The Seven Year Bitch (12 page)

“Bye, Mama,” Duncan said. He opened his mouth as wide as he could and kissed my knee, taking my whole kneecap in his mouth.

“I love you,” I said to Duncan and Shasthi as I walked out the door.

 

 

I got to Jean-Georges
almost thirty minutes late and a tall blond woman led me professionally to a table in the main dining room where Gabe Weinrib was patiently waiting.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

He stood up and looked at me. “Is-old-a,” he said, saying my name wrong in a very long and drawn-out fashion. Men never knew what to do with my name and always wanted it to be three syllables instead of two. “A pleasure to finally meet you, m'dear.” I was hit with a blast of Listerine that brought back all the nervousness of dating.

I slid onto the oversized white upholstered chair as gracefully as possible and he waited until I seemed settled before taking his seat.

He looked at me. “So do I look familiar?” he asked, grinning.

“No,” I said. “Why? Do I know you?”

I looked into his eyes and felt myself blushing again. From his name and personality on the phone, I hadn't expected him to be gorgeous. Suddenly all the
m'dears
didn't seem so bad. He was wearing strange and expensive clothes, some kind of weird wool hat that hugged his head and forced me to stare into his eyes and a tight black sweater that made his chest look very hard and his arm muscles look big. It had been a long time since I'd looked at a man close up like that, I thought. I'd looked at other women's husbands not as men but as fathers. I'd lusted after men but only from the safety of my car the way I looked at animals from the monorail at the Bronx Zoo. I'd wanted Dr. Heiffowitz and Dr. Lichter, but there was always a nurse in the room with us. I tried to conjure up Russell in my mind but could only see glasses, manuscripts, and his big glass desk.

For a long time after I got married, I would play a little game with myself whenever I was at a party or something like that. I'd ask myself, “If you were single, is there anyone here you would even like?” And the answer was always “No!” I was happy I had gotten married. Dating had been miserable. There was never anybody anywhere who was remotely interesting.

“So let's see,” I said. “I should ask you some questions.”

“What is my philosophy about discipline?” he asked.

“What?” I said.

“It's the first question on your pad. I'm all for it as long as it's consensual of course.” I looked down in horror at the nanny questions on my pad. “Do you believe in spanking?” he continued. “Absolutely! I'm a big believer. But only if you're a very, very naughty girl.”

I tried to turn my pad over but he grabbed it from me. “You want to know how I like to give a bath? I get the water very hot. A touch of jasmine oil. No bubbles. Let's go to my place right now and I'll show you.”

“I think I would actually like that,” I said, laughing in spite of myself. “But I have a baby. I'm married,” I blurted out.

“I know,” he said. “I looked you up. You had a ʽVows' column in the
New York Times
. The big one. Very impressive.”

If you Googled me, the first thing that came up was a big photo of me in the “Styles” section of the
New York Times
smiling in my black-and-white Reem Acra dress at Chanterelle. The article was framed and hanging on the wall outside our bedroom.

“Thank you.”

“The article said you and your husband met at Don Hill's.”

“That's right,” I said.

I grasped my menu.

“Interesting. So you're married.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Happily?”

The word hung there for a minute. No, I thought. And then I thought, I love my baby.

“Just married,” I said, smiling coolly.

He looked down at my pad again. “And how does your husband handle your tantrums?”

I thought about that. Whenever I fought with Russell he just apologized for anything and everything until I calmed down. He became single-mindedly focused on mollifying me. It was pretty effective actually.

“Can I have my pad back?”

He handed it over and I turned several pages of the legal pad and folded them over, exposing a blank page.

“You dropped this,” he said, handing me a single sheet of paper that had floated down onto the floor. “A spreadsheet of some sort. Looks impressive.”

It happened to be a spreadsheet I had created to keep track of the new foods we were introducing Duncan to, but he didn't need to know that.

Something was happening to me and I hadn't even had a single drink yet. Maybe finally loosing myself of my nursing bras had done something to free me. My hips swayed in my seat. I felt every cell in my body yearning, reaching, pulling toward him. I felt my panty hose begin to rip and I had an incredible urge to go into the bathroom and take them off.

This whole thing was a non-issue. Aside from the fact that I was married, he was now my client and I was extremely sensitive to the ethical issues that could arise. I was angry at myself for even agreeing to dinner and for joking with Russell that I was going on a date.

“So, what brought you to that auction?” I asked. “Do you have a child at the school?”

“I'm an alum,” he said. “When my family moved to New York I went to the school for a few years. I loved it.”

A legacy! I thought. That was almost as good as your aunt being head of admissions. “That's great,” I said. “So did you bring the information I asked for?”

“Let's order first,” he said as the waiter came over to our table. We had our choice of two tasting menus. “They're both delicious.”

“I know!” I said and let him choose. He picked the slightly scarier one, which included a quail's egg and caviar and garlic soup with sautéed frogs' legs. I wondered if I could delicately leap my frog's legs over to his plate without anyone noticing.

“So you don't remember me at all? We met once and I remembered your name. You have a very memorable name.”

“I'm sorry, I'm terrible at remembering names.”

“We had an interesting conversation.”

“We did?”

“When I saw your name at the auction I wanted to meet you again,” he said. “You look the same. You have perfectly shaped eyebrows. Well, I obviously didn't make the same impression on you. That night. At Don Hill's.”

“Don Hill's?” I asked. I had only been to Don Hill's once in my life. I'd gone with Joy the night I met Russell. So it would have been eight years ago.

“I was there with a mutual friend of ours—Carla Gigante—and she introduced us,” he said.

Carla Gigante was a girl I had gone to business school with who had a very old, ugly sugar daddy who paid her tuition and would pick her up after class in a chauffeured Bentley.

“Carla Gigante isn't really a friend of mine,” I said.

“Oh, you don't like her?”

“No,” I said.

“So maybe that's why you weren't interested when we met?”

I was taken aback by his straightforward question. And it was a good one. Why wouldn't I have been interested in him?

I tried to think back to that night, but I just couldn't remember anything. I sort of remembered dodging Carla Gigante, but I had absolutely no recollection of this man, who was probably even more gorgeous eight years ago, eight years more gorgeous, and had been clearly very interested in
me
. I remembered wearing something black velvet that no longer fit, and, now that I thought of it, I might very well have been at my most beautiful that night all those years ago at Don Hill's.

It had always been my deepest wish that someone from my past would remember me and wish they hadn't let me go. He hadn't said that exactly, but it seemed close enough.

“I only ask because I really was,” he said. “Interested, I mean. I thought we had such a great conversation. In fact, I think I remember I very sincerely invited you to come to Paris with me the next day.”

“I remember,” I said slowly. “You were married.”

“I was bailing out,” he said, smiling. “So you do remember me.”

“
Hmm
, I believe you said something like, there had to be more heat to a fire than that.”

He laughed. “Sounds like something I would say. I don't want to get too maudlin about it, but I consider the moment you blew me off at Don Hill's one of the most disappointing moments of my life.”

“Oh come on,” I said.

“I'm serious, m'dear,” he said.

“Why?” I asked. “As I recall we didn't get along too well. We argued about marriage.”

“You said you would never date a man who was divorced.”

“I said married.”

“You said separated.”

“Well it's true if you were with Carla Gigante who I really can't stand, and I'm surprised you can actually, and if you called me m'dear . . .”

“Oh, you don't like that?”

Luckily the waiter put a tiny plate with three
amuse-bouche
the size of quarters before each of us, which gave me time to think of an answer.

“Carla and I aren't very good friends, you know. We just met that night at a party and I wasn't interested in her at all. You were the first girl I asked out after my marriage ended. I mean it's
no big deal
. I survived the blow. I lived.”

What I remembered most, as I stared into his eyes, were all the nights I'd sat around at bars and sushi restaurants with my girlfriends talking about how I would never meet anybody and there was absolutely nobody to meet. We dissected every possibility, my own portfolio so to speak, of the many inappropriate losers I'd managed to sleep with in the nine years after business school and before I met Russell and got married. Night after night, year after year went by and the only people I met were either clients or asshole traders, while my mother's shrink assured me, via my mother, that when I was emotionally ready and open, men would suddenly fall out of the trees. There weren't, however, any trees in the financial district, and if men were falling it meant they had jumped from their office window or, of course, a terrorist attack.

And here was this man Gabe, whom I had completely ignored because of his association with Carla Gigante and possibly a couple of harmless
m'dears
.

“The article about your wedding said you met your husband at Don Hill's. You didn't meet him that night did you?”

“Actually, I did.”

“So while I was thinking about you at the airport—hoping you would come running up to the gate at the last minute—you were grooving on this . . . what was his name . . . Rodger?”

“Russell,” I said reluctantly. He had gotten a little sarcastic with the running-up-to-the-gate bit and I couldn't tell if he was serious about any of this or not. Or making fun of me even.

“Anyway, luckily a woman on the plane helped mend my broken heart. I remember her name was Su-san-nah. Great little redhead. But I prefer brunettes.”

“Well, I'm glad she eased your terrible pain. And I'm glad she didn't care that you were married.”

“Yes, she was a lot less judgmental than you, m'dear.”

“So if I was so judgmental, why'd you want me to come with you?” I asked.

“I liked you,” he said.

“Why?”

“I believe you said something very meaningful to me at the time.”

“What was it?” I asked, wracking my brain, trying to think of anything meaningful I could have possibly said.

“You said you liked my hair.”

The way he said it made me laugh probably harder than anyone had ever laughed at Jean-Georges.

“That's it? That's why you wanted me to go to Paris with you? I liked your hair. Now I can't even see your hair, you're wearing a hat.”

“I came from the gym.”

“Take it off,” I said.

“No,” he said.

“Come on, take it off,” I said.

“No. It's not what it used to be.”

I stood up and walked behind his chair and took his weird knitted hat off. He reached up and grabbed my wrists but he was too late. His hair was light brown and a little shaggy. It was too long in the back and a small bald spot was starting to reveal itself.

I wanted to touch it, but I stopped myself.

“So what do you think of it now?” he asked.

“Still nice, but you could take a little off the bottom.”

I never could have flirted like that if I hadn't been married. Most people thought love was the cornerstone of a marriage, but it wasn't. Flirting was its bedrock. Flirting was marriage's greatest reward. The ring on your finger was a magical golden hoop that protected you from all pain and rejection. The most happily married couples were constantly flirting, I noticed.

“Can I have my hat back?” he asked.

He reached for it and I pulled it away, spilling my glass of red wine on it. I said I was sorry and he laughed and then I laughed.

“Well I still think we could have had a lot of fun in Paris.”

I had always loved the idea, in so many books and movies—and let's face it, I watched a lot more movies than I read books—that love was just around the corner, that if you walked down one block instead of another you'd bump into it. Life was out there waiting and a bad sense of direction might be all you needed. What I hadn't counted on was how much good luck I had avoided with this same idea. The good thing was if you made a mistake, and missed love, you would never know it. You weren't supposed to be confronted by it at a five-hundred-dollar dinner.