This is what happens. You’re out at a bar on a cold Friday night with your two best friends, feeling inferior and hopeless because one, Jed, is the indisputable stud and the other, Rael, is newly married and just along for nostalgia’s sake, to bask in the utter irrelevance of it all. So one has nothing at stake and the other has nothing to prove and there you are in the middle, with plenty at stake and everything to prove, and no real prospects of success. It’s been eight months since your last relationship, six months since you’ve had any kind of sex, and that was of the desperate, rebounding nature, and you’re starting to feel invisible in the Big City, wishing you could go back home to your small town, where it was so much easier and the girls were so much more approachable, so much less jaded. Except that you don’t come from a small town; you come from here, or, at best, a soulless suburb of here, and there’s nowhere to go back to, so you’re just going to have to soldier on, get over your fear of rejection, and find someone who will somehow recognize that thing in you, that thing you can’t even recognize in yourself but you know is there, that will make you seem like a worthwhile investment, the thing that will somehow inspire a woman to take you home and exchange fluids and then stories and then secrets, in the hopes of finding a love that will fill you both up to the point where you can stop looking for it.
Who could blame you for being a little drunk?
Your crew is well positioned on three stools by a high table at the window, where you can watch the people come and go, and you’re joking around rowdily with Jed and Rael, hoping you look like three guys who could care less if there are even any women in the room, feeling self-conscious even though you know there’s no reason to, since no one’s really checking you out.
And then you see her, standing with her girlfriend against the wall, holding her Coors bottle just a little too perfectly, not organically, not like someone who has a genuine relationship with longneck bottles. And she has this sweeping mane of sandy-colored hair and a square jaw that frames her features perfectly, features almost childlike in their delicacy, that bespeak a childhood of privilege and insulation. Her eyes are the blue of faded denim, her nose small and wide, like a kitten’s, and her cheeks soft and ever so slightly plump, the cheeks of a nymphet. And you know, instinctively, that she hates those cheeks, that she habitually looks into mirrors when she’s alone and sucks them in, and you want to tell her she shouldn’t, because, set as they are atop her lean, gym-toned body, and under those mesmerizing blue eyes, they’re two pockets of soft, flawless flesh that hold the infinite promise of untold pleasures, like the perfect ass above her lean, muscled legs, or the lovely, upturned breasts above the flat expanse of her abdomen. You know what it will feel like to brush those magnificent cheeks with your own, what those cheeks will look like from above with her eyes closed, lips parted, as you lie on top of her, lowering your head to kiss her open mouth.
And you’re so caught up that you forget to man the controls of your disinterest, and she catches you staring at her, so there’s nothing left to do but get off your stool and, drink in hand, walk over to where she’s standing, and as you do, you feel an alien resolve clicking into place with the muted thunk of a luxury-car door, and since you’re already committed, you decide there’s nothing to lose.
“I’m Zack,” you say, raising your voice to be heard above the din of the jukebox, the loud conversations going on around you, and the frenzied fluttering of the butterflies in your stomach.
“Hope,” she says, extending her hand, and for the briefest instant you don’t realize it’s her name, but imagine that she’s wisely identified the defining motivation that brought everyone in the place out tonight.
“There’s no easy way to break this to you,” you say, “so I’m just going to come right out with it. I’m here to hit on you.”
Hope laughs, and it’s a rich, musical laugh, unguarded and comfortable, like you’re old friends. Not at all what you expected. “Well,” she says. “I appreciate your candor.”
“May I begin?”
“Go for it.”
And what follows is two hours of perfect conversation, the kind you couldn’t have scripted if you wanted to, the kind where it becomes instantly apparent that your sensibilities and wits jibe, and when the conversation turns to banter, it’s easy and fun and never veers away from the substance of the discussion. And she quickly becomes familiar, touching your wrist when she laughs, leaning in to you easily when the crowd jostles her. And after a while, you realize your friends have left, and her girlfriend is long gone, and it’s with mixed feelings that you realize that they’re ringing last call at the bar, because on the one hand, when was the last time you made it to last call, but on the other, what the hell do you do now? You’ve long ago determined that tonight will not be about sex (as if it were up to you anyway), not because you don’t want it, God knows you do, but because you don’t want to ruin this one with a crude one-night stand. But you don’t want the night to end, either, even though it already has. So you offer to walk her home and she acquiesces, and that works out well because it’s bitterly cold outside and she doesn’t so much hold your arm as wrap herself around it, and the wind blows her hair into your face, drawing tears as it whips at your eyes, and there’s intimacy in this, so much more so than with casual sex. Her building is one of those posh monoliths on Fifth Avenue, and you start to say good night, your voice hoarse from hours of shouting above the jukebox, but she pulls you past the doormen—“Hi, Nick. Hi, Santos”—and into the elevator. And before you can work up the nerve for a good-night kiss, she does it first, kissing you deeply, hungrily, backing you up against the elevator wall, the full length of her body pressed against you, making you wish to God you weren’t both wearing thick coats. And this goes on for fifteen flights, and then a little bit more, since she doesn’t stop when the door slides open on her floor. And then she steps back, breathless and windswept, deliciously disheveled, and says, “That was lovely.” She pulls out a silver Cross pen from her bag and writes her name and number down on your hand, and under that she writes To Be Continued, and then she turns serious and says, “Listen, Zack. I’m not into games and I don’t like players. If you like me, call me, okay? There’s no appropriate waiting period. If I don’t hear from you tomorrow, I’ll assume you’re not interested.”
“I passed interested about three hours ago,” you say.
She smiles and kisses your nose. “Then I’ll speak to you tomorrow.” And then she ducks out and the door slides shut, and you fall to your knees, savoring the sweet pain of the unfulfilled erection shrinking in your pants, and offer a short prayer of thanksgiving as the elevator car slowly brings you back down to earth.
We began dating after that, intensely and exclusively, and I kept waiting for the bubble to burst, for Hope to look across the table at me and realize that somewhere, an error had been made, that she’d mistaken me for somebody else. But her smile always seemed utterly sincere, and she laughed at my jokes and returned my kisses with unchecked ardor, and when we walked, she always reached for my hand while I was still considering the implications of reaching for hers. That was pretty much how it went, Hope leading the way while I refrained from making any moves, terrified of calling any undue attention to myself that might cause her to reconsider my general worthiness. But it never happened, and three weeks into it, as we climbed into a cab after a late Friday-night movie, she interrupted me as I started to give the driver her address, and gave mine instead, smiling out the window as I trembled silently beside her. When we got home, I unwrapped her like a gift and we fell into bed, and at some point during that thrilling, sleepless weekend, I forgot to worry about it and just accepted that she was mine, that it could really be this easy, and the way she devoured me left no doubts that I was hers as well.
“Come and meet my parents,” she said to me a few months later.
Her parents lived a few blocks over from her apartment on the Upper East Side. When I arrived, the uniformed doorman informed me that I was expected. “What floor?” I said.
“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen what?”
He just smiled and pointed toward the elevator. “Just fifteen.”
The elevator opened into a private vestibule with only one door, at which Hope was waiting, looking radiant in a white cashmere sweater and black stretch pants and boots. She led me into a gargantuan anteroom with a marble floor and a large diamond-shaped skylight cut into the high ceiling. There were doors at various intervals, leading deeper into the apartment, and at the far end of the room was a grand staircase that went up to the second floor. I’d heard about apartments like this, had seen them in movies, but I never really believed real people actually lived in them. “Nice place,” I said.
“Don’t let it freak you out,” she said apologetically.
I shook my head. “It’s beautiful.”
Hope’s father, Jack Seacord, had inherited his father’s medical supply company and grown it into a publicly traded, multinational conglomerate, of which he was still majority owner and CEO. He was a large, athletic man in his late fifties whose small, commanding features were jammed between the jutting slabs of his prominent forehead and chin. His smile was plastic, like a politician’s, and he had a quick, efficient manner about him, shaking my hand and sizing me up in the same instant. His lone displays of affection were reserved for Hope and seemed just a tad abnormal to me, his kisses landing squarely on her mouth, his hand resting casually on her backside, fingers stroking absently as he held her next to him.
Hope’s mother, Vivian, was a stunning woman, a long-limbed brunette with a gleaming, Botox-smooth porcelain complexion, a pixie haircut, and a languid, feline expression, a cat in sultry repose. In her prime, she’d actually been a rated tennis player. Now she sat on the boards of various museums and philanthropic foundations, and had this whole down-to-earth vibe that usually seemed so contrived in obscenely wealthy women, but seemed completely genuine in her case.
He was unimpressed. She thought I was hilarious, and told me so repeatedly, her loud laughs reverberating off the ceilings. Neither thought I was good enough for Hope, but naturally they were too polite to say so. It was evident in the way Jack nodded seriously as I explained what I did for the Spandler Corporation, his seeming lack of condescension simply a highly stylized version of it. “I know the company,” he said. “Great little outfit.” Vivian found me to be refreshingly grounded, which was fine for passing the time, but in no way made me a suitable mate for Hope. Hope’s only sibling, an older sister named Claire, was a militant lesbian living in LA, which Vivian mentioned with contrived pride at every possible opportunity, the word “lesbian” rolling off her lips with a practiced flourish. Claire’s outing had left Hope as the sole remaining member of the Seacord progeny to bear the burden of her parents’ dreams of succession, and that was a pretty tall order for a middleman to fill. So the dinner was a friendly affair, warm even, but there was a general undercurrent of shoulders being shrugged in the manner of the underwhelmed.
After dinner, Hope and I cuddled on a couch in one of the many densely decorated dens scattered throughout the labyrinthine halls of the massive apartment. “So,” she said, curling up into me. “What do you think?”
“They seemed great.”
“Oh, come on,” she said, hitting my chest lightly. “They were awful. But they mean well.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It’s okay, Zack. I’m not blind.”
“No. I meant the part about them meaning well. I didn’t get that at all.”
She giggled and kissed me.
“Your father seemed disappointed.”
“He’s just very protective.”
That’s because he’s maybe a little too into you. “Yeah,” I said. “I got that.”
“Lucky for you, they don’t get a vote.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“They won’t cut you off, or something?”
Hope laughed. “It doesn’t work that way. Besides, as the straight daughter, the world is pretty much my oyster. I’ve got some leeway.”
“So I guess I’ve got that going for me.”
“You’ve got me going for you.”
She kissed me and I kissed her and soon we were making out on the couch like a couple of teenagers. “Let’s go to my room,” she whispered.
“Are you serious? Your parents are sitting in the living room.”
“I know,” she said, tongue in my ear, hand in my pants. “Hurry.”
I stagger into the brownstone at around seven, to find Jed sprawled in his usual position on the couch, shoveling Cap’n Crunch into his mouth and watching Entertainment Tonight. Living with Jed is like having a puppy. No matter what time of day or night you come home, he’ll be there to greet you. “Hey, man,” he says with his mouth full, taking in my haggard appearance. “What happened to you?”
“I had a tube shoved up my dick,” I say, plopping down next to him.
“A cystoscopy,” he says knowledgeably.
“You’ve had one?”
“Hell no. But I watched one on the Learning Channel.” Jed has become quite well-rounded since he took up television full-time. “Why’d you have it?”
“Blood in my urine.”
“Hematuria,” he says, nodding.
“Very impressive,” I say.
“If it’s out there”—he indicates the television and then points to his head—“it’s in here.”
“Well, do you think you can pry yourself away long enough to get me some Tylenol?”
“No need,” Jed says, reaching into a crack of the sofa and feeling around. His hand emerges a moment later, clutching a bottle of Aleve. “Sometimes I get headaches from watching,” he says in response to my incredulous look.
I down three pills with one of the many half-finished Coke cans that litter the coffee table.
“So, what’s the verdict?” Jed says.
“They found a spot,” I say.
Jed actually looks away from the television for a minute. “Oh, shit,” he says worriedly.
“It’s probably nothing.”
He nods. “Probably. They do a biopsy?”
“Yeah.”
“So when do you find out for sure?”
“Friday.”
“What’s today?”
“Tuesday.”
“That sucks, man.”
“Yeah.”
We sit together in glum silence, watching Mary Hart feverishly discuss the latest celebrity pregnancy. I’m thinking that Mary ought to cut down a bit on the caffeine before taping. She’s looking more and more like a Saturday Night Live sketch of herself.
“Oh, hey,” Jed says after a few minutes. “Your dad’s here.”
“What?”
“He’s in your room.”
I look at Jed. “What’s he doing there?”
Jed shrugs. “He was tired. Said he wanted to lie down.”
“So you just let him go up into my room?”
“What’s he going to do, rob you?”
I pull myself off the couch. “I can’t believe you let him upstairs.”
“That’s right, Zack,” Jed says, getting annoyed. “I had the gall to let an older man rest in his son’s room.”
“Don’t get all righteous with me, Jed. You have no idea what he’s like. What he did to us.”
Jed nods. “You’re right. Sorry. I didn’t mean to come off like that.” He looks up at me. “I can barely remember my dad, Zack. He died when I was seven. But I still miss having one, you know? Those years when my company took off, you know, when I was so successful, I always missed having a father to be proud of me. It made the whole thing feel, I don’t know, hollow. And after Rael died, you know . . .”
“I know,” I say softly.
“I mean, I’ll get it together,” he says, looking back at the television. “I’m not going to watch television forever. But I sometimes wish I had a father, you know? Someone to just look to in all of this, to tell me to get off my ass. To set me straight, I guess.”
“Mine is not really the kind of father who sets people straight,” I say.
“So he’s a fuckup,” Jed says with a shrug. “What are we? The point is, he’s still here and you’re still here, and as we both know, that’s an equation that can change pretty quickly.” This is far and away the closest Jed’s ever come to discussing Rael’s death.
“Jed,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“This is the first meaningful conversation we’ve had in over a year.”
“You see, he’s already having a positive effect,” he says with a smirk, but his eyes dance purposefully away from mine, back to the television, and the moment is lost.
My room is engulfed in the twin odors of aftershave and flatulence, a noxious combination that actually stops me in my tracks for a minute. Norm is sitting at my desk, shoes off, belt undone, his belly bumping up against the desk like a docked dirigible. He’s bent over a large, warped journal with frayed edges, scribbling copiously and humming atonally to himself. I watch him for a moment as he sits there unaware of me, trying to discern some hidden truth in his posture, trying to connect this bloated man with the version that was frozen in my head when I was twelve years old, trying to justify the intense longing and sadness I’ve always felt with respect to him. It’s not happening, so I clear my throat. “Zack!” he says, closing the journal and spinning around on his chair. “Hello, son.”
“Jesus,” I say, stepping into the room and opening the window. “How can you stand to be around yourself?”
He smiles good-naturedly. “An unfortunate side effect of my Frappuccino habit.”
“What are you doing here, Norm?”
“Oh,” he says. “I hope you don’t mind. I just figured I’d get some work done while I waited for you.”
“For all you knew, I wasn’t even coming home tonight.”
My father flashes a simultaneously sad and defiant smile. “After all these years, do you think a few more hours are really going to make a difference to me?”
I don’t want to sit down, because that will somehow ratify his presence here, but a sitting position seems to be the only thing that soothes the fire burning in my crotch, so I sit down on the bed. “So, what’s up?” I say.
Norm stands, pulling up his pants, and starts tucking in his checkered button-down shirt. “I’m hungry,” he says. “Let’s go get some dinner. My treat.”
“No, thanks,” I say. “I just want to go to bed.”
“Come on, Zack, it’s just dinner. It’s no big deal.”
“Yes,” I say hotly, and you don’t think of your voice as coming from your groin, but when I raise it, I feel a sharp bolt of pain there. “It is a big deal. It’s a huge fucking deal. Because we don’t do that. Ever. We aren’t that father and son. We never have been. And you can’t just materialize, showing up at Matt’s gig, sitting in my room, at my desk, like it’s our fucking routine or something, as if you’ve been around for the last fifteen years, as if you gave a damn about us before today—” And then I have to stop, because goddamn if my voice isn’t breaking and I can feel the tears threatening, and I cannot, under any circumstances, give him that, because he’ll be fucking dancing in the streets over his breakthrough, will be celebrating the connection he thinks he’s made, will be so impressed with himself, thinking that he was right to come back and knew just what to do to reach out to me. I’ve had a shitty day, I’m on edge for a thousand different reasons, and the last thing I want to do is inadvertently validate this absurd notion he’s always subscribed to that a few grand gestures will accomplish what should take years of building or rebuilding.
“You’re right,” Norm says, standing awkwardly in front of the bed, nervously patting down the anorexic strands of his hair. “It is a big deal, and I in no way meant to minimize your feelings. I apologize.”
“Forget about it,” I say, feeling nonplussed by my reaction and annoyed with his recovery speak.
“Zack,” Norm says. “I’ve always prided myself on my ability to read people, and I’m going to tell you what I’m reading in you.”
“Please don’t.”
“Obviously, there’s a lot of hostility toward me.”
“Wow. They should give you a talk show.”
“I said it was obvious,” he says. “But there’s more. I’ve been disliked before—”
“Say it isn’t so.”
“—So I have a pretty good idea of what it feels like. But I am suggesting that what I’m getting from you is very scattered and unfocused. It’s as if you’re too distracted to hate me properly. I mean, look at Matt,” he says admiringly. “Now, that boy can hate.”
“You’re criticizing the manner in which I dislike you?”
“No, I’m analyzing it. And what I come up with is that while you certainly do have your issues with me, as well you should, they’re not foremost on your mind. You were drunk at Matt’s show last night, not fun drunk, but desperately drunk, if you take my meaning. You looked to me like a man with way too much on his mind.” He smiles at me. “You were always a worrier, even as a kid. Whenever there was a thunderstorm, you would always ask me for a flashlight. You were five years old and you were worried about blackouts. Do you remember that?”
“No,” I lie.
“Well, anyway. It just seems to me that on the list of things that are troubling you, I’m nowhere near the top right now. I don’t know if it’s work, or your engagement, or what, but I just know this: it’s not me.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” I say. “You’re still way up there.”
Norm lets out a bone-weary sigh and picks up his notebook, carefully organizing some of the tattered pages sticking out at various angles. “What is that, anyway?” I ask him.
“I’m writing my memoirs,” he says without the faintest whiff of self-consciousness, and something about it just makes me laugh out loud. “What?” he says defensively.
“Your memoirs,” I say, unable to hold back a laugh.
“That’s right,” he says defensively. “And I’ll have you know that I’ve already shown them to a friend or two in the publishing game, and they’re very interested.”
“No doubt.” I’m still smiling, and I can see it’s aggravating him.
“Look,” he says, annoyed. “Are we going to eat, or what?”
And maybe it’s the insanity of the last twelve hours, maybe it’s my current worries about my own mortality, maybe it’s because I’m scared and I want a father, any father, or maybe it’s just because this is the first time I can recall laughing in recent memory, but suddenly, I have no resistance left in me. “Fine,” I say. “Let’s go eat.”
“Hallelujah,” Norm says.