The Year of Yes (20 page)

I leaned. I felt. I wondered if I’d misjudged the Designer.

“A sofa is on the way,” he said, and then sat down on the floor in lotus position and offered me a glass of wine. Glass? Not actually. A Dixie Cup. Well, I could deal with that. I didn’t have wineglasses, either. I looked around the corner. Yes, a jug. All very familiar to me. The computer was
enormous and intimidating, however, and it was playing a selection of blues CDs.

“When does it arrive?” We’d already been through the typical conversation topics and discovered that we had almost nothing in common. The Designer was very nice, but he had a tendency to look intensely at me and nod, like a bobble-head doll. He had no conversation starters up his sleeve, either. He’d have been perfectly pleased to stay silent, nodding forever, as far as I could tell, with the exception of the occasional outburst about exposed brick.

“In about five minutes,” said the Designer, looking at his watch. I tried to start two conversations, then gave up and started singing along with the CD, which had become Ray Charles. The Designer nodded, in seeming contentment. We sat for five minutes, and finally, there was a knock at the door. “There it is.”

The Designer opened the door to two equally normal-looking, if sweat-drenched, guys. They did not look like delivery guys. They looked like software designers. Which, in fact, was what they were. The Designer was borrowing their couch for the night. They both flashed him the thumbs-up when they left. They thought I didn’t see, but I did. Kind of sweet, I thought.

I got up and went to look at the Designer’s books, which were still in boxes. “How long have you lived here?”

“One, two, oh, I guess it’s three years now,” he said, as though there was nothing odd about living in an apartment for three years without furnishing it at all.

The Designer seemed to have a collection of books of love poems. I asked what he liked about them, and he came over, looking very excited. He pulled out a book of Neruda.

“I love Neruda!” I said, relieved that we’d now have a topic.

“I haven’t read the book.” He opened it to the frontispiece, and showed me an inscription. “I like the handwritten stuff,” he said. “You know, love stories that got donated to the Salvation Army.”

Apparently, the Designer would thumb through these books of secondhand poems, looking for inscriptions dedicating sonnets to people who were no longer adored. He liked that they’d been tossed out among the fondue makers, blenders, and leftovers of marriages. He liked to think of love relegated to curbside pickup, put into cardboard boxes with old lingerie and cat scratching posts. It made him feel as though his own life was maybe not so dismal, as though other people gave their love away, as well, as though other people had not understood its value. Love poems. Inscriptions vowing forever. Just paper in the end. The Designer was replete with other people’s failures.

“Do you have any of your own?” I asked, thinking maybe that was what had started him on this strange collection.

“Any what?”

“Any books given to you by old girlfriends?”

“Oh, I don’t have any old girlfriends.” He sounded cheerful enough about this, despite its inherent sadness.

“How is that possible?” He had to be thirty.

“I used to be bigger. Much, much bigger. My whole life, I was, I guess you’d say, ‘morbidly obese.’ That’s not a very nice phrase, though. Three hundred and sixty-one pounds was my top weight. Or thereabouts. I stopped weighing myself. Want to see a picture?”

He rummaged in a book box, until he found a 1970s-era photo of a poor little kid in a cowboy hat, standing in a sprinkler. The kid was wide. Very, very wide. He was clutching the kind of inner tube that is supposed to go around your waist, but it was clear this one wasn’t going to.

Did this mean that the Designer was a virgin? Yes, it probably did. That was a terrifying prospect. I’d never understood the appeal of sleeping with virgins. I knew some men who’d isolated this category as their number one object of pursuit. First footprints on the moon, or something. Planting the flag at the North Pole.

No woman would do such a thing. We wanted to arrive sometime after about four or five explorers had already been there, and built a fire. We were willing to attempt to train men who were bad lovers, but we were not really willing to start from scratch. Not even when we were ourselves inexperienced. We didn’t want a lost man. Men were lost enough. Besides, if something turned out to be askew, we wanted to have someone to blame. If you were the first, you could only blame yourself.

“I just decided, enough was enough,” said the Designer. “One day, I stopped eating anything that made me happy.” He nodded at me a few more times.

Now that I knew his history, it seemed that his bobbling was largely an attempt to get a better view up my skirt. I crossed my legs.

“And how about now?”

“Basically, mostly celery. Crudités are a wonderful weight management tool. I hope you like zucchini,” he said.

“I love zucchini,” I said. Not necessarily by the ton, but I did like it. He brought a platter out of the kitchen. Uh-oh. Crudités.

“It’s a raw dinner!” he announced, smiling joyfully. “Raw foods are really good for you.” He placed the platter in front of me. Ten pounds of raw vegetables. He sat back and watched me. I took a carrot. He bobbled.

“Aren’t you having any?”

“No, I’ll just watch you,” he said. “I like to watch other people eat. It makes me happy.”

The blues howled loud and long over the computer speakers, and I tried to crunch my carrot in the quietest way possible. I looked down at the plate. It was going to be a long night. I figured I’d just eat the crudités, and then excuse myself. I couldn’t ruin what was very possibly his first date ever.

Then he brought out the cake. It looked like birdseed mixed with treacle. He smiled.

“I got the recipe from a veterinarian,” he said.

“You mean a vegetarian?” I asked.

“No, a veterinarian,” he replied. “Raw food is also good for animals. I mean, we’re animals, too. Human animals. That’s why we crave things. Like cake. It’s really good! Try it.”

I picked up my fork. I took a bite. Birdseed. That was what it was. Birdseed.

I pecked at my sesame seeds and suet, thinking that nice apartments were not really what mattered to me. I’d gone out with a guy on the basis of an apartment brag once before, and it hadn’t gone well.

That guy, who’d owned a swanky building in Williamsburg, had made me a Bloody Mary with half a bottle of Tabasco in it, and then tried to seduce me through the bathroom door as I choked on fire.

“I just wanted to heat things up,” he’d said, in a voice that was trying to be sexy.

“You did,” I’d replied. “And now I’m going to die.” What kind of guy used chilies to heat up a date? It was as though he’d skimmed
Like Water for Chocolate
for seduction techniques, not understanding that it had not been the chilies that had done the heavy lifting in that book, but the unrequited love.

“I’ll give you a deal on an apartment,” Tabasco Bastard had said.

“I don’t think so,” I’d said. It had not really mattered to me whether or not his building had hardwood floors. I’d developed a hatred for him, and that was all I’d cared about. Spicy foods were not something I liked. Half a bottle of Tabasco? Not only that, he’d been boring. Men who were obsessed with things like hardwood floors and mill work tended, as a rule, to be deeply dull. At least he’d eaten, though. He’d eaten all of my dinner, as well as his own, prior to the Bloody Mary interchange. What kind of person drank a Bloody Mary as an after-dinner drink? Only someone without a clue. Not that people without a clue weren’t sometimes nice.

The Designer was definitely nice. He was so nice that he ate a whole radish, so that I wouldn’t feel alone. I couldn’t leave him mid-date. He was too lost.

He swooped toward me, a little while later, just as I stood to tell him that I’d had fun, but was really tired. He seemed to be possibly dancing to the Ray Charles. He grabbed me, and gave me a kiss that could only be compared to how it might have felt if I’d picked up a mussel shell on a beach and stuck my tongue inside it. It was, hands down, the worst kiss
I’d ever had. Could I blame him? It was probably his first. He bobbled his way to the bathroom, and I pounced on his phone and called Vic, hoping I could get her to save me.

“Vic?”

“Why are you whispering?”

“I’m trapped in a gorgeous apartment with a virgin.”

“Why are you calling me? Don’t you want to destroy his innocence?” Sarcasm. Well, what had I expected?

“You might like to see the apartment.” Vic was as fixated on exposed brick as anyone. Sometimes we’d bonded over other people’s apartments. I hoped that she’d take the bait. If she came over, we could gracefully exit without crushing the Designer’s self-esteem.

“Is it nice?”

“Gorgeous. And empty.”

“I take it you need to be saved. Fine. You owe me.”

I gave her the address.

“I’m still mad at you, you know,” she said. “I’ll be right there.”

This was one of the reasons I loved Vic. Even if she was deathly pissed off at me, she’d still save me from a bad date. I would have done the same for her, and I had on occasion. I told the Designer that I’d checked my messages and that my roommate happened to be in the area. He was delighted.

When Vic arrived, she admired the Designer’s exposed brick and water view. He fluttered around, looking thrilled to have not just one, but two girls in his apartment. He’d had his first kiss, and now he was confident.

“Cake?” he said to Vic. I shook my head surreptitiously at her.

“No thanks,” she said. “Nice couch!”

“Thank you,” said the Designer. “I designed it myself.” He looked at me somewhat guiltily, but I didn’t give him away. Vic sat down on the couch. I sat on one side of her. The Designer sat on the other.

“So,” Vic said.

“So,” I said.

“So,” the Designer said, and then launched forward and tried to kiss me over Vic.

“What are you doing?” said Vic.

“Nothing,” said the Designer.

“So, we’re late,” said Vic.

“We are,” I said apologetically.

The poor guy didn’t really deserve to be dumped this way, especially after he’d given me so much birdseed, but dumping him now seemed like a kinder thing than dumping him later. You couldn’t date someone just because you felt sorry for them. I should have learned that before, but somehow it was only just becoming clear.

“Thanks for the crudités and the cake,” I said.

“Thanks for the exposed brick,” Vic said.

“Do you want my apartment?” the Designer asked. It was too sad.

“No, we’re okay together,” said Vic. “Our place is fine.” She looked at me. She nodded. I wasn’t forgiven, but I was on my way.

WHEN WE GOT HOME, I went to the closet and got Pierre’s vacuum out. I went downstairs and knocked on his door.

“I hadn’t even noticed I’d left that at your place,” Pierre said, looking at the vacuum. It was true. I hadn’t heard his morning vacuuming in days. Maybe Pierre was changing, too.

We had an awkward hug. The insane attraction was gone, and all that was left between us was the kind of feeling that survivors share. We didn’t have love, but we had a series of nights spent holding onto each other. That counted for more than I would have thought it would.

“Want to taste this?” asked Pierre, holding out his whisk. I decided that at least I might have learned how to trust him. I nodded. He put his finger into his bowl and then into my mouth.

Sweet. Not spicy at all. “Thanks,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” he said, and grinned at me. “Now I know what you like.”

I kissed Pierre for the last time, and then ran back up the stairs and home.

In Which Our Heroine Travels to Foreign Lands…

I WAS WAITING FOR THE TRAIN at Fifty-ninth Street, when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned, and saw my worst nightmare made flesh. Black-and-white stripes. Expression of agonizingly good cheer. Whiteface. A tilted beret. A red flower, in the buttonhole of a black bolero jacket. I shook my head violently. No good. In front of me stood a man in the Marceau mold.

The Mime was offering me a crepe paper rose. I tried to take it, but he snatched it away, wiggling an admonishing finger at me.

My initial impulse was toward violence. Throw the Mime from the platform and onto the third rail. It was rare that I felt like a superhero, but every time I saw a mime, my guts told me that I ought to eliminate the villain. I resisted. I smiled. I was not violent. Oh no. I gritted my teeth. I was nice. I was not judgmental. So what if this person thought it was a kick in the pants to dress up in tights and plague pedestrians with false joie de vivre? What did I care? I was enchanted. I was rapturous. O Mime! I’ve waited for you my entire life!

The Mime seemed surprised by my welcoming smile, but then started building a wall, from which protection he played peekaboo. I started to walk to another part of the platform, but the Mime scampered in front of me and started
to mime falling in love. His hands fluttered in front of his heart. His mouth formed an O of adulation. I stood there, colossally uncomfortable. People were watching. They thought I, a sworn enemy to mimes everywhere, wanted this mime. Why was the train so slow?

The Mime reached into his pocket, shyly fingering something. He gave me an invisible blush, signified by bashful patting of his cheeks. He knelt. He opened an invisible ring box, bit an invisible diamond to show me it was real, and then offered me an invisible ring.

What was I going to do? It was the Year of Yes. This was an offer. No, I didn’t have to marry him, but in mime language, this was what passed for a date. I took the ring. The Mime fitted it onto my finger, admiring the results, and then came in for a kiss.

It was a peck, luckily. Mimes don’t do tongue. They aren’t supposed to have them.

The Mime linked arms with me, attempting to walk me down an invisible aisle. He started silently conversing with an invisible officiator, took an invisible wedding ring from his invisible best man, and stuck it onto my finger. Then, apparently regardless of the fact that I’d said nothing about taking this mime for better or for worse, he lifted my invisible veil and came in for another kiss. Another?

I was starting to wonder how far the miming was going to go. Were we going to mime a honeymoon? Apparently, yes. The Mime got ready to lift me over the threshold of what I imagined was probably one of those honeymoon resorts with a champagne glass-shaped hot tub and a heartshaped bed. He bent down. He prepared his lower back to lift. And then he went for it. But wait.

I didn’t budge, possibly because the Mime was making no physical contact. The Mime tried again, still not touching me. He strained. He heaved. Nothing. His face fell. He made the universal sign for tears of woe.

And then the Mime did the unforgivable. He brought out an invisible measuring tape and measured the diameter of my hips. His jaw dropped. He flung a hand across his forehead. He checked the measure. Again the hand was flung. My ass, it seemed, was simply too large to be lifted.

The Mime, his heart clearly breaking, took off his invisible wedding ring. He kissed it, and then put it back into his pocket. He looked at me expectantly. He motioned toward my hand. Apparently, I was meant to surrender my invisible diamond.

Well, too fucking bad. He’d called me fat. I shook my head.

The Mime turned his pockets inside out, piteously showing me the lint in them. He’d pawned his grandmother’s ashes to buy this ring. And his last crust of bread. And a whole bunch of helium balloons. It was all he had left. More tears.

What the Mime did not know: I’d spent all of high school thinking that I was going to be an actress. As such, I’d spent hours in mime workshops, walking through bogs of invisible molasses, and climbing invisible staircases. My high school drama teacher had been famous for a morbid mime series, which included
Death by Dental Floss, Death by M&M,
and
Death by Slurpee.
Despite my inherent dislike of mime, I’d learned from the best.

I took off my invisible wedding ring, put it in my mouth, and swallowed it. I rubbed my hand over my belly. I smiled.

The Mime went into shock. He tried to enlist the support of the other people on the platform, but they mostly pretended he wasn’t talking to them. Miming was only another form of madness, and New Yorkers were veterans at avoiding the insane. The Mime decided to try another tactic. He took off his beret. He took an imaginary penny from an imaginary pocket, and placed it in the hat to seed it for donations. And then he held out his hat to me, and motioned that I damn well better pay up.

I wasn’t about to pay him for marrying me. I turned my pockets inside out and showed him that I’d even sold my lint. I, too, had pawned my grandmother’s ashes. I, too, had sold my helium balloons. In fact, I, too, was malnourished. Could the Mime blame me for swallowing the ring? I needed the nutrients. I was probably getting rickets. The latter involved a complex mime starvation sequence; sucking in my stomach and plucking at my suddenly too-large clothes, hobbling briefly with suddenly crippled legs, swooning. And then a devil-may-care shrug, just to rub it in. The Mime motioned angrily at my midsection. I shrugged again.

The Mime drew an invisible sword from an invisible scabbard on his back. He made the universal symbol for hari-kari. He handed me the sword, jeweled hilt first.

I appreciated its hair-splittingly sharp blade, and then chopped off the Mime’s hand.

The opportunity for a melodramatic mime death was too great for him to resist. He began to spurt arterial blood, looking in vain for a paramedic amongst the passengers. No volunteers, although a few more people had started watching.

Finally, the light of the oncoming train appeared. I began to walk down the platform to get a spot far from the dying mime. As the train pulled up, I looked back.

The Mime was holding his hand in front of his forehead in an L for loser. As I watched, the L converted to a straightup bird-flipping. The Mime then mimed shitting and throwing said shit at me. Applause. Laughter. The Mime had found his New York audience. As the door closed, I could see people surrounding him, their faces joyful. He’d brought sunshine to their day.

“GOT MARRIED TODAY,” I told Vic, when I got home.

“Funny,” she said.

“You would have liked this one,” I said. “He was mute.”

“The best kind of man,” she said.

Vic and I had recently watched Woody Allen’s
Bullets Over Broadway.
When Dianne Wiest put her hands over John Cusack’s face, admonishing him, “Don’t speak. Don’t speak!” Vic and I, along with most of womankind, had sighed in recognition. Sometimes, everything was perfect, until the guy opened his mouth and ruined things. Mimes for everyone! If only they didn’t wear those stripy tights. I’d started out the day with a mime prejudice, though, I had to admit, my mime marriage had broken me of it. Annoying as the Mime had been, he was inarguably funny. What would be next? Sweater vests? Would I have to give up all of my prejudices? Yes, in fact. Yes.

“WE’RE GOIN’ TO CONEY ISLAND, BABY,” said the Conductor, and grinned at me. “Goin’ to see the freak show. That shit’s the shit to see. Swedish Fish?”

“No thanks.”

The Conductor shrugged. He’d eaten most of a bag of Swedish Fish by himself already. It was a candy, he’d told me, that he could relate to. The fish swimming upstream their whole lives, he’d said, were like conductors stuck on the G train, never making it anywhere close to Manhattan, always hoping that the train would miraculously take flight and transit across the East River. Failing that, the Conductor wanted (at least, goddamn it) some shiny new cars.

I’d met the Conductor a few mornings before, on the G. Or rather, I’d met his voice. As usual, I’d waited half an hour for the train, along with a surging pack of irritable, caffeinated New Yorkers. When the train finally pulled in, we squeezed on against our better instincts, pressed against friends and foes, elbowing and kicking to get a spot. It was a rush-hour ritual. At least one person on each car was usually speared by an umbrella. On this particular morning, a light rain had become, in about ten minutes, a torrential downpour. An hour later, our train pulled into Queens Plaza, normally five minutes away. The doors didn’t open. We started to hyperventilate. Over the normally incomprehensible in-train intercom, a jolly voice boomed forth:

“Good morning, Great People of Brooklyn! As you can tell, we got some trouble. So take a deep breath and love your neighbor for just a few more minutes till we can get you all off to your day.”

New York City subway conductors were known for two things: their mumbling and their irritability. Typical rush-hour messages normally sounded more like:

“Attention, Asshole-in-Red-Shirt at the last car. Step OUT OF THE DOORWAY. NOW. Don’t think you’re getting on my train. There is NO ROOM FOR YOU. We’re just going to sit here and WAIT for you, Asshole-in-Red-Shirt.”

The persons stuck on the last car with Asshole-in-Red-Shirt would direct threatening looks and/or gestures and/or streams of obscenity at him, until he got out of the doorway and back onto the platform.

Even more typically, the message went something like this:

“Wyhow? Mmmhhiummmumblemumble! Proceed to mumblemumble! MMMMPH! Now! Hmmghrrh.”

This morning, it seemed that the rain had flooded every station in the city. The entire passenger contents of the subways were to be disgorged to buses. When the doors finally opened, I took a walk past the conductor’s car to see who the hell this cheerful guy was.

I got there just as he left the train. He was walking in front of me, and walking fast. Five foot three was never the best of heights, and particularly not when trying to keep up with someone tall. From behind, I could see wiry, graying hair, a navy suit jacket, and a dark neck. I started running. The sunshiniest subway conductor in New York City stopped in his tracks, causing me to run past him. He started opening his jacket. Something began to emerge from his (
horrors
) sweater vest. I recoiled. Aliens! Sigourney Weaver! High school geometry teacher! My brain, as usual, was out of
control with associations. I could do nothing about this problem. I hoped it wouldn’t one day end me up in an asylum, babbling about Byron and Barry White. When I forced the brain to pause, it became clear that what was climbing out of the dreaded sweater vest was an iguana. The Conductor pulled a small white bag out of his pocket, fished something out of it, and fed it to the iguana. By then I was close enough to identify the treat as a Swedish Fish. The iguana retreated into its argyle lair.

“Excuse me,” I said.

The conductor looked up. He was about fifty, skinny, and startled. Then he smiled a smile like a newly whitewashed fence. I felt the rain retreating and rainbows scaling the sky. Maybe this was irrational. New Yorkers, though, weren’t known for their smiles, particularly not at strangers. I felt like I’d found a kindred spirit.

“Hey, girl,” he said, as though he’d known me for five hundred years.

“Hi!” I said. “How’d you get so happy?”

“What’s not to be happy about?” he said. Even though he had an iguana, even though he wore a sweater vest, I liked him immediately.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Maria.”

“Pleased to meet you. I’m Joseph.”

I’d watched a lot of
Mister Rogers
as a child. The train to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe had been one of the primary objects of my fantasy. I envisioned myself stepping aboard, donning a conductor’s cap, and shortly thereafter arriving in a glorious place where there was not one, but
two
talking cats. There was a definite soft spot in my heart for
trains. So, when the Conductor asked me if I wanted to take a little trip with him that Saturday, I was very excited. I had visions of a little trip to heaven. Or, at least, to some make-believe sector of New York City, one with sparklingly clean sidewalks and maybe a few nice elves. I thought maybe it was a secret place that only conductors knew, especially because the Conductor refused to tell me where we were going, and would only say that I needed to bring a bathing suit. It was October. Wherever we were going, it was somewhere warm. Somewhere tropical. Somewhere deep in Brooklyn that I’d never heard of before. We were taking the F train.

As we took it, though, it became clear that we were not going to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. We were going to Coney Island.

Coney Island was about the last place on earth I wanted to go. It was cold, cold enough that hot dogs would be frozen on the spit, cotton candy would crack into spun sugar shards, and neon lights would split into splinters of color if they lit. It would be Siberia, but painted with toxically bright lead paint. It would be like one of those nightmares of juxtapositions that couldn’t exist, similar to the one that had plagued me as a child: the evil Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man from
Ghostbusters
stomping down my driveway, his teeth bared to consume me. I would have deserved it, too, as I’d regularly killed his kin in campfire s’mores. Worse, I’d enjoyed it. I might as well have been a Nazi, as far as the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man was concerned. In the dream I cowered, watching his white head bobbing above the tree-line, marking his inexorable progress toward my house. He often waved cheerily at me, a bloodied parent in each paw.
Periodically, he’d nibble at their skulls, and grin at me with dripping red teeth.

“It’s cold,” I told the Conductor, speaking with all the authority I didn’t have. “I think the freak show’s closed. And the rides aren’t running.”

“Avoid the crowds, that’s my motto. I only go in the fall. Summer, you got crazies there, swimming in that ocean. Nobody need swim in that ocean in the summer. Nasty. This is the last day they’re open, and it’s perfect weather for it.”