What I Saw in Him
You want to know what I saw in him, right?
The first time I laid eyes on Luhrmann he had his hand on another man’s neck. It wasn’t a fight—just a kind of tap to let everybody know who was in charge. Then he pulled a wad of cash out of a pocket and peeled off a Ulysses S. Grant and said the drinks were on him, real casual. The combination of the hand on the neck and the big drink gesture put me off. It’s the kind of Big Man horseshit you see all over. He looked my way when he did it. Just a piece of meathead theatre.
I was at the Ritz Bar with some present and future salesgirls, the kind of girls Neave thought were silly just because it mattered to them that their shoes and purses matched. Which of course they have to. Neavie was back at the grinding wheel with her nose pressed real hard on some problem about the cash flow. She’s happier with that kind of thing. I’m happier fishing for sales staff with a martini in my hand and a nice view of Newbury Street. The girls saw Mr. Grandstander focus in on me and smile from where he was sitting on the other side of the room.
“Take a gander at the table closest to the bar,” one of them said to me. “That guy’s looking you over.”
“Let him look,” I said. “That’s all he’s gonna get to do. I’m going to the ladies’.”
Somehow I knew he’d do exactly what he did, which was find a way to get himself in my path on my way back, out of sight of his gang and my girlfriends. I wasn’t drunk, so I don’t know why I let him talk me into giving him my number, but he had it before I sat down with the girls again. Let him call, I thought. Doesn’t mean I’m going out with him. Doesn’t mean anything.
At first I gave him the bum’s rush. He’d call. Leave messages. I’d ignore them. He kept it up for a full month before I said I’d have a drink with him. He said if I’d go for one drink he’d be satisfied and that would be the end of it, just one drink, which we both knew wasn’t the real deal. How did we know so soon how to play each other’s game, but still be able to surprise each other? It was magic, the way he made me resist him just enough to get a little friction going, and then find a way to make me feel like whatever he wanted was exactly what I wanted in the end.
*
I’m kind of shocked at myself. I mean, here’s Boppit shaking his head saying, “So blind. So blind, and yet you saw…” Okay. I could see it from the start, but I didn’t want to see it, so I didn’t. I made fun of it at the Ritz Bar and then I let it make me say yes when he asked me for my number. I told the girlfriends he was a showy meathead and they said they thought he was sexy as hell, which he was. It was right smack in the center of him, whatever it was that made women say he was sexy as hell.
I was so confident. I could have any man who caught my eye and I could walk away from any of them too. Neave and I weren’t Jell-O-cup-for-dessert women. We were the owners and directors of a fast-growing cosmetics company. I was the best-dressed woman in the room, and I paid for the Chanel suit myself, thank you very much.
I like men, really like them, even apart from the whole mating-dance thing. The truth is that most women like men. Ricky Luhrmann was not what most women would call likeable, though. He was something else. He moved like a big animal with lots of nerve. He could walk down any street and other men moved aside. He came at me like that, full of himself right up to the minute he was humble, treating me like I was the source spring of all good things, some kind of goddess he needed near him just to survive. If you’ve never been treated like a goddess, I’ll tell you, it messes with your judgment. You forget, if you ever knew it to begin with, that lots of goddesses end up sacrificed on some altar or other.
NEAVE
What Does He Have to Do?
In the end I didn’t find Ricky. He found me. Ricky Luhrmann showed up at my door acting like a bag of gasoline-soaked rags that had just met a match. It was about ten on a Friday night and Lilly had left Annie with me for the evening while she went out for a drink with some of the younger salesgirls. Any social life that didn’t include Ricky Luhrmann looked like a good idea to me. Annie and I had sat on her bed and advised her on jewelry while she ignored us and picked out what she wanted. We’d waved her off and then driven to the apartment above the Be Your Best offices, played Monopoly until eight thirty, eaten large bowls of ice cream, then sat in bed reading stories until Annie had drifted off to sleep. I’d wandered into the kitchen and fallen back on my old friends: flour and chocolate. I’d imagined Annie and me eating pies for breakfast and the idea had made me cheerful. When I heard a knock I thought it was Lilly home early, knocking because she’d lost her key. I opened the door.
“Hello, bitch.” The quietness of the words rattled me more than the words themselves. He threw his shoulder against the door as I tried to slam it shut. I scrabbled with one hand for the chain while the other pushed for all it was worth. He said, “You hated me from the get-go, which is fine with me because I can’t stand you either. You go whining to my brother Max, you say things to him that aren’t true.…”
I pulled in a deep breath to make my body puff up like an animal that fills its neck and chest with air to look larger. I imagined Annie sprawled out like a starfish in the bedroom behind me, probably drooling onto the pillow with her hair fanned around her. “Go away, Luhrmann. Lilly isn’t here.”
“I didn’t come to deal with Lilly. I want to deal with you. Why are you talking with Max? What gives you the right to talk about me to my brother?” He jammed a foot quickly into the narrow opening I hadn’t been able to close when he’d pushed against me with his shoulder.
“What is it with you and sticking your nose in my business? You think I don’t know that you told Lilly I was trash? What do you know about what Lilly and I have? What would a dried-up old maid like you know? I’ve seen what you call a boyfriend. He’s a busy boy, but he’s clearly got no working equipment where it counts. Your sister and me, we’ve got what everybody on the fucking planet wants.”
I looked at Ricky Luhrmann’s blotchy face while he worked his knee into the doorway and tried to get it wide enough to pass through. I didn’t smell any alcohol on his breath, which unnerved me. I had no explanation for what he looked like right now. I kicked the knee, hard.
“Son of a bitch!”