Authors: Darri Stephens

Spooning (23 page)

BOOK: Spooning

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A post office truck was parked a few blocks from our building seven days a week. So useful! It had a lifting side panel through which you could buy postal supplies. Today, a large postman was leaning out of the side, grinning into the January sun like he was basking in Aruba.

“Hi!”

“And what can I do for you?” he smiled. Maybe Santa spent the off months between Christmases in the postal system.

“I need four stamps, please.”

“That's it?” he asked. “No envelopes today?” I grinned at the obligatory random question.

“Nope. Just four stamps.” He handed me a small leaf of bright first-class stamps. As I handed him the money, I looked at them more closely. They were colorful. They were large. Colorful and large and sporting enormous Hanukah menorahs.

“Oh, excuse me?”

“See, you need those envelopes to go with those stamps, right?” he laughed, and I swear his stomach shook like a bowlful of …

“No,” I stopped myself. “Um, I just, can I have some other picture?”

“Oh, you have a problem with the religion depicted on the stamps?”

“Oh, no.” I didn't have a problem with the religion, just the picture. “I just, well …” I did appreciate the pink background with purple flames blazing brightly above the sacred candles, but I was sending the four remaining thank-you cards to my severely Catholic grandmother, my former minister, and one each to my newly divorced yet equally small-minded aunt and uncle. With family, I always put the stamp upside down— the universal message of love being sent through the mail. I knew my granny looked for this love with each letter, and I knew she would completely notice the menorah. And since they would be on my Christmas thank-you cards, I wouldn't
want
my granny to think I was converting.

“Don't you have flags or something?” I almost saluted. The once-jolly postman looked ready to bite my head off. He snatched back the stamps and handed me four others.

“You'll probably have a problem with these too.” I took the stamps and fled the postal truck, feeling sure that I was now off the “Good Boys and Girls” list at the North Pole for next year. Who knew Santa was Jewish to boot? As I rounded the corner, I glanced down at the stamps folded in my mitten. Thurgood Marshall stared me in the face. He had given me Black History Month stamps. Perfect! New York City was home to all types. This included a politically correct postman who was dispensing
life lessons about open-mindedness through a small panel in a white truck on the corner of Amsterdam and Seventy- fifth Street.

With thank-you cards mailed, I decided to tackle the next item off of my to-do list—buy new underwear. Shoving my hands into my pockets, I trudged a block to the bus stop. I thought the New Year deserved new, cotton, no-panty-lines underwear. And I thought J. P. might appreciate the purchase as well (as would the operating attendant in the emergency room after I got hit by a bus while daydreaming).

I took a childish swipe at my running nose as I pushed through the bodies toward the back of the bus. As I looked up to scan for a vacant seat, I found myself staring right into the eyes of Tom Funger. Shit. Shit! Did I have a second to pinch color into my makeup-less cheeks? Tom Funger had been my two-week pre–Mr. J. P. Morgan fling when I'd first arrived in New York City. Back in those early virginal NY days, I'd found the whole social scene so overwhelming. I mean there were so many boys to look at, never mind meet. So one night, I happened to run into Tom, who'd gone to school with us. Tom was Tom. At school, he was an unassuming nice guy—one you'd never look twice at. But, oh how things had changed for good ole Tom. He had stepped up quite a bit since I had seen him last (when was that … sophomore year, at Bugger's Bar?). The day I ran into him, he was wearing a crisp, ultrastarched Thomas Pink button-down and brown suede Gucci loafers— what a fast learner! He looked good—good and familiar. And there was something reassuring about familiarity in such a huge, impersonal city.

We'd hooked up and gone on two dinner dates, but I'd soon decided after that despite his snappy new attire, Tom was still
fairly uninspiring and therefore I shouldn't waste my time. Plus, he had small hands. Now I know what you are thinking, but it's so not true. I wasn't worried about the hands and penis size correlation—I'm not that shallow. The problem was that my manicured hands ensconced, no eclipsed, his! I felt like I was holding a little boy's hands, and the pedophile ramifications scared me. Plus, with a name like Funger … I just knew I couldn't be called Mrs. Fungus, I mean Funger, for the rest of my life. And being a traditional girl, I wouldn't want to have to choose to keep my maiden name. Charlie Brown-Funger. Mrs. Brown-Fungus. So I never called Tom back. No reason was given, no good-bye was said, no excuse, no nothing. And now here he was on the same bus. There was absolutely no escape. The bus was packed, and we were standing smack dab in the middle. With a quick lick of my chapped lips, I turned and gave him my cheeriest smile.

“Tom, hey, good to see you! How are you? What have you been up to? I've been super busy.” Smile, smile. I think I gave too much information away in that first conversational strand. I took a big breath.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Watch him be happy and about to pop the question to some young New York socialite.

“Hey, Charlie.” Was there any enthusiasm in his voice or did I just hear bitter contempt? Was his smile genuine or mocking?

“Long time no see!” I quipped. He just nodded. “So what's new with you?”

“Not much,” he said. “I'm just on my way home. I brought breakfast to a sick friend.” Oh, he was a humanitarian. Did I know this when I didn't call him back?

“I think you might know him,” he went on. “J. P.?”

Did I know him? Of course! Wait. How did Tom know that I knew him? How did they know each other? Had J. P. mentioned me? And if he had, did he say that he just “knew” me or that he “
knew
” me in a deeper, more soulful sense?

“Sure I do,” I said, trying to sound like he was a dear yet casual acquaintance. “So he's, um, sick? Like deathbed sick?” I swallowed a heaping sense of panic.

“Probably just a cold,” he answered. “Good seeing you, Charlie.” Tom waved as the doors opened and he pushed his way out through the crowd. I stared distractedly after him out of the bus window. I gave him a slight wave like the prom queen I never was. J. P. was sick! Not that I was excited over his pain, but maybe he was too weak to pick up the phone (he hadn't called since our dinner, despite the spooning). His was an older, heavier cell phone.

A new plan for the day was forming in my mind. As we approached the next stop, I scurried up the middle of the bus to the front and jumped off to run back uptown. Back in the apartment, I grabbed the leftover container of Sage's Skinny Soup. Nothing like soup for the ailing. Like a top spinning out of control, I was back out of the apartment and back on the bus downtown before you could spell “pathetic.”

J
. P. didn't answer the door right away. I began to think that his illness was probably just a bad hangover and that I was the fool in waiting, the fool with soup in her hand.

“Charlie!” he said as he opened the door. Did he sound surprised or startled?

“I heard through the grapevine that you were sick, and I thought that you could use some soup!” I responded cheerfully
trying to mask the fact that my sudden appearance could be considered stalkerish. I smiled. How could a disheveled, bathrobe-wearing, two-day-beard-sporting patient look so cute? How?

“Thanks,” he answered, still standing in the doorway. I waited for him to invite me inside.

“Let me heat some of this up for you,” I suggested.

“Microwave's broken.” Did he not want me to come in?

“Silly. I know how to use a stove,” I laughed. Thank God I did! Thank you Cooking Club!

Ten minutes later, I had warmed up the soup.

“This is quite good, Charlie,” he commented. I didn't tell him that Sage had made it because I also now had the recipe to go with my growing arsenal of cooking skills.

“Here,” I said pressing a cold washcloth compress to his forehead. “You really are warm,” I murmured. I disappeared back into the kitchen and opened a couple of cans of soda to leave on the counter.

“Let the fizz, the carbonation, leave the soda. Flat soda is good for your upset stomach,” I advised as I walked back into his living room. I walked by his comatose body on the couch and turned on ESPN on the television. Figuring that his lack of conversation was due to exhaustion, I put my coat back on to go. Food, sports, and now for a little loving … I could be a true Renaissance woman. As I leaned in for a kiss good-bye, he shrank back into the pillow a bit.

“You shouldn't have come over,” he said.

“No, no problem at all.”

“I might be contagious, C.”

“I'm not worried,” I answered as I planted a well-placed kiss just below his ear.

A
s I walked back up Broadway, I began to wonder if I should be worried. He had said that I shouldn't have come over. Huh. I had just risked my health and I wasn't sure that J. P. had recognized or even cared about my sacrifice. Luckily, I didn't have a chance to wallow too much because a sale sign at the Gap reeled me in off of the cold sidewalk. I had hit upon the moth- erload of all post-holiday sales. (Note to self: Never again shop at full retail price.) Once inside, I dug through the bins and found about eighteen pairs of thong (not g-string) underwear, all for the mere price of about $23.50, not counting tax. What a relief, especially to my swollen credit card debt. Dumping the load on the counter, I gave the Gap woman a post-holiday smile. I had done some freelance retail work at the Gap during college vacations and knew the stress involved.

“Whew, it's cold,” I said to no one in particular.

“It must be important for you to keep warm,” the Gap woman remarked.

“Warm? What?” I inquired. Did she not notice that I was buying thong underwear and not wool sweaters?

“I mean, it must be important for you to keep warm with your bundle of joy,” she said smiling. I looked down. The only bundles of joy were in my hands and they were in brown and white striped bags.

“My bundle of joy?” I asked, still confused. The woman behind me gasped audibly.

“You're not pregnant? Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry.”

My cheeks flushed despite the January winds whisking through the ever-revolving Gap door. Didn't she see that I was buying medium-sized underwear and not XL? What could I
say? For God's sake, my jacket was unzipped, so it was not my marshmallow frumpy down jacket either.

“Um, that will be $25.76.” My friendly Gap woman went into serious retail mode. I stood there for a second. Should I demand an apology? Did I want her to acknowledge her error yet again? My post-holiday sale buzz deflated. I scowled as I signed the sales receipt. Who was I kidding anyway? Why would J. P. be excited about cotton underwear? I took out my cell phone. The screen stared back at me blankly—0 missed calls. Couldn't he, shouldn't he call to say thank you? Didn't I deserve a simple phone call?

Experts say that the holiday season can cause severe depression. I left the Gap feeling low, and cold water seeped into my boot as I sank into a slushy gray snow bank at the corner. I looked up hoping to find some divine intervention as the snot running from my nose froze to my face. I felt like a used tissue—an apparently pregnant used tissue. As “Oh, Come All Ye Faithful” blared from the Hallmark store, I burst into tears.

I made a list of resolutions (yes, a tad late) right there on the corner of Broadway and Thirty-fourth: