Monkey Business (24 page)

7:30 p.m.

I'
m lying in bed staring at the ceiling. I hate him. How could he jerk me around like that? How could he ignore me?

I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.

There's a knock on the door.

“Not here,” I say. I don't feel like talking to anyone. It's not like it's Russ. He's too busy with his
girlfriend.
No time for me. I'm sick of it. So sick of it. He can have his precious Sharon. I don't care. He can go to hell.

“It's me,” Russ says.

Huh? What, did he send Sharon on an errand so he could get a quick blow job? “Go away.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“I don't want to talk to you.” I can be strong.

Pause. “I told Sharon the truth. She left. Can I come in, please?”

What? I scurry off my bed and open the door. He looks sad and disheveled.

He told her. He broke up with her.

He told her. He broke up with her.

I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him inside. He chose me. I can't believe it. A helium balloon of happiness rises in my chest. I kiss his neck.

He loves me.

 

I nap and wake up feeling happy. It doesn't matter that he was a jerk. He realized his mistake and chose me! I turn over and see that he's staring at the ceiling.

“Do you want me to set the alarm?” I ask. What I'm really asking is, Do you still plan to sneak out?

“What time is class tomorrow?” he asks.

“Ten-thirty.”

“Why don't we sleep in and get up at ten?”

I fall back asleep, smiling, my head nuzzled in his arms.

 

When the phone rings the next morning I'm still smiling. I reach across Russ for the phone. The call display says O'Donnel. Oh. My. God. “Hello?”

“Hello, may I please speak with Kimmy Nailer, please?”

Please be yes. Please be yes. Please don't ruin this perfect morning. Damn you O'Donnel, give me good news. “Speaking,” I say, my voice shaking.

“Hi, Kimmy, this is Claire Moss from HR at O'Donnel. We're pleased to be offering you a position of summer associate.”

Oh. My. God. Hurray!

“The summer program is ten weeks, beginning June first. Your salary has been set at fifteen hundred dollars a week.”

I can pay back some of my loans! “I accept!”

Russ's eyes pop open. I give him a thumbs-up and mouth,
O'Donnel.

“Wonderful,” Claire says. “The only provision is that you'll need to maintain a B average in your classes.”

“That won't be a problem.” Better not be.

“Let me confirm your address,” she says, “and we'll send you all the necessary paperwork.”

When I hang up, Russ hugs me. “Congrats,” he says. “I'm proud of you.”

He must have gotten in, too, right? “Check your messages,” I urge.

He hesitates, then picks up the phone and dials his voice mail. Two minutes later he smiles.

“I got it, too,” he says, looking dazed.

“Wahoo!” I scream. I don't believe it. How amazing is this day?

He scoops me up and whirls me like the twister ride at a fair. I bend my knees so they don't hit the wall.

I can't believe how good my life just got. He broke up with Sharon. For me. We both got jobs. In New York. Where we'll be working together all summer. Maybe we can even live together…. Maybe I should wait a day or two before bringing that up. Don't want to push my luck.

We walk to the showers smiling, his arm tightly around me. Two people from another Block spot us. “Morning,” I sing.

“Morning,” they say, eyebrows raised.

I think we're finally out of the closet.

Saturday, February 21, 7:40 p.m.

I
walk up the stairs of the Zoo, feeling dazed. It's only been a week and a half, but it feels like I've been gone for months. I hear laughing through the rooms, doors slamming, people walking from one room to another. I wonder if anyone even realized I was gone.

I drop my bags off in my room, and then try to snap out of it. My family will be fine. They don't need me watching over them. I'll be back in two weeks to make sure they're okay.

At least I'm not behind on my assignments. I sent them all in by e-mail. Right now I have to get my life in order. I need to talk to Layla. I knock on her door. I'm not sure what I want to say to her, but I want to see her.

“One second!” she yells. I hear her laughing inside. She opens the door and hugs me. Tight. Maybe she feels the same? “Hi! You're back! How are you?” The phone is cradled between her ear and neck. “Hon, let me call you back, okay?”

Hon? Who's hon?

“Five minutes, I promise.” She giggles. “Me, too. Bye.” She
hangs up the phone and hugs me. “Jamie, how are you?” She pulls back and puts on her somber face. “You doing all right?”

“I'm all right. Who's hon?”

She claps her hands. “It's him! The essay guy, Bradley Green.” She mouths the word
essay
so no one in the hallway will hear. Not that there's anyone in the hallway. “Come in. I'll bring you up to speed.”

As usual, her room looks as though she's spent all day organizing and fluffing it. I flop on her bed and make myself comfortable. Who knows? Maybe she'll join me.

Nope. She sits on her desk chair. “First tell me about you. How's your family doing?”

“They've been better.” They were better when more of them were alive. “It was all pretty sudden.”

“Poor you. How are you?”

I don't feel like talking about me. “I want to know about Bradley.
Nu?
”

“He's wonderful,” she gushes. “I met him when I did the prospective students tour. Then I met him in the City last weekend.”

Last weekend. When I called. “That's where you were.”

“What do you mean?”

“I called you.”

“You did?”

“Yeah.” Should have left a message. Should have told her how I felt two weeks ago, then maybe she would never have gone to meet this Bradley guy. Maybe she would have chosen me. “Never mind. So you went to visit him last weekend.”

“Yes, and he took me to a fabulous restaurant, and we had an incredible time.”

“Get some action?” I lift my eyebrows suggestively. My stomach falls simultaneously.

She smiles. “Wouldn't you like to know.”

Bradley Green. Kermit had it wrong. It is easy being green.
I feel an unmanly lump in the back of my throat. Oy. “What else is going on? Russ and Kimmy still on the sly?”

“No, that's the other big news. He broke up with Sharon. And now he and Kimmy are all over each other in class. You'll see tomorrow. And they both got offers at O'Donnel.”

Throat lump increases exponentially. “Am I the only one without a job?” I need to figure out what I want to do.

“No, I don't think Lauren got one yet.”

“But she'll take any job. She swings all ways.”

Layla giggles. “We're all going to the Monsoon Bar on Johnson Street tonight to celebrate. And it's Nick's birthday. You'll come, won't you? We missed you. We miss our comedian.”

I fake smile. “Celebrate we shall.” What's not to celebrate?

11:38 p.m.

I'
m sitting next to Jamie along the bar. “What do you call a four-hundred-pound stripper?”

“What?

“Broke.” I laugh, waiting for him to join in. Instead, he sits with a dump-truck-just-ran-over-my-puppy look on his face. “You okay?”

My adorable
boyfriend
and Nick are playing darts and doing tequila shots, and Layla is on her cell phone, talking to Brad. I love my boyfriend. I started taking my pills again so my
boyfriend
and I can start having sex without a condom.

“Fine,” Jamie says. “What about you? You've hardly touched your beer, and we've been here two hours. You feeling okay?”

“Ha-ha, funny man. I can tell you're masking your pain with jokes. Are you going to tell me what's wrong?”

“Glenda,” he says to the waitress, “can I have a beer?”

“What?” I say. “You're drinking? You don't drink.”

“I do now,” he says, staring at Layla.

Huh? “Do you…do you like Layla?”

He shrugs.

What? Since when? What about
me?
“But she's seeing someone.”

“Thanks, Sherlock.”

“So that's why you're upset,” I say, and take a sip.

“You are quick.”

I could do without the attitude. “Stop being such an ass, Jamie. I'm trying to help.”

He shrugs. “What can I do? It's not like someone like her would ever go for someone like me. I'm not quite her handsome knight in shining Armani, am I?”

Not quite. “You never know.”

He's gazing at her with big cartoon puppy eyes, and it's making me jealous.

Why is this making me jealous? I thought Jamie had a thing for me. When did he start having a thing for Layla? What does Layla have that I don't? Besides blond hair and a smaller ass?

“What does Bradley III have that I don't?” Jamie asks. “He must be hung like a donkey.”

I should hope so. Those vibrators were pretty well endowed. “She hasn't told me.”

“You think she's slept with him already?”

Um…yeah. “I don't know, Jamie.”

My
boyfriend
gets a bull's-eye and then does a little dance. Can't he stay still for one second? He's always moving. I thought that now that the cheating was over, I wouldn't have to share him, but he's still always running from club to club, basketball to real estate, friend to friend, me to the dartboard. Why can't he stay still?

Jamie pings me on the leg. “Is he tall?”

“Who?”

“Is Prince Bradley tall?”

“I don't know. I've never met him. Why?”

“Because tall men are usually well hung.”

I burst out laughing. “Are we still talking about Brad's penis?”

“Yes,” Jamie says. “I can't help but worry.”

“Why?”

“Because how am I going to compete with a man with a huge
shlong?
You know what I'm talking about. I look as if my last girlfriend was Lorena Bobbitt.”

Beer snorts from my nose, I'm laughing so hard. I thought all men think they're Goliath. “You're not that small,” I lie.

He dismisses me with his hand. “Yes, I am. I don't care. There's a lot of magic in that wand. Occasionally Cinderella's coach turns back to a pumpkin before midnight, but normally she can party all night, you know?”

At this point, I'm screaming with laughter, and my
boyfriend
appears protectively by my side. “What's so funny here?” he asks.

Jamie points his finger at Russ's crotch. “We're discussing
shlongs
. Care to join in?”

I weave my arm around Russ. “You can't discuss
shlongs
with my
boyfriend
.” I monitor his facial reaction to my use of the word
boyfriend
. Neither his lips nor his eyebrows flinch. That's a good sign, isn't it? I'll assume we're officially dating unless advised otherwise.

Russ squeezes me back. He reeks of beer. “Why can't he?” he asks.

I'm not sure he knows what a
shlong
is. “You want to discuss your genitals, go ahead.”

“That's the problem with coed bathrooms,” Jamie says. “In the days of urinals I could check out the competition. Now I'm forced to battle blindly.”

“Do you pee blindly, too?” I ask. “Someone keeps hitting the floor in the third stall.”

Jamie shakes his head. “Not me, I have perfect aim.”

Russ nods. “So do I. I just kicked Nick's ass in darts.”

Jamie wags a finger at me. “Maybe it's you, Kimmy.”

“Me? Woman can't have bad aim.”

“You leave the toothpaste all over the sink,” Jamie says.

“No, I don't!”

“Yes, you do,” Jamie says. “I've used the sink after you do, and it's no pretty sight.”

Great. Now Russ thinks I'm a slob who pees on the floor. “Jamie, do I make fun of you?”

“Yes,” he says. “All the time. We just spent the last twenty minutes making fun of my
shmekel
.”

Layla finally turns off her cell and joins us. “What are you guys talking about?”

“My
shmekel
,” Jamie says, looking desolate.

“Isn't that the Yiddish word for a small
shmuck
?” Layla says.

Jamie obviously needs my help winning over the opposite sex. Maybe I should write a book; I've certainly had a lot of success recently. First tactic: do not bring up one's small penis in front of one's object of affection (unless, of course, you're actually bringing it up, ha-ha).

Layla smiles. “Small isn't always bad. It's all about the shape. Sometimes big is too big.”

Then why are all her vibrators twice the size of a normal man? The guys look surprised. They obviously haven't seen what's inside her pleasure drawer, or listened to one of her masturbation lectures.

Jamie leans forward, eagerly. “You prefer small?”

Could he be more obvious?

Layla scratches the side of her face in thought. “I find when it's smaller, you can have sex more often, and you don't get sore.”

Nick's eyes are popping out of his head. “How often do you like to have sex?”

She appears thoughtful. “When I'm in a relationship, you mean?”

“Or not,” Jamie adds.

“Once or twice a day, I suppose.”

I spit the beer I was drinking back into the bottle. “Oh, please.” Give me a break. She's batting her big blue eyes at her adoring fans. “You do not have sex twice a day.”

“I don't?”

“Come on!” What, she needs everyone's attention? It's not enough that she has the perfect boyfriend, but she has to steal Jamie and now Russ?

“It destresses me. I can't sleep if I don't orgasm.”

Great. The masturbation discussion. Again. Why do we always have to talk about masturbation?

“Do you have an orgasm every night?” Russ asks. He can't take his eyes off her. My back tenses. Is he going to fall for her now? Start sleeping with her? What if I become Sharon and no one tells me he's screwing someone else? If he did it to her, why not do it to me?

“Of course,” Layla says. “Don't you?”

“I do,” Nick says.

“I think you're the first woman to ever admit to masturbating,” Russ says.

Layla looks shocked. “What are you talking about? My friends at home and I talk about it all the time.”

“You do?” Nick asks. “Now there's a conversation I'd like to overhear. Can we call them?”

“I'm not embarrassed about my body. Women have to be in charge of their own pleasure.” She gives me a meaningful look.

“Charge away,” Nick says, and everyone laughs. Everyone except me.

 

Back at the Zoo, Russ asks me to masturbate for him. I don't really want to touch myself down there. “Can't you do it?” I ask.

He gently bites the top of my ear. “I want to watch you do it.”

This is highly stressful. I don't want to touch myself with
him watching. I don't even know what to do. But I don't want him to think I'm a prude. And what if Sharon used to do it? I can't not do what Sharon used to do. I can do this. If every other woman can make herself come, so can I. If it takes way too long I'll just fake it. I'm good at faking it.

“It might take me a while,” I say.

“I'm not going anywhere.”

Unless he meets someone else.

I dip my hands into my pants and attempt to arouse myself. I feel like an idiot. But I pretend I'm finding this arousing. I continue rubbing myself and it starts to feel better. And better. I feel him getting hard beside me. This apparently turns him on. Which turns me on.

I continue stroking myself, faster, harder, lighter, slower. He starts to stroke himself beside me. My legs and arms start to shake. My hands and feet start to feel cold, but we don't stop. We're each breathing so hard, we could have asthma.

Eventually I feel overwhelmed with heat, like an itch that desperately needs to be scratched, and then…

So that's what everyone keeps talking about.

I love you, I think but don't say.