Читать книгу The Woman Before You: An intense, addictive love story with an unexpected twist... - Carrie Blake - Страница 7

I’d always wanted to be an actress. It was where I could use my ability to see what other people were feeling, what other people were thinking and make a crowd of strangers see it, too. I could even make them feel it. It was like a superpower. There was no limit to what I could do in these pretend worlds. That should have raised a red flag; pretending is never too far from reality. But I saw no flags. I loved the feeling of not being me, of being someone else. I loved the attention. I loved making my whole school cry when I did Emily’s ‘Goodbye, World’ speech in Our Town, at the end of senior year.

By the time I was in high school, my mom had finished school (she’d put herself through college working as a waitress) and had a job she really liked as an administrative secretary in the English department at the college in our town. I could have even gone there for free. But I needed to leave. I loved the small Iowa town where, it seemed, I knew everyone and everyone knew me. But that was another reason why it was time for me to get away.

When I moved to New York, I had about six hundred dollars of my own money—money I’d made when I’d worked every summer, babysitting and minding the neighborhood kids. And Mom had given me a fraction of the money she would have spent sending me to college—money that I knew she didn’t really have—in one lump sum. I dreamed of late-night rehearsals, smoke breaks on fire escapes, stacks of scripts piled high on dusty Turkish rugs in my bohemian penthouse. There’d be bottomless brunches and dinners till dawn with the crew. My name in lights. My glorious stage and film career.

I went to a few auditions. It took me a couple of weeks to realize this wasn’t high school anymore. I stopped going to auditions. I took a drama class at the New York School of Theater, which is where I met my two closest friends in New York, in fact my only friends in New York, Marcy and Luke.

I tried out at a few more auditions. I quit again. Everyone was better than me. I could hear them through the walls as I sat in the corridor, waiting for my name to be called. And when I got through the door, I could see the casting directors’ eyes glaze over. I was pretty, but not pretty enough. I wasn’t this enough, I wasn’t that enough. I looked like a million other girls who’d come to the city with the same hopes and ambitions. And boy, were they ever not interested in hearing me do the tragic monologue from Our Town.

Thanks. We’ll call you. Next!

I was running out of money way faster than I thought I would. If I wanted to stay in New York, I would have to make some changes. It wasn’t easy to give up on my dreams. And when I finally called my mom in Iowa to tell her that maybe I didn’t want to be an actress after all, it was as if I’d somehow made it official. Even though I knew my mom loved me and believed in me and wanted only the best for me, it made me furious when I heard, in her voice, that she’d always known how small—how ridiculous—my chances were.

She said, ‘Maybe you should consider something else, dear. Maybe you should think about becoming a psychologist. You’re so good with people, so sensitive. So intuitive. So caring.’

That was when I almost told her what the school guidance counselor had done in that dim cubicle off the gym. But I didn’t.

‘Thanks, Mom,’ I said. ‘I’ll think about it.’

That night, I cried myself to sleep. Could it really be this easy to give up on so much of myself?

Maybe that was part of what I saw in The Customer.

He gave me a chance to act, to pretend to be someone else—someone hotter and sexier than the nice girl I’d always been. But he knew I wasn’t pretending.

And he believed in me. He believed that I could become someone else, that I could do something else. And he let me show him how.

The week I got to New York, I found an apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a studio which was super cheap because it was tiny and had hardly any light and because everyone knew that it was directly over a giant toxic dump site that had never been properly cleaned up. I didn’t care. I wasn’t planning on staying there long enough for it to hurt me. I bought a plant—a cactus. I named it Alfred, I don’t know why.

The cactus shriveled up and died. Too little light, I guess.

I got jobs that paid almost nothing but that I was grateful to get. I helped people figure out how to use the copy machines at Staples until the flash of the machines started hurting my eyes and I got scared that it was going to damage them. I was a receptionist at a nail salon. The Korean girls were friendly and sweet and really brave in the midst of their terrible lives, but the only English they spoke was about nail shape and length and polish, and it made me feel even lonelier than I already did.

I guess that’s how I wound up selling mattresses at Doctor Sleep.

The place was named after Steve—my boss’s—favorite Stephen King novel. Steve lent me a tattered paperback copy of the novel and told me to read it. I got through the first two hundred pages, but it was too scary. It gave me insomnia—and when I finally fell asleep, I had nightmares. It seemed odd to me that a store designed to help its customers sleep better had taken its name from a book that would keep them awake. I thanked Steve for the book and told him that it was my new favorite novel, too.

Obviously, I’d never once in my life said: I want to be what Steve refers to as a ‘mattress professional.’ Believe me, I never thought: Oh, if only I could know everything in the world there is to know about memory foam and pillow tops and coils. If only I could work for a guy named Steve who looks like an aging groundhog, who has creepy, secretive habits and a pitiful business model, and who always stands way too close when he talks to me. Though in fact he never touched me, except once, to shake my hand when he hired me.

I could tell what Steve was thinking and feeling. I saw how he imagined himself: as the king of a vast mattress empire with branch stores all over the city and suburbs.

I decided that Steve was harmless, which didn’t mean that it wasn’t a little disturbing when, on my first day at work, he explained his theory: insomnia is not a psychological problem but an actual disease that only the right mattress can cure.

The showroom had touches—white tile walls, a weird little machine that blinked and beeped like a heart monitor, and to one side, a gurney on which there were stacks of fancy duvets no one ever bought—designed to look like Steve’s sick fantasy of a hospital or operating room. Steve even wore a white lab coat. At first he said that I should too, and he lent me one of his, which smelled of cologne and sweat and said ‘Steve’ on the pocket. But after a week he told me that it was a pity to hide my pretty legs under a uniform.

So he got me a short white medical jacket that came just down to my hips, the kind of jacket an outcall hooker would wear, a prostitute hired to play Naughty Nurse.

Maybe that’s why The Customer got the wrong idea. Except that it was the right idea. The right idea that went very, very wrong.

My name was stitched on the pocket of the medical jacket.

Isabel.

I felt like sobbing when I saw it. It was like a threat: I’d be working here forever, at least for a very long while. But I could tell that Steve was proud of the jacket. That little corner of my mind that had Steve’s feelings in it lit up like a Christmas tree. He was so happy when he gave it to me. I smiled and said, ‘Thanks, Steve.’

‘I can write it off as a business expense. It improves the look of the establishment,’ Steve said.

Was I supposed to say thank you for that?

My friend Marcy, from drama class, had worked at Doctor Sleep for a few weeks. She said it was easier than waitressing: better hours. But she preferred waitressing. I wondered if she’d left because of Steve, but I couldn’t ask a friend, even a friend I saw more rarely now that I’d quit drama class, if she’d set me up to work with a total creep. I didn’t like how Steve looked at me when I tried on the starchy white jacket.

On my second day at work Steve announced that he was in an open marriage, but that workplace romances were strictly forbidden for professional reasons. I was the only person he could have had an office romance with, so I assumed he was telling me something. That was a relief. As I said, he never once touched me, or did anything perverted. If I wanted to keep my job, it seemed like a stupid idea to ask my boss to stand back when we talked. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he took it the wrong way. So I didn’t say anything. I let him breathe his hot breath on me.

Whenever Steve left for his lunch break, he had a furtive, weaselly air. Through the window, I watched him scurry away. I always had the feeling that he was going to see a dominatrix. But weirdly, the part of my brain that told me what someone else was experiencing stayed empty—no picture, no sound—when Steve left for his lunch break. I’d always had an almost telepathic sense of empathy, but now I realized the foolishness of taking any gift for granted, of thinking you would have it forever.

I told myself that it wasn’t fair to blame Steve for being the person he was.

On the day Steve hired me, a Friday, he gave me a large binder full of papers from the International Mattress Retailers Association. He told me to study it over the weekend. On Monday he would give me a test.

I had a bad feeling about this ‘test,’ but I studied just in case it was real and not some euphemism for getting groped by Steve—like the ‘compassion test’ at my high school. I learned about the science of sleep and the fine points of mattress construction. There was even a section about feng shui—the ancient Chinese system that told you where and how to position your bed in your room for the soundest sleep and maximum good health.

The manual instructed me to look friendly, concerned, professional, like a doctor. I was dealing with one of the most intimate aspects of my customers’ lives. I should keep that in mind when I asked about slumber positions, back problems, sleeping difficulties, what they wanted in a mattress.

On Monday Steve handed me a multiple choice test and told me to fill it out at his desk. I scored one hundred.

‘Good girl, Marcy,’ Steve said.

‘I’m Isabel,’ I said.

‘Right,’ said Steve. ‘Marcy was the last girl.’

‘My friend Marcy,’ I said.

‘Right,’ said Steve. ‘The redhead. You’re the blond.’

I did what the mattress experts suggested. I acted concerned, sympathetic, professional. Like a kindly family doctor. I’d guide the customers to the most expensive mattress I thought they could afford, murmuring about why it was perfect for them. I even talked about feng shui, if I thought a client was the type to go for it. I never once tried to make clients buy something that I knew was beyond their budget.

Almost always, customers wanted to try out the mattress. Then my role would shift from that of the diagnostician to that of the tactful nurse who leaves the room or turns away when a patient undresses.

It was surprising how many people lay like corpses. On their backs, arms crossed. Even young couples, in love, lay there like statues on a tomb. Staring up at the ceiling, they discussed the mattress. Too hard? Too soft? You would never suspect that they might ever have sex on that mattress. Watching them, you couldn’t imagine the thought even crossing their minds.

The day I met The Customer was one of those weirdly warm, swampy September afternoons. An unusually quiet Saturday. Lately, business had been slow, even though Steve said it was usually his best season, when NYU students were moving into their dorms and convincing their rich parents that they needed a better mattress than the one the school provided. I could feel Steve’s gloom, his disappointment. He’d stopped talking about opening a second branch in the East Village.

Steve had gotten me a small cheap desk, at which I sat, looking out the window at people whose lives were more fun and exciting than mine. Everyone had somewhere to go, someone to be with, shopping to do. I wished them well. Someday I could be one of them. One of the lucky ones. I was determined not to feel sorry for myself—not to give up hope, no matter what.

A mom with a stroller came in and asked if we sold mattress covers for cribs. Steve sounded impatient when he told her to try Babies ‘R’ Us. When she passed me I flashed her a smile that I hoped said, what a cute baby, though I hadn’t actually seen her child under its milky plastic awning.

I tried to concentrate on my book, an anthology of poems based on Greek myths. I was obsessed with Orpheus, on how he could have gotten his beloved Eurydice out of hell if he hadn’t turned around to make sure she was there. What was that story about? Trust? Love? Fear? Stupid faithless men who would ruin everything in a heartbeat if something upset or scared them? Or women who think they can overpower fate and end up trapped forever?

I read the poems till I thought I understood them. Which I never did.

But I guess those poems prepared me for how I would feel about The Customer. For the sheer terror that I would turn around—and that he wouldn’t be there.

I pulled out my phone and scrolled through to a folder of apps I’d labeled ‘auditions.’ It hadn’t been easy to abandon acting. But the truth is I’d found a small workaround, for the time being at least. One drunken night, Marcy, Luke, and I all downloaded Tinder on our phones. It started out as a joke. We would each go on three dates and report back. ‘Come on, nice girl,’ Luke said. ‘Join the modern world. You’re not in Iowa anymore.’ We’d spent the rest of the night swiping left and swiping right, laughing out loud, screaming every time we had a match. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel good when a hot guy matched with me. We switched to beer and took a sip every time we landed on a picture of a guy with a puppy or a guy with a guitar. We were all hungover the next day.

I was surprised by how little effort it took to ‘match’ with somebody. But when I actually started texting with one of these so-called matches, I understood the old ‘plenty of fish in the sea metaphor’ on a whole different level; it was a big sea filled with a lot of creepy fish. The first guy made a joke about how cheesy dick pics were, told me he liked butt play, and then sent me a dick pic. Then there was the guy who sent me a picture of a paddle and asked me what I wanted to do with it. Or the guy who opened the conversation with ‘do u like to be choked?’ Finally, I matched with a guy who had just moved from Connecticut to work in marketing at some greeting card company in Midtown. He missed his mom and had a dog (the adopted, shelter variety—included in his Tinder profile) and lived just a few blocks away from me. Pretty vanilla. But after so many conversations with gross guys about the size of my chest and euphemisms for penises, I could do a first date with Mr Vanilla.

The date was pretty basic. We met at a bar around the corner from his apartment in Williamsburg that had just opened and he’d been meaning to check out. The bar was dog-friendly, so he could have brought his dog, he told me, but he didn’t want us to ‘move too fast.’ I wore a yellow knee-length dress and he wore a button-down shirt and khaki shorts. I could tell he’d gotten his hair cut for the occasion.

We talked about his hometown of West Orange; about what he studied in college, and his favorite TV shows. But when he started to ask me about my life a funny thing happened. I told him I grew up in Ohio, had two brothers, and two parents who were crazy in love. My dad was a historian and my mom was a lawyer. Dad was a total romantic and my mom was a real-life superhero. I had a grandmother I was really close to (actually my great-aunt, but I called her Nana—‘a long story,’ I told him), who passed away last year. The best Christmas present I ever got was my Labrador-mix named Juno, when I was nine. I met my best friend when we were in kindergarten, and I lived with her now.

I watched his eyes light up as I pulled out the props for my character. I could feel how excited he was to know me—this girl with so much potential who knew where she had come from and where she was going. I had written a different script for myself. I became the girl he would want to see again, someone who would meet his dog, his mom, his best friends from home.

After a chaste kiss at the corner, I walked home alone. I deleted our conversation from the app on my phone. I didn’t want a second date. I wanted to preserve that moment. The look on his face when he thought he recognized me, when I became the perfect girl. It was almost like acting except better. I wasn’t just memorizing lines, I was writing them, too. And in real time for an audience of one.

I wanted to feel that way again. To meet someone, figure out who they were and what they wanted, and become the person they needed, then watch them fall in love. Now I was the one not giving callbacks. I’ll admit, it felt good to finally have some power. When Tinder started to feel stale and flooded with perverts, I made profiles on Bumble, Thrinder (even more of a challenge), OkCupid, Coffee Meets Bagel—and each with a slightly different character. On Bumble, I was Riley from Portland, Maine. On Thrinder, I was Lorrie from the Bay Area. On OkCupid I was Amanda from Manhattan. All I had to do was make a new email, and a new Facebook profile (back when Facebook made it easy to do such a thing). I never went on more than a first date—and never took more than a sweet goodnight kiss on the cheek. I was still a good Midwestern girl, after all, and one date wasn’t enough time for anyone to get hurt. I thought of it as more of an ever-evolving character study game. I loved keeping all the scripts in my head at once, remembering which app I met so-and-so on, which backstory to pull out.

That day, I was going on a coffee date with a Mr Matthew from Bumble. I pulled up Bumble and scrolled through his pictures. From what I could see, he was tall with broad shoulders, and dark hair. There were no puppy pictures. There was Matthew on the beach in a tank top and American flag shorts, all square chest and tight, tan quads, Matthew sitting at the center of a group of guys, his thick shoulders wrapped around the two closest to him. But the one I kept swiping back to was a picture of Matthew standing on a pier, the sunset behind him framing his face. His head was thrown up to the sky and his eyes were closed, like he was in the middle of the greatest laugh. He had the best jawline I’d ever seen.

I grabbed my stuff and prepared to leave for my lunch break date. Steve told me to ‘have fun’ as I walked out the door. As I was walking to the coffee shop to meet Matthew, I kept thinking about that laugh, that jawline. I didn’t know why, but something about this date made me want to ride the line—maybe show him a little more of the ‘real’ Isabel. A new character challenge, or so I thought.

When I walked into the coffee shop, I spotted him immediately. Our eyes locked and we both grinned, mirroring each other’s delight as we moved closer to each other. When I got to his table, he stood up and gave me a kiss on the cheek. He smelled expensive—all sandalwood and vetiver—and my knees buckled as I tried to remember what he thought my name was.

‘Excited to meet you, Riley,’ he said, watching me as I sat down.

I laughed and said something about the pleasure being all mine. This was a new role for me—the fumbling girl who couldn’t get the words out of her mouth in the right order. I blushed every time I looked at his smile, and had to look away.

He glanced at his watch and said something about having to be back to the office for a meeting later in the afternoon, then asked me what I did. I opened my mouth to start talking about my uncle’s lobster boat on the coast, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I had this strange feeling that telling Matthew who I really was would make him like me even more.

‘Okay, so here’s the deal,’ I said. ‘My name isn’t Riley, and I’m not from Maine.’

He smiled but didn’t say anything. And so I did. I told him about growing up in Iowa and about moving to New York to be an actress and about failing at being an actress and about my ‘acting game’ with the dating apps and finally my sad life working for creepy Steve at Doctor Sleep, just down the street.

I laughed as I finished my confessional monologue, and leaned back in my chair, waiting for him to react.

He was quiet for a beat but his eyes were bright and working fast to take me in.

‘So that’s it? Any recent ex-boyfriend killing sprees? Any fetishes you want to confess?’

I laughed. ‘No. No. That can wait for our second date.’

‘Well then,’ he said, smiling as he leaned in closer to me. ‘I’m excited to meet you, Isabel.’

It was liberating to let someone in on my secret game. I had gotten the feeling that he would be okay with the story, but I was still surprised to realize that he was not only okay with it, he was thrilled by it. I was working hard to look cool and unfazed, but the way he said my name made it hard to stay composed.

‘Now your turn.’ I said. ‘Is your name really Matthew?’

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘That can wait for our second date.’

We both laughed.

He looked at his watch. I looked at my phone. My lunch hour was up and I had to be back at Doctor Sleep in a few minutes.

Before I had a chance to say anything, Matthew said, ‘Hey, I have a crazy question.’

‘Go for it,’ I said.

‘I’m sure you’re about to tell me you have to go back to work. But I feel like I’ve only just met you, Isabel-formerly-known-as-Riley. And the truth is, I don’t want to stop being with you just yet.’

I was floating. I definitely didn’t want to leave him either. ‘So what do you suggest we do?’

‘Well, I don’t feel it’s fair to deprive the poor mattress shoppers of their favorite Sleep Doctor, so what if I came back to the store with you and pretended to be your customer? I’ll wait for a minute to come in so your boss won’t suspect a thing.’

I smiled and shrugged. ‘Sure. Why not?’ I knew Steve would be going on break when I got back from mine, anyway. It was probably the first time I had ever been excited to race back to the store from lunch.

When I walked back my whole body was buzzing. I was kind of okay with the idea of slipping on my uniform today.

I walked into the store and Steve said, ‘I’m going on break.’ The timing was too perfect. I wondered what Steve did when he left. I didn’t ask and I didn’t complain even though his breaks were getting longer and more frequent.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Take your time.’ The truth was, I usually hated being alone in there in plain view of every passing maniac who might think, Hey! Look! A young woman all by herself with a cash register and a lot of mattresses! But today, I was excited to be alone. Today, I wanted him to take his time.

The doorbell rang its fake sleigh-bell chime. I looked up. Matthew—or should I say, The Customer—stood in the doorway, back lit. Tall, thin, broad-shouldered.

I walked toward him, slipping into character; welcoming and friendly, but not pushy, hungry, or aggressive. That was what the mattress professional instruction manual said to do.

Close up, he was so handsome I had to look away—but not before I noticed his glossy dark hair, dark eyes, eyelashes longer than mine. His features were chiseled. He looked a little like Gary Cooper, a little like Robert Mitchum—like old-school movie stars used to look before actors began to look like the guy next door who’s going to get fat and bald and jowly the minute he turns forty.

In other words: He was hot.

I said, ‘Can I help you?’

He said, ‘I hope so. I’m moving soon, and I don’t see any point in taking my old mattress with me.’

If I had ten dollars for every time I heard someone say those exact words, I could have quit and lived on the money for the six months it might take me to find a better job. But sex and beauty change the conversation. Things you’ve heard a million times sound interesting, fresh and new.

I wanted to know everything. Where did he live? Why was he moving? Who would be sleeping on the new mattress? I loved this adaptation of my game—for two players now instead of one.

‘What sort of mattress are you looking for?’

He smiled and shrugged. He had a beautiful smile, a charming shrug.

‘A comfortable one,’ he said.

I said, ‘Okay, let me ask you.’ This was on script. ‘Do you like your current mattress?’

‘My mattress is ten years old, what would like mean?’ He smiled again.

I smiled back. So there we were.

I asked him the standard questions. Side sleeper? Back sleeper? Skeletal problems? Sleep issues? He slept like a baby. He closed his eyes and fell out, slept straight through the night. I wanted to lie next to him, with my head nestled on his chest.

I had never felt quite like that before. Certainly not about any other mattress store customer. It threw me off script.

‘Lucky you,’ I said.

He didn’t respond. He was making me do all the work.

‘I think I know what you might like. We have one on the floor that I can show you. Please come this way.’

‘Thank you,’ he said.

I walked down the aisles lined with mattresses, looking back from time to time, as if to make sure that he was still behind me. I thought of Orpheus—don’t look back!—mostly to avoid thinking about how self-conscious I was, how aware that a man was following me, looking at me, at my back, my ass. Sometimes I wondered how a customer was responding to Steve’s weird medical decor, but now I wished The Customer would actually look at the gurney, at the bizarre medical stuff—at anything but me.

I stopped at the foot of the most expensive and luxurious mattress we had, twelve thousand dollars’ worth of organic German cotton, French wool layers, inner hand tufting. The celebrity movie star mattress, the Executive Deluxe Comfort Natural Pillowtop Set. As far as I knew, Steve had never sold a single one of them, but he insisted on having it on display. He said it improved the look of the ‘establishment,’ like my shorty jacket, I guess.

I could read The Customer’s mind well enough to know that this was the mattress he would want. But I also obviously knew he wasn’t going to buy it. I had no idea what he was thinking right that second. It was as if those circuits—my mind-reading window—were jammed by how sexy and handsome he was.

He asked, ‘Is this the best one you have?’

‘I think so,’ I said. ‘I mean yes. Would you like to try it?’

‘No. You. I want you to try it. I’d appreciate that very much. If you wouldn’t mind lying down for a moment.’

It wasn’t that this never happened—that people asked me to lie on the mattress. But mostly it happened with very old people, or people with some physical damage, who came in with their caretakers. They couldn’t, or didn’t want to, risk being a spectacle, struggling to lie down. Or they couldn’t lie down without help. In that case, they might want to see me lie on the mattress, to see if I looked comfy.

‘Comfortable?’ they’d ask.

‘Totally,’ I always replied, though nothing could have been less comfortable than I felt at those moments.

In the ten months I’d worked at Doctor Sleep, not one—not one!—young, handsome, hot guy had ever asked me to try out a mattress for him.

Actually, I did mind. I felt sort of queasy and flushed. I wanted to say that this wasn’t my job.

I could tell that he wouldn’t have insisted. He was too polite. But I was a nice Midwestern girl. I wouldn’t want to be rude to a customer…

And besides, I wanted to do it.

‘Lie down,’ he said. ‘Please. Let me see.’

That please did the trick. ‘All right.’ I couldn’t look at him.

I climbed onto the mattress. My white jacket rode up. I had to lift my ass to tuck the hem of my dress around me. All this time I was conscious of how intently he was watching me. I saw myself through his eyes. The mind-reading corner of my brain was glowing red.

When I saw myself through his eyes, I realized that I was already shaking.

I lay the way all the customers did, on my back, with my arms crossed, like a mummy.

I was so nervous that I started babbling. ‘Do you know anything about feng shui? It’s an ancient Asian … I don’t know … science, I guess you could say. What matters is not only which mattress you buy but also how and where you set it up in your room. It’s important for how you sleep and how healthy you’ll be. There are principles, guidelines…’

I stopped. I sounded like an idiot. He didn’t seem to be listening, and I didn’t blame him. Why was I blabbing on about all this to the last guy in the world who would be interested? I lay back and stared at the ceiling.

‘No one sleeps like that,’ he said. ‘Like you’re lying now. On your back with your arms crossed. Do you?’

‘No,’ I told the ceiling.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Show me how you really sleep.’ His voice was low, gentle but firm and insistent.

I rolled over on my side. I reached back and yanked down my skirt. He walked around to the other side of the bed so he was looking straight down at me.

Was I ashamed? I was ashamed to think that I would never have done this if The Customer hadn’t been drop-dead handsome. I thought: What a shallow person you are, Isabel.

‘How does it feel?’ The Customer asked.

‘Comfortable,’ I said, automatically.

‘I think not,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you look comfortable at all.’

‘Okay, not really.’

‘You don’t have to lie to me,’ he said. How did he know? I was the mind-reader here.

‘It feels weird,’ I said. ‘But good weird.’

‘That’s a step in the right direction.’

He just stood there, looking down at me. I heard my breath get slightly ragged. I willed it to stop, but it wouldn’t. My breath came faster.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Good. Now roll over on your back.’

I rolled onto my back.

‘Lift your jacket,’ he said.

I tried. It was awkward and clumsy.

‘Beautiful,’ he said. ‘You’re very beautiful, do you know that?’

‘Thanks.’ How stupid I sounded.

‘Now spread your legs a little,’ he said. ‘Just a little.’ His voice was so calm, so even, considering what he was asking.

I moved my legs apart, just a few inches.

‘Okay. Now I want you to do you one more thing for me. I want you take your underwear off,’ he said.

I didn’t think: What? I didn’t think: Who is this sicko and what sick game is he playing?

Here’s what I thought: What underwear am I wearing?

I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t stop myself from reaching up my skirt. I felt an edge of lace. Thank heaven.

‘No, wait. Stop. Keep your hand there, where it is,’ he said. ‘Put your finger inside that lace edge, just underneath…’

‘I can’t,’ I said.

‘Why not?’ he said flatly. ‘I know you can. Please don’t tell me you can’t.’ We were almost whispering now. He leaned closer down over me, to hear.

‘Steve could be back any minute,’ I said. ‘My boss.’

I didn’t say: I don’t want to. I didn’t say: Are you crazy? How can you ask me to do this? I didn’t say: Go fuck yourself, pervert.

I said: ‘Steve could be back any minute.’

‘Just a little,’ he said, even more softly ‘Just raise your knees and spread them a little. And touch yourself.’

I closed my eyes. It was the only way I could do it. I couldn’t look at him. I could feel my face burning. I wanted to hear his voice with my eyes closed.

‘Please.’ His voice had a funny sound, not pleading exactly, but almost.

I pulled my knees halfway to my chest and let them slowly drift apart. My body felt hot and weirdly sleepy, as if I were dreaming, as if I’d lost my power to resist.

I didn’t care if Steve came back. I didn’t care what happened. It was the not caring that let me say, ‘Want to join me?’

I had never said anything like that in my life.

Even though most of my dating in New York had been of the online-dating game variety (with no sex, only chaste first-date goodnight kisses), I’d still managed to have my share of brief sexual affairs, and thought of myself as someone with a little experience—certainly I’d had experience taking my clothes off in front of a stranger, which, if you ask me, is a big part of what hangs people up about sex. I could count the number of guys I’d slept with: seven. But none of them had made me feel what I was feeling now in the middle of a public place, a mattress store, alone on a bed with all my clothes on.

Even then, right away I knew that I would do whatever The Customer told me. The pure electric pleasure flooding every nerve—I wanted to feel it forever. Exhibitionism, voyeurism, consensual, harassment. There were no words for what I was doing, for what was happening to me. It was just a feeling.

‘Sit up,’ he said, sharply, suddenly.

I sat up just in time to see Steve outside, slithering into the frame of the window. I was surprised to notice that I was on the edge of tears. What was that about?

I jumped up, slightly dizzy. The blood was taking its time, flowing back from between my legs to my brain. I stood beside the bed. The Customer stood beside me looking down at the mattress. We both looked at it. There we were, for anyone—including Steve—to see: a mattress professional and her customer engaged in a simple business transaction that might or might not occur.

I put my palm out toward Steve. Stay away. But Steve didn’t. He couldn’t. This customer, this mattress. It was like showing honey to a bear. This was the big fish Steve had dreamed of reeling in.

‘Have you made up your mind?’ I asked. I wanted to keep my job, so I included Steve in our conversation. ‘Do you think you might be interested in making a purchase today?’

‘No,’ said The Customer. ‘Not yet. For the moment I’m just looking. I need to think it over. Can I have your card?’

Steve was gloating, triumphant. He’d insisted on printing up business cards for me and making me carry them in the pocket of my little white jacket. I didn’t want strangers having my name and the phone number of the store. I’d fought against it, but he’d won.

Now I was glad I’d lost. I took a card from my pocket. It flipped out from between my fingers. Steve and The Customer watched me scramble to pick it up from the floor. I felt my short dress ride up, and I yanked it down. With Steve there, nothing was sexy, just pitiful and clumsy.

‘Thank you,’ The Customer told me and Steve, his gaze focused midway between us. ‘I’ll call when I’ve thought this through.’

‘Perhaps you’d be interested in something that was less of a … financial commitment,’ said Steve.

‘No,’ said The Customer. ‘I wouldn’t.’

And with that, Matthew left the store.

***

The weather turned drizzly, a chilly, watery taste of the winter ahead. I sat at my desk at Doctor Sleep and read a novel about zombies. Sometimes I stared out the window, past the fat cold drips blurring the world outside.

I wished I had never met Matthew.

Until that day he walked in, I’d made my peace with life. No boyfriend, no real job, no career track, a crappy walk-up apartment in Greenpoint next door to my landlord, who screamed at his wife all night. But still I had no major complaints. Hope for the best, my mom always said. Look on the bright side. Something will come along.

Now something had come along, and I’d let it slip through my fingers. I should have done any sex-maniac thing he wanted. I should have made him promise to call me. I should have humbled myself—right in front of Steve—and begged Matthew to stay.

The days dragged on. I could hardly fake the interested smile for the few customers who came in. Once I practically nodded off in the middle of a sale.

Steve hissed, ‘Isabel! Look sharp!’

Look sharp? How sharp did Steve think he looked?

I worked Saturday and got Sunday off. I slept till eleven, then sat in a café and read, like I did at work. Every so often I thought: I am the loneliest person in New York.

I was about to call my mom in Iowa when I got a text from her that said, ‘Faculty potluck. Yuk. Talk later.’ Even my mom had something better to do than talk to me.

At five I met my friend Luke, and we got mojitos at Cielito Lindo, the Mexican restaurant in the East Village where Marcy worked. If we got there early and left early, Marcy let us drink for half price. She’d sit with us for a few minutes, taking sips of our drinks when no one was watching. But around six-thirty she got busy, and after a while she gave us a look that said, ‘You guys better leave.’

Luke was still going to auditions. He’d gotten so thin and dyed his hair such a flashy platinum-blond color that it limited the parts he could get. But I couldn’t tell him that. It wasn’t my place.

We sat in Cielito Lindo, with the late afternoon leaking into the windows, a salsa beat thrumming, everything revving up for maximum deliciousness and fun. But just when things began to get good, Luke and I would have to make room for people who could pay actual money.

On his second mojito, Luke said, ‘Audrey got me an audition for the older brother in a cereal commercial. I didn’t get a callback. I guess they figured out that I’m twice Cereal Boy’s age.’

Three times Cereal Boy’s age, I thought, but didn’t say.

‘How old do I look?’ Luke asked.

‘Hard to tell,’ I white-lied. He was twenty-six, a year older than me. He looked fifteen. He looked thirty. He looked awful.

How old did Matthew think I was? I liked having a secret. Luke, can I tell you something? Promise not to tell. I played weird sex games with a stranger in the store when Steve was out to lunch.

‘Hey, are you in love or something’ Luke said. ‘You have this … glow. Promise me you’re not pregnant.’

‘I promise,’ I said. ‘I’m the same.’ I loved that Luke noticed something different about me. It made me feel almost hopeful. Maybe it was the mojitos kicking in, but suddenly I realised Matthew knew where I worked. He could stop by the store, maybe he would…

‘Are you hungry?’ Luke asked. ‘I know a pretty good Thai spot near here.’ Pretty good Thai spot was his not-so-secret code for even cheaper than Cielito Lindo.

‘That’s okay.’ My stomach heaved at the thought of chopsticking up the gummy, stuck-together, greasy Pad Thai that Luke would want to split. I wanted to go home and think about The Customer and what we’d done—and jerk off and fall asleep.

I said, ‘Next time, okay? I don’t know why I’m so tired. I think I’ll call out for Chinese and watch TV and pass out.’

Walking to the subway, I felt the mojitos wear off within minutes, and I got sad again. Why was I so stupid? Why couldn’t I just text Matthew? But I would never text Matthew first. Back in my apartment, I called my mom, who had gotten home from the faculty picnic.

‘Honey,’ she said. ‘Is something wrong? I can hear it in your voice.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘Really, I’m fine. I’ve been out with my friends. I had a couple of mojitos, maybe that’s what you’re hearing.’

‘As long as you’re having fun,’ Mom said.

‘Oh, I am.’

What a liar I was becoming. And the lies were only just starting…

On Tuesday, the store phone rang. Steve answered. There were no customers. He put the phone on speaker.

I heard Matthew’s voice from across the store. I would have known it anywhere. I closed my eyes for a moment. Then I went closer to the phone.

I heard him say, ‘I’m calling to order the mattress I looked at in your shop a few days ago. That nice young woman helped me … Isabel, is that right?’

He was taking this whole role-playing thing to a new level.

Steve gave me a thumbs up sign. He switched the phone off speaker, put on earphones and began typing into the computer. Numbers came up on screens that dissolved into other screens.

Steve said, ‘Sure thing. You’ll have it tomorrow. Thanks for doing business with Doctor Sleep. Yes, certainly, I’ll tell her. Goodbye.’

‘Tell her what?’ I said.

‘Nothing,’ said Steve. ‘I can’t remember.’

I could have tortured him to find out. Steve walked over to me, so close he was practically standing on my toes. I shrank away.

‘Good work, Isabel,’ he said. ‘That was your friend from last week. He went for the Super Deluxe. He said that the floor model would do, if that was all we had. I think the guy has the hots for you. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense. Guy like that should have an assistant ordering for him, he doesn’t do shit like that himself. You know what I think? I think the guy was hoping you’d answer the phone. I’ll bet you would have liked to talk to him, too.’

I wanted to smack him. But he was right. Why wouldn’t Matthew text me? Maybe he lost my number and this was the only way he could reach me? Maybe that was my last chance. I would never get another.

Steve said, ‘Am I right? Huh? Am I right about you and that guy? Something … funny? As in, funny business? I definitely got that vibe when I walked into the store that day he was here.’

That Steve noticed made me blush, and it made me strangely happy. It was all I could do not to ask what made him think that something funny was going on. I liked having evidence that whatever happened between me and Matthew wasn’t entirely in my imagination.

I said, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, Steve. Maybe the guy just wanted to buy a mattress. Maybe he’s got more money than he knows what to do with.’

Who was I angry at? Steve? Matthew? What had Matthew done except play a fun little game and leave me more unhappy than I was before I met him? It’s not like I hadn’t done the same thing to countless guys before him.

‘Whatever,’ said Steve. ‘And FYI … No one has more money than he knows what to do with. People with that much money know what do with it.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ I said.

‘I don’t suppose you would,’ Steve said.

The next day the guys from the trucking company took away the mattress. They carried it away … bye bye.

It left a giant gap on the sales floor. Steve let the spot stay empty for a while, to remind himself of the amazing deal that he (already taking credit) had made. I couldn’t stand to look at the bare space, the only evidence of my hot, five-minute scene with The Handsome Customer. Now I would grow old and sell mattresses until I retired and died.

I looked up Matthew’s order on the store computer. There was no name, just an address in Brooklyn Heights, a charge to an Amex card listed to the Prairie Foundation and a note (in Steve’s writing) that said, Contact assistant.

The next day the phone rang. I knew it was for me before Steve said, ‘Isabel?’ He put his hand over the receiver. ‘It’s your rich boyfriend.’

Somehow, I’d known who it was. My friends never called on the store phone. None of them had that number. My mom would have called on my cell.

‘Isabel, it’s me.’

I didn’t have to ask who me was. I couldn’t speak. Or breathe.

He said, ‘The mattress is set up. I’m wondering if you would be willing to come over to check out the feng shui. I would hate for it to face in the wrong direction.’ He laughed, meaning it was a joke and not a joke. The feng shui line was a joke. But my going to his place wasn’t. After all, we had a history. We were more than friends.

‘I could do that,’ I said.

‘Isabel?’ he said. I loved the way he said my name. ‘Excuse me. I think we may have a bad connection.’

‘I could do that,’ I repeated. Maybe I’d been whispering, or maybe he wanted to make me say it again. Our connection was fine.

I felt something warm and moist and unpleasant on the back of my neck. Only then did I realize how close Steve was standing.

‘When?’ I said. ‘Where?’

‘Is tomorrow evening too soon?’

I should have said, yes, way too soon. I should have invented dates I couldn’t break. A boyfriend I was seeing. But what if this was my last chance? I wasn’t busy tomorrow evening. If I were, I would have cancelled, no matter what it was.

‘Tomorrow evening would be fine,’ I said.

‘What time do you get off work?’

‘Six?’ Why did it come out as a question? Why was I asking him? I could probably leave any time I wanted if I told Steve where I was going. But the following day, Steve might try to make me tell him everything we did.

‘Perfect. Come straight here,’ Matthew said. ‘We can watch the sunset.’

‘Great,’ I said. ‘Can you text me the address? On my cell.’

‘No need for that,’ he said. ‘It’s in the system at your store.’

Suddenly, it was as if I heard Mom’s voice. Put the phone down. Don’t talk to this man again. Don’t go there tomorrow night.

Sorry, Mom, I thought. I have no choice. After my dad’s death, my mom never remarried or even (as far as I knew) dated. So there was a lot my mother didn’t know about the modern world. Anyway, I wouldn’t have listened if she had been standing beside me. The desire made everyone else disappear.

When I hung up the phone, Steve said, ‘You’re not supposed to get personal calls on the store phone.’

I said, ‘This was business, Steve.’

I’d never felt that I had the power to make Steve step back. Yet now something—some new note—in my voice made him take a big step backward. Something in me had changed just from talking to Matthew.

I should have taken that as a warning, a hint of changes to come.

I couldn’t sleep all night. I obsessed over what to wear. Sexy but not so sexy that it would look weird in the store—and send the wrong message, first to Steve and then to Matthew. But what message was too sexy after what I did on the mattress?

I bought new underwear, black lace with a slim red ribbon threaded through the bra and panties. I wore a short denim skirt and a black T-shirt. I carried a jacket, just in case. The weather seemed changeable, low clouds, wind. Stormy weather. I went light on the make-up. At the end of the day, I could put on more in the broom closet that Steve called ‘the staff lounge.’

‘You look nice,’ said Steve, when I got to work. ‘Nicer than usual. Going somewhere?’

I didn’t answer. He knew.

Maybe I should have dressed up every day. Business was booming, for a change. There had been a bedbug scare in the NYU dorms, and the place was jammed with kids using their parents’ credit cards to (they hoped, ha ha) fix the problem. They bought the cheapest mattresses, but so what? In Steve’s words, we were ‘moving product.’ I liked the college kids, mostly. Their needs were simple. Their purchasing decisions were all about price. Not one of them wanted to act like a jerk trying out a mattress while a stranger (me) watched. Fine, they said. I’ll take it.

Steve felt good about the day, and when I asked if I could leave early, he said sure, if I was willing to come in early a couple of mornings next week and open up. That sounded fair to me. I would have agreed to anything.

I redid my makeup. And when Steve was in the toilet, I put on high heels and skittered out of the store.

I spent a big chunk of that week’s paycheck on the cab fare to Matthew’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights. Google Maps said that it was blocks from the station, and my heels were too high to walk that far. Besides, I was eager to get there.

I had four condoms in my purse, just in case. I was a nice Midwestern girl, but not that nice. Hey, this was New York, 2016.

From all the way down the block I knew which building was his: the luxury high-rise designed by a famous architect. There had been a battle between the Landmarks Commission vs. the architect and the developers. The outcome—who was going to win—was never in doubt. The structure was a twenty-four story middle finger raised to the city.

That was where Matthew lived. The house of the neighborhood destroyers. Though (to be honest) I knew that I would live there too if someone offered me an apartment.

The lobby reception desk was raised, like a throne. Seeing it from below added to the height and size and heft of the two enormous doormen, both in olive green uniforms. What if they asked me for Matthew’s last name? I didn’t even know it.

I gave them the apartment number. Could they ring Penthouse Three, please? I was asking them to ring someone whose name I didn’t know.

‘And you are?’

‘Isabel,’ I said. ‘Isabel Archer.’ I hardly recognized my own name. It sounded like two nonsense words. What did it even mean? Part of me had left my body. The nice Isabel, the cautious one, was trying to understand why this reckless new Isabel was here—doing this.

The doorman hung up the house phone. ‘Go on up,’ he said. ‘This elevator goes as far as the tenth floor, where there’s another desk for our premier floors. They’ll tell you what to do from there.’

A double layer of doormen.

The elevator whisked me through a column of air and let me off ten floors up, where a second pair of doormen directed me toward another elevator. I pressed PH3. This elevator was glass on all sides, so I could watch the rooftops of Brooklyn fall away beneath me.

There was only one apartment on the floor. I rang the bell.

A middle-aged housekeeper opened the door and took my jacket.

She said, ‘The Señor is out on the terrace.’ Did I want a cocktail? Absolutely. Bueno. Already poured. A young man, also Hispanic, also friendly, brought me a martini glass on a tray. Balancing the glass—filled to the brim with orange-golden liquid—I followed the maid through a huge living room that looked like a modern art museum, with white couches, white marble floors, walls whose perfect whiteness was defiled only by the violent splashy energy of the large abstract paintings. Was that a real de Kooning?

The glass wall to the terrace was open. The Customer stood with his back to us, looking out over the edge. I gulped down half my drink.

‘Thank you, Maria,’ he told the maid, without turning around.

The maid—Maria—asked me, ‘Are you all right, Señora?’ I wondered how many girls she’d watched stop dead in their tracks, barely able to move.

He didn’t turn around or acknowledge me in any way. I went and stood beside him. He was wearing jeans and a crisp white shirt, open at the neck. He looked even more handsome than he had at the store. I grasped the edge of the low brick wall and hung on. The view made me dizzy, or maybe it was being near him. Or just possibly it was the drink. It was all very confusing, but I loved it. I loved the last rays of daylight twinkling in the windows, the giant red ball that was the sun bouncing on the water.

Now I knew what it meant to feel like you owned the city. The Manhattan skyline spread out before us, lay at our feet, begging us, its rulers, to tell it what to do. Though maybe I was confused again. Maybe that was how I felt. Like a queen.

I took another sip of the cocktail. It was intensely delicious. Tequila, I thought. Edge of chili, edge of something fruity but tart.

‘Hibiscus flower,’ The Customer said.

The strong drink went straight to my head, especially since I’d skipped lunch. I’d been too nervous to eat. But now I kept drinking till it was done. I’d never tasted anything so amazing. I felt tipsy, terrified, and happy.

The sun dipped into the river. Matthew moved closer to me, and like a reflex or afterthought, as if he wasn’t paying attention, he rested one hand on my ass.

‘Lovely,’ he said. ‘No?’

‘Yes,’ was all I could say. But what was I agreeing to? The loveliness of the sunset, or the lovely warmth of his hand?

‘Come take a look at the bed.’

He smiled as he stepped back and let me precede him into the apartment. He took my arm and guided me down a long corridor lined with small vitrines, cut into the wall, displaying classical Greek and Egyptian statuettes. I paused in front of a figure of a human with a dog’s head.

‘Anubis,’ he said. ‘The lord of the dead and the underworld.’

I wanted to say I’d been reading poems about the underworld, but I was afraid of sounding pretentious. And I’d dated enough to know that too much anxious chit-chat could kill the sexual buzz. And there was plenty of buzz.

The bedroom was as stylish as the rest of the apartment. There were windows on three sides, so it seemed to be perched, like an eagle’s nest, above the city below. Could you have sex in a room like this without thinking about all the strangers who might be watching? Or maybe that would be part of the fun, the excitement.

Was it really me thinking that? I was shy about my body. I’d always preferred to have sex with the lights out. But now I was ready to do it any way, anywhere…

In the center of the room was the bed: the mattress from our store. Not that I would have recognized its organic cotton and hand-knotted tufts covered by a simple but beautiful midnight-blue silk bedspread and a half dozen matching throw pillows. Was he married? Would a single guy have a bed like that?

Maybe this was how rich men lived, men who never made their own beds. It shamed me to think of my bed at home, a tangle of rumpled sheets and blankets piled with books and, right now, with the entire contents of my closet, clothes I’d tried on for this evening.

Why had I bothered? I could read his mind, sort of. And I had the definite sense that he wasn’t getting ready to throw me down on the mattress. He wasn’t even going to ask me to repeat what I’d done in the store. We stood there in the doorway, looking into the room. He was still holding my arm.

He said, ‘Do I have to have it moved?’

‘What?’ I said.

‘The feng shui,’ he reminded me. ‘Does it work?’

Was he serious? I didn’t know him well enough to ask. I was ready to have sex with him, but I wasn’t comfortable enough to find out if he was joking.

From a strict feng shui point of view, the bed should have been diagonal to the door, which it wasn’t. But I wasn’t going to say that. There was really no place else in the room that the bed could go.

‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘Perfect.’ If he had bad luck, or got sick, or developed insomnia, it would be my fault. Fine. Anyhow, I didn’t even believe in feng shui. It was just a way to sell mattresses.

He said, ‘That’s odd … I had the impression that the bed was supposed to be diagonal to the door and facing the other direction.’

My face burned with shame. ‘Probably,’ I said. ‘That’s probably right…’ Then why had he even asked me?

‘But I think I’m going to leave it where it is,’ he said. ‘Live dangerously, right?’

‘Right!’ I said. ‘That’s right.’

Standing beside me, he reached around and put his hand under my T-shirt, on my bare skin, on my back, just above my waist. My breathing quickened. It didn’t take much. He could feel it.

‘What now?’ I said. It was up to him. I would do whatever he wanted.

He took his hand out from under my shirt.

He said, ‘Thank you, that’s great. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.’

‘But…’ I couldn’t help myself. Something could still happen.

Or did I fail some sort of test when I’d lied about feng shui?

Only later I would learn that I’d passed the test when I lied.

He said, ‘I’m looking forward to getting to know you better, Isabel.’

Was he trying to make me beg? Maybe I would have, if I could have figured out how to beg a man for sex without humiliating myself. I was ready to humiliate myself, but I didn’t believe that it would work.

‘Could I ask you a question?’ I said.

‘Ask me anything,’ he replied. But I could feel him tense. What did he not want me to ask? What was he hiding?

‘Well. I suppose we might call this our second date. And you haven’t confessed to any other names. But what’s your last name?’ I said. ‘I was terrified one of the doormen would ask me for it on the way up tonight.’

He laughed. ‘I assumed you knew.’

‘I don’t,’ I said.

‘Well, I’m Matthew,’ he said. ‘Matthew Frazier.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Frazier,’ I said, and stuck out my hand.

He looked down at my hand but didn’t take it. My arm dropped back to my side.

He guided me back down the hall and through the living room towards the front door. Halfway there, he handed me on to Maria, who gave me my jacket and opened the door.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Goodbye.’

I stood outside the door in the hall for a long time, though I was pretty sure that I was being watched on a security camera. Let them watch. I couldn’t move. Why had The Customer—Matthew—brought me there? What did he want from me? Why had he even called? He couldn’t have meant that he cared about the feng shui. And then when he caught me in a lie … I didn’t know him well enough to know if my tiny white lie had been a deal breaker.

Well, I told myself, I would be better off if the whole thing ended right here. I’m a truthful person. I don’t need a relationship with a man I’d started lying to, even before I had met him.

Over the next few days, even Steve could tell that something was making me miserable. He seemed weirdly pleased about it. Luke and Marcy treated me like a person who had a life-threatening disease but who didn’t want to discuss it.

When Marcy and Luke and I met at Cielito Lindo at our usual time on Sunday, Marcy made sure that my drinks from the bar were double strength and doubly delicious. But that only reminded me of the cocktail I’d drank at Matthew’s apartment. Nothing would ever taste that wonderful again. Nothing else would ever get me high in that same way. I’d been offered magic, and I’d lied and spoiled everything. I should have told him to move the bed. Maybe I’d be in that bed right now. Did he ever think of me when he lay on the mattress?

One night, after not having heard from him for days and not having thought of anything else, I dreamed I gave him a present. It wasn’t clear in the dream, what the present was, but I woke up remembering his smile, how in the dream he’d hugged me, how warm and happy I felt.

I thought: It’s a sign. I’ll send him something. A little thank you present. Thanks for the lovely drink. Thanks for buying the (I wouldn’t need to say ‘most expensive’) mattress. Businesses sent thank you gifts all the time. They showed their appreciation. That’s how you built customer loyalty, which was something Steve talked a lot about, though no one had ever bought anything from us twice. So what would customer loyalty have meant?

But what could I give The Customer? Matthew? What did a man like that need? How could I base my decision on a coffee shop exchange, a sex game in the store, and a chaste drink on the terrace? And a dream I only half remembered.

Every day, on the walk from the subway to Doctor Sleep, I looked in every window. I was shopping for The Customer. For Matthew. But nothing seemed right.

Then one warm afternoon—on my lunch break—I was going to meet Luke for a quick picnic in Tompkins Square Park. I passed this funny little store, part joke shop/part kids shop, the kind of place you hardly see anymore in New York except in the East Village. In the window was one of those Mexican card games, Loteria, like bingo but with pictures, beautiful old paintings of the world, the sun, the musician, the jug, the cactus, the tree, the heart—and words in Spanish on the card and the board.

The image that caught my eye was El Melon. A cantaloupe, sliced open, pinkish orange, juicy and full of seeds. A picture of a cantaloupe. A picture of sex.

I bought the set, and sent the card to Matthew’s penthouse, in an envelope addressed to Matthew Frazier. I hoped that he would open it himself, rather than the assistant he’d listed on his sales receipt—whom I’d never met—or the housekeeper.

Nothing happened. No reply. I imagined him throwing my card in the trash. What a stupid gift I’d chosen. Why would a hot rich guy who sipped cocktails on the terrace want a funky old picture of a cantaloupe?

A week later the package came back to me. The stamp on the slightly battered envelope said that no one by that name lived at that address. Why had he done that? Did he not want to hear from me? Why had he gone so far as to pretend he didn’t live there?

Meanwhile, I couldn’t stop thinking about Matthew. His hands, his body, the way he smiled at me from across the table at the coffee shop, the sound of his voice when I’d lay on the mattress at the store. I got interested in sex—obsessed, you could say— in a way I’d never been before.

Now, when Steve went out to do whatever he did at lunch, I watched porn on my computer. I’d found a little clip in which a guy who looks like Matthew is interviewing a girl for a job and he somehow persuades her (I watched it without sound) to have sex on his desk in many different positions. I’d come every time I thought about Matthew’s voice saying, ‘Lie down. Please. Let me see.’