by Poppy Dunne
To say Jack and I shared a spark is a massive understatement. It was more like an instantaneous explosion, or an electrical fire that goes crazy and wipes out half a city block. It’s the kind of spark that winds up on prime time network news, with neighbors being interviewed and a new, fresh-faced reporter lady commenting on it while secretly assuring herself that one day, one day, she will climb the corporate ranks and be the desk anchor.
That got out of hand. Point is, we shared a lot of heat. There’s nothing you can do that prepares you for something like that, nothing you can do to stop it. You feel it, and it warms you…and then it roasts you from the inside out.
I go back to my kitchen to get more sponges, passing my Hermione costume. It’s still draped over my kitchen chair, flung there after I got home and couldn’t bear to wear it any longer. The sight of it fills me with a burst of longing. Go talk to him, Dahlia, it seems to say. It’s not every man who would play dress up so enthusiastically.
That doesn’t sound as good as I think the Hermione costume wants it to. But then again, it’s a costume. And costumes can’t talk, obviously.
Good, I’m glad I’ve got all the important things figured out.
My phone rings again, and I freeze. My id is screaming yes, go, go get it! and the superego is tugging at my arm and going no, don’t be an idiot!
In this particular case, my id and my superego are both being played by Jack Carraway. As the superego, he’s all dressed up in nerdy deliciousness, with a white button down shirt that beautifully hugs his broad chest and sculpted shoulders. Superego Jack is wearing a pair of rimless glasses, and he’s holding my arm so tenderly. So gentlemanly.
Meanwhile, id Jack is wearing nothing but a pair of tight Speedos and is grinding against me with enthusiasm. I know I shouldn’t want it, but damn, he is super built and, in this particular scenario, glistening with coconut oil spread all over his manly…
I wonder if Jack objectifies me in his imagination like this. I hope he does. That way, I won’t be the only weird one.
Finally, the phone stops ringing, so I take the opportunity to go sit on my futon and stare at the floor. Except that this futon is where Jack and I banged, so I sit on the floor in front of it.
Where Jack and I also banged.
What part of this apartment did we not have sex on top of? Right, there was one place…one lone place…
As I go to sit on the toilet for the rest of my life, I hear my front door buzzer sound. Oh no. My eyes widen, and I clutch my throat. No way he came all the way over here. Maybe the calls were to see if I was home; maybe he’s waiting outside with a bouquet of roses and his shirt unbuttoned in just the way I like it. If he thinks for one moment he can lure me back with a glimpse of sculpted pectorals and some flowers, he does not know me.
Nevertheless, I’d probably better talk to him so he can know I’m not that type of girl. I might even go downstairs and tell it to his face. Hell, I might even have to make out with him once or twice, just to get it through his thick skull that it’s really over.
I’m so excited to show him how much I don’t care that I’m practically skipping to the intercom. “Yes?” I say as I answer, striking just the right nonchalant pose. Perfect.
“Dahlia?” That’s Edith’s voice, and she sounds perplexed. “Is it just me, or do you sound horny?”
Okay, maybe I’m not doing as good a job at the ‘not caring at all’ as I thought I was. Cursing under my breath, I hit the ‘speak’ button.
“Edith? What are you doing here?”
“I sent you three emails and you never responded, so I thought I’d drop by. Also, there appears to be a hippie waiting for you. I assume she wants some food? Do you need any quinoa, dear?” Edith asks. Then Chelsea gets on the line.
“Dahlia, I’m standing next to a woman who is wearing a sloth. I approve of this new fashion trend. May I come up?”
Man, I am so relieved that this wasn’t Jack. You have no idea how relieved I am. Sometimes, when I’m this relieved, it feels a lot like disappointment. But it’s not. It’s relief.
“Are you talking to us or yourself?” Edith asks. I can hear the concern in her voice. Crap, was I saying all that out loud? Groaning, I hit the buzzer to let them in the door, then press my forehead against the wall. I will be cool. I know how to be cool. Nothing to worry about here.
“Dahlia?” Chelsea asks as she enters, Edith tagging behind her, with Ernold the sloth hanging from her back. “Don’t bang your head against the wall. It’s not that bad.”
Oh, that’s where the headache was coming from. Obviously.
“I’m fine,” I say as I rub the tender spot in the middle of my forehead. Chelsea instantly goes to the kitchen, probably to brew me a mug of tea made with authentic Chinese twigs. At least she’s not putting any of that beetroot dirt into it; not when I begged her to stop that last time. Edith places Ernold on a kitchen chair, takes me by the hand, and drags me to the living room, sitting me down on the sex futon. Since I can’t ask her to have this conversation on the floor without being excessively weird, I resign myself to sitting on the remains of happier times. She sits across from me, legs crossed at the knee, one expensive Italian leather stilettoed foot bobbing.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” she says, leaning in with a conspiratorial air, “but…you’re not really happy, are you?”
I think ‘no shit, Sherlock’ would be an unnecessarily rude thing to blurt out right now, so I compose myself to look like this idea hasn’t yet crossed my mind. “You might be right,” I say. Edith squares her shoulders back, proud of herself for having cracked the case.
“The stove has informed me,” Chelsea says, bustling in with a cup of brewed herbs, “that the coital enthusiasm of this space has evaporated. You must have broken up with that attractive and often naked man.”
Edith’s eyes light up. “I knew there was a reason you weren’t returning my emails. That’s what I told this hippie when I met her downstairs.” She gestures casually at Chelsea, who never loses her serene expression. “What can I do to help, Dahlia? Do you need me to schedule an asshole blanching? Those really lift my spirits when I’m in a dark place,” she says with an all-knowing nod.
There’s a joke to be made here about blanched assholes and dark places, but I am not in the mental space right now to pick up on it.
“I don’t think that’s what I need right now. Sorry if I’m a little slow to respond, Edith. If you need any help, we can schedule it in for now.” After all, even when my life is falling apart, I need to remain professional.
Edith’s brow furrows. “Oh. I don’t need any help. Gerald and I are getting along so, so well. He loves all my animals!” She beams, looking positively twitterpated, to borrow a phrase from Bambi…which I’m certain is a movie Edith had an unhealthy obsession with as a child. “I wanted to see if you, ah, ever wanted to get lunch? Go shopping? Do normal, healthy social interactions?” She puts both feet on the floor, places her hands in her lap. Edith looks at me shyly, like she’s ready to bolt if I say no.
Does Edith want to be my friend? I blink; I never think of having clients as friends, sure that after I help them sort their lives out they’ll move on to bliss and their own private circle of loved ones. But…I really do enjoy Edith, in an ‘I can’t believe you exist’ sort of way. I mean, she’s wild and passionate and struggling to do good in the world—hard not to get swept up in that kind of enthusiasm.
“I believe we could have room in our friend brunches,” Chelsea says, smiling sleepily at Edith, who gasps with excitement.
“I never have girl friends! Everyone I know is in my tax bracket, and they all hate me!” she crows, her hands fluttering. “They say I’m too weird!”
Well, weirdness is in the eye of the beholder. After some of the wacky shenanigans I’ve been embroiled in these last few days, who am I to judge? In fact, Edith’s excitement and Chelsea’s laid-back acceptance are the tonic I needed after the Jack fiasco. I just didn’t realize it
until right now.
“I can cook lunch for all of us. I’ve got the makings of a nice pasta salad,” I say, and barely get the last word out before Edith’s got her arms around me, dragging me to my feet and squeezing the air out of my lungs. I smile and give her a hug back. If nothing else, having good friends makes up for a lot of weird shit life throws at you.
“And I will bless the meal,” Chelsea says happily. “We can commemorate it to this Babylonian snake goddess I learned about on Wikipedia.”
“Snakes?” Edith says, interested with the mention of animals.
My friends are odd, but they’re good.
“I have an idea,” Edith says, when we’re done with lunch and on our second glasses of wine. “Why don’t I throw a party? That’s what friends do to cheer each other up, right?”
“Just so long as it doesn’t involve arson of any kind, I’m in,” I joke. It worries me a tiny bit when Edith gets a concerned look on her face and has to thumb in a message to herself on her phone: no arson.
“I can set you up with all my hottest billionaire frenemies,” she says proudly.
“That’s…so nice of you?”
As she says it, my stomach ties itself in knots. Not cute little bows, oh no, gnarly Gordian knots of tension and strife. She couldn’t possibly invite…Jack? Should I ask her about that? No, on second thought, that’s a bad idea. If she does know Jack, she’ll have all the information she’ll need for an inadvertent slip to some of her more well-connected acquaintances. If that happens, Jack might find out I was talking about him. At all. To anyone. And I don’t want him to know I’m thinking about him.
Because that would be embarrassing. And because I am thinking about him. All the time. Constantly. Even when Chelsea says the blessing over my pasta salad, he’s at the forefront of my mind.
I’ve got to get over this, so a party might be just the way to do it.
“How about tonight?” Edith all but titters gleefully. “I know it’s short notice, but I can send out an invitation blast. No one I know has regular jobs, anyway, so they don’t have to worry about work tomorrow. And I have the perfect venue!”
If Edith’s enthusiastic about it, I’m officially worried. But again, the idea here is to dance and drink the night away, free of concerns. Free of thoughts of Jack Carraway.
Because after all, he’s in LA now. I know that. No reason to worry I’ll run into him tonight. No reason at all.
23
Jack
I’m trying my damndest to run into Dahlia, but apparently New York is a large city. I dropped casually by her apartment, but she wasn’t in. Now I’m pulling a step that is one level above seedy stalking, and heading to all the places we’ve been together, or she’s mentioned loving. The public library, with the two stone lions standing guard out front. Strawberry Fields in Central Park. That one wine bar in Astoria. The Neptune Diner. That one Ray’s Pizza, which she says is the best one in the city, because she’s tried them all. And now, Damico’s Bakery in Little Italy.
Dahlia likes food, apparently.
A middle-aged woman with sleek blonde hair and a warm smile greets me when I go up to the counter. An array of pastries is spread out before me underneath the curved glass, pies and tarts and buns and cakes, all placed on little paper lace doilies. Maybe I can buy a box of cream puffs and lead them in a line up to her apartment. Then, when she shows up, gathering pastries as she goes, she’ll find me, waiting with the last cream puff in my hands. Manfully, I can tell her that this cream puff represents my heart, and if she wants to eat it, she can.
On second thought, I’m more of a ‘say it with flowers’ kind of guy.
“May I help you?” the woman asks. I pull up my phone, with the picture of Dahlia sitting at the front of the speedboat, smiling with a can of beer in hand. Even thinking about those perfect few days upstate hurts.
“Have you seen this woman recently?” I ask.
The lady’s eyes widen with horror. “Oh my God. Is she dead?” She whips around and starts yelling for someone. “Joe! Joe! Dahlia’s dead!”
There’s the sound of something clattering in the back—it sounds like ten thousand pots and pans just hit the floor. The woman whirls around again, tears in her eyes. “She was so young! So sweet. She’d always come in and say—”
“Wait, sorry, there’s been a mistake. No one’s dead.” The woman and I gape at each other a second. “I’m just looking for her. She told me she likes this place, and I wondered if you’d seen her.”
“Oh, thank God. Joe, Dahlia’s not dead! You’d better pick the kitchen up,” she calls over her shoulder again, and smiles at me. “Sorry. You just seemed like one of those men in those shows, you know, who come in and say someone’s dead. That’s a very conservative suit you’re wearing. My mistake.” She blinks. “Do you ever watch Law and Order reruns? You look like those kinds of guys.”
Is everyone in New York crazy, or is it just the people I happen to run into?
“So, yes. Dahlia? Have you seen her?”
“Hmmm.” The woman screws up her face a bit, judging me. “You know, she has been coming here like clockwork over the last few days. We’ve had to make her slice of princess cake a standing order.” Then she narrows her eyes. “Women can always tell when other women are using pastry to cope with heartbreak. It’s part of the unspoken sisterhood.”
Far be it for me to get in the way of cake and spirituality.
“We had a fight,” I admit at last, because I think this woman’s a second away from sticking a toasting fork in my head, and I’d rather not have to explain that to my doctor. “I’m trying to make things right.”
“Jam tarts always go a long way to soothing a broken soul,” she says, with the business acumen of a shark in an underwater bakery. Or something.
“Then maybe I should buy a dozen.” I’m not above a little casual bribery, and it turns out neither is she—Mrs. Damico, I eventually find out, as I pay up for the tarts and she rings up the order. Laying the pastries in a little pink cardboard box, she ties the whole thing up with a bow and hands them over, beaming with pride.
“Thanks,” I say. “Any idea what time Dahlia should be getting here?”
“She’s usually in before noon.” Mrs. Damico gives me a patient, not unkind look. “She didn’t come in today, though. Maybe she’s getting over the obvious heartbreak you must have caused, with your devilish good looks. You terrible creature.”
Hey, I bought your tarts, lady. But that doesn’t sting nearly as much, or as deep, as the idea that Dahlia’s already picking herself up and feeling better. Maybe she’s realized we’re not compatible, and it was a good thing we broke up. Maybe she’s found someone new already, someone with dark hair and an interest in real estate, someone who can move her out to Long Island with her extended family all around her. Then she can tell her adorable little dark-haired children about the one time she schtupped a terrible billionaire, and how lucky she is that she met Daddy instead.
It’s times like these that I wonder two things: when did I start using the word schtupped in earnest, and how can I keep that nightmare I just envisioned from becoming reality?
As I leave the bakery, I think of standing outside Dahlia’s apartment, waiting for her to come home. Not in a creepy way—at least, not in a way as creepy as that sounds—but more like a Say Anything way. I can stand outside her window, a box of tarts held over my head in place of a boombox. I will name the tarts Peter Gabriel, and she’ll let me in. Then we will engage in passionate lovemaking on top of a crushed pink box, the squelch of raspberry jam beneath us.
At least, I think these are raspberry.
As I stand on the street corner, the humid summer day alive around me, I realize I’m probably not going to see her. Not this time. Jesus, how could any woman have gotten past my charming-but-asshole defenses so easily? How could I feel this desperate to see anyone again?
There’s an answer to that question, one that scares the shit out of me.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I plop the box onto one of the outdoor tables and take the call.
“Jack?” It’s a female voice I don’t recognize. Damn, I usually check caller I.D. “This is Jack Carraway, right?”
“If this is a great opportunity for solar paneling, I’ve already installed it in my west coast company,” I tell her, ready to hang up. “East coast, there’s not enough sun to—”
“No no, I don’t work,” the woman says, like the idea is a disgusting proletarian slug. “I have a trust fund.”
Christ, if this is that Upper West Side, upper class woman I had a particularly fun summer with two years ago, I’m not getting out of this conversation easily. It’s not money she’ll be after; maybe she needs a date for an upcoming gala. I clear my throat.
“Let’s start with names, and dates. When’d I last go out with you?”
The ‘yuck’ noise she makes over the phone shouldn’t endear me to her, but it kind of does. Maybe because I’ve only got eyes for one full-lipped, smart-mouthed, half-Italian woman right now, and this is not her. The mystery woman just made things a lot simpler for me.
“We’ve never dated. I have the most dreamy boyfriend in the world, anyway,” she says airily. “It’s Edith. Montgomery? We met at the Anderson Center benefit at the Carlyle hotel?”
My whole body tenses; hell if I’ll ever forget that night. Instantly, I’m transported back to Dahlia sipping that martini, Dahlia underneath me in the hotel bed, Dahlia moaning and keening while I—
“Did you just groan?” Edith sounds appalled.
“I remember the event,” I say at last.
She tsks. “Well, I’m trying to host a party for a friend who’s so depressed right now. It’s last minute—tonight—and it’s at the Central Park Zoo.”
