Room for Love

by Andrea Meyer

  “That’s a start,” she says.

  “I brought doughnuts,” I say, placing a box of Krispy Kremes on the drafting table in the middle of the room and selecting a glazed one for myself. “I need them to soak up whatever poison is still in me.” I eat half of it in one bite, as Samantha jumps out of her seat and grabs two doughnuts for herself. My petite co-worker has the metabolism of a professional basketball player.

  “Hey, have you proofed the text yet?” she asks. “I just read your Cate Blanchett piece. C’est magnifique.”

  “Thanks. Yeah, doing that right now.”

  I take the pile of articles from her and sit back down at my desk to read them for what feels like the eighteenth time. The pounding in my head has dulled to a mere thud. After getting halfway through the first page, I feel myself drawn to the phone. I want to call him so badly it hurts, but I won’t. First of all, he’d still be sleeping—he rarely gets up before two. Second, I have to break myself of the habit. I snap the rubber band on my wrist and focus on the sting as I try to dream up a way out of my funk. I could eat another doughnut and think about how no one will ever love me again if I get fat. I could go outside and pet puppies, but that would mean moving. I cruise around Friendster for a while, inviting everyone with a picture of a dog to be my friend. For some reason, a black Lab called Bert I’ve befriended, who loves “barking, playing demolish my squeaky toy, and smelling other dogs’ weewees,” reminds me of my chat with Alicia yesterday, the one that invoked strangers’ sweaty socks, admirable pectoral muscles, and the fringe benefits of hunting for a roommate. I pick up the phone.

  Clancy, one editor who gets to work on time, answers on the first ring.

  “I was just about to call you,” she says even before I announce myself. The wonders of Caller ID. “You’re a genius.”

  “Really?”

  “Just had an editorial meeting. Doing a whole section for July on alternative ways to meet men. Your story could fit in nicely.”

  “Cool,” I say and hold my breath.

  “But you’d have to do it,” she says.

  “Do what?”

  “Test it. Look for a room. Make the necessary phone calls. Hit the pavement.”

  “But I’m not looking for an apartment,” I say, feeling like I’ve had this conversation before.

  “Jacquie, you’re a reporter. It’s research.”

  “Hmm,” I say. Why does everyone want to make a dishonest woman of me? When I even slightly rumpled the truth as a child, my mom would see it all over my nervous little face and punish me. I learned my lesson. I don’t want to lie to anyone. I just want to write a good story and make a few extra bucks. “I’m not a very good liar,” I tell Clancy.

  “You’re not lying. You’re going undercover,” she says. “Now get to work. A thousand words. You’ve got six weeks. Two dollars a word. I’ll put a contract in the mail.” Two dollars a word? That’s two thousand dollars! That’s what I make at my job in a month, working ten, eleven hours a day. Jesus Christ. I spring out of my chair, sprint into the hallway, and scream at the top of my lungs, all the while jumping around like a spaz. A FedEx guy leaving the graphic design firm down the hall smiles at me and shakes his head.

  I return from my episode with my heart racing, convinced that I’m utterly incapable of facing “10 Awesomest Flicks to Watch While Taking Bong Hits,” which is next on my pile of articles to proofread this morning.

  “Hey, Sam, where is everyone?” I ask.

  “Steve is at a breakfast meeting with an investor, Chester has class until eleven, and Spencer and Trevor are MIA. Apparently. Steve called and said you’re in charge, get to work, he’s counting on you. Maybe you should think twice before planning your next birthday party on the night before we ship.” Sam is a self-righteous twit. N’est-ce pas?

  Everyone’s momentary absence buys me some time to slack off, and if there was ever a morning when I needed to slack off, it’s today. I type “craigslist.org” into my browser. “New York. Housing. Rooms/shared.” Boom. About a million listings come up. I click on them one by one, at first uncertain what I’m looking for. Most ads are thoughtful enough to include a neighborhood in the heading, so I click on apartments in downtown Manhattan—the Village, SoHo, NoLita, the Lower East Side. I figure if I actually have to visit these apartments, I should stick as close to home as possible. It occurs to me that I should also focus my energies on apartments with outrageously high rents. I’m not going to have to come up with the money because I’m not really renting the place, but the piece is about meeting guys I’d like to date, so I should look at apartments likely to be inhabited by guys I’d want to date—i.e., financially sound ones. God knows I don’t need another struggling, unsuccessful new boyfriend. Done with boytoys! Done with commitment-phobes! Done with poor, starving jerkoffs who won’t be able to provide for me and my future children! Tribeca lofts appeal to me, as do charming brownstones in the West Village and cozy, sun-filled floor-throughs with gardens in Cobble Hill. On the first few pages of ads, the most promising apartments are inhabited by women or groups of twenty-something guys. It takes me fifteen minutes of solid browsing to find something interesting enough to investigate: a filmmaker renting a room in his 2,500-square-foot loft in SoHo. He’s asking $2,200, which sure qualifies as a lot for half an apartment.

  I glance surreptitiously around the office. Sam is engrossed in a shopping site, apparently browsing for lilac bridesmaid gowns. I roll my eyes and get up to nonchalantly put on a mix of songs from Chester’s favorite sound tracks and saunter casually back to my desk as Modern English belts out the opening lines of “Melt with You” (featured in Valley Girl and 50 First Dates, both on my list of top-ten chick flicks ever, and the little-known indie Cherish, which I also dig). I dial Graham’s number. A sleepy voice answers. It has a British accent. I picture a tawny-haired Englishman, his aristocratic good looks buried in a sage-green flannel pillowcase as he reluctantly holds a phone in one hand and wipes sleep from his crinkly blue eyes with the other.

  “Hello, Graham?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Sorry to wake you.”

  “Never mind, I should have been up ages ago. Thanks for reminding me.”

  “My name’s Jacquie. I’m calling about the room.”

  “Pity, my sweet, I rented it last night.”

  “Oh.”

  “No sadness, please, Jacquie, not this early in the morning. You haven’t even seen the place. Chin up, love, you might have hated it.”

  “But it’s supposed to be beautiful and sunny and loaded with new appliances.”

  “All lies.”

  “Ah, just luring pretty young things down to your lair?”

  “She’s a smart one.”

  My groin reacts on cue to flattery in an English accent. I’m so easy. I envision the two of us, Graham (played by Hugh Grant), wearing a gray Cambridge sweatshirt with a hood, sitting across from me at my corner café reading the Arts & Leisure section of the Times, blowing me a kiss when our eyes meet.

  “You wouldn’t believe how many of them came down here dolled up and ready to bed me if only I’d had the audacity to ask,” he says.

  “But you didn’t, of course, because you’re a gentleman.”

  “You’d better believe it, baby.”

  “What kind of movies do you make?”

  “I’m editing my second documentary right now, about an incredible blues musician I met on the subway. He used to be quite famous, really, but he’s been homeless and battling schizophrenia for the last eight years. Still plays in the subway, a tremendous talent. It’s, shall we say, a labor of love.”

  “How does a documentary filmmaker afford to live in a forty-five-hundred-dollar loft in SoHo, pray tell?”

  “That’s very personal, isn’t it, missy?”

  “Independently wealthy, are we?”

  “Look at the time. I’d better begin my day!”

  “All right, I promise, no more impertinent questions.”

>   Steve walks into the office chattering loudly on his cell phone. He waves at me. I wave the pile of text back at him.

  “I have to go to, too, Graham. Good luck with your new roommate.”

  “And you, Jacquie. I hope you find yourself a marvelous flat.”

  I hang up with my heart banging against my rib cage and run out into the hallway again, an instant replay of my earlier explosion. I laugh out loud, amazed at this thing that I’ve discovered. I want to kiss my sister, and I wonder what excuse I can invent to call Graham back and try to get him to ask me out. He sounds like a scoundrel, but all the good ones are, aren’t they? Then again, there must be hundreds of Grahams out there. This is New York City, after all. The number of eligible bachelors looking for roommates has to be limitless. I should have come up with this plan ages ago. I almost shriek for joy, but this time I control myself. Okay, so I’ll have to be a sneak and a snake for a couple of weeks, but look on the bright side: What if I actually do meet someone I like in the process? Now that would make a good story.

  “Where the hell is Jacquie?” I hear Steve shout from the other room.

  “Here, Steve! Here I am,” I say, running back into the office, where he’s rifling through a pile of text looking for the Cate Blanchett piece that he hasn’t read yet. I grab it off my desk and hand it to him before positioning myself in front of my computer again. I glance at the time on my screen, smiling so hard that my face feels like it might break, and realize that I haven’t thought about Jake in over half an hour.

  “Fuck Jake,” I say, feeling like Graham has completely cured me of him.

  fuck jake, says the Instant Message I get at that very instant from my sister. I love how she can read my mind.

  Precisely what I was thinking, I write back. You’ll be happy to hear we broke up.

  you broke up with him, right?

  Sort of. Mutual really. I feel my face getting hot at my fib, but I guess it’s kind of true. I mean I was planning to break up with him eventually, anyway. Guess what! I type, changing the subject. I got an assignment from Luscious—1000 words on searching for men in the apt ads!

  good idea. how’d you come up with it?

  I know, I know. THANK YOU, BRILLIANT HERMANA, I write.

  And then I give in to the irresistible pull of Craig’s List. Here’s what I learn right away: Unlike computer dating, the people who place apartment ads don’t necessarily list any personal information, so some research is required. My first step is to send out a dozen “Who lives in this apartment?” e-mails. I get responses like, I am a German woman, a sculptor and I’m a bartender and a musician; Tommy’s in film school; there’s Sammy and Zab (Zab?); Curt’s moving out, you’re in his room. It’s dope! You should toooooootally come see the place!! Come over now, man, have a beer!!!!

  I jot down a couple of phone numbers: John, a musician in the East Village; Steven, a thirty-four-year-old doctor with a duplex in the West Village; and a thirty-seven-year-old with a newly renovated two-bedroom in Tribeca. One ad intrigues me:

  * * *

  Looking for a roommate to share spacious, bright, immaculately decorated E. Village 2-bedroom that’s bursting with charm. 1800 square foot roof garden is stunning. $1500. Call Chad.

  * * *

  I shoot off an e-mail: Who would I be living with? A few minutes later I receive the following: You’d be in one room, my boyfriend Jurgen and I in the other. Best, Chad. I should have known. Straight men do not call their apartments “stunning” or “bursting with charm,” and their homes most certainly aren’t “immaculately decorated.” Most straight guys—metrosexuals excepted—scratch their balls, look at their dank, laundry-strewn pad with its navy-blue futon, entertainment center purchased at Kmart, and stack of video games and porn in the corner, and call it “cool, dude.” I become obsessed with meeting a man with an eighteen-hundred-square-foot roof garden.

  Truth be told, I’m having a hard time focusing on work. How can I be expected to care about Sam’s exposé on Suzy Q. Starlet or Spencer’s review of the movie he calls “the best thing to emerge from Spain since sangria” when some guy I don’t know is out there waiting to become my new boyfriend, and all I have to do is show up at his door. I grab a handful of hair, scrutinize my split ends, and bite them off one by one. I flick my wrist with the rubber band and watch a pale welt appear.

  Suddenly the office turns chaotic and, contrary to my nature, I am forced to forget about boys for a minute. (Men, I mentally correct myself. “Until you start calling them ‘men,’ you will continue to meet unformed, noncommittal boys,” says Courtney.) Chaos: Steve’s arguing loudly with an advertiser. I’m on the phone with the copy editor debating the finer points of parentheses. Sam’s running between the two of us, demanding final decisions about which pictures go where. Trevor’s frantically inputting changes that the rest of us are throwing his way. Then it’s lunchtime and we’re ordering burritos from the taco stand around the corner. Chester’s blasting the Pet Shop Boys and shaking his hips like the wily gopher in Caddyshack when he should be proofreading, while Trevor’s brand-new Jack Russell puppy named Maximus runs laps around the office, barking incessantly. Then it’s eight o’clock and we’ve pulled it off. I’m checking the most recent version that Trevor printed out to see if we missed any copy mistakes, and it looks good. With Maximus snoring softly in my lap and another issue of the magazine in the can, I suddenly feel high on it all, as if everything is going to turn out fine.

  4

  * * *

  EV rock star looking to shack up: Rm avail in the grooviest digs on Ave B. Live with a bass player, cool cat, nice guy, can put you on the phone with the man vacating to nest with his main squeeze. He’ll vouch for me—I won’t even have to pay him ☺. A girl might be nice this time, but I’m not picky. Call John.

  * * *

  There’s an illness that afflicts New York couples: They’re living happily in some shoebox apartment in Manhattan, and life is groovy. Then they get married—and start to feel queasy. Suddenly shoebox makes them claustrophobic. Delusional thoughts and paranoia set in. They could swear that the city has become noisier, dirtier, more urban somehow, way too noisy and dirty and urban for their liking anyway. Suddenly, their skin is crawling and they’re sure they will die if forced to spend another second of their put-upon lives in this horrible place called Manhattan.

  Next thing you know, they move to Brooklyn.

  I’m not making this up. It has happened to every single person I’ve ever known who got married while cohabitating in New York. After dating since junior year in college, Court and Brad finally got hitched six years ago and, naturally, they mutually agreed (probably the day he proposed) to give up their mind-blowing East Village one-bedroom—and its marble mantelpiece, massive skylight sending sunshine over a funky, sunken living room, windy staircase leading to their own private roof garden—to move to Park Slope. I almost lost my oat-bran flakes when they broke the news to me. I was writing freelance movie reviews for a free newspaper at the time and waiting tables at a dive to cover my student loans and credit-card debt, so I couldn’t afford to take over their lease. At only a thousand dollars a month, it was a steal, but still out of reach for me. Instead, they gave notice, the landlord did minor renovations to justify jacking up the rent to twenty-two hundred, and some trust-fund deadbeat with a drum set moved in. I fantasized about dating him for a minute, just so I still could visit the apartment, but he smelled like b.o. and his drumming sucked. My best friends moved into a perfectly pretty two-bedroom located on a quaint, tree-lined street in the Slope, where baby strollers outnumber dogs four to one. Worst of all, it’s a forty-five-minute subway ride from me.

  When the Flicks crew—bouncing off walls following a frenzied day—heads out for a drink after work, as we do every time we wrap an issue, I decline. I promised Brad I would come over and hang out with him and Courtney while he packs. So Steve et al. saunter off to our usual dinner and beer spot a few blocks west of our office, which has
crayons on the tables and a great bacon cheeseburger, and I take a ten-minute stroll up to West Fourth Street to hop the F train to Brooklyn.

  I open the door with my own key while Courtney is ordering dinner. She is about to hang up when she hears me banging in and shouts from the kitchen, “We’re ordering Thai. Steamed dumplings, veggie pad thai, lemongrass shrimp, and green chicken curry. Want anything else?”

  “Sounds like you hit it,” I say, slinging my bag onto the mushy green couch on which I’ve spent many nights. “Sorry, Chaz,” I say, as it lands on the cat’s head. “Didn’t see you there.” I throw myself down next to him and nuzzle his white furriness. He kneads the cushions and purrs, gazing at me lovingly with big, blue eyes. “I love you madly, fat man,” I tell him.

  “I had to order. Kitchen closes at nine-thirty,” Courtney says. I shake my head in disgust—only in family-happy Park Slope do restaurants shut down before anyone over age five has even digested lunch. She wanders into the living room, holding a Ziploc bag bursting with every vitamin and herbal remedy ever made, which she must be packing for Brad, and a Corona. She points at the beer. I nod and go into the kitchen to grab one.

  “Brad, want a beer?” I yell.

  “Uh,” he grunts from the front bedroom, which they use as an office. This means yes. He’s checking e-mail in green sweats and no shirt, with a red bandana wrapped around his bushy blond head. “Nice look, homey. Move over.” I scoot him over and squeeze onto his chair with him. “I want to show you something.” I type in the address for Craig’s List and go to the roommates-wanted page.

  “Check this out. Court, come here. I’m writing a piece for Luscious! Two thousand bucks!”

  “You go,” says Brad.

  Court ambles in, nibbling a handful of wasabi peas, and throws her arms around my neck.

  “I’m so proud of you, sweet,” she says. “What’s it about?”