Читать книгу Iris Has Free Time - Iris Smyles - Страница 12

Though Lex was thirty-six and I was twenty, in just a few years I would be too old for him. He’d had many “good friends” like me already, girls who eventually grew up and left him behind. Lex, always and forever, the boy behind the DJ booth.

Some people said he was living in the past, that he didn’t revive the’80s, but had never let it go. And sometimes, behind his back, I called him “the denim gargoyle.” He had lines on his face and thick skin from too much sun, too much partying and, finally, too much time. One of his tattoos, a thorn of roses circling his forearm, was fading to blue. In the mornings, before we’d head out for breakfast, I’d trace my fingers over it. I love you, Lex, I’d think, which is perhaps why I invented the cruel nickname.

“If I met you back then,” I said, looking up from a photo, “if we were the same age, I don’t think you’d like me.” It was a Saturday night, and we were at his apartment, looking through a box of old pictures taken in the early ’80s when he first moved to New York. In each, he looked so young and handsome, he and his friends so effortlessly cool. I dropped the stack onto the bed. “I think you’d be mean,” I said, going into the kitchen.

Lex and his friends dated models, fresh-faced movie stars, and the daughters of the rich and famous. Seeing him among them, I felt rough and embarrassed, as if my body were sewn from a cheaper material. I returned with a beer.

Lex was laughing and handed me another photo. One of his friends, the preppy one, had gotten the Lacoste alligator tattooed onto his chest. He pointed him out.

“That’s funny because I’ve been thinking about getting a one-legged alligator tattooed on mine,” I said frowning, “the insignia for the Lacoste knockoff on sale at JCPenney.”

“What about the Polo symbol without the mallet?” he ribbed back. “We could get matching ones. You get the mallet, and I’ll get the rest of him.”

“I don’t want the mallet,” I said, flopping down on the bed. I stared at the ceiling, at Lex’s face as it came over mine, as he kissed me.

I would never be cool. And I wouldn’t have cared finally, if I knew that Lex didn’t. Still, I couldn’t blame him for being shallow; his life depended on it. Cool people, cool places, cool things. As a DJ and party promoter, being cool was how he made a living. And with no distinction between his personal and professional life, Lex, quite simply, couldn’t afford to date me.

That said, I don’t think he really wanted to. Though he’d pursued me in the beginning, I didn’t know how to hold the interest of a veteran playboy of his caliber. He’d had hundreds of “relationships,” while I’d had two. Playing aloof at first, I managed for a while to excite his curiosity—I’d stand near him at the bar and then talk to someone else. But then, once I got him close, I let down my guard, began looking at him too often and too long, and the whole dynamic between us quickly shifted. He knew he had me, which was not nearly as exciting as wanting me.