Hotel Living

by Ioannis Pappos

  Fucking Erik was my war. A craze, a luxury excused by the circus that otherwise surrounded me. We had time to “stand up for our favorite type of font,” address “the nonsmoker’s identity at work,” or text each other the ridiculously obvious while, because, our Alkises could “fire clients.” We had legitimized our silliness, we were silly, so why not make a war for Erik, Grandpa? I was still within my social standard deviation.

  “On the Andrea side,” I began texting my work-nonwork response, when Paul walked onto the patio.

  “I’m heading to Soho House. Do you care to join me?” Paul asked as I heard Erik jogging up the stairs to my apartment.

  “No can do,” I replied. “It’s Erik’s brother’s party tonight. An uptown thing.”

  My apartment door squeaked open and Erik dashed to the patio, where he came to a halt. He glanced at me, then at Paul, then back at me.

  “Erik!” Paul waved. “It’s been a while.”

  It took a second.

  “Right,” Erik said, and ducked back in. I heard his beer cap hitting the dirty dishes in the sink.

  “Good day?” I asked Erik when he surfaced again.

  “So far.”

  They bumped shoulders as Paul stepped inside, his phone ringing madly.

  “What’s this jackass doing here?” Erik asked while marching to his tomatoes.

  “We ran into each other at Andrea’s High Line thing.”

  “Of course you did,” Erik said over his shoulder. “What the hell was he there for? Stalking the romantics, or helping them out?”

  “Watch it,” I said. “You’re supposed to be High Line impartial, remember?”

  He turned and looked at me with narrowed eyes.

  “I’m just saying,” I added quickly. “We don’t want the district manager to be cited in blogs with funny HL quotes, now, do we?”

  Erik shook his head. “HL? Seriously?”

  I smiled, confused, like I’d missed his point.

  “Does the towel on the coffee table say High Line?” Erik went on.

  “It does!” Paul hopped back before I had a chance to speak. “It’s from a princess turned fashion designer,” he said, rowdily. “You wait. Five years from now you can make a killing with your towel on eBay. Just don’t mark it.”

  I almost fell from my chair. “What the fuck, Paul?” I said, and tried to laugh it off.

  “Hey, I just used the bathroom and wanted to dry my hands—”

  “That’s cool.” Erik gestured to me. “I can wait to make a killing, but you don’t have to, Paul. Why don’t you build a kiosk on Seventh and Eleventh that sells maps with actors’ addresses in the Village?”

  “Actually, we’re doing that online,” Paul said smugly. “You and I, Erik, define privacy differently. Stathis is from the Balkans, he understands.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  I felt busted. Like my balancing act, my having it both ways, was coming to an end.

  “Transparency is not a crime,” Paul said. “We chronicle trivia, details, in real time.”

  “Since when does acknowledging that you’re doing something shitty actually legitimize it?”

  “Since people are fed up with hypocrites,” Paul answered calmly, and I put my cell in my pants pocket. “I have to run. I’m meeting friends from London,” he continued, checking his Timex. He turned to me: “I’ll leave your name at Soho House.”

  THE BUZZ FROM KEVIN’S PENTHOUSE got louder and louder as we cruised up, making the elevator operator less and less audible until he was practically muted. Still, Erik laughed at the guy’s joke about the Mets.

  The door opened onto a hallway that led to a crowded living room. Most of the women were in flowery dresses, the Madison Avenue–goes-Nolita type. Guys wore work suits or Patagonia shirts, and Lance Armstrong wristbands. They were all tan, and they mixed like they knew one another. Catering staff in bow ties served the decades-younger guests, which was bizarre in New York—uncomfortable, almost. I lost Erik to his Exeter schoolmates—“Hi . . . yes . . . been a while . . . good to see you too”—and looked for a vodka rocks.

  “I’ll take care of you,” a waitress, who’d have long been retired had she lived in Europe, said to me.

  With my drink firmly in hand, I crossed the living room and stepped out to the balcony, with its Spider-Man view. My eyes hopped from skyscraper to skyscraper before they laddered down to Park Avenue, which was covered with streams of red and yellow car lights. “Me and My Monkey” came on. I lit a cig and smelled Andrea’s perfume.

  “Stathis!”

  I saw Helen, Erik’s brother’s girlfriend (sort of), showing off her brown hair and white teeth to me. She was in a black dress that turned into jewelry around her neck, leaving her tan shoulders naked. Northeastern, beautiful, early forties, she looked older and more together than the rest of the women there.

  “Hi, Helen,” I said.

  “So good to see you.” She kissed me slowly on the cheek. “How are you? How do you like New York?”

  “I’m good. And the city looks pretty steep and steely from here. Kevin’s view is unstoppable.”

  “It sold him on the penthouse. Adore!” She waved her hair as she bummed a cigarette. “So, how is the love these days?” she asked teasingly.

  I lit her. “Tested?” I said.

  She took her time exhaling. “Then you’ll learn something.”

  “I usually don’t.”

  “I like this,” she said, feeling the cotton on my shirt, but I wasn’t sure if she was talking about the fabric.

  “Thank you.” I smiled at how comfortably I accepted her compliment. “And coming from a fashion executive . . .”

  Helen gave me a plotting stare. “I don’t learn either.”

  “How do you feel in your ignorance?”

  “Wonderful!” Helen laughed. “I just focus on sex. You should try it,” she said.

  I felt my phone against my ass and remembered Gawel’s text, which I hadn’t returned yet.

  “And I stay busy,” Helen continued, playing with her glass of champagne. “We are moving our offices to the Meatpacking District. You’ll come to the party.”

  “Is that an invite?”

  “Oh, Stathis, stop flirting. You know I can’t compete with a communist in bed.”

  “Ha! Erik’s not a communist. He’s an independent, he says.” I rolled my eyes. “And how’s sex with the family’s fund manager?” I tossed back, and looked away at the Citigroup building.

  I sensed Helen leaning toward me. “I wouldn’t know,” she whispered.

  I had to think about this, so I turned strategically, covering my surprise with casualness, when halfway around I saw Erik through the window, talking to a news anchor inside.

  “Unlike his brother, Erik loves contradictions,” Helen said, picking up on my sighting.

  “Tell me about it,” I murmured, glued on Erik.

  “But they are both surprising,” she said, before kissing me and stepping back into the living room.

  “Hey! I need more,” I shouted after her, wanting more of her allusions. A couple on my right turned. I rattled my ice cubes their way till they looked elsewhere.

  An hour later, things had slowed down. Erik, seated on a buffet table, held court among the ten or so guests left at the other end of the living room. He was talking with his hands about technology and globalization. I caught bits and pieces: “. . . didn’t reduce the gap between haves and have-nots . . . the incestuous connectivity . . . a perverse interface . . . believe it or not, they gave business class a high out of disruption . . .”

  I stopped listening and squatted by the fireplace. Most of the furniture had been removed, which made Kevin’s living room look ridiculously large for New York. One of the framed photos above my head, on the mantel, showed their family with the Clintons
in Chappaqua. Hillary looked at Erik’s father—her signature you-got-me laugh on her face—while Kevin, on his knees, petted a Lab with Chelsea. Then I turned to my left and saw Kevin in the flesh, seated by himself, taking his right shoe and sock off, and I thought of the coincidence of two people taking their socks off in front of me within twenty-four hours.

  “Marathon training is killing me.” Kevin massaged his foot.

  Even though he was seated, you could tell that he was six-three, six-four. I saw Erik in him. “What time do you run?” I asked.

  “Before work. I’m in the park by seven,” Kevin said.

  “And what time do you go to bed?”

  “I try for elevenish.” He stretched his toes. “But these days I am not that good at it. We’re in the middle of an Avastin me-too due diligence, and it’s running us around the clock.”

  Two bow-tied women asked Erik to move so they could clean the table.

  “Stop showing off your foot size,” a guy from Erik’s circle yelled to Kevin from across the living room. “It doesn’t work!”

  “Hey, try training on triple-E 13,” Kevin shouted back at him.

  “I bet they’re broken in by now.” Kevin’s friend walked over. He looked at me: “He’s been in the same stinky sneakers since Wharton.”

  “He’s been in the same pleated pants since Wharton,” a woman joined in. “And they have to go.”

  “I need the pleats, Kimberley. Need the space. Otherwise I feel constricted,” Kevin said, and winked.

  I grabbed the lion’s head on the fireplace and pulled myself up. “It’s been a long day,” I told Kevin. “I gotta head home.”

  Kevin stood up, half-barefoot. “Captain Stathis! It was good to see you. Hey—” he squeezed my triceps. “There’s some biotech stuff I want to bounce by you. We should get together.”

  “Anytime,” I said. “And thanks for tonight. Fun.”

  Erik was still binge-talking. He looked my way and made a military salute.

  I raised my eyebrows and walked out.

  In the cab, Erik’s good-bye kicked off a lecture in my head from Alkis about “plateau-equals-failure” frustration. I was ready to call it a night, but the booze in me questioned my plan. “What happens when I’m not there is irrelevant to me.” Another Alkis-aphorism that I found challenging in New York. Wanting something to go my way, I decided to ditch Paul and Soho House.

  Half an hour and an Ambien later, I was backwashing a beer on the patio when I heard Erik skipping up the stairs. The door creaked and banged, and I saw him—he didn’t say a word walking in—pick up some paper from the coffee table. He yawned, and with his free hand he reached the top of the patio door, stretching out his shirt, making visible the thin line of hair that reached down from his belly button. Unlike me, he was still as lean as he had been when we met in France.

  “You didn’t go out with Paul,” Erik said, checking both sides of Zemar’s postcard.

  “I didn’t know you were coming.”

  He let go of the door. “Interesting,” he said, and Frisbee’d the card to the sofa. “Why? Were you expecting someone else?”

  “Would that’ve been a problem?”

  His body language changed as he walked by me to his plants.

  I felt the Alkis-plateau again. Slouching in my chair, I knocked over my beer bottle and sent it rolling to his pots. Erik picked it up. Then he turned and looked at me. “Are you high?” he asked.

  “Will you answer me?” I insisted.

  “Yes, it would have been a problem,” he replied, impatiently. “You’re my bud, right?” He bent over his plants again.

  “I’m your bud? What’s that? ’Cause I’m done trying to interpret what you mean,” I said. “Fuck that,” I whispered.

  “Then go to bed,” Erik said, feeling the leaves, sticking his hands in the soil.

  “Why? You horny?”

  “I lost my wood when I saw you with Paul. Plus I don’t wanna get anything on your High Line towel.”

  I stood up, holding on to the back of my chair. “Right, of course. The High Line, our dead moose.”

  Erik stopped nursing. “You’re a fucking mess. What did you take? Ambien?”

  “You can’t change the subject on me twice.”

  “Fine.” He stepped toward me, and our faces leveled. “Tell Paul and Andrea that the wait at St. Vincent’s is an hour long, while their cash goes to a rusty railroad, which—”

  “Paul’s cash?”

  “Which is the roof to the homeless whom you guys will push to Jersey after you’re done with your renovation.”

  “Is that your worry?” I laughed. “’Cause homeless’ll come back. They always do.”

  “No, you’re my worry. You talk safety on the streets, then you run amok with your pills at the Standard. You use the fear of developers so Barry and Diane can sell more shoes and ad space.”

  “Maybe you can talk some sense into them at your parents’ parties,” I said softly, which made the sound of the incoming text on my cell more acute.

  “Wanna check that? It might be your new pen pal, Zemar.”

  “You love me?” I said.

  He stared in disbelief, not moving.

  “I fucking love you,” I said. “Do you love me?” I reached for his shoulder, but he struck my hand down, soil flying from his hands, sobering me up.

  “Look at you. Smart and pathetic. Actually, no, you’re dangerous. You take something bad and you turn it into a joke. You masturbate through simplicity.”

  I felt like I was at the end of a rush. “Then it won’t stick, will it?” I said. “But here’s what does: masturbators like your brother bragging about their dick size.”

  “Swear to God, leave Kevin out of this.”

  “Oh yeah? Tell me, how is his size any different from your dad’s money he inherited? Or did he work for his dick?”

  His fists formed.

  “What?” I shouted. “You don’t look at me? ’Cause I talk money? What the fuck you gonna do when you have to split half a billion with your brother? Huh?”

  “You Greek piece of shit!”

  I felt the cement burning my back, the soil from his hands scrubbing my neck, the metallic taste of blood as his watch sliced my lip, happy Ambien flashes of me swimming with my sister in the Aegean, sleeping with Erik in Normandy. He locked my neck with his elbow. I got his stomach from the side and saw his fist coming down on my face, suddenly stopping midair.

  “Come on, you dick!” I yelled.

  “You’re not worth my punch.” He spit hard on my face. His liquid fogged up everything.

  PART II

  After Erik

  TEN

  July 2006

  THERE’S A HEAT WARNING OUT,” the driver says as we cruise along the Jersey Turnpike back to Manhattan.

  “Got any limo-bar peanuts?” Justin asks him.

  The driver studies Justin in the rearview mirror. There’s no bar in the car.

  Justin glances at his watch. “It’s after nine. I need a burger, boss,” he tells me. “I need some alcohol immunity before I get to those girls downtown. Wanna come along?”

  I get that Friday-night air in his voice, but it’s Wednesday, which reminds me of his calling card—martial arts, partying, and seventeen-year-old girls—and the fact that we have nothing in common.

  I reach for my cell phone and speed-dial the office. I get Andrea’s voice mail and I start summarizing the presentation we just wrapped up. It was my first big pitch without a VP in tow, so I work in a couple of self-deprecating expressions, Washington’s favorite way of signaling confidence and comfort when describing a kick-ass meeting: “. . . if I could still think straight at the time . . .” I hear myself babbling, “. . . which, of course, was the most unintelligent thing I could have said . . .” By the time I hang up, I’m disorie
nted. It may be the haze or just my exhaustion—I’ve already put in forty, fifty hours this week. I rest my head back and fall in and out of sleep.

  “Boss, the girls are fun,” Justin insists. “Tatiana is nuts. You should totally come.”

  I have a slight fever and I need a drink, badly. I worry about the note I got yesterday that I have to vacate my sublet by the end of the month, and about the fact that I have been officially and irrevocably beaten out of a four-year on-again-off-again relationship, when I was always on. I haven’t slept ten hours since Sunday, trapped in an Ambien drowsiness that I have come to like; it dulls the pain some. I don’t want to talk to anyone, and I definitely don’t want to hear how good I still have it.

  “Not a hundred percent,” I tell Justin, but the idea of being alone scares me too. Numbing myself and watching others is how I deal with rejection.

  Justin faces me. “You owned the room today, Stathis. You were technical but philosophical. I think they really liked us.”

  “They were easy on us,” I mumble.

  “Nah, you nailed that Black-Scholes question. Andrea would’ve frozen. How do I get to be a manager like you two years out of business school, man?”

  It’s been three years, and his sucking up is pre-drinks, so he’s trespassing. I look at his tight suit. “Wear a fucking suit,” I say.

  “It’s McQueen,” he shoots back, fingering his sleeve.

  “I know how much you make,” I say, looking out my window.

  “Barneys Warehouse! Know what, I paid for it like fifteen seconds before the blackout.”

  “And?” I don’t get it.