Room for Love

by Andrea Meyer

  By the time I move into Anthony’s, I’m less freaked out. Alicia helps me pack and lug, bitching all the way. We’re each hauling an enormous suitcase that’s impossible to carry down my four flights of stairs, so we drag them. They thump as they hit each stair on the way down, and the thump thump thump thump gets all the dogs in the building barking and howling. My neighbors must be happy to see me go. As we’re climbing into a cab on the corner of Eleventh and Avenue A, my phone rings. Of all people, it’s Jake.

  “Hey, stranger,” I say and tell the driver where to go.

  “What up?” he asks.

  “Funny you should ask. I actually…” Telling Jake makes my situation seem even more surreal. “I met somebody. I’m, um, moving in with him.”

  “You high?”

  “No, just moving in with this guy,” I say.

  “He’s moving in with you?” he asks.

  “No, I’m moving in with him.”

  “But you have the spankin’ pad,” he says.

  “It’s complicated,” I say, feeling defensiveness rising out of my belly. “God, Jake, it’s for the article. I’m moving in with a guy I met through the apartment thing. It’s, you know, research.”

  “Oh,” he says. “I guess you don’t want to go to an art opening tonight then.”

  “No,” I laugh. “I can’t.”

  “Well, I have a piece in this group show in Chelsea,” he says. “If you get a chance, check it out. I’ll e-mail you the info.”

  “Sounds great,” I say.

  “You should come see the show,” Jake says. “It’s kind of a cool group of people and I was thinking about you and you and me and stuff when I did the painting, you know? I don’t know, you might dig it.”

  “I’ll definitely go when I have a chance,” I say.

  “Where you moving?”

  “Williamsburg.”

  He laughs a Beavis and Butthead laugh. “You get sick of your dude, you know there’s a place you can come hide.”

  “Thanks for the offer,” I say and hang up. I watch the buildings of my neighborhood float by the cab window, feeling in my bones how much I will miss them. I see the cute café guy walking to work as we stop at a light and our eyes meet for a second. How strange that I will no longer flirt with that guy every day of my life. I look over at my sister, who’s staring equally intently out her window. Beyond her I catch a glimpse of the Bible-studies lady rushing past the colorful fruit and flower stand fronting a crowded deli, clearly headed for my corner. She’s wearing a navy skirt suit and black boots as always and holding an umbrella over her bundled head, even though it’s seventy degrees with hazy sunshine, no chance of showers.

  As we drive over the Williamsburg Bridge, the skyscrapers of Manhattan loom behind me like a guilty secret. I twist around in my seat and watch the city where I’ve lived for the last eight years recede into the distance. I’ve considered moving to Brooklyn before, to a cheaper, bigger space in one of the quaint, brownstone-lined regions you have to cross a bridge or tunnel to get to, but I was never quite able to tear myself away from the downtown bustle. I wondered if I would lose my drive and inspiration if I left the city. I wondered if the trip back and forth would become daunting and I would hole myself up in some cozy flat with spacious rooms and a shady stoop, spend my days lazing about reading the paper and watching Friends reruns and never go out again. But here I am, in the back of a cab that’s transporting my clothes, computer, and beauty products into a dirty, practically treeless barrio on the Brooklyn side of the bridge. We pull up to Anthony’s building, to the bland block of concrete that from the outside could be a warehouse—or a prison. I hand the cabdriver ten bucks and he helps me hoist my two monster suitcases and random plastic bags bursting with my belongings out of the trunk.

  Anthony already gave me a key, so Alicia and I let ourselves in. He’s sitting on the couch watching an old movie starring Bette Davis and looks up at us, startled. He’s wearing old gray sweats with a white button-down shirt hanging out. He’s as cute as I remembered, I notice with some relief. The place is still in a state of disarray, although he’s straightened some of the piles.

  “You’re here,” he says, flipping off the tube and jumping up. He sounds pleased and smiles at both of us shyly. He has a dimple.

  “You live in the ‘Burg, too?” he asks Alicia.

  “Yup, on the gnarly side of the tracks,” she says.

  “We should all hang out sometime, get brunch at Diner or something.”

  “Sounds like a plan, man,” she says, throwing an approving glance my way before fleeing, probably for fear that I’ll recruit her to help me unpack.

  I feel as if I’m sleepwalking as Anthony shows me the cluttered room that’s now mine, chattering along the way about his former roommate, a neuroscientist he’d known since college who didn’t mind burrowing through years of accumulated junk to find his bed. My new home is about twelve by twelve with a big window. About half of the room is stuffed almost to the ceiling with books, boxes of tapes, another bike, a surfboard, a sled, Rollerblades, a skateboard, scuba equipment, a beer bong, an electric guitar. The section of the room housing the full-size bed is otherwise empty.

  “I’ve started clearing some of the junk out,” he says. “But we’ve got our work cut out for us.” He puts the surfboard into the crowded hall closet as I move boxes of books into the living room, stacking them on top of the stacks. I almost bump into Anthony hauling a Nerf basketball hoop over his head. I back up to let him pass, blush and look away. Suddenly it hits me like a brick to my skull that I’m going to live in this small, cramped room in Brooklyn. I am going to have a roommate. I am going to have to take the subway to work every morning. I am doing all of this why? Is it really for the sake of the article? Or is it because of this guy?

  “Hey, Anthony, do you want a cup of tea?” I ask him.

  “What I want is a drink,” he says, making a move for the kitchen. After rummaging around for a minute, he shouts out, “Beer’s not gonna cut it for a cleaning spree. Out of vodka, but I’ve got a bottle of Patron. Shots, anyone?”

  “Who am I to say no to good tequila?” I shout back from inside the closet where I’m cramming an enormous stuffed elephant I found under the bed. Next thing I know we’re doing shots, blaring Led Zeppelin, and playing strip Boggle. I guess having a masters in English has at least one advantage—I’m kicking his butt, which is covered in nothing but red boxers, while I remain relatively clothed. Knowing he’s about to lose his last scrap of an outfit, he tells me he’s “sick of this lame-ass game.”

  “Were you really gonna make me tea?” he asks.

  “Yeah, I was,” I say. “We’d be a lot soberer if I had.”

  “I don’t think I have any tea,” he says.

  “I brought it with me. Moroccan mint tea, mint green tea, chamomile, lemon-ginger, apricot black tea, honey vanilla rooibos, Egyptian licorice tea, which is way better than it sounds, raspberry leaf tea for, uh, women’s issues.”

  “You’re a regular tea store.”

  “A tea junkie.”

  “A tea-mophiliac.”

  “That’s retarded,” I say, cracking up.

  “Did you call me retarded?” he asks, with a loopy smile on his face.

  “Uh-huh,” I say, sucking on a slice of lime and closing my eyes ’cause it’s so sour.

  “Nobody calls me retarded in my own home. There’s no way you can live with me now,” he says, looking very stern.

  “Too late, bud,” I say and throw the lime rind at his face. It hits his right cheek. “You’re stuck with me.”

  “You are way too hot to be my roommate,” he says, getting up off the couch to play the air guitar in his underwear. I bob my head along with him and he picks up the lime rind that I threw at him and throws it back at me. It hits me on the forehead and I open my mouth widely as if offended by the nerve of him.

  “Oh my God,” I say, jumping to my feet. “I have to sleep in that room! What are we thinking?
We have to clean it!” I run into the room with such drunken gusto that I bang my forehead against the door and it starts throbbing with pain.

  “Ow,” I say, putting my hand to my head and feeling really stupid.

  “Are you all right?” Anthony asks, rushing into the dark where I’m sitting on my new bed, cradling my aching head. I nod as he pushes my hair out of my face to get a good look at my wound, sending a jolt of electricity right through me. I guess he felt it, too, because he looks suddenly discombobulated and very sweet. He kisses my forehead where I bumped it, pauses for a moment, and then kisses me very gently on the lips. It is both audacious and the most normal thing in the world. Getting hammered and making out with some hot guy I just met? This is what I do. I’m good at it. The fact that I’ve been trying to stop and the fact that Anthony is my new roommate are both inconsequential next to his extraordinary looks and soft lips. I am much too drunk to care and much too susceptible to cuteness to resist. Not to mention that this is the most perfect ending I could have imagined for my Luscious piece. It is completely natural and expected when Anthony pulls me on top of him and we spend the next ten minutes kissing each other, his messy spare bedroom spinning wildly around us as if it has never seen a kiss before. We are giddy, weightless, floating, as if pumped full of helium (and tequila), inches above the hard, bare mattress.

  “I can’t believe you’re my roommate,” he says. We both laugh, softly at first, until we’re clutching our stomachs like teenagers who just took our first hit of pot, tears streaming down our cheeks, gasping for breath. Finally he stands up and pulls me onto my feet.

  On our way into his room, he turns to me and slurs, “Don’t worry, no funny business.” We fool around for another hour, grinding away at each other in our underwear like virgins in naive agreement not to go all the way. It’s only in the morning that Anthony dips into the pack of condoms tucked neatly into the drawer in his nightstand, purrs, and slowly makes his way out of his clothes and into mine. I almost stop him, telling myself I have no excuse anymore for moving so quickly. But then lust trumps reason, as usual, and I bury my face in a pillow and let him have his way with me. Afterward, we fall lazily back to sleep until ten, when I wake again with a shock. “Shit, I’m supposed to be at work!”

  “Don’t go,” he says. “Please! You can’t leave me. I’m tired and hung over and so, so crazy about you. I can’t let you go yet.”

  I grin at him. “I really want to, but we’re shipping the issue tomorrow. It’s like the craziest day of the month.”

  “Pleeeeease,” he pleads, his hands clutched together in front of his heart. He’s kneeling on his bed and he has a hard-on.

  I call Steve and tell him I have the stomach flu and can’t make it in.

  “Shit,” he says while I hold my breath. “Okay, I’ll have Sam and Spencer get on the text. You feel better. I really need you tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Steve,” I say, “sorry,” and pounce on the gorgeous guy grinning at me from the bed.

  Through my woozy post-tequila haze, I feel a pang of guilt about the elaborate deception I’ve constructed with Anthony and our fragile new romance at its center. I want to tell him the truth right now, but how would I explain now that I’ve actually moved in? I’ve pushed things too far for any explanation to make sense. He would hate me. That guy Hunter got so pissed off at me when I confessed to him the real object of my quest and I hadn’t done anything as bad as really moving into his apartment.

  “You know, Jacquie, I was thinking, now that you’re moving into my bed,” he says, grinning, “we could turn the spare room into an office. We could both use one.”

  “Isn’t this all a little fast?” I ask him, suddenly uneasy. “I mean, wouldn’t it be better if I moved into the other room and we got to know each other a little bit and sort of waited to see what happens?”

  “Shhh,” he says, mashing his body against mine. I can feel his warm breath on my lips as he speaks. “Didn’t I tell you how crazy I am about you?” I nod. “This is going to be fine. We’re going to be fine. There’s no such thing as too fast. We met, we dug each other, and here we are. Not to mention that it was like fucking fate or something. I mean, you came here looking for a roommate and we wound up, like, madly in love!”

  I make an attempt to smile at him, even though I feel like a jerk.

  “So are you gonna help me turn the spare room into an office or what?” he says.

  I nod obediently as words run typewritten through my head: Not only do I have a gorgeous new boyfriend, but I have landed myself a spacious two-bedroom apartment in one of the hottest neighborhoods in town. Two bedrooms mean one for us, another for my clothes and my computer. What other dating strategy can yield that kind of unexpected perk?

  I envision two desks placed side by side and nervously bite off a split end, anticipating the sting even before I hook the rubber band with my finger. I picture my desk at home, Serena perched on my gray swivel chair. Lying on his back next to me, Anthony takes my hand in his and squeezes it tightly. Who is this guy? He grins as if to say, “Stop worrying, angel, it’ll all be fine.”

  Besides sleeping off our hangovers and rolling around his bed, we spend the day wandering around Anthony’s neighborhood in cowboy hats and dark sunglasses, dodging the hoards of disheveled twenty-somethings with no apparent jobs who populate Williamsburg. Anthony thinks I’m nuts for talking to every dog that makes the move on Lucy as if we were old friends, but says it’s nice that I have an affinity for the world’s dumber creatures.

  “They’re not dumb,” I tell him. “They’re completely loving and trusting and their whole world is tied up in whoever is loving them right now. I think I must have been a dog in a past life.” Anthony shakes his head as if I’m nuts again, but wraps his arms around me and kisses my forehead.

  “Hey, what if someone offered you a million dollars to get on the subway back to Manhattan and never see me again? What would you do?” he asks me as we’re meandering slowly back to his place. His eyes are so pretty. “I mean, maybe I’ll be nothing to you, or maybe I’ll be the guy you grow old with. But it’s hard to know now, isn’t it? A million dollars.”

  “Tough call. What would you do?”

  “Take the million bucks for sure,” he says. “You’re pretty cute, but I could make a lot of great films for a million bucks. Or at least a couple.” He laughs and covers my face in kisses.

  When I wake up from our second nap of the day, long after the sun has fallen out of the sky, I hear Anthony on the phone and walk sleepily into the living room, where he is leaning on the kitchen counter, ordering sushi. I’m wearing nothing but a pair of his socks and boxers and suddenly have the urge to do the splits. I’m close but not quite there, so I hold on to the back of the couch and try, however inelegantly, to slide into my imperfect version of the agonizing pose. He glances over at me and says into the phone, to whoever is taking his order, “I have the sexiest girlfriend in the world.” Unlike Jake, this guy has no problem assuming the role of boyfriend. This is a man who digs me and wants the whole world to know it.

  * * *

  “Think about how much cash people flush renting two apartments,” Anthony says, gesticulating with a veggie vermicelli roll wrapped in a lettuce leaf that’s between his thumb and forefinger. “In New York, it’s financial suicide.” He swallows the last bite, kisses me hard on the mouth, and grins at his sister, who shakes her head.

  We’re at Anthony’s favorite Korean restaurant on First Avenue, a sleek, dimly lit cube with creative cocktails and the best bulgogi in town, which is located a mere Frisbee toss from my apartment, which he doesn’t know exists, having dinner with his sister, Suzanne, and brother-in-law, Bill. His big sister is a public relations maven in a gray suit who, with her petite, lightly freckled facial features and blond bob pulled back with a purple paisley silk scarf, looks like the heroine on a Harlequin Romance cover, perhaps the prim schoolteacher who’s about to rock some handsome tycoon’s world. Her lean husba
nd has come straight from the gym and is sporting jeans and a navy fleece jacket over a Knicks shirt. “Me and Jacquie are the new urban couple, saving money, time, and a ton of needless agony arguing about whose house is closer or how many sleepovers before you get your own toothbrush,” Anthony says. “And hey, if we get sick of each other, we do rock, scissors, paper to find out who moves to the spare room.” He chuckles, throwing an arm around me.

  “All right, all right, you can drop the pitch. We get your point,” says Suzanne, finishing off her third beer. “Guess who I bumped into at Fairway the other day? Ben Carroll’s mom.”

  “Scrawny three-pack-a-day-Ben Ben?” Anthony asks.

  “Not anymore,” she says. “Apparently a couple of years ago he met this woman, fell madly in love, got her pregnant in five minutes, and they moved to, guess where—Bali, one of my favorite places. I guess his wife makes jewelry and had always wanted to go there, so they sold Ben’s apartment and skedaddled, and now they run a successful import-export business and he’s a dive master and she sells her jewelry for a fortune in Beverly Hills, SoHo, and Barcelona, and they have two kids. But the most impressive thing is this house they bought over there, this gorgeous, thatched, indoor-outdoor Balinese affair they expanded into an enormous compound with a big modern kitchen and a wooden staircase that winds down to a riverbed. It’s fabulous. Just can’t afford that kind of space over here. His mom showed me pictures, she carries them around alongside the photos of the kids, who are adorable.”