Blue Rose In Chelsea (20 page)

     Dylan scolds me, because they can’t hear the television over my playing.

     “That’s impressive,” the undaunted suitor says of my playing.

     “A monkey could play that waltz,” Dylan returns.

     I ignore them, and play the song that Evan has declared as being ours.  I sing softly to myself, an attempt to shut out everything around me.  I’m hoping to lure Evan, like a siren, to the bench, but it will be the persistent suitor who picks up the signal.

     Evan has not budged from where he leans against the wall, sipping tea and taking in the unfolding drama.

     “So, you’re a dancer?” the persistent suitor says, sitting beside me.

     “Not a very good one,” Sinclair jests, and I’m resigned to the fact that I’m losing Sinclair to the irresistible lure of male comradery.  It’s official now; I haven’t got a single ally in the whole joint.

     “Don’t ask about her poetry,” Brandon jokes.

     “Unless you’re a cat aficionado,” Dylan adds.

     I’ve learned to take this ribbing in good form over the years, but in front of Evan it feels a bit like being stripped naked.  I smile and shake my head, as if to show it’s all in good fun and I’m not the least bit bothered.

     Evan leaves the room and brings me in a fresh cup of tea.  Sinclair has passed out for good, his head on Dylan’s shoulder.  “Oh man, too much Grecian formula.”  Dylan recoils, sliding Sinclair’s jelled head onto a throw pillow.  “We’ve got to split anyway,” he says to Brandon.

     It’s decided that Sinclair will crash on the couch, as there is no way that he could stumble home now, even if we were able to rouse him.

     “Let him sleep it off,” Evan suggests.  “If you want to look out for him, you’re welcome to stay, too.”

     “She’s coming home with me,” Dylan says, scrounging for his leather jacket from a pile of coats in the corner.  “Mom is expecting us tonight,” he throws in for effect.

     “Maybe I should stay.  Mom will understand.  Sinclair might wake up and become disoriented; he won’t know where he is.”

     “He’ll figure it out soon enough.  He’s in midtown Manhattan; he’s not in the Serengeti.”  Dylan tosses the bear coat at me, knocking me off kilter with the force.  It lands on top of my head as if I were a coat rack.  I let out a long frustrated sigh as I pull it off, smoothing my hair, trying to muster up some modicum of dignity before departing.

     Evan shakes Dylan’s hand, but seems hesitant to approach me, with Dylan standing guard in his leather coat like the enforcer of some heavy metal underworld kingdom.  When Dylan moves to say goodbye to the others, Evan leans in to brush a kiss across my cheek.  “Happy Birthday, Sylvia,” he says.

~~~~~

     Dylan and I step off the elevator directly onto the avenue.  I always feel disoriented whenever I leave Brandon’s loft.  The elevator that takes you up is not the elevator that takes you down.  One is accessed through an entrance on the street, the other dumps you directly onto Seventh Avenue.

     Dylan lifts his leather collar against the onslaught of wind.  With a black bandanna tied around his forehead and his silky mane of dark shoulder-length hair, he cuts a striking figure on the avenue.  He chats with me about the band, about new songs they are working on, how the members want him to write darker lyrics, but Dylan can’t shake his Beatlesque pop influences and his natural optimism.  As we walk, passing girls rubberneck to get a second look at him.  He’s often mistaken for Matt Dillon.

     “Sinclair is cool,” he says.

     “Who plied him with all that Jack Daniels?  Was it Evan?” I accuse, hugging my borrowed coat about me, and struggling in my mules to match Dylan’s long strides.  Below us, the subway rumbles in some vast underground.  Above us, the moon is cold and silver as chrome.

     “Evan doesn’t drink.  One beer and Evan’s in the bag,” Dylan says.  “Believe me, Sinclair helped himself.  He was a mess when he got there.  Be grateful that there was booze on hand to sedate him or the guy might’ve jumped out a window.”

     “I can’t believe you made Sinclair sit through that Andrew Dice Clay video with all those tasteless gay jokes.”

     “Oh, lighten up.  Sinclair laughed along with it.  Gays have a sense of humor, too, you know.  Be happy that the guy found something to laugh about.  Cripes, I hope I don’t ever end up spending fifteen years crying in my beer over some chick.”

     He halts at the corner to light a smoke.  I try to bum a drag but he insists that it’s bad for my health.  A passing blonde lures his attention; she glances back and smiles at him, but almost immediately he’s looking left at another girl.

     “No, that’s not likely,” I mumble.

     “Tell me who the new guy is that you’ve got it bad for, and I’ll give you a drag,” he teases, holding the cigarette playfully out of reach.  Dylan is six foot two.  I leap for the cigarette, my golden furry collar flapping like some crazed Pomeranian.

     “There is no guy.  Sinclair was delirious.”

     “It’s not Evan is it?”

     I quit leaping and look away, frightened that my face will betray me.  Dylan surrenders the cigarette to me and lights another for himself.  “Why do you say that?”

     “Keep it.  You’re only going to get that goop all over it,” he says, meaning my red lip-gloss.   “Did you sleep with him?”

     “Why do you ask that?”

     “That doesn’t sound like a no, Haley.”

     “No, I didn’t.  We’re just friends.  We’re not even friends.  I don’t know what we are, but nothing happened between us.”

     “Because I get this weird vibe whenever you two are together.”

     “What kind of vibe?”

     I stop because my cigarette has gone out, and Dylan has to light it again.  He watches me closely, shielding the match from the wind for me, as I suck the blue flame.

     “A vibe,” he says with emphasis, as if this clarifies it.  I really would like the vibe to be defined, but then I remember that I’m speaking to the two-dimensional Dylan.

     “We say flirty things to each other.  That’s just a game between us.  It’s just something we do.”  I bugle smoke into the crystal air.  It feels like snow is coming.

     “It’s not what you say to each other that worries me.  It’s what you don’t say.”

     “Do you think he has feelings for me?” I ask airily, taking a risk.

     “Feelings?”  Dylan looks as if he’s sucked on a lemon.  “What I’m saying is he wants you between the sheets, and so badly I’m amazed the guy can even stand up when you’re in the room.”

     I get a rush from this, as if I’d just plummeted on a roller coaster, but it’s followed by a freefall, because this would not be my choice of imagery to describe what I have deluded myself into believing is a grand passion.

     “He told you that?”

     “No, I just know.”

     “Oh, what are you, The Lust Police?  Besides, he has a girlfriend,” I say, hoping this will provoke Dylan to reveal what he knows about The Gum Goddess.

     “Does he?  I’ve never seen him with anyone.”

     “The girl at the Halloween party, dressed as Aphrodite, the
Goddess of Love
,” I mock.

     “I wasn’t at the party, remember?  I don’t remember Brandon mentioning a chick in a toga.”  No other information is forthcoming.

     “Maybe he has a boyfriend,” I taunt.

     “He’s straight, Haley.”  I can see Dylan takes this personally, as Dylan considers his inner circle to be an extension of himself.

     “Don’t worry, there’s not much chance of anything happening between us, with all your efforts to make me look like a complete idiot in front of him.”

     “What’re you talking about?”

     “Well, let’s see, how about telling him I write nothing but cat poems?  Or, ‘Even a monkey could play that waltz!’  Or trying to make me look like an airhead every chance you get.  You practically hauled me out of the loft tonight as if I’m a child.  Believe me, whatever attraction he may have had to me at one time, you’ve killed it dead.”

     He grins, dragging on his cigarette.  We cross the avenue into the entrance to Penn Station, which is lit up like a Christmas tree.  I drop some singles into the cup of a homeless man.

     “I’m your big brother.  Big brothers are supposed to tease little sisters.  It’s an archetype,” he says.  Dylan has been keeping company lately with some Columbia grad student who studies Jungian psychology.

     “I noticed he asked you to spend the night,” he says, as we float down the escalator.

     “He asked me if I wanted to crash on his couch to look after Sinclair,” I say, growing frustrated with the direction of the conversation.

     Dylan drags deeply on his cigarette and blows it out with a roll of his eyes.  “Okay, whatever.”

     “Okay, now that we’ve got that settled.  Do me a favor and don’t go around telling people that I write nothing but cat poems.  In case you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to establish some sort of writing career.”

     “Newsflash, Haley!  Evan could give a rat’s ass if you write poems about cats.  You could write communist manifestos, for all he cares.  His interest lies elsewhere.  This guy has had a woody the size of the Chrysler building for you since Day One.”

     “Oh, gross!  That’s disgusting.  You’re disgusting!”  I forge ahead of him now, past the newspaper and candy vendors toward the escalator leading to the Long Island Railroad.

     “What’s disgusting about a woody?  It can be a beautiful thing!  Just not with my sister!”  With a theatrical wave of his hands, he announces this from his high perch on the adjoining escalator.  I’m halfway down the escalator, pretending not to know him.

     “THIS is not like that!” I retaliate when we hit bottom.  I realize a moment too late what I’ve said.  I weave away from him, walking parallel but with three feet of space between us.  I don’t want to hear any more.  The dreamy canvas upon which are painted all my chastely erotic encounters with Evan seems suddenly soiled with some oily vile substance.

     “THIS is not like that?  Oh cripes, Haley.  What have you done?”

     “Nothing!  I haven’t done a blessed thing!”  I bob and thread my way through the crowds, to the board that announces arrival times of the trains.

     “
This
is not like those novels you read.  This isn’t England in the 1800s, like those Masterpiece Theatre shows, where the guy shows up at the ball and does some gay dance and in the next scene they’re engaged. 
This
is not Jane Halston.”

     “Jane
Austen
!” I snap, snatching two tickets from the vendor, and tossing Dylan’s ticket at him.  “Halston is a designer, you big super-doofus!”

     “This is New York City, circa 1988!  Men don’t show up with flowers, asking permission from your father to take you to the malt shop.  This guy is twenty-two years old.  At that age you can barely keep it in your pants; any decent looking chick who passes your field of vision looks irresistible.  I’m twenty-eight and I’m slowing down only slightly.”

     I roll my eyes.  “Well, that’s a boon for womankind.”

     We determine our track and head for the stairs.  “For someone with a genius IQ, you see the world through pink sunglasses sometimes.”

     “Pink sunglasses?  You mean rose-colored glasses?” I say, with a withering glance.  “Most geniuses are naturally innocent; it’s part of the genius thing.  And what have you got against Evan?  Are you jealous of him, because he’s successful?”
     “He’s not that successful, Haley.  He’s made an art out of dodging his landlord when the rent is due.  I have nothing against him.  He’s a great guy.  But he’s not for you.”  We take the steps quickly to the lower platform.  My embroidered mules snap like whips on the dingy slate.

     “Oh, I’m not worthy of a great guy?”  I adopt nonchalance, glancing down the track at the approaching train.

     “He’s all over the place, Haley.  He’s got some audition in Los Angeles next week for a movie.  All he talks about is his career.  If his TV series is picked up, that’s it, he’ll move to the west coast.  He could up and move any day now, and that would be it.  You’d be left in the dust.  Remember the time that friend of mine, what was his name, Charlie Jerimeter, the guy who danced like he was tossing Frisbees—“

     “Softballs.  Pitching softballs!”

     “Whatever, you were dating him and he went off to college and you bawled your eyes out for weeks, always begging me for any word of him.”

     “Okay, I get it!”  I roll my eyes and sigh forcibly, hoping to discourage further discourse on my failed love affairs.  “So, you don’t object to Evan as a person, just his profession?”

     “Men are their professions.”

     “By that definition, I shouldn’t get involved with anyone in the Arts.”

     “Exactly.  No fellows on fellowships, and no artistes.  Find yourself some doctor or accountant.  I know you’re always trying to be this bohemian type with your depressing poetry and your vintage dresses and your Baby Jane red lipstick, but deep down you’re just The Girl Next Door.”