The Opposite of Me (13 page)

Seven
 

 

IN THE END, ALL it took to erase any sign that I’d lived in New York was a rental truck, a trip to an upscale consignment store, another one to Goodwill, and a half day on the phone canceling utilities and negotiating an early end to my lease and arranging for my painting and plasma TV to be put in storage.

And suddenly I was standing in my bare apartment with dust motes floating in the sunlight and two suitcases at my feet. Just the way I’d begun my life here seven years ago.

“I can’t believe you don’t have more stuff,” Matt said, picking up one of my suitcases. I was spending tonight, my last night in the city, on the couch in his apartment before catching the 9:00
A.M.
train home to Maryland tomorrow. I hadn’t asked how Pammy felt about this.

“Aren’t girls supposed to have more stuff?” Matt asked.

“I’ve got stuff,” I protested. “I took a truckload to Goodwill.”

“A quarter truckload,” Matt corrected me. “Where are all your scrunchies? Where are all your clothes? Where are your stacks of magazines that tell you how to drive your man wild with an ice cube and Saran Wrap?”

“First of all, I stopped reading
Penthouse
when I was ten,” I
said. “And scrunchies? Do you know how disturbing it is that you even know that word?”

“We’re talking about
your
inadequacies, not mine,” Matt said.

God, it felt good to banter with him again, to act like everything was normal, even if underneath the surface I felt like brittle glass, ready to splinter under the slightest tap.

“So what’s the plan for tonight?” I asked. “Mexican and a movie?”

“Hell, no,” Matt said. “It’s your last night in New York. We’re going out.”

He picked up my other suitcase and I locked my door and we walked to the elevator. I didn’t look back, not even once. I had to keep my eyes forward. I had to keep moving.

When we got to the lobby, I walked up to the perpetually smiling doorman and handed over my keys. Don’t think about it, I instructed myself. Just do it. Put the keys in his outstretched hand. Now let go of the keys. That’s it, baby steps.

“Here you go, Hector,” I said.

I reached into my purse for the little envelope containing his early Christmas tip. Hector was in his late forties, one of the steady, stalwart people New York couldn’t run without. He shows up every day wearing a crisp white shirt and the same blue suit, and he keeps a vigil on the door so he can jump up and open it every time someone approaches. I was about to say something else—to thank him for the times he’d kept my deliveries behind his desk, or hailed cabs for me in the rain—but a young couple I vaguely recognized from the floor below me burst out of the elevator and rushed over.

Suddenly the three of them were tossing around words like
chemo
and
daughter
and
prayers
, and Hector was unashamedly wiping a tear from his eye as he said, “Remission. Yes, the doctor said it is a remission.”

Then they were hugging him, first the wife and then the
husband, who initially stuck out his hand but at the last second changed his mind and pulled Hector in for a big, back-thumping hug. Hector was smiling and bowing his head and saying, “Thank you, God bless you,” over and over again.

“Does his kid have cancer?” Matt whispered to me.

“I guess so,” I said slowly.

I looked down at my plain white business-size envelope while Hector thanked the couple for the lasagna they’d cooked for him while his daughter was in the hospital. Inside my envelope was a hundred dollars. I hadn’t included a card. I hadn’t baked him lasagna. I hadn’t even known his daughter was ill. All I’d done was smile at Hector as I rushed by on my way to work, and absently thank him for opening the door as I zoomed in again at night, my arms laden with my briefcase and take-out Chinese, my mind full of taglines and dialogue and storyboards. Hector had been as much a part of the background to me as the fake tree in the corner of the lobby. Now I wondered: How old was his daughter? What was her name? Was the cancer going to come back? How had he come to work every day and smiled and opened the door for me like it was the best thing he’d get to do all day, while his whole world was shaking and crumbling around him?

“Ready?” Matt said.

“Sure,” I said.

But first I reached into my wallet, grabbed all the twenties in it, and stuffed them in the envelope. I left it on Hector’s desk and slipped away while he was still talking to the young couple.

I’m sorry
, I whispered as the door closed behind me, so softly no one could hear.

“What’s the plan?” I asked Matt once we were settled in a yellow cab.

“First we’re dropping your insane amounts of stuff at my
apartment,” he said. “I hope we can squeeze in all the scrunchies. Then—”

“I have a request,” I interrupted. “I want to see the Naked Cowboy.”

Matt looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

“Seriously?” he said.

I nodded vigorously.

“And I want to buy a knockoff Prada bag on Canal Street,” I blurted, the words tumbling out of me faster and faster. “I want to take a horse-drawn carriage ride in Central Park. I want to see a celebrity, a real one, not the B-listers we usually get stuck working with. I want to window-shop in Soho. I want to eat sushi at Ruby Foo’s and get a drink at Tavern on the Green.”

“Good God,” Matt said in mock horror. “You’re a . . . a tourist.”

“I’ve never done any of those things,” I said, feeling a twinge of sadness.

And it was true: I’d lived in New York for more than half a decade, but I might as well have been standing behind a glass wall the entire time, watching other people get kissed on street corners and dance to bucket-thumping drummers and head out to bars with rowdy groups of friends. I’d lived in New York, but I hadn’t really
lived
in it.

And to Matt’s eternal credit, he didn’t laugh at me or threaten to kick me out of the cab. He just leaned forward and told the cabbie to step on it, because we had a lot to do that day.

Ten hours later, every single one of my wishes had been granted, as if a fairy godmother had waved a magic wand over my head. Trust me to get the fairy godmother with the world’s worst timing. I could’ve used her that night in the conference room; instead, she’d shown up a few weeks late, shaking the wrinkles
out of her gown and straightening her tiara and muttering about traffic and broken alarm clocks and the dog eating her schedule. Still, at least she’d given me today.

“You’d never guess it was a knockoff, would you?” I said for the tenth time, admiring my Prada bag while we sat in a corner booth at Ruby Foo’s.

“I swear on my mother’s life that, if you put it next to a real Prada bag, I couldn’t tell the difference,” Matt said solemnly, putting a hand over his heart.

“Oh, shut up,” I said. “You’re just jealous.”

“That’s definitely it,” he agreed.

“Is the stitching crooked?” I wondered, peering more closely at my bag.

“You got it for twenty dollars,” Matt said. “You’re lucky it has stitching instead of superglue.”

“I was good at haggling, wasn’t I?” I asked smugly.

“Brilliant,” Matt said. “You wore him down.”

“He wanted twenty-five,” I reminded Matt.

“You broke him,” Matt said. “He’s a broken, bitter man. Now can we get something to eat?”

“I want a California roll,” I said. “And a tuna roll. Ooh, and scallion pancakes and shrimp dumplings.”

“Perfect,” Matt said as the waitress scribbled down our order. “I’ll have the same.”

Matt leaned forward and looked at me closely.

“So, I know this has got to be hard for you—” he began, his teddy bear—brown eyes all soft and sympathetic.

“Reese Witherspoon is even prettier in person,” I interrupted. “And I’ve got her lip gloss!”

“You mean you stole her lip gloss,” Matt said.

“Finders keepers,” I said, gulping my dainty little cup of sake. It was hot and vaguely medicinal and exactly what I needed.

“That was a brilliant idea, though, to stand outside Letter
man’s studio right before the taping,” I said, tilting my cup at Matt. “And an added bonus that she dropped her purse! That woman next to me only got one of her dirty pennies.”

“You got the better end of that deal,” Matt said. “I think the penny was there all along. Anyway, I was going to say it must be really tough for you—”

“Do you think the Naked Cowboy stuffs his underpants with a sock?” I cut him off. “I mean, nothing else about him is natural. He stands there in Times Square in boots and underwear and a spray-on tan, strumming that guitar and posing for pictures. God, the girls love him, though. I thought that blonde was going to punch me when he put his arm around me for a picture.”

“Definitely a sock,” Matt agreed, a bit too eagerly. I didn’t blame him; the Naked Cowboy could make any man feel inadequate.

“I really love this lip gloss,” I said, pulling it out of my purse. “Isn’t the color perfect? I like it almost as much as my bag.”

“Okay,” Matt said, leaning closer to me. “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You’re being relentlessly cheerful,” he said.

“I had a good day,” I protested.

Matt gave me one of his dog-covered-with-Crisco looks.

“I’m glad you had fun,” he said slowly. “So did I.”

“So let’s not ruin it by getting all serious,” I begged him.

I opened the menu again. “Look, they have tutti-frutti ice cream!”

“Lindsey,” Matt said, then he sighed. “Look, I’ve gotta say it. Sometimes I worry that you don’t deal with stuff all that well. You’re so busy and gung-ho and frantic all the time that you don’t ever sit back and think about what you really want and how you feel. I mean, you’ve got to be upset, but you’re babbling on about your bag and lip gloss like they’re the most
important things in the world. You’re not dealing with your emotions.”

“I hate it when you hang out your shingle,” I said, punching his arm lightly. “You’re just like Lucy from
Peanuts
.”

“I get it,” Matt said tightly. “You don’t want to talk about it. Fine. But tell me this: What are you going to do in D.C.?”

“Get a job,” I said. Wasn’t it obvious? “Start working again.”

“And in another six months, it’ll be like nothing ever happened,” Matt said.

I blinked in surprise.

“Are you kidding?” I said. “There’s no way I’ll be that high up in another six months. It’s going to take three years.”

“And that’s what you want?” Matt said. He leaned closer to me and put his hand on the table between us. His hands were like the rest of him—comfortable and warm and solid. “That’s all you want?”

His voice was low and gentle. Somehow that frightened me more than if he’d shouted.

“That’s exactly what I want,” I said.

“Fine,” Matt said, sounding like it was anything but.

“Fine,” I echoed, feeling vaguely pissed off but not sure why.

He folded his arms across his chest and looked down at his napkin. I twirled my lip gloss around in my fingers like it was the world’s smallest baton. This was just what I needed, for Matt to turn all serious and grumpy. What did he want, for me to curl up again and sob about the disaster my life had become? I’d done that, and it still terrified me to think about how fuzzy and distant those lost three days had felt. I couldn’t go to that place again, not ever.