by Jane Heller
“Fine. You want me to tell you? I’ll tell you.” Silence.
“Well?”
He cleared his throat. “I was wondering if we could get together. Just the two of us.”
I shifted in my chair. He was making me extremely uncomfortable. “Is it my shoulder you’re interested in or, perhaps, some other body parts?”
He laughed. “That’s something else I remember about you: your great sense of humor.”
“Why do you want to be alone with me, Stuart?” I said. “Tara’s your wife. Be alone with her.”
“Are you so busy you can’t spare an hour or two? For an old friend?”
“That depends on what the old friend has on his mind.”
“You. I have you on my mind. I need to see you, okay?”
He needed to see me? “I have no idea where you’re going with this, but I’m engaged to Tony. I doubt very much if he’d be thrilled about this conversation.”
“Tony doesn’t have to know about this conversation. Neither does Tara. It’s between us. Nobody else. Please say you’ll meet me.”
“Meet you?”
“Yes. It would mean a lot to me. You mean a lot to me.”
Well, I was beyond surprised now. I was floored. His were the last words I expected to hear, after the way he’d tossed me aside for Tara. If I meant so much to him, why did he let her into our bed? If I meant so much to him, why did he call off the wedding? If I meant so much to him, why did he stand up at the altar and tell her he’d love her until death did one of them in?
“All I’m asking is that you consider—just consider—spending some quality time with me. I’ll get a room at a hotel. Someplace nice. We’ll order up, have a few drinks, a little bite, anything your heart desires.”
“Stuart, let me get this straight. You want me to meet you in a hotel room?”
“A room. A suite. You name it.”
“It’s not the type of accommodations I’m worried about.”
“Then what? The fact that I can’t stop thinking about you?”
So he was interested in more than my shoulder? What kind of man was he? A man who had no qualms about cheating on his wife, apparently.
As I sat at my desk, still reeling from his phone call, I flashed back on the past few weeks, on the times when I’d been in his company in Tara and Tony’s presence. Had he been coming on to me without my realizing it? Actually, now that I thought about it, there was the arm around my waist that lingered longer than necessary, the quick hello kiss that landed on my mouth instead of my cheek, and the amorous look—yes, it was rather amorous now that I really focused on it—whenever he thought no one else would notice. So this “I can’t stop thinking about you” business wasn’t totally out of the blue, I had to admit.
“I hope your silence doesn’t mean you’re rejecting me,” he said.
Rejecting Stuart Lasher. Now there was a tempting idea. If I did meet him at the hotel, I could reject him, the way he’d rejected me. I could show up, get cozy with him, and then, just when he was feeling confident about me, tell him to fuck off. I wasn’t a nasty person, but this was Stuart we were talking about. Giving him a taste of his own medicine would only be fair, wouldn’t it?
Yes, the rejection angle definitely appealed to me. But there was another angle that appealed to me, too: the fact that I’d be having a clandestine date with Tara’s husband. No, of course I wouldn’t have sex with the jerk. Just meeting him in that hotel room, behind her back, was the point, because it would represent the ultimate one-upping of her. She’d had her secret assignations with him when he was mine. Why shouldn’t I have my secret assignation with him when he was hers? It had a nice symmetry to it, didn’t it? She’d never find out about it, but I’d know about it, and knowledge is power, right?
And it wasn’t as if I was really engaged to Tony, so I wouldn’t have anything to feel guilty about on that score. I hadn’t made a real commitment to him, any more than he’d made a real commitment to me. We were just business partners in a way—two people doing each other a favor. Well, okay. Maybe we did have feelings for each other, but we hadn’t expressed them, so they didn’t count.
And then there was another thought that occurred to me—a motive for rendezvousing with Stuart that was much more compelling than either rejecting him or one-upping Tara. If I went to the hotel to meet him, I could find out what was really going on in that marriage of his. Tara had painted them as deliriously happy—two people who loved and respected and supported each other. But how could that be the case if he was hot to hit the sheets with me? There was definitely something wrong with this picture.
“Don’t leave me hanging,” said Stuart.
“Oh, you mean like you left me hanging two weeks before we were supposed to be married?”
“Let me make that up to you. Agree to meet me and I’ll prove just how sorry I am.”
He was sorry all right—a sorry excuse for a husband, just as he’d been a sorry excuse for a fiancé. “I’ll have to think about it, Stuart. I can’t give you an answer right now.”
“I see,” he said, “but please don’t keep me waiting long. I’m begging you, hon.”
He was begging me. The man who’d dumped me for my best friend was begging me.
I’ve got to tell you the truth: I was enjoying the plaintive tone in his voice as much as I was cringing from it. Judge me if you must, but there were a million times in the years since his betrayal that I had fantasized about this moment. I had imagined him calling me up and saying how he’d finally realized that I was the woman he wanted, not Tara, and then how I’d hang up on him in mid-sentence, squashing him like a bug. Now here he was, begging me. So I have to say, in the interest of full disclosure, that his proposition was vile, but not the worst thing that had ever happened to me. You can understand my ambivalence, can’t you?
19
Tara called about an hour after Stuart did, which made me feel guilty, even though all I’d done was talk to him. She apologized for bothering me at the office, but said she just had to tell me that business at Lasher’s Meats & Eats was so good that the two of them were planning to buy a second home, in Palm Beach. She went on and on about the merits of “the island,” as she referred to it, and then entered into a debate with herself over whether a gated community was preferable to your run-of-the-mill beach-front estate with caretaker and state-of-the-art security. She added that she would be spending stretches of time at the house whenever her radio show was on hiatus but that Stuart would commute back and forth to New York on the corporate jet.
I found her latest riff on her simply beautiful life as dizzying as all the others, but I also wondered whether there was more behind the intent to buy a place in Florida—more behind Stuart’s intent, I should say—than having another trophy. Clearly, with Tara out of the picture, he’d have more playtime.
I pondered the matter of their increasingly puzzling marriage while she prattled on about the gift she was running out to get for him.
“Remember how I write in the book about buying him little presents for no apparent reason and then slipping them inside his briefcase, or his dresser drawer, or under his pillow?” she said. “To keep the magic alive?”
“I remember.” Some magic. She was slipping little gifts under his pillow and he was trying to make pillow talk with me.
“Well, I’m going to buy him a new leather date book,” she said. “A small one that’ll fit right in his jacket pocket. He’s not a Palm Pilot sort of guy—he can’t even figure out how to program the VCR—so he’s got to write all his appointments down on paper. If he doesn’t, he forgets where he’s supposed to be.” She sighed. “There are times when he literally rushes out of the house because he realizes at the last minute that he’s missing a meeting.”
Yeah, a meeting with one of his mistresses. Maybe I wasn’t the only woman he was propositioning—in which case, Stuart was a very bad boy and deserved to be teased and then tossed.
When he called again the
next day to ask if I’d made up my mind about the hotel room, I told him I had.
“Where and when?” I said, much to his delight.
He told me he’d reserve a room at the Plaza and that we should meet at noon the following Monday.
My curiosity piqued, I agreed. Besides, the lunch hour worked for me. I could tell Celebetsy that someone else was picking up the check this time, so her precious budget would remain intact.
“Will the room be registered under your name or a fake name?” I said, naïve in matters of sneaking off to trysts with married men.
“My own name. Why not?” he said.
“Because Tara might find out what you’re doing,” I replied.
He laughed. “Tara won’t find out. She’ll be too busy buying marbleized pencils, or tying ribbons around all our wine bottles, or writing in her journal about the wonder of newly fallen snow.”
So he was making fun of her to me? It was one thing to come on to an old flame, but to ridicule his wife’s passions suggested that he didn’t even love her and that their “deliriously happy” marriage was a total sham.
“But what if she does find out?” I persisted, the possibility unnerving me suddenly. Yes, I relished the opportunity to turn the tables on both of them as well as to find out what was really going on behind their picture-perfect smiles, but I didn’t want to get caught with his pants down. My relationship with Tara was complicated enough. Not only would she accuse me of being vengeful and vindictive; she would also realize that my declarations of love for Tony were complete nonsense and she would think I was as sad a case as ever.
“Hey, trust me, hon,” said Stuart. “She won’t find out. I’m not going to tell her and you’re not going to tell her, so what’s to worry about?”
I did not run out to shop at Victoria’s Secret in anticipation of my nooner with Stuart, although I did manage to find some panties in my drawer that were not ripped or faded or pulverized by the washing machine. As I’ve said, I wasn’t intending to have sex with him, but arousing him and then rejecting him was still a viable option. And so I shaved my legs. That was the extent of my preparation for our rendezvous. Well, that and the skirt that was the size of a paper towel.
As per Stuart’s instructions, when I got to the Plaza, I went straight to the registration desk, where I said I was a guest of Mr. Lasher and that I understood that a key to his room had been left for me.
“Yes, Ms. Oates, Of course we have your key,” said the clerk as he handed it to me.
No. He didn’t make a mistake. While Stuart had no problem using his name, I had a problem using mine. When he’d asked me what name he should give the hotel instead, I happened to be reading a review of a new Joyce Carol Oates novel, so there you are.
“I hope I’m not late for my business meeting,” I told the clerk. Well, I couldn’t let him think I was a hooker.
“You’re not late,” he said. “Mr. Lasher hasn’t arrived yet, but you’re welcome to go on up to the room, Ms. Oates. Will you be needing a bellman?”
Yeah, like I had luggage. “No thanks. I’m fine.”
“Then enjoy,” he said.
I smiled and headed for the elevator. As I ascended to the fourteenth floor, I started to feel oddly naughty, sort of wanton. I mean, I never did this sort of thing—taking off in the middle of the workday to meet a man in a hotel room. Particularly a married man. Particularly a married man to whom I’d once been engaged. I was fairly traditional when it came to dating and sex, if you didn’t count my unorthodox relationship with Tony, so this was all new territory for me. Tara was the one in high school who bordered on sluttiness, while I obeyed my parents’ curfews and didn’t let boys go too far and honestly thought I shouldn’t sleep with anyone unless I loved him. But now here I was, prancing down the hall, twirling a room key in my hand, counting the minutes until Stuart showed up.
I counted a lot of minutes, as it turned out. He was late.
To occupy myself, I perused the room. It was a lovely room, by the way—the hotel’s top-of-the-line guest room, with a king-size bed and a separate sitting area and a swell view of Central Park. The bathroom, too, was deluxe: two fluffy terry-cloth robes, lots of fancy toiletries, shower built for two, huge tub, the works. Stuart certainly hadn’t scrimped.
I opened the minibar and took out a pint-size bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream and a small bag of smoked almonds—the almonds because I was getting hungry, the Bailey’s because I was getting anxious. He was fifteen minutes late now and giving me too much time to think about what I’d gotten myself into.
I flipped on the flat-screen TV, channel-surfed, watched a little CNN. Still no Stuart. I considered haranguing him on his private line, but I figured he was already on his way and, therefore, wouldn’t be in his office to hear my harangue.
I went back into the bathroom. I opened the moisturizer and applied some to my hands, turned on the hair dryer and blew my hair around, slipped on the bathrobe over my clothes and posed in front of the mirror. Tried to kill more time, in other words. Still no Stuart.
Okay, where are you, Stu boy? I finally get the chance to burn you and you burn me instead?
Feeling ever more frustrated, I did call his private line, got his voice mail, and hung up, deciding not to incriminate myself by leaving a message. I also pestered the front desk to make sure they hadn’t sent Stuart to the wrong room, but they had the right room in the computer, just no Mr. Lasher to claim it.
Pissed off as well as ravenous, I went back to the minibar, foraged for more to eat, and settled for a couple of those cheese balls that come individually wrapped in wax.
This is silly, I thought, picturing the stack of papers on my desk. I should get back to the office and let Stuart pine for me on his own time.
Speaking of my office, it occurred to me that maybe he’d been detained, through no fault of his own, and left a message for me there instead of tracking me down at the hotel. But after checking in with Scott—he asked where I was and I said, “Having lunch with an old producer friend”—I discovered that there were no messages from Stuart, although there were several from Celebetsy.
I waited until two o’clock—yeah, two goddamn hours. By then, I had consumed the Bailey’s, the almonds, the cheese, some trail mix, and a can of Sprite, and I felt sick. Sick that I had eaten all that junk. Sick that I had stooped so low that I had actually thought meeting Stuart in a hotel room was a good idea. Sick that I had allowed my obsession with Tara to turn me into a person I didn’t recognize. In short, I was repulsed by myself.
I was also furious that I’d been stood up. How dare he lure me to the Plaza with talk of how much I meant to him and how I was such a good listener and how he really, really wanted to be alone with me. The man had begged me, remember? Did he have such little regard for other people—the hell with other people, for me—that he would blow me off like this? Not come? Not call? Not anything? Thank God I hadn’t married him when I’d had the chance! He couldn’t be trusted even to appear at an appointed place at an appointed hour! He was the absolute pits!
I grabbed my purse, took a quick scan of the room to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything (the mere thought of the hotel housekeeper finding out that I’d been there was too mortifying to contemplate), and left, slamming the door behind me.
Once down in the lobby, I went to the front desk and handed the key to the clerk, who asked me if everything was “to my liking.” The truth was, I wasn’t to my liking, but that wasn’t his problem.
I went back to the office. I did not return Betsy’s ninety-seven calls. I did not make follow-up calls to media people. As a matter of fact, I was so angry, hurt, and humiliated by Stuart’s no-show that I avoided everybody; I told Scott I wasn’t feeling well and headed home early.
At about eight o’clock, I had hunkered down in my apartment—was in bed, under the covers, with all the lights off—when the doorman buzzed me to announce that I had company.
He wasn’t specific, because he was C
roatian and his English wasn’t the best, but I knew who was there: Stuart. Who else? He had probably cooked up some lame story about how he’d gotten held up with a business thing earlier and didn’t have a second to call me but that he had come to my apartment to ask for another chance. With flowers, I figured. Or, given that he was such a high roller these days, a diamond bauble, like the ones he gave his wife.
Well, bauble or no bauble, I’m not interested, I thought, and told the doorman I wasn’t receiving visitors.
I trudged back to bed, about to get comfy, when there was a knock at my door.
I kicked off the blanket in disgust. Leave it to Stuart to dole out a big tip to the doorman so he could march himself up to my apartment without an invitation.
I was so mad, I didn’t even bother to change out of my bathrobe or run a comb through my hair or plop on some makeup. Who cared what I looked like for that bastard? I didn’t. Not anymore. Let Tara have him. Let them have each other. Good riddance to bad rubbish, as my grandmother used to say.
I pumped my fist as I realized that, for the first time since I’d walked in on the two of them in our bedroom four years before, I didn’t care what either of them thought of me. I really didn’t. Maybe Stuart’s not showing up at the hotel was the last straw, the final indignity, the blow I needed to conquer my demons once and for all. Maybe it had been good for me to sit by myself in that room at the Plaza, swilling chocolate-flavored Irish whiskey and stuffing my face, to show me what a waste of energy it had been to try to compete with, stick it to, one-up, or pay back Tara. Maybe I saw how pathetic it was that I’d allowed myself to get hooked into her life again instead of living my own. Maybe I’d hit rock bottom with my Tara Messer addiction.
That’s it, I thought as there was another, louder knock at the door. I’ve been liberated. No more toxic friendship with her. No more turning myself inside out for her or because of her. No, I had achieved my moment of clarity. She was never going to have power over me again.
I know what you’re thinking: famous last words. And you’d be right, sort of. When I flung open the door, fully prepared to announce to Stuart that he should get the hell out of my sight and go back to his wife, where he belonged, I was stunned to find it was not Stuart after all, but three police officers.
