10
“What are you doing?”
I had known it would be Andrew when I said hello. Had known it would be him when the phone finally, thankfully, mercifully rang a little after nine P.M. But his voice sounded altered from before; it was on a more intimate note than our first phone call had ended on.
I didn’t know what to say. “Waiting for you” or “Hoping to die if you didn’t call” did not seem appropriate, though accurate they were. Nor did I have anything fabulous, exciting, or even mildly interesting to report from the four and a half hours I had just lived through without him. There was nothing really, so a gap appeared on the line like a Nixonian tape, just blank.
“Umm, I’m…” I got that out, then noticed how similar they sounded in my accent while hoping more words would magically materialize, but Andrew rescued me, ending the conversational flummox.
“Why aren’t you here yet?”
He said it so seriously that for a second I forgot he had only just called and wondered at my own delinquency before I remembered the sequence of events.
“I will be.”
“Will be?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Good.”
We hung up.
The cab driver didn’t flinch when I gave him the Ritz-Carlton’s address, so I tried to borrow his nonchalance. Taking a taxi was extravagant enough without getting all I could from it. I wasn’t surprised that I was nervous; what surprised me was that I wasn’t nervous in any way I had ever been before. I felt keyed up and able to notice each moment and detail as if I were reading microfilm, so much information compacted in such a small space, yet able to be seen.
After crossing the iron curtain of my neighborhood and shuttling down Columbus Avenue, we passed brightly beckoning restaurants with clusters of customers in front talking and gesturing. They looked crucial to the neighborhood, an integral part of this Sunday summer night, sustaining the avenue as it stretched south toward Midtown.
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel announced itself in gold letters above an ever-revolving door and again with its logo, the regal profile of a lion’s head, on a red carpet that flaunted itself across the sidewalk to the curb.
“Welcome to the Ritz-Carlton,” the doorman said, as he held open the cab door while I counted out the bills, then put them in the driver’s hand. He asked if I had any bags in the trunk, and I wished for a moment that I did. Luggage to spend my life with Andrew.
I had to request his room number. He hadn’t told me on the phone and I had forgotten to ask, but as the front desk clerk called to get Andrew’s permission for me to ascend, I realized they wouldn’t have allowed me to walk in and go straight up without announcing myself first anyway. I wondered if this was the sort of experience that induced all those restaurant customers to speak to me in the coat-check room before they headed upstairs. I immediately felt less churlish toward them.
The elevator I took to the twenty-eighth floor was filled with an empty quiet. I had never been here before. Not just here-here, in the hotel, but Here, with everything that entailed. There was no reference in my life for it, so my mind had no idea what to think. It was experiencing a rare phenomenon, the completely new event, and my lack of knowledge of the circumstances I found myself in felt freeing. There was nothing for me to do. Nothing for me to think. Nothing but to give in. A bell chimed, the doors glided open, and I was released into a small hallway that contained the entrance to Andrew’s penthouse door. I knocked.
I could hear footsteps approaching after what was probably a three-Mississippi wait, if I had been counting, which I wasn’t, but I knew it instinctingly becase of all those games of hide-and-seek I had played with the other neighborhood kids, hands covering closed eyes, counting off numbers plus our state’s name up to ten to give everyone time to find a spot. I had a sudden vision of a young Andrew being a master at that game.
Then he opened the door and we looked at each other without saying a word. It was different seeing him after our journeylike phone call and the subsequent hours I’d spent with him in my head. As his eyes looked at mine, it was clear that a part of him was all for me, as all of me was for a part of him, like a branch’s relationship to the trunk of a tree.
“Hi.” He barely said it; the word was fractionally formed.
I moved into his arms. Our embrace was the ending and the beginning and we stood still in the middle. Andrew had such solid arms. Arms you wanted to detach and keep and connect around you again and again, an armor of amour, every bit of sinew and muscle and skin involved in his holding. And tall. His shoulder was at the bridge of my nose, providing many options to lay my cheek against. I forgot we had to let go.
He kept one hand across the small of my back as he walked me into the suite’s large living room. And I had been imagining him in one hotel room. Good Lord. At least I had been right about the Yankee-luxury part; this definitely was more extravagant than the Monteleon. It looked like an extremely upscale apartment vacuumed free of “home.” Andrew steered me to a yellow silk couch that I sank into as we sat down. He took my chin in his hand and turned my head this way and that. It felt more supported than it did on my own neck.
“Look at you. You’re perfect.”
I really felt I was not, but his voice was so strong and radically different than the one in my head that the shouts of protest became disarmed.
“Do you know how many beautiful women I’ve seen? You—are—per-fect.”
And he started talking, saying long things, trains of thought about himself that had to do with me, and his words became physical, bathing me, swirling around, lulling me into a state of relaxed happiness I had never known.
Then he paused for a moment and looked at me. “I’m going to be in your life for a very long time. I’ve been waiting for someone like you.” And he paused again, making sure I had heard.
“Thank God,” was what I thunderously heard in my head. Thank God, thank God, thank God. Because the empty space in me perfectly matched the empty space in him, and for some inexplicable reason, the two empties together made one whole, like that weird math rule where you subtract twice, but still end up getting an addition, which in class I could never understand, but now here it was in the form of him.
The sex lasted a couple of hours. I undressed in the living room’s light before walking into his bedroom, disrobing as easily as removing a cap that had squished my hair for too long. We were on the bed, a bed whose multitudinous softness I couldn’t before have imagined, and we moved together in the immense dense darkness that only hotel rooms have. I liked the blankness of the dark, the sole reliance on form and smell and sound and skin.
At one point, Andrew reached over me and turned on a lamp. I had no idea which way we were on the bed and was surprised at how accurately he had located the switch. In the golden light, he looked into my eyes.
“This is how you know I’m not just fucking you, that I’m making love to you.” And his eyes stayed on mine as he moved.
Then he nestled against me, saying something small and low at the bottom of my ear.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“No I didn’t or I wouldn’t’ve said ‘what.’ What’d you say?”
“I said…I said…” More movement ensued. “I said…I love you.” He sounded about to choke.
Then the edges of my body disappeared, the room tilted, lifted, and opened up until there was only warmth and light and motion and Andrew’s head buried in my neck.
Afterward, while he lay still on top of me, I rubbed and kneaded and plied his back, the big muscles of his public life and dizzy-heights career that were hard and interlocked. Encouraging his torso to release into gravity, I felt his rib cage expand, his lower back drop, and with a deep expulsion of breath, he relaxed into me.
It was almost one A.M., just the beginning of Monday morning, and Andrew was sitting on the side of the bed, wearing a fresh black T-shirt, and shaking out his jeans. He had decided it was time we leave the bed, the bed it felt like we had spent three incredible years in during the two and a half hours we were there.
“What do you want to eat?”
I was in New York City with Andrew Madden so there were no limits to the answer for that question. The gleanings of the city had never been offered so openly to me, but I was distracted by trying to find my clothes. They appeared to have attempted some sort of freedom run during the interval I wasn’t held in their restraint. By the time I recovered them, dressed, and walked back into the bedroom, Andrew was reading the sports page.
“What did you like the best?” I said, standing before him.
He looked at me over his reading glasses, his right brow heightening the surprise and question in his gaze.
“No, no, not…” I glanced at the rumpled sheets to finish the sentence, as I blushed. “I meant, when you played sports in college, like you told me you did, what’d you like the best?”
“Oh. For a second there, I wondered where the sweet Southern girl I was with had gone. Football. I liked football the best. But they all were great.”
I didn’t understand football. All I knew was that Daddy had gone to Tulane and screamed bloody hell whenever the LSU Tigers scored a point.
“Now, what are we going to get you to eat?”
“Pasta and vodka.” I had come up with that menu selection hours before, while sitting on my bed during one of the interminable intervals in which I had kept deciding that surely in the following fifteen-minute period, Andrew would call. That was all so far away now. My closet of a bedroom, the sitting and waiting, my mind chilling itself to keep from processing the loud menacing question, “What if he doesn’t call?” I was safe from that now, ensconced in Andrew’s glow.
“Pasta with vodka sauce?”
“No.” That sounded odd. “Just…pasta, somehow, and vodka, like to drink.” I hoped the vodka part didn’t bother him since I was underage in New York.
“I see.”
Andrew briefly disappeared inside a closet larger than my bedroom. “Do you like this jacket?” he said, when he came out.
He had put on what is generally referred to as a sports coat, though that phrase has always made me think of the burgundy polyester numbers I’d seen at the business conventions my daddy sometimes made appearances at in Gulfport. Andrew’s was of an entirely different breed. It was a silk cashmere, and each thin thread was a separate shade in a spectrum of mid to dark gray to black, creating an effect of a muted charcoal gloss fitted precisely to his frame.
“It’s stunning.”
“An old girlfriend of mine gave it to me.”
I wondered who she was and how much of him and his life had been hers. I was envious of what the gift implied. She had been able to buy him a jacket, a perfect one for his body and wardrobe and style. I imagined her—exquisite—sitting in a quiet, elegant store, having the time and money and opportunity to give him this gift that had lasted past their relationship’s end. I wanted to give him something like that.
“Let’s go.”
“Where?” I knew New York continued into every hour of any night, but now that my hunger depended upon it, I doubted it would sufficiently come through.
“I know a place, don’t you worry.”
Walking on the quiet, vacant streets with Andrew was having him enter my dreams. The buildings I so often passed alone in similar dark emptiness now saw me with him. I felt a novel lack of need for their reliable stability. The path he was taking us on, unbeknownst to him, was a backward retracing of the route I took as I walked home from work, before catching the Broadway northbound bus the rest of the trip up. Andrew turned us right out of the hotel, heading east along Central Park South, then made another right onto Fifth. The marquee of the Paris movie theater boasted a British film that was getting much attention for its “searing portrayal of human darkness.” A smoldering blonde, cigarette dangling to ensure the point, peered broodingly from the glass-encased poster.
“Didn’t see it—that’s not my cup of tea,” he replied to my question about it.
I wasn’t much interested in the film myself, but I would have enjoyed hearing his personal review so I could see it with his words interpreting the images, like his private subtitles in my head.
Fifth Avenue widened in Andrew’s presence. Buildings sat back; the sidewalk softened. New York turned itself into a reverent country for him.
P. J. Clarkes’ on Third Avenue was barely inhabited when we entered. A white-aproned bartender stood still as a statue in front of the beveled glass behind the bar. Portraits of Lincoln and J.F.K. stared down silently above him. A lone man sat next to a dark wood wall with a pitcher of beer, a mug, and the Daily News on the table before him. Andrew and I walked past them without disturbing their gaze, and into the empty dining room where Andrew settled me down at a large round table.
“That table there is for parties of four or more.” A waiter was striding toward us, delivering his directive to Andrew’s back. “You’re gonna have to move to—”
Andrew slowly turned his head. It was like being inside a cartoon; the waiter was immediately defeated by seeing who our superhero was.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Madden, awfully sorry, sir, I couldn’t see it was you, sir.”
Andrew didn’t say a word.
“Let me get you some menus, sir, and anything you’d be wanting to drink?”
“She will have a vodka…” Andrew paused for me to finish my request.
“Tonic with a lemon twist.”
“Any particular vodka that would be?” the waiter asked.
I had never ordered a brand drink before. When I went to bars in New Orleans with my friends, I’d bring enough money for one drink, figuring that by the time it was empty, I’d have met someone who’d buy me more, but those guys only bought house brand. Andrew and the waiter were waiting.
“Smirnoff.”
“And I’ll have a Pellegrino, no fruit.”
The waiter walked over to a large wooden stand, selected two menus, came back, and laid them with a flourish on the red and white checked tablecloth. Andrew put his reading glasses on before opening his.
I wished the restaurant were busy, wished there were people everywhere, on dates, in groups, to further cement my togetherness with Andrew. To make us a solid couple by being gazed upon as a unit. I figured the waiter’s eyes would have to do.
I wondered if the waiter could tell I was underage. I had started going to bars in Pass Christian when I was fourteen, but everyone always thought I was twenty-eight. And that really is rather odd for them to all, but separately, pick that particular age to think I was. Unless I really looked thirty and they were all just trying to be nice. Though, actually, I did feel twenty-eight back then. At fifteen, I was drinking and having sex with a man seventeen years older than me, but in terms of my bar age, only what, four?
When I moved to New York, suddenly everyone could tell what age I truly was, as if some sort of regression had occurred as I traveled north—the years I had lived that counted for double in the South now did not in the brutality of urban reality. Any mature-beyond-my-years swagger I once possessed remained so firmly behind that I began to doubt it had ever been mine, and I thought of it as a Southern condition, like relinquishing to the heat.
The waiter deposited our drinks before us, then stepped back, holding his pen and pad protectively in front of his chest.
“And what would you like?” He had put a little smile into it, but I could feel the exhaustion underneath. I knew there were career waiters in the city who regarded the profession as solid and respectable, the filigree in New York City’s culinary crown jewels. I also knew, after almost three months of working alongside them, the imprisonment they could feel in the locked servitude of the customer’s meal. I wanted to tell him he was holding up well.
The choices on the page had barely registered on me, so I glanced quickly to find something.
“Pasta primavera, please.”
“Very good, and sir?”
Then commenced a lengthy discussion between them of the shrimp scampi, and another even more detailed one about veal scaloppine. Andrew brought up the chicken marsala; all were deemed excellent choices with accompanying persuasive nods of the waiter’s head. A silence ensued.
“Cheeseburger, medium rare, and a green salad.” Andrew said, closing the menu, and allowing the waiter to pick it up from the table before he withdrew.
I turned my chair toward Andrew’s and rubbed along the top of his thighs. I had read in a magazine once that you can tell how a man will treat you years past the honeymoon by the way he orders his food. Andrew hadn’t really been rude. Just thorough and exacting. But it was like watching a dance instructor and a student on a floor where the tiles light up whenever the student misses a step. Though Andrew did leave an awfully nice tip.
The Monday morning light reaching into Andrew’s hotel room high above Central Park exuded a richer glow than the rays that circulated down through the alley and air shafts that my apartment windows faced. The sky unfurled itself toward Andrew’s bed. It reminded me of being at the Gulf, standing at the water’s edge and seeing only the blues of sea and sky that were allowed by the yellow of the sun. Andrew was lying on his stomach, his head turned toward me, his face illuminated by sleep. I edged sideways off the bed, letting my weight gradually ease, not wanting to end his slumber. In the bathroom mirror, I unmussed my hair, and used his toothpaste on my finger to brush my teeth. I was back in bed, reliving the night before, when he awoke and looked at me.
“Are you going to take care of my back?”
“What?” I wondered if he had pulled it during the night.
“My back. I haven’t woken up without pain in my back for years. Whatever you did last night when you rubbed it…Are you going to take care of it for me?”
“Oh, yeah, I will.” I was thrilled.
“Good. Are you completely all mine?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I started to move against him, but he kissed my cheek, then jumped out of bed.
“C’mon, we’re getting up. I want to see the slides of your work.”
In the dizziness of being with him, I had almost forgotten that I’d brought them, as he had asked me to during Sunday afternoon’s phone call. Sitting on the bed and facing the windows, Andrew held each square up to the light. There were ten of the last pieces I had done in Mississippi before I left. They were a series of sculptures comprised of driftwood, copper wire, and found glass in expressionistic houselike crosses suggesting our reliance on fallible structures. The sculptures ranged in height from three to four and a half feet and were being stored in the attic of Momma’s house, covered by old flowered sheets from the bed of my youth. There were also some slides of wood pieces and a few abstract oil paintings I had done years before.
Andrew was quiet as he scrutinized them again and again, sometimes flipping one over as if to view it from the other side. I tried to distract myself while I waited for his response by counting the number of taxis I could spot driving through Central Park, tiny yellow objects appearing and hiding among the trees. Then he picked up the slides’ small plastic cases and inserted each slide into it precisely without marring them.
“You…”
It was an eternity before the next word. The number of cabs I had left off on was even, a sign—I hoped—that he liked my work.
“Are going to be…”
Nothing? Forgotten? What?
“A Big Fucking Star.”
Oh. Jesus God.
“A big fucking art star.” And he nodded his head.
I had no idea what to say. It was like being spoken to in a foreign language, in words you’ve vaguely heard before, but never thought would be addressed to you and with the expectation of a reply.
“Can you leave these with me?”
“I can leave them.” I can leave everything with you, I thought, even me.
“I want to let someone take a look at them.” He kissed my forehead and nose. “You big fucking art star.”
The phone in the living room rang, and Andrew reached for the extension next to the bed. “Hello?” He listened for a bit, and made small “uh-huh” sounds as the person spoke. “Hold everything a bit longer—give me fifteen. Oh, and when he comes in this afternoon, I want the other guys’ pictures on the wall behind my desk facing him. Yes, even though he already has the—uh-huh. Okay, fifteen.” He replaced the receiver, picked my pullover up off the floor, and handed it to me.
“Okay, sweet-y-vette, you are going to call me this afternoon.”
I didn’t want to leave. Ever. I felt giddy and renewed, but like I was being sent off to school. I wanted to stay with him and be next to him for the rest of my life.
“Okay, but…” I had no end to the sentence; it was all I could muster. My clothes had become traitors—their coverage of my body allowing me to leave. “But when will I see you again?” I sounded like a child who doesn’t believe everyone will reappear in the morning after the night’s sleep. “Will I see you again?”
He smiled at me, kindly, and put his finger on my nose. “Oh, you’ll see me again. You’ll see me a lot again.”
Andrew put on his jeans and a navy blue T-shirt, but with an air of being temporarily dressed, then kissed the top of my head as I put my shoes on. I resisted the urge to try to leave something of mine in his room; that was too obvious and schoolgirlish. When I stood up, I saw him holding out a hundred-dollar bill toward me.
“Oh, no.” I was shocked. Did he think I was there for that? Then I saw his eyes on mine. I obviously needed the money, that he could see, there was nothing more to his offer than that. I shook my head, and he put it away. I didn’t want to need him for that or for him to think that I did.
In a whirlwind of motion, Andrew escorted me down in the elevator, had the doorman hail me a cab, and, settling me in, kissed my cheek while pressing the hundred-dollar bill into my hand.
“For the fare, so you’ll have enough. Call me this afternoon, honey.”
And when he shut the door, the cab moved into action, entered traffic, and left Andrew’s quickly departing figure behind.