Room for Love (31 page)

“Right,” Conrad says. “But now that they have? Jacquie, don't you feel like you should take responsibility for what you've done? Or let me phrase it another way. You went undercover for this article and met this wonderful man, but you've had to lie to him. Given your current situation, would you still recommend this dating scheme to other women?”

“I don't know, Conrad,” I say, rattled. “I did this for two reasons: to research an article and to try to meet a nice guy. And while I did achieve what I'd set out to, I'm not proud of the white lies I've had to tell in the process. Dishonesty is not something I would ever advocate, especially when you're looking for love. I hope Anthony forgives me for my deception, and I intend to be honest with him from here on out. One thing I've learned through this experience is that honesty is the most important ingredient in a relationship.”

“Words to live by, Jacquie,” Conrad says, nodding gravely and looking, I think, pretty damn proud of himself. “Thank you for sharing with us your adventures between the sheets. I wish you the best of luck.”

When I leave the studio, there's a message on my voice mail from Serena saying that she's out of town and needs to talk to me about something. When I call her back, it goes directly into her voice mail.

That afternoon after work, on our way to my favorite bar, Alicia and I run by my place to get my mail. We pass a homeless woman with long gray hair hunched on the sidewalk by a heap of garbage bags full of her belongings. She shifts and fiddles with her bra, hoisting her huge breasts into a cup and grumbles in a cigarette-burnt voice, “This is what I call hell,” before putting her head down on a stuffed panda and falling asleep.

“That'll be me in ten years,” Alicia says.

“That's not funny,” I say.

When we enter my apartment, I am stunned to discover that Serena's squeeze has tiled my kitchen. My millions of metallic mosaic tiles that have been sitting on the floor in a bag with the word
backsplash
scribbled on it are arranged above my counter into the most beautiful backsplash I've ever seen.

“Jesus Christ, whoever this guy is, she'd better marry him,” I say.

“Um, I think she is,” my sister says, holding up the latest in Z's epistolary oeuvre: “Hey, lovely. It feels great to be in this apartment for good, and even better that you are ready to move on with your life. I can't wait to walk you down the aisle! I love you, Z.”

“What? She's getting married?” I lean against the counter, clutching the note I grab from my sister, suddenly short of breath. I don't know why this news should upset me, but it does. It seems unfair somehow that my subletter can break up with her fiancé and find a new one in three seconds flat, while I'm having so many problems with my boyfriend. The buzzer buzzes and I walk over to the intercom.

“It could be from the old dude,” my sister says. “We don't really know.”

“Well, that's probably why she keeps calling me, to let me know she's moving out. What will I do? But why the hell is he fixing the place up then?” I say, realizing that none of it makes sense. “Hello?” I say into the intercom.

“Serena?” says a male voice that sounds eerily familiar.

“Uh, no,” I say.

“Hey, can I come up? It's an old friend, Anthony. I'm dropping off my directing reel.”

My heart seems to stop beating. My sister runs over to the intercom and stutters, “Uh, God, I just got out of the shower, she's not home.”

“I have a DVD for her,” he says.

“Can you leave it by the mailbox?” Alicia says. “I'll make sure she gets it.”

“Uh, yeah, sure.” She buzzes him into the building.

I push the Talk button again and say, “I'm sorry. Really. Sorry.”

“No problem,” he says. I sit down on a stool, put my elbows on the kitchen counter, and start to cry.

13

Seeking a big apt in the East Village. As luck would have it, the great place I thought I'd found went up in smoke, so Buster the wonderdog and I are on the prowl again, and we have to move ASAP. The EV is our first choice but we're open to suggestions. Ideal would be a large, raw space that can use some work. There is no structural or aesthetic impediment we can't handle. Zach.

When I get off the subway at Astor Place in the East Village, there's a message on my voice mail from Serena, saying, “This phone tag is out of control. I really need to talk to you about the apartment. Nothing to worry about, but I do need to talk to you ASAP.” I call her back and get her voice mail.

I'm meeting Anthony for dinner at a trendy bistro on Avenue C that he loves. He called me at work to say he had a couple of hours to spare and would love to grab a quick bite, just the two of us. He sounded rushed and distracted, making me wonder if he'd somehow found out about the article and was planning to confront me. Two days have passed since the article hit the stands, after all, and I still haven't told him, mainly because I literally haven't seen him. But now the situation is dire. My only hope is to preempt his confrontation with a confession. I plan to land it on him as soon as I see him, even get down on my knees and beg for his forgiveness if necessary.

My episode of
Between the Sheets
is on tonight, so not telling Anthony right away could be deadly. Before he called, I'd been planning to go to the bar to watch with everybody. Maybe I'll still go. Maybe when Anthony recognizes the humor in all this, he'll want to go with me. I picture him perched on a bar stool next to mine, holding my hand, chuckling as my TV self recounts my apartment-search antics, surrounded by Alicia, Court, and Jeremy, whom I can't believe Anthony hasn't met yet. I manage a smile, imagining Jeremy checking Anthony out and making lewd gestures at me behind his back. It's probably a dumb fantasy, but I'm clinging to it, terrified of the alternative. I'm actually shivering in anticipation and trying to bite my fingernails, but there's nothing left to bite. Maybe I'm just worried about the show. I think I did all right, but I suppose I could come off like an idiot, and I hope I look pretty. You never know how the camera is going to treat you. My bartending friend Johnny is so excited that one of his local girls has become a minor celebrity that he's christened the occasion Jacquie's Big Night and is offering free shots of Jack in my honor. Maybe I should stop by and get one before going to meet Anthony, I think, but I don't get the chance. While I'm waiting for the light to turn green at the intersection of First Avenue and Tenth Street, someone sneaks up behind me and pinches my waist, making me yelp. Anthony nuzzles my neck and says, “Hi, beautiful girl.”

He definitely doesn't know about my article.

“So, back in your old 'hood,” he says, laying his right arm across my shoulders. “Do you ever miss it?”

“I spend a lot of time here,” I say, as we approach the building I lived in when I first moved to New York, a beat-up tenement that should be condemned and that happens to have an enormous rat running across its threshold. I scream and Anthony squeezes me more tightly, laughing at my girliness.

“That's my old apartment,” I tell him, babbling nervously. “Lived there for years. I loved it so much, your typical East Village hole with the tin ceilings and slanted floors that had been painted a million times. I put on a coat of really pale green when I moved in, but they got so scuffed, a couple of years later I covered it with bright peach. Thought it warmed up the place. I heard when they booted me, they pulled out all the old detailing, turned it into a generic box, started calling it a one-bedroom, and cranked the rent up to sixteen hundred dollars.”

As we stop to wait for the light to change at Avenue A, two wailing fire engines hurtle past us in rapid succession and turn swiftly onto Twelfth Street, one block beyond my own.

“What's going on? I've seen more fire engines go by,” Anthony says.

I'm suddenly aware of a steady scream of sirens that I hadn't noticed before from my preoccupied bubble. We cross and rush up Avenue A. My heart pounds as we look to our right at my block and find total chaos: A cop car is blocking entry to the street. Four fire engines and an ambulance are parked right in front of my building, red and amber lights flashing. A crowd is gathered on the sidewalk and teeming onto the street. Firemen are rushing through the front door of my building. People are shouting, staring, looking frenzied, hot, frantic. There's smoke and electricity in the air as I run toward the commotion.

“Oh my God,” I whisper. “It's my apartment.”

“What?” Anthony asks me.

“It's my apartment,” I say, looking at his face pleadingly. “Anthony. I'm, um, I've been meaning to tell you, my apartment, I have one, I'm renting it out right now.” The heat emanating from the building feels like it's cooking my face and my bare throat and shoulders and I can't breathe very well. I crane my neck to look up. A tall ladder leads all the way up to the top floor.

“I don't understand,” Anthony says. “Doesn't Serena live here?”

I turn to face him. “She's my subletter,” I say. “Anthony, I am so sorry. I wanted to tell you.”
This is it,
I tell myself. “When I came to look at your apartment, I wasn't really looking for a room. I was doing research for an article about looking for love in the apartment ads.”

“What?” he demands, his face contorted into a mask of confusion and vulnerability that I've never seen him wear before. He's not angry yet—he doesn't understand what's going on—but with the red reflection of the flashing lights on his skin, I'm momentarily afraid: I wonder if Anthony would ever do anything to hurt me, I mean, if I wounded him deeply enough.

“I wrote an article,” I say, and reach into my bag to pull out the magazine and hand it to him. “Anthony, I'm so sorry.” I shake my head and wish I could take the time to explain this to him. I desperately want to cradle him in my arms and tell him I love him and explain why I'm not the awful person he must be thinking I am, but my head is swimming, my apartment might be burning, I have to go. Does that make me a terrible girlfriend? A terrible person? Oh God, I don't know. “Anthony, I need to talk to you about this. I'm so sorry, but I really have to go find out what's going on.” I wave my arm around, indicating the disaster that I have to attend to, and turn toward the crowd to look for faces I know.

Lured by a familiar barking through the crowd, I push by a man holding a little girl who's pointing up at my building starry-eyed, to make my way to Larry, who is running around free of his leash, barking gleefully, clearly over the initial shock of the fire. The sweetness of his furry, white snout makes tears spring to my eyes.

“Hi, sweet face,” I say weakly, afraid I'll cry, and he sprints over to me and starts squealing, happy to see me. Lucinda, his owner and the head of my co-op board, follows. I crouch down to cuddle Larry.

“You know this all started in your apartment, right?” Lucinda says, jutting her skinny hip out.

“What?”

“Someone, probably one of the people you've been subletting to”—she says this as if describing an obscene sex act I'd performed on them—“lit a fire in your apartment. Or rather blew the place up. Karim from across the hall from you said he heard what sounded like an explosion.”

“Oh my God,” I say. “I hope they're okay.”

“I guess no one was home when it happened,” she says. “The guy found the fire and started yelling bloody murder. No one was hurt, thank God, but our building is pretty much wrecked thanks to you.”

“I'm so sorry, Lucinda. I don't know what to say. I just got here. I don't know what's going on.”

A fresh fire truck arrives with a fresh group of firemen aboard and they descend shouting and serious to dash into the building. I watch them as one at a time they risk their lives to save our homes. When I look up, my throat goes dry and I feel woozy, with so many people and sounds around me and the heat of the fire and the summer night stifling. There is smoke in the air and soot floating gracefully downward. A fireman hollers to clear the streets, but no one is listening. As I sway, I look up and see the face of the cute hardware-store boy gliding above me. He's all scruffy, like he hasn't shaved in days, with his choppy strawberry-blond hair in serious disarray. He's dressed like a lumberjack as usual, green and blue plaid flannel framing his boyish face.

How weird,
I think as the ground rushes toward me and cute hardware-store boy reaches out his big hands to catch me.

“Are you all right?” he says, I don't know how many seconds later.

“Uh, yeah, I think.” My head feels fuzzy, my eyes sting, and I'm leaning against the cute hardware-store boy, who looks distressed. He's holding my shoulders firmly in his hands as dozens of people mill about, some looking over their shoulders at me with quizzical expressions on their faces. Through the swarm, I think I see Courtney, but then realize it's someone else, as the cute hardware-store boy lets go of me with one hand to reach into his backpack and pull out a bottle of water. I hold my hand out toward the woman who's not Courtney, but immediately lose focus.

Still holding on to me with one hand, cute hardware-store boy puts the bottle under his arm and unscrews the top and hands it to me.

“My apartment is burning down,” I say between sips.

“I know,” he says. “I, uh, oh God, where do I start? Jacquie, I'm Zach. We've never officially met. I've been staying at your place.”

“You're the guy who's been staying there? You're Z?”

“Yeah.”

Although I'm fascinated by the fact that Serena's sleeping with my cute hardware-store boy and wonder how they managed to find each other, I suddenly remember that Anthony is somewhere here reading my article. “Oh my God, Zach, I have to go. Can I talk to you later?”