Nothing To Lose (A fat girl novel) (30 page)

“Have things, uh, progressed?” he asked carefully.

“What do you mean?”

“Have you gone all the way?”

“You’re going to ask me a question like that?” She tried to look harsh and put off.

“Why not? We’re all adults.” He waited. “Well?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, my god. Really?”

“Why are you so surprised?”

“Not surprised. Just excited for you.”

“Well, don’t get too excited. Right after that, he dropped me.”

“Dropped you? What do you mean?”

“He hasn’t called in five days.”

“Five days. That’s bad. You must have done something really awful.”

“Thanks for leaping to my defense.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. I’m only kidding. He’ll call.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“I’m not. I’m just trying to make you feel better. What did he say when it was over?”

“He said I was a terrific girl.”

“Uh oh. That doesn’t sound good. When a man says you’re a terrific girl it’s like finding a dead canary on your doorstep or your favorite horse’s head in your bed. It’s the kiss of death.”

She finished her wine in one gulp. “Let’s change the subject.” She didn’t know if he was kidding or serious and she didn’t want to know. Before she left for home, however, Pierre kissed her cheek and said, “He weel call tomorrow. I feel eet here.” He dug his finger into his diaphragm.

The following day when she returned to the office from lunch, there was a message on her desk: Mr. O’Neill called. Next to ‘Wants to be called back’ was a black check.

“I’m just back from Harvard,” he offered casually. “I attended a seminar for executives. On ethics.”

“Good,” she said. “I thought you didn’t want to see me anymore.”

“Why would you think that?”

“You said I was a terrific girl and everyone knows that’s the kiss of death to a relationship.”

“I take it back,” he said. “You’re not terrific. You’re crazy.”

“Now you’re talking,” she said with relief.

That night, he kissed her with a hunger that made her sober and contemplative. The last five days had shown her how painful it could be. He slept with his head burrowed into her breasts and clung to her all night. He trusted her enough to show his need, yet she couldn’t help feeling apprehensive. She had to guard herself against him.

Chapter Thirty

Indian summer was generous and lengthy. The dry, golden weather lasted past Halloween and All Souls’ Day into December. Everyone talked about it as if it was someone’s happy mistake. April and Luis saw a lot of each other but still within certain boundaries. They didn’t go from stage to stage. She knew she was more aware of the details than he. There were certain hours when he never called. Days when – for business reasons (her assumption) – he was unavailable. There were subjects they never discussed. Was he as fastidious about doping out her habits? Probably not. Still, she was pleased at the way she had handled the whole thing. He was part of her life but not the whole of it. There were no tears at night. No false hopes.

If she hadn’t had a love affair and a co-op to occupy her mind, her job at Sinclair and Chewalt would have been a decent substitute. It was a medium-sized agency with three copy and art groups, each with a supervisor reporting to Herb Sinclair for copy and Morris Chewalt for art. April’s group head was Larry Sugarman, ambitious, coarse, but not mean or stingy. He didn’t waste time putting things in a nice way, particularly criticism. If something stank, he said it stank. On the other hand, if something was good, he kissed you and patted your behind, man or woman. “Clio, Clio,” he would shout. “For sure a Clio.” Clio was the Tony Award of the advertising industry.

He had only said, ‘that stinks” to April twice, but he had kissed her and patted her behind more times than she cared to remember. “You ever hear of sexual harassment, buddy?” she’d ask in a menacing voice.

“You want to talk sexual harassment,” he would throw her on his couch. “I’ll show you sexual harassment.” She liked Larry and he liked her. He didn’t mind if she learned to be better than he. He gave her a mountain of old storyboards to study in preparation for her first spaghetti commercial. “Just remember one thing. It’s like doing War and Peace in 58 seconds.”

When she wasn’t thinking about her job and Luis, she was thinking about 15th Street. She was paying $368 a month maintenance but she couldn’t move in without a sink and a toilet. She had called two floor men from ads in the Village Voice to give her estimates on the floors. On weekends, she scraped paint off the walls. When she finally reached the wood, she buffed and caressed each bit of paneling like it was a child.

Don and Pierre were crazy about the loft. On his first visit, Don had headed straight for the ladder that led to the skylight. Then he went through the skylight and onto the roof, something that had not occurred to her. “You can plant tomatoes up here,” he shouted down to her. “It’s wonderful. It’s unbelievable. How could you have found this all by yourself?”

She was thrilled that he liked it and followed his advice even when she didn’t quite agree. She would have done a lot to make him happy. Both Don and Pierre insisted on helping her scrape the walls. They worked together as long as they could keep the windows open because of the paint remover fumes. It was such tedious work, they only had the back wall done when the weather turned suddenly cold and they had to stop.

Her days were full and some of her nights were memorable. There was nothing in her experience that compared to making love with Luis. Nothing. It was both sweet and dangerous. Dangerous because it wrenched her out of the world as she knew it. She was floating somewhere above all the mundane. And yet, before and after, there was tremendous sweetness. He had a habit of rubbing her jaw. She knew he wasn’t thinking of what he was doing. He was probably thinking about Burdie’s grosses and net s or if they should do Ireland In Our Midst or Shanghai Holiday for the winter promotion. Still, rubbing her chin, helped to soothe him. Like a pacifier. “I don’t mind being your pacifier,” she said softly, “as long as I’m not your doormat.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing.”

If she stayed overnight which she seldom did, she left immediately the next morning. She didn’t make him breakfast or offer to make the bed. It was his bed. Let him take care of it.

She wouldn’t have minded making his bed but her housekeeping abilities were not why he liked her. He liked her independence and her cheerfulness and the fact that she was too busy to hang around all day. She never ate breakfast with him either. “Don’t have time,” she would say. Even on Saturday. “Got to get to the loft and work.”

On the third occasion she did this, he stopped her. “I don’t get it.” He was sitting up in bed with no pajama top and it was difficult for her to look at him and not get back into bed. “Come here,” he patted the side of the bed. “I want to have a talk with you.”

“Look, Luis,” she was brushing her hair as Carlo had taught her – all the way over her head, bending over, and then all the way back. “If you want to discuss something with me, just say, ‘I want to discuss something with you.’ Let me decide whether I sit on the edge of the bed or not. But don’t pat it as though you’re going to talk to a pet. Or a child.”

“Of course.” He tried not to smile. “I just want to know why you run out of here like a bat out of hell every time you sleep over.”

“It’s morning,” she said reasonably. “The night is over and it’s a new day.”

“And? What? You just signed on for the twelve to eight shift? What’s wrong with staying a little while? Stay all day. Spend the day with me.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that.”

“Why?”

She sighed and sat next to him on the bed. “Luis,” she began slowly, “I’m sure it’s not news to you that you’re a desirable man. Forget that you look like a movie star. Forget that you could be a gigolo and get by on your looks alone. Forge that you are a generous lover. Forget that you’re wealthy and have a sense of humor and are kind and smart. For..”

“All right, April, will you cut it out! Get to the point, for godsakes.”

“I could fall in love with you for your eyes alone, but then where would I be?”

“What’s wrong with falling in love with me?”

She ignored the question. “I could fall in love with you like that.” She snapped her fingers. “If I gave my imagination the slightest leeway, it would, every day, see us married with ten little guys that looked just like you. I’m smart and I’m pretty and I’m a terrific copywriter, but I don’t have the emotional clout that you do. Not in this situation. I’m going to be the one left crying my eyes out and you’ll go on to someone else or something else.” She rose. “That’s why I don’t stay all day. I can’t depend on you for my happiness.” She struggled into her coat and looked around for her handbag. “You should be thrilled with the arrangement. Someone to screw who’s not hanging on to you. It’s ideal.”

“Don’t say screw.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not…Just don’t say it.”

“Sorry. I was being practical. I got carried away.”

One morning, as she was leaving, he sat up, shook away the sleep and called to her. “I can’t see you for a week. I have to go out of town today.”

Two fat tears rolled down her cheeks surprising her as well as him.

“You don’t have to take it so hard. It’s only a week.” He was teasing her in a gentle way, wiping the tears away with a corner of the sheet. “Why are you crying?”

“You’ve never told me before when you couldn’t see me. You just didn’t see me.”

“You’re crying because I told you that I wasn’t going to be able to see you?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re happy I told you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re crying because you’re happy?”

“Yes.”

There was a big difference when a man told you when he couldn’t see you as well as when he could. He was letting her in on the particulars of his life and that put everything on a different footing.

If she had known the reason he was going to be away for a week, she would have cried for a very different reason. When he came back, he told her he had been offered a job to head a small conglomerate in California. They had offered to pay him $730,000 a year. Two thousand dollars for every day of the year. They were prepared to give him a three year contract if he would accept and he was thinking very seriously of accepting. In fact, he was ninety-five percent sure. It wasn’t only the money. The big department store model wasn’t the future of retail anymore. The discount stores were putting a big dent on the bottom line and it was going to get worse. If it wasn’t the discount stores, it was the specialty boutiques. Shoppers were getting savvier. Small and special was better than big and general.

To his credit, he told her all of this in the dark. And when she didn’t answer or ask any questions, he made love to her twice and then held her to him for the rest of the night. She understood why he couldn’t ask her to go with him. It was one thing to have a loose relationship in New York. If it didn’t work out, each went his own way. But when you had to transport someone across the country – ask them to give up their job, their co-op, their entire life – well…that was a very serious thing. Very different.

Chapter Thirty-One

New Year’s Day was on Thursday and Luis was to leave on Saturday. The last night they were together, she was determined not to make any reference to his going. “This is just another evening out,” she told him in his foyer. “No sad looks. No sad words.”

He helped her on with her coat. “You don’t have to take it that casually,” he said. “Go ahead and cry your eyes out.”

“If I did, you’d hate it. Men,” she addressed the two art nouveau prints on the wall, “they don’t want you to be serious but they’re hurt if you’re casual.”

“What do you want to eat?”

“Something light, I guess, in case I really break down. How about that little Chinese restaurant where they make the pancakes?”

“I thought you weren’t going to cry.”

“See? Just what I told you.”

“Suppose I cry?” He said it seriously and it pleased her.

“Over me? I’d like that very much.”

“You know the choices in this situation really stink.’” He was going to explain it to her all over again.

“If I followed you out there, it just wouldn’t work. You’d hate it and I’d hate you hating it. It just wouldn’t work.” Actually, it was he who had said all of that. She was parroting him, thinking perhaps he hadn’t meant it. She was giving him a chance to say that he wouldn’t hate it, but he didn’t say anything.

Dinner was very quiet and brought no new resolutions except that she would go with him to the airport after all. She cried and waved furiously until the plane was probably over Ohio. They went so fast. She stayed at the airport for hours – as if it would bring him back – sitting in a row chair next to a black woman with four small children. She wanted to tell the woman her troubles. One of the children kept dropping her bottle so that April would pick it up. It was a game and she was happy to play it.

The worst part of his going was not the deathly stillness that enveloped her but the thought that she was not going to fall apart. She had prepared herself well, an adult woman who wouldn’t be undone by love.