The Black & The White (17 page)

I raised my margarita to thank him. He
was drinking water.

“
To our first date,” I
said.

Before I left, Jeffrey asked to meet
me for coffee later on in the week.

“
Like a coffee date?” I
asked. He smiled. Suddenly I felt myself become nervous not
understanding why.

“
Something like that,” he
said before giving me a hug goodbye.

When I got home, Meowser, my cat
seemed sad and lacked the usual excitement he had when he saw me.
.

“
You mad at me?” I asked. I
picked up his brush and began combing his fur, talking to him about
Jeffrey’s offer. “I mean, he’s like a best friend, kind of like
Dani. Well, sort of like a Dani. I mean. I do have a crush on him.
Why am I so nervous? What do you think, kitty?”

I realized I had put more emphasis on
a date than needed be. In my mind, I had married the man before I
even kissed him. Then I realized that I was just scared to be hurt
and abandoned.

Meowser began drooling. I laughed and
decided I was crazy for talking to a cat. I called Kim, who was
working late at the office.

“
What the fuck is a coffee
date?” she asked, laughing. “Listen, I think he’s a great, great
guy. He’s super sweet. A true gentleman. Single. And plus he’s hot
and owns a restaurant!”

“
Yeah, I’m excited…I think.
How are you doing?” I asked.

Kim was silent for a moment before
answering. “I’m okay. Things with M.D. are great and all. Sex is
amazing and I have so much fun with him, but sometimes, it just
gets so hard between us.” She paused. “He’s not mine. He doesn’t
belong to me. I mean, I know he likes me. But sometimes it gets
tiring. The more I hang with him, the more I like him,” she
said.

I added a few uh-huhs and yeses
intermittently but what I wanted to say I held back in fear of
sounding judgmental. I felt bad for her suffering. I know that to
love and to lose someone is hard, but to love someone you cannot
have seems worse someone you cannot have seems worst. What about
the wife? How did M.D feel? I started to wonder if you can choose
who you fall in love with. Just then, it seemed as if life in New
York was becoming increasingly more complicated.

“
I don’t know. I guess I’m
just being emotional.” There was silence. “I feel like I’m stuck. I
just can’t be with him. How are we supposed to progress if I’m the
other woman?” Silence again. “I just don’t want what happened to
Jessica to happen to me.”

“
What happened to Jessica?”
I hadn’t heard Jessica’s name in a while.

Kim told me the story. Dover’s
interest in Jessica had fizzled out. He no longer tried to charm
her or whisper sweet nothings in her ear. Sensing the loss of his
affection, Jessica had become desperate and began to stalk Dover at
work, at bars, and even at his home. One day, at a trendy West
Village restaurant, Jessica’s friend saw Dover kissing a young
woman who looked like a model. The friend immediately phoned
Jessica to come to the restaurant to witness the crime for
herself.

Jessica recognized the girl from the
barbeque at M.D.’s several weeks earlier. Dover saw Jessica and
quickly looked away. Jessica approached him to say hi. She wanted
to make sure he knew she was there. But Ben was very cold to her.
He said hello and then quickly turned back to his date and
continued to run his fingers through her hair. Jessica then tapped
the woman on her protruding clavicle and said, “Remember me? Didn’t
I meet you at a barbeque in the Hamptons? You remember right?” The
woman shook her head. “Oh, well, you don’t? I was actually with
Ben. We fucked that weekend.” Ben nudged Jessica away from the bar.
“Well, I have to let you know, his dick is small. And it’s
crooked!” Jessica felt vindicated and walked away. “Shut the fuck
up, bitch. Leave, you psycho!” Ben yelled drawing the attention of
many bar patrons. Jessica then took his drink and tipped it onto
his shirt.

At work the next day, in a jealous
rage, Jessica stomped over to Dover’s desk. She grabbed him and
slapped him loud enough for the traders seated in an elevated floor
several rows back to hear. Ben stood up, grabbed her arms, and
tried to constrain her. He had anticipated some drama, but not this
much. The more he tried to control her fit of rage, the more she
seemed to become enraged.

“
Apparently, he was really
pissed.” Kim said. “Ben pulled Jessica into the conference room. No
one could see, but you could hear them yelling.”

“
I felt bad for the poor
girl,” Kim said. “She called me from home in hysterics. She wanted
to call the wife. I told her not to, but there was no stopping her
emotional rage.”

“
I can imagine,” I said. As
much as I wanted to be sympathetic to Jessica, it was hard. I was
more curious about the drama. “Did she call?”

Kim nodded as she drank her
wine.

“
What did Jess
say?”

“
That she had been having
sex with her asshole of a husband.”

“
How’d you know?” I
asked.

“
You should know by now that
word gets around pretty fast. But, Jessica called me
afterwards.”

I asked Kim how she had gotten his
private home number.

“
The internal database. It
has everyone’s personal info in there. Scary, huh?” Kim
shuddered.

“
Oh, my God. What did the
wife say?”

“‘
Who is this? Who the fuck
is this?’ Or something like that. Jessica said she screamed into
the phone, ‘Ben knows who it is. Ask him where he was last night.
He wasn’t at a meeting and he wasn’t with me, where he normally is
after work.’”

Trying to convince her that this was
no joke, Jessica proceeded to tell her the extent of his
infidelities and that although her relationship with him was over,
she should question the twenty-one-year-old girl he had been caught
with the previous night. Jessica then offered to show Ben’s wife
all the letters and emails her husband had written to
Jessica.

“
Poor girl,” Kim
said.

“
Oh, my God! Poor wife!” I
said.

“
Yeah, that too,” Kim said
with a less-than-empathetic tone.

“
The wife apparently called
Ben at work to find out if what Jessica had said was
true.”

“
How’d you know?”

“
Well, M.D. filled me in on
what happened at work and then called to ask if I had known of what
had just happened. Go figure. Guys like to gossip too!
Unbelievable,” she continued.

Although Ben and Jessica had pretended
at work to be just friends, suspicions were fed by their
simultaneous trips to the bathroom. Ben had also boasted to his
“boys” on the trading desk about their sexual dalliances. It was
hard for unsuspecting passersby not to overhear.

“
There’s no such thing as a
secret on the trading floor,” Kim said.

The next day, after work, I stopped in
at the Biltmore Room to see Jeffrey. He immediately threw down his
apron and suggested we go to a coffee shop a couple of blocks
away.

We sat and talked for a couple of
hours, with great ease. By the end of the night, I looked at him
and said, “I guess this is our coffee date.”

He smiled. “I guess so. You’re not
going to run away now, are you?”

“
Don’t you have to go back
to work?”

“
I’ll report it back to the
boss,” he said with a grin.

M
y
new apartment in Hell’s Kitchen was a two-bedroom railroad
apartment. It was actually a one-bedroom that the landlord had
partitioned in order to be able to call it a two-bedroom. It was a
third floor walk-up with outdated appliances. The front gas burner
did not light, and the kitchen sink did not drain. The bathroom and
bedroom windows faced the adjacent apartment. I covered the window
with a curtain to maintain an element of privacy. Despite the
shortcomings, I was excited to have my own apartment for the first
time in my life, with no one to consider—except Meowser.

Jeffrey had asked if he could help
move me that Saturday, but not wanting to inconvenience him, I
opted for an online advert for a “Man with a Van,” to help me move.
I only had enough things for a van.. He was an old man in his late
sixties, much like his van.

I looked around the room of my new
place and smiled. It was the first time I had lived on my
own.

The next day, Kim and M.D had stopped
over to help me get things from IKEA. She even brought me a bag of
clothes she no longer liked. I liked them still.

I was very thankful of M.D’s gesture
knowing he had to lie to his family in order to help me
move.

“
Don’t worry about it, baby.
He’ll get rewarded later on.” Kim winked after I told her I felt
bad.

The Monday I went to work, I felt
liberated. There was a sense of freedom about finally having my
very own space that I could call my own, even if it wasn’t
plush.

“
You get all settled in your
new apartment Isabelle?” Andrew asked at work.

“
Yes, it was harrowing, but
my Kim helped me. I still need to get little things like plates and
such. But I did upgrade to a queen-size mattress,” I replied as
though a larger bed was an achievement.

“
When are you inviting me to
your apartment to christen it?” he asked.

I wanted to say something sharp in
response but worried about keeping my job. I rolled my eyes
instead.

“
Come on! I just want to
make sure that you get the best bed for yourself. Let’s test it
out,” Andrew continued as he laughed a devilish laugh.

I looked around and wondered if anyone
else had heard him.

“
Hey, by the way, we have
that hedge fund event tonight. Don’t forget. Go to your new home
and try to wear something sexy. There’ll be a lot of prospective
clients. It’ll be good for us to go and get more biz.”

I was beginning to dread going with
Andrew to customer-related events. Andrew had a tricky way of
continually making me feel uncomfortable in a group setting, by
discussing impertinent facts about my body, my looks, or making
suggestive comments about having sex with me. Although I didn’t
want to go, the fact was that client entertainment was part my job,
a job that I had worked hard to obtain.

“
Stephen will be there,” he
said. “But don’t talk to just him the whole night. There are people
there from Molecular Capital that I want to meet, and you’re my
secret weapon. Five O’clock. Don’t be late. I need you
there.”

It was the usual. Andrew expected me
to engage potential clients long enough to introduce them to
Andrew. From there, he would try to solicit their
business.

On my way home to change for the
event, I remembered that I had made plans earlier with Jeffrey. He
wanted to take me to Bed, Bath and Beyond to pick up what he
considered “mandatory household necessities.”

I called to take a rain check on his
offer to help.

“
No worries. Take your time.
Why don’t you stop by the restaurant when you finish for a night
cap?”

I agreed.

I put on a low-cut canary-yellow
wrinkled-chiffon designer tank top—the most expensive piece I
owned—with the crème, flowing pants I inherited from Kim’s used
closed she gave me.

I looked at my breasts in the mirror
and remembered Kim’s comment at the store when I had purchased the
shirt.

“
How do you think I have
these men wrapped around my finger? By having great tits or great
hair. Make them want it,” she’d said as she cupped her
breasts.

I left the apartment nearly skipping
with confidence.

It had been almost two weeks since I’d
last seen Stephen. I was excited. I had been spending less time
with him and more with Jeffrey.

I met Andrew on Park Avenue and 47th
Street. He wanted to walk in together to the event. While we were
walking through one of the side tunnels of the Met Life building, I
heard someone call out Andrew’s name. Recognizing the voice as
Stephen’s, I smiled.

When I looked over at him, Stephen’s
eyes were bloodshot, his shirt was un-tucked and tie unknotted. He
was boisterous and was clumsy as he approached us. It was more than
apparent that he had already had too much to drink, and it was only
five o’clock.

“
Well, hello there,
Isabelle.” He greeted me with a kiss on the right cheek. I turned
to kiss him on the other cheek, per Kim’s instructions, but he
pulled away.

“
Oh, sorry, I forgot you do
it the European way.” He giggled and reached out to kiss my left
cheek. He reeked of alcohol.

As we continued to walk to the bar, I
handed him my new purse. Stephen looked somewhat
perplexed.

“
Well, aren’t you going to
ask to take my bag to check in?” I said.

“
Oops. Sorry, Miss
Isabelle,” he said as he curtsied.

“
What’s going on with you?
You seem rather…” I paused, in search of the right word. “Mannerly,
I guess.”