by Tara Moss
‘Hi,’ we said simultaneously.
Jay helped me with Celia’s cashmere coat, and in a flash a thin young Italian waiter had taken it from us. He offered me a complimentary nod of approval. ‘Bella,’ he murmured. ‘I hang up your coat, beautiful lady.’ He made an animated gesture with his fingers at his lips, as if to blow me a kiss.
The amorous waiter left us and my date pulled out my chair for me.
‘You have a chauffeur?’ Jay Rockwell remarked, seeming surprised and possibly a little impressed. I took my seat, and he sat opposite. Our chairs squealed when we moved them forward. Jay leaned in attentively, his hazel eyes alive with mischief. ‘I thought you didn’t like things too fancy?’ he said teasingly.
‘I don’t. And I don’t,’ I replied in answer to both questions. ‘That’s Celia’s driver. She insisted he pick me up,’ I explained. ‘And I don’t need you taking me to some swish, overpriced restaurant.’ Truthfully, I didn’t want the pressure of a fancy restaurant. The idea of a room full of rich New Yorkers was terrifying to me. I’m sure I would have used the wrong fork or something.
‘You sure are an unusual lady,’ Jay remarked with a shake of his head, and in a flash I had a vision of him impressing other women by taking them out to expensive Manhattan restaurants and buying them fifty-dollar cocktails and exorbitant meals. The idea made me a touch jealous.
‘I’d like to meet your great-aunt one day,’ he added. ‘She sounds like an extraordinary woman.’
‘She is,’ I told him. I nervously smoothed down my silk dress, and shifted my heavy satchel to one side under our table with my foot. ‘I hope you don’t mind that I came straight from work.’
‘I came straight from work, too,’ he said. ‘I should have mentioned you look gorgeous tonight. You are the best-dressed person here.’
I felt myself blush, though I doubted what he said was really true. ‘Thanks.’
A period of awkward silence descended on us, and we opened our menus to cover the lack of conversation.
‘So, did you end up writing that piece on the BloodofYouth launch? How did it go?’ he asked me.
I stiffened.
The question, I’m sure, was an innocent one. I’d last seen him in person at the launch, after all. Jay had no idea about the detective work I’d done in the interim, or the bizarre things I’d uncovered. I hadn’t mentioned a word of it in our email exchange. Pepper had been quite clear that I wasn’t to tell anyone because it was an exclusive for our magazine. Thus, unless he happened to pick up the first copy of Pandora hot off the press today, Jay probably knew nothing of my accusations about BloodofYouth, and certainly no one knew about my outrageous suspicions regarding the BloodofYouth model, Athanasia, or what I believed she had done to my predecessor, Samantha. After a lifetime of repressing the urge to tell my parents – and later Aunt Georgia – about every strange imagining or visitation I experienced, it seemed I was getting pretty good at keeping extraordinary secrets. And that was doubtless a good thing in this case. Who could I confide in about these otherworldly conundrums? Who would believe me? No one. Except Celia. Or perhaps the Sanguine Samantha, and my friend Second Lieutenant Luke Thomas, who had died a century and a half ago.
‘Didn’t the new issue come out today?’ my date added, unknowingly pursuing an unwelcome topic.
‘Um, yes. I can’t talk about it right now,’ I responded cryptically.
A copy of the new issue of Pandora magazine was in fact sitting in the satchel at my feet. Though I was eagerly awaiting this new issue, no one had said anything about it to me at the office, not even Morticia. Through the day I’d had a creeping suspicion that the deputy editor, Pepper, was avoiding me. Skye was on the mend after her mysterious illness, but she hadn’t come in, or called me about my piece. Finally I’d seen the magazine during my afternoon coffee break and grabbed it. When I read the cover piece, the atmosphere in the office became all too clear. (I’d had to fix my eye makeup in the hall bathroom before returning to work.) No one had wanted to be the one to let me down. Pepper had avoided me for good reason.
I didn’t want to show the magazine to Jay. I couldn’t discuss it. Awkwardly, I changed the subject. ‘So how are things at Men Only?’
Jay noted my evasive response, and looked at me quizzically for a moment, his hazel eyes searching mine. Then he said, ‘Things are good. I have a couple of big new clients. The advertising base is growing.’
Jay managed the advertising accounts for Men Only.
‘Oh, good,’ I said vaguely, still stewing about what Pepper had done with the article I’d written.
My date sensed something was amiss, and leaned in. He took my hand gently in his and said, ‘Who cares about all that work stuff? I’m not here to talk shop with you. I’m here to enjoy your company.’
I managed a smile.
It was after nine when we finished up with a lovely thing called tiramisu, a dessert I’d never tried before.
Jay insisted on paying. I wanted to pay my half but the bill came and he put his credit card down and wouldn’t let me contribute.
‘Am I allowed to have your number now?’ my date asked, and grinned. We’d enjoyed a nice meal together and were experiencing a moment of feeling relaxed with each other, but in response to his question I looked to my hands. What should I say? That I was too poor to get one yet, but I was working on it? That my eccentric great-aunt was allergic to phones, as well as garlic?
After a few beats, when I didn’t respond to his request, Jay nodded and made an amused sound. ‘I’ve met girls who’ve played hard to get, but you really are impressive.’ There didn’t seem to be any bitterness in his voice. If anything, he seemed to admire my reticence.
Not that I had been aloof. Over the previous couple of hours Jay had gently grilled me about my life, and I’d more or less done the same. I tried to tell him a bit about Gretchenville without going into too much detail, but he’d got me talking about the shacks along the creek, where it wasn’t safe to go. The local redneck bullies who were impossible to avoid. The fact that so many locals thought there was nothing to do but get drunk every weekend. How Gretchenville had one rundown cinema and no Starbucks or Wal-Mart, and no diversity to speak of, apart from one African-American family who were descended from slaves. They lived in a big old house on the outskirts of town, and doubtless dreamed of leaving. No wonder I’d lived with my face buried in books, or surfing the net, right? If I didn’t want Jay to think I was some naive small town hick I had doubtless said too much. Perhaps it was such a relief to finally talk about Gretchenville behind Gretchenville’s back that I just couldn’t help myself.
Jay Rockwell, on the other hand, was a college graduate and ex-rower, which explained the very impressive build. His father, an apparently quite wealthy, three-times divorced bachelor, knew the owner of Men Only magazine, and I figured that connection had got him the job. His mother had passed away from breast cancer when he was seventeen, which still affected him deeply, I could tell. I explained that my parents had both died in an accident in Egypt, but I didn’t elaborate, and he offered condolences but didn’t press. There had been one particularly awkward moment when Jay, who was twenty-five years old (exactly Lieutenant Luke’s ‘age’, oddly enough), ordered a bottle of wine and then remembered that I was still underage. I’m not particularly interested in drinking, but at that moment I badly wished we were in Europe or Canada or Australia, just so I could have said, ‘Thank you, but I don’t drink,’ and it could have been an issue of choice, not age. As it was he cancelled the bottle of wine and we both drank soda. I found myself longing for age.
A slip of paper came back with Jay’s credit card, and he signed it.
‘Pandora, I was wondering if you would accompany me to an event tomorrow night?’ he asked me.
This was unexpected. I had imagined he was one of those guys who played by those dull dating ‘rules’ I’d heard about. ‘Don’t call for three days’ and all that. I guess I was wrong.
�
��Um, what kind of event?’ I ventured.
‘A fashion show. It’s not quite New York Fashion Week, but it’s kind of a big deal. A lot of celebrities will be there. I thought you might like it.’
I tried to disguise my delight, but I wasn’t overly successful. ‘Oh, I’d love to!’ I blurted, and then shut my mouth tight and nodded. I wondered if Pepper would be there, and see that I was there too, and I wondered if I could write about it, and then I realised these were selfish thoughts and had nothing to do with the man who was asking me, and I felt a bit guilty. ‘Is it sort of a work thing for you?’
He nodded. ‘But it would be fun with you.’
I beamed. We’d both be mixing work and pleasure, so that made it okay, right?
‘Is there anywhere else you’d like to go tonight?’ Jay asked me.
I thought for a moment then shrugged. ‘I don’t really know New York that well yet. I’ve only been here for a couple of weeks.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’
‘I met you shortly after I arrived,’ I explained. ‘Well, I saw you in the elevator the day after I got here.’ Not that he remembered, I reminded myself. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.
‘All the better for me,’ Jay responded smoothly, and I took it to mean that he was glad I hadn’t met anyone else.
‘I think I’ll just head home, if you don’t mind,’ I said finally. The bars were off-limits to me for another couple of years, and I didn’t want to risk the embarrassment of being carded somewhere. Most importantly, though, I didn’t want him to think I would go home with him. I had a feeling there were plenty of girls who did go home with him on the first date.
Jay touched me gently on the hand. ‘I’ll drive you home then. We’ll see each other tomorrow.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, relieved at the lack of pressure. We both stood up. The waiter arrived with my coat before we had to ask, and he tried to help me with it before Jay took over the job with what I thought was a bit of a possessive snarl. The young waiter backed off quickly.
Jay opened the door, and we stepped onto the streets of Little Italy. The air felt refreshingly cool at first, then downright cold. ‘Will you be warm enough? You could wait inside,’ Jay offered, seeming a little concerned about leaving me with my new waiter friend.
‘This coat is warm enough. Thank you,’ I told him, although the flesh on my calves had turned to goosebumps.
He put an arm around me, which I didn’t mind in the slightest, and as we stood in the chill wind waiting for the valet to bring his car around, another silence descended on us. Our conversation had flowed at times through the evening, but at other times there were these awkward silences. Was that normal? I hadn’t been on enough dates to know. Actually, as I stood there I realised this was my first ‘proper’ date, and not just in New York, either. The pickings were slim enough in Gretchenville to keep me largely single by choice, and things had been pretty relaxed with Ben, my high school sweetheart. We hadn’t gone on any dates and we certainly never went to a restaurant together.
‘Here it is,’ I heard Jay remark. He’d grown impatient with the valet, I could tell, though I didn’t think it had taken too long.
Oh boy.
The car that pulled up made me gape. It was silver, very expensive and impossibly low to the ground.
‘Thanks,’ Jay said when the valet handed him his keys. He slipped the valet a large bill, I noticed, and I thought of the rich father he had mentioned over dinner. I guessed that Jay didn’t need to worry about things like money, and perhaps he never had. The issue of money would be a very big difference between us. Where I came from, that tip was big money, and as for the car – well, the very existence of such a vehicle in Gretchenville was an impossibility.
The door on my side opened upwards, like the entry hatch of a spacecraft. I was taken aback. I vaguely recognised this kind of vehicle from the movies, but I couldn’t say what sort of car it was, except that it was worth more than Aunt Georgia’s entire house. With a creeping sense of embarrassment I felt the eyes of the patrons inside the restaurant again. We were being watched. Oh goodness, I thought. This is different. Part of me wished he drove a pickup, like I was used to everyone driving back in Gretchenville, and the other part of me . . . well the other part of me sort of loved the madness of it all.
Jay held my elbow while I scrambled inelegantly into the passenger side of his low-slung car. Celia’s silk dress was knee-length and elegantly designed in two halves that wrapped at the waist, and as I got into the car it split open in the centre to flash an expanse of my thighs. I quickly corrected the fall of the fabric, and Jay smiled, but was too polite to comment. I liked him for that. He passed me my heavy satchel and I held it awkwardly in my lap. The automatic door couldn’t close fast enough, as far as I was concerned, and I was happy when we pulled away from Giovanni’s and the patrons went back to focusing on their meals.
I spotted a name on the steering wheel. It said Ferrari.
‘I live on Addams Avenue in Spektor,’ I informed my date while I tried to find a comfortable position in my seat.
‘Spektor?’ Jay repeated. ‘Where’s that?’
‘Oh, it’s uptown,’ I told him. ‘I can direct you.’
‘So it’s definitely in Manhattan?’ he asked, uncertain.
I nodded. ‘Yes.’
Jay seemed doubtful about a suburb called ‘Spektor’ on Manhattan Island, but he followed my directions without complaint. I thought of Celia’s comment about it being a ‘blind spot’ and realised I might have made a mistake in letting him drive me home. I didn’t really understand how it all worked. We moved slowly through the Friday night traffic in Little Italy to Bowery and Third, and gradually made our way uptown. I indicated the northern road that cut through Central Park, and as we drove through the dark expanse of green, the Ferrari’s headlights illuminated a pair of dog walkers on a night stroll.
‘I hope you don’t go walking through Central Park at night,’ he remarked.
I took this to mean that Jay figured I was ‘fresh off the farm’. I had clearly been too open about what my little hometown had been like, and now I was paying for it. It made my hackles rise.
‘I may be new here,’ I told him sharply. ‘But I’m not that green.’ Celia had warned me not to wander around New York at night, and I knew better than to jog through Central Park after dark on my own, or in any park in any city at night. ‘I’m not crazy,’ I added, and wondered if that was entirely true.
‘Manhattan is not Gretchenville, you know,’ he continued unwisely.
‘Really?’ I replied, and thought, You don’t know the half of it.
Jay sped up a touch and heaved a sigh of regret at my response. ‘Okay, I deserve your sarcasm. Sorry. It’s just . . . I care about you, and I want to make sure you are safe,’ he said with his eyes firmly on the road. ‘I worry about you, being so new here. New York is not always the most friendly place.’ We passed what appeared to be a homeless person sleeping on a bench, as if to prove his point.
‘I can look after myself,’ I told him firmly.
‘Okay. I won’t say another word about it. You don’t live in Harlem or something, do you?’
‘No,’ I told him.
Jay concentrated on his driving, and it seemed another of our silences was upon us.
I had been oversensitive to his touch of condescension and had barely noticed that he’d said, ‘I care about you.’ Jay and I had only met a couple of times (well, three times, but he didn’t remember the elevator encounter so that hardly counted) and we certainly didn’t have common backgrounds, or circumstances (example: he drove a Ferrari and I couldn’t even afford my own cell phone) but there was a mutual attraction there, undeniably. But did he ‘care’ for me? Had he meant that? I didn’t even know how I felt. On our date, I’d thought of Luke a couple of times, a touch guiltily. I saw his face (not literally, thank goodness) and recalled the way he looked at me with his beautiful blue eyes. He seemed so full of
longing. But of course, Luke was an apparition and it made things . . . well, it made things between us a dead end. Jay Rockwell had beautiful eyes too; big, hazel, living eyes. He was real, and human, and interested, and available – though I’d have to clarify that last bit. I had a strong feeling that Jay had a lot of other attractive women in his circle, though I didn’t know in what capacity. Did he have girlfriends? Casual lovers? I wasn’t sure, and the question niggled at the back of my mind. The smoothness of his manners had been learned through experience, that much I could tell.
‘Are you seeing anyone at the moment, Jay?’ I dared to ask.
My question hung in the air for a moment.
‘Um, I’m seeing you right now,’ he replied a little too casually, and offered me a charming smile instead of an answer.
‘Do you have a lot of girlfriends?’ I wanted to know. I didn’t want to mess around with a player, if that’s what he was.
‘No one serious,’ he told me, and I believed him.
I nodded. ‘Me neither,’ I said, supposing my ghost didn’t count. Did he?
I directed us down the tunnel at the end of Central Park, and we came out the other side in an oppressive opaque mist.
‘What a funny fog,’ Jay remarked, frowning and looking around. He slowed down and drove his Ferrari carefully through it.
I wondered again about Spektor. The cabbie had got me here, as had Jay. So how did it work? I had so many questions. After a moment I noticed we were on Addams Avenue. There were no people on the street, and no other cars. I indicated Celia’s large corner building and Jay pulled the car up to the empty kerb. ‘What an . . . unusual place,’ he said, leaning forward and looking out the car window.
‘I like it,’ I said, smiling broadly. I did, I had discovered. I really did.
‘Well, if you like it then I like it,’ Jay offered, still sounding unsure. We looked at each other and there was an awkward pause, where we both wondered what to do next. Finally his hand ventured across the seat and clasped mine for a moment, and he said, ‘Well, I guess I’ll walk you to your door.’
