Instant Love (8 page)

If I heard that today I’d probably reply, “Yeah, and I bet half of them are divorced now anyway. Or dead.”

Instead I said: “They were jealous of their true love, that’s all.”

“Mom was one of the prettiest girls in school. You should see pictures of her from then, Holly. Next time you come over, I’ll show you. Dark hair, red lips, a little zaftig but that was more desirable back then. I mean, it’s still desirable for me of course.” He reached toward me and pinched my rear. “But she was just gorgeous, my mom. Everyone said she looked like Elizabeth Taylor, but Jewish.”

I had met his mother once. I didn’t see the Elizabeth Taylor resemblance, but I had to admit she was a remarkably manicured woman. Her hair, trimmed short, was dyed the color of a fresh cup of coffee with milk, and lay precisely in place. Her creamy linen suit was tailored and wrinkle-free, as if she had freshly pressed it moments before seeing me. And with an artist’s eye she had deeply and intensely outlined and colored her lips with a frosty mocha tint. I pictured her knowing the name of everyone who worked at her salon, whether they cut her hair or not.

Me, I get haircuts so infrequently I can’t remember where I got it cut last. Though when I was dating Alan, I started making trips to salons more often. He bought me a gift certificate once for an upscale place near my apartment, which made me think he wanted me to be a more upscale girl.

“Use it for anything you want, sweetheart. Hair color, manicure, waxing. Ask the girls there. They’ll help,” he said.

I hadn’t known I needed help.

I SAT DOWN
at the table and spooned some ice cream in my mouth.

“So Mom was a stunner,” Alan continued. “But Dad? Not so much. He was balding before his sixteenth birthday, plus he has that hawk-nose thing. You know what I’m talking about?” Alan outlined an awkward shape with his fingers.

“And his family, they didn’t have much money. But Dad was a salesman then, just like now. Sometimes that’s all it takes. Talking ’em into it.”

“Hey,” I said. I tried to muster up a snappy retort, but the ice cream was freezing my brain.

“Not you, Miss Stoner. You’re a smart cookie. Plus I don’t have to talk you into a thing, you little tramp.”

It was true. I was crazy for sex with him, the way he tossed me around so handily, as if I were still just a girl. I was planning on having sex with him as soon as he had finished his story, and I my ice cream. Calling me a tramp only amped up my arousal. Not a lot of people think to call Ph.D. candidates in biology “tramp,” but we like it just like everyone else. Not “hussy,” though. We hate that.

“So Mom started dating the jeweler’s son, Jonathon Wolfowitz. ‘Great birthday presents,’ she said.”

Alan winked at me. My birthday was two weeks away. He had been hinting at something special for a month.

“It’s a huge chain now, actually,” he said. “You know Wolfowitz and Sons?”

I had seen their ads in the paper since I had moved to Chicago, the most recent one depicting a bejeweled array of Mrs. Wolfowitzes, with their highlighted hair and perfectly lined lips, the younger ones displaying their propped-up cleavage, all beaming saucily at the camera. The tagline underneath the photo read, “It’s Either Half Now or Half Later.”

“I found a condo for one of their cousins last year,” said Alan. “A two-bedroom, great light, an OK view of the lake. Some people, they don’t care about the view, they just care about the light.”

Alan was a highly successful real-estate agent, and as far as I know, he still is. At the time, he represented a couple of Chicago Bulls, a handful of politicos, and was making headway with a bunch of United Airlines honchos, all seeking something special on Lake Shore Drive.

That was Alan’s shtick. “I will find you something special,” he would say, in such a way as to make the clients feel that, because they were so special, they simply could not live in anything less than special—that it would be a crime! That’s what it’s like when you have a lot of money. You can pay people to make you feel good about yourself.

“
HE BROUGHT HER
home to meet the family, took her to all the school dances, she wore his class ring. The whole nine. His folks even offered to take her to their winter cabin back east for the holidays.”

He stopped talking for a moment, loosened the spoon from my hands, and took a bite of ice cream.

“And I remember my mother made a point of saying—I guess it was a big deal—that her family and their family sat next to each other at shul over the high holidays.”

“For the whole world to see,” I murmured.

“Exactly. A public proclamation. Wolfowitz was a catch. My mother has told me that a million times.”

“Why is she still talking about him after all these years?” I said. I meant to say it in my head, and was surprised to hear it come out of my mouth. The public questioning of any and all Naomi actions was a privilege extended solely to Handelman family members. All civilians were required to keep their mouths shut.

“Because he’s part of the story, their story,” Alan snapped. And then he relented with, “But I know what you mean. I wouldn’t want to hear about my competition for the rest of my life.”

I nodded. I looked down at my bowl. It was nearly empty. I thought about getting some more ice cream. I decided it could wait. “So let me hear the rest of the story,” I said.

“I should have waited for her to tell you,” said Alan. “I don’t do it justice.”

I was in no hurry to meet his parents again. I’m not going to say it was a total disaster, but there was no way I was going to win, looking like I do, which is to say: not Jewish, at least not enough to count anyway. I’ve got dark curly hair, but my clear blue eyes, Irish and smiling, betray my shiksa identity. That’s what his mother called me after she met me. “A very nice shiksa.”

Alan thought that was a good thing, the “nice” part anyway.

OH, ALAN,
I would have been nice to your mother forever!

“
YOU
’
RE TELLING
the story just fine,” I said. I patted his hand. “Please. Carry on. I’m interested.”

“Do you want some more ice cream?” he said. “Go on, I’ll share it with you.”

I rose and went to the refrigerator again. You didn’t need to tell me twice.

“So the whole time she’s going out with Wolfowitz, Dad’s trying to steal her away. He always says he loved her from the minute he saw her, and he had no intention of taking no for an answer. He would walk with her down the hallway at school and tease her about, I don’t know—her hair, her clothes, general flirty high-school stuff. That was at first. Then he starts saying, ‘That Wolfowitz, he’s no good. He’s got a wandering eye. I saw him sitting with Judy Kanter at lunch, and you know what everyone says about Judy Kanter.’”

Alan had slipped into an impression of his father, neck sunken in toward his shoulders, hands up in the air, torso tensed.

“What did everyone say about Judy Kanter?” I said.

“Dad said she was a real knockout. Big breasts, and this extremely sexy lisp. He knew a couple of guys that got with her senior year.”

I mock-gasped, shocked and dainty. “Judy, Judy,” I said.

“I know!” said Alan. “But she wasn’t that sharp, and say what you will about my mother, she’s sharp,” he said proudly. “Anyway, he was working on her, always talking, keeping Mom on her toes, like he still does today. ‘I was selling,’ he said to me. ‘I was selling her on me.’”

“Sounds familiar,” I said. I sat down next to him and fed him some ice cream. I kissed him on the lips. They tasted cold and minty, but felt soft. I squeezed his generous arm. I kissed him again. “That’s what you Handelmans do.”

“And we do all right,” he said.

ALAN, YOU
didn’t have to sell me on anything. You were the warmest man I had ever met, the first man that was unafraid to talk about love, although now I know if men offer it up so easy, they’re not usually sincere. I didn’t care that you were absurdly close to your mother. Or that you frequently went on vacations to Florida without me because they were “family-only” trips. Or that on most weekends, you disappeared into the warm, all-consuming bosom of your parents’ home in Highland Park, far, far away from me. What time I had with you I treasured. I loved it, in fact. Even if it wasn’t real. Even if it was temporary. Even if I wasn’t myself. Because I never got to feel like that again.

HE STARTED
unbuttoning my blouse at the kitchen table, kissed my breasts through my bra, then pulled one out and kissed it some more. “It tastes like sugar,” he said, and I moaned. I moved onto his lap and he gripped my ass firmly with his hands, then gave it a good slap. “Uch. You,” he said.

I kissed his forehead, and then his lips. His soft beard felt nice on my chin, like one hundred tiny scratches. “What happened with Wolfowitz?” I said.

“Screw Wolfowitz,” said Alan, and then he took me to bed.

In bed he was like a wolf, all hairy arms and legs, howling at the moon. He pawed at me and held me tight. He held me down, hands on my breasts, and pinched and nuzzled them. He squeezed my hips and ass right before he put his heavy cock in between my legs, and then in me, as deep as he could go. And then he forced me to look at him, not through any words or actions, but through a magnet stare. He locked me, and then I was stuck there, for as long as he liked, in his arms.

This was different for me, this link with another. I had always felt a divide between myself and other men in bed, and it was easy to shut down, look above and around, at anything else but them. (Jesus, he’s got a Grateful Dead poster. But we met at a Pavement show. And, oh my, there’s a tapestry on the wall. Is it too late to ask him to pull out?)

I could disconnect and reconnect at will. I would check out for as long as it took, let my body warm up from their heat. And then when they were done, I would demand some attention until I was done, too. Bite my nipples until I tell you to stop. Do it harder. All right. Now you can stop.

Alan, however, required attention. Alan wanted ownership. No problem. He owned me. From the minute we had met—an accident, I walked into the wrong apartment, the expensive one featuring four bedrooms and a balcony with a view and light, light everywhere, that he was showing, not the sullen one-bedroom I eventually took—I liked him, with his grownup suit and his quick mouth and his big, hungry lips. He thought I was someone special, so he showed me around the apartment, and for a little while, I let him believe it because I wanted to keep talking to him. He had me in his clutches, he was thinking, but it was really I who did not want to let him go.

At the end of the tour, after he knew everything about me in ten minutes flat—Single? Right now, yes. Jewish? Sort of, half, once removed on my father’s side. A scientist? Yes, you’re right, I am a very smart young lady—he asked me what I thought of the apartment.

And then I touched his shoulder and said, “Actually I think I’m lost.”

He shook his finger at me, and stretched out his lips, revealing two rows of large, clean white teeth. I bet he had braces forever, I thought. “I had a feeling you weren’t looking in the right place,” he said.

And then he put his hand on my shoulder, and we stood like that, hands on shoulders, until he asked me out to dinner. Even after I said yes, we still held on for another minute, finally interrupted by a knock at the door, a gasp of air between us, and then the entrance of the next client, a divorce lawyer from Minneapolis who was moving on up in the world, taking his wife and two daughters and leaving the Twin Cities behind for a big Chicago paycheck.

Boy, have I got a view for you.

THE REST OF
the Wolfowitz story tumbled out later, when I was lying on my back, my head dangling over the edge of the mattress, and Alan was sitting straight up, back against the headboard of my bed, one hand resting on his soft, hairy chest. Alan, he could never leave a story unfinished.

Naomi and Wolfowitz dated steadily up until winter break. Then she went with him and his family back east for a week of skiing and board games by the fireplace. When she returned, they weren’t speaking. Wolfowitz didn’t take her to the Valentine’s Day dance. He went stag instead and she stayed home, missing the first dance ever in her high-school career, which was a very big deal, according to Alan. A week later they were back in love, and then they were on the outs again just two weeks after that. Turns out there was talk that Mrs. Wolfowitz had walked in on something untoward between her son and Naomi while on vacation, and the Wolfowitzes no longer viewed Naomi as potential wife material.