Five Things I Can't Live Without (20 page)

D
erek Cartwright was his name, telecom was his game.

Derek didn’t actually say that, of course. But within five minutes of meeting him, that refrain was in my head. Driving a

BMW, living a block away from Danielle Steele in Pacific Heights, wearing an expensive suit. And those shoes. I didn’t even want to think what his shoes had cost, and that he probably had another pair in brown. When I’d arrived, he’d actually handed me his card. Why did I need his card? This would be our only meeting, and I already had his cell phone number. It was just part of the presentation. It was just part of his Derek-ness.

I loathed him.

It was probably just a fluke that up until this moment, I’d basically liked all my clients. But I had to admit, some of my liking for them was their tendency to meet me slightly hat in hand, embarrassed at having sought my services. They generally deferred to my authority, which was unique in my professional life. It was kind of how I imagined it went when decent men met prostitutes for the first time: shy, uncertain, abashed, needing some hand-holding before they got down to it. A weird analogy, I know, but bear with me.

Derek, in contrast, seemed like someone who had the phone numbers of several high-end escort services programmed into his cell phone. I could picture him waiting in the swankiest hotel room in San Francisco, and when the knock came, he’d answer it buck naked. He’d smack his open palms against his abs a few times with evident self-satisfaction and say, “Yeah, you get
all this
.”

I had cause for this suspicion. I mean, I was meeting him in this absurdly upscale hotel bar. A hotel bar! In a neighborhood replete with local bars. I passed no fewer than four while walking the two blocks from the parking deck (where it cost me $14 an hour to park, I might add. I’d never done an expense report for any other clients, but I was thinking it over).

“You want a Cosmo?” he asked when the waiter came by. “An appletini, maybe?”

“Root beer,” I said. “I’m on the clock.”

I wanted him to wince at that, to wonder what the waiter would make of a statement like that in a hotel bar, but Derek didn’t miss a beat. He held up his ice-filled glass, shook it slightly, and said, “Another.”

“Of course, sir,” the waiter said. He practically did a little bow before departing.

“So as I was saying,” Derek said smoothly, “I just haven’t had the time to write one of these profiles myself. But I’m twenty-eight now, and I’m tired of the sex toys and the gold diggers.” He cast me a slow smile. I stared back blankly. “I’m ready for something real. I’m ready for some
one
real. I travel a lot for my work, and I come home to an empty apartment. I’m ready for that to change. I’m ready to get some home fires burning, if you know what I’m saying.”

“So I’d be writing your profile from scratch. You have nothing written.” I tried to keep my tone as bland as possible.

“Nada.”

“Okay.” I thought a moment, then decided to price myself out of the market. “That’d cost you a thousand dollars.”

“Done. The best is worth paying for, right?”

My stomach churned at the deal we’d just brokered. On the one hand, I was thrilled to be making a thousand dollars. On the other hand, I’d have to make it by spending enough time with Derek to write him a profile. I pitied his prostitute.

“One of the important rules is that you want to know your audience,” I said. I planned to be a cold pedant throughout the evening. There was no indication that Derek was even remotely attracted to me; he probably considered me way below his league, which made my blood boil. But for the sake of my pride, I planned to convey to him that I was a professional, that he was on my turf, and that there’d be no hanky-panky—hotel bar or not. “The key is to think about what you want in a woman, and what traits that woman would be looking—”

“Yeah, yeah.” He did a dismissive arm wave. His staple gesture, no doubt. “I don’t need the philosophy.” Then he gave me what he clearly thought was his killer grin. He bore a certain resemblance to Tom Cruise. I detest Tom Cruise. “I’m just looking for results. I’m a big-picture guy.”

“Well, that’s good to know.” I doodled a picture of a big-screen TV on my notepad, and next to it, a gun. “What kind of woman do you see yourself with?”

“One who likes the fine things in life, but isn’t obsessed with money. Or, more specifically, isn’t obsessed with my money.”

“So you want a woman who’s committed to her own career?”

He appeared to consider this. “She should
have
a career, but it should be one that gets her home before me. I don’t want her to be more into her career than into me, right?”

I had to ask. “And will you be ‘more into your career’ than into her?”

“I have to be. I can’t let up now.”

“So how much time do you actually have to devote to a relationship?” I added, “For the profile. I want to give an accurate impression of what a woman will be getting if she decides to be with you.”

“Accuracy? Your ad said your approach is about the marketing.”

“Marketing is a big part of it.” It occurred to me that if I didn’t win his approval, he could withdraw the money. Then I would have subjected myself to him for nothing. “But I want to make sure you end up with something that’ll last. If you put something in your profile that isn’t true, or creates an impression that you can’t back up in person, then you’ll end up with nothing.”

“Oh, I’ll end up with something. It’s a numbers game.”

I realized with horror that I had used that phrase more than a few times myself. With much greater delicacy and nuance, of course, but still.

“Look, I don’t want you to lie. And there’s no reason you’d have to.” That grin again. Ech. “But as you said, we’re creating an impression here. It’s not facts that move people; it’s impressions.”

“So what impression do you want to give a woman?”

“The impression of availability. I mean, I’ll be around enough.”
More than enough, I’m sure.
“I don’t think she needs to know up front that I travel a lot for business. I do think she needs to know up front that I’m successful in business.”

“I thought you were trying to avoid gold diggers.”

“I can smell a gold digger a mile away. Your job is just to do volume for me.” Grin.

I consulted my pad. “So far, I have down that you want a woman who has a career, but puts her relationship first. What else?” I kept my eyes fixed on the paper. If I could do that 70 percent of the time, I’d make it through this.

“She needs to look good, of course. She should wear Prada; Prada shouldn’t wear her, right?” From that flashing grin of his, I was starting to wonder if the man had Tourette’s. Maybe all this bravado was just to compensate for a disabling tic disorder. “Good in bed, but you can’t say that right out. You need to finesse it a little.” He paused to think. “She should like cats. I’ve got a cat.” I looked at him in surprise. He shrugged. “My ex-girlfriend left me the cat. He’s purebred. What else, what else. A good sense of humor. Someone who can get along with my friends. Someone who doesn’t get seasick. Or carsick. That one would be a deal breaker. I like to drive switchbacks a little faster than advisable.” He looked at me. “Do you need more?”

“No, that’ll do it.” I continued to scribble for a minute while thinking of my next question. “Five things you can’t live without?”

“BMW 650i convertible. The open road to drive her on.” He stopped, momentarily stumped. “Five, right?” I nodded. “Sleep. Food. Sex.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “It would be kind of funny to take the question really literally, right? No one can live without sleep, food, and sex.”

I nodded approvingly as I wrote his answers down. The good thing was he would be warding the ladies off all on his own.

A half hour later, he counted ten $100 bills into my hand and we called it a night. I told him that I’d e-mail the finished product to him in the next couple of days, and that was it. It was the quickest profile meeting I’d had, and by far the most profitable. I’d never held $1,000 in cash before, and clutched my purse tightly as I walked to the garage. Then I loosened my grip, figuring that I should stop looking like a woman with $1,000 in cash in her purse.

When I got home, Dan was out and the apartment was silent. I immediately turned on the desk lamp at my drafting table and started working on the profile. I wanted it done as soon as possible. I’d been trying to muster a feeling of satisfaction that I’d taken Derek by charging so much for so little, but I felt the opposite. I just felt dirty. I shouldn’t have taken Derek’s money, I should have walked out on behalf of womankind. I should have shown Derek that women couldn’t be bought. Instead, I’d confirmed his obvious belief that it was all a matter of price. Though honestly, Derek probably didn’t think he’d bought me, because he wasn’t thinking about me at all, the same way he would barely think about whatever woman he would net with his profile.

I should donate this money to the women’s movement.
Was there still a women’s movement? I mean, feminism was the default mode for women under forty, so no one needed to carry a card anymore. I could donate it to the National Organization for Women, or the League of Women Voters. To People for the Ethical Treatment of Women. To the Self-Respecting Women of America.

But I looked at the pile of hundreds, and I really, really wanted them. I had earned them. I
was
a self-respecting woman. It wasn’t like I worked for a tobacco company. I was just a woman trying to run a business. Gloria Steinem would understand. If not, Helen Gurley Brown would.

In writing the profile, I put in every asinine thing he’d said. I dressed it up prettily enough that he wouldn’t suspect I was trying to sabotage him. In the final version, there were more than enough clues that he was shallow and self-involved. The depressing part was that I knew he’d get plenty of responses anyway.

After e-mailing the profile to Derek, I found myself roaming the apartment, pent-up and antsy. I turned the TV on for a while, scanned through all hundred channels twice, then turned it off. I did the same thing with the pages of a magazine. I wished Dan were home to talk me down. Finally I took a sleeping pill and went to bed.

When I woke up the next morning, Dan had already gone to work. I was disappointed; I’d been planning to surprise him by initiating morning sex. Since the literary festival the week before and the Dustin/Larissa debacle, I’d been trying to make at least one gesture of love a day. There’d been a tender voice mail left for him at work, a back rub, and lots of praise for a new drink he’d concocted with fig liqueur. I didn’t complain that he used the last of the milk without telling me or buying more. I’d watched an entire baseball game with him, and even worn the baseball cap he’d bought me months before, the one that he thought was cute and I knew made me look like a rodent.

So morning sex would have to be tomorrow’s gesture. I wasn’t sure how long I was supposed to keep this up, with Dan taking it all in stride. Except for the back rub. He was really appreciative of that, and he even reciprocated with his own, much less thorough rub. Obviously, I’d have to go bigger. That night, I decided to surprise him with a four-course gourmet meal.

I spent much of the morning poring over recipes that involved ingredients like enoki mushrooms, fruity green olive oil, and ruby chard. As I made the shopping list, I was filled with good humor.
It’s so nice to do things for someone you love,
I thought, captivated by my own beneficence.

That is, until I actually started having to do things. There, the plan unraveled. I’d assumed I could find everything in one place, but instead, I ended up going to three different outrageously expensive markets. As I pushed my cart through each of their narrow aisles, I was struck by just how ill-conceived this was. I don’t like cooking. Neither Dan nor I have a particularly refined palate. And Dan probably wouldn’t even know how much money or energy I’d spent, unless I told him. He’d know there were more courses than usual, but beyond that, I’d have to point it out. Which just seemed tacky and pathetic. But if he didn’t notice, I knew I’d sit there stewing through all four courses. I was supposed to be doing this with the spirit of kindness, buoyed by my love for Dan. Instead, I was standing in my third line, fuming.

I was also silently tallying my purchases, with rising horror. Sure, I’d known that dinner would be expensive, but “expensive” is such an abstract notion. I started to seriously consider abandoning my cart full of groceries and going back to the other two grocery stores to return the rest of the ingredients. But how to do it? I could wait until it was my turn at the register, and then explain that I’d changed my mind. Of course that would inconvenience the staff and draw disgust from the other shoppers. I could walk down an unoccupied aisle and ditch the cart. If an employee caught me, could he force me to return to my cart? It didn’t seem likely—though there could be some measure of public shaming. The final option was that I could replace everything myself, but I’d have to pull produce back out of the plastic bags, which would get me even more dirty looks. The customers who shopped at a market carrying seventeen varieties of mushrooms cared about sanitation. They probably already thought I was the riffraff.

The problem was that all the plans risked humiliation. On another day, I could withstand the ire of the staff and the other patrons. But I was suddenly feeling very fragile. I was getting exhausted just thinking about potential ways to dispose of my groceries, and besides, the woman in front of me was already paying and the man behind me was genially pointing to the conveyor belt, maybe thinking I was from another country and didn’t realize I was supposed to unload my own cart. My window of opportunity was rapidly closing. Which was fine, because I was also realizing that I didn’t want to tell Dan that my day had been spent planning and shopping for an aborted dinner. It looked like I was going to have to suck it up and carry on. I would have to cook.