The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken (11 page)

And while every fiber of my being is eagerly saying, “Yes!” I force myself to focus on my unfit-for-company underwear, or at least on the reason I wore it.

“Not tonight.” I kiss him again because I don’t want him to get the idea that I’m not interested. Because I
so
am. I’d love to tear off all our clothes and spend the night in his bed, but I’m not going to risk becoming a one-night stand. He’s too extraordinary. If I want to keep him interested, Angela counseled, it’s imperative to extricate myself from date number two with him wanting more.

When we pull up in front of Angela’s building, her doorman is having a heated exchange with a very Nordic-looking man in tweed. He looks about forty years old, and his face has turned red with fury. When the doorman notices us, he asks his adversary to step aside. The Nordic man continues to freak out and steps closer to the doorman, so his nose is inches from the other man’s face. He starts screaming, in a pronounced Germanic accent, that he has friends in Washington, and that he will have the doorman’s pathetic self deported back to Puerto Rico if he doesn’t let him pass at once. I see spit flying from his mouth, illuminated in the darkness by the portico lamps. The doorman stands his ground.

Oscar, who of course has no idea that the crazed Teuton must be my best friend’s date, laughs out loud. “Puerto Rico is a U. S. territory. We don’t deport there. Not that your doorman looks Puerto Rican to me.”

“He’s from Brazil, actually.”

Oscar double parks and gets out to open the door for me. As if on cue, a window several flights up flies open. Angela leans out, waves her phone maniacally, and screams, “Reiner! If you don’t stop disturbing the peace this instant, I’m calling the police.”

At this, more lights come on from other units.

Reiner, who appears strangely encouraged by Angela’s threat, abandons his quest to throttle the poor doorman and runs out onto the sidewalk so he can see her better.

“Please,” he wails. “I just want to come up and talk.”

“Forget it! It’s over between us,” she yells back. “Now please leave before I have to pour a pot of boiling water down on you.”

“You’ve misunderstood, my darling!”

“No, I think you’ve misunderstood. If you don’t leave, I’m calling the cops.”

“You know I have diplomatic immunity,” Reiner yells, more coldly. His imploring tone has vanished.

“That just means they can’t charge you. I can still call,” says Angela, petulantly.

I start towards the entrance, but Oscar is rooted to the spot, watching the show. Angela raises her arms to shut the window, and as she does, she notices me standing there. “Zoë! I didn’t expect to see you back before dawn. You must be Oscar! I’m Angela, and you really are cute. Sometimes Zoë’s taste isn’t so great.”

Oh, God. She’s drunk. Angela never slurs her speech, but you can tell she’s had too much to drink when she says something unfiltered.

Oscar actually blushes. Angela leans out the window again. “Hey, Zoë, why don’t you and your new lover come up for a nightcap?”

“He’s not my new love –” I cut myself off and feel my face go red.

“Sounds great,” Oscar yells with a smile, before I can decline on his behalf. He takes my arm and starts steering me towards the entrance, giving wide berth to Reiner, who’s now making motions that suggest he might be about to physically assault the poor doorman.

The doorman turns away from his tormentor to let us through. Reiner screams, “That bitch owes me. Do you have any idea what I’ve spent on her, tonight alone? Not to mention over the past three weeks. I demand to go upstairs.”

His accent gets more and more pronounced as his cheeks get redder and redder.

“I’m sorry, sir, but Ms. Mancuso made it clear that I am not to admit you under any circumstances. Now I’m going to ask you one last time, to please leave. If you don’t I’ll have to call the police.”

Reiner looks as if he’s trying to formulate some persuasive retort, but his brain must come up empty because he lets out an alarming roar and charges at the doorman. Reiner’s first punch knocks the older man off his feet. His uniform hat skips across the ground like a flat stone over water, before coming to rest on the pavement.

Oscar’s there in a flash. He grabs Reiner with both hands and shoves him roughly against the wall. I watch in mingled horror and admiration as he closes his fingers around Reiner’s throat, and when he speaks, his voice has lost every last bit of its earlier charm and tenderness. “I’m not surprised the lady won’t allow you upstairs.”

Reiner makes a sucking sound, as if he’s not getting enough air. The doorman clambers to his feet.

Oscar says, “Now you are going to get the hell out of here and never come back. Because if my friend over here sees you around again, he’s going to call me. And I have friends who could care less about your diplomatic immunity. Do you understand?”

Reiner tries to nod, but Oscar’s choke hold prevents his head from moving very much.

“I can’t hear you.”

“Yes.” It’s barely audible, but it must be good enough because Oscar releases his grip and a very disheveled Reiner slumps towards the pavement. He forces himself onto his feet, and makes his way across the street, his face burning with shame and anger.

We all watch him plod down the block, until he’s out of sight. I stand rooted to the sidewalk, stunned at my date’s amazing display of masculine prowess, and slightly startled by how fast he resorted to his fists. Even though this Reiner character clearly had it coming.

“Thanks,” the doorman says to Oscar. “Even five years ago I would’ve turned him to pulp, but I’m getting old, and with all the panic about immigrant labor lately, I’m afraid to get physical, even with a prick like that.” His eyes move from Oscar to me and he adds, “Sorry, miss. I meant to say even in self-defense.”

“It’s alright. I’m glad you’re not hurt.”

“Probably just bruised a bit. You enjoy your evening, miss.”

Oscar asks, “Shall we go in? I’m ready for that drink.”

As we pile into the elevator, he says, “It must be nice, having a friend in your building.” He sounds cool and collected, not at all like a man who nearly beat someone to a pulp mere minutes ago.

“Mmm-hmm.” I press the button for Angela’s floor.

“Which floor is yours?”

“Not tonight,” I say with the best smile I can muster. He pushes me against the wall and kisses me, hard. His little fight doesn’t seem to have taken anything out of him. In fact, it seems to have revved him up. I’m glad we’re not at my place. He might be hard to turn away under the circumstances.

Angela’s waiting at the door, wearing a floor-length hand embroidered silk robe that one of her beaus brought her from a business trip to Asia. It’s not like she’s uncovered or anything, but I don’t know anyone else who would receive her friend’s date without getting dressed. She’s also sporting the beginnings of a greenish mud mask on her chin.

“Is he gone?” she demands, before I can even make introductions. The treatment on her chin crackles.

“Yes, and I doubt he’ll bother you again. Oscar Thornton.” He sticks out his hand.

“My hero!” Angela’s eyelashes flutter. “Angela Mancuso. Please, come in, have a drink.”

To my surprise and relief, Oscar says, “Thank you, but I might beg off. I’m afraid I accepted your invitation under false pretenses. I thought if I got inside the building, Zoë might have me up to her place.”

At this, Angela’s eyebrows go up. Oscar leans down to kiss me on the cheek. “I’ll call you in the morning,” he says, and then to Angela, “It was nice to meet you.”

“You, too, and thanks for your help with Reiner.”

“My pleasure.”

We watch him disappear back into the elevator. Angela hisses, “You still haven’t told him you don’t live here?”

I shrug. “What the hell happened tonight?”

“I need a drink before I launch into it.”

I open the fourth bottle of wine I’m about to share tonight while Angela finishes slathering a new kelp-based anti-wrinkle potion on her face.

“That bastard slapped my ass.”

I look up from the corkscrew, confused.

“Reiner ran into some prince from Monaco, and instead of introducing me, he told me they had to talk in private, and that I should run off and get him a fresh drink. And then he slapped my butt, as if I was some 1970’s Bond girl, and he and the prince laughed like it was the funniest thing ever.”

“Why didn’t you slap him back?” It’s unlike Angela to take anything less than fawning, doting treatment from her dates.

“All the decision makers from
Vogue
were in the room, at least half of the senior management team. I couldn’t risk making a scene.”

“I thought this baron or whoever was taking you to dinner.”

“That was supposed to be later. We had to stop in at the Cavalli men’s fragrance launch first.”

“Why did you have to go to that? You do shoes.”

“Zoë, dear, you’re missing the point. Reiner humiliated me. In public. And I didn’t know what to do, so I ran outside and got a cab home. I guess he charged out after me.”

“Wait, when was that?”

She consults her watch. “Just over five hours ago.”

“He was out there with your doorman for five hours?”

“No. There was a shift change. He only harassed Philippe for about three hours. Juan was down there before. But that’s not the worst part. My boss called me twice. She’s furious. Reiner’s family owns, among many other things, a major cosmetics company that buys a lot of ad space in the magazine.”

“I’m sorry. That sucks. But what does she expect you to do about it?”

“Her voicemails pretty much insist that I apologize to the insufferable twit.”

At this point, I know I’m supposed to commiserate, and ask why she ever went out with Reiner, the Baron from a Mostly Insignificant Country, in the first place. But I’m starting to feel just a teeny bit peeved. Angela will obviously weather this crisis, and she hasn’t even bothered to ask how my (much anticipated) big date was. Nor has she even said anything about Oscar. He may not have quite the social connections her suitors boast, but damn it, he is objectively hot. Not to mention he’s the most exciting thing that’s happened to me in ages, if not in my entire pathetic life. And he just kicked the insufferable twit’s butt. He should rate a nod in this conversation.

On Monday morning, Carol shows up in pants. That can only mean one thing. We’re about to spend half the day moving our desks. Carol thinks that we get lazy if we sit next to the same person for too long. She also likes to reward the most productive people by giving them views. Unless I can convince Niles Townsend to sign on the dotted line before lunch today, I’ll be trading my window on Madison for an interior cubicle.

A year ago, this would have upset me, but now I know it’s just part of the circle of life at Broadwick & Associates. Next time I have a good month, I’ll be rewarded with better desk geography.

This particular morning, it seems that Carol wants to do more than switch our seats. Without even saying good morning, she barks at Marvin to help her move one of the five-foot grey dividers that encircles New Girl’s desk. New Girl, detecting an unavoidable invasion to her personal space, does what any rookie would do, she grabs whatever she can hold, in this case, a purple mug full of pencils, a stapler, and a mouse pad, and cowers in the opposite corner of her cube.

“New Girl!” Carol barks. Her eye shadow is emerald green today, and it looks like it was applied by an eleven-year-old. “You are going to sit next to Marvin from now on. So you can listen to him and learn how to make money.”

Marvin scowls at me. He hates training new people. He feels like he has to conform when there’s a newbie hovering over his shoulder. No gin from the flask. No offering to fix up recruitment coordinators with eligible real-estate-owning bachelors, in exchange for interviews for his candidates. No making out with those same candidates in the smaller, windowless conference room. Marvin is pushing forty, and there’s something about a young corporate associate, fresh from law school, in his first ever French-cuffed shirt, that he can’t resist.