Almost Royalty: A Romantic Comedy...of Sorts (28 page)

“You seem tense,” said Aaron, “but I think I know how to make you feel better.”

“You might be mistaken tonight. Aaron, I think I want to go…” He placed his tongue in my mouth and started kissing me. He pulled the straps down on my bathing suit and started feeling my breasts. I didn’t feel well at all.

“I think that we could have a lot of fun together—exploring, experiencing, no rules, no promises,” said Aaron. My stomach was cramping and I pulled my legs to my chest.

“How old are you?”

“24,” he said.

24. 24. 24. I’m 35. No rules, no promises—no future. I’m pathetic. Someone who would sexually involve herself with a person—a person who probably was looking for career help—and was deluded into thinking this was how to play the game. This seemed very familiar. But now I was the older person.

I had become Gene Jenny. How had this happened?

“I think I’m going to…” I turned away and stood up, leaning over the side of the hot tub on the pavement as the vomit burst out of my mouth and on to the ground… cheap wine, height, heat, and oysters all combining to make swanky vomit, retching four times before I was done.

We walked downstairs without saying a thing. I opened the door to find a large swath of grease across my plush gray shag carpeting, littered with baloney trailing from the kitchen to the northeast corner of my sunken living room, where sat Abyss. She had dragged the entire package of baloney from the cabinet to the corner, in the process eating so much that she was covered in grease, fur slicked back, whiskers stuck to her face, fur matted to her head, face, and chest, only making it worse by trying to clean herself with tongue and paws that were also covered in baloney grease.

“Oh, Abyss.”

Aaron had slipped away and returned with clothes on and a piece of paper with various numbers on it.

“Home, cell, work, email,” he said, handing me a piece of paper with various numbers on them. “I meant what I said up there.”

He walked toward the door, and stopped.

“Are you going to be OK?” said Aaron.

“No. Never.”

“Call me tomorrow.”

I didn’t call. Three days later, he called me.

“You didn’t call me. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. You didn’t really think I was going to call you, did you?”

“Well yeah. How often does a 24-year-old guy like me call you wanting you?”

As Roberta would have said, I was feeling an Ancient Pain.

“You know Aaron, attractive as your offer is, I just don’t see what we have in common. I mean, you’re 24. Go do your 24-year-old things.”

“You’re kidding me, right? Women like you don’t turn me down.”

“Women like me. You’ve done this before?”

“Sure. And it worked out really well. Sometimes they’re married. Sometimes they’re not. Always they’re a little older. And alone.”

“And what do you get out of this?”

“A car. An apartment. Help with my career,” said Aaron.

“And they get?”

“Sensuality. Romance. All their desires met.”

“I’m looking for something else.”

“Don’t tell me you think you need a boyfriend?”

“That’s a start.”

“A husband?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Some of the women I’ve been with have been married, or even gotten married, and then returned to me. It’s not like being married is going to solve any of your problems.”

“It’s not like being or having a sex toy with a pulse will either.”

“God, you’re puritanical. And you think too much.”

“Do they recycle those lines every generation? What’s next?
If it feels good, do it?
”

“Didn’t you feel something when I was kissing you?”

“Aaron, I threw up.”

“You’re a mess. I’m going to give you a couple of days to think about it. Alone. You’ll call me once you realize what we could have.”

“Hmmm.”

“No woman has ever turned me down.”

I’ve often thought if I could just go back to age 15, read the classics and like them, study Latin, summer in Martha’s Vineyard, apply to a school like… Vassar… Dartmouth… Princeton… or Stanford… it would’ve all been different.

Like I could have been reborn as the daughter of Todd, a Yale grad, a tax partner at a large law firm, and Carolyn, a stay-at-home mom who began chairing the fund-raising committees of local art museums when I entered Andover at 15, residents of some very leafy area of Connecticut, say New Canaan, where they owned a 10,000-, no, too big and not tasteful, 7500-square-foot two-story home on three acres of land, where they had a leafy fall during which they all wore beige and earth tones, and then celebrated a very white, and very Episcopalian Christmas with a big,
real
, not aluminum, Christmas tree, at which the women wore red and green plaid skirts, red sweaters and black tights, and served egg nog and sugar cookies with little sprinkles on them. And Todd and Carolyn stayed married, didn’t die, and didn’t divorce, so I never had to see them date someone else, and certainly didn’t see them (mom or dad) date, or attempt to date, my boyfriends.

And after Andover, I, with Todd and Carolyn’s help, visited all the Ivy-League schools (so in case everything failed, I could be a member of the Ivy & Elite) and decided that I would apply to the appropriate school in an appropriately leafy area, on the east coast, like Wellesley, which I got into, where, somewhere between my junior and senior year I met the big brother of one of my friends from school—John, who was in his third year at Yale Law—and we started dating. We dated until I graduated and started working in publicity or marketing for DKNY or Calvin Klein, and then after he finished his federal court clerkship and started working for Sullivan and Cromwell we got married in a 200-person wedding at my parents’ place in The Hamptons during June when everyone looked very pretty, like tall, thin, high cheek-boned golden-haired models, like in the Ralph Lauren ads.

Or,

Wait a moment…

Was this entire fantasy an ad for Ralph Lauren? Yes, I already knew someone from Andover—Frank—and his prep school slacker life didn’t at all resemble a Ralph Lauren ad, but I’m sure that mine would’ve turned out differently.

All right, so it was a few, make that many years later and I was starting to read the classics. I figured it was never too late to start down the right road.

First book up—Joyce’s
Finnegan’s Wake
.

First book down—Joyce’s
Finnegan’s Wake
.

One more try.

First book up—Edith Wharton’s
Age of Innocence.

No, seeing the movie, even the director’s cut DVD, does not count as reading the book.

But I was hungry.

So I made my recipe for Velveeta junior pizza, slathering mayo and grated Velveeta on some La Brea Bakery rosemary and olive bread. Somewhere, I was sure that Nancy Silverton was going into anaphylactic shock.

I sat in bed with
House of Mirth
. Abyss hopped onto the bed, walked into my lap, and sniffed the junior pizza.

“Abyss, you don’t like Velveeta junior pizza,” I said.

Maybe not, but she seemed to go for the bread. She stuck her snout in the pizza and started to drag the entire thing off the bed, leaving a vertical trail of Velveeta grease three inches wide and three feet long down my ivory white comforter.

“All right, then, take it.”

I walked into the kitchen to make another Velveeta junior pizza. La Brea Bakery rosemary and olive bread, mayo, tomatoes, grated Velveeta…

Bam bam
. Pounding on my front door.
Bam bam bam bam
.

“Open the door, Courtney.” A guy’s voice. Not one that I recognized.

Had I forgotten to pay my cable bill again?

Bam bam bam.
Louder now.

“Open the door, bitch.”

If it was Time Warner cable I was definitely not going to contribute to their holiday toy campaign.

BAM BAM BAM.

“BITCH OPEN THE DOOR.”

Not likely. A great way to get beaten to a pulp. I never understood why people opened the door and let go of the only protection between them and a crazed animal.

“Whoever it is, stop pounding on my door or I’ll call the police.”

“You don’t know who it is?”

“Aaron?”

“Stupid bitch. Who’s Aaron?”

“Dr. Ted?”

“You can’t reject me. I do the rejecting.”

“Frank?”

“You don’t return my calls. Who do you think you are?”

“Genie?”

It occurred to me that I had a few too many possibilities in the angry guy category. Perhaps it was time to refine my list.

“Whore. You’ve got so many guys, don’t you?”

“Andre?”

“You think you’re better than me, but you’re not as good.”

“That’s it. I’m calling the police.”

“I’ll get to you first.”

Whack. Whack. Whack. Whack
. It sounded like he was hitting my door with a hammer. I called 911.

“Are you in immediate danger?” said the 911 operator.

“The police won’t touch me, bitch.”

Whack whack whack whack whack.

“What are you, O.J. Simpson? Pipe down, will you. I’m trying to talk to the 911 operator.”

“Hello…” said the 911 operator.

“I don’t think he has a gun,” I said to the 911 operator, “but he’s banging on my door with something and screaming.”

“Don’t open the door,” said the 911 operator.

“Thanks for the advice,” I said.

“I’ll send someone around in a while to check up on you.”

Crash
—the sound of glass breaking.

“You idiot,” I said. “Did you break my potted cactus?”

During my Southwest motif stage I had been gifted with a cactus in an Age-of-Aquarius turquoise blue pot. Through careful neglect, it grew about two feet. But Abyss spent endless hours using the cactus as a back scratcher, causing the cactus to be matted with her fur. I had put it out front at my door.

“If you knew anything, you’d know that Southwest is over.”

“Oh.” I knew who it was.

I thought about who lived close enough to get here quickly. I called Bettina.

“Can you come over, quickly, with Bean? Someone’s trying to break my door down.”

“We just sat down to dinner,” said Bettina. “Call me back in 45 minutes, OK? I want to know who it is.”

I called Marcie.

“Any possibility that you and Greg could pop over? Some guy’s trying to break my door down.”

Whack. Crash.
The sound of the pot breaking into smaller pieces.

“I see that you’ve got yourself into another mess,” said Marcie. “Where do you find these guys?”

“At the Ivy & Elite,” I said. “I’m pretty sure that it’s Richard from the Ivy & Elite.”

“No way,” said Marcie, “those people have good breeding. Nobody from that group would want you enough to break your door down.”

“I’m guessing that you and Greg won’t come over,” I said. “I gotta go.”

“Oh, the drama, Blanche. How exciting. Someone wants you,” said Stefan. “Let him in. I’m sure you’d have fun.”

“I don’t think so, Stefan,” I said. “I’m scared.”

“Well, James and I are having drinks with friends.”

“Gotta go,” I said.

I didn’t want to do it. But I did.

“So there’s this guy hitting my door with a hammer,” I said.
Crash crash crash whack
.

“I’ll be right over,” said Josh.

“Richard,” I said, “it is you, isn’t it? What are you doing?”

“YOU DIDN’T RETURN MY CALLS,” said Richard

“It
was
you… You’re the Breather, right?” I said.

“You didn’t even go to an Ivy League School,” said Richard, “but I did.”

“So go find a little Ivy Eliter.”

Whack Whack
.

“You don’t reject me. I reject you.”

“So reject me, and go away.”

BOOM.
A thousand pieces hit the floor.

“Did you just throw my pot against the door?”

“I was going to show you how to be
one of us
.”

“You and everyone else out there.”

“Our children could have gone to the best schools and known the right people,” said Richard.

“Look, Richard, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. But you’d better go. I’ve called someone and they should be here soon.”

“OK,” said Richard. He sounded calm now. “I’m sorry about your pot. I’ll buy you a new one—but Southwest is just so…”

“I got it, Richard.”

“Call me if you think you might want to go out. You’ve got so much potential. I really think I could do something with you.”

It was suddenly quiet. I sat down on my gray futon, and greasy-Velveeta Abyss walked onto my lap, sat down and stuck her head into the crook of my elbow, something she had done every night since the day of her adoption. I knew that stroking her would feel like running your hands through a salad slathered in Ranch dressing. I did it anyway. She purred, and left an enormous grease spot on the inside left elbow of my favorite blue cashmere sweater, something no cleaner anywhere, not even the very exclusive Brown’s, would ever be able to get rid of.

A few minutes later, someone knocked on my door.

“Go away, Richard.”

“It’s me—Josh.”

I unlocked the door and opened it. There were turquoise-blue shards everywhere. My little two-foot cactus sat in the corner, leaning against the wall, de-potted, looking as if it were being punished for bad behavior.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Wow,” said Josh, “are you OK?”

“Yeah, but I better get my cactus. Do you know anything about potting cactus?”

“Not a thing,” said Josh.

“Hmm. I guess I’ll put it in with the Ficus overnight.” We walked into the apartment. Greasy-Velveeta-encrusted Abyss walked up to sniff Josh.

“What’s that?” said Josh.

“Ah, that’s my cat—Abyss. She took a liking to my sandwich. Normally, she resembles a fat Tabby.”

“Did the guy go away?” said Josh.

“I think so.”

“Want me to stick around for a while? To be sure? I’ll make tea, or something—and you can tell me what happened.”

Tea. I hate tea. Did I even have any?

“Sure. While I try to pot the cactus with the Ficus, you can make tea.”

“Where do you keep your tea?”