Engaging Men (9 page)

“What does it look like I’m doing?” I replied, defensive. Sometimes the ease of Justin’s life annoyed me, I have to admit.

He ignored my irritated reply, plopping down next to me on the couch.

“Where’s Kirk?” he asked. Even Justin realized my life was so intimately entwined with Kirk’s that my being home on a weeknight meant something.

“Don’t know. Home, I guess,” I said, picking up the remote and surfing through, hoping my expression showed my indifference. I didn’t really want anyone to know what I was up to, especially not Justin. It was downright…humiliating. But utterly necessary.

Then the phone rang and I was completely unmasked. “If it’s Kirk, I’m, I’m…not home,” I blurted as Justin reached for the receiver.

He turned to look at me, one eyebrow raised, as he spoke into the phone.“Hello? Hey, Kirk, my man, what’s up?” he continued, his voice belying the suspicion in his eyes as he gazed at me. “Angie? Naw, she’s not home. But then I didn’t check under the rug…”

I glared at him, despite my humiliation.

“Okay, I’ll tell her you called,” he said. “Take it easy.” After he hung up, he turned to stare at me full in the face.

I ignored him, lost in my own quagmire. “What the hell is he calling me for anyway? I told him I was busy.”

Justin’s eyes widened. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing!”

“God, Ange, don’t tell me you’re playing games,” he said. “I didn’t think you were like that…”

“I’m not!” I insisted. But suddenly it seemed glaringly apparent that I was one of those women I despised.

I would have despised myself even more for shamelessly avoiding Kirk if I didn’t come off the Saturday shift at Lee and Laurie to find him waiting out in front of the building for me.

“Hey,” he said, a smile lighting up his features as I came out the front doors.

“Kirk!” I said, surprised, realizing that he hadn’t done anything so spontaneous, so…romantic, since the early days of our relationship. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you, stranger,” he said, putting his arms around me and tugging me close. “I missed you.” Then he kissed me so tenderly I felt a rush of warmth toward him.

Now I ask you, can you blame me for playing these stupid games? Especially when Kirk led me back to his apartment and made love to me like it was our last night on earth together.

Two simultaneous orgasms later, I was a goner.

Which is probably why I found myself sitting across from Michelle at a tiny table in the back of a bar by our office on Tuesday night, plying her with drinks while I smoked cigarette after

cigarette from her pack, reveling in my relationship revival and anxiously awaiting advice on my next maneuver.

Hanging out with Michelle after hours was a peculiar enough event as it was, because we hadn’t really been social since high school—specifically, since just after Grace moved to Long Island and I had moved on to my first serious boyfriend, Vincent. At the time, Michelle had been dating Vincent’s cousin Eddie, and we bonded simply because it was always useful to have a girlfriend around all those nights we roamed the streets with the guys, restlessly searching for adventure and usually winding up at a diner or the movies, blowing what little money we had. Though Michelle was a bit of a fair-weather friend (or a fair-man friend—we parted ways when she moved on to Frankie, who ran with a different crowd), at least for a while I had someone around to tell me whether I had lipstick on my teeth or if some cheerleader had been spotted at school that day flirting a little too hard with Vincent. In truth, Michelle and I wouldn’t even be friends now, except that when I gave up my job in the garment district four years ago, my mother had told the whole neighborhood (including Michelle’s mother, whom she’d run into at the supermarket) that I was jobless, penniless and about to pursue a career with no pension plan. Mrs. Del-grosso had happily told my mother about her daughter’s illustrious career and flexible hours at Lee and Laurie and put me in contact.

But despite all my doubts, I couldn’t help turning to Michelle now that step one had succeeded in at least a quarter turn on Kirk’s lid. Suddenly I was ready to be persuaded that the art of persuasion was my only resource when it came to Kirk.

“Make him jealous /‘Michelle said with a definitive crack of her gum.

“Jealous?”

“Yeah, that’s your next step,” she continued. “You need to convince Kirk that he’s not the only man who’s pining for you.”

This was not as easy as it sounds. Kirk was just not the jealous type. In fact, during the first months of our relationship, when we were caught up in the throes of new passion, I was suddenly the object of every man’s desire. So much so that one overzealous suitor even followed me home from Lee and Laurie one night, trying to get my phone number. Kirk, who had been waiting out on the stoop for me (yes, there was a time when he did that), had found the whole thing quite amusing.

“That’s because he didn’t see the guy as a serious threat,” Michelle advised. “You need to bring on the heavy artillery.”

I looked at her. “Heavy artillery?”

“Yeah.You need to show him some other guy is serious about you,” she said, her eyes narrowing speculatively. Then, realization lit her face. “Flowers,” she said. “You need to get flowers from another guy.”

“What other guy is going to send me flowers?” I said, going through my catalog of men and coming up short. The only man who’d ever bought me flowers was Randy, romantic that he was. But Randy had been married for five years, and was not inclined to buy me anything nowadays except the odd drink whenever we happened to get together.

“That’s the beauty of this plan,” Michelle said. “You don’t need another guy. You can send the flowers yourself.”

“Myself?” This plan was starting to seem ridiculous. And expensive. “Do I sign the card from myself, too?” I asked.

“No, no,” she said, shaking her head at me as if I were the insane one. Then her dark eyes lit up, as if my faux Prince Charming had just stepped into the bar. I even turned my head to see if, in fact, there was some bouquet-wielding charmer waiting in the doorway. Then swung it back just as quickly when I heard her say, “Jerry Landry.”

“Jerry Landry?” I asked, incredulous. Jerry was our boss and—at least according to his calculation—the Office Stud. He made a point of hitting on every available woman—and even some of the unavailable ones, depending on how short they happened to wear their skirts—who worked for Lee and Laurie Catalog. It was rumored that he slept with at least fifty percent of the incoming trainees, but I had a feeling Jerry himself started these rumors. Because although we all laughed at his stupid jokes and even batted our lashes playfully at his off-the-mark flirtations (after all, he was the man monitoring both our phone calls and our break times), I seriously doubted any woman in her right mind would find him attractive. Maybe it was the amount of Brylcreem he used to get his suspiciously dark hair (suspicious for a forty-two-year old with gray chest hairs peeking out beneath his oft unbuttoned collars) slicked back, guido-style (hello? The eighties are over, Jerry). Whatever it was, something made Jerry utterly unappealing to most of the female population. Men, however, thought he was the greatest. Probably because he was the one buying the rounds during those rare after-office outings. And because the guys actually believed all those conquest stories he told. Even Kirk had, during his short stint at Lee and Laurie. So much so that, on more than one occasion, he had sidled possessively toward my cubicle when Jerry was leaning over me, giving me his usual schtick while trying to look down my shirt. Hmm, maybe Michelle wasn’t so far off in this far-off scheme of hers…

Then I remembered that it wouldn’t be Jerry’s credit card that took the hit. “How do you propose I pay for these flowers?”

“Look,” she said, “do you want to land this guy or what?”

Apparently, I did. Because suddenly I was willing to forgo that seventy-eight-dollar pair of pants I had been coveting in the Lee and Laurie Catalog (that was the other problem with this job—it fed my shopping disease) for the sake of my future.

That’s when I got caught. No, not by Kirk. By Justin. Which seemed worse, somehow.

I was on the phone ordering flowers for myself. I know, I know. Stupid, right? On my budget I was the last person who should’ve been dialing up for a dozen long-stems, but I was a different woman. I didn’t even recognize me. The thing is, I had invited Kirk over to my place for our usual Friday night together and, according to Michelle, I had to undo some of the damage I had done by sleeping with him with a quick follow-up maneuver.

So, I’m on the phone, ordering up flowers from Murray’s 24-Hour Florist—New York City is probably the only place in the world where you can get anything delivered at just about any time. It’s this type of convenience that makes a girl capable of anything, right? And I wouldn’t have felt so bad about my behavior if Justin hadn’t strolled through the door just after I had handed over my credit card number.

“…if you could deliver those flowers promptly, I would appreciate it. Thanks.”

“Who died?”Justin asked, heading for sofa #3 (he always developed an especial fondness for the newest sofa as if to prove to me, and the rest of the world, the worthiness of salvaging it) and picking up the remote.

“Died?” I asked, puzzled, as I hung up the phone.

“Didn’t I just hear you ordering flowers?” he said, his gaze seeming somewhat speculative despite the way he was already cruising through the TV channels.

Humiliation shot through me.Then panic. Justin wasn’t supposed to be home tonight. Fridays he often frequented the open-mike night at the Back Fence, watching musicians try out their material and, I imagined, gathering the courage to get up there himself. Or something. Because ever since he had left film, and then acting, ostensibly to pursue music, he seemed to have lost his energy to do anything but strum a few chords on his guitar now and then as he gazed dreamily at his assorted artifacts around the apartment.The only reason I knew he was still pursuing anything was his vigilant attendance of Friday night’s open mike. It was one of the reasons I had picked tonight for this wretched little plot. I didn’t even want to bear witness to what I was about to do, and I certainly didn’t want one of my best friends to. “Aren’t you going to the Back Fence tonight?” I inquired, ignoring the fact that he had settled on a program and sunk deeper into the sofa.