Nights Like This (16 page)

“I give a fuck. Is that so terrible? Just because you're not used to anyone giving a fuck or you don't allow anyone to, doesn't mean I'm going to sit my ass on a barstool and pretend I don't care about you.”

“I just meant why? I mean why?”

And she said, simply, “Because I like you. I really like you.”

“So here's something real. Let's say I write this book about us, about my life in New York. And my family and everyone I know realizes all I've done is piss my life away. Then what?”

“That's your fear?” she nearly screamed. “That's what you're scared of?”

“You don't understand.”

“I think
you
don't understand. Give a fuck about the right things.”

“My family and everyone I know is the right thing. Can you imagine writing your life and your parents read it and it is totally and entirely different than the life they imagine for you. And then what?”

“It's called fiction. Don't go writing a fucking memoir. No one's asking you to do that.”

“And when my parents ask me how the fuck I know so much about women loving women, what the fuck do I say? I have a good imagination?”

“Wait! They don't know? Your parents, they don't know?”

“They're in India,” I said quietly. “I haven't seen them for ten years.”

“What the fuck, Jess! No wonder you're scared shitless. No, I don't think you should come out to them in a novel either. So you have to come clean.”

“I can't do that. I'm an only child, my parents are these big socialites and I can't.”

“You're full of shit is what the problem is.”

“Whatever. I don't want to talk about it. Just fucking drop it.”

She placed her hand over mine. I could feel her watching me, waiting for me to talk or cry or both. I did neither. I felt both the weight of my secret and yet a sweet release at finally having told someone my fear whether she understood or not.

“All I'm saying, princess is you don't know what's going to happen. You don't know. You can't live tomorrow until you have fully lived today. I mean are you happy living this way, in constant fear?”

“No.”

“One day you'll want to take off, like I told you and figure all this stuff out. Until then, let's see if we can do this together. Okay?”

“Yes,” I said blinking hard, not wanting a single tear to fall from place. She kissed her fingertips and gently placed them on my eyelids. She took her hands away.

“I got you,” she whispered, “Even when you think I don't understand your pain.”

We sat quietly for a while, not filling full spaces with emptiness. But our words that night had been full. I knew that. I held Vanessa's hand and relished the roughness of her palm. I was glad that after we got up from the bar, she would be resting her head next to me, reaching for me in the middle of the night. I watched her as she sat there, sipping sometimes, sometimes looking at me, sometimes looking towards the fifteen inch flat screen nestled in the corner across from us. Her movements made her erotic. I wanted to bury my face within the depth of her hair, to kiss her neck, to feel her skin under cool sheets.

“Can we go upstairs?” I asked.

I thought she would have a smart-ass comment. I expected Vanessa to talk of fucking.

“I'm going to hold you all night,” she said, “because I think you want me to.”

And I did want her to. But I was in awe of the fact that she knew and had agreed to my desires all without my knowing. It was these moments that allowed me to enter her as she entered me and my thoughts. It was these insights that made me understand Vanessa. It was this tenderness that made me fall in love with her.

It was true that Anjali offered me such tenderness often. But Vanessa's tenderness was different. It was more heartfelt. It was rare. Vanessa wasn't trying to coax me into love or into loving her. She was who she was; full of raw humor, sarcastic asides and, at times like these, a tender insight into the essence of who I was.

As we entered our room, Vanessa kissed me. She kissed my face and my neck and then tugged at my shirt until it was over my head and on the floor. She unhooked my bra with her left hand, pulling at my pants with her right. I allowed her to undress me as hastily as she did. I was excited by her hunger, her immediate desire. I undressed her more slowly, enjoying the feel of her neck, her breasts, and her stomach. I ran my hands along her thighs, the muscles in her legs revealing that she either walked a lot or did a hell of a lot of squats. I pictured her then squatting by a fountain in Central Park, as I had seen her that first day, smiling up at me.

We made love slowly but full of hunger, full of the understanding that this was not just a fuck in a foreign city. That night, I needed Vanessa to want me with all of her body, to desire me for more than mine. And she did. That night, for the first time, I made love to her, desiring to please her not because she was a random stranger that had blown my mind, but because she was Vanessa and I enjoyed her and she made me believe if not in me, then at least in the slightest possibility of promise.

After she came, I kissed her tenderly and felt her legs shake around my neck. I rose up above her and kissed her mouth. When I rest my head on her chest, I felt her heart beating under my ear. I heard the blood pumping through her heart and I had an image of the heart as it was illustrated in my anatomy book, a flat depiction of four chambers, and an aorta. It seemed so banal on paper but here, lying on my lover's chest, the heart seemed vivid, full of life and dreams.

I could blame the liquor for what happened that night. But I know within me that it was something I wanted. It was my choice to make love to Vanessa as I did. In a way it was a relief. Now that I had transgressed, there was nothing to fight. I lay there on her chest thinking maybe we'd just be lovers in Philly. After we got back to New York, I wouldn't see her again. Or I would see her and we'd just be friends. I knew then that there was no way for that to happen. But I told myself it would all work out.

I fell asleep with my head on Vanessa's chest, listening to her heartbeat as it slowed, became more faint, yet continued to speak to me as if to say I should believe in the possibility of an angel who could someday mend the broken wings of all who have ever used the heart to love. My heart is intact I told the angel. I have love in two places. If you have it in you, for all my transgressions, please mend the heart of a girl named Anjali.

 

 

Vanessa woke me up the next morning to breakfast at the foot of the bed. She had ordered a full breakfast through room service without me knowing, without me even waking when it arrived. I got out of bed and used the bathroom, brushed my teeth and washed my face. As I used a quarter towel to wipe my skin, I looked into the mirror. I looked hard at myself, my strong jaw line and as a woman on the subway had once said to me, my pixie features. When my hair was short and stopped an inch past my ears, my features looked more pixie-like. But it was long now and I wondered how much like Tinkerbell I looked, at least to Vanessa. I spent time looking into my eyes, wondering what she saw when she looked in them, wondering what in them made her stay interested in me.

“Jess, you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said as I folded the towel in half and left it in a neat square on the sink.

Vanessa had poured our coffee, uncovered the two plates of eggs and arranged our meals conveniently on the bed.

“I thought you might've had too much to drink or the gin fucked you up.”

“No,” I said, “I was just washing my face.”

“
I was just wondering why the fuck you're here with me
,” I wanted to say. But I couldn't say that because if I did, she might have started wondering too.

“You like bacon?”

“Love bacon.”

“Good, because I got you bacon, not sausage.”

“Great.”

I settled into the bed beside Vanessa, careful not to spill either cup of coffee that rested in the tray by her folded legs.

We ate breakfast with our knees touching slightly.

“You ever eat breakfast in bed naked?”

“No,” I said, “not something I do.”

“Well you're doing it now.”

“I guess I am.”

Breakfast the morning after sex had usually meant Anjali made bacon and eggs as I slept. Those mornings, I showered, dressed and walked into a kitchen that smelled like fresh coffee. She would have freaked if anyone had taken food anywhere near her seven hundred and fifty thread count sheets and her king size goose down comforter. Before Anjali, there had been Tiffany. Tiffany had been a vegetarian, a fucking annoying habit I had thought, and breakfast had meant a half a bagel or something else that would make me starve through the day until I ate lunch.

So breakfast in bed had never been something I had done. But in Philly with Vanessa, I had a feeling I would have a lot of firsts, most of them not sexual. The strange thing was, unless Vanessa mentioned things to me, I was not aware of them. It was as if she was awakening my senses and my mind to take notice of firsts, of things I liked when I tasted them and things I didn't, be that a drink or a morning of eggs and bacon in bed. It was our first morning in Philly. We had spent less than a day together and already I felt as if I knew Vanessa better. Strangely, I also felt as if I were getting to know myself better.

“So where are we going today?” I asked.

“We are walking the streets.”

“What?”

“We're going to park by the Museum of Art and walk around all day.”

“That's it?”

Vanessa looked at me as if she was amused.

“What else did you have in mind? Is there anything that you want to do? Because you act like this is all not enough or not what you want to do.”

“It's just I figure for the time and money we're spending here, couldn't we just have taken a trip to Paris or something? I don't know how much we're paying to stay here but I'm guessing it's a lot.”

Vanessa sighed and smiled at the same time, a strange mixture of exasperation and amusement.

“Jess, we're staying here through a friends and family discount thing I have from a colleague of mine whose husband manages a Marriot in Manhattan. You're right, even with that, we're spending a hell of a lot of fucking money to stay in Philly, at a fucking airport so why not go to Paris? Why not?”

I looked at Vanessa, waiting for her to offer an answer. It had been, after all, my question.

“Because I want you to wake the fuck up. You go to Paris, you expect to see the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, beautiful bridges. You're still not awake; you just take it all in and keep saying ‘ah, that's beautiful.' Here, you don't know at what turn, in what place, you'll find something to capture your heart. That's why we're here.

‘I know it sounds fucking crazy but it's real. You want to go to Paris, ask your sugar mommy. I'm sure she'll take you on a guided tour of everything that everyone who ever goes to Paris takes a tour of. But stop her in a bakery somewhere and ask her the name of a pastry that you think looks so fucking good and she won't know what the fuck to say. Ask her the name of a plant that grows near a bridge that runs across the Seine and she won't have a fucking clue. You want to sightsee what everyone else has always seen, buy a fucking Fodor's guide. But I'm not going to take you on a sleeping tour of Paris or anyplace else that's mapped out for you. That's why we're here.”

“So we're walking around today?” I asked.

“Yes. Just relaxing. The entire city is our Central Park.”

I got up and removed the breakfast dishes from our bed. I laid everything to the side, by the wall and then went back to where Vanessa sat. Before she could get up to shower, I kissed her and started to touch her stomach. I slid my hands up to touch her breasts.

She pulled me onto the bed and we tumbled, struggled, pleased each other and came almost at the same time. We showered after that and for a moment I thought of having showered with Anjali, of her kneeling before me, offering me everything she had while steam swirled and collected in a heavy fog around us. While Vanessa soaped my back and kissed my shoulders, I thought of Anjali grasping my hips with something like desperation. I thought of her kissing me softly after I came. I remembered her kissing me slowly enough to make my knees bend slightly and to let her know she had pleased me. I felt guilty for having pushed Anjali away the last time we showered. I promised myself that when I returned to New York, I would shower with her again and allow her to have all of me. I imagined her bright body and her soulful eyes.

I didn't know why I was thinking of Anjali but when Vanessa tried to touch me, I quickly pushed her hand away, feeling somehow, that I couldn't or I wouldn't allow her to have me in the shower.

“You okay?”

“You ask me that a hell of a fucking lot!” I snapped.

“Well you zone out. What the fuck? Have you ever tried to be with you? You'll be talking and then you'll be so quiet it fucking worries me.”

“I'm sorry. It's just hot in here and I want to get out. I'm a little dizzy.”

“Bullshit, but okay.”

I ignored her. I washed all the soap off my skin and Vanessa moved the shower curtain for me. I stepped out of the shower, took a bath towel from the rack and went into the bedroom. There was a rush of cool air as I sat on the bed, wiping my arms and then my legs. The room felt cold after the hot water but I welcomed the cold. I couldn't shake the thought of Anjali kneeling in front of me. I remembered not having let her please me in the shower before our Chinese dinner and senseless buggy ride. I felt guilty that I had come away with Vanessa when I knew that, had I asked Anjali to go away with me, she would have gone anywhere and done anything I might have wanted.

But that was exactly why I didn't like asking her. Her places of enjoyment were mapped and predictable. She would never have suggested or entertained the notion of coming to Philly and just walking around. Anjali would have pretended that it would be nice but we would have ultimately gone to Greece or someplace like that to see whatever we were shown in a guided tour. And Vanessa was right about mapped places of delight for whenever I had gone somewhere, I had appreciated what I knew I should, had drank expensive wine and had lauded the trip as a great vacation.

I thought back to when Anjali and I had gone to London for a week and we had seen London Bridge, Trafalgar Square, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. None of it had excited me but I had been in awe because these were places I should have been excited about. So what if half the attraction of the city was a pigeon shitted square and an oversized clock? We were glad to have seen it. I wondered what Vanessa would have found in London, if anything. What I had enjoyed most about London was watching sunrise over the Thames, watching ripples of water capture sunlight as a boat glided by, majestic and glorious as it bathed itself in early morning sun. I had seen that sunrise alone. Anjali had been sleeping contently in our hotel, covered in expensive sheets.

But then, hadn't she been the one to ask me to go to DC? Was it possible that she too was capable of getting away and walking random streets? I hadn't ever given her the chance. Over the years she had asked me to go to Chicago, San Diego, Portland and every time I had declined. Perhaps she would have booked an airport hotel too. Maybe there was more to her than I allowed there to be just so it was easier to reject her altogether. I promised myself I would go to DC and give myself to Anjali wholly, see what she had to offer.

Vanessa emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her hair held in place by another wrapped like a turban. She unwrapped the turban and towel dried her hair. I watched her dress and then run her mousse filled palms through her thick brown hair.

“Have you never seen a woman get dressed, Jess? What the fuck?” she asked as she saw me sitting on the bed, watching everything she did as if it were intriguing.

“I've never watched you get dressed,” I said. “And yes, I always watch people get dressed.”

It was the truth. I had always watched my lovers dress at some time during our situations or relationships. It gave me some insight into their lives, into how they readied themselves for the day. Sometimes, thereafter, I could close my eyes one early morning and imagine what they might be doing that very moment. It made me feel as if I weren't so alone, as if I were let into a secret that should make me believe that somewhere, I was connected to someone.

“Jess, if you don't want to be here then go home.”

I felt shaken.

“What?”

“I mean you keep drifting into these thoughts that you don't share. I am sure you are thinking of your sugar mommy. Go home to her if you want.”

“Fuck you!” I almost screamed.

Vanessa stopped what she was doing and stared at me. Then she laughed.

“Truth hurt? Look, I just want you to enjoy this or quit this. Shit or get off the pot. But don't not enjoy this and be here. I can do this alone.”

“But I want to be here with you,” I said.

It was true. I did want to be there with Vanessa. But how do you hold down your mind and heart and say, “Enough of this?” Anjali meant something too. And she would come into my thoughts because she wasn't a stranger or an ex. She was my present as much as Vanessa was. I couldn't extricate them completely from each other because the heart does not work that way. No matter how hard you try, those you love are within you simultaneously. Even exes, for that matter. You never get over people; you learn to reconfigure them in the chambers of the heart. With the least stimulus, a scent, a sight, a shower, sometimes those chambers open and you think of someone without meaning to, sometimes without even knowing it. It doesn't mean you want to fuck them or be with them or even talk to them really. It just means you pay some respect to the good you knew of them. Was it so bad? After all, none of us is a blank composition books waiting to be written on. We're all full of writing and for anyone new that wants to write on us, they have to work around all that's already there.

“Jess…you're fucking doing it again.”

“Vanessa I get lost in my thoughts, okay? If you don't like that then I don't know what to say. I think a lot. It doesn't mean I don't like you or I don't want to be with you. It doesn't mean I want to run home to someone else. It just means that I think a lot. And if you can't accept that, then we can always go home.”

She walked towards me then stopped.

“All right. Enough said.”

She went back to fussing with her hair and then dressing. I stayed quiet. When Vanessa was ready, we went to the third floor and walked to the car. The parking deck was damp with rain and humid with expectation.

“Here we go,” Vanessa said as if nothing had happened between us.

I admired that quality in her, the ability to shake off a moment. Anjali dwelled on every word, on every instance. Vanessa dissolved time and space as if it never were and for that I was grateful. Although within myself, I was still at unease, hoping she wouldn't turn around and decide that maybe we should go back to New York, that maybe she'd had enough of me.

I watched as she backed out of a narrow parking space by the pillar where we had parked the afternoon before. I wished she would say something but she stayed quiet. Soon, we were on the highway, driving towards signs that would take us towards the museum district, this great downtown where Vanessa planned on spending an entire day. I was not quite sure how the day would play out before us or how much I would enjoy the haphazard plans Vanessa seemed so comfortable with.

“Welcome to our first day in Philly,” she finally said as she circled through streets for a parking space.

“Vanessa, I'm sorry about before,” I said.

“It's all good. You think we should park here?” she asked as she pointed to a small parking lot charging a flat fee for the entire day.

I took her cue to let it go.

“Yeah, it seems all right,” I said.

She parked and I helped her fasten the roof of the convertible. We got out and I looked around us, past the parking lot, towards the streets and ultimately towards the rows of flags beating against the wind.

Vanessa took my hand and with her other hand managed to put on her sunglasses. I wished I had sunglasses as I squinted against the bright sun. I had never been one to wear them but Vanessa's dedication to wearing hers led me to want a pair, to look perhaps as she did with flair and majesty.