Hotel Living
Page 26
“funny ur text. bio-hacking may be our next stop. really. rewind the mind through the body,” Paul texts back.
I know he is not kidding, and the fact that what I now see as absurd is my friend’s daily reality—even if he is Paul—makes me feel a touch left out. I have a moment of what-have-I-done doubt about my piss-off strategy. I think of replying some nonsense, but a second text from Paul comes in: “need to talk to alkis. he’s not picking up. what’s going on?”
Perfect. I type: “Bubble blues, Paul? Keep stalking and pimping, you’ll make it through.”
“Who is this?” Paul responds.
A couple of lines later, I am surprisingly calm. I think I see an end to all the crap I was supposed to want in life, and that gives me hope for some new freedom. I can’t see myself getting off a plane in Athens and handing in my passport (that idea still gives me the creeps), but I can see myself on a fishing boat in Bequia, hanging out with Jeevan, probably the only person in my memory who seems authentic and real. I used to look down on him with pity, the way I did my father. Now I envy them both. What have I done better, anyway? Lived a decadelong fiesta that started with a scholarship and ended with me in Prada, chasing white powder. I gave it my all in conference rooms, when all I cared about was bagging some phony rebel. I didn’t succeed at either. Now, calling it quits is all that’s left to do.
“You stole my line,” I text back to Paul’s “Who is this?,” and then I ring Tatiana to leave her a message—she never picks up—and tell her she’s a cunt for disappearing, but she does pick up, and I’m stunned.
I am missed, I am in her thoughts all the time, I am handsome. She laughs. She is happy in France. Over there it’s all about the everyday things, which are the really important things. Have I ever had a moment when everything made sense?
“How long will you stay there?” I ask her.
“Indefinitely,” she replies, and I can see her playing with her hair, seducing whoever sits opposite her while she’s talking to me on the phone.
“Get to France,” Tatiana orders, and it hits me that between schools and jobs and running after Erik, I missed my chance to make real friends, or really care for the ones I had. When all is said and done, friendship is the love that we are most accountable to.
“I’m on my way,” I tell Tatiana. “I am meeting my family in Paris this Thanksgiving. Finally.”
She’s ecstatic. “I want to meet them! We have to get together.”
“I miss you too,” I say, and sniff a bump, which makes Tatiana go silent. “Allergies,” I say, but she doesn’t react. “Tati? You there?”
“Baby, I worry about you,” she says. “Justin told me that you don’t go out, that you don’t go to work . . . Are you partying by yourself? That’s dangerous.”
“No way.”
“I’ll tell Kate to put your name down for God’s after-party tonight. I want you to go. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“I can’t wait to see you.”
JUAN AT THE DOOR OF the Soho Grand hugs me.
“Juanito!” I say as Juan lifts me off my feet slightly. “Are you trying to flip me, bitch?” I laugh.
“You bet,” says Juan.
“Not happening.”
“Are you here for the screening party on the roof?” Juan asks.
“Free drinks . . .”
He elbows me into the outside lobby. “We’ve lost you since you moved to New York. You got to swing by more often, Stathis.”
“Deal!” I say, and head to the elevators.
I exit into the penthouse’s party roar.
“Stathis Rakis,” I tell the tall girl with the list in her hand.
She takes her time. I spell my name.
“You were a party of two . . .” she says.
“I’m by myself.”
“Your friend has already checked in,” she says briskly, and lets me in.
Neither Kate nor God is in sight, so I walk to the sponsor’s bar to pick up an already-mixed vodka something. Then I head toward the balcony, but someone grabs my shoulder.
“You’re my plus-one, boss!” Justin laughs.
“We’re both Kate’s plus-one, I guess,” I say.
“Oh, Kate’s gone,” Justin says.
“Be real . . .”
“She jumped the bones of that short dude from X-Men,” Justin says. “I was like, guys, get a suite . . .”
“Er, are you still doing Kate?” I ask.
Justin shrugs. “Never turned anyone down.”
“Been there,” I murmur.
“How’re you doing, boss?” Justin looks at me with bloodshot eyes. “I don’t see you at work. You don’t text back.” He seems concerned. Then he smiles. “Are you coming to the Beatrice later?”
I scan the smokers through the glass door. “Maybe. We’ll see.”
“Shit, boss! You’d be so proud of me. I was in Princeton and someone was telling Andrea how much he loved Blink, you know, Gladwell’s book of anecdotes. So tonight at the Spotted Pig, I was explaining to my analyst how we’ll turn our DCF into a decision analysis model, when guess who walks in?”
“Yes, that’s interesting,” I say, spotting God giving an interview at the other side of the penthouse.
“Who walks in?”
“Who walks in?” I repeat impatiently. What does he want from me?
“Malcolm Gladwell!” Justin shouts.
“Really?” I say, uninterested, but Justin does not read me.
“You can’t miss him, the dude’s Halloween.” His jaw shakes, he talks and spits on me. “So I go: fuck decision analysis. We’ll call our project blicision analysis!” Justin laughs, spilling vodka over his pink shirt. “I love you, boss!”
“Yes, so proud of you,” I say, and try to walk away from him toward the balcony, but Justin grips my hand.
“What?” I yell. “Blicison analysis. I got it, Justin. I invented that shit. Let go.”
Justin winks. “Come with me, boss.”
My phone rings. It’s a number I don’t recognize, but I have my own stuff in my pocket, so I pick up to get rid of Justin. I raise my eyebrows while motioning to my phone and walk out to the balcony.
“Captain Stathis,” Kevin says over the phone. The static is terrible.
“Where are you calling from?” I ask.
“Car phone,” he says.
Didn’t car phones die in the nineties? “What’s up, Kevin?”
“Where are you?” he asks.
“At a party.”
“Nice. Where’s that?”
“Downtown . . . at the Soho Grand,” I say. “What’s up?” I try to sound busy.
“Nothing. I’m heading back to the city, from Greenwich, and I could use a drink.”
I stay silent.
“Actually, I have a meeting down on Wall Street first thing tomorrow,” Kevin says.
“Really?” I say, and think of the years when I used to cook up meetings so I could fly across the country to fuck his brother.
“Yeah, it’s at seven thirty,” Kevin says casually.
“The early bird . . .” Now beg, motherfucker.
“Come to think of it, I could check in at the Grand and skip the morning rush.”
“I made up a business trip to Montreal once just to spend the night with someone. But we can’t always get what we want, Kevin.”
“Really? What is that like?” he says, and laughs.
Like snorting speed instead of coke by accident—appalling. “Let me make it simple for you,” I say.
“Oh yeah?” he says with a bring-it-on tone.
“A friend of mine told me that when we fall for someone, we fall for everything about them, the whole package. So you were my fuck-you-Erik fuck; you were part of my closure. And by the way, thank you for
that.”
“Dude, who cares if—”
“Wait, there’s more. I used to live at the Soho Grand. The people at the door know me. You wouldn’t want them to take note of your pathetic little life, now, would you?”
He is silent.
“I’d stay away if I were you,” I say, and hang up.
A bittersweet feeling comes over me.
This was the last link to Erik, now cut loose, and the sadness that was always part of not being able to possess him mixes with relief, an exciting freedom that has arrived with closure. For the first time in a while, anything seems possible. I want to stroll downtown, get lost on the Lower East Side, and watch passersby, or just bump into someone on the street. I rush inside and look for the elevators, but Justin comes out of the bathroom. “Boss!” he calls. His jaw tweaks, bad. “Kate put our names down at the VIP room. Let’s go see what’s shaking.”
“I don’t give a fuck,” I say.
“Huh?”
“Justin! I’m checking out!” I say, and his face becomes as serious as it gets.
“So the scoop is true,” Justin says. “I thought it was a rumor, but you are leaving Command.”
“Yes, the scoop is true. I’m leaving.”
“Fuck, boss. I’ll miss you.” Justin hugs me. He presses something into my hand.
“What is this?”
“A parting gift. Good stuff. Parting with a y! Got that?” Justin smirks.
“Yes, yes.”
“With a y . . . That was good!” He laughs.
“I got it, Justin.”
“What’s next, boss? Got something bigger going down?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ll go see my family. Maybe I’ll get a stove.” I feel a chill. I am suddenly worried. I think of all the things I’ll need to get by. Not now, but soon. “I’ll get a job,” I say. “Hopefully a real one. One where I get to ask real questions.”
Justin puts his hand on my shoulder—I can’t tell if he’s reaching out or losing his balance.
“Boss, Alkis told me that after he left consulting he never felt that free again,” Justin says. “You may never be this free again.”
I feel like I’m running out of time, now that I’m a tired, middle-aged, practically unemployed man who has no country. It might be tricky to start over. Loneliness takes hold of me, and once again, I see Ray’s whitetip patrolling the oceans. Well, it’s too late to start feeling sorry for myself. There must be something out there that I’ll want to call my own. I don’t know what that is yet, but hopefully I will.
“I’ve been way free,” I hear myself saying. “I want boring next. I want Jeevan.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Boss, Alkis is talking recession.”
“I want a fucking recession!” I yell, and people turn.
TWO DAYS BEFORE THANKSGIVING, I walk into Two Boots on Greenwich and Seventh Avenue for a slice of cheese. There’s no one in line, so I’m done with lunch in ninety seconds. I step outside to light a cigarette, and the weather is unseasonably warm, so I shove my leather jacket into the plastic bag they gave me at the Apple store. I take a puff and glance at my watch. Six hours till my flight to Paris.
I am smoking away, imagining my nephew and niece running toward me at the airport, when I recognize a voice.
“You’re still smoking!”
I see Erik hurrying toward me from Seventh.
I stiffen, bracing for a seismic shift in me, but it doesn’t come.
“Hi?” Erik says.
He’s swimming in an oversize Abercrombie & Fitch hoodie, and, if I still know him, that would account for his tentative greeting. He looks like what he used to sneer at. I could easily take him down.
“I’d be all, go for it,” Erik says, pointing at my cigarette. “But I’m coming from there.” He waves toward St. Vincent’s Hospital across the street.
“Hi,” I say. “What happened?”
“Warren’s son cut himself at a birthday party and we brought him to the ER for a couple of stitches. Nothing serious. I stepped out to get him a soda.”
“Parker cut his finger?” I ask lightly, surprised that I’m not surprised or even upset to see Erik playing dad.
He just nods.
“I hear they’re closing the hospital down,” I say, and blow my smoke away from his face.
“Yeah, bummer,” Erik says.
“Mismanagement or real-estate something.”
“New York . . .” Erik says, and leans back on the Two Boots window. His legs relax. He’s a different Erik, not the one I remember, who was always ready to sprint. I notice him taking me in, as if I’m someone he just met, or someone he’d known for years and now unexpectedly sees in a different light. I sense tension as he waits for my next move.
“I’m sorry about Constantine,” I say.
“Right,” he says, and looks down at his yellow Puma shoes. I could easily take him down for those too, but what would it prove?
“I am sorry I lost the rest of Constantine’s postcards. Do you think they would have made a difference?” I ask.
Erik looks across Seventh at the fence covered in 9/11 memorial tiles. “No. Not really,” he says.
“That’s what I thought.” I nod.
A man rushes out of Two Boots and brushes my bag. Erik makes his half smile, and I have this image of the past, of him outside the hut at Montmelian, the first time he smiled at me that way. “Is that yours?” Erik asks, poking at the Apple logo.
“That’s mine. But it’s not for me.”
“Still a techno snob.”
“I’m meeting my family in a couple of days in Paris,” I say, smiling.
“Greeks bearing gifts—” Erik stops, embarrassed, like he was catching himself slipping into an old habit. “Seriously, that’s excellent,” he adds soberly.
“Finally.”
There is impatience on his face, and I have a hunch that he’s about to bring up Kevin. He does.
“I hear you helped my brother with a due diligence,” he says, so casually that I know he is overcompensating. He knows.
I look straight into his eyes. “Does it matter?” I ask.
“No. Not really,” he says, once again avoiding me.
Another few dead seconds go by. Talking about Kevin makes me sad. I have a flight to catch, and I haven’t finished packing. I put out my cigarette with my foot. “It was fun, Erik,” I say, exhaling the last of the smoke.
“Yes, Stathis, it was.” Erik gives me a full smile. And that is my sign-off.
Memories mutate; they overpower the truth. We keep what we wish to remember. It was fun and goddamn pain, all mixed together. We shake hands and Erik goes for that extra second, which I allow him because I don’t need it.
“See you around,” I say, and walk north on Greenwich. As I turn the corner onto Bank Street, my phone buzzes.
“I don’t believe this,” I answer.
“What?” Tatiana asks.
“Guess who I just ran into.”
“Who?”
“Actually . . . it’s not important. How are you?”
“Huh?”
“How are you?”
“I’m good. I’m just checking in on you,” Tatiana says. “Make sure you don’t miss your flight.”
“Still watching over me.”
Tati giggles. “Always.”
“I can’t wait to see Markos and Zoë,” I say, sitting down on my brownstone’s stoop. The trees on Bank Street have started to change. This might be my last fall in New York, and for the first time, I’m awake to how beautiful my block is.
“What did you get them?” Tatiana asks.
“Gadgets, iCrap . . .”
“Aww, I wish I were there with you to go shopping for gifts.”
“Oh my God, I’m such a good cook now. You’ll gain five pounds in a week. Where are you guys staying in Paris? Hey!” Her voice turns dark. “I don’t want you to see Teresa over there.”
“I wasn’t planning to, but—”
“What?”
“Tatiana, she’s been worrying about you. She calls me all the time. Tati, listen, she really—”
“Stop!”
“Okay . . .”
“Are you still in touch with Ray?” she asks, calmer.
“No. He sends me a text once in a blue moon.”
“Drop him.”
“Don’t worry about him,” I say. “I have. I don’t even understand his messages. I give him six months before he breaks up.”
“Do you know that he got high and beat the shit out of my mother?” Tatiana asks. “He sent her to the fucking hospital.”
“Shit. I did not know that. I’m sorry,” I say. “Tatiana, listen. One more reason you should call her. She’s probably depressed, she needs you.”
“I’m working on it,” Tatiana says softly. “I will.”
“Good.” I light a cigarette. “Better sooner rather than later.”
“Things take the time they need to take,” Tatiana says. “Are you still smoking?”
“Well . . . things take the time they need to take.”
She laughs.
“Just because you moved to France doesn’t mean you’re the poster child of health,” I say, and there’s an awkward pause. “Okay, I should not have said that. I am impressed with what you did.”
“What are you impressed with?” she asks suspiciously.
“You, leaving New York . . .”
“You don’t know how I live here.”
“No, I do not,” I say. “But you sound happy, living with your father. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you more together.”
“My father is in Berkeley. I’m kind of alone.”
“We are alone together,” I say, and out of the blue I think of Jeevan. I remember Erik and me holding on tightly to his dinghy, heading south to Tobago Cays, at the far end of the Caribbean, when Jeevan spotted a tiny red boat out in the middle of nowhere. Instantly, he started racing toward it, ripping through open waves—no life jackets or radio on board. “What in the hell are you doing!” Erik screamed. “You’re gonna get us drowned!”