Bicoastal Babe

by Cynthia Langston

  Ewwwwwwwww! Okay, I’ve got it. The worst is over. Nothing that a little soap and water can’t cure. And giving the bracelet back to Jen will be a bit funny, given all the exciting places that it’s been to visit.

  Oh, for God’s sake—the sink also runs by motion detector. Is there really a purpose for this? Some genius out there is making millions of dollars because he woke up one day and said, “I’m going to invent a sink for people who are too lazy to turn on the water.” That’s just wrong.

  I wave my hands in front of the sensor, but the water does not flow. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I say out loud (another benefit of the single bathroom is that you can talk to the appliances as much as you like), and start to shake my hands at it furiously. To no avail. What a piece of shit! I just don’t understand. How can the sink not work? This is the Rainbow Room, not the Delta terminal at fucking Chicago O’Hare airport. The automatic sink (in addition to the automatic toilet and the automatic hand dryer) is just simply a bad invention, and there are no two ways about it. I curse the single bathroom. In a multi-stall there would’ve been multi-sinks, at least one of which probably would’ve worked.

  Seriously, I am about to cry. I look up in the mirror at my pee-soaked hand holding the pee-soaked bracelet like a wet noodle. There is nothing I can do.

  I grab a paper towel (which is so soft it feels like a washcloth, because remember, this is the Rainbow Room). I wrap the paper towel around the bracelet and slip it into my purse. Then I wipe the offending hand dry with another paper towel and hope to God Victor doesn’t notice me eating left-handed tonight.

  When I get back to the table, the waiter is just delivering our salads. “What’s the matter?” Victor asks. “You’ve got a funny look on your face.”

  “Nothing.” I grimace.

  Like an old-school gentleman, Victor stands up and pulls out my chair for me, but then just as I’m about to sit down, he grabs my hand (yes, that hand).

  “You look smokin’ hot tonight,” he says. “Trés élégant.”

  And in a moment of shocking horror, he lifts my hand up to his face and kisses the back of it. I gasp and try to pull my hand away but he holds tight. Then he raises his eyes to mine with a dirty grin, parts his lips ever so slightly, and lets his tongue graze over the skin.

  Oh, yes. Absolutely. Like Victor said: Trés élégant.

  Chapter 20

  Finding a teen panel was easy in L.A., because it basically wandered up to me at the Starbucks and asked me for a ride. In New York it’s a wee bit more difficult, and I’ve wasted half of a day on it with no results. When I was a teen, where did we hang out? At the mall. But there are no malls in Manhattan. So I’m walking around, kind of half concentrating on it.

  I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with Victor. I want to know how to define our “relationship” (for lack of a better descriptor), and exactly where I stand in it. It’s a great difference between men and women. Men are always content to go with the flow, la-di-da, status schmatus, happy in the moment (as long as the moment is during sex – or at least in the near vicinity of it). But women have the built-in need, at all times, to have a firm understanding of the category, class, type, stage, and level of the relationship – which must be verified and confirmed on an almost daily basis.

  Particularly in a new relationship. In a woman’s mind, the temperature of a new relationship is being taken constantly, even if the man has no clue of it. Every word, every blink, every intonation, and every movement are being analyzed for clues as to what he’s thinking, how he’s feeling, and where the whole thing stands. Unfortunately, I am actually too busy to keep checking Victor’s thermometer, but when I can manage to find a few free minutes, my mind is right there.

  After the charity ball I spent the night at Victor’s apartment, desperately trying to distract Victor from remembering the lap dance that I promised when I was in California. And it worked, for the approximate forty-five seconds that it took him to toss off his jacket, loosen his tie, and grab a beer from the fridge. I realize that when it comes to sex, a man’s propensity for logical argument tends to vaporize into the night air, but it was worth a shot. I explained to Victor that I’d taken only one stripping class, and that to have a really good lap dance, he would need to wait until I could accumulate more expertise. Then I pointed out that I was wearing a cocktail dress that night, which is not conducive to the movement of a lap dance – but if I took it off beforehand, there would be no tease. And that to optimize the lap-dance experience, I would need to select my own music beforehand, not pick through his CDs in a scattered, last-minute fashion. And also –

  “All right, all right!” Victor threw his hands up in defeat. “ Man, you sure know how to kill a guy’s buzz.”

  “That’s not very nice.” I laughed, relieved. Then I grabbed the beer out of his hand and took a swig. When he reached for it back, I winked and told him to go get his own.

  But instead Victor collapsed into a chair and stared at me with lazy eyes. “So. Little Miss West Coast. Did you happen to lie out topless in California when you were supposed to be working?”

  Because my tan is fake, my boobs really are the same golden-bronze shade as the rest of my body. “I did, actually,” I told him, and watched his eyes light up with excitement as he got up and followed me into his bedroom. Men are such fools. Where the hell did he think I could lie out that I could just whip off my clothes and be half-naked in public? My own apartment pool, in plain sight of the neighbors? The beach, which is patrolled by cops and lifeguards? But it’s true: When it comes to anything sexual, men don’t think.

  So that was a good night. Tuesday night. But it is now Wednesday evening, and I haven’t heard from him, and I’m furious. He knows I have only a week here, and that I’m incredibly busy. Even if he calls tonight, I can’t go out with him until at least Friday. If I do, I look like a loser who has nothing to do but sit around and wait for him to call. And if he doesn’t call until tomorrow, I can’t go out with him until Saturday, which gives me only one more day to see him before I leave. I hate men. And no, I cannot call him. It is an absolute fact that men do not like to be chased, despite continual testimonies in Cosmo and Glamour from dopey, overweight guys who are too shy to approach a girl, so being chased is the only way they’ll ever go on a date.

  To get my mind off of Victor, I pour myself a glass of wine and sit down with the new results from my Internet study. The activities section is pretty clear. Trendy new activities among young adults seem to include girls’ poker night, making home movies, knitting circles, art galleries, and “cleansing” binges (meaning a week-or-two stretch of no drinking, smoking, or eating solid food). Among those not into cleansing, hotel bars and lounges are gaining popularity, along with Ethiopian restaurants and retro diners. While body piercings are “over” in big cities, they’re just catching fire in suburban areas, although tattoos remain at the same level of popularity as a year ago. Fusion-yoga is starting to appear (more creative twists on the traditional form), and kickboxing seems to be making a resurgence among both men and women. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

  But the rest of the study is a bit more difficult to make sense of. It’s all numbers and percentages, a confusing sea of facts and figures that I can’t seem to wrap my head around. Seventy-three percent of women in their twenties spend more time listening to music and talking on the phone than watching television, but the same is true for only thirty-seven percent of men. Seventy-nine percent of teens own cell phones with built-in video cameras, but only thirty-six percent say they’ve used the video component. Sixty-four percent of men in their forties believe a good family life is more important than a successful career, but in large cities, the percentage goes down to fifty-two. I feel the panic rising inside of me, and I have to force myself to calm down and take it step by step.

  Okay, I’ve drawn up some charts to illustrate this stuff, broken down by demographics and time line, but something’s still nagging at me. The point
of this whole thing is to allow our advertising clients to know and understand their consumers better. But what are all these numbers really saying? When I was in media buying, it was my job to navigate which magazines a certain advertisement should run in, or which television slots a commercial should appear during, based on the age group of who was likely to be reading or watching. But these numbers don’t add up to anything meaningful – and in certain places they almost seem to contradict themselves.

  I call Carmen in California and immediately launch into complaining.

  “I just don’t get it,” I tell her. “This stuff makes no sense. And now I’m in a position where I have to figure it out, because it was my bright idea to do this thing in the first place.”

  “I think it might be the way you’re looking at it,” she suggests.

  “What do you mean? You’re the one who helped me with these questions!” I don’t mean to take it out on her, but I’m really frustrated.

  “No, the questions are good. But maybe it’s the way you’re interpreting answers.” I can hear a cork pop, indicating that she’s having a glass of wine as well. She and I are soul sisters, united by destiny and love for cheap chardonnay. “Look, I deal with art. I don’t know jack shit about this stuff, but it occurs to me…” Her voice drifts off, and I can tell that she’s afraid of overstepping her boundaries.

  “Just spit it out. You’re not going to offend me.”

  “Well, okay. Take me, for example. I’m a twenty-eight-year-old woman who is single. I like to party, go out, do fun things with my friends. Outside of work, I have all the time in the world to explore life and try new things. I spend all my money on myself and view the world as my playground of spontaneity. Just like you.”

  “Playground of spontaneity – ha,” I mumble.

  “But my cousin Sarah, who is also twenty-eight years old, is in a much different situation. She’s married with two kids. She’s a stay-at-home mom who runs around like crazy trying to organize block parties and church functions, get the kids to swimming class, ballet class, whatever. They’re tight on money because everything goes toward the kids and the house. She and I have completely different lives, and because of it, completely different perspectives on everything. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

  “Sort of. Keep going.”

  “My point is that if you ask that questionnaire of both me and Sarah, you’re going to get two totally different responses on just about every question. But when you get the results back, you’re analyzing it so we both fit into the same category: females in their late twenties. So no wonder it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Wow, you’re so right!” In addition to being fun, caring, generous, and wonderful, Carmen is also brilliant. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before.”

  “Give yourself a break. Those numbers are overwhelming. I would never have the patience to pull all that together.”

  “Okay, so what’s the solution?”

  She laughs. “Sweetie, that’s where you come in. You have to figure out a different way, that’s all. Don’t worry. It’ll come to you.”

  I take a deep breath and try to imagine Liz Gordon faced with this dilemma. Liz would view it as a challenge to be conquered, a small obstacle to be kicked aside with a little hard work and a boatload of attitude. In fact, Liz wouldn’t wait for it to come to her – she’d go crashing out like a high-paid bounty hunter and find it! Which is exactly what I’m going to do.

  And while I’m at it, I’m going to call Victor. And I’m going to ask him for a date tomorrow night. Rules be damned.

  But I don’t have to call Victor, because in one of those rare, perfectly choreographed life moments, just as I reach for the phone, the phone rings and it is him. (Well, it wasn’t exactly as I reached for the phone. It was about the time I reached into the fridge for another processed cheese slice, but after the cheese slice, or maybe after the cheese slice after that, I was definitely going to call him. So same thing.)

  “Are you busy tomorrow night?” he asks.

  “Yes, I am.” Now that I have what I want, I am suddenly defiant about it.

  “What about Friday night?”

  “I’m busy then too.”

  “Lindsey. Come on. You don’t know anyone in New York. What the hell are you doing two nights in a row?”

  “I don’t have to tell you that!” I’m trying not to be defensive, but if he wanted a date tomorrow night, he should have called last night. And because he waited so long, he can kiss Friday good-bye too.

  “You’re not playing games with me, are you?” He sounds teasing, like he can see right through my feminine ruse and knows damn well that on both nights I’ll most likely be on my couch with a pizza and a Netflix envelope on the coffee table.

  But then I give myself a little punch in the arm in reminder that those days are long gone. I’m on the list at every hot restaurant and bar around town, and my job is to take advantage of it and milk it for everything its worth – with or without Victor Ragsdale.

  “I have Saturday night free. But I have to check out some new clubs for work, so if you want to tag along, fine.”

  “What time should I pick you up?”

  “I’ll pick you up,” I tell him. He can take me to all the fancy dinners and parties he wants, but Saturday night is mine.

  The next few days are perfect. I have plenty of time to get things accomplished for the job without the distraction of Victor. Yet I know I’ll see him on Saturday, which gives me something to look forward to and allows me to not stress about the standing of “us.”

  I haven’t made any headway into rethinking the Internet study, but by hanging out around the Steve Madden shoe store and the Lush cosmetics boutique, I’ve managed to put together my New York teen panel, which had its first meeting yesterday afternoon.

  The teens are great. They love being “experts” and feeling like their own thoughts and opinions are the basis for a real, live publication. I talked to them about everything I could think of: their lives, pastimes, music, movies, television, relationships, cool brands and not-cool brands. We also discussed their values, their opinions on world events, their perceptions of life, and their goals and dreams. Meanwhile, I stuffed them with snacks and caffeine, and let them take pictures of one another, so I think they had a lot of fun. I took their e-mail addresses and got their permission to contact them with any follow-up questions, and told them to come back in a month, same time, same place.

  I also met with a celebrity stylist who frequently works with Beyoncé and Reese Witherspoon. As Liz told me, “If you want to understand the celeb thing, don’t go to the celeb – go to the people who handle them.” The stylist was a bit tight-lipped on any new fashions or cosmetics soon to be seen (God forbid someone find out about it before People magazine shows the celeb wearing it), but she did provide insight on how they attend fashion shows and take early cues from designers when looking ahead to upcoming vogue.

  And then, armed with a million and one topics (and about a million more after a confusingly friendly phone call from Jen), I finally did street-corner duty, this time up in Central Park, about fifty yards away from the smoothie stand near the east entrance. I’ve learned by sight who to approach and who not to approach, and I’ve become very adept at differentiating native New Yorkers from Middle American tourists. This has all made my job much quicker and more proficient, and I can now understand how Jen gets so many interviews done in a day.

  We’re halfway toward the next Pulse, and this time I have a lot to contribute. A LOT to contribute. And I know it’s good stuff. If you can believe it, I actually can’t wait to put the newsletter together. I still have that one nagging issue, but I also have a week plus to solve it, which I’m confident will happen. By Saturday, two days before leaving again for L.A., I’m in good shape.

  Saturday night also goes well, with me dragging Victor from club to club, making him look around and describe the people: what they’re wearing, what they’re d
rinking, what they’re talking about… as I furiously scribble it all into my notebook. I hope he’s having fun, but if he’s not, tough shit.

  Sunday night he takes me to a cocktail party at his friend’s penthouse.

  “Does everything you do require dress pants and a tie?” I ask him.

  “I don’t wear a tie to the Yankees game,” he tells me.

  “I’d like to see that.”

  “Maybe you will.”

  I’m not complaining. Before Victor, the most elegant cuisine I indulged in on a regular basis was the “Rich Man’s Pancake” at Debbie’s House of Waffles back home, which was the same as the regular pancake, but with strawberry goop and a blob of whipped cream on top of the syrup. Don’t get me wrong: I love getting dressed up and going to fancy places with Victor. But every once in a blue moon, a girl can really go for kicking back with a greasy cheeseburger and a chocolate milk shake.

  But on this particular evening, I’d eat raw snails off of breaded cow pies if they were called “gourmet,” because on this particular evening Victor is introducing me to his friends. Which is definitely a few degrees warmer on the relationship thermometer.

  The party’s host is Patrick, a physician and old rugby teammate of Victor’s from college. As I reach out to shake his hand, I turn to Victor and ask, “You played rugby?” To which Patrick laughs and Victor gives us both a look of annoyance. Then he leads me into the main room, toward a group of three couples who are congregated together in a huddle of champagne glasses and expensive shoes. They all look beautiful and interesting, and I have to remind myself that I am beautiful and interesting too, with an overflowing reserve of fascinating conversation topics and intelligent opinions.

  “I’d like you all to meet Lindsey,” he tells them, and then to me, “Lindsey, these are my nearest and dearest friends. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to snort a few lines in the little boys’ room.”