Super in the City (21 page)

Did he have a soft side that inspired him to capture close-ups of urban flora dotted with ice drops? Puppies frolicking in a basket lined with red velvet? Or would there be pictures of guys in stained coveralls delivering fuel oil? Maybe, I thought as I let the door to Fast Foto bang shut behind me—if they’d bothered with the “Ph,” I might have closed it gently—James’s dual personality made it hard for him to remember people and he needed head shots to keep his deals straight.

I stumbled as I left the store (I’d broken with my “comfort first” rule and was wearing shoes not designed for walking). But even as my calves ached and I had to downshift my stride so I didn’t overcompensate and do that weird forward hip scoop—the hunchbutt—that cancels out any sex appeal imbued by the shoes in the first place, I was feeling my place in the city. I had a job, I had friends, I had a lover, I had very bearable parents. And I’m a native, I added smugly to two willowy transplants opening the door to Equinox to shed pounds they couldn’t spare. My hair was behaving, my mid- section felt flat-tish, and the spring air teased my pale green sundress around my freshly shaved legs. The blue cloudless sky, the late-blooming hyacinths, the light green leaves with their false promise of an endless summer—the city itself was urging me to overlook my Hayden hiccups.

After Gregory and I went on our real date tonight and got going full force, I’d be rid of the Briggs pig forever. It would speed things along just a tiny bit, I couldn’t help thinking as I maneuvered my way across Greenwich Avenue against a red light, if I could see Hayden in person just once, to exorcise him. And it would help a big bit, I added, darting past a conveyor belt swallowing barrels of texturized vegetable protein into the basement of Soy Luck Club, if I saw him right at this moment, while I was feeling very catalog- sexy and suffused with the appeal of a full Saturday night agenda ahead of me: vengeance followed by romance. I looked around hopefully, on the off chance that in this city of eight million people, Hayden would be walking toward me at exactly that moment, preferably looking bereft, having just been fired, and able to tell just from my expression that I’d be on my back with another man just hours from now.

As I rounded Jane Street, my hands flew to my thighs to keep my dress from flying up (on Marilyn, sexy; on me, like
wrestling a parachute). As the fabric threatened to slip through my fingers, a barrel- shaped guy with a thin ponytail came blasting by on a skateboard, pounding his straightened, pumping leg into the blacktop like a metronome. “Hey!” I yelped as he whizzed by, just inches from my exposed toes.

Without looking back, he held up his middle finger to me.

“Fucking…” I spat, my man-eater mood dissipating into thin air. I looked around indignantly to see if anyone else had witnessed his random act of spite. I should start a kindness movement. I’d lobby the state, then Congress. I’d write a charter and guidelines and usher in the Century of Goodwill.

The guy got off his skateboard, flipped it into his hand, and headed into Grounded. There was no mistaking the freckles or the pasty face beneath them.

LinguaFrank.

My ire bloomed. He was a hypocritical, arrogant, arguably misogynist, and definitely anti- Semitic boor. And he was even uglier in person than he’d been on his JDate profile. Was Abigail’s bad taste caused by poor judgment, or by desperation? Either way, LinguaFrank deserved no leniency. I felt like a warrior. The justice of what we were about to do made my heart begin to race and I choked back a demonic cackle.

He cased the tables and, seeing no Asian females, sat down near the front, facing the open double doors. He crossed his leg, ankle on knee—the arrogant, space- hogging leg cross, I noted bitterly—and started picking at his teeth with the corner of an Equal packet. I uttered a quiet gurgle of disgust.

He squinted out at the street and I ducked behind a ginkgo tree. As I did, I spotted Lucy hiding behind a large planter next door to the café. She was watching the front door and taking notes on a small steno pad, which instantly irritated me. We didn’t need a written record of this. At the most, we were going
to snap a photo of the moment we told the great scholar Darren Schwartz, aka LinguaFrank, that his would- be Asian dream girl, who happened to be our friend, had seen him from afar and decided he was too fat. And too Jewish. And she had left.

I wanted to shout to Lucy to stop playing Nancy Drew and go inside, but I couldn’t without drawing Lingua’s attention. I left my post and resumed walking west on Jane Street. As soon as I was out of his line of vision, I crossed the street, doubled back, and poked Lucy hard from behind.

She shrieked.

“Shhh!” I whacked her gently.

“What do you mean
shhh?”
she hissed at me. “You hit me!”

“I didn’t hit you.”

“What do you call this?” She jabbed me.

“A poke.”

“Hey.
No fighting.” Tag sneaked up behind us, making us both jump. She rubbed her hands together and raised her perfect eyebrows. “It’s time to go slit ‘im.”

“He’s not a shark,” Lucy reminded her nervously.

“You mean we can’t disembowel him, toss his entrails overboard, and send his head to the Midwest for further research?”

“Down, girl.” I patted her arm. But I was remembering how adeptly she’d handled herself in front of the King of Spain. I felt a rush of gratitude for Tag’s steely constitution, which in turn inflated a small balloon of generosity toward Lucy. “This is gonna be good,” I reassured both of them.

Lucy boldly led the way inside.

Even though none of us had discussed attire beforehand, my friends had also dressed up for the occasion. Lucy was wearing a short, flouncy skirt; Tag was showing cleavage; and both were navigating on high heels. If we were going to make LinguaFrank feel deep, abiding regret and repentance, and we
were representing the hot woman he couldn’t get, we had to be ambassadors of hot in her place.

As I followed them to the vacant table, skirting other customers’ legs, ducking the stale Valentine’s Day decorations still hanging campily from the ceiling and trying not to snag my dress on potted cacti, I felt the first prickle of doubt since concocting the plan.

Lingua openly checked us out as we walked by his table. He smiled a self- knowing smile, which made his Wonder Bread face even less attractive. My nerves recovered a little.

Lucy and I sat down. Tag remained standing.

“What can I get you?” she asked us.

“No foam double latte,” Lingua piped up behind her in a surprisingly solid and sexy voice. Maybe that explained Abigail’s attraction: she’d gotten to know him on the phone. A face for radio, I thought.

Tag turned slowly to him, and I nudged her foot with mine to remind her not to blow it. It worked. She forced a thin-lipped smile and turned back to us.

“Cocoa,” Lucy said.

“Small coffee,” I said.

Tag shook her head, disappointed in our predictably low octane tastes, and headed for the counter.

For the first time in the fourteen years we’d known each other, Lucy and I could think of nothing to say to each other, hyperaware that Lingua was listening. A few awkward moments passed.

“I have this new client,” Lucy finally blurted out. “He left his wife for someone thinner and he’s just hating himself now.”

I glared at her. She looked at me helplessly.

“I’m seeing Gregory tonight,” I rebutted as Tag returned to the table. “Retroactive first date.”

Lucy was confused. In one meaningful look, I tried to convey
that we ought to be presenting ourselves as active- duty hotties, not offering Lingua abstract morality tales that he couldn’t absorb.

“So you’re gonna do what besides hop into bed with him?” Tag asked, following my lead. We all felt Lingua’s attention bearing down on us. I thought Tag didn’t need to reveal quite so much information about me.

“Bed?” Lucy picked up on the tactic. “That would be progress if they could make it to a bed this time.” The two of them cackled and in my peripheral vision I saw Lingua shift in his seat.

“Tag, did you ever talk to that guy again, the one you slept with in Madagascar?” I had no intention of being the sacrificial lamb.

“I never slept with anyone in Madagascar,” she said coolly. Damn my wretched geography. M … M … It was in some M place she had had a one- night stand with another parasitologist. Mexico? No, I’d remember that. Malawi?

“Do you think Mercedes will sleep with Dover Carter tonight?” I said, sacrificing the friend who wasn’t there to defend herself. It occurred to me, though, that if Lingua was as much an ivory tower prisoner as Abigail, the name Dover Carter might not mean much.

Lucy and Tag looked at each other, trying to decide whether to let me off the hook.

“Oh, I bet they won’t,” Tag conceded. “Mercedes has that prudish side that comes out when she really likes someone.”

“Wait,” I said, forgetting the eavesdropper for a moment. “Do you think she’ll actually fall for him? He’s a movie star. He won’t commit!” I felt myself getting upset at the thought of Dover’s future transgressions.

“First of all, calm down,” Tag admonished.

“And second of all,” Lucy added, “he’s a real person, too. He
probably wants a meaningful relationship as much as the next guy.”

Now Tag and I looked at Lucy dubiously. She remembered where we were and whom we were sitting next to and shrugged.

“Well, some guys really do want meaningful relationships,” she amended. “And Dover could be one of them. He’s had a successful career, he’s never been married, never had a kid. Maybe he’s ready.”

Tag shuddered her shoulders like a horse keeping a fly at bay. I knew that she was also trying to picture, and not for the first time, pale little Lucy sitting in her dark basement in Bed- Stuy with not much more than a Rolodex of phone numbers to assist her, offering real comfort to a desperate, unemployed, abused single mother of three. But as I looked at Lucy’s open face, shot through with apparent innocence, I wondered whether we hadn’t all been mistaking hard-fought conviction for naiveté. If a social worker couldn’t have some faith in everyone from the street to the screen, then there wasn’t much point in her doing the work she did. Maybe this same trust in Dover Carter’s good intentions, informed by nothing more than a few issues of
People
magazine, served Lucy’s clientele far better than we ever gave her credit for.

I looked at Lucy with new admiration. She returned my glance with one of suspicion.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said, giving her arm a brisk, affectionate rub. “Maybe you’re right about Dover.”

Tag hung her head in defeat, as though she’d lost another friend in her ongoing personal crusade against the Warm Fuzzies. She looked at her watch.

“Okay, it’s been ten minutes. Let’s do it,” she hissed.

“I think we should let him sweat it out another five,” I said in a low voice, growing nervous again.

“But look at him. He’s not sweating. He’s as cocky as he was when he came in here.” We glanced over. He was lounging in his chair now, elbows back, surveying his kingdom.

“He’s too interested in our conversation to notice he’s being stood up,” Lucy suggested.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Tag told her. “Unless either of you want to do the honors, I’m itching to do the deed.”

“Wait,” I said, “we haven’t gotten our drinks!”

“So? We’ll tell him, then have our drinks, then go.”

“That doesn’t make for much of an exit,” Lucy said, and I silently agreed.

So we waited another minute until the barista called out Tag’s name. Tag brought back our drinks and we blew on them and sipped them in silence.

“Are we taking a picture?” I whispered.

Lucy held up her cell phone.

“I’m nervous,” I finally admitted.

Tag and Lucy nodded their heads.

“Wait, you? You’re nervous?” I said to Tag accusingly. She was shattering my world order. Nothing made Tag nervous.

“Well, not nervous exactly…” she corrected me unconvincingly

“We don’t have to do this,” Lucy suggested. “Even if we do nothing, he’ll still have been stood up.”

The thought of not following through made me feel like I’d failed Abigail, who back in Palo Alto was eagerly awaiting our phone call. Tag had the same thought.

“No,” she said, gulping the rest of her espresso, “let’s do it.”

She surreptitiously dialed my cell phone. I took a deep breath and answered. She hung up, but I pretended to have a conversation.

“Oh, hi!” I began too brightly. Tag and Lucy shook their heads at me. I brought it down a notch. “ Uh- huh. Uh- huh.” I was stalling, giving my unrealized acting career a moment to dust itself off. “Ohhhhh,” I said knowingly, glancing over at LinguaFrank, who was openly watching and listening.

I brazenly caught his eye. “Yeah, I see what you mean.” It was a pleasure to watch his narrow eyes grow even closer together with concern. “Yeah. Yeah. No, don’t waste your time. We’ll handle it.”

I snapped shut my phone and shook my head dramatically at my friends. With the safety of numbers behind me, I turned abruptly to Lingua.

“You’re waiting for someone, yes?” He looked startled. “Asian? Thin?”

“Red dress,” Lucy piped up.

Lingua just looked at us, surprised.

“She’s not coming,” I told him cheerfully.

“Who are
you?”
he asked.

“Her friends. Her good friends.”

“And she’s too cowardly to come in here and tell me herself?” he demanded.

I hadn’t thought of it that way. Tag jumped in.

“She’s busy. She doesn’t have time for men like you.”

“Like me?” he said, leaning forward menacingly. But Tag leaned right back at him.

“Fat. Jewish,” she said, enunciating evilly. He sat back as if she’d slapped him, and even I felt my heart race. Then his eyes narrowed again.

“But we met,” he said through gritted teeth, “on
J
Date.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” I was happy to interject with fake thoughtfulness. “What kind of person would say that to someone they met on JDate?”

“What kind of person,” Lucy said, warming up, “would say
that to anyone at all? What kind of thing is that to say to
anyone?”