Now I See You (9 page)

“Well, at least we tried,” she concluded.

You call that trying?
I thought. And promptly switched doctors.

So the fact that Dr. Turner had issued me a stern warning about cigarettes was not only not a deterrent to smoking; it was almost incentive. It wasn’t that I set out specifically to spite my mean ex-doctor or anything, but when I did light up—and it wasn’t often, just once or twice a week—I would feel a certain satisfaction picturing how pissed she’d be if she could see me
totally
disregarding her medical decrees.

At the cast party, still irate from my backstage fall, I took two or three long drags on the Marlboro Light that the bartender had lit for me and when I exhaled, I imagined blowing the smoke directly in Dr. Turner’s smug face. Then I stubbed the damn thing out, only half-smoked. I had the emotional maturity of a ten-year-old but I did retain a bit of sense, after all.

The champagne was flowing freely at the cast party and I was in no position to resist, so I partook, and partook, and partook, until it was hard to keep my eyelids open. That’s when I should have gone home. Instead I called Gabriel.

Gabriel was a good-looking Colombian-American actor I’d met at an Equity open call near Times Square a few weeks before. He’d insisted I get a drink with him after the audition, and I’d consented, mainly because of his gorgeous eyes, which were the color of melted chocolate. Over drinks, he told me a sad, lovely story about how his soulmate, a cousin in Bogota, was kidnapped by a drug lord who she’d ended up falling in love with. Now, he was trying to put the pieces of his heart back together. Would I like to go back to his apartment in Hell’s Kitchen and watch a Monty Cliff movie? I would indeed. When we left the bar, it was pouring rain, a summer deluge that had us soaked well before we made it to the subway. So we retreated to a dark corner under some scaffolding on Broadway and became that writhing, tangled pair of shameless kids to whom it is commonly suggested: “Get a room.”

Unfortunately, that first night wasn’t just the tip of the romance iceberg, it was the whole damn thing. The attraction fizzled fast. Gabriel’s backstory was the most interesting thing about him and the sex, when we weren’t rain-soaked and drunk, was the worst ever.

I knew things weren’t going well when, one night as we lay on his futon mattress, he asked why I was looking at him like that.

“Like what?” I asked.

“Like you’re a little girl and you need something from me,” he answered. “It’s freaking me out.”

Not that this lack of depth distinguished him from the rest of the men I dated. The guys differed but the dalliances were always the same, and their defining characteristic was “casual.”

I was hungry as hell for companionship but didn’t have a lot of emotional currency to spend so I’d taken to popping into the dating equivalent of drive-thrus—cheap, fast encounters lacking in all nutritional value and making you feel sick and hungry again almost before you were done. But I’d gotten used to my diet and hardly noticed the gnawing in my gut anymore, telling me I needed a real meal for once, something that would satisfy.

Gabriel was a perfectly decent diversion. But he wasn’t the ideal candidate to console me after my opening night mishap.

Unfortunately, one forgets these details after one drinks most of a bottle of champagne. I dialed his number from memory, since I’d deleted it from my phone. He told me to come right over.

“You look drunk,” Gabriel observed, ever astute. “And hot.”

Soon we were rolling around on his lumpy futon. Mostly, I kept my eyes closed but once, I made the mistake of opening them and then I saw Gabriel’s face, large and grotesque, his mouth twisted into a crooked grimace that was collecting drool on one side. Everything about the scene was dirty and repellent.

Hail Mary full of grace

Without meaning to I was praying, in a whisper. Turns out, even á la carte Catholics will knock off a few Hail Marys when the going gets tough.

Pray for us sinners

It wasn’t the first time I’d done it during sex and I was fully aware that it did not bode well. I was willing to wager that even zealots refrained from praying out loud during sex, especially while squeezing their eyes closed and lying limp like a corpse. Still, it settled my nerves. And Gabriel didn’t notice, anyway. I finished the Hail Mary and repeated a response I intoned at mass:

Only say the word

And I shall be healed

Only say the word

Afterward, it took approximately two minutes for Gabriel to sail off into a deep, unencumbered sleep. I, meanwhile, felt restless, with no idea what to do next. I peeled off my fake lashes—the right one was half off anyway—and left them on the pillow next to Gabriel’s face, hoping they’d scare the living daylights out of him the next morning. Picking the glue off my lids, I weighed my options. I had no interest in spending the night but heading home to my empty bed in Brooklyn seemed even less appealing. So I settled for a smoke on the fire escape.

I had nearly a full pack in my purse after all, and besides, I was drunk and lonely and it was a very cinematic thing to do. Plus, Dr. Turner had told me not to.

I pulled on some panties and Gabriel’s T-shirt, lit a cigarette after a few tries, and groped in the dark until I got to the window that led to the fire escape. The piece-of-junk window stuck, so I held the cigarette in my mouth and used both hands to yank it open. Then I stepped out.

Except instead of landing on cool metal grates, my bare foot kept going. It stretched through the night air, reaching and reaching for a surface to grip until I felt the balance tip and realized with sudden clarity that there was no fire escape below, just a four-story drop down to the asphalt.

Instinctively, I jerked my body backward, yanking my head and leg inside and grabbing the window molding with a splayed hand. The cigarette fell out of my open mouth and cascaded down to the street. A few feet away, Gabriel snored on, oblivious to the fact that I’d almost accidentally killed myself. Because, of course, the fire escape was out the other window.

As I panted at the open window, I felt the sickening relief that rushes in once you realize you’ve narrowly avoided death or paralysis. A few inches more and the balance would have tipped the other way and I’d be lying half-naked on the pavement, waiting for an ambulance, if I was lucky enough to retain brain function. What was worse is everyone would think I’d attempted suicide. Because who accidentally falls out a fourth-floor window? No one would guess I was so blind I couldn’t see whether or not there was a floor underneath my feet, not even the people who knew about my vision loss, not even my parents. No, the story would be that I’d jumped.

I’m not in charge of my story anymore,
I thought.

Somewhere along the way, I’d ceased taking life by the balls and had settled for taking men by them. And now, not even that. Now, it was me being taken. Where was the victory in
that
?

Only say the word and I shall be healed

Say the word

Say

I wanted to scream, a shaking, animal scream that would make the skin around my mouth ache and leave me hoarse. I wanted to put a fist through the window. But I knew that would wake Gabriel and the last thing I wanted to do was hear his voice. Instead I found myself shaking all the cigarettes left in the pack into my hand and closing my fist around them, clenching my fingers until the nails dug into my palm. I did it over and over, mashing the cigarettes until the filters were decapitated and the papers torn so the insides spilled out. Then I stuck my hand out of the window and let it all fall, let the tobacco rain down on Fifty-third Street.

Tip #7: On falling in love

No accommodations are necessary. Love is blind, just like you.

7. LONGER TO YOUR HEART

Two days later, on Monday morning, I woke to the sound of the phone ringing. The clock on my nightstand read 9:30.

Crap
, I thought as I sat up in bed.
Not again.

The answering machine clicked on and I heard the voice of Martha, who I worked with at the accounting firm in midtown:

“You’re not picking up, so I guess you’re on your way in. Call me an optimist. But in case you’re still at home, I’ll give you some incentive to get your ass in here. You got flowers. Roses. Yellow. Not my favorite. Still, if you’re not here in an hour, I’m seizing them.”

Well that’s a surprise,
I thought, as I searched my drawers for a shirt that would cover my bruised throat,
I guess Gabriel’s more perceptive than I gave him credit for. Maybe he understood what a shit show Saturday night was. Not that it changes much. Still, might be worth another chance.

Unlike Martha, who was anything but, I’ve always been a genuine optimist. Often, this makes me an idiot, too—especially in matters of the heart.

By the time I got into the office, I’d decided on what I was going to say to Gabriel when I called to thank him for the flowers. Which turned out to be a waste of time. The flowers weren’t from him.

“It’s a long way to the Smoky Mountains, but longer to your heart,” the card read. It was signed, “David.”

What I felt then wasn’t misguided optimism. It was hope. My salvation had arrived on the scene and not a moment too soon.

David had been popping up in New York at parties and shows ever since I’d moved back to the city after graduation. Every time, he had Mary on his arm and every time I smiled broadly and gave everyone hugs, while stabbing pins into the mental voodoo doll I’d created in David’s likeness.

What kind of a selfish sadist,
I’d think,
tells someone he loves them when he can’t—or won’t—follow through?

Then I’d go sleep with some aloof hipster, in an idiotic and ineffective “that’ll show him” gesture, and then I’d go home and write awful, angry poems about David’s facial hair and what a douchebag he was.

Seeing David was just a total buzzkill. Since my visit to the Park Avenue doctor, I’d perfected the ability to anaesthetize myself, mainly by jumping from one drama to another without ever stopping to think. I liked being comfortably numb; more than that, I relied on it. So it pissed me off when David would pop up like some bogeyman and startle me right out of my reverie.

It was unsettling in the first place that he possessed the power to rouse such feeling in me. Why should I be jealous? I should be happy that he was happy because, hey, I was happy myself. Everyone had gotten what they wanted. I had more suitors than a deb at her coming-out ball and all the drama—both professional and personal—that my heart desired. And David had love, with someone he had chosen over me.

How nice for us both,
I thought, as I fantasized about kicking him so hard in the ’nads he’d never have children.

Then, one day, just after I was cast as the birthday-cake burlesque dancer, I found out through the grapevine that David and Mary had broken up. It was for good; she’d already moved out of the apartment in Queens they had shared. So, naturally, I called the apartment later that night and asked to speak with Mary.

“Nicole?” David asked. “Is that you?”

“Oh, hi David.” I was breezy, ever-so-casual. “I just had a question for Mary.”

“I guess you didn’t hear,” he said. “Mary and I broke up.”

I tried to make my gasp believable.

“I had no
idea,
” I gushed. “I’m so sorry.”

“Well, thanks,” he replied, “but, you know, it happens.”

He paused, and I didn’t interrupt but gave him the chance to gather his thoughts. After a moment he said: “I feel like this is a sign, that you called. I’ve been thinking about you.”

Bulls-eye.

By the time we hung up, we’d set a time and place to meet for drinks. I was excited, though not in a girlish, butterflies-in-the-stomach way as much as a villainous, revenge-is-best-served-cold way. Now I’d have the chance to make David feel lousy, the way he’d made me feel after his futile confession of love. I’d show him what a big mistake he’d made passing me over before.

Because, of course, it was too late for us. I wasn’t the same girl David had fallen for back in college. It had only been a year and a half since we’d sat in my dorm room reading ee cummings poetry but a lot had happened; I’d graduated from kitten heels to stilettos, from Midori Sours to martinis, from boyfriends to lovers. I tended bar in the meat-packing district wearing midriff-baring shirts. Beth had moved out of our mouse-infested walk-up apartment and I’d filled her spot with a perfectly nice, total stranger I met on the bus. Almost no one I spent any real amount of time with knew about my eye disease, except for my family, and we hadn’t talked about it in years.

I had built a nice, hard titanium shell around my heart and it wasn’t so easy to break through. So I agreed to go out with David but if he thought I’d swallow any more of those sweet nothings he fed to me before, he was crazy. And though I would sleep with him without much ado, I wouldn’t pretend this was an exclusive arrangement.

“You’re different,” he observed when we met at a bar on Ludlow Street.

“No shit.” I laughed, not bothering to mask my derision.

Despite the fact that I was about as approachable as a razor blade, David kept asking me out and trying, with no success, to break through.

Until the day he sent flowers. That morning, he made a dent. That morning, after spending a half hour searching for a shirt that would cover the bruise on my throat from my backstage accident, after finding the empty cigarette carton in my purse and thinking of the fate those cigarettes had met, which had very nearly been my own, I was ready for a change. I called David to thank him for the flowers and he told me he had a proposition for me—a work-related one. He’d like me to play the lead in an indie film he’d written and was shooting in his hometown in Tennessee next month. He was moving back there, at least for the time being, and would fly me out for a week of shooting now, and another week in a few months. It was a love story—the movie, that is. The collaboration, on the other hand, would be strictly professional, he assured me. He knew I wasn’t looking for anything more.