Milkrun (11 page)

“Cute? I can't tell if another guy is cute.”

“Bullshit. I can tell if another girl is cute.”

“What girl do you think is cute?”

“Forget it. I'm not allowing for any lesbian fantasies until you at least tell me if this Ben character is single.” Brunette? Brunette? Come back, brunette! Come back, come back wherever you are!

“Ben!” He calls over a built blond in a collared shirt. “Are you single tonight?” he screams over the music.

I smack him again.

“Why do you keep beating me up?”

“Because you're bitable…beatable.” Good God.

“Every time you hit me, you lose more of your drink to the floor…Ben!” He raises his glass to the husky blond guy who has approached us at the bar.

Single-Tonight looks me up and down, and drawls, “Hellooo.”

“Ben, Jackie. Jackie, Ben.”

He pulls my hand toward his lips and kisses it. “It's a pleasure to meet you,” he says, not letting go. “Would you like a drink?”

“Why don't you give the lady back her hand and go buy us some shots,” Andrew says.

“But her skin is so soft.” He brushes his lips against my knuckles. Very soft lips. Who is this guy again?

“Forget it, she's off-limits.”

Off-limits? Does Andrew like me? Do I comment on this? Should I let it go? Do I like Andrew?

Ben nibbles on my fingers and I start to laugh. He releases my hand, smiles, and returns to wherever he came from.

I ask straight out, “Why are you ruining my chances with an obviously available swinging single?”

“Because Jer would never forgive me if I let you go out with Ben.”

Jer?
Jer?
“Jer?”

“I just meant—”

“—that the only reason you're talking to me is to make sure I sit here and virginally wait for Jer's return while he fucks everything he sees.” My voice is suddenly loud. Why is he bringing Jer up? Is he an idiot? Or just a completely insensitive prick? Here I am, for at least fifteen minutes not thinking about Jer, and he has to go ahead and ruin everything.

“Whoa! I definitely didn't mean it like that. Sleep with anyone you want. But as your friend, and as an old friend of your ex, I can't recommend in good conscience that you go home, to my apartment no less, with a guy who screws a minimum of three girls a week and drinks a minimum of one bottle of vodka a day.”

“Oh.” Oops.

“Unless you like playboy lushes.”

“Not particularly.” I sniff my kissed hand. It smells like Scotch.

“In that case, you're forgiven for your outburst. At least you didn't smack me again.”

“Here you go, gorgeous,” Ben says, passing me two shots of some indefinable liquid.

“What is this, exactly?” I ask.

“Don't worry, sweet thing.” He pinches my cheek with a sticky hand. “To Andrew's hot friend,” he says, raising his shot with his other hand.

“I can definitely drink to that.” I look him straight in the eyes. What can I say? Patronizing, playboy, lush…in spite of Andrew's warnings, I find myself tempted—but not too tempted.

“Cheers,” Andrew says, and we shoot the first of the indefinable burning liquid.

Ben lifts the second shot in the air and toasts, “To getting laid. Tonight.”

I nearly choke on the burning residue in my throat.

“Want to come home with me tonight, Andrew's hot friend?”

I pause for a moment in mock contemplation. “No.”

Ben shrugs, shoots, and returns to the bar.

“Based on the sounds that come from his bedroom, I think you might be missing out,” Andrew says.

“I doubt it. What you probably hear is him puking into his wastebasket. Or the sound of his crying when he finds out he can't perform, given his altered state.”

“You sure you don't want to reconsider? He's not a bad guy, despite his extreme sketchiness.”

“A minute ago, you were against the idea. Now you're my pimp?”

“What are friends for?”

Friends? Interesting concept. “You'd be amazed how difficult it is to make male friends in a new city,” I confide. “For some reason, approaching a stranger and asking him if he'll change your lightbulbs gives him the wrong idea. Is there something phallic about lightbulbs that I'm missing here?”

“That's the barter system—manual labor for sex. How many lightbulbs are we talking about exactly?”

“Just a couple dozen.” Maybe this could work. What did Sally's Harry mean when he said that men and women couldn't be friends? “And there's also this bookshelf or wall-unit thing I've been meaning to put together—”

“Let me get this straight. I slave over your apartment and get nothing in return?”

You can have anything you want in return. “You get my undying friendship. And dinner.”

“You can cook?” he asks. “What can you make?”

Cook? God no. “I have Star-Search-caliber pizza-ordering talent,” I answer, my back halfway turned to leave and return to Nat. “And I make great reservations.”

 

I must sit. My feet are in bad shape. Why are all the cutest boots always so damn uncomfortable? Oh joy, there's a free seat next to Natalie. I'm about to sit down, when I realize that Stripe-Boy is sitting in Amber's seat.

“I'm back,” I say. He's cute. His bleached blond hair gives him a bit of a boy-band look, but his dark-rimmed glasses add on a few years.

“Where were you?” Natalie asks. “Come sit.”

“I was talking to Andrew.”

“Andrew? He's here? Where?”

I point around the corner.

“Who's he with?” she asks.

“Some guy. Ben.”

“Ben Mason?”

“I don't know.”

“Tall? Cute? Blond?”

“Yeah.”

“Drunk?”

“Bingo.”

“That boy is always drunk,” Stripe-Boy pipes in.

Natalie looks at Stripe-Boy, then at me. “I'll be back,” she says, which translated means, I'll be gone for the rest of the night, so hopefully you two will have something to talk about. “Amber doesn't want us to lose the table,” she adds just before leaving, “so don't go anywhere.”

Go anywhere? Is she kidding? “Hi, I'm Jackie.” Not a fine jump start, but a start nonetheless.

“Damon,” he says, sticking out his hand. I shake it. Firm handshake. Strong personality. Dad would approve.

“Tell me about yourself, Damon.” The liquid courage sets in.

He swirls his drink with his small hand. “I'm a writer.”

Oh, my. This is obviously fate. “I'm an editor.” Our eyes meet over the unspoken, unedited words between us. “What are you writing?”

“A novel.”

“Your first?”

“Yeah.”

“What about?”

“A boy's coming of age in Boston.”

Omigod, I swear I'm not just saying this, but if I were ever going to write a novel, that's what I'd write about. Okay, not about a boy coming of age; my comprehension of the male mind doesn't go that deep. In fact, ever since Jer, I often find myself wondering if the male psyche has any depth at all. So I'd probably write about a girl becoming a woman, in a Judy Blume–style. And I'd probably set the book in Connecticut. The only place I'm familiar enough to write about in Boston is this sleazy bar, and the bathroom here is no place for a nice girl to get her period for the first time.

His lips curve into a Jack Nicholson devilish smile. “So how did you get to be an editor?”

“I majored in English lit. Then I did half of my M.A.”

“What did you specialize in?”

“My undergrad was a general lit degree. For my M.A. I concentrated on both the romantic and realist periods in American literature.” I was supposed to choose one area for my thesis, but I put the program on hold after my first year when I blindly followed Jer to Boston. At least the “on hold” part was what I told myself. “I'm assuming you majored in English lit, too?”

He smiles. “Is there anything else?”

I've never dated a lit guy. Nope, there were no stripe-boys in my Spenser's
Faerie Queen
class; for some reason my classes were unusually proportioned with cool women and nerd boys. I'm not talking about the
good
kind of nerd who is able to woo a girl over cups of espresso at two in the morning in a small café, using his profound understanding of the universe as bait. The good kind of nerd, when asked to name something that will impress you, might answer, “My idea of euphoria is reading Karl Marx, naked, on a beach in Mexico.” The kind of nerd who sat in my lit classes made little holes in the dry skin on his hands with the tip of his pencil, and when asked to name something that would impress you, said, “I have a big pencil,” and would really mean pencil. Not penis. Pencil.

“And you? What did you specialize in?” If he says poetry, the search is over. I'll give my high black boots to the charity shop and accept him as my destiny. Who can argue with destiny?

“I jumped around a lot. I tried to concentrate on lyric poetry.”

Omigod, omigod. Fifty years from now we'll be sitting on a porch swing in the sunset. I'll be helping him with his latest manuscript. Maybe in a house hidden by a hill. Maybe in a little shack like in
Little House on the Prairie
, only with indoor plumbing and a computer and a ceramic-topped stove—and a piano. Definitely a piano (maybe I should start taking lessons now). I'll be there playing the piano; he'll be there paying the bills. And we'll collect things like ashtrays and art.

I have déjà vu. Oh, never mind. Those are lyrics from
Annie.

“So what do you edit?” he asks.

“Umm…manuscripts.”

“What kind of manuscripts?”

“Women's fiction.”

“Feminist fiction? Today's up-and-coming Woolf? Chopin?”

Not quite. “I work for Cupid.”

“Romance novels?” He laughs. “Henry James would roll over in his grave. Say, would you like a drink?”

“A Manhattan, definitely.”

“Manhattan? A sophisticated drink.”

Love that Amber. “I'm a sophisticated girl.”

“I'll have to hurry back then.”

“Please do.”

This is going perfectly according to my new life plan. I've already met my soul mate, and it's only taken forty-eight minutes.

He returns—of course he returns; he's unexplainably drawn to me—with two Manhattans. “Good. You're still here.”

As if I'd go anywhere without him now that we've mated literally (which is not to be confused with literally mated—not yet anyway). “I want to hear more about your writing,” I say between sips. I stare down at my drink, a sinking feeling settling in my stomach. What if my teeth turn red from this drink? I'll have to swallow the drink very carefully without swishing any of the liquid around in my mouth. I wish I could use a straw. “Where have you been published?”

“
Heat, Other People's Money, Playboy…
A few others. I've mostly published short stories, but I've done some interviews, too. I used to write…”

I drown out the rest of the conversation because I'm stuck on the
Playboy
portion. “
Playboy?
What did you write for
Playboy?
”

“A short story.”

“Really? I'd love to read it.”

“You read erotica?”

Read erotica? I'm the queen of erotica. Without me, erotica would be full of superfluous commas and run-on sentences. “I work for Cupid, remember?”

“That's true. What are you doing tomorrow night?”

Now
that
was sudden. Or not that sudden considering I've been waiting twenty-four years for this soul-meeting moment. I pretend to think about it. “What exactly did you have in mind?”

“I'd like to take you out for a drink.”

Finally, the kind of nerd who eventually woos you over cups of espresso/alcoholic beverages at two in the morning in a small café/sleazy bar! “That would be nice. Assuming of course, that your interest in seeing me doesn't stem from my declaration that I work in porn.” I'm joking of course; surely he must feel the cosmic pull, as well.

“Partly. But mostly because I can see my friend waving at me. I think he wants to leave. I want to make sure I see you again.”

A very good reason. Not only is he sensitive (mandatory emotion for a writer), he's also smart.