Arm Candy

by Jill Kargman

  “Mommy, what are we doing here?” Wes asked, breaking into a yawn.

  “Well, honey,” Penelope started slowly. “We’re here to try to find an old friend of mine. His name is Wesley.”

  “Does he live near the restaurant?” he asked.

  “I think so,” said Penelope as the waitress placed eggs and pancakes on the table. Wes began to devour them as she stared into her coffee cup.

  “I’ll take some more when you get a chance,” she said, lifting her mug.

  Caffeinated to the point of quivers, Penelope pulled into a small driveway marked with the address Jonathan had given her. She put the car in park, then sprung Wes from his backseat perch and walked slowly toward the white clapboard house. It had a lovely slate-blue-painted front door and a nice front yard.

  Please God, don’t let a wife open the door, she thought.

  She knocked. No answer. She knocked again. Nada.

  Hmm . . . it was late afternoon and a gray truck was in the driveway. She took Wes’s hand and went around the back to the yard area.

  Oh no.

  A swing set. An inflatable kiddie pool.

  This was a huge mistake.

  “Hey, a playground!” Wes said, running to the white picket gate.

  “No, no, honey, we—we have to go right away. Mommy is sorry. We’re going home.”

  “Why?” he whined, frustrated and confused.

  “We have to go, sweetheart, let’s get back in the car.”

  Penelope took her son’s hand and walked quickly back around the side of the house toward the car. She opened the door to the backseat, sweat pouring from her small feminine brow. She thought she might cry.

  She buckled in Wes, then went around to the driver’s side and opened her door.

  “Miss?” she heard a warm voice ask. “Can I help you? Are you lost?”

  She stopped still, then slowly turned around.

  That 180-degree pivot was the longest second of her entire life. But when she put her feet together and faced Wesley, her reddening eyes could hide her emotions no longer. His handsome face was the same, and as they locked eyes, his fingers opened, and the two grocery bags in his hands fell to the dirt below.

  56

  Youth had been a habit of hers for so long that she could not part with it.

  —Rudyard Kipling

  With thoughts of that little diner on the Bowery flooding her mind, Eden brought Chase back to her apartment, where, awash with memories, she kissed Chase more deeply than ever. He was moved by her unbridled affection and held her tightly as she undressed him and they collapsed on her bed.

  He made her want to be outlandish, to be young again, to be unburdened by what anyone (including herself) thought. Maybe she could run away with him to some island and never return. Chase grabbed her back as he moved inside her and Eden very suddenly felt a chill down her spine as her breaths grew staccato, as she slowly let her lids fall shut. And against the dark screen of her closed eyes, hazy like a Super 8 film in her mind, recollections played in quick-flashing cinematic frames.

  Sexual fantasies had a bizarre habit of making unannounced appearances, and sure enough, in the throes of passion with Chase, her mental movie projector made a jump cut back to Wes. He was so fresh in her mind from a week of thinking about him; her long afternoon with Penelope had popped a cork and now all the bubbly bliss was flooding back. In recent days, Eden realized, she had been thinking about him more and more. The fact that he would be arriving in New York after so long made her sick and excited. What if she ran into him? What would they do if they saw each other? What could she possibly say?

  Though she was intertwined with Chase, in her closed eyes, Eden was back at the little diner on the Bowery. She imagined she was not in a lavish designer bed and Pratesi sheets but on the cheap mattress she and Wes shared on the floor, unmade as their sheets swirled soapy wet in the basement washing machine they never seemed to have the quarters for.

  As Chase breathed harder and harder, Eden kept her eyes closed. She didn’t want to exit her reverie. She couldn’t help but envision that it was Wes pushing deep inside her. Chase said her name and she flushed the sound out of her head, as she wanted nothing to bring her back to the present; she found herself enjoying what her mind’s eye was offering her so much more. She had a flash of Wes diving onto the mattress as she laughed, an image of him holding a long wooden spoon for her to taste the tomato sauce he had made, how he pressed her against the window, kissing her, running his hands over her. The details flooded back as if the film frames were digitally enhanced in the replay; she saw the large vein in Wes’s wrist as he drew sketches, his fishbone boxers and worn-in white T-shirt. She pictured him taking off his gold glasses before he made love to her on his drafting table. Eden was growing more turned on by the fantasy of Wes in her arms. Each push inside her thrust her back deeper into her past until she could barely breathe—she was holding all the air in her lungs as if 1990 were trapped inside her and she didn’t want to exhale and let it all flow away from her body. She relived Wes’s quickening heartbeat and breaths, imagining he was kissing her neck, and she let out a deep sigh of delirious ecstasy. And when she opened her eyes to see Chase’s flushed, happy young face, she couldn’t believe she had deceived herself so vividly.

  Chase, on the other hand, could not have been more in the moment. After exhaling and collapsing into her, he lay holding her, breathing deeply, inhaling the unique fragrance of her apartment. As Eden silently drew little swirls on his back with her finger, Chase finally felt like he had the life people relished. This woman had literally walked into his life and had altered it forever.

  “I think this might be my favorite place on earth,” he said.

  He looked around the room. This place was Eden, his own version of paradise. Vinyl records played almost constantly. Every surface of her apartment was covered in vases—fresh cut flowers, overflowing plants, everything was in bloom. Eden had imported her very namesake into every place she had ever lived. No matter how cold or rainy it was outside, no matter how bare the branches of the trees were by her window, there was always life within her four walls.

  “Thanks, but there’s a whole wide world out there, Chase,” she said. “I promise you, my apartment is not cloud nine.”

  “It is to me,” he replied.

  The next morning Chase walked down the street, toward Park Avenue, beaming with exhilarated glee. He pondered how strange life was, how random it was that one person could cycle into your orbit and change the way you walk down the street, how you carry yourself, how you think, how you spend free time, how you value the little things. As he walked he was in his own world, in a dream state, in his very own Eden. Chase didn’t even notice that, at the stoplight at Fifty-eighth Street, his father’s town car had pulled up alongside him.

  Grant, who was sitting behind Luigi as always on his morning ride to work, suddenly spied his son outside the window. He put down his Wall Street Journal and reached for the button to lower his window. But just as he was about to do so, through the thick tinted glass, Grant saw Chase smile to himself. His hand paused above the button as he watched his son. Chase was in his own world, grinning ear to ear. And Grant echoed that smile to himself: His son was happy. Finally.

  Cheden’s Pub Crawl!

  Aging model/muse Eden Clyde and her younger beau, Chase Lydon, known lovingly by gossip bloggers as Cheden, went from Ballanchine to belting out tunes at West Village piano bar Marie’s Crisis. Uptown at the NYCB gala, the crisis was all Brooke DuPree Lydon’s—the high-society swan was spotted shaking her head at her son’s date, whose sexy scarlet frock had all the uptown gents drooling, and their jealous wives left to mop it up. But downtown, the drool was for Brooke’s son. The bar, filled with gay crooners, allegedly screeched to a halt when the matinée idol-esque, youngest Lydon scion strolled in for a round of drinks and songs with his beloved. Of the comely twosome one observer offered, “They’re both hot so who cares how old they are? They
only have to answer to themselves, no one else.” Added another, “No matter what anyone else says, you could just tell they were totally into each other. And that should be all that matters.”

  57

  Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.

  —Douglas MacArthur

  “Penelope?” Wesley asked slowly, syllable for syllable, as if saying her name in a foreign language. His blue eyes flashed as he walked slowly toward her, vegetables scattered on the ground behind him. “Is it you?”

  “It’s me,” Penelope replied, blinking back Fiji-style waterfalls. “I-I-I’m sorry to just show up like this—I was just, um, going to go—”

  “I’ve been wondering about you,” he said, stunned. “All the time.”

  “Me, too, for four years,” said Penelope.

  “Four and a half,” said Wesley, shattering any ice with a huge, all-engulfing hug. As she felt his big arms around her—the only ones that had touched her since Wes’s conception—she crumbled. She thought she would choke on her sobs and tried with all her might to hold them back.

  “Sorry,” she said, pulling back, wiping a tear. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Why? Do you know I’ve been trying to find you? I’ve thought about you so much, I even went to San Francisco.”

  “I saw the swing set—are your kids—”

  “No, no kids. Those are for my nieces. I have three, just down the street.”

  Relief had new meaning as Penelope’s entire tightly wound-up body grew limp with the word “nieces.”

  “Mom?” Wes’s muted voice called through the closed car door as he knocked on the window.

  Penelope ran to the car and opened the door, unbuckling Wes. She helped him step out of the car. She picked him up, holding him on her hip in his little red T-shirt and blue shorts as her heart sprinted like hoofbeats in a derby dash.

  “Wesley,” she said in a voice so shaky it was studded with nervous breaths. “This is Wes.” She put him down and held his hand.

  Wesley bent down on one knee, facing him.

  “Hey, buddy,” he said, charmingly. But then, his expression changed, his eyes widening. As he looked into Wes’s eyes, he knew. He instantly looked up at Penelope. “Is this . . . ?”

  Penelope’s mouth quivered, and she simply nodded.

  To her complete shock, Wesley grabbed Wes and hugged him so tightly she thought the boy’s lungs would squeeze out his last gasp of CO2.

  “Wes. Wes, I am your dad!” he said to her son. “I’m your dad.”

  Streams of tears flowed down Penelope’s cheeks. Wes looked confused, but Wesley’s warmth and enthusiasm were infectious and softened any apprehensions.

  “You’re my daddy?” Wes said, looking at Wesley’s welling eyes.

  “Yes, I have a son!” He engulfed his child in a bear hug, and Wes’s little arms moved from his sides up and around his father’s neck, encircling him so tightly that his little hands touched his elbows.

  The vision transcended Penelope’s wildest hopes. It had been only a few days, so long ago; drugs, music, a blur of rolling in grass, of keeping each other warm, a rainbowy collage of dancing and good-byes. And here they were.

  “I was so worried you had a family,” she said. “And I didn’t want to just show up but I’ve been trying to find you for so long and I have just thought of this—dreamed of it—for so long.”

  “Penelope,” he said, kissing her cheek and squeezing her hand. “I’m so happy you’re here.”

  Without talking about plans or the future or even the past, the little family cooked dinner. The next night they did the same. And the night after that. For two weeks, as Wesley lay awake in a spare room off the kitchen while Penelope slept upstairs in his bed, he replayed the memories of Woodstock, fresher and more colorful than ever.

  One night after Wes went to sleep, Wesley asked Penelope about her life in San Francisco. She spoke of her friends, the familiarity of the rolling hills and winding streets, the place she bought her paper, the café where she sipped her espresso.

  He reached over and took her hand.

  “I was so terrified we’d come here and ruin your life,” Penelope confessed, feeling the spark between them as he ran his fingers over hers.

  “Ruin it?” Wes laughed, kissing her hand. “Are you kidding, my life is made.”

  As Penelope’s eyes watered, Wesley got up, moved her chair with her in it, bent down and swept her up in his arms. He carried her to his bed and kissed her like he had in the grass, but no magic pills, no dewy damp air, no music. This time, the guitar chords were all in their heads, shared memories they now relived together. Their spines both tingled even without acid, and now to be completely naked together, warm skin on skin, legs intertwined, Wesley and Penelope transcended their former ecstasy by finding it once more, as adults.

  “Penelope,” Wesley said, holding her trembling soft body. “Can you and Wes stay? I don’t have that much, but whatever I have, it’s yours.”

  58

  Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you are aboard there is nothing you can do about it.

  —Golda Meir

  “So the sex is like mind-blowingly sensational, right?” probed Allison.

  “I guess, yes,” said Eden, stirring four Sugars in the Raw into her cappuccino.

  “What do you mean, you guess?” asked Allison.

  “It is,” replied Eden, warming her hands on the scalding mug. “I’m crazy about him. He’s such a great guy and I just am so grateful to him, you know? I feel like he picked me up and dusted me off after Otto basically chucked me out with yesterday’s news. He made me feel beautiful and special again.”

  “Uh-oh,” said Allison, leaning back in her chair, knowingly. “He’s toast.”

  “What? Wait, why do you say that?” Eden asked.

  “I know you. That tone.”

  “No, no, it’s just . . . ,” Eden trailed off. “I feel like Chase is so wonderful, he’s such a great guy but . . . I have this strange kind of . . . ache lately.”

  “For what? My analyst would say for your youth, maybe,” said Allison. “That’s not surprising. I was running around with a hundred guys in my twenties! You were bound to Otto and had Cole! Maybe you just miss that era in your life; you weren’t shagging a million people like the rest of us.”

  “It’s not about the million people,” Eden said, trailing off as she stirred her coffee. She finally got the courage to meet Allison’s inquisitive gaze across the table. “It’s about one.”

  “Who?”

  This was too embarrassing. Eden could barely admit it to herself, let alone say it aloud, even to her best friend.

  “Never mind,” said Eden, shaking her head quickly as if to scatter the memories away. “I mean, it’s literally Paleozoic. Forget I said anything.”

  “Eden. Come on, it’s totally normal to think about past relationships, about people who were in your life . . .”

  “Seriously, not this long ago,” Eden said, looking out the window at the busy street. “It’s the past. It’s foolish to even wonder. It’s just that I bumped into Wes’s mother, Penelope.”

  “WHAT? When?”

  “A few weeks ago. I can’t stop thinking about him now. He never got married. And his mom, God, she was so . . . amazing, Alli. We spent this whole afternoon together—until the museum closed—and I just have had all these memories flooding back. She told me this whole saga of how she got together with Wes’s dad, and I’m obsessed with it. I realized that I think I’ve been, I don’t know, haunted by that relationship in a way.”

  “I can see that. I mean, he was such a great guy. And you totally decimated him.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What? You did!”

  “Don’t remind me. I’ve been thinking about that, you know, the path not taken or whatever. I can’t stop! It’s so unproductive and stupid to waste time thinking about it but knowing what I know now . . .”

  “You r
egret it?”

  “No, I mean . . . I don’t have regrets. I have Cole, I have a life here. It’s just Wes was such an amazing person; he never would have treated me like Otto did. He was the type to love each wrinkle and fat roll, you know?”

  “I don’t see any of either, annoyingly.”

  “I’m just saying I may not have been starting over at this age, you know?”

  “Or you might have. There is no way of knowing.”

  “Right, as I said, it’s foolish to even think about,” Eden huffed, clearly wanting to change the subject. Sort of.

  Allison caught her drift. “So he never married?”

  “No, never.”

  “Really? Where is he?”

  “Moving back here,” Eden said, looking cautiously up at Allison.

  “Oh, boy.”

  “But it’s irrelevant, anyway. He probably hates me. And there’s Chase. I think in this strange way his sweetness reminded me of Wes. I guess in the whole blur of falling for Otto, having Cole running around, I kind of forgot about the purity of that relationship. I don’t know, in a weird way I think he’s the only man who ever truly loved me.”

  “Oh, bullshit! Don’t make me puke. You had countless guys wrapped around your finger!” Allison shot back, calling Eden’s bluff.

  “But they didn’t love me. I was so lonely for years with Otto, and I think I was lonely in the beginning, too, but I just didn’t notice because we had so much going on when Cole was a baby, and traveling so much, and I was blinded by all the stuff that I now know is just crap. Wes was my best friend. He was totally devoted and I shat all over him. I didn’t break his heart, I trampled it. I obliterated it. I smashed it with a mace.”