Any Place I Hang My Hat (30 page)

The E! Network guy sighed and said, “I can’t believe it. I’m honestly, wow, touched. How weird is that?”

The Sky News guy said, “Nice work, wrapping up the Latino vote that way.”

After the press conference, I went back to the office for a few hours. When I got home, about nine-thirty, I ate half of a pint container of chocolate-marshmallow frozen yogurt for dinner. After that, I took a bath and began watching a special report on CNN: two journalists had been killed and some others injured after U.S. forces fired on their hotel in Baghdad. The Pentagon explained that the commander of the troops believed the place to be a source of sniper fire. I clapped my hand against my forehead, the Duh! gesture, thinking about how doubly awful the deaths were. What kind of sick son of a bitch could have thought up the term friendly fire, and why the hell did the military keep using it?

But time after time, my attention wandered. I could not get the image of Freddy Carrasco out of my head. Whenever I’d met him in the past, he’d always looked like a Before picture in an ad for Prozac, a sufferer of longtime sadness. Up on that polished dance floor in the Press Club, his eyes had sparkled when Jen Bowles squeezed his hand. Standing beside Thom Bowles, he radiated high energy. It was as if a momentary paternal touch on his shoulder had transformed him from a blah boy into a man full of vitality.

When I’d first seen Freddy being escorted out of that ridiculously posh apartment on Central Park West after trying to claim a parent, I hadn’t even bothered making a comparison between him and me: I was made of much stronger stuff. So if being taken into Thom Bowles’s life had done so much for Freddy, what would I become if I reunited with my mother? Xena the Warrior Princess? What would it be like to have a parent really love you? Sure, I know Chicky loved me, but if there were a paternity court, he might be adjudged a father of diminished capacity.

This led me to remember something Gloria had said a couple of years earlier. A few of us were having drinks on Tuesday night after work and somehow the talk rolled around to what our families’ expectations of us had been. She said she’d been in fourth or fifth grade and had used the words horizontal and vertical in describing something to her mother. Her mother was so overcome with joy that she immediately called her husband to announce even further proof of Gloria’s genius.

When I had been older than that, I think in seventh grade, Grandma Lil told me that if I’d stop wearing blue nail polish, when I finished high school she would put in a good word for me at Beauté.

That was the best she could imagine for me, waxing legs or maybe someday giving facials. She’d had no concept of what I was. Forget calling someone to proclaim my genius. Even for a woman who lived for superficialities, she never once said, Amy, you look great, or Your boyfriend’s a cute guy. Instead, it was Your hair looks greasy and Do you have to go out with every spic in the neighborhood?

What was Freddy doing now? I imagined him taking all the Bowleses and his girlfriend uptown to some little restaurant between his place and City College. The senator would grab for the bill, but Freddy wouldn’t let him pay. It’s on me. I was wondering what he would call him: Thom? Dad? It was all so touching it didn’t take long before I could almost see the movie version on Lifetime cable starring Jenna Elfman as the brave and loving Jen.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with Steve Raskin, criminal defense lawyer. In fact, on the phone, he’d sounded better than most potential blind dates, telling me, “I’m not one of those men who meet for drinks. From what Greg Watson said about you, I think we could probably stand each other for three courses.” The Greg in question was my counterpart at In Depth, the guy who covered the Republicans, the right, and the radical right in all its forms—East Coast moderates to neoconservatives all the way to radical racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic groups. Greg hadn’t known I’d broken up with John for the simple reason that he probably didn’t know I was seeing anyone. We were congenial colleagues, not friends.

“Are you and Greg Watson good friends?” I asked Steve before I ate a forkful of mysterious appetizer wrapped in puff pastry, which he’d recommended. I’d given up salads on blind dates years earlier because of the baby-spinach-sticking-to-teeth factor.

“Fairly. I met him when I was in the U.S. Attorney’s office. He was interested in a case I was prosecuting, a bunch of right-wing crazies. Refusal to pay income taxes.”

“I like him a lot,” I said, “although I don’t think we’ve ever talked about anything except politics. I was surprised when he came over to my desk Wednesday and asked if he could fix me up.”

“Actually, I mentioned something to him about my girlfriend, my ex-girlfriend now, moving to San Francisco for her job. I asked if he knew anyone nice … Greg is a pretty basic guy. He probably thought single Jewish male, single Jewish female it’s a definite go. What’s with the Lincoln, though? How did that happen?”

“The usual way. Ellis Island, wanting to be a real American, couldn’t deal with three syllables so Washington was out.”

Who was I to complain? Steve Raskin had taken me to a well-regarded, totally nontrendy restaurant with heavy white table linen and waiters in short black jackets, a place where we did not have to strain to listen to our own conversation. He had an easy smile along with one of those massive but solid construction-guy bodies I was often attracted to. I considered height an overrated quality. Growing up in a neighborhood in which real men carried their lunch to their jobs had formed my tastes. On the basis of looks, I would always trade in a six-foot-two guy with fine bones and aristocratic posture for a five-foot-eight guy who looked as if he busted kneecaps for a living. Plus, having recently tossed aside a doctor, Shea D’A, I knew I’d be a fool to take for granted an eligible lawyer.

“So you cover all the candidates?” Steve asked.

“We aren’t a weekly in the sense that we offer the news of the previous week. We interpret, explain, try to give the big picture.”

“Okay then, give me the big picture on which Democratic candidate would have the best chance against Bush.”

How could I object to this rara avis, a blind date who believed there was something else to talk about besides himself, a man who was actually intrigued by what I did for a living? I started telling him about the candidates’ strengths and limitations, but I couldn’t whip up my usual enthusiasm for politics and being the center of attention. I felt only half present. The rest of me was waiting for John to call.

Look, I told myself, this is a completely predictable, run-of-the-mill funk. What woman approaching her thirtieth birthday wants to go through that struggle of looking for love, or even companionship, yet again? Was I missing John or just missing having a real boyfriend? Was I missing him or his family? Steve listened closely and ate his salad, apparently not having baby-spinach-teeth issues. The Orensteins were special: good-natured, thoughtful, happy with one another, generous to outsiders. So different from the Lincolns. My father would have been happy with a minimum-security prison, while the Orensteins loved and tended an old colonial house on five acres. Was this all I really wanted, to be part of a family that preferred gardening tools to burglary tools?

It was John, I decided. His family was just another one of his assets. Except I couldn’t have him. Even on the tiny chance La Belleza was a PBS producer, he’d said my distrust was just the tip of the iceberg. Fine, so I was a realist. No more John. Then how come I couldn’t lighten up a little more, at least to be more appealing to a man like Steve? If you’d been dating in New York between ages twenty-one and twenty-seven and a half—when I’d met John—you knew a catch when you saw one. Like the guy across the table from me. Easy, smart. Probably tough, being a trial lawyer, but not mean.

Steve would be fine: I didn’t have to date him for six months or a year to know that. I could marry him on the spot and start having babies. I didn’t even have to worry if he would want to marry me: I knew he would, even though he might not realize it this particular night, although my guess was he knew I was a definite candidate. We would date for four months, pro forma, and then I’d be deciding between platinum and gold.

Go for it, I ordered myself. Don’t be one of those women who mourn the death of a relationship for so long that by the time they recover their ovaries have shriveled and their spirit is dead. Here was the rare man, aside from John, who I could take both to my Ivey-Rush reunion and to the diner in Queens to meet my father. Even the guys I fantasized about as a kid, like River Phoenix, the ones I’d endowed with every amazing power, weren’t this adaptable. Steve Raskin and I could be that They met on a blind date couple who would give other women hope. We could have hot sex on Saturday night, then laze in bed together on Sunday mornings and watch George Stephanopoulos and Tim Russert.

But men weren’t plug-and-play. Steve was admirable, Steve was fine. Maybe I was just tired from work, or maybe from the idea of, yet again, having to meet a new guy’s friends—no doubt most of them married—and feeling obliged to praise excessively their pictures of little Max, who would be either a son or a basset hound. But Steve wasn’t John. Nevertheless, I gave him my best semidimpled smile and got a bright, wide grin in return.

It could work.

Another day, another restaurant. Uncle Tai’s was the newest hot spot in Chinatown, which meant that within six months, Uncle Tai’s heart would be broken by the mass desertion of the big-spending media and financial types who would pick up on an aside by one of those high-tone, suspiciously thin food writers that Uncle Tai’s cha sui bow was less than authentic. Meanwhile, Frankie Watanabe, In Depth’s hippest editor—although there wasn’t much competition for the title—had organized a Sunday noon dim sum brunch to celebrate Gloria’s birthday.

Everyone knew Frankie was au courant because her hair was always cut no more than an inch and a half long and her entire wardrobe was by some designer whose work was said to be post-postmodern, i.e., unstructured, i.e., her clothes hung on her. For all I knew maybe her face could also be called post-postmodern, if that meant going without makeup despite having no discernible lips and eyebrows made up of many scattered hairs, like cilia that had lost their protozoa. She was a rising star at the magazine, an associate economics editor, a good writer. She frequently worked with Gloria, especially on articles about the European Union.

The waiter rolled around a rattling metal cart stacked with covered dishes of some new delicacy and said something in Chinese that caused the women at the table, everyone but me, to say, “Ooh!” It was an ooh in the happy, anticipatory sense. Except when he lifted the hemispherical cover from the dish, I realized we were not up to dessert. So I said no thanks to chicken feet in ginger sauce and ate some more rice. I wondered if John had spent the night with La B. Her place? His? Or were they already living together?

“What are you,” Dana Jones asked me, “one of those picky eaters?” Along with me, she was the only staff member at the table who did not work directly with Gloria. Dana was sport editor. Our Revered Founder had not liked the word sports, and had chosen instead the multimeaninged sport for the department that covered athletics.

“I’m not at all picky,” I told her. “I mean, I eat a lot of different things, but I tend to be leery about newfangled body parts.” Also, the barbecued pork pie soon followed by pork ribs with black beans had unsettled me enough to give me new respect for the phrase losing one’s lunch. “Anyhow, I’m enjoying the rice.”

“You don’t worry about carbs?”

“Sometimes. Not incessantly.”

“Oh.”

I suppose many people imagine women sports writers—or in Dana’s case, sport writers—as looking like Vin Diesel with lip gloss. To the contrary, I’d noticed many were over the top when it came to femininity, blond bombshells, brunette sizzlers. Dana was another type of femme. Fragile, like what Mammy wanted Scarlett O’Hara to be. Beneath the white skin of Dana’s temples, you could see a network of blue veins so complex it looked like a map of Los Angeles. Her pale blue eyes were the sort that liquefied in bright sunlight. Her hair was the fine, near-white blond of Republican babies. She was so delicately built you feared her soul might be separated from her body with one good sneeze.

Since I’d already failed to get a comfortable conversation going with her about the Yankees or about whom she’d nominate as best American sportswriter aside from herself, I pretended not to hear her “Do you follow any specific diet philosophy?” and returned to the group’s conversation. In the few seconds I’d been talking with Dana, the subject had changed from the question of Kofi Annan’s diplomatic muscle to Caroline Braden, In Depth’s arts editor, a woman in her early forties who had quit the magazine when her husband, an architect, decided to move to London.

“Does she have a job there?” one of the women asked. I think she was an assistant editor covering the Iberian peninsula and maybe North Africa. Most of the women at the table worked under Gloria, and I was relieved they weren’t involved in some European Union discussion I wouldn’t be able to follow.

“No job. Not yet,” Germany replied. She had been born and educated there. While she had no discernible accent, she was a bit too definite about the letter T. I guessed she was well into her fifties, because she had been at the magazine for over thirty years. With black hair and white skin, she always reminded me of Snow White, if Snow White had been a middle-aged, stocky German lesbian who wore men’s suits. “I don’t know what she’s going to do. It’s not as if they are desperate for arts writers in England.”

France was the sort of woman who wore leather jeans and black fuck-me shoes with ankle straps and four-inch heels to an all-women Sunday brunch. “Not that I would particularly want to live in London, but what was Caroline supposed to do? It’s not as if he’d moved to Boston, where they could have some kind of a commuter marriage.”

“How could she give this up?” Eastern Europe began hesitantly. She was Polish. Her written English was fine, but speaking the language fluently seemed to require more RAM than she possessed. “At In Depth, she was powerful.”