Room for Love (11 page)

She starts running around picking clothes up and folding them. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry, really. I'm gonna do laundry right now. Want me to do yours?”

“I don't know,” I say. “Jesus Christ, Alicia, what is up with you? You're not working, you're not really looking for a place to live. Why would you? You've got mine and it's a free bed and phone and Internet and food and company. Shit, you're twenty-eight years old and you're doing nothing but hanging around these guys who are, like, twelve and live in Williamsburg and play the drums.”

I'm pacing now, gesticulating wildly with one of Alicia's hot-pink flip flops, which has taken up lodging on my kitchen counter. “God, you've got this perfect life in L.A. and now you're over here dumping your shit all over my apartment. I just—I need to get out of here. Would you please clean up? Would you try to find an apartment?”

My coat is still on, so I just turn around and exit the way I entered, and head for the corner café. I let a glass of white wine poured by my favorite Italian calm my nerves and pull my notebook out of my purse. An ad placed by someone named Peter sounds appealing. I dial his number on my cell. Peter tells me he lives in a “cozy [read: minuscule] two-bedroom in Little Italy” and spends his days reporting for
The New York Times.
He's thirty-two, scratchy voiced, funny, and flirtatious. He says there's someone interested in the room, but he isn't sure if it's going to work out and he's leaving the country tomorrow to spend two weeks on a boat off the southern coast of Turkey and write about it—hello, the guy's perfect—so if I want to see the place, it has to be now. I'm still wearing the see-through shirt that caught Clarence's eye, but I reapply lipstick, slam the last of my Pinot Grigio, and jump into a cab.

My cab pulls up to the corner of Elizabeth and Spring in NoLita, brakes screeching to a halt in front of a bland beige building with a rust-colored door. This is a nice neighborhood, expensive with new, overpriced boutiques and trendy bars popping up every day to replace the old ones that are forced to close their doors, victims of the ever-increasing rents. I'm undaunted by the appearance of the building, aware that hidden treasures often lurk behind unsightly facades. I buzz and climb a dingy, poorly lit staircase with two-tone walls that are peeling and crumbling. The top half was once off-white but has been weathered into a rough shade of grime, and the forest-green bottom half looks as if a feral cat comes out every night after the inhabitants' bedtime to claw at it rabidly. I've learned not to judge an apartment by its stairway, any more than the edifice's exterior: At least downtown, nine out of ten hallways feature scuff marks, stairs beaten by decades of overuse, and cheesy, misguided paint jobs by management too tight-fisted to do it right.

Standing on the landing of the third floor is a tall, hot teacher's-pet type with short, dirty blond hair wearing faded jeans, an untucked, light blue Oxford shirt, thick tortoise-shell glasses, and a big smile. He's unfairly good-looking.

“Hey, thanks for rushing over,” he says.

“I'm excited to see the place,” I respond, taking his outstretched hand firmly in mine. In spite of strike one (Clarence), I realize that Alicia was right: This idea is ingenious. A man's apartment is a reflection of him—his passions, his temperament, his compulsions, his soul—and I am about to invade Peter's.

I wag my hips as I enter an apartment that is as cozy as he described it. Honey-colored wood floors, exposed brick, exotic rugs, eclectic furniture, a fireplace, funky, multicultural knickknacks cluttering every surface, and a tiny, old-fashioned corner kitchen, someplace Annie Hall might live. Bookcases packed with books: quality novels, biographies, political nonfiction, art monographs—not a testosterone-fueled action adventure or Atkins manifesto in sight. As I scan the shelves, I can't believe my luck. It's only my second apartment, and I've stumbled upon a smart, attractive, straight guy with great taste. God, what if this is it? What if I meet the man of my dreams on my first day on assignment? That would make a perfect ending to my story.

My heartbeat quickens and I apply Rule #4: If I find him attractive and his apartment acceptable, skip banalities and get personal fast.

“What makes a guy hold on to a porcelain bunny with a missing ear that's probably been around since 1978?” I ask him as he stands fidgeting in the kitchen, which is separated from the living room by a sturdy bar topped with wood the color of caramel.

“My grandmother gave me that when I was six. Haven't been able to let it go, I guess. It reminds me of her,” he says as I finger the spine of a weathered copy of
Anna Karenina.
I've held on to everything my grandmother ever gave me, too. We spent a lot of time together when I was growing up and were incredibly close; I became ill for a week when she died three years ago. I'm not ready to tell Peter about my grandmother, though, as cute as he is.

“I read a lot,” Peter says. “Can't bring myself to throw books out, either. A bit of a head case, right? Hey, do you want something to drink? A beer? Tea?”

What I want is to throw this cute, sensitive head case onto the couch and get to work making a blond, brainy kid with a thing for literature and clutter, but instead I accept a Corona and ask to see the room. First we visit his: chunky, wood-framed, fluffy-white-comforter-covered bed that almost fills the room. No other furniture except an elaborately carved Asian armoire and a small chest of drawers. I run my finger suggestively along its edge. One wall is completely covered with framed black-and-white photographs.

“You take these?”

“Most of them,” he says. “I dabble.”

I study the photos taken in places as diverse as Bangkok, Beirut, and Botswana, Paris, Puerto Rico, and the Poconos. He likes shooting children and old people, the two human subgroups I've always found most appealing. He notices details. His compositions are unexpected. He's talented, understated, a pack rat like me.

“What's your sign?” I ask.

“Aries.”

I move to the window and look out onto Elizabeth Street, momentarily dismayed, but hopeful that some other aspect of his chart will make him a suitable candidate for my heart. Once we start dating, I'll get his time and place of birth and pass them on to Courtney to sort it all out. Peter stands next to me. His left hip touches my right, making me tingle.

“See that window?” He indicates a dimly lit rectangle in the building across the street. “There's this couple that lives there. I can see them sometimes in that chair, you know.” He lets out an embarrassed laugh. My cheeks flush. This is an extremely good first date.

“Let's look at your room,” he says, a clear attempt to flee his bedroom before suffocating under the sexual tension.

The second bedroom is the size of my closet. You could barely fit a full-size bed if you didn't have any other furniture, but it has a hefty closet. He tells me that the girl who lived there previously was clever with space and put up shelves to the ceiling right over the bed, but she unfortunately took them with her. He indicates where her creation used to be, stretching his arm up high, his shirt rising to expose a tanned six-pack. I gasp quietly, and he turns toward me.

“So, someone else is interested in the room?” I squeak.

He says the other potential roommate is supposed to let him know by tomorrow. He'll call and leave me a message before he takes off. I start to feel bad about lying to him, recognizing what a terrible way this is to start a relationship. I say I'm not sure if I'm moving yet, that my situation is up in the air, I'll let him know as soon as my plans solidify. We exchange e-mail addresses.

We make our way back to the living room, and I sit on the couch. He plops down next to me and absentmindedly turns on the TV and we stare at scantily clad women taking turns scaling a building. When the doorbell rings, he buzzes without asking who's there.

A couple of minutes later, a girl saunters into the room and kisses him on the mouth. His sister? She's Asian. And skinny. And striking, with poofy, red lips and skin like vanilla Häagen-Dazs. Could she be one of those girls who kisses male friends ambiguously on the lips whether or not she's sleeping with them? I hold my breath.

“Jacquie, this is my girlfriend, Stacy. Jacquie's looking at the room.”

I smile weakly up at her from the couch, which suddenly feels very low to the floor. “Nice to meet you,” I croak, feeling like a dwarf all alone on a planet populated by tall, pretty people.

We make polite conversation for ten minutes and watch TV, while I groan inwardly and display an expression that says,
Chipper! Relaxed! Enthusiastic would-be roommate!
After all, this enchanting, good-looking guy—and his equally enchanting, good-looking girlfriend—thinks I want to move into this apartment. I gnaw my left thumbnail and snap my rubber band. Ouch.

“Guess you'll miss Peter when he's in Turkey,” I say lamely.

“I'm going with him,” Stacy says perkily. “I'm psyched!”

“Yeah, cool, lucky.”

That clinches it. I stand up, drop my empty beer bottle onto the coffee table with a clink, and announce that I have to leave. What's the point? I'm completely depressed and feel an urgent need to get out of the joint and call Jeremy to meet me for a stiff drink in the East Village, my turf, where I feel confident and protected.

“Well, Peter, I don't think I'm interested in the room after all,” I announce.

He looks up at me, perfectly baffled, while Stacy continues to smile beatifically. Of course Peter is perplexed. If there's anything I have learned in my thirty-two years on the planet, it's that people generally believe what you tell them. If they own a liquor store and you tell them you're organizing a fund-raiser for the American Cancer Society next week—like my best friend in high school once did—and you're going to be ordering fourteen cases of wine and sixteen of beer and would like to check prices, they believe you. And when you add, incidentally, “I think I'll take a bottle of that cheap white wine-in-a-box on the shelf behind you right now,” they hand it over, even if you're seventeen and wearing a private-girls'-school uniform.

And if you tell a guy you want to rent a room in his apartment and actually go over to look at it, it never occurs to him that you might have ulterior motives. Why would it?

I stop by my apartment, which Alicia has miraculously straightened and momentarily evacuated, and check my messages.

“Hey, Jacquie, John here, remember me? Room for rent, Avenue B. I know you're not looking for a place to live anymore, but I wondered if you wanted to come by—”

I erase it midmessage.

“Hi, my name's Herbert. You left me a message about my room for rent. You wanted to know more about me. I am fifty-six, never married. I live with my six cats (Greg, Peter, Bobby, Marsha, Jan, and Cindy) two parakeets (Mike and Carol), iguana named Alice, and tarantula called Sam the Butcher—”

Delete.

“Hi, Jacquie. It's Matt with the apartment in SoHo. Hey, can you come by Tuesday instead of Wednesday? That would be sweet. Let me know.”

“Hi, this is Denise. My boyfriend, Rufus, told me you called about our extra room?”

Delete.

“Hey, Franz here.” Sexy accent. “You called about the apartment. Me and my girlfriend would love you—”

I punch the Delete button with my fist, causing my answering machine to topple off its perch. “Sorry!” I tell it before placing it nicely back in its spot.

“Every guy in New York has a girlfriend,” I bitch to Jeremy over drinks at a onetime dive on Avenue A that now charges eleven dollars for a Cosmopolitan but Jeremy likes anyway because they let Napoleon sit on his bar stool with him. “I'm getting totally pessimistic about this whole endeavor.”

“What did that one guy say?” he asks, while Napoleon, decked out in a leopard-skin hoodie, compulsively licks his wrist. “The investment banker in Tribeca who raved about skinny-dipping in Ibiza.”

“‘She's over sometimes, but I wouldn't worry about it if I were you.'”

“That guy doesn't have a girlfriend,” he says, ripping Napoleon off his arm and feeding him from the bowl of pretzels on the bar. “He wants you to know he won't jump on you when you walk through the door. Here's what I think: If they don't live together, he's fair game.”

“Maybe you're right.”

“Of course I'm right,” he says, leaning over to check his phone, which is sitting silently on the bar, and scooting back in his stool, disappointed. “Any mildly attached guy who's still living alone sees you, he's dumping her. Or at least having an affair.”

“You say the sweetest things. You know, if you'd fall in love with me, I wouldn't have to go through this insanity.”

“Are you kidding? This is the best thing that's ever happened to you. You'll meet a guy so hot, next year every hipster in New York will be”—he makes quotation marks in the air with his fingers—“‘looking for a roommate.' It'll be the new trend in dating. You'll be famous and go on
Oprah,
as if having a hot new boyfriend and an article in the women's rag du jour weren't enough.”

“I like that.”

“What's rule number five again?”

“Rule number five: The date's the prize. Do what it takes, whatever it takes, to nab the date.”

“You're such a vixen. You'll definitely get a date soon.”

I wonder silently why no one has asked me out yet, but wipe the thought from my mind.

“Whatever happened to that guy you went out with on my birthday?” I ask.

“Never called.”

We bow our heads. Napoleon gets nervous and barks twice. “It's all right, Nappie, Daddy's got it all under control.” Addressing me again, Jeremy says, “I called him and left a really cute message and then when he didn't call back, I left another totally nonchalant one, and then yesterday, I left one saying, ‘Look, if you want to go out for a drink sometime, let's do it. If not, please call and let me know. I had a really good time the other night and I think you did, too. I just want to know one way or the other.'” As I shudder, he goes on, “I am so sick of these people being dishonest with me. I don't really care what happens. He was way too built for me anyway—I don't like a guy with too many muscles—but just be straight up, you know?”