The Big Rewind (6 page)

B
osco's was one of those bars that tried too hard to look like a dive and charged nine bucks for a beer because hipsters in vests and faux-vintage concert tees would pay it. Marty was performing
Blue Valentine,
cigarettes he didn't smoke rolled up in his T-shirt, cabbie cap pulled low over his eyes. He was growling “Red Shoes by the Drugstore” with all the record cracks and hisses in his voice. I had no idea how he did that.

He met me at the bar when he'd finished the A-side. He got a drink and I gestured for two. The bartender rolled her eyes and slid me the glass so hard it soaked my coaster. I took a sip. Plain Coke. I stuffed two bucks in her tip jar and smiled ruefully. She didn't smile back.

“I can't drink when I do these shows,” Marty said, clinking his plastic cup against mine. “Relaxes me too much. Have to get into that space, you know?”

I nodded even though I hadn't come here to hear his vocal diet. “Weird question, but I was wondering, do you have a tape deck?”

He leaned back against the bar, took a drink, and shook his head. “My last one busted a couple of weeks ago, and I haven't had a chance to fix it,” he said. “But Josie, she's got one. I used it to make her copies of
Heart Attack and Vine
and
Foreign Affairs;
she needed to learn the words to “I Never Talk to Strangers” for a show we're doing next month. She said she learns music best when she's driving from one catering venue to the other.” He pulled out his phone. “Want me to ask?”

“Sure,” I said. I knew Josie peripherally—she ran a catering company that specialized in art openings and small-plate affairs like the ones Natalie had at her gallery—but if she had a tape deck, we were about to become really close friends.

He massaged his screen without looking. “What do you need a tape deck for?” he asked. “Got some never-reissued rarity you're trying to transfer?”

“A mix tape, actually,” I answered. “I can't remember what's on it. Just curious, you know?” I didn't feel like explaining my whole investigative process; I didn't want anyone knowing what I was doing in case none of us liked the outcome.

“She's still got the setup.” He held up the brightly lit screen. “Here's her number; give her a call and set up a time.” He took one last swig and clapped me on the back. “I've got to get back up there,” he said. “Good luck with your tape.”

O
NCE OUT OF
Bosco's, I called Josie and left a message. In the meantime, I had another mission to complete, this one with a charge card and a veil of secrecy. I hopped on the F train with a straight-arrow path to the Victoria's Secret in Herald Square.

With the Talking Heads playing “The Book I Read” in my ear, I watched a college-age couple in art school fashion snuggle in the seat diagonal from mine. He had his arm around her and she had her head on his shoulder, happiness radiating off them, filling the car with an effervescent light. It was the kind of love baby boomers told us we were too immature and slutty to feel. It was the kind of love I wanted to feel for someone, anyone, the kind of love that doesn't hurt or ache or feel like you're dying when he's not there. The giddy kind of love David Byrne was
singing about at that very moment, my only frame of reference for what that might feel like.

They gathered themselves for some kind of lover's adventure at Twenty-Eighth Street, and I was sad to see them go. That sadness stayed with me even when they were out of my line of sight.

I was sick over what I'd said to Sid before brunch. I wasn't his girlfriend; I had no right to dictate who he fell in love with. Besides, I had a
This Is What a Feminist Looks Like
pin on my bag; I knew better than to slut-shame his stripper sweetheart. But when I tried to text Sid, I couldn't write
I'm sorry
in any language that felt sincere. I put my phone back in my bag. Maybe the words would come later.

My self-pity psych-up was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a dudebro on the prowl. I'd learned to block out the sound of catcallers, but this one was loud enough to hear even through my earbuds. “Where are you going?” he asked a girl in a thick wool peacoat, hat pulled down low over her heavy curls. “'Cause wherever it is, I can help you get off.”

I rolled my eyes. A normal guy would have taken her disinterest as a sign to move on to other targets, but not the wild dudebro. He was on the hunt, and he wasn't going home without his prey. “What, you think you're too good to talk to me?” he snarled. “You're a fucking lardass, you ugly skank. You should kill yourself, you fat bitch.”

No other passenger looked up from their phones or their newspapers. He kept railing, and she made subtle shifts around the pole, like a stripper in slow motion, turning redder with each move. “Moo, you fat cow,” he continued. “Next stop, I'm going to push you in front of the fucking train, you dumb bitch.”

Something in me snapped. All my anger at myself, at Sid, at Bronco's headline and the porkpie hat at Egg School, came boiling to the surface. He wasn't going to quit until either she gave him a fake number or his stop came up, and no one else seemed interested in looking up from Tinder or Grindr or
Fruit Ninja
to
help. I stood and advanced toward him with a Terminator walk, as though the car wasn't buckling or rocking beneath my feet. “Leave the innocent alone,” I said. “I am an angel of true justice, and I can see the evil in your heart. Leave her alone.”

The girl looked freaked out, but not as freaked out as the dudebro. “What the fuck is your problem?” he asked.

I shoved him just hard enough to rattle him. “The devil's in your soul and you need to cast him out. I will bring hellfire and char the flesh from your bones. You will not take her innocence away. She is magical, but you are wicked.”

Still, no one was paying attention but the girl and dudebro, who was trying hard to keep his cool. I was kind of having fun.

“You bitches are crazy,” he said as the car lurched to a stop. He hustled off and ducked into the next car to try his Prince Charming routine again. I smiled at her, but for a moment, she didn't look convinced I wasn't going to turn on her.

“I didn't mean any of that,” I said.

She let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks,” she said. “But what the hell were you doing?”

I'd seen Natalie chase off a catcaller using the same routine, but with more screaming. Normally Natalie loved being hit on, but we'd been in Central Park one day and this acne-cratered broseph would not stop bugging us, so she'd launched into this tirade worthy of the craziest street-corner prophet. “New York crazy,” she'd explained. “No one will bother you if they think you're crazier than they are.”

“I'll remember that,” my new pal said when I recounted this to her. “Back in Maine, the cold shoulder always did the trick, but I guess not here, huh?”

“New York dudebro is a whole different species,” I said. The car slowed and I smiled at her. “Good luck,” I said.

“Thanks again.”

I felt a little better when I got aboveground. Maybe my good deed would karmically cancel out the bad ones. But the instant
I stepped inside Victoria's Secret, I was lightning-struck with paranoia that the other customers and clerks could sense what I was doing, that I was shopping for someone else because I was a lonely loser. A woman with too-pointy heels and caked-on eyeliner wafted over in a cloud of Very Sexy perfume and Virginia Slims. “Oh, honey,” she said, looking at my ass and the pair of blue satin bikinis I was checking the tag on. “Those will be
way
too big for you.”

“They're for a friend,” I said. “For her birthday.”

“Then, honey, she's not going to want
plain
panties,” she said insistently, putting her electric-green manicure between my shoulder blades and guiding me over to a selection of push-up bras with thick padded cups larger than my head. “Our Very Sexy is more in line with gift-giving.” She held up a black lace vagina noose with a rhinestone detail. “I bet she'd love these.”

“It's for my aunt,” I blurted. “For her fiftieth birthday.”

“But you just said—”

“I'll let you know if I need anything,” I said. “Thanks.”

She eyed me as I labored to pick out the requisite sizes and colors, likely making sure I didn't stuff a floral-print thong or a mini Angel perfume into my jacket pockets. I'd almost forgotten that Philip said I could pick something out, but then a pair of polka-dot boxer pajamas caught my eye, and onto the pile they went. I even had them gift wrapped: pink box, black bow. Later, perhaps, I would pretend that my imaginary boyfriend, Adam Scott on
Parks and Recreation,
had sent them for our anniversary.
Wow,
I realized as I took my bag from the salesgirl.
I am a dork
.

It was nearing four by the time I was done with my shopping. I put on my headphones and started for the subway. I hit shuffle and the first song to come up was “Say You'll Be There.” For a moment I forgot how and why I'd even put the Spice Girls on my playlist. A wrongly labeled MP3 file? A goofy fit of nostalgia brought on by a Buzzfeed listicle?

No. It was the block party KitKat had organized just after I'd
arrived on Barter Street. There was a nineties theme, and afterward, she'd given everyone the playlist as a digital keepsake. I'd never listened to it in full, but occasionally, the songs would find their way onto shuffle.

I hesitated on the corner. I wasn't far from Forty-Ninth Street and the Ambassador Theater, where Jeremy had surely just finished belting out “Mr. Cellophane” to an awestruck crowd. I quickened my pace. I just hoped that he would be able to recognize me, a decade later, through the throng of backstage admirers.

A
h, sweet little musical-theater nerds. Overdressed teenage girls clutching
Playbill
s and phones ready for a blurry picture they'd post on Instagram no matter how weird a face they were making. Their chaperones and most of the boys hung by the edge of the alley outside the theater, some scowling as they watched their girlfriends swoon over a song-and-dance man almost twice their age.

Through the throng, Jeremy gave me a twice-over before recognition split a smile on his face. He wove through the group and swept me up in a big bear hug. A handful of girls glared at me like I'd just crashed their prom. He kissed me on the cheek.

“Jett, Jett, how
are
you! I didn't know you were down here!”

“I would have looked you up sooner if I had known you were here too,” I said. “I'm really glad to see you make it like this.”

“Isn't it a
trip
?” he gushed. “When they called me up and told me I had the part, it took me three days to realize that it wasn't just a dream. I all but walked into Times Square traffic trying to prove to myself it was real.” He quickly turned and smiled for a camera shoved in his face. “Let me just sign a few more and we'll go get dinner.”

I hadn't been expecting that. “I really just stopped by to say hi,” I said. “If you've got other plans.”

“Oh my God, no,” he said. “You do
not
just come by after
ten years and stay for ten minutes. Besides, I am
starving
. Only so many carrot sticks you can eat in the greenroom, right?”

“What, Cindy Smithson's mom doesn't bring brownies anymore?” I joked. Rumor had it that Cindy had gotten the lead in every show because her mother made these incredible brownies with a secret recipe she wouldn't even give Cindy. For all we knew, the white powder she dusted them with was pure cocaine, but they were so insanely delicious even McGruff the Crime Dog would have taken one taste and said,
Eh, it's worth it
.

Jeremy made an exaggerated orgasm face and let out a dreamy sigh. “Don't tease me with memories of postshow chocolate,” he said. “I would kill—literally, murder my director and his whole family—for one of those brownies. I swear to God I still
dream
about them.”

If the waiting fangirls overheard his plot, it didn't deter them from continuing to push pens and “Ermahgerd, you're
sooo
great!” in his direction. I beamed as I watched him sign autographs and pose for pictures with his radioactive smile.

“Are you his girlfriend?” one plump girl in a short, sequined tulle skirt and a souvenir T-shirt asked.

“Just an old friend,” I replied. “We used to do musicals in high school together.”

“You are
so
lucky,” she said. “I wish some of the boys in my school had talent like his. He is totes amazing.”

A sharp whistle blast ricocheted off the brick alley walls and the girls all shuffled toward their chaperones, some beaming as they posted their photos for all to see, others glum that they'd been ushered away before they could brush up against Jeremy's fame, as though it might rub off on them as they headed for their own college auditions.

“Do you want my autograph too?” he said to me when the last one had turned the corner out of the alley.

“I have an original cast recording,
Bright Lights, Little City,
from before you were a star,” I said. “Maybe I'll put it on eBay, let all your fangirls clamor for it.”

His eyes got wide. “Ohmigod, you are
so
cute,” he said. “I can't believe you still have that. Didn't I put ‘Spice Up Your Life' on there?”

“‘2 Become 1,' but close,” I said.

“A few years ago, I was in London doing
Guys and Dolls
—I was Benny Southstreet—and Geri Halliwell brought Bluebell to see the show. When she got backstage and told me how much she loved me singing ‘Guys and Dolls,' I
just. About. Died.
So, dinner? I have to get changed first, but come on, come backstage, I'll make some introductions.” He pulled out his phone and hit a number. I could hear ringing. “You really have to come see the show sometime,” he said while he waited for the other line to pick up.

“Hi, Jim, look, I'm going to be back late, you won't believe who I ran into—Jett!” He smiled at me. “No, you remember, she was a girl I did theater with in high school. Oh stop, you've seen pictures of her. No, that was Cindy, Jett was Lily. Anyways, she's in NYC and we're going out to dinner, you want me to bring you something? Okay, then I'll see you at home. No, I won't be too late. Love you. Bye.”

I asked a question I already knew the answer to, just to be polite. “Who was that?”

“My fiancé, Jim,” he said. “He's the best. Too often you date these theater guys who mince and prance and will stab you in the back the
minute
you are up for a part they want. Not Jim. I had to
drag
him to opening night; show tunes are just not his thing and it is
such
a relief.”

I wasn't as surprised as I thought I should have been. Not because he was in musical theater, not because he loved the Spice Girls, not because he'd never tried to take off my bra. He hadn't set off a gaydar or flailed about like a token character in a cheap sitcom. There'd just been something otherworldly about him that I'd always chalked up to having a big personality in a too-small town. Now it all made sense, and I was happy that he was able to make sense of it himself, to construct his psyche into something beautiful.