What Men Want (5 page)

By the end of dinner, I think all of us were ready to drive home with him to explore an alternative way of living. We walked outside and Chris and I headed to First Avenue to go home.

“I'm going up Lexington,” Ellen said to Moose.

“So am I,” he said. “Do you want company?” They turned and walked off together and I watched them from a distance. Moose was a foot taller, if you counted the mop of curly hair.

“He's a sweet guy,” I said to Chris.

“Sweet?” he hesitated. “Hmm…on one level. But on another…” He paused again. “He's the most determined, tough-minded, independent son of a bitch.” I listened to Chris and didn't say anything. It was one thing to hear it from a guy, and another to get a female perspective.

When we got home, we undressed and fell into bed and made love in a soft, easy way—part comfortable affection, part margaritas making my blood cells feel as though they were dancing. I was about to fall asleep, when I thought of Ellen. She was close to my
age, but still, I felt as though she was my little sister. Did Moose walk her all the way home? Did she ask him in for a drink? She spent her life fighting to help other people get by. Why did I think that I had to watch out for her?

“What were the other women in Moose's life like?” I asked Chris.

“I can only remember one,” he said sleepily. I waited, but he didn't say anything.

“I think you told me about her, but I've forgotten what you said.”

Chris rolled over and I could tell from the sound of his breathing that he was about to fall asleep. It never took him more than twenty seconds. He could fall asleep standing on the subway. I was insanely jealous. I needed total darkness, quiet, even the right temperature. And if there was a faucet dripping…

“CHRIS…”

“What?” he said, jumping up as though I had startled him.

“What was she like?”

“Who?”

“The girl he was seeing,” I said.

“Hot,” he said.

“So what happened?”

“Do we have to talk about this now,” he mumbled.

Why, at one in the morning, when I should have been concerned about falling asleep, was I wonder
ing about the love life of a mountain man? Ellen hadn't even dated him, and for all I knew, she wasn't even interested.

I don't know about you, but I feel as though for my entire life I've been wasting my own time, not to mention that of friends and family trying to figure out why men act the way they do. And what they're looking for.

“W
ho was she?” I asked Chris a few minutes later.

“An actress,” he said. “Pretty famous, I think, but he never told me.” Trivia expert that I am, my brain scanned all the names of the current actresses who might have traveled up to the Adirondacks to do a film or prepare for one, and then, thanks to my devotion to gossip columns and celebrity trivia, bingo, it hit me.

I never saw the movie. It was some type of outward-bound-thriller flick where something goes terribly wrong. I don't remember whether the girl gets chased by a bear, or whether her food supplies are invaded by a mountain lion and her campsite ransacked or whatever, but fear gets the better of her and she has a breakdown. Because of it, she packs up and goes home to her cushy New England life a changed woman from the spoiled princess who
left. The actress that they cast in the role was a young, blue-eyed ingenue who, I read, spent three months in the area learning survival skills to prepare for the role.

Clearly, I was jumping the gun, but it was one of those intuitive moments when you just know something, so I was willing to swear that Kelly Cartwright was the girl who had been Moose's live-in. After I was sure that Chris was deep asleep, I crept out of bed and sat down at my computer.

I went from one site to another and finally found some bios of her and magazine articles that described how she prepared for the role.

The article discussed how she read every book she could find on wilderness survival and made an extended trip up to the Adirondacks to talk to hiking guides, campers, outdoorsmen and survivalists to learn about getting along outdoors, alone, in the company of four-legged friends such as bears, moose, mountain lions and God knows what else.

So, enter Moose. Even though I never saw his name mentioned in any of the articles, how could K.C. not be the one that he was seeing? I mean, how many guys like him were there who got involved with a movie star?

Two in the morning. Should I call Ellen? No, dumb idea. What if Moose was there with her? And if he wasn't, she'd be in a dead sleep. I bookmarked the sites, and then slid back into bed. Chris rolled
over toward me and slipped his arm around me. I snuggled up next to him and fell asleep.

 

“Kelly Cartwright? Is she the one who looks like an eighteen-year-old Robin Wright Penn?” Ellen asked. When I finally reached her on Monday. Why was it that every celebrity was described as looking like somebody else, as if there was a limited gene pool from which all players were created? It was similar to the way book reviewers described authors. They were always crosses between two or three others—Hemingwayesque, or Shavian, Faulknerian—who wrote in the same genre, as if no one was original and every work was merely a crazy quilt of what had come before.

“Well, a younger Robin Wright Penn,” I said, “but not as good an actress.”

“Mmm, I thought she was miscast in
Hometown Queen,
” Ellen said. It was clear why we were friends. “She didn't have the breadth of character to carry it off.”

“Agreed,” I said. Still, we were getting ahead of ourselves. Two plus two didn't equal ten.

“Any number of people could have helped her for the role, and it was quite possible that she wasn't the one at all,” Ellen said. “Maybe some celebrity just went up there looking for property. You know how they always want to buy houses in places like upstate New York, Montana, Wyoming or up-and-
coming spots like Marfa, Texas, where no one would run into them.”

But the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became.

“I know it's her,” I said, and then changed the subject back to Moose. “So what happened with him?”

“He came back here and we sat on the floor talking about everything from television to books to seasons for planting,” Ellen said. “He even went outside to examine the garden in the back of the building and we talked about starting a vegetable garden,” she said. “Then we went through a bottle of wine.”

“And?”

“He left at two,” Ellen said. I couldn't tell whether she was relieved or disappointed.

“Did he want to?”

“Well, he didn't jump me, if that's what you mean.”

He already got four stars for good behavior. “Did he act interested?”

“Well…we talked for two hours,” she said. “But the crazy thing is, I think he was trying to pretend that he wasn't interested.”

“Well, that'll make it better when it does happen,” I said.

“Maybe,” Ellen said. “I don't know.”

“Did he say he'd call before we go to the concert?”

“No. He just smiled and said he'd better push off.” She paused. “But he has my card….”

 

When Chris walked in from work, I told him about Moose and Ellen.

“If he jumped her bones she would have resented it,” he said, peeling off his jacket and tossing it on the couch. “So he played it cool and that put her off? We can't win.”

“Well, I just thought he might have said something—‘I'll call you,' or whatever—to let her know that he was interested,” I said, jumping to Ellen's defense. “I think he's the first guy that she's had an iota of interest in in the last six months. I know she probably wouldn't admit it, but I could tell. I saw a sparkle in her eye that I haven't seen since you know who.”

“So let her make a move on him,” he said, sinking onto the couch. “She's a big girl.”

“Do you like it when a woman comes on to you?”

Major shoulder shrug. “Depends who,” he said. “Yeah, why not?”

I dropped down on top of him and tried to pin his arms above his head. “This okay?” I said.

He laughed. “Yeah, definitely.”

Men always said they wanted women to come on to them, but that didn't make it true. While initially it flattered the hell out of them if a woman pursued them, after the first date, most men liked to take charge. If the relationship wasn't on their terms, it made them uneasy.

“How's the diet-drink campaign going?” I said, dropping the subject.

He shrugged. “We've been brainstorming, but I don't have anything yet.

“What's your deadline?”

He massaged his temples. “Forty-eight hours.” He picked up the TV page of the paper, scanned it, and then grabbed the remote and started to channel surf. When I first met Chris it surprised me to see him come home from work and spend most of the night in front of the TV when he had a deadline the next morning. I thought he'd be sitting in front of the computer, or staring at pictures of the product. Only later did I realize that he really wasn't watching television as much as using it to help him think. It became the backdrop for the movie that he was making in his head. Maybe he needed the visual wallpaper to stimulate his thinking.

I was the opposite. The blare of radio or TV destroyed my concentration, which may explain why we had the different kinds of jobs that we did. Clearly, he was a right-brain kind of guy—holistic, random and intuitive, and I was a left-brain—more logical, analytical and sequential.

I slipped out of the room and went into the kitchen to start making dinner, something that I didn't do on a regular basis. It wasn't that I didn't like to cook, it was just that I didn't want to fall into a routine that would regularly take a chunk
out of my day and that wasn't, as I saw it, effective in terms of the time spent cooking/time spent eating it ratio.

But tonight at least, I wanted to help Chris in any way that I could. I really sympathized with him. The pressure of having to produce under a deadline could make the most secure person crumble. I took out a steak, made a marinade, and then let it sit for a while before putting it under the broiler. I put baked potatoes into the microwave and cut up a salad. When the steak was ready—rare for him, medium-well for me—I brought a tray over to the coffee table. He turned to me for a minute, intuiting the moral support that I hoped to be offering along with the food.

“Thanks,” he said, turning back to the TV. He cut into the meat and ate like a hungry dog. I sat next to him, amused, and we watched a mindless quiz show followed by an episode of
Animal Planet.
Were we melding into a Middle American couple? But no, there was no
TV Guide
on the coffee table, no popcorn or even Bud Light. And I'm proud to say that there were no Barcaloungers in our living room and never would be, despite the fact that the horrendous-looking things were amazingly comfortable. But there we were, not exchanging as much as a word for the entire time we sat in front of the TV. Finally, Chris turned to me.

“Metamorphosis?

“You're kidding, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, giving me his signature half smile. We sat there for another minute without speaking.

“How about ‘The Change'?” I said.

“You're kidding, right?”

“Yeah.” We sat some more. How ridiculous was this? Two mature adults trying to come up with the name of a diet drink that would be no more effective than a low-fat malted but at twice the price. Who could give up food for any length of time without going back to it with a vengeance that would ultimately negate all the weight lost while enduring sweet diet drinks instead of real meals. I thought of “Fraud,” but thought better of suggesting it. Maybe “Waste.” Those who couldn't spell might think that it would give them one.

“Slice of Life,” I said brightly, starting to toss out ideas and brainstorming. “Close Shave. Beanpole, Svelte, Stick, Stick Figure, Slim, Shape—oops, forget that, they already used that—ummm…” More silence. But then, in a flash of inspiration, I knew that I had it.

“Wait,” I said suddenly. “I've got your name.”

He looked at me. “Well?”

I nodded my head up and down. “I have it, it's great, really great.” He held out his hands.

“So?”

I thought I'd torture him for a bit. I was a super-hero to the rescue. The pressure was off, Chris was
home free and tomorrow he'd be a star in the client's eyes thanks to yours truly.

“Yep, it's really great. Really, really fresh, original. This one will bring you a raise. Maybe even a Clio.”

“So what the hell is it?” he asked, losing patience.

The pregnant pause. “Model Thin,” I said softly with a self-satisfied expression on my face. And again for more emphasis. “Model Thin.”

“Hmm,” Chris said in a positive voice, nodding his head slightly. I had struck a nerve. “Hmm,” he said again, biting the corner of his thumbnail. “That's not bad. That is definitely not bad at all.”

“Think of all the models that you could hire for the shoot,” I said, regretting the words the instant they rolled off my tongue. He sat there, mulling it over.

“I could work with that,” Chris said. “Model Thin.”

“Can we go out and take a walk now?” I said. “I'm getting tired of vegging out in front of the TV.” He clicked it off decisively and we headed out, walking downtown, toward the Village, always a good destination because it was about three miles there and back. We stopped at a coffee bar for espresso and pastries that would never allow me to become model thin, scanned magazines and out-of-town newspapers hanging along a wooden rack on the wall, and then got up to leave. As we got outside, fate reared its head, and a six-foot-tall blonde strutted by. Perfect skin,
hair piled sloppily on top of her head, arresting blue eyes and, of course, she was totally without makeup, which I can't stand because it tells me that that's how she looks in the morning or the middle of the night if, say, she runs out to the street because her house is on fire.

I looked her up and down. Never mind the ragged jeans that are made to look grungy, so unappealing to me, and the tired-looking down jacket, she was ready for the cover of
Vogue.
If she wasn't a model yet, she'd be discovered in a heartbeat. She just had that camera-ready look—you can always tell.

“Model Thin,” Chris said, looking right into her eyes. “I like that.” She looked at him curiously and then just smiled. I took his hand and pulled him away, in the direction of uptown, trying to ignore the knot eating into the base of my stomach.