I was in the suit for the photo shoot, so I went down to the men’s department to buy something more casual for my furlough in Queens while Natalie finished up her shift. She said that she would meet me down there and we could blend right in with the crowd on the subway. I kept my baseball cap on the whole time, and there was something exciting and clandestine about the whole thing. Plus I hadn’t been on the subway in such a long time, and never to Queens. When the tracks rose aboveground and I saw the outside world from the train, I felt like a kid. Natalie said I looked like one as well.
We walked the few blocks from the Ditmars Boulevard stop to her garden apartment. It was so nice to be away from Manhattan again. I imagined the paparazzi camped outside my building and loved the idea that they would be waiting for me all night. I didn’t want to think about going home.
Her apartment was tiny and charming. Like her. One L-shaped room with a white fluffy bed filling the shorter arm and a long couch along the other. A big-screen TV hung in the corner, making it visible from either the bed or the couch. Natalie handed me the remote. “Here,” she said, “entertain yourself while I get ready.” The Rocky marathon was still on, and somewhere around the time Dolph Lundgren shot his first dose of steroids, Natalie changed out of her work shirt and into another right in front of me, as if I were her college roommate. The brief view of her sexy lace bra and belly-button ring threw me.
“What do you feel like eating?” she said. “Let me give you the whole neighborhood rundown. We’ve got nearly every type of ethnic food you could ask for.”
“Surprise me,” I said, mostly because I hadn’t heard a word she’d said. It’s hard to get the full audio when the visual is so…distracting.
She seemed to love that answer and happily skipped to the bedroom, where I imagined her finding something to cover up her very sexy lace bra and her boy-pants underwear, which barely grazed the sweetest little belly button that I had ever seen. Never in my life had I met such a free spirit, and never in my famous life had I met someone so uninterested in me. This Flip Roberts must be something else.
She came out fully clothed, ran a wand of lip gloss across her lips, and clapped her hands together twice. “Let’s go!” I followed her like a puppy dog to a Moroccan restaurant where we sat on the floor and ate with our hands. She gushed, “It’s just like that scene in Sabrina, the new one, not the old one with Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn, remember?” I didn’t. She was surprised that I’d never seen either of them.
We talked about everything you can imagine, including how badly I didn’t want the night to end. When I realized what I’d said, I bit my lip and added somewhat fraudulently, “Because of the paparazzi at my apartment, of course!” She confirmed that I was genuinely invited to stay over.
When we got back to her apartment, she hunted through a collection of what looked like every romantic comedy ever made and found the original Sabrina. “You have to start with this one,” she said gleefully, handing me the DVD. She dug through her T-shirt drawer and pulled out the biggest one she could find and tapped on her bed. “This is my side. I’ll just be a few minutes.” I got undressed and climbed under the covers wearing my boxers and a T-shirt that read I don’t sweat, I sparkle. I tried not to let it add to my insecurity and waited to see whether she would reappear in sexy or BFF mode. She came out in sweats and a tank, plunked a big bowl of popcorn between us, climbed in, and turned on the TV.
“I haven’t had a sleepover in ages. How fun is this?” she said.
This girl was definitely not attracted to me. I couldn’t take it anymore—I had to know more about this ex-boyfriend, who apparently so eclipsed me in every way that she was completely uninterested.
“Before we start the movie, I’m curious. Do you have a picture of Flip Roberts?”
She laughed. “I burned them all!”
I looked at the cover of the DVD. Audrey Hepburn with a man on each arm: Humphrey Bogart on one, William Holden on the other. “Okay, if one of these men was me and one was Flip, who would be who?”
“You’d be William Holden, of course! Humphrey Bogart is practically old enough to be her father in this movie, and he’s not half as dreamy as William Holden.”
I looked at the picture again. “Well, who does Sabrina choose?”
“You’ll have to watch and see!”
I awoke the next morning knowing two things that I had not known the night before: first (spoiler alert), Sabrina/Audrey Hepburn chooses Linus/Humphrey Bogart, and second, that I could sleep with a girl without sleeping with a girl. I watched her sleeping for a minute as I consoled myself with the thought that she most definitely had daddy issues and I simply wasn’t old enough for her. I lost myself in her simple beauty. Her parted lips and tousled hair. I wondered what sorts of things she dreamed about.
Eventually I snapped out of it and made enough noise for her to wake up, but not enough for her to know that I’d woken her. As soon as she was coherent I said, “So, you spoke a lot over dinner about your mother, but I noticed that you never mentioned your father.”
“Good morning to you too!” She swung her legs out of bed. “My father left when I was six. I was sitting in the living room playing Barbie dolls and he just walked out.” Now I felt bad for asking, though also relieved that I was right about the daddy issues.