by Poppy Dunne
“I know, at my age I should be working on my third failed marriage,” I snap. But before we can get into it, Ben interjects.
“We’ve been dating about six months now.” He squeezes me against him. It feels pretty nice. What’s even nicer is the flickering moment of disbelief on Mom’s face.
“Really? She’s never mentioned you before,” Mom purrs. But damn it, Ben’s ready for her.
“I wanted to tell everyone right away, but she waited. That’s one of the things I love about her—how wise she is. When you have something special, you take it slow.” Then he leans down and presses his lips to my cheek, just a whisper of a touch. Instantly, and startlingly, my insides kind of gel together. Thank god he’s holding me up. “That’s part of the reason I’m so excited to meet all of the family now. You should be so proud of your daughter.”
His confident smile is killing Mom right now. He’s throwing a bucket of water on her, and we’re watching as the witch melts down to a cream pair of Manolo Blahniks and a spilled cosmopolitan.
Her horror at being unable to mock me gives me life. It spurs me on. Move in for the kill, Alex. I grip Ben by his lapel.
“You always know just what to say,” I murmur, trying to sound kittenish. Then I get up on my tiptoes and kiss him.
It’s supposed to be a moment to make Mom uncomfortable and get out of our faces. But the second our lips connect, a hot spark shoots through my body. Instead of freezing or shoving me away—which Ben could do, because I’m borderline assaulting him right now—he pulls me closer. Our bodies melt together.
My head tips back and I inadvertently sigh into his mouth, my lips opening just a little, and that’s when I feel his tongue trace my lower lip, then stroke against mine just hard enough to make my pulse race. There’s nothing in our verbal contract that mentions making out, but I can’t stop myself from reaching up my arms to twine around his neck. As we kiss his hands slide down my back, a little possessive. I think I’m getting dizzy. Man, this guy is a good actor.
He trails his fingers just above the curve of my ass, too. Classy, but still enough to make an onlooker a little uncomfortable. Bullseye. We break apart, even though part of me would like to stay locked to his face. Mom’s gulped down her drink in one go, clearly desperate to get the hell away from her daughter’s happiness. It feels good.
“Well. You two have a pleasant evening.” She says it like we’re a pair of strangers whom she just walked in on to find screwing in a corner of the bathroom. “Go find Rollie before you…do whatever it is you do.” I want to say ‘have sex in the front hall,’ but think better of it. She walks away from us, stiff-kneed and red-faced. My mother tried to embarrass me and got it thrown right back in her face. It’s like Christmas in February.
Though watching her walk away like I just stripped in front of her is kind of like a stiletto to the heart. Since Todd and I broke up—hell, since I took myself out to California and basically flipped her kind of life the double bird—she’s been distant. At least, more distant than she used to be. I can’t help wishing she could just be happy for me and the man I paid to be my date. Is that so much to ask?
Still, we got through the first level of hell. Mom was the final boss at the end. The rest should be easier.
“Well, we got the hardest part out of the way,” I say, sighing. I mean, we still have Great-Aunt Agatha to deal with, but she’s 106 and hard of hearing. She’ll probably yell at Ben to get a haircut, tug on her twenty-strand pearl necklace, and then have a minor heart attack to spite us all. The Harringtons are fun like that.
Speak of the devil, I spot her across the room. Todd’s helping her into a seat, being kind of considerate, actually. I need to remember that he’s not just the one note douchenozzle who talks shit to me and gropes his girlfriend. He’s even bringing her a drink now. When you see someone who’s kind of a jackass being nice to other people, it makes you worry that you’re the jerk factor.
Then again, Todd did just grab a feel of his girlfriend’s ass, so maybe I’m not Satan in this scenario either.
“How are you feeling?” Ben asks.
“Good.” I take another fast swallow of booze. I’m still a little flushed from that kiss.
“Before we go out there, want to at least get our stories straight?” Ben’s eyes crinkle in amusement. “Or we could just make out all evening and have everyone ignore us.”
Ha, yeah, ha, that’s…way too tempting. Ben’s still got his arm around me, and I’m still gazing soulfully into his eyes. Nothing can ruin this moment, except…
“Pop quiz. What’s my last name?” he asks. Oh, clever bastard.
“Wylie. Williams,” I say, wincing. “I got so close the first time. You’ve got to give me that.”
He laughs, which vibrates through his chest and feels really wonderful, what with being pressed up against him like this. I mean, maybe the plan B make out is still on the table…
“We still need to get better acquainted,” he says.
“All right. What’s the Cliffs Notes version of your life story?” I ask. But he shakes his head.
“I was thinking more on the fly, undercover.” His smile widens. “Maybe we check out the contemporary mummy wing at the museum’s coffee shop.”
Wait. “Are you asking me on a date?”
He thinks, shrugs. “Research trip. Date. Can’t they be the same thing?”
Oh shit. Here I am, still trying to catch Todd’s eye—just for an instant, just so he can see what he’s still missing—and Ben comes up with an offer that’s way too inviting. I don’t have time to get involved, after all. I mean, even though it’s not really involvement. It’s just a date. But there’s Todd, and my mother, and my own neuroses, and…
Hell, maybe I really do need to get out.
“All right,” I say, smiling. “It’s a date.”
4
“Is that spaghetti?” Ben asks, as we stand side by side the next day in the most expansive, brilliantly lit wing that the New York Museum of Contemporary Art has to offer. This whole cultural enrichment thing isn’t going the way we planned. I know there’s a lot of good modern art out there, but they’re not currently hiding any in New York. Right now, Ben and I are staring at what looks like a pile of cold noodles covered with some kind of black oil. It’s sectioned off by a velvet rope, as though the museum’s in danger of someone being overcome by this masterpiece and sneaking out with it under their jacket.
The plaque in front of it just says “ALONE”.
Exactly this little exhibit’s fate. Ben and I turn around, slowly taking in the rest of the gallery. So far we’ve got two utterly blank canvases, a sculpture that looks like a pair of styrofoam cups glued together by someone very drunk, a bundle of sticks suspended from the ceiling, and a spray-painted wicker chair. Ben makes like he’s going to sit in it, but I tug at his arm.
“That’s got to be an exhibit,” I whisper. I know how these things work—the artist takes some everyday object, takes a crap on it, then demands ten million dollars for the effort. Baffled, Ben looks around.
“There’s no sign.” Oh, you sweet summer child.
“Here.” I go over to a guard in a blue security outfit standing silent by the door. “Hi, ma’am. Sorry to bother, but that chair’s an exhibit, right?”
No response. She stares ahead, silent as the grave. Confused, I glance around. “Uh, are you all right?”
“Sshh,” the guard hisses out the side of her mouth. “I’m an exhibit.”
Ben pulls me away, his shoulders shaking from trying to hold in laughter. It’s tough for me too, and pretty soon we’re leaned up against each other snorting into our hands. Some blue-haired women with tattoos who are taking this stuff very seriously glare at us. They wander around the room, and I hear them talk about the hidden vaginas in one particular piece. I’m pretty sure that’s just a blank stretch of wall, but you do you, ladies.
“Next question,” Ben says, gesturing around the room. “Do you like this stuff?
”
“Well, I studied art history in college. I liked that,” I say, sighing as I look around. “Sure, it was more post-Impressionist and less…absolutely nothing.”
“So what made you want to study art history? And not law, finance, or soul trafficking,” Ben drawls, whisking me over to a painting that looks like someone got naked, rolled around on the canvas in yellow paint for twenty minutes, and then threw a half-melted pint of Ben and Jerry’s at the thing just for good measure. “Wasted Time: A Season” the plaque reads. I feel you, brother.
“You mean why not any of the high-ranking professions my family’s so clearly into?” I’m sure the Harringtons are very into soul trafficking, actually.
“They do seem to love the color green,” he admits, rubbing his thumb and fingers together in the universal ‘money, please’ gesture.
“And you don’t have any time for that?” I ask, feeling a little flushed. Look, my family may be a group of grubby, money-loving monsters, but they’re my money-loving monsters. Not particularly grubby, though. Ben merely shrugs at my question. Well, he probably doesn’t have a lot of time for agonizing over high paying jobs. He works as a server in a hotel. “No, of course not, you’re obviously the sensitive starving artist type.”
He shrugs. “I could never be an artist. I didn’t have the genius to dream any of this up,” he deadpans, eyeing what looks to be a used condom placed beneath a doll’s head. I swear, I hope they don’t bring kids in here for field trips.
“Actor? Model?” Dancer? Sexpert?
I want the last one to be true so very badly.
“Forget me for a second.” Ah, mystery man again. No matter how much we talk, I can never get close to the truth behind whatever’s going on inside that chiseled, golden façade of his. In fact, he seems to really get a kick out of pulling stories and details out of me. He’s interested in everything, from the American Girl doll I had growing up (Felicity, naturally) to the time I got locked out of the bathroom during a hurricane in Miami. That one was a lot less cheerful, and involved a lot more swearing. “You grew up surrounded by people living large, right?” he asks.
“It’s not that I’m so above money, or anything. I always thought that since the Harringtons have more than enough people to move money around, maybe one of them could care about something else. Art tells you the history of how people thought, not just what they did.” It’s true I didn’t make a career out of art history—because it’s hard to make a career out of looking at paintings, stroking your chin meaningfully, and saying ‘Monet painted these lilies because symbolism’—but that idea of contributing to the stories people tell about themselves, about where they’ve been and where they want to go, was part of the reason I took a job at House of Jazz to begin with. It’s historic, a testimony to the great musical pioneers who came before.
Also, I’d just hitchhiked to California and Nigel was the only one who’d give me a job in Los Angeles that wasn’t waiting tables. You’ve got to show your loyalty.
“Sounds like something a rich kid would say.” Ben doesn’t say it in a Che Guevara way, though. Like, I don’t think he’s about to incite la revolucion. Instead, he looks thoughtful. “You know, ‘hey, I don’t need to make money, I just want to feel things.’” Spoken in any other way, it’d sound like he was making fun of me, but he seems to be playing with me more than anything.
“You think I was the type of kid with a lava lamp and a list of pet causes?” I ask, mockingly offended.
“I’d think it was a waterbed, not a lava lamp,” he replies.
“I mean, I could’ve gone back to Mom and Dad’s house after college and taken the internships they wanted me to take, married the man they wanted me to marry.” I pause, because I actually did want to marry the man Mom thought was so great. And then he kicked my heart in its crotch and fled the scene while cackling to himself like a cartoon villain. At least, that’s my interpretation of events. “Running off after school was right around the time Mom and I started not getting along at all.”
Man, when she found out I’d landed in Los Angeles after hitchhiking with a group of hipsters in an Oldsmobile. Our family doesn’t do a lot of screaming, but I swear she was clinking the ice in her bourbon glass extra hard. I could feel it in my bones from thousands of miles away.
“Was that the plan all along? Running away to the wilds of California?” Is it just me, or does Ben sound a little impressed? I hope that’s not just me.
“My plan was to find out how people from another zip code live. Turns out I have a lot more affinity for regular life than the rest of the clan.” I shrug.
“So you’re not into artifice,” Ben says, as we take another lap around the gallery. “No bullshit.”
“I feel like people should earn what they get. Be honest about things, too.” That’s the tug on the old heartstrings right there. Mom smiling to my face and then insulting me, Todd acting like everything in our relationship was fine while he secretly knew it was not—stuff like that’ll give a girl a complex. The best way to freak me out? Lie to me. Works every time.
“I agree, both on the earning things and the honesty.” There’s a pleased expression on his face—he looks good when he’s pleased. The way he looks good any other time I’ve ever seen him. I’m fairly certain he could make even constipated look good. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Will you answer one of mine if I do?” Seriously, all I’ve gotten from him today in regards to who he is/where he came from is “six-two” and “San Jose.” Which is a little annoying, but being a six-footer from California ain’t half bad.
Ben and I stop in front of the spaghetti/oil thing one more time. He does a good job of impersonating a snooty art lover, nodding enthusiastically and pulling at his chin. Finally, he asks, “Does this make you hungry?”
God, it looks like rancid pasta. So of course it makes me hungry.
“What is this, a Rorschach dinner test?” I ask. He quirks his mouth in a smile. Good, we’ve got a man who understands antiquated psychology references. The sky’s the limit as far as our not-dating goes.
“How about dinner? Italian. I know a great place, four blocks away,” he says, guiding me toward the exit. Oh, yeah. Italian’s music to my stomach.
“Lead on,” I say, slipping my arm through his with a flourish. Though we get stopped right at the exit by another security guard. I sigh. “Let me guess. You’re part of the exhibit too?”
“No, but the exit sign is,” he replies, looking weary. “If you’re trying to leave the gallery, you need to go the other way.”
Ben and I suppress our snickers all the way out the door.
5
“This is so much more like it,” I say, twirling a glorious forkful of marinara-covered spaghetti onto my fork. “Man, I didn’t know this place was around.” We’re cozied up in an adorable little hole in the wall eatery down on Madison Avenue. Snow’s blowing so hard outside that people are nearly walking horizontal, but inside, it’s all old school Italian charm. There’s autographed photos of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons on the wall! Over there, we’ve got a waiter singing opera to a table of bored-looking tourists wearing fanny packs! And in the back room, through a stained glass door, you can get a glimpse of real New Jersey mob bosses probably deciding which guy’s arm to cut off first!
It’s all about the ambiance, I tell you.
“You need to spend time looking around, you know,” Ben says, laughing as he takes up a white linen napkin and wipes at my chin with it. Great, I always know how to look smooth for a prospective not-date. We’re lucky I haven’t dunked my face in the garlic sauce and started swirling it around.
That comes later, after a third (or fourth) (I’m losing count) glass of this really incredible Chianti. The edges of the room are blurring in a cozy haze now, and Ben’s somehow looking even more attractive than before. Or maybe that’s just my inhibitions sliding away, because he’s pretty much peak perfection even in the most sober light.
; I have to push away a little twinge of sadness when I think of how date nights with Todd used to feel like this. Smiling, laughing at each other across the table. Before he started making serious money. Before he started thinking that his own stories and jokes were a lot better than mine, just because he had more zeroes in his bank account.
Still, I’m not going to let these thoughts derail me tonight. Time with Ben is going pretty smashingly, actually. Very British, that’s me.
“Is that what you do? Look around the city?” I ask him, cupping my chin in my hand. Here it is, at last—a piece of the Ben Williams puzzle. Ben takes a forkful of lasagna, chewing thoughtfully.
“I like to look at what people need,” he says, his eyes turning from boyish blue to electric like flipping on a switch. A super handsome blond switch. “Say I’m walking past a boarded up shop in an area that’s crammed with high end, expensive eateries. That’s a good place for a little sandwich place, you know? Sub development, I guess.”
I giggle at that. I swear I haven’t had too much to drink. “You’re looking out for the working stiff, then?”
“Hey, there are a lot of people who work long hours in restaurants, stores, hotels,” he says. Hotel staff, yes, he definitely knows about that. He looks serious now. “They deserve a nice place to eat that isn’t going to break their bank. Then if you can replicate that model, you win, and so does everyone else.”
Ah, he’s a hopeful entrepreneur, not an actor. How could I have missed it?
“That’s actually a lovely idea,” I say, smiling dreamily. Everything about me feels dreamy right now. Like if I wake up and find out that I made Ben up in my head, it’s going to make too much sense. He smiles, but in a more subdued way. He rubs the back of his hand under his chin once, thoughtfully.
