Читать книгу You Have To Kiss a Lot of Frogs - Laurie Graff, Laurie Graff - Страница 16

An Hour Later

Ten Blocks North, NYC 1994

I walked my parents to the garage to get the car and watched them take off down Second Avenue, the fumes from the engine trailing behind. I walked south to get the crosstown bus back to my apartment, but felt a tug that pulled me in the opposite direction.

My oversized orange fake fur wrapped around me like a warm blanket and I pulled my black earmuffs down around my neck so I could hear the street sounds. I walked past liquor stores selling wines to woo with. Past a Hallmark gift shop where the window displayed the little redheaded girl sending Charlie Brown a valentine. The next thing I knew I was standing in front of The Comic Corner. I looked up at The Comic Corner logo. To go or to stay?

I was about to go. I was about to stay. For a moment I felt like I lost my balance. I was in the circus, walking a tightrope. I was struggling to keep on a straight course, but I could not. I looked around for help. I saw a man below me. I waved. I kept waving and waving, but he never looked up. It was clear that I was going to fall. But I didn’t. I was at the end of the rope. It was over and it became instantly clear I had to get out of there. I had to escape before I found out what more there was to lose.

I turned away and the door slammed against my back.

“Ouch!”

I spun around and came face-to-face with Jack.

I stood, frozen, taking him in. Jack’s blond hair was longer in the back, and he had started growing a beard. The beard was darker than the hair on his head. It looked like he had dyed either one or the other.

“Oh my God. Hi. Hello. Jack. I never expected to run into you.”

Jack stood and looked at me. Actually, he stared.

“It was an accident,” I said. “Kind of.”

He smiled as if he understood that it was. A collision of sorts. Of which sort, he was uncertain.

Being in Jack’s presence for the first time in almost six weeks was like finding that glove you gave up on. You had lost one so you couldn’t wear the other. You could try, but one hand was always left out in the cold. Even though there were new gloves to be bought in stores all over the city, some of them even on sale, none would ever be that pair. None of them would be broken in. Comfortable. But you wouldn’t throw out the mate. You just kept it with your hats and scarves as a reminder. A hope. And then one day, when you were moving the couch to get the pen that had dropped behind it, there it was. Your glove. Your favorite one. It had been waiting for you to reclaim it, you just didn’t know where to look. And later that day, when you went to the deli, you slipped the pair on in the elevator, and a warmth and familiarity consoled your body. You were only going out for a container of milk, but however far you went, you felt fine.

I smiled in spite of myself. Then I laughed.

“What’s so funny?” asked Jack.

“You!”

“Me? I thought we broke up because you didn’t laugh anymore.”

“Did I say that?”

Jack nodded yes.

“When did I say that? You’re lying,” I chided.

I waited for him to laugh, like in the old days, but he didn’t. I waited for him to do something, anything, so I could feel normal.

“How was your set?”

“Great. They loved me.”

“They always do, Jack.”

“You always used to laugh at my stuff and then you stopped.”

“No.”

“Yeah. That last time you were here.”

“Well, we were breaking up. I was upset. I think you’re the best.”

“You do? You really do?”

His eyes softened and his lips turned up into a smile. “So, little Miss Orange Coat, you think I’m the best?” He extended his arm and spun me into him like I was Ginger Rogers. He dipped me over the cracks in the sidewalk, then dramatically pulled me up. He parodied the song “You Don’t Send Me Flowers Anymore.” Looking deliberately into my eyes, he sang from his heart.

You don’t think I’m funny anymore—

I threw my arms around his neck. He picked me up.

“Oooo, Ouch, Oooo!” Jack mimicked Curly from the Three Stooges. “It’s a giant Twinkie,” he said, poking at my coat.

“What goes good with Twinkies?” I whispered in his ear.

Jack’s eyes looked at me. Then he looked through me, as if to answer a question without having to actually ask it. Again his lips broke into a smile. I laughed.

“I haven’t felt this good since we broke up,” I said, laughing.

“Which time?” he asked.

“This time. The last time. How many times did we break up?”

“Altogether? Over the whole year?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.” I nuzzled my head into him so that my hair warmed his neck.

“We broke up three times,” Jack said.

“Right. But that would be counting the time in the Chinese restaurant and I thought we said we weren’t going to count that time.”

“Didn’t we break up twice in a Chinese restaurant?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

“I thought so. Once in ChowFun in Chinatown, and once somewhere around here.”

“Szechuan East.”

“Szechuan East. So which one doesn’t count? Szechuan East?”

“No. ChowFun,” I said. “Szechuan East counts.”

“Remember we got those great fortunes.” He put me down as he recalled them. “Mine said, ‘You will soon go from rags to riches,’ and yours said, ‘Something you don’t think is possible will soon surprise you!’”

“Right! So we figured why break up? This was an omen for everything to change.”

“What were we fighting about again, hon?” he asked.

“Oh, your career, my career, competition, money, marriage, religion, children. The usual.”

“I knew it wasn’t anything important.” Jack moved into me and put his arms around my waist. He rested his chin on top of my head. His lower lip was slightly chapped and his red scarf hung loosely around his neck.

“This is new,” I said as I untied and retied it.

“Yep. My mom made it for me. Remember. For Christmas. This was the gift that wasn’t finished that she said she’d send. She made one for you, too. She sent it even though I told her we broke up. You know, just in case we got back together. Mom’s a real optimist.”

“How’s your dad?” I asked while I pictured Jack’s mother sitting in her kitchen, shucking oysters for her famous oyster dressing.

“Good. Still a gentleman farmer. He also sent a book for you on Jews for Jesus.”

Oy gevalt, I thought. “So, Jack… You’ve got a lot of stuff for me in your apartment!”

“I guess I do.”

We took a breather. We let it all sink in. Whatever it was, and looked at each other a long while before we kissed. My lips brushed his cheeks inside his right dimple. They moved down his straight nose and back up to his green eyes to gently tug on his long lashes. Jack’s breath felt warm on my neck. His hands were inside my hair.

“Let’s get a cab home,” said Jack, and before I could blink we were sailing through the park going west on 79th Street. We were silent until we got out of the cab on Amsterdam Avenue. I turned to Jack, put my hands in my pockets and started to walk to my apartment. He took my left hand out from inside my orange coat and held it tightly as he walked, quietly, alongside me. Saying anything would spoil the moment. This moment was swell. I didn’t want to spoil it about thinking about what would happen next, because it was “the moment after” I was afraid of. I thought I had come too far in the healing process to blow it all just for one night of delicious, passionate, uninterrupted, erotic love.

Then again…

Actually, I hadn’t healed that much. Quite frankly, I had been pining. Obsessing. I’d practically been carrying Jack around in my pocket. If I spent the night with Jack, I would still wake up with yearning as I watched happy couples stand in movie lines, but at least I would have a memory of a nourishing, tactile and filling night.

And what if I got hit by a truck on the way to my audition tomorrow? Then I would have given up the last Valentine’s Day of my whole entire life with my best male friend and lover, to date, just because it wasn’t permanent. What was permanent in this world? Hardly anything. This was the moment to take and to seize. Spending the night with Jack Whitney was not only the smartest thing I could do, in fact, it was my only option.

I turned to him as we passed an open deli.

“You want me to get those Chips Ahoys you like?”

“I’m cutting back on sweets,” said Jack, placing his free hand on his stomach.

“Oh. That’s nice.”

I took out my keys and opened the double door leading into the lobby.

Gomez, the super, was wheeling out a barrel of garbage with a hand truck. He was wearing a red bandana around his neck and used it to periodically wipe his moustache.

“I fix the kitchen sink for you, Miss Karrie,” he said. “It won’t be leaky anymore.”

“Thanks, Gomez.”

“Nice to see you again, Mr. Jack. You been away making people laugh?”

“I like to think so,” he said, opening the elevator door for me to get in.

He pressed the button numbered three, with the assurance of someone who knew where he was going and where he had been. I stood on the other side of the elevator. Leaning against the banister I took solace in deciding that I really wasn’t in my life, I was just watching the dailies.

Jack unbuttoned the big, black buttons on my coat. I unzipped his leather jacket and slipped my cold hands up the back of his sweater. His skin felt warm against my palms. He pressed close to me and filled the gap between us.

With a sudden burst, I jumped onto Jack, straddling his waist with my legs. He fell backward, me on top of him. Our bodies made a loud thump as we landed. I fell all over him, my body pressing into Jack’s under the canopy of my fake fur. Jack pulled me toward him, massaging my shoulders as my breasts dangled over his face. Our mouths seemed to search each others for reasons why they had been apart these weeks.

“Not that I care, but I don’t remember the elevator being so slow,” Jack murmured as he nibbled on my upper lip.

“It isn’t.”

“It is,” he said while expertly moving his hands under my sweater to unhook my bra. Jack knew all of my bras hooked in the front, except for the strapless, which hooked on the third set of clasps in the back.

I waited to feel his fingers cup my left breast before I spoke. I knew you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out if didn’t take more than forty seconds to ride from the lobby to the third floor.

“We’re stuck,” I said, allowing my body to move into the swirling motion of his hands. By this time his two hands had successfully located my two breasts.

“I guess we are,” Jack said. “I love your body. Let’s put our differences aside tonight. You’re right. We’re stuck with each other.”

“Not us. The elevator. We haven’t moved in a while.”

“What do you mean?”

I removed my tongue from Jack’s ear and whispered, “I think we did something when we fell. We’re not moving. The elevator is stuck.”

He looked up at me, his brown eyes dancing.

“You’re kidding.” He laughed. “This is great. Let’s not call for help. Let’s do it here.”

He went to unzip my jeans.

“Wait,” I said, stopping him. “Gomez will be back to get more garbage any minute. He’ll find us. I’d be mortified.”

“Well.” Jack tried to salvage the idea. “Maybe just a quickie. Under your coat.”

I didn’t want that. “I like when we have time for a whole, you know…”

“We can have another session in the apartment. But how many times can you say you had sex in an elevator?” he asked.

“Six hundred fifty-three. At least.”

“This will be exciting. Come on. Let’s do it fast. Before Gomez gets back.”

We unzipped each other’s pants. He slid his right hand beneath my pink lace panties.

“Wait. We can’t.” I stopped him again. “We don’t have anything.”

Jack’s face lit up. He reached into his coat pocket. “I’ve got,” he said, pulling out a brand-new package of three lubricated latex condoms.

My body came to an involuntary halt as I stared at the man and woman embracing on the misty blue box. The Natural Way To Love That Special Someone, it read.