by Devan Sipher
“It’s a holiday,” Hope reminded me.
“I work on holidays. I work on weekends. Which is why I have no social life and I’m going to spend the rest of my life alone.” There. I had said it. Hope wasn’t the only one suffering. It had been almost three years since I had sustained a relationship for more than a month. Since Laurel. I wasn’t going to think about Laurel. The rule was that I never thought about Laurel.
Hope tried to say something comforting. But I didn’t want to be comforted. I wanted to be in love.
“Forty-eight hours ago you were worried you were making a mistake going out with Jill on New Year’s. You said she was superficial and you had almost nothing in common but running.”
If I didn’t want to be comforted, I sure as hell didn’t want to be logical. “What if she was the best I’m going to find? I’m an almost-forty-year-old guy who lives in a studio apartment and has a—”
“Are you going to start in about your neck size again?”
“I have a small neck,” I said, somewhat wounded.
“Women don’t go around looking at guys’ necks. It’s just not something we do. If we’re going to look at something, we’ll look at their pecs, and you have very nice pecs. Okay?”
I was rather proud of my pecs. And my abs. At an age when my friends were getting love handles, I had developed a six-pack. Sometimes even an eight-pack, as long as I didn’t inhale.
“Gavin, I don’t want to go to this party by myself,” Hope said softly. “I had a really awful night. Please don’t make me go alone.”
I had come to realize that being alone isn’t just a feeling. It’s a scarlet letter. It’s the first thing other people see. No matter what else you’ve accomplished, it brands you as a failure in their eyes—and, worse, in your own.
“I’ll meet you there at five,” I said, “but I can only stay an hour.” I hung up and started typing again.
When it came to love, Mimi Martin thought she had missed the boat.
Last summer, she was on the cusp of thirty and self-consciously solo, when she found herself running late to a friend’s birthday party aboard the Venus de Mylo. Tripping on the gangway, she was afraid her entrance was about to make the wrong kind of splash. But a handsome stranger helped her regain her balance just in time.
With his arm around her waist, Mylo Nikolaidis said, “It’s a good thing we have life preservers on board.”
“Is that what they call you?” she asked.
It was a start. Sometimes that’s all you need.
Chapter Four
What a Fool Believes
I regretted being at the party before I even arrived.
I barely got past the front door of the Chelsea building. It was one of those new luxury constructions crammed into a narrow lot between two stodgy, prewar edifices. The gleaming glass facade seemed to scream out, “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful. Hate yourself because you can’t afford me.”
The penthouse apartment wasn’t the largest I’d ever seen, and, topping only a seven-story building, it wasn’t the loftiest. But it might have been the most crowded. I had anticipated a low-key gathering of a dozen or so physicians, jazz music and white wine. Instead, it was rum punch and kamikaze shots with nearly two hundred inebriated people wedged between the transparent walls and teetering amid the retro sixties furniture and shag rugs. Loud talk and louder music predominated. Mostly eighties tunes, for some reason. Lots of Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper and Spandau Ballet. The fact that I recognized Spandau Ballet songs depressed me immeasurably. I looked for Hope, but couldn’t spot her in the density of revelers.
What happened to spending New Year’s Day in bed or hungover or both? There was something desperate in the air. As if everyone there was trying to make up for missed opportunities the night before.
A blowsy blonde careened into me, eyeing me like prime beef. “What kind of medicine do you practice?” she screeched directly into my ear canal. It was the third time I’d been asked. Not everyone in the room was a doctor. Some were there to meet doctors. I burrowed deeper into the throng, just wanting to find Hope and get out.
But she was nowhere in sight, and I was trapped. To my right, a dermatologically challenged cardiologist was regaling a pediatrician with tales of his surgical prowess. To my left, the party’s host seemed to be examining the tonsils of a buxom ophthalmologist. I unsuccessfully tried to squeeze around them, brushing against the backside of the eye doctor. She gave me a nasty look, and the host shot me a nastier one. I could feel the space around me contracting, and I was only moments away from becoming party roadkill.
That’s when I saw her. Not Hope. A young Sandra Bullock with a tangle of loose brown curls obscuring her eyes but not her wide cheekbones and glossy, plum-colored lips. I could see only her face through the crowd, but that was enough. She was leaning back against a bedroom doorway, and when she smiled, she seemed to be channeling deep reservoirs of joy. I realized I was staring and quickly looked away. When I looked back, I saw she was talking to a thick-necked, young blond guy with arms the size of my thighs.
I pumped up my pecs. But my five-foot-nine swimmer’s build was no match for a six-foot-three Matthew McConaughey in training. Especially one who probably had an “MD” after his name. I had every reason to turn my attention elsewhere, but there was something irresistible about the way she sipped the fluorescent-colored punch from her nearly empty glass. She tilted toward the McConaughey wannabe, and I strained to hear her voice. She was only a few yards away, but it was bumper-to-bumper people in between.
Then a half dozen rowdy partygoers emerged from the kitchen, unsettling the tectonic balance of the room. As the sea of bodies shifted, I edged forward six inches, but then I found myself being inexorably pulled in the opposite direction. Like an undertow, the more I fought it, the farther away I drifted. Until I was pushed up against the sliding glass door leading to the rooftop terrace, and she had disappeared into the bedroom, as had the buff blond twentysomething.
“Do you work at St. Luke’s?” asked a flush-faced man jammed against my left side. “I think I recognize you from my gastroenterology residency.”
In fact, I had gone to medical school once upon a lifetime, but I hadn’t made it to residency. I had attended Columbia, which is where I met Hope. But after three semesters, I took a leave of absence for a year. Then a year became two. I decided that if you leave a door open for too long, you start to feel a draft. So I officially disenrolled. More than a decade later, my Jewish parents were still recovering.
I told the GI guy what I did for a living, but it was his wife, pressed against his other side, who responded. “Oh, my God, I love your articles!” she squealed with delight. “Can I take your picture?”
I squirmed as she wrested her camera phone out of her purse. It was an odd perk of my job that strangers sometimes wanted my picture or autograph.
“You’re so cute!” she said. “You look just like James Franco. I bet you get that a lot.” I had to admit I’d heard it once or twice.
“But older,” said her husband.
“My brother’s getting married in two weeks,” she said, “and he would be perfect for your column.” The trouble with receiving adulation was the inevitable request to give something in return.
“It’s a great story,” she said, which was what people always said before proceeding to tell me a really bad story. “You see, my brother goes to the Laundromat every Monday night. Like clockwork. But one week, and only one week, mind you, he went on a Tuesday night and—”
I cut her off. “I’m sorry. I already have my assignments for the rest of the month, but I hope your brother has a great wedding.”
“She took your friggin’ picture,” said her husband. “The least you can do is listen to her stupid story.”
Did James Franco have this problem?
I was spared further interaction with the couple when a husky man backed into the small pocket of space between us. There were bodies smashed against m
e from all sides, and I was conscious of the increasing moistness under my arms and across my brow. There was still no sign of Hope, so I pulled open the sliding door and escaped into the crisp winter air.
Seven floors were not enough to have an unobstructed city view, but a pink and purple, Disney-colored sunset was visible between the buildings. It felt good to have some breathing room. I stepped over to the railing and looked down.
“Did you bring a bungee cord?” a female voice asked.
I turned around. And there she was. The girl with the brown curls.
“It would be a much faster exit than fighting a way back to the front door,” she said with a dimpled smile. She had a heart-shaped face and tiny laugh lines in the corners of her chocolate brown eyes, suggesting both merriment and age appropriateness. She looked to be around thirty and much more petite than she had seemed from a distance, only about five foot three in her suede boots. She was wearing snug-fitting jeans and a cream-colored cashmere sweater with a V-neck that provided a modest glimpse of her surprisingly robust cleavage.
“Left my bungee at home,” I said, wondering if I could have come up with something lamer to say. It turned out I could. “Are you into bungee jumping?” I asked.
“Never done it,” she said. “I’m afraid of heights.” I noticed she was pressed against the glass wall, holding the banister of a white spiral staircase beside her.
“Good thing you’re not standing on an open terrace.”
“I like to challenge myself.” She took a swallow from a bottle of Corona she was now nursing. “Just don’t ask me to stand next to the ledge.” She smiled again, and I wanted to live inside her smile.
“I’m Gavin,” I remembered to say.
“Melinda.”
“I’ve never met a Melinda before.” Yet something about her seemed familiar. “So what kind of medicine do you practice?”
She laughed. “The closest I got to medical school was walking by the campus once at Harvard.” The word “Harvard” bounced around my head like a loose pinball. “I’m a journalist. Well, travel writer. If that’s a real job. I travel to exotic places and pretend it’s work. Or I used to. Until last year. Now I’m working on a book.” Her words tumbled out at an impetuous velocity. “What I really want to be is a photojournalist. But I’m too short. Or too shy. Not that I’m shy. But photojournalists need pretty sharp elbows.”
“I think you have excellent elbows,” I said.
Her dimples made a reappearance. I noticed they were slightly asymmetrical, which somehow made her even more appealing.
“Is that your professional medical opinion?” she teased.
“I’m not a doctor.”
“I’m so sorry,” she quickly said. “I think it’s great that more men are going into nursing.”
I had gone from pigeonholer to pigeonholee. But before I could correct the situation, a certain blond freak of nature poked his tree trunk–like neck out of the bedroom door.
“There you are,” the McConinator boomed while flexing his trapezius muscles. He bounded toward us despite my best don’t-mess-with-a-trained-reporter scowl. “I almost lost an arm scoring these,” he said, holding up two Coronas in his oversized paw.
Melinda held up her own. “Sorry. Already snagged one.” She turned to me. “Do you want a beer?”
There was a long, awkward pause before I said, “Sure,” and an even longer one before he handed me a bottle. We eyed each other suspiciously, standing our ground, shoulder to solar plexus.
Melinda kick-started a conversation. “So, Gavin, how did you decide to become a nurse?”
“I didn’t,” I started to say.
“I know exactly what you mean, dude,” he said, interrupting me. “I don’t feel I decided to become an orthopedic surgeon. It’s just something I was compelled to do. I think it’s a calling. Like being an artist, and it’s an incredible responsibility. To hold someone’s broken bones in your hands and know you have the ability to mend them.” There was no way I could compete with a sensitive surgeon in a size thirteen shoe.
“That’s odd,” Melinda said. “I’ve always thought of surgeons as being more technicians than artists.” The McConatron flinched.
“It’s cold out here,” he said.
“Maybe you should go inside and warm up,” she said with a sympathetic smile, not at all the same as her dazzling one. It seemed to knock the wind out of his surgical scrubs. He saluted me with his Corona and retreated indoors. It was like slaying Goliath. With someone else’s arrows.
“Some people just don’t take a hint,” Melinda said, furrowing her brow. She wasn’t relishing the conquest as much as I was. A pained expression crossed her face as she nibbled on a fingernail. She turned away from me, and I wondered if I was also supposed to be taking a hint.
“What do you think’s up there?” She was pointing to the top of the spiral staircase, not far above our heads.
“The roof,” I offered unhelpfully.
“What do you think’s on the roof?” She was already heading up the narrow steel steps, and I was right behind her.
“My guess would be air ducts, a water tank and maybe a satellite dish,” I said, just trying to keep the conversation going while hustling up the last stairs.
“Your guess would be wrong,” she said softly.
A wooden boardwalk meandered through waist-high, straw-colored grass. Small lanterns dotted the landscape, like fireflies suspended in the darkening sky. We drifted along the winding path until reaching a cul-de-sac around a shallow, pond-shaped whirlpool with steam rising like mist from its rippling surface. I felt like Heathcliff on the moors.
With little but vapor between us, we started circling the pool. Her long curls danced in the light wind, backlit by the city skyscape. I needed to say something. Anything. “So, where did you last travel?”
“I lived for six months in Katmandu.” She could have said Kansas City and I would still have been mesmerized. But she didn’t say Kansas City. “I volunteered at a girls’ orphanage while working as a stringer for Lonely Planet. Then spent a month teaching English in a rural village and writing freelance articles about the cultural impact of the adventure-travel industry.”
She made me feel deficient as a journalist—and a human.
“I might be the only person who ever went to Nepal without going mountain climbing,” she said. “The vertigo thing is a drag.”
“You did pretty well getting up here,” I said, moving closer to her as we continued our slow orbit of the burbling water.
“Eleanor Roosevelt said to do one thing every day that scares you,” she said, “but one flight on a staircase with handrails is about as much hiking as I do at high elevations.” Unless I was imagining things, she seemed to be moving closer to me as well. “Even at lower altitudes I can get myself in trouble. I remember being at the edge of a Himalayan lake at sunset with the fog rolling in through the banyan trees. I must have taken a hundred pictures and lost track of time. The trail seemed to vanish in the darkness. I was convinced I was never going to find my way back to civilization.”
“You weren’t traveling by yourself, were you?”
“That’s what my grandfather asked when I told him.” Ouch. “I adore my grandfather,” she added.
“It’s impressive for a woman to go to those places alone.” I hoped I didn’t sound like a misogynist as well as an octogenarian.
“It’s insane,” she said. “I was terrified, but I’m terrified just getting out of bed in the morning. I’m not joking. I used to have these dreams when I was a kid that a plane was going to come crashing through my window. This was way before nine-eleven, so it was just me being morbid. Oh, God. Now you’re going to think I’m one of those neurotic women you meet at parties in New York.”
“I don’t think you’re neurotic.”
She bestowed another smile. It was the perfect opportunity to say something devastatingly clever. Instead, I said, “I’m not a nurse.”
“Let me gue
ss,” she said, stopping and turning to me with an impish look. “You’re a magician.”
“I am,” I said, matching her flirtatious tone while still racking my brain for a clever remark. It was much easier at my computer. I considered going downstairs and texting her.
“What’s your favorite magic trick?” she asked.
“Making a beautiful woman feel like she’s bungee jumping while she’s standing still.” I was still figuring out what I meant when I noticed she was blushing, which I took as a good sign.
“Did you go to magician school to learn that?”
“I guess you could say that,” I said, leaning toward her. “I spent two years in grad school, which made thirty thousand dollars of my savings magically disappear.” She was close enough for me to kiss her.
“I’m starting a master’s program in writing at NYU to help with my book. So I’ll see your thirty and raise you ten.” Before I could up the ante, a lanky guy in a leather coat appeared behind her and slipped his arms around her waist.
“Hey, sexy,” he cooed.
She lit up as she embraced him enthusiastically. And extendedly. I metamorphosed into a pillar of chopped liver. After what felt like the longest fifteen seconds of my life, I loudly cleared my throat.
“Gavin,” she said, disentangling herself. “This is Jamie.” He nodded in my direction, though he might have just been flipping his dark, wavy hair. “Jamie’s roommate knows someone who works with the guy throwing the party. We’re interlopers.”
Well, he certainly was. And he seemed to be in a hurry to get to the next stop on their party hop. The walkway wasn’t wide enough for all three of us, so I was awkwardly shadowing them as we retraced our steps. He whispered something in her ear, and she briefly giggled. His skin was pale and pockmarked, and he was only a couple inches taller than me. I wasn’t intimidated.
“We met at a Vishnu shrine in Katmandu,” Melinda said, “and Jamie gave me a ride on his motorbike to the Bandipur hills.” Maybe I was a little intimidated. “We’ve been pals ever since.” Not lovers. Pals. But if they were pals, why was his hand still glued to her waist?
