The Idea of Him

by Holly Peterson

  “Are you really interested in him?”

  I wanted to say, He might just be a lifeboat for me if I ever get up the strength to jump off the Wade juggernaut. But I didn’t. I held firm to my as yet unaccomplished mission of figuring out just why Jackie had bulldozed her way into my life. “This isn’t about me or Tommy. That’s really not why I’m here,” I said, switching to a businesslike tone.

  Jackie answered, “You’ve got one hell of a client roster and an impossible, self-destructive, self-obsessed boss, and you should be focusing on your screenplay in whatever spare time you have right now, not Tommy, the likes of whom come a dime a dozen if you’re in the market for it.”

  She didn’t know Tommy. She had no way of understanding how well he understood me. I had to change topics. “How do you know so much about Murray? Did you have a thing with him?”

  She rolled her head back at that. “Wow. Definitely not. I’m determined to figure his piece in all this. I want him to come clean about things he doesn’t even know.”

  “Why? About what? Murray’s the most transparent person I know,” I told her, now more concerned about my job and my livelihood than ever before.

  I pulled my purse discreetly closer into me, with my one last piece of power inside—the second flash drive I’d copied everything onto—and tried to switch subjects. I of course didn’t trust her enough to imagine handing it over. “Can we talk about you for a minute? I get that you love to hate many of the people in here who are drunk off their own power. Believe me, so do I: I didn’t come from this world either—they act like aliens if you ask me—but why does this all matter to you so much? And why were you at the screening? What did you know ahead of time and how?” The questions came tumbling out almost faster than my mouth could form them.

  “I have explained almost every bit of it to you. In time you will understand why I can’t tell you one thing right now until I figure it out for sure. But I will add this: I knew they had a ton of Luxor stock and hoped it would go up. A few simple media stories about a fake potential takeover caused all the sudden upward movement in that stock. Nice thing if you secretly own a ton of it. I’m sure this isn’t the first time they’ve done it, this merry little group. In fact, I know they’re planning another false media story to make another stock climb even higher, and they’re going to make serious bucks off that one. Luxor was just practice, kids’ play, for what they have in the pipeline.”

  I listened carefully but I still had to argue hard for my family’s sake. “Since the very first night I met Wade he used to talk about taking the bad guys down all the time. It’s in his blood; that’s why he likes journalism, like it’s a vigilante calling or something. He’s got a very irreverent spirit that rebels against authority. I just still have a lot of trouble believing this.”

  She stopped me by placing her hand on my arm. “The rebel in him may be waning. Your husband’s a little desperate and more than a little sold out, for your information.” My husband’s ex-mistress then took a sip of her cappuccino. “Just trying to wake up the wife here.”

  “How do you know all this?” I asked. “Other than searching these men’s laundry rooms, that is.”

  I glanced in Tommy’s direction to make sure he was still downstairs and out of view of this conversation.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  “Nothing, I was just . . .”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Are you boy crazy?”

  “Well, I wanted to make sure he was leaving . . .”

  Her head shook slowly as she tried not to laugh. “We’re talking about much more important stuff here.”

  I smiled a little at her catching me. So did she. “You got me.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re one of these women who can take on the world, but you let the men take over your life? Wade and his childish behavior? Murray? May I add the seductive Tommy to the list?”

  “I don’t let men . . .”

  “You sure look and act like you do,” she answered, with a big, kind, forgiving smile.

  “I don’t think it’s that easy,” I answered, but then I couldn’t help adding, “Not many women I know, myself included, are able to be hard-core on cue like you seem to be. Men are sometimes an unhealthy obsession . . .”

  “Oh, Jesus, just fuck those men.” She took a slow sip of her coffee while keeping her glare on me.

  “Well, ignoring them is easier said than done . . .”

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” she answered, her gorgeous face very close to mine. “I mean, literally, just fuck them. Why all the torture over Tommy? Why are you resisting? Just get it over with.”

  I put my hand to my forehead. “I need Tommy to help me write, but I have no intention of sleeping with him.”

  “That’s so charmingly Edwardian. You give him that spark; I just saw him yank you into the closet like he wanted to attack you. You need to just fuck the guy and find out if there’s any there there for you.”

  That did sound appealing on more than one level. “Well, I’m married, last I checked.”

  “How can you be so prudish when you’re still in your prime?” She licked the froth of her cappuccino.

  “Jackie, if you want to talk, girl to girl, and you want me to trust you, then I’m going to really consider it, though no promises. Let’s hear your story,” I said, drinking a few sips of lukewarm tea between questions. “Do you have a boyfriend that makes it easy for you to act all hard-core about everything on cue? Do you even let any guy into your life? Didn’t any man ever obsess you, cast a spell on you, control you?”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Not really.”

  “That doesn’t sound definitive.”

  “Well, there’s someone I met who is a little different, very different and special in fact, but I haven’t taken the plunge there yet. . . . As for the rest of them”—she smirked and took a sip of her drink—“I like sex and I like it no strings attached.”

  “Well, I certainly had a few men I slept with in high school and college,” I answered, defending my ability to have sex for fun. “Slutting around in my own way.”

  “Listen to yourself.” She cocked her head in disdain. “You weren’t slutting around; you were sampling the merchandise, figuring out what you wanted.”

  “No, I don’t think I cared much about the quality of the merchandise.” Truth was, I didn’t even look at the merchandise, much less check for a sell-by date.

  “Well, why can’t you do that now?” she asked, as if she were suggesting I try on a new pair of shoes.

  “Maybe I want to set a better example for Lucy.” I think I must have looked at her in that condescending way mothers do to those women without kids. It didn’t make even a tiny dent.

  “So you prefer this needy state you’re in now with Tommy where you’re so fearful of your own shadow and your own desires you can’t even figure out what you want?” Clearly it was her turn to condescend. “Besides, your husband is doing it, so why can’t you?”

  “Well, his wrong doesn’t mean I am okay with my doing it,” I answered, raising my pitch. I felt a bit uncomfortable opening up to her, but I did like hearing her take on things—more independent than anything I was capable of. Except for Caitlin and a few sweet moms at school on rare occasions, I didn’t like to let people know how I felt deep inside, which meant I didn’t naturally open up to many girlfriends. Besides, James had an understanding of me that no one else ever would. And that sufficed.

  She waved my concerns away with her hand in the air. “Sex is what you make it. It’s just a release if you want it to be. Ask any man.”

  “You may think it’s freedom, but I’m not so sure . . .”

  “It doesn’t mean anything to me, if I don’t want it to mean anything to me.” Jackie shook her head at my simplification. “And it means the world to me, if I’m in love. I’ll take the freedom to make that choice any day. Are you following what you want or what society wants you to want? Make sure you d
on’t walk around town with the scarlet letter pasted on your chest, Bovary’s arsenic, all that creepy ‘punish the woman’ bullshit.”

  “Those novels are more than a hundred years old.”

  She tied her straw in a heart-shaped knot and tossed it in front of me. “My point exactly. You are following ancient dictates.” She sipped the last drop of her cappuccino and slipped her small laptop into her bag. “Just fuck him, if that’s what you want. We’re not in Saudi Arabia.” She leaned close to my ear. “Whatever you decide, don’t let society put you in a box.”

  I looked into her velvet brown eyes, her pupils enormous in the low light. My opinion of her swayed; I went from thinking this woman was out of her mind and someone I just had to hate (or poison) to thinking she might actually be making some good points. “I don’t think I’m going to do anything, and I certainly wouldn’t be broadcasting it to you if I did, but I’m going to think about what you say. I’ll give you that.”

  ”Well, think about it; and if you indulge, watch those guys in the thirty-and-under crowd. I know Tommy passes the thirtyish bar, he’s what . . .”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “Well, from the looks of him, he’s a wild card.”

  “Watch what exactly?”

  She licked her lips and stood to go. “Oh, you know . . .”

  “I’m not exactly a virgin, nor was I before I met Wade,” I answered.

  “I think you can peg men by the decade. I can, anyway.” Jackie responded like the expert she apparently was. “Guys in their fifties are all desperate to show they’ve still got their mojo. They try to show off uncomfortable positions they themselves don’t even like.”

  I thought about Wade, the near fiftysomething, imagining him acting like a total fool in bed with Jackie, some bucking bronco positions I couldn’t even fathom. Part of me was humiliated to be linked to him. “Go on.”

  “Thirties and forties are pretty much the same; they know how to please a woman and they know what they like. Pretty straightforward. They like the woman to be turned on, and they understand turning her on actually makes it better for both. You know, normal, pleasurable sex as if, strange enough, that’s the goal.”

  “And the under thirties?”

  “That’s the wild card decade right now, I’m finding.”

  “You’re finding or your friends are telling you . . .” I had to ask.

  “Well, a combination of direct, in-the-field research and what I hear, let’s say. But the under thirties are Internet porn obsessed for sure; they watch it like a tutorial. That’s how they learned to do it, not like the old days where guys learned from the hot sitter down the block teaching them the moves that a woman really likes. They jerk off to it, copy it, emulate it, and they don’t know there’s another way. They’ll slap your ass out of the blue, get a little too rough by holding you down; basically they fuck like they’re a porn star the entire time, and they expect you to do the same.”

  “Jesus, that sounds horrible. Is that it or is there more?”

  “Much more, but I’m late and have to go.” She threw her bag over her shoulder and whispered to me, as she got ready to leave. “Truth is, they all want to replicate the money shot and they’re too stupid and immature to understand that the money shot is just for viewers, not real people actually doing it.”

  “And by money shot you mean . . .” I sounded like the fishing town girl I was.

  “They like to get their jollies on you rather than in you. They forget there are no viewers waiting for the finale. And if you don’t get my drift, I mean get out a handkerchief for your face. Put it that way. Or rub it in; it’s supposed to be good for your skin.”

  “Uh, well,” I huffed loudly. “Thanks for the advice, on all fronts.”

  Her sudden smile lit up the bar. “Don’t thank me yet. For all I know, despite all his intensity and passion, maybe Tommy sucks in bed. Wouldn’t that be ironic?”

  “Yeah.” I laughed awkwardly and reluctantly. “That would be hilarious.”

  Jackie gave me a long, sideways glance as she laid a hand on her purse and kissed me softly on the cheek. “And I’m sure you can get it the way you want in anyone’s bed, regardless of their age, but think about what I said about the men in your life having too much power over you. I meant it.”

  22

  Blasting Heat

  The entire next day at my office, I couldn’t help but contemplate Jackie’s man-by-the-decade theory. As for her ideas on the morals of sleeping around, part of me wanted to kill her for doing just that with the man I married (and for looking so good while doing it), but I had to admit to myself I liked hearing a woman talk like a man. At least she didn’t love Wade back and just considered him a quick, fifty-trying-to-prove-something lay. The clock hit one P.M. and my phone rang.

  “Allie.” Murray started in without saying hello. He sounded a little out of breath, even for a guy whose breathing was always loud, rattly, and labored, like he might go into cardiac arrest at any moment. “Do what I say.”

  “I always do what you say, Murray.”

  “Yeah, I know, I know. But this time, don’t fuck it up and improvise with some of your own input. Do exactly as I say,” he instructed.

  “Okay, first of all, you sound like your mother, which is pretty much not who you want to be in life, and second, I don’t mess things up.” I was concerned something serious was going on, but I didn’t want to let on to Murray how much I knew.

  “You don’t. I’m just used to having to say that to every-fucking-one. I’m sorry, just do what I say, you hear me?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “I think we’ve established that.”

  “I need to see your reports, but I want everything in person now. In Southampton. Today.”

  This seemed ominous. Why couldn’t I fax or e-mail them? “Today? You want me out there? We talked about doing it on the videoconference.”

  “Nope, I need something else as well. A man is going to come to you from a bank. He’ll arrive downstairs in approximately three minutes. Let the guard know he can come upstairs. He is going to personally deliver an envelope with some documents to your office door. Not a messenger, but a banker. No one may look at the documents. Not you. Not the guy delivering them. You got it? There’s going to be tape bonding the envelope closed. Make sure it isn’t ripped anywhere.”

  “What am I supposed to do with this envelope?” I asked with great trepidation.

  “Get your ass on the Long Island Expressway and bring the envelope to me. And if you get into a car wreck, and the car’s about to blow up, grab my papers and let your fuckin’ purse burn.”

  A FEW MINUTES later, a guy looking like a humorless Swiss banker in a suit appeared in my doorway after having been cleared by the guard. He was upstairs for all of forty seconds before he left again, not saying a single word.

  I placed the envelope—closed up with red tape that read CONFIDENTIAL—in my bag. I wondered what was in it, but I knew I couldn’t open it and find out. I then gathered all my own papers, rushing out the door and bumping into Caitlin bringing me a fresh Frappuccino for my thighs. My phone rang.

  Wade.

  “What?” I practically yelled.

  “Oh, thank God I caught you.”

  “What?” I yelled again.

  “I’m downstairs with the kids.”

  “Downstairs where?”

  “Your office building.”

  “Okay, well, I’m working a full day as we discussed, and we also discussed that you would take them for the half day, remember? And I’m suddenly on my way out to Murray’s in any case so I can’t take them now.” I winked thank you to Caitlin and grabbed the cold plastic cup.

  “Great.” And then he turned his voice away from the receiver. “They’d love to take a ride out, wouldn’t you, kids?”

  I closed my eyes, trying not to say motherfucker out loud. “Wade, we discussed how much work I have. How often do I save you from kids when you’re overwhelmed? How often do I say I h
ave to work instead of being the main caregiver? Never. Today is different. My turn to be overwhelmed. I can’t take the kids today all the way out to Southampton; that’s nuts.” I mouthed Motherfucker to Caitlin and pointed to my cell phone.

  “I know, I know, but something’s come up, and I need to play a round of golf with Max Rowland this afternoon. We have to discuss a film in the festival that he’s now sponsoring; it’s not going to launch so well, and I can help with some much-needed buzz, so . . .”

  “What do you have to talk to Max about? The prereviews are already out there. You can’t bring them back.”

  “He wants to discuss international distribution so he can double down on his investment here and overseas. His car is waiting to take me to Bayonne Country Club right now.”

  “Motherfucker! Wade, really? Golf? That’s your excuse for screwing up my presentation?”

  “I promise to make it up to you . . .”

  “Make what up to me? Your cheating throughout our marriage or ditching the kids with me on my big report day for my boss?” Caitlin’s eyebrows were raised to the heavens at that one, though she quickly occupied herself with neatening up my files and charts in the bag on the ground.

  Wade didn’t answer for a long time and then finally offered, “Allie. I’m sorry. Jesus, we’re in a bad place right now. I, I . . .”

  “Yes, Wade, you are making up what exactly?”

  “I was referring to today’s unfortunate planning snafu. Making that up to you, I mean.”

  “You can’t make that up either, Wade.” And I hung up.

  “Wowza,” said Caitlin. “So by cheating, you mean the girl at the party or just from way before when Lucy was born?”

  “I’m not answering that.”

  She stared into my eyes, standing on her tiptoes a little to do so. “You have to. I need to know.”