by Alix Strauss
Once as a child, she became hysterical at the Delta terminal at the airport. She had a pressing sensation that if she got on the plane it would crash. Her parents had to physically carry her onto the flight. She screamed during takeoff, during the movie, even through dinner. The steward tried to bribe her with crayons and a deck of cards, her brother poked her, and people seated in the vicinity begged her parents to do something. They never took another family vacation and Anne never took another flight.
“So”—Gage says, leaning forward—“am I your first Internet date?” He says this like he’s a pro. Like no matter how many dates Anne has had, he will have more.
“Sort of. You’re the second one I’ve gone on, but you were sixteenth to reply.”
Gage seems pleased with this and smiles warmly, widely, causing the crow’s-feet near his eyes to crinkle. “Not bad odds.”
“You?”
“A few.” He shrugs. “I’m not much for the personals, but I figured, what the hell. The women I’ve met have been okay.”
An hour later, Gage holds the door open for her, and as she passes through she taps the frame twice and twists, as if she wants to steal one last look of the room.
“Oh, I thought I forgot my glasses.” As she watches him look at their table, she catches the faint scent of turpentine.
“Looks clear,” he states, turning to face her.
They walk a few blocks and end up standing in front of the number six subway.
“You think we could do this again?” he asks. A leaf sails by and she restrains her urge to snatch it.
“Sure,” she says, realizing she wants him to phone, wants to see what her hand feels like in his. She thinks about this as the train cradles her uptown.
At work, she takes her place beside the other two concierges, Julia, a model-in-training, and Cecile, a mother of three who works part-time, mostly, she says, to get away from her children. Anne surveys her to-do list while feeling powerful in her black suit, crisp white shirt, and headset. The three look like stand-ins for Charlie’s Angels—each dressed exactly alike.
Though she came to hotel management late in life—most of the girls she worked with were in their early twenties and still living at home—she loves her job. Things at the Four Seasons are orderly and organized. Structured. She likes the idea that everything is replaceable. Disposable. Right down to the shampoo and conditioner bottles. Use a soap once and a fresh bar is presented to you daily. Rooms are stripped clean and given another chance, the air shifting slightly with each new occupant. The early morning buzz that a new day awaits, the slick clean marble floors, the plush ribbed lounge chairs somehow calm her. She loves making reservations at trendy restaurants where most people can’t book a dinner three months in advance, let alone that evening. Loves obtaining house seats for a sold-out, must-see show. Once, she was asked to locate a miniature dachshund for Madonna. She spent all day tracking down the pedigree and finally unearthed a breeder in Vermont who had just one pup left. Madonna stopped by to thank Anne personally. Gave her free tickets to her Farewell Tour. These were good days. Days when she felt connected to something other than the tapping.
At night she surfs the Web for obsessive-compulsive disorder treatments. There are over 2 million and she makes mental notes of conference dates, behavior therapy institutes, foundations, and support groups. She reads message boards and enters chat rooms with a phony name and e-mail address. Before logging off, she takes a quiz given by the Florida Obsessive-Compulsive Foundation. Last week she scored a 73. Until she gets a 90 or higher, she refuses to seek real help. This is her barometer. An alcoholic in the making. A coke user not ready for rehab.
To keep the test fresh she clicks the random button and eight questions from a list of fifty are revealed.
1. Do you have mental images of death or other horrible events? Yes.
2. Do you worry about fire, burglary, or flooding in your house? Yes.
3. Do you worry about accidentally hitting a pedestrian with your car or letting it roll down the hill? No.
4. Do you perform excessive or ritualized washing, cleaning, or grooming rituals? No.
5. Do you check light switches, water faucets, the stove, door locks, or your car’s emergency brake? Yes.
6. Do you perform counting, arranging, “evening-up” behaviors (making sure socks are at same height)? Yes.
7. Do you need to touch objects or people? Yes.
8. Do you think about poisoning dinner guests or injuring children? No.
This last one puts her mind at ease. She doesn’t even bother to take part two, Repeated Thoughts, Images, Urges, and Behaviors, because this last question is so off base. She shuts down the computer and taps the top twice. As she reaches for the light, her eyes catch the free box of Paxil she received in the mail last month—the medication of choice to all OCD’ers. “Magic pills” they’re called in the chat rooms. She picks up the box, wonders what they taste like. Wonders if they can save her.
Anne has signed up for an anti-anxiety class given at the Red Cross, free to all New York residents. This is her first one. A step in trying to gain control over her life. She found the group accidentally. A guest needed a nearby AA meeting and while scanning the net, she stumbled upon the class.
Orthodox Jews are seated next to her. A group of black men talk about Eminem. An actor rehearses a scene by himself, his sides marked in yellow highlighter, while another woman, dressed in a bright orange sweatshirt and jogging pants, reads Getting Over Your Ex. Across from her, a man with a Walkman sings as if he’s in the shower, lost in a world of music that no one else can hear. She doesn’t know the song or she’d happily sing along, anything to stop her jabbering inner voice, the smaller version of herself that makes her second-guess every single decision she makes. A few seats away is a homeless couple. The woman’s teeth are crooked and one tooth hangs over her lip. The man is fat and unshaven and they hold hands like teenagers drooling over each other. This sickens and comforts Anne all at once. Perhaps there really is someone for everyone. Perhaps Gage is her soul mate. At thirty-four she’s not going to bump into her future husband at an OCD class, or find him in the hallway of some dingy hospital corridor as she heads to her group meeting and he to his Living with Tourette’s class. She envisions their wedding. He could shout “Fuck me!” sporadically throughout the ceremony and she would constantly need to tap the priest’s Bible. Her brother would be sedated and though he’d be best man, a ward of the state would stand behind him ready to embrace him with a padded coat. Anne’s parents would need sedating too, the liquid kind, like scotch or gin. It would be a freak show no matter how you looked at it.
Then something terrible happens that takes Anne’s breath away. A woman dressed in a long black coat, carrying a beat-up leather purse sits down. Mirroring an old librarian, she has dry gray hair, which hangs down past her shoulders, and wears trailer-park red lipstick that accentuates her mouth and long drawn face. Anne is about to turn away when the woman’s expression becomes distorted. Her jaw juts out, her eyes widen, her mouth opens, and a horrible sobbing/choking sound escapes. It manifests into a half laugh, half ear-piercing moan, “I can’t take it any more. I just can’t.” It sounds like a war cry and Anne expects to see tears, but nothing.
A moment passes.
The air stands still.
Anne doesn’t know what to do and looks to others to see if maybe she imagined it. People are turning to counter partners, to seat mates, all with an inquisitive, horrified gaze.
“She does this every week,” the actor tells Anne. “We’re used to it.”
The woman looks straight ahead, as if it never happened. Anne cannot take her eyes off her. Her chest aches, her heart pounds. She yearns to ask what’s wrong, why those words. But before Anne can lean over and say, “Are you alright?” the wailing starts again, this time more painful.
“I can’t take it any more. I just can’t.”
Bile rises in Anne’s throat as a vision of the woman
standing up and running toward the plate glass window then hurling herself through it overtakes her thought process. She wants to cover her ears and sing along with the man in the corner. This is too much for her to deal with. She asks where the bathroom is and while the actor is pointing and telling her to turn left down the hallway, she’s already up and heading toward the exit. She runs down the stairs of the old church, clinging to the brass handle, careful not to fall while praying she won’t throw up.
Gage’s voice is a pleasant surprise on her machine, and she approximates that forty hours have passed since he walked her to the train.
“I was hoping you’d be up for pool,” he says, when she phones him back. “I want you to like me and the places I go to. It’s a large part of who I am.” All Anne has is work, home, and the occasional get-together with friends. What would she introduce him to, the Presidential suite at the hotel that costs thirty-five thousand dollars per night?
Gage takes her to Fool’s Pool, on Hudson and Thompson, and shows her how to strike the ball. The room is dank and dark. An underground lodging for late-night crawlers. A baseball game is on one TV, VH1 flashes on another, Comedy Central on a third. Eighties music blares over the roar of pool balls clinking against each other. The sound reminds Anne of her good luck bracelet. Bought at a new age shop in Soho, it has the word “happiness” inscribed on a leather band held together by a silver clasp. Attached to the clip is a thin velvet rope where two round stone-colored beads, the size of large peas, hang. Whenever Anne moves, the balls meet and make a clinking noise. Like Chinese brass gongs used to cleanse the air and remove negative energy, her bracelet does the same. Though the clicking irritates co-workers—who often ask her to take the damn thing off—the sound soothes her greatly.
Anne watches ladies flirt with men who slap hands with other men after difficult shots are made. She enjoys seeing the colorful balls spiral across the felted field of green, likes the blue chalky powder, the way Gage’s body feels up against hers, warm and strong, as he tries to correct her posture.
Three weeks later, Anne finds Gage waiting for her at the end of her shift. It’s freezing out, but Gage is still sporting his leather bomber jacket and jeans. Tonight, however, he’s replaced his slightly paint-stained T-shirt with a black ribbed wool turtleneck sweater, a look that Anne loves. Like her sandalwood incense, she’s gotten used to the stench of acrylic paint, his dirty fingernails, even his smoking. When he sees her, Gage takes one more drag and drops the unfinished cigarette to the ground. He steps on the butt, then bends down and sticks it in his pocket. This is his most endearing quality. Anne wonders how many Parliament pieces are in there, and if that’s why his fingers always reek of smoke. He seems older in the dark, more manly. More weathered. They kiss hello. His mouth is warm and tastes of smoke. She wonders if she turned off her computer and if she put her to-do list in her desk drawer. She’d ask him to wait for her while she goes to check, but doesn’t want to break their moment, doesn’t want to add to the teasing that takes place at work from the other women in her department.
This is their seventh date, and in honor of the occasion, he has a surprise at his apartment. He lives at the Union Square Hotel in the West Village, a once hot spot for icons like Andy Warhol and his factory misfits, Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf. As they walk up the five flights to his studio, Gage points out which celebrities stayed in the various rooms. “The year is 1979. Refugees from the School of Visual Arts flood the area,” he says, imitating a PBS documentary. “The streets are rich with excitement. Painters mingle with poets; underground filmmakers prey on would-be actors. Rents are cheap and drugs are abundant.”
She laughs at his cleverness. Kisses him in the poorly lit, wallpaper-peeling hallway to let him know she thinks he’s smart.
They stop in front of room twenty-four, an even number. Good.
He blindfolds her with a red bandanna he pulls out from his pants pocket before he opens the door. She doesn’t trust him well enough to do this. Takes deep breaths of stale air as she gulps down the anxiety. She strains to see through the cloth, which is soft and smells of smoke and hair gel. “Stupid girl,” she can already hear TV watchers say as her body is flashed on the ten o’clock news. “She let him blindfold her, tie her up somewhere in his apartment, and then is surprised that he raped her. What was she thinking?” She might as well run through Central Park at 4:00 a.m. naked, wearing only the diamond necklace her grandmother gave her for her thirtieth birthday while shouting, “Sex anyone? Anyone want free sex?” She taps on the frame as Gage’s rough hands lead her into what she guesses is his hallway.
The room feels small and smells of day-old paint. It’s hot and musty. She takes baby steps while her right hand gropes for something solid.
“You’re doing great,” Gage whispers. His voice is hauntingly deep and smooth. She wants to do this. Feels this will help her lose her need to tap.
“There’s a canvas on the floor,” he continues. “It’s a perfect square, six feet by six feet. Right now you’re standing at the far right. Basins of different color paint are at each corner.”
“What do you want me to do?” she asks.
“Whatever you feel like. Make me something pretty.”
She feels his hands at her feet removing her shoes and socks while thinking how lucky it was she wore a skirt today. She hears him place them on the floor somewhere to her left. She can feel him staring at her and she doesn’t want to disappoint him so she dips her feet in the paint, which is cold and squishes between her toes, then steps on the unrolled canvas. She’s giddy and laughs nervously while asking what colors he’s chosen for her.
“Guess,” he responds.
The room is quiet and she listens to her breathing, then to his. The clicking of the fan over her head gives her brain something to focus on rather than the fear of the unknown.
“Red? Maybe white? And black.” She pretends to tap dance, waits to hear a laugh from Gage and when all is silent, stops. She steps in another color and lets the paint drip off her heel. She brushes her toes lightly in a half circle. Then again. And again. She goes for more paint and moves thoughtfully, slowly. She’s dizzy and off balance. Feels drunk. She wants to see what she’s created, wants to take the blindfold off.
When she’s finished he lifts her up, as if she were a newlywed and places her on something soft. A couch? A thick cushion? Her hand travels hurriedly over the fabric until she finds the edge, then moves down to finger the frame. He removes the bandanna, her eyes focus as she searches the room. It’s dark and bare. The only light is from the dozen or so candles Gage has lit. He kneels in front of her, looking like Prince Charming with his broad shoulders, thick hair, and massive hands.
He submerges her feet in a large bucket of warm water, rose petals float on top. He exfoliates her skin up to her calves, towels them dry, leans her back on the futon, which squeaks as he climbs on top of her. She laughs, thinking this is like a badly written Harlequin Romance novel or sappy movie of the week starring Shannon Doherty. But it’s happening to her, so it feels silly and surreal and she plays along, forces herself to let go. She wants to tap her thumb and index together for luck but Gage extends his hands on top of hers. Fans her fingers out like a deck of cards. His are coarse, like the canvas, like the futon. He presses them down hard so she can’t tap. She wants to mutter her Katta Katta but his lips are over hers before she has a chance. She screams inside her head, wonders what to do, calms herself by counting to ten, by listening to the clicking of the fan above.
Anne notices her bracelet is missing at 1:09 p.m.
As if she’s broken up with a lover, a deep sadness sits in her heart. She carries it with her all day. A cold she can’t shake, a heavy malaise that covers her like a thick wool blanket. She looks everywhere, retraces her steps at home and at work. Even phones Gage to see if she left it at his place.
To rectify the problem, she scans novelty shops and browses department stores in the hopes of finding a substitute. She h
olds an array of possible replacements tightly in her hands, waiting for a positive sensation. “If my cell phone rings within the next minute, that will be a sign that the object is good luck,” she tells herself. But her phone remains silent when she holds the sapphire silver necklace or charm bracelet at Urban Outfitters. No tingling occurs at the gift shops at the American Craft Museum or MoMA, even though she holds on to twenty-two different objects.
At home, Anne puts on a pair of bright yellow plastic cleaning gloves and tosses the plant she purchased last week down the compactor. Perhaps this is the culprit that brought bad luck into her home and shifted the peaceful balance. She goes around the house bagging items, sealing in the sour luck to see if that will work. If that will make her bracelet appear.
On Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. Anne tries to make a reservation for a frequent guest at Tao, but is unable to pull any strings. She breaks a heel, her computer crashes, and she loses a week’s worth of work, including her recently updated calendar of hotel events. Worse, Gage hasn’t called since the painting incident.
Anne finds Darjeeling’s name wedged in between an ad for a religious advisor and a holistic nurse in the classified section of Cosmic Times, an alternative and spiritual magazine new age stores distribute. A proclaimed psychic and spiritual cleanser, Darjeeling has named herself after the tea because she is both soothing and has healing powers. “I’m a harmonious blend of calm and balance,” she tells Anne on the phone. Even though $150 seems like a lot of money to find a strap of leather, Anne is desperate.
Darjeeling, who shows promptly at 7:00 p.m. as promised, makes an unpleasant face as she enters Anne’s apartment. She’s dressed in a colorful kimono with a large eye stitched on the back. Her tights are blood red and match her high heel shoes. Her dangling earrings are so long they practically touch her shoulders. Her short auburn hair sticks straight out in sharp points, making her resemble Cyndi Lauper on crack.
