Milkrun

by Sarah Mlynowski

  “Do you believe!” Natalie squeals. “I think I just saw Darlene Powell. No, it couldn’t be her. I ran into her at Saks last week and she looked like shit. She had pockets under her eyes the size of her shopping bags…”

  I focus on their eyes, which continually flicker around the room. It’s as if Natalie and Amber are stage actors who have been instructed to face the audience instead of each other.

  The waitress places three very chic red drinks in martini glasses on our table. “Cheers,” we say, clicking glasses.

  Mmm. Quite good. Very alcoholy. At least you’re good for something, Tiffany. Debbie. Amber. Whatever.

  “Did you see Debbie’s ring?” Natalie asks while jotting down some numbers in her calorie notebook.

  Amber runs her fingers through her mane. “You call that pebble a stone? How embarrassing for her.”

  I can’t handle this ridiculousness. “I’ll be back soon,” I tell the gossiping duo. I’ll do a once-around stroll through the bar.

  Obstacle number one: stroll is a misnomer. Elbow/squeeze stepping in the Lilliputian gaps that divide women’s bare skin from too touchy men would be a more accurate term. My height disability only adds to the situation; I can’t see over anyone’s head.

  Problem number two: every elbow/squeeze step sends a tidal wave of my drink over the glass rim. Whose decision was it to make glasses in this stupid V shape anyway?

  Finally I maneuver my way through half the bar. The end looms in the distance like a pot of gold or a two-for-one sweater sale. What if my soul mate is waiting at the end of the bar? And what if he’ll only be standing in that same spot for the next four minutes? If I don’t happen to bump into him within this time frame, the moment will be lost forever and I’ll be forced to roam the earth alone for the rest of eternity.

  Oh, my, it’s Stripe-Boy! The cute bleached blond with the New York rimmed glasses from last week! He’s sitting by himself on a stool in the corner, and here I am, trapped in the age-old eleventh-grade math question: if I always have to cross the halfway point before reaching the endpoint, how is it possible to ever reach my destination, since every halfway point is a destination, and every destination has a halfway point? See where I’m headed with this? If the distance between a girl and the end of a bar is say, twenty feet, she has to pass the halfway point at ten feet before she can reach the end of the bar, but first she has to pass the halfway point of that, which is at five feet, and so on, and so on…Good God, there will always be another half point, and I will never reach my damn soul mate, oh, Stripe-Boy, you adorable, unattainable goal!

  Which might be a good thing because Jon Gradinger is currently standing smack in the middle of a halfway point with his elbow against the bar, wearing a black turtleneck, which simply reinforces my I-won’t-date-guys-who-wear-turtlenecks rule. What guy wears a turtleneck to a bar? What guy wears a turtleneck? I turn around and walk back through the three halfway points I survived getting here.

  And while we’re on the subject, why is Stripe-Boy obsessed with stripes? A dysfunction from his childhood? Maybe he’s the kind of guy who linearly plans for his future. Like me. Didn’t I plan ahead by calling Master NanChu in advance? Stripe-Boy probably already has a ten-year plan. To meet a nice girl. Me. To fall in love with a nice girl. Me. To propose to—

  A splash of red hair surfaces at another halfway point. Andrew? Thank God. Now I get to talk to someone I know while simultaneously proving to all skeptics (mainly Andrew himself) that I do in fact have friends.

  Quite the social butterfly, that Andrew. Always doing the scene. I elbow-squeeze my way toward him. Push. Elbow. Push. Someone pats my butt.

  Andrew smiles when he sees me. “Hey, Jack.” A gentle arm wraps around my waist.

  Destination complete. Math theory proven false.

  “I thought I spotted you in the distance. Are you here alone?” he asks.

  I smack him lightly on the arm. “No, I am not here alone. Natalie is sitting right over—”

  “I’m kidding.” He takes a sip of his beer. “I’m sure you don’t go out alone every night.” He smiles, his eyes crinkling into half moons.

  “So, who’s the blonde?”

  “Blonde? Where?” he looks around the bar in a mock search. I swat him on the arm.

  “Jessica. The Sweet Valley Twin. At the movie.”

  “What’s a Sweet Valley Twin?”

  “Don’t they teach you anything at Harvard?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “When do you study, anyway? You’re Mr. Scene.”

  “I don’t know about Mr. Scene—I’ve only left my apartment four times all year.”

  “Yeah, sure. And three times in the past two weeks.” What is he, a socialite in denial?

  “The more important question is, Where have you been all year?”

  “Around.” Around my apartment.

  A brunette who’s had one too many knocks against him, and he bumps against my leg. “I only go out when Ben drags me out,” he says, apparently oblivious to our body contact.

  Hmm. He’s standing quite close here. Does he realize how close he’s standing? Is he standing this close on purpose?

  You know when someone’s standing so close you can feel them even though you’re not actually touching?

  “Who’s Ben?” I ask, after clearing my throat.

  “My roommate. You didn’t meet him last week? Now he’s who you’d call Mr. Scene.” The brunette disappears, and Andrew returns to his previous not-quite-close stance.

  “Is he cute?”

  “Cute? I can’t tell if another guy is cute.”

  “Bullshit. I can tell if another girl is cute.”

  “What girl do you think is cute?”

  “Forget it. I’m not allowing for any lesbian fantasies until you at least tell me if this Ben character is single.” Brunette? Brunette? Come back, brunette! Come back, come back wherever you are!

  “Ben!” He calls over a built blond in a collared shirt. “Are you single tonight?” he screams over the music.

  I smack him again.

  “Why do you keep beating me up?”

  “Because you’re bitable…beatable.” Good God.

  “Every time you hit me, you lose more of your drink to the floor…Ben!” He raises his glass to the husky blond guy who has approached us at the bar.

  Single-Tonight looks me up and down, and drawls, “Hellooo.”

  “Ben, Jackie. Jackie, Ben.”

  He pulls my hand toward his lips and kisses it. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he says, not letting go. “Would you like a drink?”

  “Why don’t you give the lady back her hand and go buy us some shots,” Andrew says.

  “But her skin is so soft.” He brushes his lips against my knuckles. Very soft lips. Who is this guy again?

  “Forget it, she’s off-limits.”

  Off-limits? Does Andrew like me? Do I comment on this? Should I let it go? Do I like Andrew?

  Ben nibbles on my fingers and I start to laugh. He releases my hand, smiles, and returns to wherever he came from.

  I ask straight out, “Why are you ruining my chances with an obviously available swinging single?”

  “Because Jer would never forgive me if I let you go out with Ben.”

  Jer? Jer? “Jer?”

  “I just meant—”

  “—that the only reason you’re talking to me is to make sure I sit here and virginally wait for Jer’s return while he fucks everything he sees.” My voice is suddenly loud. Why is he bringing Jer up? Is he an idiot? Or just a completely insensitive prick? Here I am, for at least fifteen minutes not thinking about Jer, and he has to go ahead and ruin everything.

  “Whoa! I definitely didn’t mean it like that. Sleep with anyone you want. But as your friend, and as an old friend of your ex, I can’t recommend in good conscience that you go home, to my apartment no less, with a guy who screws a minimum of three girls a week and drinks a minimum of one bottle of vodka a day.”
<
br />   “Oh.” Oops.

  “Unless you like playboy lushes.”

  “Not particularly.” I sniff my kissed hand. It smells like Scotch.

  “In that case, you’re forgiven for your outburst. At least you didn’t smack me again.”

  “Here you go, gorgeous,” Ben says, passing me two shots of some indefinable liquid.

  “What is this, exactly?” I ask.

  “Don’t worry, sweet thing.” He pinches my cheek with a sticky hand. “To Andrew’s hot friend,” he says, raising his shot with his other hand.

  “I can definitely drink to that.” I look him straight in the eyes. What can I say? Patronizing, playboy, lush…in spite of Andrew’s warnings, I find myself tempted—but not too tempted.

  “Cheers,” Andrew says, and we shoot the first of the indefinable burning liquid.

  Ben lifts the second shot in the air and toasts, “To getting laid. Tonight.”

  I nearly choke on the burning residue in my throat.

  “Want to come home with me tonight, Andrew’s hot friend?”

  I pause for a moment in mock contemplation. “No.”

  Ben shrugs, shoots, and returns to the bar.

  “Based on the sounds that come from his bedroom, I think you might be missing out,” Andrew says.

  “I doubt it. What you probably hear is him puking into his wastebasket. Or the sound of his crying when he finds out he can’t perform, given his altered state.”

  “You sure you don’t want to reconsider? He’s not a bad guy, despite his extreme sketchiness.”

  “A minute ago, you were against the idea. Now you’re my pimp?”

  “What are friends for?”

  Friends? Interesting concept. “You’d be amazed how difficult it is to make male friends in a new city,” I confide. “For some reason, approaching a stranger and asking him if he’ll change your lightbulbs gives him the wrong idea. Is there something phallic about lightbulbs that I’m missing here?”

  “That’s the barter system—manual labor for sex. How many lightbulbs are we talking about exactly?”

  “Just a couple dozen.” Maybe this could work. What did Sally’s Harry mean when he said that men and women couldn’t be friends? “And there’s also this bookshelf or wall-unit thing I’ve been meaning to put together—”

  “Let me get this straight. I slave over your apartment and get nothing in return?”

  You can have anything you want in return. “You get my undying friendship. And dinner.”

  “You can cook?” he asks. “What can you make?”

  Cook? God no. “I have Star-Search-caliber pizza-ordering talent,” I answer, my back halfway turned to leave and return to Nat. “And I make great reservations.”

  I must sit. My feet are in bad shape. Why are all the cutest boots always so damn uncomfortable? Oh joy, there’s a free seat next to Natalie. I’m about to sit down, when I realize that Stripe-Boy is sitting in Amber’s seat.

  “I’m back,” I say. He’s cute. His bleached blond hair gives him a bit of a boy-band look, but his dark-rimmed glasses add on a few years.

  “Where were you?” Natalie asks. “Come sit.”

  “I was talking to Andrew.”

  “Andrew? He’s here? Where?”

  I point around the corner.

  “Who’s he with?” she asks.

  “Some guy. Ben.”

  “Ben Mason?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tall? Cute? Blond?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Drunk?”

  “Bingo.”

  “That boy is always drunk,” Stripe-Boy pipes in.

  Natalie looks at Stripe-Boy, then at me. “I’ll be back,” she says, which translated means, I’ll be gone for the rest of the night, so hopefully you two will have something to talk about. “Amber doesn’t want us to lose the table,” she adds just before leaving, “so don’t go anywhere.”

  Go anywhere? Is she kidding? “Hi, I’m Jackie.” Not a fine jump start, but a start nonetheless.

  “Damon,” he says, sticking out his hand. I shake it. Firm handshake. Strong personality. Dad would approve.

  “Tell me about yourself, Damon.” The liquid courage sets in.

  He swirls his drink with his small hand. “I’m a writer.”

  Oh, my. This is obviously fate. “I’m an editor.” Our eyes meet over the unspoken, unedited words between us. “What are you writing?”

  “A novel.”

  “Your first?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about?”

  “A boy’s coming of age in Boston.”

  Omigod, I swear I’m not just saying this, but if I were ever going to write a novel, that’s what I’d write about. Okay, not about a boy coming of age; my comprehension of the male mind doesn’t go that deep. In fact, ever since Jer, I often find myself wondering if the male psyche has any depth at all. So I’d probably write about a girl becoming a woman, in a Judy Blume–style. And I’d probably set the book in Connecticut. The only place I’m familiar enough to write about in Boston is this sleazy bar, and the bathroom here is no place for a nice girl to get her period for the first time.

  His lips curve into a Jack Nicholson devilish smile. “So how did you get to be an editor?”

  “I majored in English lit. Then I did half of my M.A.”

  “What did you specialize in?”

  “My undergrad was a general lit degree. For my M.A. I concentrated on both the romantic and realist periods in American literature.” I was supposed to choose one area for my thesis, but I put the program on hold after my first year when I blindly followed Jer to Boston. At least the “on hold” part was what I told myself. “I’m assuming you majored in English lit, too?”

  He smiles. “Is there anything else?”

  I’ve never dated a lit guy. Nope, there were no stripe-boys in my Spenser’s Faerie Queen class; for some reason my classes were unusually proportioned with cool women and nerd boys. I’m not talking about the good kind of nerd who is able to woo a girl over cups of espresso at two in the morning in a small café, using his profound understanding of the universe as bait. The good kind of nerd, when asked to name something that will impress you, might answer, “My idea of euphoria is reading Karl Marx, naked, on a beach in Mexico.” The kind of nerd who sat in my lit classes made little holes in the dry skin on his hands with the tip of his pencil, and when asked to name something that would impress you, said, “I have a big pencil,” and would really mean pencil. Not penis. Pencil.

  “And you? What did you specialize in?” If he says poetry, the search is over. I’ll give my high black boots to the charity shop and accept him as my destiny. Who can argue with destiny?

  “I jumped around a lot. I tried to concentrate on lyric poetry.”

  Omigod, omigod. Fifty years from now we’ll be sitting on a porch swing in the sunset. I’ll be helping him with his latest manuscript. Maybe in a house hidden by a hill. Maybe in a little shack like in Little House on the Prairie, only with indoor plumbing and a computer and a ceramic-topped stove—and a piano. Definitely a piano (maybe I should start taking lessons now). I’ll be there playing the piano; he’ll be there paying the bills. And we’ll collect things like ashtrays and art.

  I have déjà vu. Oh, never mind. Those are lyrics from Annie.

  “So what do you edit?” he asks.

  “Umm…manuscripts.”

  “What kind of manuscripts?”

  “Women’s fiction.”

  “Feminist fiction? Today’s up-and-coming Woolf? Chopin?”

  Not quite. “I work for Cupid.”

  “Romance novels?” He laughs. “Henry James would roll over in his grave. Say, would you like a drink?”

  “A Manhattan, definitely.”

  “Manhattan? A sophisticated drink.”

  Love that Amber. “I’m a sophisticated girl.”

  “I’ll have to hurry back then.”

  “Please do.”

  Th
is is going perfectly according to my new life plan. I’ve already met my soul mate, and it’s only taken forty-eight minutes.

  He returns—of course he returns; he’s unexplainably drawn to me—with two Manhattans. “Good. You’re still here.”

  As if I’d go anywhere without him now that we’ve mated literally (which is not to be confused with literally mated—not yet anyway). “I want to hear more about your writing,” I say between sips. I stare down at my drink, a sinking feeling settling in my stomach. What if my teeth turn red from this drink? I’ll have to swallow the drink very carefully without swishing any of the liquid around in my mouth. I wish I could use a straw. “Where have you been published?”

  “Heat, Other People’s Money, Playboy… A few others. I’ve mostly published short stories, but I’ve done some interviews, too. I used to write…”

  I drown out the rest of the conversation because I’m stuck on the Playboy portion. “Playboy? What did you write for Playboy?”

  “A short story.”

  “Really? I’d love to read it.”

  “You read erotica?”

  Read erotica? I’m the queen of erotica. Without me, erotica would be full of superfluous commas and run-on sentences. “I work for Cupid, remember?”

  “That’s true. What are you doing tomorrow night?”

  Now that was sudden. Or not that sudden considering I’ve been waiting twenty-four years for this soul-meeting moment. I pretend to think about it. “What exactly did you have in mind?”

  “I’d like to take you out for a drink.”

  Finally, the kind of nerd who eventually woos you over cups of espresso/alcoholic beverages at two in the morning in a small café/sleazy bar! “That would be nice. Assuming of course, that your interest in seeing me doesn’t stem from my declaration that I work in porn.” I’m joking of course; surely he must feel the cosmic pull, as well.

  “Partly. But mostly because I can see my friend waving at me. I think he wants to leave. I want to make sure I see you again.”

  A very good reason. Not only is he sensitive (mandatory emotion for a writer), he’s also smart.

  He walks up to the bar to get a pen and a piece of paper, and I see the bartender smirk and mouth, “You scored digits?” How immature.

  I write down my number in what I hope appears to be a sexy scrawl. And then I write Jackie in big letters underneath, just in case. Soul mate or no soul mate, my name was the first thing I said to him, and it’s possible he wasn’t overcome with destiny just at that moment.