“There are a lot of paintings of women in your loft,” I remarked.
“They’re just women I see on the street and stuff.”
“So you don’t date them?”
“I don’t think I would make a very good boyfriend, small fry.”
Uh-oh. Do I want to know why? Wait, did he already forget my name? Is that why he keeps calling me all these weird nicknames?
“Why do you say that, Adam?”
“I’m a little forgetful, in case you haven’t noticed. Not good with anniversaries, birthdays, in-laws, parking tickets. You know the deal.”
“Were you always forgetful?”
He didn’t answer me. I stood there awkwardly.
“I was dating a runner when I worked at the firm. Her name was Keri, and every weekend we’d get up early and go for a run. We ran by this place at seven in the morning once and there was a line wrapped around the building. As we passed by, Keri looked at the line, rolled her eyes at me, and said something about them being gluttonous pigs. I remember just really wanting a donut.” He looked down at me and smiled. “I’m glad I’m here with you.”
“What happened to Keri?”
He stared past me down the street, looking wounded. “She left me about a year ago, right after I quit the firm.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be. Her loss.” He smirked. “Honestly, I could have been better to her.”
We were getting close to the order window when he slipped a hand behind my neck, leaned in, and kissed me. The lady behind him bumped hard into his backpack, which forced Adam to stumble into me. He reached one hand out to the wall behind my head and the other snaked around my waist so I wouldn’t get crushed against the brick wall. It was a somewhat athletic move. I felt completely safe and cocooned by him.
His eyes were wide open. He looked furious.
The lady leaned around him and said, “Sorry about that.”
His body relaxed. He let go of me, turned toward the woman, and smiled. “No worries.”
I was in awe of his self-control.
I could not figure Adam out. All I knew was that I liked him. One minute he’d be totally focused, and the next he’d be onto another subject. I couldn’t tell if he was truly free-spirited or working toward it. He seemed like a typical guy his age, but I suspected he was grappling with something from his past.
We ordered two maple bars and headed back to Adam’s loft. At the top of the stairs was a woman standing near his door, holding a cat. “Oh shit,” Adam said.
My stomach sank. I thought for sure it was his girlfriend, or a disgruntled ex. “Hi, Adam. Foxy was out on the ledge meowing for the last half an hour.”
He ran up the stairs toward the woman. “Come here.” He took the fluffy black cat from the woman’s arms. “Awh, I’m sorry, Foxy,” he told the cat.
I stood a few steps below Adam. The woman was wearing a thin robe. She leaned around him and waved. “I’m Stacy, his neighbor.”
“Oh, hi, I’m Charlotte. His friend.”
“It’s late. I’m sorry we woke you, Stacy,” Adam said.
“You can’t forget to close the bathroom window, Adam. Foxy can jump out here.” She pulled a Post-it from her robe pocket. “I wrote you a note to put in the bathroom.”
“Thanks.” He took the note from her and gestured for me to come up. “Come on, let’s go inside.”
I hadn’t noticed before because of all the clutter, but once I was back in his apartment, I realized there were little Post-its on various items throughout his apartment, reminding him to do random things like eat, buy food, and shower. When my grandmother got dementia and we’d go see her in the convalescent home, she would always call me by my mother’s name because she remembered my mom from thirty years ago, but couldn’t remember what she ate for breakfast. We had to put Post-its on pictures around her room to remind her of everyone’s names. She still forgot.
Adam set Foxy down. “I better close the window before I forget.” I picked up the cat. She purred. Adam called back, “That’s Foxy Cleopatra! Get to know each other.”
He had a cat. I always went for guys with dogs. I always thought dog people were more normal, but they’re not. In fact, they’re less normal. One time, George (the panty man) asked me to take his Labrador, Lucy, to the groomer while he was at work. When I picked her up, she was wearing a pink bandana with cherries on it. The groomer told me that Lucy had a fungal infection in her ears and recommended sixty-dollar eardrops and a cup of plain Yoplait with each meal. “You gotta be kidding me! Yogurt, for a dog?” I had said.
“It’s a yeast infection. Like what women get, but in her ears.”
“I’m sure it will run its course,” I had said.
Her smile faded. “Is that what you do when you have a yeast infection? Let it run its course?”
“She’s a dog.”
I unleashed the puppy police with that statement. “How could you be so heartless? That poor animal is relying on you to take care of her.”
I was about to tell the woman it wasn’t even my dog, but I thought she’d probably try to have me arrested for dog-napping. “I don’t have sixty bucks.”
“We take Visa and MasterCard.”
When I told George about the incident, he said I was insensitive. And he never paid me back the sixty bucks. Dog people.
I had a cat named Ginger when I was a kid. He was orange. I named him when I was three, before I knew Ginger was a girl’s name, according to most of the world. Anyway, when I was around eight, a raccoon attacked fierce Ginger. He came walking up our driveway with part of his intestines hanging out, dragging on the concrete. My dad said he’d be fine. No one believed my dad. Ginger somehow managed to climb into the rafters of our garage. I was 99 percent sure he was going there to die, but he didn’t. He spent seven days licking his wounds until he healed himself. Cats are awesome! We had a lot of respect for Ginger after that, even though he was kind of an asshole.
“Oh my god!” Adam slammed the refrigerator door closed and my attention was suddenly directed to him standing in the kitchen, shocked.
I set down Foxy Cleopatra. “What?” I began walking toward the refrigerator.
He stood in front of it, blocking it. “No! You can’t look in there.”
I started feeling sick to my stomach. “What, what is it?” Is it a human head?!
He slowly moved out of the way. “You’re gonna find out eventually.” He looked down at the ground as I reached for the handle. I was trembling. This was suddenly getting very strange.
I opened it and looked in. There was nothing unusual. Adam leaned in, near my ear, and whispered, “Champagne. We haven’t had Champagne tonight.”
“You scared me!” I shouted. I grabbed the bottle and pulled it out.
“What’d you think you’d find in there?”
“You don’t want to know.”
In the kitchen, we ate the giant maple bars and drank Champagne from the bottle.
We were hopped up on sugar and Adam seemed fidgety. “Bathroom break. I’ll be right back,” he said.
“Okay.” He handed me his phone. “Here, it’s hooked up to the speaker up there. You want to put some music on?”
“Sure.”
The picture on the screen saver was of Foxy. Maybe cat people are a little weird, too. Who just hands over their phone like that? He was hiding nothing from me, but he was still a mystery.
I picked Paul Simon, and “Obvious Child” came on. Adam yelled, “Good choice!” from the bathroom. He came out wearing only a white T-shirt and boxers. My mouth fell open in shock.
“What?” he said.
“What happened to your clothes?”
“I took them off.” He squinted, confused. “Why are you dressed like that? It’s the middle of the night.”
I paused for a minute, unsure of what he meant. “This is the same outfit I’ve been wearing all night. How should I be dressed?”
Something flickered in his
eyes. “Sorry, I bet that seemed weird. That was my lame attempt at a joke. Shall we get comfy?”
5. Stranger Things
“What the hell,” I said. I kicked off my shoes, peeled off my jeans, and pulled my shirt over my head. I was standing in a black lace bra and underwear set.
“Wow.”
“Wow?”
“Yeah, wow. By the way, have I told you how beautiful you are?”
I turned up the volume. “No!” I yelled over the loud music. “Tell me again, Adam!”
“You’re insanely beautiful!” he shouted. He pulled me toward him and I was yanking his T-shirt off. He had muscles. If you must have a one-night stand with a strange artist-man who paints murals in your neighborhood and seems kind of weird, muscles help. I moved my fingertips across the ridges on his stomach and up his arms to his defined biceps. He laughed.
“Ticklish?” I said.
He guided my hand to his mouth and pretended to bite my fingertips.
A second later we were dancing like lunatics in front of the big window and then we took turns sliding across the wood floor in our socks. We ate more Chinese food and drank more Champagne and spun each other around until we collapsed into a pile on his bed. Then we were kissing and it wasn’t slow anymore. It was frantic and passionate. We were tugging at each other and rolling from one side of his bed to the other. He was on top of me and I was yanking his boxers off with my toes, pulling them down his butt.
He jolted upright and grabbed my foot. “How are you doing that?” He inspected my feet. “Oh my god!” Holding my foot up, he said, “How are you doing that with these sausage toes?”
“Hey! I like my toes.”
“They’re adorable, but they look like they belong on a fat toddler.”
We were both laughing, but I felt vulnerable, so I sat up. “Let me see your feet.”
“I have beautiful feet,” he said and it was true. The bastard could have been a foot model.
“Damn you.”
“Come here, let me see those little Jimmy Deans.”
“Leave my toes alone!” I tried to scurry off the bed but he caught me. He was sitting on the edge, pulling my arm back. He spun me around and his face was level with my belly. He kissed it, slowly, while running one hand up the inside of my thigh. There was no more talking after that.
He pulled me to straddle him and then he gently unclasped my bra and began kissing my breasts. I arched my back and let my head fall. A moment later, we were completely naked, rolling back onto the bed. I tried to pull him on top of me, but he turned us over again so that I was on top of him. I leaned forward and clicked off the bedside lamp. The light from the street reflected off the ceiling, creating a cool glow in the large loft space.
Remember what I said about one-night stands being awkward? It wasn’t awkward with Adam. Usually teeth clash or heads bump or hands go the wrong way. It’s like when you’re walking down the street and you veer to the right to get out of the way of the person coming toward you, and then they veer to their left, mistakenly, and then a series of awkward jerky movements ensue, making you both feel like jackasses.
It was nothing like that.
At first we were just kissing; I was feeling a tad self-conscious about being naked on top of him. And then he was inside of me, coaxing me to move. “Sit back,” he whispered.
I sat up and let my hair fall down my back. He gripped my hips hard as I began to move above him. He met my movements with ease.
Blissfully, he watched as I moved. My self-consciousness slipped away. I closed my eyes. When I slowed the rhythm, he flipped us over. He hovered over me, full of strength. We were connected, so close, and he was kissing my neck and nibbling at my ear and then his mouth was on mine. He picked up the pace and I could feel my body tingling. I was coming apart, letting go with a stranger. I couldn’t believe how easy he made it all feel. Once there was no stopping it, my back arched off the bed, my neck went rigid, and one quiet “Oh” slipped from my mouth, almost painfully, before I felt myself pulsing all around him.
“Oh god,” he murmured, and then he thrust one last time and collapsed on top of me.
When I opened my eyes finally, he was holding himself above me, staring down.
“What?” I said.
He squinted slightly, as though he were trying to recall something. “How long have we been in love?”
My throat tightened. I felt like I was in love with him, but I didn’t even know him. It was just lust, ecstasy, some weird trick our brains played on us right after sex, but the look on his face was so sweet, sincere, genuine. I reached up and ran my hand through his hair.
“It’s been years now. Five, right?”
“Yeah, I think so, but I’m bad with anniversaries, remember?” He smiled.
We were role-playing and I was into it. Most of the men I dated would have shied away from this type of thing . . . afraid it would lead to something permanent. I wanted to pretend for just one night that we were in love . . . that I was his muse.
We lay in bed next to each other, naked, holding hands, staring up at the ceiling.
“Do you believe in reincarnation?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I guess I believe that our energy is everywhere, even after we leave the physical world. Like our souls leave some residual imprint on the people we knew, or something.”
“Explain.”
I turned toward him, propping my head up on my hand. “Your art, our memories, the memories people have of us . . . it makes us immortal. When you love someone, whether it be your family, friends, partners, whatever, it’s like planting a little seedling of yourself inside of their hearts.”
“I like that,” he said. “Tell me about us. How’d we meet?”
I searched his eyes. “I can’t believe you don’t remember.”
He smiled as if to say, you know I do. “I just want to hear you tell it again. I love the way you tell it.”
“We met at a museum . . . the Getty.” I had to think on my pudgy toes, but I was getting a chance to describe exactly what I wanted. My fantasy.
“The Getty . . . right. Go on,” he said.
“We were both completely mesmerized by that Edvard Munch painting. What is it?”
“The Scream?”
“No, Starry Night,” I said.
“That’s Van Gogh, kitten.”
I reached across him for my phone on the bedside table. “I swear to god, Munch also painted a Starry Night and it’s at the Getty. We met in front of that exact painting.” I Googled it and handed him the phone. He stared at the screen.
“Yes, I remember now. What were you wearing?”
“A red dress. I had my hair up, Audrey Hepburn style.”
“That’s right. And you were staring at the painting for a long time.” He closed his eyes. “I wanted to kiss the back of your neck.”
“You didn’t, though; you just said something absentmindedly like, ‘It’s not as starry as the Van Gogh version.’ ”
He laughed. “Sounds like something I would say.”
“I agreed with you and then you asked me out on a date. I politely declined.”
“How could you?”
“I was playing hard to get.”
“Of course you were.”
“But then you followed me through the whole museum, making silly comments about the artwork. We played I Spy in the Italian Romanticism section. You kept hinting at boobs and penises. I told you to grow up, so you disappeared for a bit and then you found me a little while later, staring at the illuminated manuscripts. You tried to act cultured and sophisticated. You pointed out some crap about the fine brushwork detail and we both started laughing. That’s when you asked me out again and I said yes.”
“And for our first date I took you to—”
“Pink’s Hot Dogs!” I shouted.
“Gross.”
“I know, I was deeply disturbed, but you just kept saying it was an institution.”
“You
know I don’t eat pork, silly,” he said.
“They’re all-beef hot dogs,” I quickly replied.
“After Pink’s, I brought you here and we made love.”
“No.”
“No?”
“You were the perfect gentleman. You drove me home, walked me to the door, and kissed me on the cheek. Then you asked me out on a second date.”
“It’s because I really liked you.”
“I pulled you inside my apartment and had sex with you on my kitchen floor.”
He turned and looked at me with wide, shocked eyes. “You did not.”
“I know, I’m teasing. We ended up going out the next night. And we’ve been together ever since.”
“Didn’t I take you to the Griffith Observatory a couple of months later?” he asked.
“Are you being silly? That’s where you told me you loved me for the first time.”
I expected at some point for him to start laughing like it was all ridiculous, but he didn’t.
“I didn’t forget that. I was just testing you,” he said.
“Remember you were looking into a giant telescope and you pulled away and said, ‘Darn, there’s not enough,’ and then I said ‘What?’ and you said, ‘There aren’t enough stars up there to match the reasons why I love you.’ ”
“God, I’m romantic when I want to be.”
“Yes, you are.”
He leaned over and kissed me. “I’m sure I’ve told you a million times, but I’ll tell you again. Your body is perfect.” He smoothed his hand down my side to my hip as we lay face-to-face.
I traced my finger along his chest muscles across the small tuft of hair. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
“Do you know why I paint?”
“Because you’re damn good at it.”
He laughed once. “No, that’s not it.”
I pulled the sheet off the bed and wrapped it around my body. I went to the window and bent near a stack of canvases propped against the glass. “You painted this one because you liked the color of this woman’s hair.” The woman in the painting was standing in front of Adam’s building.
“Maybe,” he called out from the bed.
“You must enjoy it?”
“I do.”