Run Catch Kiss

by Amy Sohn

  After the flick, Sara and I went to the bar next door to the movie theater. As I tried to signal the bartender, I spotted the man of my dreams. Standing catty-corner to my quivering kitty, talking to a bunch of nondescript hangers-on, was Nick Fenster in the flesh.

  I squeezed Sara’s arm. “Ten o’clock,” I said.

  “He’s staring right at you,” she said.

  “Are you fucking with me?”

  “Would I fuck with you about a matter as grave as this?”

  I shot a glance at him. She had not been fucking with me. Out of the legions of lipsticked, bulimic groupies in the bar, Nick Fenster had chosen to look at me. But I couldn’t play it too easy. I turned my face away and ordered two Jamesons. Sara slipped me a Camel Filter. She knew I was in serious need of mystique, and nothing gives a dame mystique like a death wish.

  As she proceeded to tell me how weird she felt about having fucked her ex-boyfriend Jon again the night before, I began to grow supremely conscious of how I looked listening to her. Aware of my every eyebrow raise, nod, and ash flick. I could feel Nick’s eyes a-laying on me. Just as Sara was getting unnecessarily explicit, I saw him leave the hangers-on. He seemed to be heading straight for us. Moments later I was face-to-face with his gaunt, sunken cheeks.

  “Hi,” he drawled. One of his trademarks was his deep-fried voice. He sounded like a slowed-down record player all the time.

  “Hi, Nick,” I said like I knew him. “Great movie.”

  “You liked it?”

  “I loved it. But the seats in the theater were so uncomfortable! My ass is killing me!” He nodded, smiled halfheartedly, and began walking away.

  Sara hooked him back, though. “Nick!” she called after him. He ambled back over. “There was something about the film I didn’t get.”

  “What?”

  “The sheep in the film were all dead before they got killed. The hunters never shot any real live sheep.”

  “I know,” he said, rolling his eyes. “That’s why the last line is Frank saying, ‘Is that a live sheep over there?’ He was spotting a live sheep. Did you catch that?”

  “Oh, I caught it,” said Sara. I hadn’t caught it, because I’d spent most of the movie craning my neck to the balcony behind me to see if he was sitting in the VIP section, but I nodded like I had caught it. I waited for him to say something else, but without so much as a “Catch you later” he slipped out the door.

  “That was so weird,” I told Sara. “He came up to us, but then he acted like we were annoying him. It was so passive-aggressive.”

  “I know,” she said. “He’s so desperate for attention he approaches his own groupies before they approach him, but he’s so embarrassed by his desperation that he has to make sure he’s the one who leaves first.”

  She went back to dissecting her relationship with Jon, but it was hard for me to listen. All I could think about was Nick, Nick, Nick. My tall, emaciated smoker. My Renaissance man. His natty hair and bony, bony knees.

  On our first date I’d so impress him with my intellect and wit that he’d realize how different I was from the fake-titted supermodels he’d dated before. He’d see that what he really wanted was a real girl, with a zaftig body and things to say, and instantly fall hook, line, and sinker. I’d teach him world history, reinstill his faith in Judaism, and give him a reason to live. The sex would be the hottest I’d ever known. I’d come every time. But I’d rest easy knowing the main reason he loved me was for my brain. My innocent background and Ivy degree would be the perfect complement to the rocky road of his childhood and his years in the school of hard knocks.

  He’d put me in all his films and they’d all begin winning the biggest awards. He’d be the Cassavetes to my Rowlands, the Bergman to my Ullman, the Godard to my Seberg. After several years, though, his balding and erection difficulties would begin to get on my nerves. I’d realize that what I needed was a guy my own age, and I’d file for divorce—coldly, calmly, and without any warning.

  He would fall into a deep depression and make lots of movies that were bad because I wasn’t in them. But I’d keep acting in lots of movies that were good because Nick hadn’t directed them. I’d write a book called Leaving Nick and everyone would buy it. He’d write one called Losing Ariel but no one would buy it. He would become known to the world as Ariel Steiner’s ex-husband and have to support himself with sporadic appearances on tabloid TV, where he’d discuss the misery of having been loved and left by such a mankiller. I’d go on to conquer the world in every conceivable way, grateful that he had helped me back when I was just a nobody, yet aware that I could have done it all without him.

  When I turned seventy-five, I would receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Oscars. “You worship me, you really worship me,” I’d tell my cloying minions, thanking God, my parents, and everyone who helped me along the way—except Nick. On my way out of the ceremony a wizened, geriatric hunchback would hobble up to me and my twenty-five-year-old personal trainer/boyfriend, Lothario, and whisper my name. The hunchback’s stench would be nauseating but I would not vomit because I had spent so many years working to help smelly hunger victims in Third World countries.

  As the old man came closer, I would see that it was Nick. Gaunt and pathetic, shit stains on his pants, saliva dripping down his face. “I still love you, Ariel,” he’d croak. I’d dash into the car with Lothario, quickly hitting the automatic door lock. Suddenly Nick would spasm in pain, cry out my name again, stagger forward, and drop dead on the hood of my limo.

  “Morty,” I’d call to my chauffeur, opening the partition. “Put on the wipers.”

  As we watched Nick get swished off my windshield, Lothario and I would smile ruefully, and as the limo pulled away I’d look out the window at Nick’s crippled, dead body on the sidewalk and cluck, “Poor, poor thing.” Lothario would pat my thigh lovingly. I’d give his huge Italian member a hearty squeeze and he would lift my gown and eat me out vigorously and expertly until I erupted in the best orgasm of my life, or at least of my seventies.

  When I got home from the bar, I took out the white pages. I didn’t expect Nick to be listed, but he was. There was no address, but there was a number. I looked at my watch. It was well past midnight, but I knew he was a night owl and severely doubted I’d wake him.

  I dialed. A machine picked up, with that unmistakable voice. He said I could press pound if I wanted to leave a fax. I imagined him lying naked next to me, whispering, “Press pound, baby. Press pound.”

  I kept my message brief. “Hi, Nick. I met you at the movie. I told you my ass hurt. I was wearing a white dress with bell sleeves and a bell bottom.” I left my number, hung up, and got in bed. Right as I was drifting off, the phone rang.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “No,” I said, trying to sound relaxed. “Not at all. I’m surprised you called. I didn’t expect you to call me back.”

  “I try to call everyone back.”

  That was a little pretentious, but I tried not to let it turn me off.

  “So you liked the movie, huh?”

  “I sure did,” I lied. “It was funny. Why’d you come up to me tonight?”

  “ ’Cause I thought you were cute.” Those were the words I’d been creaming to hear.

  “But why’d you walk away when I mentioned how badly my ass hurt?”

  “To stop myself from making a dumb joke. Tell me more about your bottom.”

  “Well . . . once I mooned somebody. This boyfriend of mine in college. We were in his dorm room and he was watching 60 Minutes. I wanted him to pay attention to me so I stood right in front of the TV and mooned him. I like mooning. But people think it’s weird when a woman moons. Funny when a guy does and gross when a girl does.”

  “I always thought it was the opposite—nasty when guys do it, funny when girls do.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Listen, how would you like to get together and talk about mooning some more?”

  “All
right. Come to my apartment Friday at midnight. I’ll be in the studio till then, recording a movie sound track. I live at eighty-nine Lispenard Street, buzzer number five.”

  “What should I wear?”

  “Wear that white dress again.”

  “What kind of underwear should I wear?”

  “Something see-through.”

  “Gee, Nick, the closest thing I have to see-through underwear would be no underwear.”

  He was quiet a second, and then he murmured, “Wow.”

  “What?”

  “Now you got me horny.”

  “Really?” I smiled gleefully. “So how’s your shotgun, Nick?”

  “It, uh . . . it really is a shotgun now.”

  “I’m glad,” I said. “Well, it’s getting late. I should go to sleep. But I don’t want you to go to sleep right away. OK?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think you know what I mean.”

  He chuckled and said, “You’re a good kid.”

  I hung up and threw myself down on my futon. I couldn’t believe it. Right at that very moment, Nick Fenster had his dick in his hand thinking of me. There had always been this huge gap between my fantasy life and my real life, and suddenly the gap was closing. I turned over onto my pillow and visions of Nick fucking me from behind on the back of a dead sheep jumping over a fence danced in my head.

  •

  Friday night I changed into the white dress and went to his apartment. I wore underwear because Sara told me to. “It’s the hot-and-cold thing men go crazy for,” she said. “Gratify him in one way but not in the other.”

  Nick’s apartment was a fifth-floor walk-up, so I was winded by the time I got there. He opened the door. “I thought I was gonna die before I made it here,” I panted.

  “You’re too melodramatic,” he said. It wasn’t the most auspicious beginning.

  The place was immaculately decorated, with a slanted ceiling, a black leather couch, and tons of fancy recording equipment. As I looked around the room he sprawled out on the couch and whined, “Jesus, I’m exhausted.” I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or himself, and then I realized he might not know the difference.

  “Why are you exhausted?”

  “I’ve been up late every night this week recording this sound track. Fred Wilson is such a prick.”

  “Who’s he?” I said, taking off my coat and sitting next to him.

  “The director of the movie. He did that indie film Breaking the Maiden.”

  “I loved that movie. Why’s he a prick?”

  “He looks over my shoulder the whole time we’re trying to record. I can’t work under those conditions. He reins in all my creativity. Wanna hear what we worked on tonight?”

  “Sure.”

  He got a remote control off one of his shelves and jerked it toward the DAT player. Soft acoustic guitar music came out. It was pleasant. “So, what do you think?”

  “I like it.”

  “Do you know my music?”

  “Yes. I have all your albums. I first saw you play at Chaise Lounge in November ninety-one.”

  “That was a lousy show.”

  “No it wasn’t! As soon as you sang the opening line of “Pop Goes the Cherry,” I knew I would meet you someday. Thank me, spank me, wank me, yank me. Let me kiss your cute pink hole. Lay me, slay me, pay me, weigh me—’ ”

  “Stop it! I hate that song. I can’t even listen to it anymore.”

  “But it’s one of your best!”

  “I don’t even keep the CD in my apartment. Bad karma.” He upped the volume on the player. “This is the music for the opening credits. The shot is a sunrise.” He propped his legs on my lap but kept his head turned toward the DAT. He didn’t seem to want to acknowledge that he was making a play for me. It was the same dynamic he’d exhibited in the bar when he’d come over to Sara and me, then left as though we’d been bothering him.

  But who was I to complain? A rock star, albeit a minor one, had invited me to his apartment—and I was busy psychoanalyzing him.

  “You hungry?” he said.

  “A little.”

  “I’m starving. My assistant was supposed to leave food in the refrigerator but he forgot. I gotta get rid of him. He’s more of a harm than a help. There’s a great oyster place on Greenwich we can order from, but they don’t deliver. You’d have to take a cab over, have the cabby wait outside the restaurant, and pick up the food.”

  If Nick had been a friend, the I-buy, you-fly thing wouldn’t have bothered me in the slightest. But because he paid someone to do precisely the kind of thing he was asking me to do, I didn’t want to do it. It made me feel like a hired whore.

  “Why don’t we go together?” I asked.

  “I’m exhausted, honey. I gotta take a bath. If you don’t want to go, that’s OK. It just means we can’t eat anything.”

  I didn’t like that “honey,” but I knew the food would be good, and plus, there was no way he was going to get it himself. Besides, it wasn’t like he was asking me to walk there. All I had to do was hail a cab. I was being way too sensitive. I told him I’d go.

  He picked up the phone and ordered oysters, lobster, and chicken, with rice and greens, mashed potatoes, and French fries. Then he stood up, yawned, and said, “I’m gonna get in the bath. You should leave in ten minutes.”

  I followed him into the bathroom. He ran the water and began to strip. His body was long and lean, not too muscular, not too skinny. I had masturbated to the thought of this moment on and off for the past five years, but he took his clothes off so casually and quickly that I didn’t get turned on. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to work. He was supposed to strip sexily, slowly, staring at me all the while, then carry me to his bed, play me like a Stradivarius, and tell me afterward that it was much more than sex; he’d fallen head over heels.

  He opened his medicine chest, took out some Rogaine, and squeezed a few drops of it onto his bald spot.

  “Does that stuff work?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t make it come back, but it definitely stops the loss.”

  “Do you worry about the side effects? I’ve heard it can be bad for your heart.”

  “I shot heroin into my veins for eight years, sweetheart. I’m not too worried about the dangers of Rogaine.” Suddenly the thought of sleeping with him seemed a tad less appealing.

  He slid himself in the tub and I knelt beside him and watched him soap up. “Your penis looks like a little boy’s,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, turning to me and glaring.

  “Well, it’s so wiggly, and cute. It reminds me of a boy’s. Not that it’s small. Not at all. I just mean it reminds me of a boy’s . . . personalitywise.”

  “Have you seen a lot of little boys’ penises?” he growled.

  “No. Um, maybe I should go get the food.”

  “There’s a hundred bucks and a set of keys on the kitchen counter. Lock the door behind you before you go. I don’t want to get ax-murdered.”

  “I don’t think there are that many ax murderers hanging out in Tribeca.”

  “Neither do I, but if there’s just one, I bet I’m first on his list.”

  •

  When I got back to the apartment, Nick was still in the bath. “Put the food on some plates!” he yelled. “I’ll be out in a minute!”

  As I was setting the plates down on the coffee table he came in, wearing a white terry-cloth robe. He looked huge and manly in that robe and I wished the night would suddenly turn from disappointing to exciting.

  I handed him his food and we dug in simultaneously. The oysters slid smoothly down my throat, the potatoes were fluffed and garlicky, the chicken juicy and rich. But I knew it would make a pretty sad statement if my only good memory of the night was the meal.

  When we finished eating he propped his legs up on my lap again. I leaned over to kiss him. He jerked his head away. Did every guy in the city over thirty have a kissing issue—or just the o
nes I went out with?

  “You’re like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman,” I said.

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “She never kisses her johns, because if she kisses them she might get vulnerable and fall in love with them.”

  “I’m not afraid of being vulnerable. I just don’t like kissing.”

  “Oh,” I said, then darted in again.

  “Now, why would you do that, right after I said I don’t like it?”

  “To change your mind?”

  He laughed scornfully, reached his hand into the V neck of my dress, and fondled my tit. “You have nice breasts.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to enjoy the feeling of his hand, but it wasn’t easy without the smooch. It felt mechanical and disconnected. Maybe he would change his lip policy if I got him more excited. I put my hand on his cock and worked it. It got hard, but not completely. We kept making out in this halfhearted style, my hand around his cock, his hand in my dress, our faces three feet apart, until he pulled away and said, “I’m exhausted. I gotta sleep. You should go home, honey.”

  That was it? A good meal and a copped feel? No candlelight, no lovemaking, no downtown celebrity gossip? No revelation of the deep-rooted self-hatred and insecurity that came with fame? No “Thanks for getting the food”? The evening had been a disappointment in every conceivable way. At least on the phone I’d felt like I’d had some sway. I had turned him on—all with the sound of my voice. I wanted it to be like that again. I wanted to call the wad shots.

  I stood up and put on my coat and we walked to the door. “Thank you so much for having me, Nick,” I said. “I had a great time.”

  “No problem.”

  “It’s such a shame that you have to go to sleep, though,” I said slowly.

  “Why?”

  “There are so many things I would have loved to have done with you.”