnau. We hadn’t touched the coke and I switched to soda the moment we left Avenue A. I wanted to remember everything.

12

Sitting on a park bench, Janine told me about how she had come to be the front woman for the Blue Is, who had already been an established rock blues band on the local tri-state area circuit.

They weren’t getting radio play at all, and their manager had thrust Janine upon them in spite of their disdain. Much animosity ensued, but after their first live performance of “Too Much Trouble,” which was an original Janine piece, everything changed to a fairytale. The boys in the band couldn’t deny Janine’s seduction of the audience, and the audience was how records were sold. However, much like The Doors of long ago, they were having difficulty capturing their live presence in a studio.

I listened to her and mentally memorized every aspect of her physicality. Within hours, she became more and more beautiful to me and it scared the hell out of me. We got up to walk again, and came upon several musicians strumming their way through one whole half of the Beatles’ White album. Janine kept her hold on my arm and brought me down to the ground to sit with them in a semi-circle. A joint and a carafe of cheap sangria were making their way around and we each had a hit from both bottle and smoke. It was good quality weed for a bunch of struggling artists, they must have had a “regular at the park” discount.

When the group reached “Blackbird” Janine launched into song with a voice as sweet as a morning dove. I fought back the screaming phoenixes and decided I would allow myself to fall after all. She was much too sweet to be another devil in my long list of devils wearing blue dresses. I eased into the twilight of the early hours, and reminded myself what a terrific enigma the city was, and I looked forward to peeling the layers away with Janine as I lost myself in that magical voice. I allowed myself to imagine a near future, complete with moonlight and dinners and long summer nights, my romantic soul ignited with possibility.

More sangria went around. Janine lay cradled in my arms, singing along softly to a variety of seventies tunes, and occasionally craning upwards for those tender little kisses so typical of a new attraction to an unknown soul. I didn’t want the night to end, and tried to ignore the rising sun in hopes that I had some magical 13