by Joey Bush
I remembered Drew was going to arrive outside my apartment at three in the afternoon. When I got back to my place, I began preparing for our strange, Saturday afternoon date. “Wear something tight,” he had said, and I was prepared to follow his directions. After all, I was just a notch in his belt. But the past few weeks with him had been eternally exciting, rooted in something beyond my normal comprehension of life. He knew how to live and live well. And, until he moved onto the next notch in his belt, I could fit this bill.
I grabbed one of my leotards and brought it up over my body. It was black, tight. I wore it over black leggings. I looked streamlined, like an eel. I looked at my body in the mirror, the way the breasts rose high, the way my butt looked so tight, so sleek. My cat, positioned on the kitchen table, seemed to roll his eyes.
I was prepared for the date all too early—around two. I stared at the balcony, at the life below my apartment, on the street, as I prepared for his arrival. My cat rubbed up against my leg as I waited. “At least I’ll probably get laid tonight,” I told Boomer then, rolling my fingers up around his ear.
At three o clock, I heard it; his footsteps coming down the hall. My heartbeat quickened in my chest. Could I really do this? Could I go on a date with this clearly evil man, this man who was content to talk about “fucking” me with his curly-headed friend, Marty? I roughed my fingers around my hair, trying to look sleek, sexy. Why did I care so much?
Finally, I heard his knuckles against the door. “BAM BAM BAM.” Three times. Boomer hopped down from the table in preparation, as if he had been caught. I walked toward the door languidly, hoping to take a bit of extra time. I pulled open the door, my eyes soft, my body supple.
“Oh. Hello,” I said, as if I was surprised.
Drew stood outside, dressed in all black. His tight turtleneck tucked up around his sleek neck, and his pants were tight, honing in on his slim waist, his muscled stomach. I eyed his body without embarrassment. It was like I was playing a different version of myself.
“You ready to go?” I asked him. My voice was nearly raspy, like an old-fashioned movie starlet.
Drew nodded. He grinned at me with such confidence. His eyes glinted. He placed his arm in front of me, ready for me to take. And I did. “I’ve been waiting for this moment all day,” he said. He was nearly laughing at me, I could tell; at the way I had yelled at him and his friend the day before. But I couldn’t care less.
I flipped my hair as I shut the door behind me. I didn’t want him to see my apartment; not yet. I didn’t want him to get any ammunition, to make fun of my lack of wealth in any way. “So. Where are we going?” I asked him.
“That, my darling, is a great surprise.”
“You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?” I said sarcastically as we bounded down the steps. I noted how different this interaction was than the previous week, when we had floated to the top of the Four Seasons in such style and grandeur.
At the front of our apartment building, a shining white Porsche was parked, its lights on. A crowd of a few different men, all moaning with envy, was stationed before it. Drew parted the sea of men with ease and opened the door for me on the passenger side. “My lady,” he said.
Trying to make a game of it, I waved my hair at the men who looked on at us with such need. I sat in the Porsche’s front seat, looking at them with lazy, bedroom eyes. I had never been anyone other men had swooned at. I assumed it was the backdrop of the Porsche that created the lasting effect. I nearly laughed with glee.
Drew sat in the seat next to me and swooped sunglasses over his eyes. He knew the way he looked. He turned on the radio, loudly, and cranked into gear. We were off. My heart was nearly in my throat as we passed the sagging apartment building we both shared. My life, in that moment, was different than I could have ever dreamed.
And yet, I had a million questions.
“Quite a performance back there,” I began.
“Yes, well. The Porsche brings out the crowd. She does all the work.”
“It really is beautiful. You collect cars?”
“I just have this one and the Jag. I also have a Jeep for off-roading, if I feel up to it. You like off-roading?”
“Can’t say I’ve ever been a part of it, no,” I murmured. Who was this guy?
“Anyway. The Porsche is my favorite. The other two are still back in New York. I haven’t moved everything back yet.” He paused. “You know. It’s pretty bizarre that we’re stationed in the same apartment building.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m stationed there. I’d say I’m more—living there. That’s my home.” I turned, blinking at him. “And you told me your home was in the Four Seasons.” I was challenging him. If we were going to go on this date, I wanted to know all his secrets. I wanted to know who this guy thought he was.
Drew gave me a brief wolf smile as we turned. “I figured you’d be confused by that. You know. I spent the first week or so in the Four Seasons. But then my friend Marty and I got this place, just for now. He’s helping me open the business here, you see. He’s going to be a manager. We’ve been friends for a long time—“
“But why in this dank apartment building?” I asked him. I wasn’t ready to give up the fight.
His voice was easy, unmatched with my combative tone. I sat upright, in a feminine way, looking at him like a tiger.
“You know. We actually bought an entire apartment building, really close to the new bookstore. But it isn’t ready for us yet. We’re remodeling; we’re creating our exact specifications. When it’s done, it’ll be so much more than the fucking Four Seasons.” His eyes flashed. “You’ll have to see it when it’s done.”
I crossed my arms over my breasts. “So. You didn’t rent that hotel room just to impress me.”
“God, no,” Drew said, shaking his head.
“And you didn’t rent it to impress any other girl?”
Drew raised his eyebrow. “I didn’t know a jealous side of you existed.”
My face burned. He was calling me out. I cleared my throat, hoping to find a better topic of conversation. “So. Where is it you’re taking me?” I noted that we were exiting the city, north and west, more toward the airport. What was going on?
“Still a surprise, so sorry,” Drew slurred, laughing briefly. “Say. What have you been up to the past several days, anyway? You didn’t answer my calls, even when you didn’t know I was living in your apartment building. I thought you’d dropped off the face of the earth.”
I thought about it; about everything that had happened. About saying goodbye to my beautiful dance studio, to my dreams. I pictured myself there, in the front seat of the Porsche, telling this dastardly beautiful man about everything that had happened. And I realized, in that moment, I couldn’t. I couldn’t come clean. “You know. I’ve been working really hard to find a PR job. I wanted to be centered this week, during my interviews. I couldn’t date or anything.”
“And now, that’s over?” Drew asked me.
I nodded. “At least for now.”
“When do you hear back?”
I paused before answered. “My assistant will let me know. She takes care of everything for me.” Suddenly, I grabbed my knees, shocked. I knew where we were.
The Porsche turned into the Bungee Birds parking lot. Bungee Birds was a company that took you into the woods, about an hour away from Chicago, and allowed you to bungee jump in a clearing, with the entire beauty of the earth below you. I grabbed my heart as we entered, already in a sort of panic mode. Bungee jumping? What kind of a date was this? My sense of adventure was escalating; all memory of the past dismal week was falling away. Bungee jumping. Yes.
“Have you ever done this before?” Drew asked me as he parked the car. He grinned at me.
“You know. I haven’t.” Drew waited for my response as I turned toward him in the car, my chest heaving with excitement. I wanted to grab his face right then, to kiss him passionately. “I haven’t. But I’ve always wanted to try.”
<
br /> “I like that spirit in you,” Drew murmured. There was such a sexual tension between us in that moment.
Suddenly, he popped the door open and rushed around to the side to let me exit. I stuck my sheer, black leg out of the car and walked, feeling model-like in the slim-fitting black clothes. We turned toward the main office, where a woman with overalls greeted us and asked us to sign several forms. Oh, the technicalities of living out your dreams, I thought for a moment as I signed, signed, signed. Molly Atwood, over and over.
“I love your name,” Drew said, tapping his finger over the paper. “It reminds me of a classic English woman.”
“With like, bad teeth and a beard?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “No. Like my grandmother, maybe. Making tea and eating crumpets and talking about society.” He turned back toward the woman and gave her his paper. “Thank you so much,” he murmured.
They loaded us in the large van. They told us that normally, they had a lot more people for a Saturday’s jump. However, this late-September day had just a hint of chill to it. “People don’t feel so daring in the autumn months,” the overall woman called to us in the back seat.
Drew and I held hands tightly. Beneath his confidence, I sensed a feeling of fear. I loved seeing that nuance to him, that other side. He looked at me with bright eyes. “Are you all right?” I whispered to him.
“I’ve done this before,” he murmured. His voice did not sound assured.
Finally, we reached the back road that took us to the alarmingly high station, where we were meant to bungee. I stepped out of the large van and looked up at it, tucked there between the trees. I noted that the clearing was large enough that you wouldn’t hit the trees, even if you spun a bit on the rope.
“It’s quite a view from the top,” the woman told us then, tapping us both on the back. “Wait till you see the autumn foliage.”
Drew and I eyed each other, both with secret, interior fear. I was humming with such excitement. I hadn’t given thought to the terrible nature of the week, to the fact that this guy next to me was just sleeping with me for fun, without passion. I hadn’t thought about any of it. I only focused on the true adrenaline I was about to feel; I focused only on the top.
To reach the top platform, we had to climb a humongous ladder. We followed the owner, a man named Everett. I focused on my hands around the ladder, on the sheer cold of the material beneath. I heard Drew puffing beneath me.
“You okay down there?” I asked him.
“Sure am,” he called back haughtily.
I knew, in that moment that this had all been a test; he hadn’t really thought I would go through with it. He thought that I was going to panic, run away. That way, I could be made to look a fool; he would be rid of me. He would get the best of me.
But I was climbing the ladder, one rung at a time. And I felt the excitement bubbling in me. “Don’t be too slow, Drew!” I called to him.
He huffed below.
Finally, we reached the top. I grabbed at the side rail, peering around us. Just as the woman had said, the fall trees were truly beautiful. I saw hints of orange, of red, of yellow all throughout. And to the east, I could see the bright, expansive lake and the beautiful, Windy City; my Chicago. My heart ached for it; the marriage of nature and city.
I turned my head up, toward Drew, and watched as his eyes turned sour and his face closed. He was fearful of the edge.
“Who wants to go first?” the man asked us. He was chewing gum, and his accent was southern, nearly foreign.
“We can go together, correct?” I asked him blinking slowly.
The man thought for a moment. “We have a double set-up, yea-up,” he said. He smacked his gum.
“Great!”
Drew swallowed slowly. I could hear it.
The man helped us latch ourselves into the bungee suits. He attached the bungee cord to us tightly, utilizing the metal clasp. He tugged at it from behind, making sure that it was soundly latched. We jerked back with it, nearly falling to our deaths below.
“Hey, hey. Easy there,” Drew murmured.
“All right, city folks,” the man said. “You can go ahead up there and ease forward and jump together. We usually hold hands when we do it. Easier to stay in line that way.”
I looked up at Drew, this man who hadn’t ACTUALLY thought he was going to go bungee jumping that day. “You look good in that bungee suit,” I whispered to him. I grabbed his hand.
He looked down at me, at my body, at my breasts. I could tell he wanted me, that I was his, truly, in that moment. He reached toward me, without Cubs cameras watching, without people noticing, and kissed me soundly. Our eyes met together as he took his lips away, licking them lightly.
We took the step up to the edge and looked down. We were about seventy feet in the air, seven or eight stories. We were higher than my apartment building; we were as high as that hotel room had been the previous week. I tried to imagine what it would feel like, tossing myself to this wind.
“Remember. We ain’t got all day,” the man called to us. The wind had started to pick up.
I inched forward once more, tugging Drew with me. He was grinning, his wolf teeth out, his hair raveling through the wind. “You’re an adventurous girl,” he called to me.
“I know.”
“If we die here today, what will happen?”
“I assume the world will continue turning!” I called back.
He laughed at this. “I think I like you, Molly Atwood!” I could hardly hear his voice through the wind.
My heart surged into my throat as we took our leap into the bungee jump. We free-fell through the air, our hands clasped together between us and our free hands out, like we were flying. We fell fast through the air, not feeling the rope tug at our behinds until we were just twenty feet from the ground. I emitted a slow scream as we neared the rocks below; closer and closer and closer.
But the sheer adrenaline pulsed in my brain and in my ears. I watched as the beautiful trees greeted us on both sides, as the crispness of the air lurched into my throat, into my stomach. When we began to swing at the very bottom of the great leap, I started laughing haphazardly. My hand still remained in Drew’s.
I turned toward him and saw his ashen face, his strong smile. He shook his head at me, as if he had never experienced anything so grand. “What the hell,” he yelled out. “What the hell!”
The man and his overall wife eased us down to the ground, where we unlatched ourselves from the bungee cord. We grabbed each other close and started kissing, as if we had avoided sure death. I was thinking that the man and the wife still on the platform surely saw this all the time; the assurance of two people that they had avoided sure death. I wondered if it ever got old.
I flashed a pretty, confident smile at this man before me. I wrapped my slim arms behind his back and kissed his broad, brilliant lips. “What do you think of that?” I whispered.
“I can’t think of it. All I can think of is you.” Drew murmured back.
We piled back into the van behind the husband and wife duo. We breathed heavily the entire way back to the parked Porsche. “Has anything ever gone wrong?” Drew asked the two owners.
The man spoke gruffly, utilizing vague words. “Oh, you know. We have this happen, that happen.”
My eyes fluttered along with Drew’s as we grinned together in the secret discovery; we had survived something truly grand together.
Finally, back in the Porsche, I curled up in the front seat, feeling confident. I asked Drew as many questions as I could think of in those moments. “You really haven’t been bungee jumping have you?”
“Well—I mean. No. I haven’t,” he declared, grinning at me.
“Why did you want to go so badly today?” I asked him.
“You know. I just wanted to push myself, push you. See what you would do. I know you’re angry with me about—about everything you heard me say. But you have to understand; guys say dumb shit all the time.” He held his
hands high on the steering wheel. I longed to curl up with him, to talk to him about everything and anything. What had his life been like before he met me, really? Why was he attracted to me—a lifeless nobody—anyway?
“Well. It was one of the best days of my life,” I murmured to him. I was surprised that I let him know so much of myself in that moment, but some small part of me didn’t care. I shrugged, knowing in my heart that this fake relationship, that this lovely life that had sprung from nowhere, was not to last. Not at all. And so I decided to be honest, to be truthful. What did I have to lose?
Although, it was true these days that I didn’t have a job to my name, that I didn’t have an ounce of savings. These things were not to be helped.
We stopped for brief burgers on the way back to the city. “Best I’ve ever had, hands down,” Drew said to me, his eyebrows high on his forehead. “Seriously.”
He swooshed through the drive-thru, told the man on the other line his name. “Hey, man. It’s Drew. Can I have two of the regular?”
And the regular came to him as we rushed around to the window. The thirty-something guy who manned the grill came toward him in the window and brought his hand forward, high-fiving Drew as if they were old buds. “Drew, my man,” he said in a pure Chicago accent. “We got you two of the regular, and I threw in some extra fries. For you and the lady.” He leaned down and looked at me, grinning. “Hey, ma’am. I’m Ty.”
“Good to meet you,” I said, mustering as much sweetness as I could. The inside of the restaurant was pulsing with grease and an old-fashioned 50’s burger joint attitude. I smiled as Drew handed me the dripping bag.
“Ty, it’s always a pleasure,” Drew said. He handed him a one hundred dollar bill and nodded at him. “I’ll see you next week.”
“Looking forward to it, Drew,” Ty said, stepping back and placing the hundred in his white breast pocket. He waved his hand toward us as we sped away.
I felt the grease dripping on my leg. “What is this?” I asked Drew.
