Spooning (32 page)

When I opened them, I was given the final ultimate treat. It was a stunning vision. Right smack dab in front of me was the Statue of Liberty. I pressed my forehead against the plane window to get a better look. It was a magnificent sight to see. There she was in all her feminine glory. With my glass in hand, I turned to face the window in order to make a toast. This one's for you, Ms. Statue of Liberty. Her gown was a bit ragged, streaked with the city's finest grime, but her face was regal, complete with an aristocratic nose. Her smile was tired (New Yorkers tended to stay up way too late working and playing) but suggestive, like she had been up to something while everyone wasn't looking. I winked at her. Here's to many new adventures, to never giving up, and to finding true happiness. I closed my eyes and proceeded to drink the entire glass of wine
in one sip. It was a sign. Charlie, I thought, you can be anything you want to be and do anything you want to do.

As I tightened my seatbelt and made sure my seat was in the upright position, I felt an odd rumbling in my throat. That last glass of wine wasn't sitting so well with the glasses of champagne that had come before it. My stomach lurched. Oh, God. Don't tell me this was going to happen. I flew out of my seat and ran toward the bathroom.

“Excuse me, miss,” the flight attendant spit the m, if that was possible, “You're going to have to take your seat. We are just about to land and the captain has turned on the fasten seat-belt sign.”

It was as if she was reading a manual to me. Did she not see my face? If she just looked at me she'd notice that this wasn't your ordinary bathroom visit. I didn't have to do number one or number two. No lady, this was number three. Back off or I was going to pull the trigger.

“Yes. You're right. But I promise, this will only take a minute,” I urged her with one hand over my mouth and the other on the bathroom door. But before she could respond, it was too late. Up came the wine and the champagne, all over the cabin floor. Okay, in hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have had eleven glasses of alcohol thirty-something thousand feet in the air. But up until this point, I had felt fine. And as the last drop of the bubbly backed out of my mouth, I looked up to find every single first-class passenger staring furiously at me. By now, they'd probably figured out that I wasn't your typical first- class passenger. This wasn't the mile-high club I wanted to join. The flight attendants looked mortified. Oh well, what are you going to do? It was fun while it lasted.

Glorious Greasy Pizza

Go ahead and treat yourself this month:

It was April and thus far, I had avoided all of the city's subtle dangers: broken heels, pigeon dung, construction- site catcalls. I had even avoided the more infamous city dangers: muggings, rapes, accidentally falling onto the subway's third rail. My mother's philosophy of “safety in numbers!” always resounded in my head whenever I took the subway late at night or walked home in a drunken haze by myself from a bar (usually from the one just across the street mind you). But in New York City, it's easy to develop a false sense of security. I mean at 4:30 in the morning, the city is still wide awake and doing its daily jumping jacks. And not just in Times Square, which is constantly aglow—even down in the city's respectable “villages,” people are out and about chatting, strolling, smoking, fighting, drinking, puking, laughing, and loving even at the wee hours. Still, I always made sure to walk in well-lit areas, letting the fake yellow light wrap its arms around me. If I
ever got a tad spooked, I'd just pull out my powerless cell phone and talk as if I was in the midst of the most animated conversation, a conversation with my big buff boyfriend (a boyfriend is always much more intimidating than a husband— he just is!). And for most of the year, I never had to look over my shoulder, never heard eerie footsteps echoing my own, and never had to blow the safety whistle tucked deep into my purse courtesy of dear old dad.

So when I was first confronted with a potentially dangerous situation, you can imagine how my mind went spinning out of control. Just like a Lifetime movie, the epilogue was already scrolling across my mind:

Yes, Mail Protect. “Mail,” not “male.” I had taken it upon myself to collect our mail daily. No one else ever seemed to bother, so inevitably when one would finally open the little brushed silver door in our lobby, magazines and bills would
avalanche onto the floor. A tad embarrassing. There was one old biddy from our building who was always in the mailroom and always scowled in my direction when our box spilled overdue notices on my shoes. One day she actually said, “I don't think it's fair to make our postal person cram letters into our boxes like a complicated jigsaw puzzle.”

What?

“I was in the Congo for the past month doing medical research,” I explained. Was that a real place? I stuck my tongue out of the corner of my mouth and tried to look at the ceiling in a contemplative way as I bent down to scoop up our mail, hoping to look like I was debating the molecular structure of DNA. In reality, I was biting on my tongue so that I wouldn't stick it all the way out at her.

So I had taken it upon myself to try—stress try—to go to the mailbox each day when I got home from work. It wasn't easy though since I never got fun letters; instead we received utility bills (aka, arguments over who'd watched a Pay-Per-View movie that month), credit card notices (want even more debt), credit card checks (who thought of that wonderful idea?), the occasional notice of a new Barney's promotion (like I could afford to shop there), and endless magazines (full of more desirable can't haves). We often got a pack of local businesses' coupons too. I tried to be efficient and clip or keep the coupons on hand should I ever need two carpeted rooms cleaned for $19.95, or a car service to any of the city's three major airports, but the only result was a drawer full of these handy irrelevant discounts. (Note to self: Must start using coupons to lower credit card debt.)

So it took me by surprise on a random Thursday when I received a letter. Actually it was a postcard. The generic type. White with no picture or address lines.

“Yes!” I initially thought. Some fun mail! However the message scribbled on it seemed a tad cryptic:

The two-word name underneath was illegible. It began with an L so immediately I thought it said, “Love, So-and-so.” Love? Could it be? Would I even let myself daydream that Mr. J. P. Morgan had sent me an anonymous love note to try to mend things? Did he even know my street address? All he probably knew was that he could get some on the Upper West Side! No, I stomped on that thought more quickly than I usually stomped on the cockroaches crawling across our floor. Then who could it be from?

“Hey, Tara!” I shouted as I entered the apartment and dumped the other mail in the overflowing basket on the floor. “Take a look at this, would ya?”

Tara emerged from her bathroom wrapped in a towel, with a mask on her face, shaving cream on her legs, razor in hand, and curlers in her hair. She looked like Mrs. Robinson getting ready for a big day out, but it was 9:34 P.M.

“You going somewhere?” I asked.

“Nope, just felt like this tired hag needed some sprucing up.”

“Hmm, the sandman is going to have some fun with you tonight, gorgeous! But here. Take a look at this and tell me what you think.” I tried to act nonchalant and headed toward the kitchen to get a Devil Dog (the perfect soul-soothing food).

“Who's this from?” Tara asked as she turned the card over in her hands.

“Um, I don't know.”

“Freaky!” Tara exclaimed stopping me in my tracks. “I mean, your name and address is written in one handwriting and the message on the back is in another. Whoever wrote your name and address has handwriting like my grandfather's chicken scratch.” Immediately, Mr. J. P. Morgan turned into a big burly seventy-year-old stalker. A sleazy dirty old man (but still not lacking in strength or sexual desire). I spun around and grabbed the card back from Tara.

“Where's the postmark from?” she asked. Good thinking. Then I could obsess over all the predators I knew in all fifty states.

“Let's see … New York, New York. And it was sent yesterday in the P.M.”

“Not much help then.” My mother would agree since she claimed this city had more than its share of psychos. Once again, it looked like Mom was right. Damn!

“What could this name be?” Tara mused. “L … Lenny, Larry, Lionel, Len … Ludacris.”

“Yes, the rapper Ludacris knows who I am and where I live.”

“No, not the rapper, just a guy who's renamed himself to fit his personality.”

“Tara! Stop! I'm a little freaked out here.”

“Could it be a woman? Lenore, Linda, or Lynda with a y, Lydia, Lindsey, Leslie. Gee there are a lot of L girl names.”

“Tara, focus. We are not naming a baby. We are naming my stalker. Do you think it could be a woman?” My seventy-yearold man had just gained birthing hips and a pouty mouth. And trust me, she did not have eyebrows like Charlize Theron in Monster.

“Now wait, who else in New York would send you a postcard?”

“That's the problem. Who would?”

“Have you had an appointment recently? A facial or something where the technician is following up with a kiss-ass note versus a phone call? My mother always says a note is more personal than a simple call.” I nodded, absently thinking that my mother would agree.

“No, I've been so dirt poor I haven't been able to afford a mani-pedi even on the cheap package days,” I responded as I bit down hard on one of my polishless nails.

“Hmm, well I'm sure it's nothing—”

“You think? I don't know!” I said doubtfully.

“We'll figure it out. But my mask is beginning to hurt because it's been on my face seven minutes too long. Huh, freaky,” she called as she sailed back into her bathroom beauty parlor. I flipped the card over and over before realizing that I was contaminating it with my fingerprints, and then threw it back into our pile of mail. At least Tara knew about it, should I be found dead on the sidewalk tomorrow with a Starbucks Grande nonfat cafe latte in hand.

I figured that I had a right to be suspicious and a tad neurotic. After all, Jane had received a dangerous liaison-type of letter too just last week. It was as if the mail gods were throwing lightning bolts. The positive side? I just knew she and I were destined to connect in some way. Maybe we would bond as we took our seats by the witness stands during our stalker trials. Yes, we would be fearful for our lives, but would testify to rid the world of two treacherous predators.

A new and oh-so-demanding responsibility of mine at work was to sort through the entries we'd received in response to a
recent contest on water feature décor. It was amazing what people could do with a little H
₂
O, colored lights, and plastic tubing. Sadly, Polaroids just don't do fountains and birdbaths justice. Amid the envelopes, most of which were vellum or Crane's twenty-pound weight, was a cheap, see-through, business-sized envelope. But in place of Jane's followers' usual hand calligraphy or embossed labels was a chicken-scratch version of our studio's address. I was surprised that the post office could read the scribblings. And where the return address should have been, there was only a seven-digit number. A phone number? As I ripped open the envelope, I realized that I had torn into a personal note to Jane. My first panicked thought was that she would see I had not used a letter opener. My second was that this was no ordinary pen pal note. Within reading the first couple of lines, my face flushed with embarrassment. I made myself do some yoga breathing (thank you, Buddha) as I scanned the rest of the letter to see if I had inadvertently opened a letter from Jane's long-lost jungle lover. No, the seven digit number on the outside of the envelope was more than just a phone number … it was a convict's calling card. Jane had gotten a love letter, or lust letter, from an inmate. And was this incarcerated boy imaginative!

Somehow, he was referencing Jane's body parts, which she hid well beneath baggy tops and conservative skirts, with the familiarity of an ob-gyn. He was quite a prolific writer, creating picturesque similes comparing her cannolis to the male anatomy. In his letter, he had her tossed on her kitchen counter, noting how the green Corian would highlight her eyes. And the things this man wanted to do to her knees! Cosmo, listen up! His step-by-step sexual instructions were just as detailed as Jane's step-by-step cooking directions, though
his suggested finale would set off more than smoke alarms. To top it off, at the end of his letter, he suggested that she use unsalted butter in her recipes as he thought the unnecessary salt might cause his blood pressure to soar, leading to a lesser performance in the kitchen. His idea of cooking was rated by X's versus stars.