by J. J. Murray
“Your girlfriend,” I say.
“Should I have said something else?”
I nod. “I am not a girl.”
“Well, hot, sexy friend who makes interesting noises during booty rubs wouldn’t have—”
I don’t let him finish. Leaves are very effective for stuffing into a nasty man’s pants. I’m sure I’ll be finding leaves in my bed this evening.
“You also said, ‘You can’t miss us,’” I say. “What’d you mean by that?”
He smiles. “We’re the two happiest people here.”
Uh-huh. We are, but I think he meant something else.
When the taxi driver shows up, I immediately think I’m talking to George Burns, only he wears Mr. Magoo’s glasses, Speed Racer’s racing gloves, and a World War II bomber jacket. I’m actually a little taller than he is.
I immediately like this driver very much.
Tom asks him to open the trunk.
“You’re putting the bike in the trunk?” he asks in a typical Brooklyn accent. “Are you hurt?”
“No sir,” Tom says.
The driver opens the trunk, Tom sets the bike inside, but the trunk lid won’t close.
“Has to close,” the driver says. “Regulations.”
Tom maneuvers the bike out of the trunk and fits it into the backseat.
“Now where are you two gonna sit?” the driver asks.
I smile. “Up front with you. I’m Shari, and this is Tom.”
He looks at each of us for a moment and sighs. “Carl.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “I don’t bite, Carl. Tom and I are taking pictures of this bike at various New York landmarks for an ad campaign.”
“Yeah?” Carl says. “Who do you represent?”
“Methuselah’s Breezy Hiccup,” Tom says.
“Never heard of ’em,” Carl says. “You out of Jersey?”
“No,” I say. “We’re straight out of Brooklyn.”
“With an office in Great Neck,” Tom adds.
Carl squints at me. “Brooklyn and Great Neck? Is he kidding?”
“Yes,” I say, sticking out my tongue at Tom. “So is it all right if we ride in the front with you, Carl?”
“Long as you pay,” Carl says, “you can sit anywhere you like.”
When we get in, Carl just lets the taxi idle.
Oh yeah. Where to? “Where are we going first, Tom?” I ask.
“Um, Carl,” Tom says, “we want you to give us suggestions for where to take pictures, and maybe you can even pose on the bike.”
“Suggestions?” Carl says. “For places to take pictures? In this city?”
“I know, stupid question,” Tom says.
“Well, you have to go to the Garden, Yankee Stadium, and the Empire State for starters,” Carl says.
“And Coney Island,” I add.
Carl nods. “Definitely. Gotta take a picture of that bike on the boardwalk. And Central Park, Radio City, Sylvia’s ...”
Carl knows about Sylvia’s home cooking in Harlem? “Why Sylvia’s?”
“You got me all day, right?” he asks.
We nod.
He straightens up his gloves. “I gotta eat, don’t I?”
And then ... we see the city from a Peterson bicycle’s perspective. We hit the Brooklyn Bridge again, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Central Park, the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, the Federal Reserve Bank, the Flatiron Building, the Grand Central Terminal, Madison Square Garden, the New York Public Library, the New York Stock Exchange, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Temple Emanu-El, Times Square, the United Nations, the World Trade Center site, and Coney Island. We don’t spend a great deal of time at each spot, and Carl never turns off his Sinatra music, giving anyone watching us something to sing or hum. I impress Tom with my ability to play dashboard drums along with Buddy Rich, and Tom blows me away with his flawless rendition of Perry Como’s “Catch a Falling Star.”
This job is a blast!
As the sun starts to set, Carl heads toward Harlem, and I smile because I’m hungry, too. After taking photographs of the bicycle at the Apollo Theater, Abyssinian Baptist Church, Hotel Theresa, the Lenox Lounge, and Strivers’ Row, we get to Sylvia’s, the world-renowned soul food restaurant on Lenox Avenue and 127th Street. Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Magic Johnson—stars, movers and shakers have eaten there.
Carl gets the chicken livers sautéed with onions and peppers and covered with gravy. Tom and I do not. We eat smothered pork chops and barbecue ribs off each other’s plates, and I am much faster with my fork than Tom is. We try to get Sylvia herself to get on the bike after we finish.
“Child, that ain’t for me,” she says. “I got my feet, and they’ve been carrying me just fine so far.”
Carl, however, proudly gets on the bike in front of the restaurant with Sylvia standing nearby.
It is easily our best shot of the day.
After a quick stop at an ATM to get more cash, Carl drops us off at the Brooklyner, and Tom pays him.
You don’t want to know the final tally. Carl can probably retire now and move to Jamaica.
I walk around to Carl’s window. “I’m gonna miss you, Carl.” I kiss his cheek.
Carl doesn’t speak, but the glimmer of a smile lights on his lips. He nods at Tom, and he rolls off.
Once inside the apartment, we load all the pictures into my computer, and they all look fantastic. Because of that last picture of Carl, we have sixteen billboards (or web banners and magazine ads) that speak of joy, freedom, America, and old-fashioned values. The fifty landmark shots are decent, but they pale in comparison to our real New Yorkers.
“These are incredible,” Tom says. “Just incredible.”
“All thanks to a Brooklyn pothole and Mrs. Harland Collier,” I say, starting work on the web banners. “What should we do with the landmark shots?”
He massages my neck. “Not sure. Mr. Peterson could run them in the New York market. Newspaper, magazine.”
I lean back and he kisses me. I lean forward. “If you keep massaging me, I won’t get these done.”
He stands at the window. “I wish I could start on the videos ...”
“Okay, okay,” I say. “Tomorrow we’ll go to your studio. It’s late, I ate too much, and I just want to make these perfect.” Click and drag, shrink. Adjust contrast, brightness.
“What about Bryan?” Tom asks. “Isn’t he coming tomorrow night?”
Oh yeah. Bryan. Why do I keep forgetting to tell Tom about this? “I should have told you this earlier,” I say with a sigh. I should have told him the day I did it. “I, um, called him when we got back to JFK. Bryan won’t be coming. We are officially finished.” I watch Tom’s reaction in the reflection of the window, and he looks ... puzzled? That’s not the relief I expected to see.
“You gave him a ‘Dear John’ over the phone,” Tom says.
I nod. Yep. Heartless me.
“How’d he take it?” Tom asks.
“He was sad,” I say. So was I. “But he’ll get over it.”
He turns my chair away from the computer and faces me. “I’ll bet he was devastated. If I were in his position, I’d come storming up here after you.”
“He won’t, now let me finish these.” I try to turn my chair back to the computer, but he holds my chair in place. “What?”
“What if he does come up here?” he asks.
I sigh. “But I won’t be here, right? I’ll be at your little bungalow in Great Neck. I am staying the weekend, right?”
He searches my eyes. “But you knew him for twelve years.”
And you didn’t answer my question. “More like eighteen years. What’s your point?”
He shakes his head. “Eighteen years, and you can just ... call him up and dump him.”
Oh. That’s his point. “It wasn’t easy, Tom. He was ... he was my first. My first real date, my first boyfriend, my first lover.” The first man who almost asked me to marry him
not ten steps from here. “Why are you so concerned anyway? I thought you’d be happy that I’m completely free.”
He lets go of my chair and returns to the window. “I’m putting myself in his place. I’m trying to feel how it would feel if you gave up on me. I don’t think I would ever get over losing you.”
“You won me, Tom, so there’s nothing to lose, right?”
He doesn’t answer.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I have the strangest feeling that Bryan is going to be here tomorrow, that’s all. He has known you for eighteen years. He grew up with you. He was your first. Don’t you think he’ll fight for you?”
Why are we even having this conversation? “He may have grown up with me, but he didn’t grow with me. I changed, and he stayed the same.”
He kneels in front of me. “But isn’t there something comforting about that? Bryan was someone you could count on.”
“I can count on you, too,” I say. “I’m relying on you more and more by the second. Why are you sticking up for him?”
He frowns. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just sticking up for myself, or my future self. You could just as easily brush me aside once I stopped ‘growing with you.’”
I’d need a bulldozer to brush this man aside, and I need to grow another foot just to see eye-to-eye with him. I look into my full-grown man’s brown eyes. “And you could do the same to me, right?”
“I won’t do that, Shari,” he says. “I don’t think you’ll ever finish growing. I have so much trouble keeping up with you already. Your mind works so much faster than mine. I just hope you will do me the courtesy of telling me face-to-face should you ever want to dump me.”
“Oh Tom, I won’t dump you.”
He doesn’t speak.
Okay, here’s another point. “So I should have said, ‘Sure, Bryan. C’mon up here to Brooklyn so I can dump you’?”
Tom wrinkles up his lips. “No.”
“Bryan was planning to stay with me through Thanksgiving Day.” I blink several times. “Would it have been better that Bryan and I shacked up for the weekend, without the ‘wall’ because he would have expected to get him some, and then I could have dumped him Thanksgiving Day?”
Tom looks away. “Of course not. Geez.” He stands and goes to the window. “I’m just saying, if I were him, I’d be knocking down your door tomorrow night.”
“But I won’t be here, right? I’ll be in Great Neck.”
He sighs. “I think you should be here tomorrow night, just in case he does show up. You owe him that much.”
“Didn’t you just hear me? He was planning to stay with me—here—through Thanksgiving.”
“I heard you.”
What’s going on? “You want me to spend the weekend and then some with my ex-boyfriend?”
“Of course not, Shari.” He shakes his head. “I was just saying that Bryan would have to be a complete fool not to come up here, okay? That’s all I’m saying.”
Is this our first fight? I think it is. I need to calm Tom down. “Well, as long as you’re here with me, it won’t be a problem.”
“Isn’t this something you have to do on your own?” he asks.
“I don’t know what the problem is!” I pick up a pencil and throw it at the window. Yeah, this is our first fight. I throw things. “You sweep me off my feet, do things to my body without even ...” I have to say this now. “You made me have an orgasm without even having sex with me, Tom. That has never happened to me before, and it scared me. You hold me like I’ve never been held, and you say the sweetest, most heart-stirring things to me. I have made my decision, Tom Sexton. I have chosen you. End of story.”
He picks up the pencil. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Shari.”
“I’m not upset. I’m just a little pissed.”
He smiles. “So fiery.”
I try not to laugh. “I’m content. I want you, just you. Bryan was holding me back in so many ways. You want me to take off.”
“Your clothes.”
“What?”
“I want you to take off your clothes.”
Now? While I’m pissed off? “I have to finish these banners, Tom. I’m not as technologically gifted as you are. I actually have to think about every button I click.”
“I just want to take some pictures while you work.” He picks up the camera. “It will give my hands something to do, and I promise I won’t interrupt you.”
Why don’t I believe that? I want him to interrupt me. I look out the window. “And you want me to take off my clothes in front of this window?”
He shakes his head. “No.” He squints. “But you could show me a little more skin.”
I’d love to. “Tom, I make it a point to be fully clothed whenever I walk around in here.”
“You were only wearing a towel yesterday morning.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s different, and it’s not as if anyone can see me. They’d have to be on a line with me.” And there isn’t anyone on a line with me. I’ve checked.
He looks out the window. “I’ll bet there are people with telescopes out there, and I’ll even bet that they’ve seen you in that towel.” He turns. “You may already be on the Internet.”
Despite my anger, I am strangely intrigued by this. I’m already beginning to sweat. Why do I feel so alive with this man? “You’ll, um, you’ll have to, um, give me some directions.” He gives very good directions.
He walks over and turns my chair to face the window. He rubs my shoulders before sliding his hands down my sides to my pants. I watch him pull my shirttail from my pants. He kisses my neck. Oh man. He unbuttons the bottom button, pressing my shirt against my thigh. He kisses my ear while he unbuttons the next two. I wish this shirt had more buttons. He frees the last button between my breasts and pulls my shirt apart. I am so glad I’m wearing a nice white bra today.
He steps back and takes a picture from behind me. “Sexy,” he says.
I giggle. Now where was I? Oh. Adjust contrast, bump up the color—
He returns to the back of my chair. I watch his hands travel down my sides again. He pulls my shirt apart wider and slides the shirt off my shoulders. He takes several more pictures, and I’m beginning to get hot and bothered.
I can’t possibly finish the web banners now.
“Throw your head back and close your eyes, Shari.”
I close my eyes. It’s like I’m his puppet or something. I hear the clicks, see the flashes, and hear him humming.
“I’m going to move you closer to the window now,” he says.
I feel the chair sliding effortlessly, I feel his hands on my ankles, I feel him placing my feet on the window ledge. More pictures. Sweat beads. I don’t dare open my eyes. I am so glad I’m wearing my jeans.
I feel his breath in my ear. “Think nice thoughts,” he says.
I am.
He rolls up my pants legs. Flash. He unbuttons but doesn’t unzip my jeans. Flash. He repositions my arms across my chest. Flash. He closes my shirt, buttoning one button in the middle. Flash. He crosses my legs. Flash.
“You should be a jeans model,” he says.
“Right,” I say.
He gently puts my feet on the floor. Flash. “Should I use the telephoto lens to see if anyone is looking at you?”
I open my eyes. “There’s no one out there, Tom.”
He shows me my last picture. Hey, that’s nice. The lighting is perfect, and I do look sexy.
“You’ll never know that for sure, Shari,” he says. “I was out there, and you didn’t see me.”
“I wasn’t looking for you.” Then. I jump off my chair and approach him. “Give me the camera, man.”
He does.
“Sit.”
He sits.
“Close your eyes.”
He does, but he won’t stop smiling.
“No smiles.”
He tightens his lips, but I can still see a smile.
I size him up in the viewfinder.
There’s so much here to work with. “Take off your sweatshirt.”
He does.
I will need a wide-angle lens for his chest. I get a chair from the kitchen, stand on it, and begin snapping away.
“Am I allowed to talk?” he asks.
“No.”
I wish he had some buttons on his shirt to play with. What could I do with that T-shirt? I don’t want to tear it up. Yet. “Take off your T-shirt.”
He does.
I take lots of pics of his pecs. “Put your hands in your pockets.”
Man, he can barely get them into his pockets. And that is so sexy. I take more pictures. “You could model jeans, too.”
He smiles.
“No smiling.”
He frowns.
I focus and take pictures of his shoulders, his neck, his hairline, his ears, and his face. If I print these out right, I can make a Tom puzzle.
“You can open your eyes and talk now,” I say. I hand him the camera. “Take a look.”
He makes no sounds at all as he scrolls through the pictures until he gets to his body parts. “Man, I need to shave,” he says. “That is a very big ear.” He widens his eyes.
Oh yeah. I took a picture of his package. Bad Shari, bad, bad Shari.
I hand him his T-shirt, but he doesn’t put it on. He sets the camera on my computer table and holds out his arms.
That’s my cue.
I straddle him, unbuttoning the only button holding my shirt together. “I want to, um, get some skin-to-skin contact.”
He sighs. “And I want to hold you. Funny how we both want the same things at the same time.”
I take off my glasses and put them on the computer table. “Then let’s kill two birds with one stone.” I remember we’re in front of the window. “Um, someone could see us.”
“I want them to,” he says. “And I hope they have a very good telescope.”
And then we, well, try to rub the skin off each other. Kisses, sighs, nibbles, my front wearing out his front, his hands wearing out my booty.
He takes a breath. “I’m beginning to like your apartment very much, Shari. There are so many possibilities here. We will live here five days a week, weekends if you want. We don’t even have to travel. We can stay here twenty-four hours a day.” He pulls me close and rubs my back.
