by Laurie Graff
The sun had moved on past the Golden Hour as the party moved into its final phases, winding down while people got ready to leave. I wondered what would happen now. My assumption was that Doug would ask if he could call me, take my number and adios! I was anxious to wrap it up and get going.
“Looks like it’s just about ending,” I said, watching Doug polish off the last of the delectable butter-cream cake. Cue. Cue. Doug, pick up your cue!
“It’s still early,” he said, eating and sipping whatever it was he was sipping now. Doug may not have been into these things, but I had discovered he sure was into parties and he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Well, I was thinking of heading on home.”
“It’s still early. You don’t want to go yet, do you?”
“Well, I can hang for a while I guess...I mean, if you feel like it,” I said, consoling myself that it was okay not to sound like a grown-up in these situations because these situations were not very grown-up.
“Stay,” he said.
He talked me into it.
“Okay, but walk me to say goodbye to the aunts.”
We made our way over to Rhoda and Becky, who both winked at me and said they had remembered Doug from when he was a little boy, or at least they thought they had. Then out of nowhere, Stanley spoke.
“I’m going to drive this young lady home,” he said, pointing to me. “I have my Caddy here. You’ll come with us, Karrie.”
“Oh, thanks so much, but I’m staying a little longer.”
“I’m going to take her home,” Doug said, triggering six female eyes to flip over to his.
“Do you have a car?” asked Stanley.
“I’ll take her home in a cab. I’ll see that she’s okay.”
I was okay now. I was better than okay.
The catering staff had started stacking chairs. They rolled the big, round tables to the sides of the huge, now almost empty ballroom. Everyone from the wedding party was outside on the terrace. We joined the open shirts, ties in pockets, sandals in hands, and the lighthearted laughter that indicated a party well partied. Brooke and Mitch looked happy.
“She’s shivering,” Doug explained, pointing to me. I wore Doug’s jacket over my bare shoulders as it had gotten colder. “It’s time to get this girl home.”
My eyes were shining when I hugged my newly wedded friends. I collected a dozen white tulips as we made our way through the hall and out the front entrance, exiting through the same parking lot I had entered, with great trepidation, hours earlier.
Doug beckoned the last yellow cab at the end of the taxi line, and opened the door so we could climb in. The driver sped up the West Side Highway, while I finally allowed myself to get drunk on this after-party with Doug. We both leaned back against the upholstery, our heads leaning in towards each other’s, almost touching, while our legs, looser, fell next to each other’s at the knees.
“Some people are meeting up later at the Soho Grand,” said Doug. “You want to come?”
“Oh. I would,” I said. “But tonight I have a show. Another time?”
“I want to come see your show. I want to talk to you about men and women. I want to understand it.”
Now that we were here, in the cab, away from the wedding, it didn’t sound as ominous. Maybe the Fox really did want to understand. Maybe he just really wanted to do better. And maybe he wanted to do better with me.
I breathed him in amidst the scent of the flowers that lay across my lap and fell on to the backseat of the cab. He tilted his face towards mine, and kissed me. His lips were warm and the kiss was short and full. We broke, but not away from each other, and smiled.
“I believe in very traditional male/female roles,” he said, pulling me back into him by gently and seductively pulling me by my hair.
“I believe in them, too,” I said. I did. I do.
“Would you like to have dinner with me?” he asked.
When?
“I’d love it,” I said, as the cab headed up Seventy-ninth Street to Broadway.
When??
“I’ll call you during the week,” he said, releasing me from his touch, but not until the taxi deposited me in front of my building, just off Amsterdam on West Seventy-eighth. The cab stopped but the engine didn’t.
“I don’t have a card or anything to give you.”
“Me, either,” I said. “You have a pen?”
Doug pulled one out of his jacket pocket while I got some receipt paper from the driver. He kissed me while I wrote down my name and number. Then I turned and kissed him back. I really kissed him. God, how I had missed romance, and was always surprised and unleashed by its sensations.
“Okay,” he said, breaking away. “I’ll get embarrassed in front of the driver.”
“Oops,” I said, flushed, embarrassed myself. I handed him a tulip. “Here.”
“Thank you.” He grinned. “I’ll call you during the week.”
“Great,” I said, gathering up the tulips, a little too slowly. “Thank you.”
I got myself out of the cab, though not quite as gracefully as I would have liked. He smiled from the backseat, and I smiled back from the curb. Holding on to the pink raincoat, the unused umbrella, the beaded purse, the tulips and the promise of Doug’s call.
Three
If you can’t keep your frog, see if you can give it away, as there will most likely be someone, somewhere, who wants your unwanted frog.
The June Before
I removed my slightly sweaty T-shirt in the fitting room and waited a minute to cool down before taking the dress off the hook and trying it on. The pavement outside was hot and sticky, and this first Sunday in June seemed to promise one helluva hot summer. Beads of sweat had collected under my hairline, and the silver bracelets on my right arm jangled as I twisted my hair and raised it up behind my head, as if someone were standing behind me with an electric fan. The fitting room was in the back of the small and elite boutique, with only a purple velvet tasseled curtain shielding it for privacy.
Charlie and I had been taking a walk when he pulled me over to a dress rack in front of the store deciding whether or not he wanted to mark it as his territory. When we got there it was clear we had landed on mine. I’d often drift in and out of Truffles, doing more looking than buying. The clothes were chic, the prices steep.
But the sales rack had beckoned. The shiny metal rack on Columbus Avenue was filled with clothes marked down so low they were practically free. I plucked off four items like I was a contestant in the Supermarket Sweep of sportswear. Facing them, now, in the fitting room I felt my competitive shopping gene emerge. I knew I was going to get lucky.
It would be about time, I thought, pulling the first item off the hook and unclasping it from the hanger. Beyond the curtain I heard the French salesgirl cooing.
“Can I give him a biscuit?” she called to me.
“Sure.” Charlie had every vendor in the neighborhood wrapped around his four paws. This dog would never starve. In his worst-case scenario he would be at a highway exit wearing a sign that said Will Dance For Food.
I slipped on the dress, my heart beating a bit faster as I reached behind me to zip it up. I took one step back in the tiny room to get a better view, and in that second I knew it was a winner.
Strapless with a velvet ribbon under the bust line, hanging straight down with a ruffle falling over the knee, the thing that made it unique was the fabric. Wool. A sexy, strapless, burgundy and brown winter plaid. It would be perfect for some holiday party. Maybe even for Thanksgiving. With a little cashmere cardigan casually tossed over the shoulders. I could just picture myself going home with him to meet the folks, helping out in the kitchen. She has such style, they’d all say while I graciously scooped the cranberry sauce out of the can and decoratively arranged it on small seasonal plates.
I would buy this dress. Why, this dress in my closet was practically a guarantee that the next six months would be better than the first. This dress encompassed the optimi
sm of last New Year’s when I had looked ahead hopefully, feeling the warmth of this season penetrating through me, while tasting the texture of a passion that was waiting. Right! After a washout of a winter and not much of a spring, the only summer warmth was the city sweat, and the only texture was this wool against my skin.
Okay. From now on I wasn’t going to just visualize. I would put together every detail, construct the big picture. When I would think ahead I’d be visualizing myself in an incredible designer outfit. Surely a girl in a great outfit had someplace great to go. If you buy it he will come. Won’t he?
Charlie was chomping on a biscuit when I walked over to the register to pay for the dress, skirt, slacks and sweater that would sit tight all summer and be waiting in my closet come fall.
“I remember you from last week,” she said, taking my Visa card before ringing up the stuff. She wrapped each item in lavender tissue paper, and placed them in the Truffles shopping bag with the long purple string handles that made the bag itself a definite keeper.
“I’m addicted to the sales rack,” I confessed, thinking that as addictions went this one was inexpensive and even improved my appearance.
Not wanting to go right home, we headed over to the little park outside the dog run by the Museum of Natural History for some quiet time on the park bench. But no sooner were we settled, a big young woman sat down next to us with her big white Bijon who yipped and yapped at Charlie.
“Chaos, stop!” she yelled. “Chaos, quiet!” she hollered, as a yappy Chaos ran over to pounce on my dog. Startled, I dropped the leash allowing Charlie to pull a Houdini by slipping in between the bars of the black iron fence that wrapped around the garden. Charlie, now in his own private park, twirled in the grass taunting Chaos, who had put his face up to the fence to squeeze his way through. Except Chaos couldn’t fit.
“Ohhhh...” Chaos’s owner emitted a long sad sound as if she were going to cry. “You have to get your dog out of there. Chaos will be so jealous because he can’t fit. I can’t do that to his self-image.” She pointed to herself. “Chaos and I suffer from similar insecurities.”
You had to wonder how Chaos got his name.
But I suddenly seemed to have plenty of my own when back in my apartment, sorting through the mail, I opened an envelope with a Save-the-Date card for Brooke and Mitch’s wedding that set a panic right through me. It was going to be next June. Next June. In a year.
I thought about running back to Truffles and splurging on some magnificent dress in order to create one infallible visualization to absolutely ensure I’d have a great date for the wedding next year. But my pragmatic side took over as I had to convince myself today’s purchases would still be in style this fall. Those people who always tell you that things never go out of style are wrong. They do.
I took another hit when I opened a letter from the accounting department at my talent agency expecting a check for the next cycle’s holding fee, but instead received a release notice telling me that my Yippee Yi Yogurt commercial had gone kaput. So much for the splurge. So much for anything. Losing the income on a national commercial before its expiration was bad news. So bad that I couldn’t even think about it, folding the letter and only hoping the next envelope would be better. It was a card, but my heart dropped when it turned out to be a belated birthday card from my most recent bad and banal blind date.
Written in tiny script after the Hallmark message was, “Is this what you want? Happy Birthday, Stewy.”
“It’s always the ones you don’t want to hear from that remember,” they say. I looked around my kitchen to silence this negative chorus, but it was hard to locate as it existed in my head.
My downstairs neighbor had insisted for months that I meet her boss from Yonkers, Stewy Stein.
“He’s so polite, he’s forty-five, recently divorced. He likes restaurants and movies and sports and ballet,” she said, pronouncing the word ballet by putting heavy emphasis on the second syllable making it sound more like a trendy dessert I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to try. “And this is the best. He looks exactly like Tom Selleck.”
“Really?” I found this only slightly incredible. “With or without the moustache?”
“Both. Except better! Better than Tom Selleck! I see you in and out of the building with these guys and, I don’t have to tell you Karrie, nothing works out for you. But wait till you meet Stewy. He’s super.”
“Well, I’m not sure it’s such a good idea, Faye. I mean me and your boss? Me and Stewy Stein?”
“You’re really being close-minded and I thought you were so open,” said Faye, who mainly knew me from our lobby dissertations of our favorite soap opera, All My Problems. “I thought you really believed in getting out there,” she said in the elevator the fifth time this came up.
What’s in a name? Call me shallow, but whatever was in his already told me stay home. Albeit for the stage, I had changed my name from Klein to Kline, and I just didn’t think it would ever work out with me and someone named Stewy Stein.
* * *
“So Faye says you like restaurants and movies and the ballet,” Stewy had said on the phone, also putting heavy emphasis on the second syllable leading me to believe if you spoke to anyone in that office they would all pronounce it the same way. Perhaps they had a group subscription to American BaLay Theater.
Stewy and I had met and gone out. He suggested an Italian place in the village that sounded nice. When I told him it was lovely he asked, “Is this what you want?” He told me about the cardboard box business and when I told him about being an actress he asked, “Is this what you want?” Stewy had been divorced five years and I said I’d never been married, which prompted him to ask, “Is this what you want?” At which point I told him yes, yes it was exactly what I wanted, and then Stewy told me his marriage had ended because whatever he did he could never please his wife.
A week later when Stewy called to ask me out, I politely conveyed the message that I didn’t quite think we were a fit.
“So maybe we are a fit? Is that what you mean?” he asked.
“Well, Stewy. In truth I would have to say no.”
“You women. You don’t know what you want,” he said, hanging up the phone, his confusion countering my relief.
And now this birthday card. Well, I didn’t have to respond, did I? There was no law that said I had to go out with Stewy Stein. With great annoyance I revisited the scenario I had tried to avoid in the first place, thankfully interrupted by the ringing of the phone.
“Hello, Missy,” said Fred when I finally picked up on the fourth ring. “Am I interrupting something?”
“Fred...! I need pork chops.”
Fred and I had met twenty years ago in acting class. Early on, we were rehearsing a scene for an actor’s showcase and we couldn’t get it right. We took a break and baked pork chops. When we went back to work we were brilliant. Or so we thought. Now, whenever the going gets tough, the tough get pork chops.
“Eat in or take out?” asked Fred, with a new lilt in his voice. “What are you doing later?”
“Watching the Tony Awards. With you. Hey, you didn’t call me back,” I said. “You’re coming over. Right? I’m having a really shitty day, and—”
“Step on the brakes! We’re doing the Tonys. But not on TV. We’re going in person. Save all questions for later. I have two tickets and a tux. Do something fabulous and formal with yourself and I’ll pick you up at six,” he said before abruptly hanging up the phone, this new Tony version of Fred.
I left the mail on the kitchen counter moving directly into my room to rummage through my closet to get ready for the night. The Tonys! Is this what you want? You bet.
Except there was nothing fabulous in my closet to do anything with. I went through it for the third time, examining and reexamining every item of clothing as if I was expecting one piece to step up and take center stage, if for no other reason than to get out of the closet.
It didn’t.
At five-t
hirty I sat in the living room, hair washed and blown, makeup fresh, jewelry adorned, wearing a bra, panties, shoes and no dress. By five-forty-five my Fairy Godmother had not arrived. At five-fifty I went back into my room to see if anything new had entered my closet.
It hadn’t.
I tried on the maid-of-honor dress I had worn to Jane’s wedding for the third time. It was a long, lacey platinum capped sleeved A-line dress. Sweet, simple and simply out of style. But it looked like the only option. As I pulled the dress over my head, my arms got caught inside both sets of threads that attached the sewn-in slip to both shoulders of the dress. I did not realize this until I looked into the full-length mirror and saw myself wearing only the slip, the lacey rest of the dress hanging over my shoulders, behind me. It was six p.m. And the buzzer rang.
* * *
The cab shot down Central Park South, making a right on Seventh Avenue. Knowing that Radio City Music Hall would be mobbed with reporters, cameras and onlookers, Fred asked the driver to stop when we got to Fiftieth Street. I reached into my purse, but Fred pushed my hand out of the way as he reached into his pocket to pay. Then he gallantly glided out the door to hold it open for me while he extended his right hand across to mine and escorted me out.
“What’s going on? You turn into Fred Astaire?” I said, really enjoying the attention as I looked down to make sure I didn’t get the heel of my shoe caught in a pothole.
“I thought we’d take the bus here, but when I picked you up, Karrie, you looked so beautiful, I couldn’t do it. You deserve the star treatment,” he said, extending his right arm to be linked inside my left while we headed down the block to Radio City. “I thought you left me a message that you had nothing to wear. Where did this little number drop down from? The sky?”
“Just about,” I said, truly elated how it had come together. When the buzzer rang, I whipped around and ran to the door causing the dress to get caught on a hook on the wall behind me. As I opened the door, I discovered I was decked out in a shiny platinum slip dress!
