The Black & The White (36 page)

I kissed him on his forehead before I
left. We made plans to see each other the next day.

The next morning, Jeffrey called me at
work earlier than usual.

“
Hey, love. You’re up and
about early,” I said.

“
I’m always up reading the
paper and having my coffee before I start my day. It’s my boring
routine,” he said coldly. “You have fun last night?” he
asked.

“
Um, yeah,” I said
hesitantly. I had forgotten I had lied to him.

“
You do anything
fun?”

“
You know, just the same old
stuff.” I rummaged through my memory bank. What had I told him I
was doing?

“
Just saw you in the papers
this morning. Page Six.”

Shit! I thought. I suddenly remembered
the picture taken of us at the restaurant. “Oh, yeah, well. He
called late last night,” I said feebly.

He interrupted me. “It’s okay,
Isabelle. Don’t explain. I need space right now. We’ll talk
sometime soon.”

“
Jeffrey,” I said. But then
I didn’t know what else to say. I hadn’t given myself any time to
think about a response. “It’s not what it seems,” I said. “I didn’t
lie to you.”

I asked Andrew if he had read the New
York Post that morning.

He laughed and said, “I don’t read
that shit. But some idiot around here probably has it.” He looked
around. “Ask that guy.” He pointed to the clerk at the end of the
row.

I asked to see Page Six and noticed
that the picture was of David lifting me up by my waist when he
first saw me in front of the restaurant. The picture had been
printed along with a caption that read, “Love is in the
air.”

Smiling, I brought the paper back to
my desk. I couldn’t believe they’d put me in the papers. Although I
knew it was vain of me to enjoy seeing myself on the gossip page, I
couldn’t help it. How could I not enjoy it? How often would I be
seen with a celebrity?

Andrew looked over my shoulder. “Is
that you Isabelle?” he asked as he quickly snatched the paper from
my hand. “That’s hilarious. That is you!”

Immediately, he dropped the paper and
called Stephen. “You see your girl on Page Six today?”

I didn’t care what Stephen knew. I was
thinking only of Jeffrey. As they were talking, I received a call
on my cell phone from David.

“
I think he’s calling her
now!” Andrew said to Stephen.

I shot Andrew a dirty look. Asshole, I
thought. I got up from my desk and walked to the reception area to
talk.

“
Hey there, babe,” I said to
David, pretending I had not seen the pictures.

“
Good morning,” David said.
“Um…I just wanted to let you know that, well, I hope you don’t get
offended if your picture is in the gossip columns. Don’t believe
those things that you see or hear, Isabelle. People just write
stuff just to stir trouble.” He was being vague.

“
What picture?” I said. Then
I thought Fuck, I’m lying again. I started to walk back to my desk.
There was a part of me that wanted Andrew to hear what I was saying
to David.

“
Page Six,” David
said.

“
Oh, Page Six,” I
repeated.

Andrew smiled. I pretended to be
annoyed by him, but I was enjoying the fact that he was
eavesdropping.

“
My publicist called to let
me know. Just don’t be mad,” he continued. “Isabelle, I have to
leave town tomorrow to do this award thing in London. Someone
bagged and now I have to fill in for the spot. Will you come and
visit me there?” he asked. “My studio will cover
everything.”

I could hear Andrew sniggering to the
right of me with Stephen. Word had spread through the trading floor
like a brush fire, and within minutes Carin was attempting to patch
through to me on my line. I ignored her.

“
Are you asking me on
another date?” I said, teasingly. I looked over at Andrew. I
overheard him say to Stephen, “Another date.”

“
You’re funny. You went home
early last night for a cat! I’m still hurt. Bleeding actually. I am
taking you to dinner, although it is in London. Please
come.”

“
I’ll think about
it.”

As soon as I hung up, I called Kim.
“You are not going to believe this! David McFadden asked me to go
to London with him. Oh, my God!” I screamed into the
phone.

“
That’s great, baby. And
what did you say?” Kim didn’t sound excited at all.

“
I said I would consider it.
Should I go? Or is that bad? Oh, my God, I don’t know what to do.
What will I tell Jeffrey?”

“
You should go. But can we
talk about this later? I was up until five a.m. this
morning.”

“
Were you working?” I
remembered what Jeffrey had told me about her and Eric and wondered
if she would tell me the truth.

Kim paused. “Yeah, I was at work.” I
knew then she was lying.

“
Let’s meet tonight then,
babe,” I said.

“
Um, can’t tonight. I have
to work,” she said. I wasn’t convinced.

I called Carin, next. She was excited
for me the way I had hoped Kim would be.

“
You better go!” she said. I
needed to hear someone be definitive with me.

“
You’re right! I’m going.
Can you feed my cat?” I asked, laughing. I had never been to
London.

I asked Andrew if I could take several
days off. He said he would let me on the condition that I explain
to him my relationship with David. There was not much to explain,
so I embellished a little for the sake of the story.

“
Goddamn it! That guy gets
to sleep with you before I do.” I rolled my eyes. I didn’t want to
let him know I hadn’t had sex with him yet.

“
I have everything set for
you. Just bring your passport,” David said on the telephone before
he took off for London.

That night, while I packed, I tucked a
small bag of cocaine in the pocket of one of my dresses and rolled
the dress up into a bundle. I knew I wouldn’t be able to find drugs
there and with the time-zone change, I needed something to keep me
up. I didn’t even think about any possible consequences.

T
he
receptionist at the hotel handed me my room key along with a
hardcover edition of the book One Hundred Years of Solitude. There
was a note on the stationery tucked inside the pages that read
“Welcome. Meet me downstairs at the Blake’s bar at 7pm. Cheers,
David”

A London city map as well as a tube
stop guide was in an envelope addressed to me.

The room was sexy, decorated in
alternating khaki and egg-white diagonal stripes. It was theatrical
without being ostentatious. I reveled in the luxury of the suite. I
especially liked the striped four-poster bed. Although the bed
itself wasn’t as comfortable as the one at The Four Seasons, with
its Frette sheets, the décor was much more high style. The window
next to the bed looked out onto a courtyard, and a sitting area was
designed to capture the view. The sitting area sunk deep into the
floor, which reminded me of the Japanese tearoom Stephen had taken
me to in midtown.

I decided to shower before I met
David. The bathroom was covered in mirrors. Even the wall of the
shower was mirrored.

I put on my the black taffeta
Catherine Malandrino dress I had bought the week before, strapped
on the Jimmy Choo high heels Kim had given me, and made my way down
the narrow wooden staircase. It was the outfit Kim had suggested I
wear. “This will knock his socks off,” she had told me. I threw on
some jewelry around my wrist and neck. I applied one more coat of
lip-gloss, smacked my lips together and kissed myself in the
mirror.

“
Damn, you look good,” I
said to myself. I no longer felt like that awkward girl in high
school. I was now part of a metropolitan crowd, traveling to London
to be with a celebrity. It all would have seemed surreal to me the
previous year, but it was now my reality. I reached into my small
purse and did a line before I went to the bathroom. I was happy
that I had brought some with me.

On my way down to meet David, Stephen
called me. “Baby, it seems like you’ve been gone forever. I miss
you.” He sounded emotional. Strange.

“
What’s all this mushy
stuff? Are you drunk?” I asked as I carefully descended the
staircase.

“
Well, yes, but I still miss
you. I was out last night at the strip club and I missed you,” he
said, ruining the sweetness.

“
Are you okay?” I asked. His
words were extremely slurred. It was only one o’clock in the
afternoon in New York.

“
At a bar. I woke up on the
street last night” He laughed.

I sighed. How could he think waking up
after having passed out on the street was funny? How could he
continue drinking after a night like that? What was wrong with
him?

Before I could finish my conversation,
a hand seized me by my arm and pulled me. I stumbled on the last
few steps, nearly missing them. David lifted me up and carried me
down the small corridor into the men’s bathroom around the corner
from the small reception area. He pushed me into a bathroom stall
and pinned me against the wall. He lifted my dress and began to
kiss my navel, then made his way up to my lips. My phone dropped on
the black-and-white tile floor. Stephen was still on the
line.

“
Thanks for visiting me,
Isabelle,” David whispered into my ear. I felt the warmth of his
breath and the soft touches of his tongue on my ears. I gently
nudged him away.

David rubbed my back while we kissed
and asked me to go to dinner without my panties on.

“
These are now mine,” David
said, placing my underwear in his jeans pocket. “Now we can go out
and get this evening started. I’ll meet you at the bar in ten
minutes. Just got to make a quick phone call.”

I picked up my phone from the tile
floor. It was still connected.

“
Hello,” I said. Stephen had
just hung up. I wondered if he had heard David and me. It didn’t
matter to me how he felt, I concluded. My relationship with Stephen
was a dead end, and being in London was a way for me to put him
behind me. At least, I was trying to.

I waited inside the dimly lit bar and
sipped on my lychee martini, eating the wasabi peas in the bowl.
The few days prior to my leaving for London had been such a
whirlwind; I had neglected to tell Jeffrey I was going away. I
hadn’t given Jeffrey much thought. As I sat at the bar, staring at
the bartender, who resembled Jeffrey, I started to feel remorse.
Not telling Jeffrey felt like a lie. How could I keep lying like
this?

I thought about calling him and
apologizing then, but I couldn’t. To do so would be adding insult
to injury. I thought about what I would say to him when I did speak
to him again.

Just then, I felt David reach around
my waist and kiss my cheeks.

“
You can’t be in deep
thought at a bar eating wasabi nuts with the sexiest guy in this
bar sitting next to you,” he said.

“
Sorry, I was just in a
daze. Just tired from the trip, I guess.” I needed a bump of
cocaine. David hadn’t known me to ever do drugs. I knew to be
careful not to alert him of my habit.

We sat at the bar, talking and
flirting, while the other patrons ogled us. I whispered in his ear,
teasing him about my being naked under my dress.

“
If you don’t stop, you’re
going to get it,” he said. “The room is right upstairs.”

I kissed him.

We left the bar giggling.

We were driven three blocks until we
stopped at an Indian restaurant on Old Brompton Road called “The
Star of India.” David assured me that London had better Indian food
than New York. And he was right. The food was outstanding, more
adventurous than that in the traditional Indian restaurants I had
eaten at in New York. His affinity for food made me like him even
more.

Throughout dinner, I tried to remain
composed as David whispered all the things he wanted to do to me. I
was ecstatic and charmed. I still couldn’t believe I was in
London.

We left the restaurant, already buzzed
from the wine, and headed to a cast party for a friend of his. We
passed through Hyde Park, through the gilded gates, onto a street
of white town houses. The townhouse seemed unassuming from the
outside but through the oak doors was an apartment unlike any I had
ever seen.

The floor throughout the apartment was
impressive. The wood was a deep brown, nearly black, with
striations of light and dark, a stark contrast to the crème-colored
furniture. Later, I learned it was panga-panga wood shipped in from
Africa. The doorknob was made of real silver. I also learned that
the apartment came with an eight-figure price tag in British
pounds. I had assumed a house with this price would have the
exaggerated opulence of ornate furnishings, yet the apartment was
minimalist.

I looked over at the far end of the
wall and saw in a lighted display a painting by Robert
Rauschenberg, an American artist that I had studied in an art
history class in college. I realized then that I was out of my
league. What am I doing here? I thought, suddenly insecure. I
really needed a line.