Since neither of those have panned out, I scan to the bottom of the list.
Private Events
Teach a course
Weddings
Back to Wall Street
Returning to finance isn’t something I’d even considered a possibility after quitting my job last year. That’s how I know I’ve exhausted every option worth listing. I can’t go lower than slinking back to a career that almost suffocated me to death. And I won’t. Maybe a year of vainly trying to make a name for myself has been discouraging, but it hasn’t killed my hope completely.
I cross it off the list, and weddings too. They remind me of things better left forgotten.
Teaching?
I’ve taught my daughter a few things throughout her short, eight-year existence. The proper ratio of cereal to milk. How to swap out dopey white shoelaces for neon ones. The most efficient way to locate Waldo. Those are the easy things. I’ve got my work cut out for me in the more important departments. Can I make her understand that marriage is forever, even though she’s just lived through my divorce? That loving someone can never be a mistake, even though I’ve fucked it up twice?
No, I’m not meant to stand in front of a classroom. I’m not sure I can teach adults how to take pictures anyway. I have a degree in photography, so I’ve got the technical stuff covered. But art is more than a skill to be acquired—it’s communicating emotion, and I’m not equipped to teach anyone how to feel, especially since I’ve been the opposite of inspired lately. Every time something stirs in me, I’m reminded of how much I risked for inspiration last year. And how wrong I was about Sadie, the woman I thought was my soul mate.
I skip that option but leave it on the list. Some things have to be last resorts.
My phone vibrates.
We’re ready for you. Meet me at the listing on 28th & 10th Ave. 15 minutes.
I flip the notebook closed so quickly, my pen rolls off the side of the table. They call, I come. It’s my second time working with a realtor. I was referred to her, Liz, by another agent. Getting in the real estate circuit could mean steady work, so I don’t delay.
I feel around for the pen, but my hand hits something bigger. Something smooth. Sturdy. I pick up a well-worn, dark-tan leather book secured by long straps tied into a bow. It’s a journal, the kind that’s twice the size it used to be, pages swollen with life experiences. My ex has a few of these from high school. Boys, summer vacations, unfair-parent rants, and more boys. She’d wanted me to read them, but I’d only managed one flowery, overwritten description of the Trevi Fountain. I never went near them again.
This journal’s more substantial, though. The cover has paled and creased where the spine’s been bent. These pages have been visited over and over. It almost looks important, as if it doesn’t hold mindless streams of consciousness.
I inhale the musky leather before I realize it probably belongs to the girl next to me, and she might not appreciate a stranger smelling her things. Not that she’d notice. She’s buried under headphones, her eyes trained on her laptop, her table covered in loose papers. I tap her on the shoulder, and she glares at me. I hold up the book. “Yours?”
She shakes her head and returns to the screen. A few people look over at me. When nobody claims it, I untie the bow. A journal this worn and loved is bound to have a return address printed on the inside. I peel back the cover. The first page makes no introduction, no apology. There’s no “dear diary” printed across the top, no “this journal belongs to.” Just neat, girlish cursive.
Give me your fuck.
Split me down the middle with it.
My face warms. Without thinking, I read it again. This isn’t some banal musing on Italian art. This is intimate. Too intimate for a stranger’s eyes. I continue down the page. The beautiful penmanship breaks down quickly, bleeding into barely legible scrawl. Trying to make it out feels even more intrusive, but I can’t stop. The leather becomes less pleasant in my hands. Sticky. Hot. I turn the page.
Own me with your fingers. Trace the aches on my chest, touch the words it hurts me to say, press the exposed nerves around my heart until you hear my begging in your dreams.
My throat is thick, as if I’ve swallowed something I shouldn’t have. Beneath the text is a simple sketch of a man’s hands holding up a nude, ragdoll-like girl by her waist. Wide-eyed, her lips are parted, her cheeks pink—the only color in the photo.
I was happily yours until you fucked off.
The poetry in her words is gone, but the rawness strikes me in the gut. Just one sentence describes what Sadie left me with a year ago—a loving hate. Sweet, searing memories. The ache of desire mixed with the gut-churn of brutal rejection.
When I slam the book shut, I’m breathing hard. I’m going to be late to meet a client I can’t afford to piss off. I stick the journal in my bag and leave the coffee shop. I should turn it in to a barista, but my heart’s pounding, palms are sweating—things I haven’t felt since Sadie. Fucking her, wanting to fuck her, watching her return to her husband—my reaction was always the same, physical.
I don’t exactly enjoy ripping open old wounds, but I need this journal in my possession. Right now, the words inside it belong to me.
I meet my new client at a building between Tenth and Eleventh Avenue. Commercial gigs weren’t exactly what I had in mind when I left Wall Street. I’d opted to shoot now and aim later, so to speak. But between child support, alimony, and renting a two-bedroom apartment in the city, I can’t be picky.
Liz looks about my age, with dyed red hair and frown lines that give the impression she’s permanently stressed. She lets me into the freshly-staged apartment. “You look just like the photo on your website,” she says. “Most people don’t, as if I’d hire or not hire someone just based on their face.” She looks at my hair. It gets a lot of female attention, always has. There’s a ton of it. “I’ve got girlfriends who’d kill for that golden color,” she says. “What’s the name of it?”
Since I moved to the city over a decade ago, I’m always getting weird questions about my hair, like whether it’s all my own or where I get it done. My senior year of high school, I was voted best hair. And smile. And biggest flirt. The last one surprised me. I never intended to flirt, but I liked to make girls smile. Growing up, I appreciated when a simple compliment could reverse my mom’s mood.
Liz is smiling now, even though I’ve hardly said a word.
She has me take photos of the kitchen and living areas from every angle. The apartment is a new development in West Chelsea that boasts views of both The Highline and the Hudson. The kind of place I might’ve come to meet a client when I worked on Wall Street. And here I am, meeting a client.
Eventually, we end up in the master. “Make sure to get the bed,” she says, hovering behind me. “They did a good job on it, don’t you think?”
“Sure.” She sounds excited, so I spend extra time on it.
“People are very particular about where they sleep. I once showed an apartment for two months without so much as a nibble. I change the bedding and bam—got an offer the next day.”
“Let’s get the balcony,” I suggest.
“We aren’t done in here.” She sits on the edge of the mattress, running a manicured hand over the comforter. “Come.”
I wipe my temple on my sleeve. It’s stuffy in here and reeks of fresh paint. “I’m working.”
She undoes a button at her throat. “Then take my picture.”
I’ve taken many photos the last year, none of which have amounted to anything. I might’ve lost the ability when I lost Sadie. I remember her eyes, richly purple, when I stepped into the hallway of my new apartment building and met her eyes. The gaze of a woman who’d become much more than a neighbor. Our first night together, we’d gotten caught in the rain. I’d photographed her in my apartment. Her back arched against my then-wife’s green velvet couch. Sadie’s wet hair stuck to the cushion as her tits pointed to the ceiling. My lens had loved all of her. I hav
en’t looked at the photos since. She’s not mine to look at. That intimacy is reserved for her husband.
Like bullets, the words hurtle through me.
Give me your fuck. Split me down the middle with it.
“I can’t,” I tell Liz.
She frowns, those lines deepening in her face, signaling her disappointment. Turning her down’ll probably cost me future jobs. It’s been a while since I’ve been with anyone, but I crave intimacy over casual sex, I’ve always needed that with a partner.
I want the weight of those words in my hand again, the stick of good leather.
* * *
Back at my apartment, I hang my jacket on a hook by the door without bothering with the entryway light. I drop my camera bag in its usual spot by the couch. Leftovers go in the microwave. Almost thirteen months after moving in here, I’m better at being single. I clean up after myself more, eat vegetables, change the sheets regularly. I at least have to try harder twice a month when I have Marissa. Kendra, my perceptive ex, would find out if I fed our daughter too much junk or had her sleeping in dirty sheets.
After today’s job, I blew off steam at the gym, then regrouped on a park bench. Did some holiday shopping. Even though the journal’s been burning a hole in my bag all day, I haven’t opened it again. It’s not right to read a stranger that way, on the fly, out in public. But as I sit in front of the TV, shoveling dry chicken in my mouth, my mind wanders. I only read two pages. The journal’s huge.
I bring it to the couch and flip through her pages. She shifts abruptly between love and sex, pain and euphoria. It’s jarring, no matter how many times she rips me out of one emotion to drown me in another. She’s wise, emotional, observant of the human condition, and yet also erratic. Angry. Indecisive. Unreliable. Her drawings are as provocative as they are messy. The beginning of one of the poems makes me stop.
Make me a woman.
Let me be your girl.
It’s simple, but I think I get it. I never feel more like a man than when I’m taking care of my girl. This one wants to be adored, to feel worthy. I can see us now, a perfect pair, her arms around my middle as she fits into my side, burrowed against me. Trusting me to read her, let me in, ease her pain. Things I never got to do with Sadie, who kept me at a distance. Or even Kendra. Our intimacy didn’t reach that kind of level.
I turn the page.
You throb and throb inside me,
until I’m nothing but a heartbeat.
a bursting beat of heart, coming apart on your cock.
My mouth goes dry. I throw the book aside, shove my hand down my pants, and make myself come in two minutes flat.
Fuck me.
I need to throb so hard inside this woman that she comes apart.
I need to find her, make her mine, and feed her her words until she’s swollen with them.
2
I have to return it.
I take the journal to the no-pistachio, no-chocolate coffee shop the next day, sit at my usual table, and wait. I set it by my coffee, not too close so I don’t spill on it. A safe distance from my cherry Danish so I don’t get it sticky.
If the owner doesn’t come looking for it, I’ll leave it at the counter. It doesn’t matter that I feel as though I’ve opened a window and let some fresh air into my life. It’s not mine to keep.
An hour passes while I wonder who she is and how she fucks. If she likes to be slow on top, in control, or if she’d prefer to be put into any position that strikes me. I wonder if she’s written something on every page of that fat journal and why I can’t stop trying to guess what I’ll find next.
I open it—after I’ve washed my hands—and this time, I begin at the end.
And there it is. A calendar.
This is more than just a journal; it has an agenda in the back. Bare bones—there’s only one thing written down for December—but not completely blank.
On the back of the previous page is a drawing of a man and a woman. She’s in a chair by an open window, wrapped in blankets. Her feet are propped on the sill, backdropped by a fire escape and falling snow. New York in winter. Behind her, a man lies in bed, watching her stare outside.
I study the drawing. His hair is colored in, but hers isn’t. Aside from her feet and face, just one hand sticks out from the blankets, a cigarette dangling between her fingers.
Written next to the bed is a two-sentence love letter.
In my sheets.
In my head.
“Jesus,” I murmur.
The only engagement on the calendar is next week.
December 1st—City Still Life, 8 P.M.
There she is, clear as day. I don’t know what City Still Life is, but several Google searches later, I’ve figured it out. I’ve found her.
Fate has given me this one chance.
* * *
Today was the warmest day of the week, but tonight, my breath fogs like the rainclouds overhead. Exposure Art Gallery has windows all along the front so I can scan the lit room without ever stepping foot in it. Is she dark and sultry or does she look deceptively innocent? Will I recognize her by the poetry in her eyes? By the slender fingers that lend her thoughts a voice?
City Still Life is a photograph exhibit, a collection of work across several artists. The pictures are bland: cityscapes, an empty post office, a fire hydrant nobody ever found worthy of commemorating until now. I prefer people. Every person is worthy. Every person has a story, and even if they won’t share it, you can sometimes read it in their eyes.
Especially with a camera.
My attention snags on a white paper cup left on a covered table. Printed on the side is Lait Noir’s black logo, the café where I found the journal. It isn’t far from here, but it’s not the closest café to this gallery.
Someone picks it up. White-blonde, nude-lipped, and dressed in head-to-toe black, her fingers wrap around the thick middle of the cup. She has short, dark nails and milk-white skin. I study her as she studies one of the photographs.
She’s put together. Classy. Not the torn-up soul I’d pictured with dark hair and eyebrows to hang over her frown. There’s no stoop in her posture from carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. Maybe it isn’t her. I step closer to the window and try to get a better look at her eyes just as she turns them down from the exhibit. She balances her coffee in the crook of her arm and scribbles on a notepad.
She’s writing.
My body warms, a conditioned response to her pen on paper. I salivate for her words. What about the photograph in front of her is worth noting? Was I wrong to call it bland? I want to know what she thinks.
She travels along the wall, squints, scratches behind her ear. She sips her coffee. People stop her to say something that makes her smile. I don’t want to look at her body—it was her words that got me here—but I can’t help myself. As she talks, she gestures, and her breasts bounce. They’d be big enough for my hands, and I’ve been told I have some serious paws. She’s got a small waist, great legs, blonde hair that hangs long and layered down her back. I lick my lips.
She flips the notebook shut and shoves it in her purse while nodding at the person speaking. When she shifts, I shift. A man shakes her hand, and she excuses herself. She heads outside, toward me, and before I even know what’s happening, she’s pushing out the gallery door and standing two feet away. Inhaling deeply, she leans back against a patch of brick wall between the window and the door, just enough to shade her. She turns her eyes to the stars.
“I already checked,” I say. “It’s too light out.”
She flinches, barely glancing over. “You mean too dark?”
“Mmm, no,” I say. “If it were pitch dark, you’d be able to see them—the stars. But all this light . . .” I nod through the nearby window. “Enjoying the show?”
She doesn’t respond at first, then says, “Yes. Very much. Which one’s yours?”
“I’m not one of the artists. Thankfully.”
“Oh. I saw your camera and
assumed . . .” She finally stands up straight and squints at me. “What do you mean ‘thankfully’?”
“I haven’t been inside, but they’re crap from what I can see.”
“Crap? That’s somebody art in there.”
It could easily be my work on those white walls, but if this is my poetess standing in front of me, she writes to move people, and these photos wouldn’t budge a feather. “It’s just my opinion.”
She steps a little closer. “And who are you?”
“Just a passerby,” I murmur, feasting on this hard-earned moment of intimacy. She’s younger than I thought. All that black clothing and studied posture made her look around my age, thirty-three, from a distance, but she’s not even thirty. I try to see her eyes again, but again, she’s not looking at me.
“I should get back inside,” she says.
“No.”
“What?”
Shit. I didn’t mean it to come out like that. Trying to cover up my command, I sniff. “I mean, weren’t you leaving?”
She shakes her head.
“So why’d you come out here?” I ask, hoping conversation is a better tactic for getting her to stay than blurting things out.
“I needed a cigarette.”
I remember the December sketch. Colorless hair. Smoker. I’m getting warmer. She makes no move to get a pack out, so I say, “I’m sorry. I don’t smoke.”
“Me neither.”
A smoker without a cigarette, a seemingly nice girl without her naughty journal. Now that I’m closer, I see her better. Her brand of blonde is stark. It almost matches the color of her eyes, a steely shade of gray that might even be ice blue. It’s hard to tell in the absence of light. In the shadow she’s under, they’re just smooth like glass, the calm before a storm.
Slip of the Tongue Series: The Complete Boxed Set Page 75
