Читать книгу The Night We Met - Rob Byrnes - Страница 9

I saw no reason why I shouldn’t be calm.

After all, he was just a man, and I’d called hundreds of men in my life, perhaps thousands, for the sole purpose of arranging a date or a more informal sexual liaison.

And I was a man now, too. The wig, the dress, the high heels, the stockings, the makeup, and all the other paraphernalia needed to turn me into Belle Bacall were stashed in a Macy’s bag in the back of my closet, where they would spend the rest of eternity, never again to see the light of day. Never ever ever.

But when I dialed the phone number, my entire body shook and my mouth went dry.

“Benedick’s.” An uninterested voice answered the phone.

“Frank?” I squeaked in response.

“Who?”

I took a few quick deep breaths, closed my eyes, and tried to calm down. “Is this Frank?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m trying to reach Frank.”

“Frank who?”

“DiBenedetto.” My tongue twisted over the name.

“I’m not sure if he’s here. Who’s calling?”

I swallowed hard and almost said “Belle Bacall,” but, since my one-time drag experience was in the past, I told him, “Andrew Westlake.”

“Let me check.” I heard the receiver roughly set down.

I waited for five minutes or so until he returned, listening to the dance music in the background.

“He’s not here,” he said finally.

“Well, can I leave—?”

The guy at Benedick’s hung up on me.

I dug out my to-that-point-unused copy of the Manhattan white pages and looked up DiBenedetto. There were three Franks, but none of them lived on West Seventy-second Street. There were also two Fs; I called both the numbers, and both phones were answered by annoyed women who claimed that no Franks lived there.

So I called Denise. After I begged off on her spare theater tickets and excitedly told her about Frank’s message, she said, “This is just too weird. Maybe you should let this thing drop.”

“But he called. He knows I’m a man and he called.”

“He’s straight. God knows what sick thing he’s got planned. Take my advice: If you don’t want to end up getting screwed by some guy who likes to get off with men wearing dresses, forget about him! Take a cold shower or something.”

“But—”

“Andrew…” she said, which I knew was a warning, because she always called me Drew except when she was pissed off at me. “Take a cold shower.”

The shower wasn’t cold, but it served its purpose. The warm stream of water steamed the romantic illusions out of my brain, and the loud hiss as the water sprayed the tub sealed me off from the outside world. Within minutes, Frank became a dim memory, huddled with Ted somewhere on the outer reaches of recall with other momentary pleasant memories of my past.

Fifteen minutes later—feeling refreshed, relaxed, and, most importantly, over it—I dried off, wrapped the towel around my waist, and padded barefoot across the worn hardwood floor through the living room into the kitchen. I found a water glass and a bottle of scotch and decided to indulge myself with a pleasant after-shower alcoholic buzz. I brought the bottle and glass back into the living room and made room for myself by tossing what was left of the Sunday Times off the couch.

The first few sips went down rough, but I was soon rewarded with a warm feeling of peace and goodwill toward men and the firm belief that nothing that had happened on Halloween at Benedick’s mattered, because I was still a relatively attractive thirty-five-year-old published author and someday my prince would come, even if he wasn’t destined to be Ted or Frank.

And then, as I stretched out on the couch only moments away from achieving complete inner peace, I saw a flickering red light out of the corner of my eye.

The answering machine.

The phone, I assumed, had rung while I was sealed in my showery cocoon. I debated internally whether or not to play the message back. It wasn’t going to be Frank; Frank had already passed on his chance to talk to me. And it wasn’t going to be Ted calling to tell me he’d come to his senses and wanted to return. And I really didn’t feel like talking to Denise or David, and especially not the guy from Citibank who was calling about my overextended Visa card.

On the other hand, I was in the mood to get some good news; say, that a previously unknown relative had died and left me a substantial inheritance. Or that Hollywood wanted to option The Brewster Mall.

Curiosity and optimism won out. I tapped the playback button.

Beep. “Uh…Andrew Westlake? Uh…this is”—again came the self-conscious laugh—“this is Frank DiBenedetto. Sorry I didn’t take your call before…I didn’t know who you were. But I looked up your number in the phone book and it matched, so you must be…uh…you know, Belle. Anyway, I’m gonna be here at the club for a while, so come down. If you want. Uh…you know where the office is, I guess. Bye.” Beep.

Ten minutes later, I was running down the steps to the subway platform at the corner of West Eighty-sixth Street and Broadway.

Even though it was Monday night, it still cost me ten dollars to get into Benedick’s. And once I was inside, I was able to estimate that the club must have raked in an entire three hundred dollars or so in cover charges that night. You do the math.

I stopped at the bar and bought a Miller Lite; then, heart pounding, I made my way to the almost-hidden door that led to the dark corridor, off of which was the office. And the women’s rest room.

He was sitting behind the desk, exactly like he’d been when I first met him: the Daily News open on the desk, the Marlboro Light burning in the overflowing ashtray. He looked up at me and instinctively reached under the desk. “You’re not allowed back here. This is private.”

My hands were shaking. “I was invited.”

He looked at me, squinted, then tentatively asked, “Andy?”

I nodded, beaming. “I prefer Andrew. Or Drew.”

He relaxed his grip under the desk and folded his arms across his chest. That smile from the other night was missing as he closely examined my face, replaced with a quizzical, confused expression.

“I…uh…I guess I look a little different when I’m not wearing a dress, huh?” I babbled nervously as my smile flickered away.

And, for his part, he seemed nervous, too. “You look like a man,” he said finally.

“I don’t…uh…I never dressed in drag before. I let myself get talked into it.”

“You looked good,” he said, still without a smile. “A little like Demi Moore.”

“So you said. But I’m still not doing it again.”

We awkwardly looked across the small room at each other. He was as beautiful as I remembered, but much less approachable without the smile. And while I didn’t know what he thought about me, I felt that the lack of a smile said it all. Still, I had gone through the effort of running down to the Village on a Monday night, so I felt owed some kind of explanation.

“Why did you want me to come down?”

He shrugged. “I dunno.”

I didn’t say anything in response. I just looked at him with a steady yet unintimidating gaze. Finally, he said, “I wasn’t going to call. You sort of surprised me when you talked like a man as I was getting out of the cab.”

“I thought you knew.”

“Yeah.” A small piece of his smile finally slipped across his face. “I guess I should’ve, huh? But I’m new to all this.”

“Everybody here that night was male. They almost didn’t let me in because the bouncer thought I was a real woman. That’s why I thought—”

He held up a hand to stop me. “I didn’t make the rules, and I guess I didn’t know the rules. I just own the place; I’ve hired people to manage it and promote it. I mean, I don’t know all this gay stuff.”

Again, silence fell between us. I noticed his forehead was beaded with sweat, which was causing one of the ringlets in his curly black hair to slowly unravel over his brow. And, at that moment, as I stood there entranced by his uncurling curl and his nervous vulnerability, I was even more sorry he was heterosexual and unattainable.

“You know this place is gay, don’t you?” I finally asked, worried Barry Blackburn and his crowd had totally put one over on poor, naive Frank.

He laughed, and the smile again made a brief appearance. “It would be hard to miss that. Yeah, of course I know it. That was part of my business plan. But I thought girls—real girls…I mean…uh…straight girls—I thought they sometimes went to gay bars. You know, to dance and hang out without worrying that some asshole’s gonna hit on them.”

“Well, you should have a talk with Barry Blackburn. I think he’s afraid of women.”

“I guess so.”

Okay, that was out of the way. Now it was time to talk about me.

“So, if I surprised you—and I’m sorry about that, by the way—why did you call?”

He looked at the floor and swallowed hard a few times. When his eyes returned to me, there was a new sadness in them. But he quickly recovered. “I don’t know. I guess it’s because you were such a great-looking woman…”

Oh, God, Denise was right. All Frank wanted was for me to put on the wig and dress while he fucked me. I turned and started to leave.

“I felt this kind of, um, bond between us,” he said quickly, rushing to get the words out as I walked back into the corridor. “We seemed to connect on a deeper level. I mean, when we danced…”

I turned back and bitterly said, “I’m not what you want, Frank. I’m not a woman. I don’t dress like a woman and I don’t act like a woman and I’m not going to get fucked around by straight men like a woman. There are already too many gay men screwing around with my head. They don’t need company.”

My triumphant, defiant, scene-stealing speech over, I spun on my heel and started to march down the hall.

He caught me before I reached the women’s rest room.

We were back at the diner, drinking coffee and eating french fries covered in gravy. He apologized for giving me the wrong impression, so I apologized for making a scene, although I was fully prepared to make another one.

“What I meant to say,” he said, “is I felt like there was something between us as two people. Not just as a guy and a girl. But it took me until this afternoon to sort it out.”

“So, what’s that mean? Any way you look at it, we’re still two men, and that means we’ve got the same equipment. I really don’t get the impression that that’s what you’re interested in.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know what it means, and I don’t know how to work it out. There must be…I don’t know.”

I started to laugh.

“What?”

“This is perfect. I couldn’t have written it any better. I finally find the man of my dreams, and he’s straight. And you finally meet that special someone, and he’s a gay man. And short of a sex-change operation—and don’t even think of suggesting it—there’s nothing we can do about it.”

He leaned back in the booth and frowned. After a long pause he said, “I’ve got something to tell you. Something else. I have a fiancée.”

I barely looked up from my coffee. “Great. Another insurmountable complication.”

“I don’t love her.”

I didn’t respond. I just watched him as he put his elbows on the table and ran a hand through his hair, then across his face until it fell to rest in a position that shaded his eyes.

“I don’t love her,” he said again, but this time he was almost inaudible.

I told myself not to get drawn into Frank’s personal psychodrama but couldn’t help asking, “So, why are you marrying her?”

His hand didn’t move from its position, but he started slowly massaging his brow as he said, in a voice still just above a whisper, “Family stuff. It’s just something I have to do.”

“Like an arranged marriage? That’s kind of old-fashioned, isn’t it?”

“It’s not really like that,” he said, still massaging his brow. “It’s just…I have to do it.”

Of course.

I liked Frank, I really did. Maybe there were even the first flickers of love for him somewhere deep inside me. But the last person I wanted to get involved with was an emotionally damaged straight boy who didn’t know what he wanted, who he wanted, or why he wanted it. I tossed my napkin on the table.

“It’s been a real experience, Frank. But I’d better get home.”

His free hand darted across the table and wrapped itself around my wrist. “Don’t go.”

“Frank…”

He looked at me with plaintive eyes. I noticed they were misting over.

“Frank…” I gently tried to free my wrist.

“I’ve told you something about me,” he said sadly. “Don’t go yet. Tell me something about you.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know.”

He was so pitiful that, despite all the very obvious warning signs, I couldn’t bring myself to do the sensible thing and get up and leave. I settled back in the booth and leaned forward, mirroring his posture.

“Okay. I’m thirty-five. My parents have both been dead for years, and I was an only child, so I’m all alone in this hard, cruel world. Still, I’ve survived. I’ve written two books that almost nobody has read. I thought I found the love of my life a few years ago, but he dumped me in September. So now I’m back on the market, and I’m not real happy about it. Is that enough for you?”

“Sorry to hear about your parents,” he said softly. “I lost my mother ten years ago, so I know what it’s like.”

“Yeah, well…” I shrugged. “It happens to everyone eventually. That’s why we have to make the most out of the time we have, right?”

“Right.”

“So, what about you?”

“Not much to tell. I’m twenty-nine years old and I dread turning thirty. Every penny I’ve ever earned is invested in the bar.”

“And you’re engaged.”

“Yeah. And I’m engaged. But can we talk about something else? What about the book you wrote?”

“Two books, actually. Have you heard of The Brewster Mall?”

He shook his head.

“Well, in that case, I’m sure you haven’t heard of Allentown Blues. That was my obligatory gay coming-of-age novel, but apparently nobody gives a damn about gay people coming of age in Allentown, Pennsylvania.”

“Cool,” said Frank, surprisingly excited to learn about my novels. “Is Allentown where you’re from?”

“I barely remember anymore. It was a long, long time ago.”

“So, what’s the deal with this guy who dumped you?” he asked. “He was gay, right?”

I laughed. “I make it my policy to only date other gay men. Life is complicated enough.”

That, at least, got a smile out of him.

“His name was—is—Ted. He’s an accountant. And let’s just say our personalities were apparently too far apart for us to be able to compensate for it with great sex. I like to look at things and let my imagination run wild, and he likes to look at things and see the bottom line.” I paused and sipped my coffee. “It could have been partly my fault, I suppose. Maybe I didn’t add up for him when he got to the bottom line. Although I’ll be damned if I know what kind of bottom line he sees in—”

I stopped myself, unable to miss the bitter edge creeping into my voice, but not soon enough. Frank looked at me expectantly. When it was clear I wasn’t going to finish the sentence without prompting, he asked, “Sees in what?”

I tried to shake away the bitterness. “Let’s just say he didn’t leave me for another accountant, okay?”

“He left you for someone else?”

“Yeah,” I confessed, letting the bitterness spew forth. “A twenty-three-year-old bleached bimbo.” I sighed. “Maybe Ted was going through a midlife crisis.”

Frank’s hand reached across the table and cautiously patted my arm. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

At that point, neither of us felt like talking anymore. We split the check and once again shared a cab to our respective apartments, but, exhausted from our emotional tour de force, we barely spoke.

When we stopped at his apartment, he said, “I hope you don’t mind, but I think I’m gonna pass on a good-night kiss tonight.”

I smiled for his benefit, but the minute the cab pulled away from the curb, it left my face.

When I called her at four in the morning, Denise wasn’t very happy with me.

“Why are you calling me in the middle of the night?” she asked.

“Can’t we just think of this as very early in the morning?”

“Andrew…”

“Sorry,” I said contritely. “But I can’t sleep.”

“I can,” was her terse reply. When I didn’t respond, she resigned. “Okay, what’s wrong?”

I didn’t want to tell her, because I knew that I was asking for a lecture. But I’d dialed the phone and let it ring and gone this far, so…

“I went to see Frank tonight.”

“Who?” she started to ask with a yawn, until the fog lifted and she snapped awake, screaming, “Oh, God, Drew! You didn’t! Please, tell me you didn’t!”

“I did. He called me, and I went down to Benedick’s to meet him.”

“With your dress on?”

“No. I’m back to living life as a man. And anyway, after we got reintroduced, we talked.”

“Oh, Drew…”

“I know…” I mumbled apologetically, then added, “He’s confused.”

“He’s confused?! Hell, I’m confused! What the hell were you—? Of course he’s confused! Is this some kind of late-breaking bulletin to you? There’s something wrong with him, and there’s something even more wrong with you if you—Oh, God! You didn’t sleep with him, did you?”

“No. My perfect record of not having sex with heterosexuals is unbroken.”

“Thank God for small favors.”

“We just talked. I think he’s doubting his sexuality.”

“Drew…”

“I don’t know what the deal is, but he’s supposed to marry this woman he says he doesn’t love.”

“Drew…”

“I don’t know what to do…”

“Drew…”

“I mean, I should at least help him get out of this engagement, right?”

“Drew…”

“It’s not like he loves her.”

“Drew…”

“And I don’t even care if he stays straight. I’m sure that we can just be friends.”

“Drew…”

“I mean, I’d expect a friend to stop me from marrying someone I didn’t love.”

“Drew…”

“How can I stand back and let him ruin his life? What kind of friend would I be?”

“Andrew!!!”

Denise’s scream finally caught my attention.

“Are you listening to yourself?” she asked harshly. “Have you heard a word that you’re saying? I’m your friend, Andrew, and I’m telling you to stay away from him! He’s not your friend, and you don’t have to save his life.”

“But—”

“He’s just another screwed-up person in New York City. One of about seven million.” Her tone softened. “Listen, Drew, you’re just a little bit vulnerable right now. But trust me: In a few months, you’ll be amazed that you ever thought about getting involved in this guy’s life. Put this behind you.”

“But—”

“He’s not your type, Drew. Maybe he liked you when he thought you were a woman, but you’re not a woman. So, get some sleep and stop thinking about this guy. Let him solve his own problems.”

I hated her logic. It always made so much sense, and yet it never quite worked for me.

I brewed a pot of coffee and didn’t sleep a wink the rest of the night.

It rained on Tuesday. I watched it start to drizzle as the sun rose, and watched it intensify into a heavy downpour just before I had to leave for work. It was appropriate.

Fortunately, I had enough work to do at PMC to keep me busy for most of the day, which kept my mind more or less off Frank. In fact, for two full hours in the late morning, while I tried to deal with a particularly difficult writer with some real raw talent but a reluctance to have her rough edges smoothed out by someone as low down the food chain as me, I don’t think I thought about Frank at all. And that was good.

In the late afternoon, the lack of sleep caught up with me. While it made me groggy and cranky, it also further minimized my feelings about Frank. And that was good, too.

“Leaving so soon?” asked David, who was uncharacteristically wandering through the offices as I prepared to make my early getaway.

“Yeah. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

He leered. “Do tell.”

“You don’t want to know,” I said truthfully. “Anyway, I think I’m over it.”

A flicker of recognition crossed his face, and he said disapprovingly, “You didn’t!”

“Didn’t what?” I asked innocently, but it didn’t work. He just stood there, arms folded, waiting for my answer, and I wondered how he was able to read my mind.

Finally, he asked, “Did you go back to Benedick’s?”

“Yeah. But I’m over it.”

“Did you sleep with him?”

“No.”

“Don’t. Take my word for it. Don’t.” And with that, he left.

I slept on the couch until eleven o’clock; to the point, that is, where it was almost time to wake up so I could go to bed again. The ringing telephone woke me up.

It was Frank.

I let him leave a message, and held a pillow over my head so I wouldn’t listen.

And then it was one o’clock, and I was still on the couch, and I couldn’t fall asleep again, and so I decided to listen to the message.

“It’s Frank. It’s around eleven o’clock on Tuesday night. Just wanted to tell you that I read Allentown Blues. It’s really good. Anyway, I’m at the club, if you want to call me.”

“Don’t,” said David, who was suddenly sitting next to me on the couch.

“But—”

“Don’t,” said Denise, on the other side of me.

And then, just as suddenly, they were gone.

“Don’t,” I repeated to myself.

I did.

“Benedick’s.”

“Can I speak to Frank DiBenedetto?”

“I’m not sure if he’s here. Let me check. Who’s calling?”

“Andrew Westlake. He’s expecting my call.”

A few moments later, Frank was on the line.

“I didn’t think you were going to call,” he said. “If you called two minutes later, you would’ve missed me. What’s up?”

“Sorry I missed your call, but I was sleeping,” I lied. “I was awake most of last night.”

“I didn’t get much sleep, either. But I did manage to find your book.”

“How? It’s been out of the stores for a long time.”

“You know that new bookstore on Fifth? Hanover’s?”

Know it? He was only talking about the newest and second-largest bookstore in Manhattan. But Hanover’s didn’t even carry The Brewster Mall, so I knew that it wouldn’t stock old copies of the already-discounted and discontinued Allentown Blues.

“I’ve got connections there,” he explained. “They can get things for me.”

“Tell them to put The Brewster Mall in the window, then.”

“Actually, I want to talk to you about that,” he said. “Can I come over?”

Huh?

No, I told myself. Say no. Because all he’s doing is satisfying his own curiosity at the expense of my own mental well-being. Besides, David and Denise are my friends, and they look out for my best interests, and they don’t approve of this. So that means that this isn’t healthy. Frank should sort out his own problems without destroying me. Just because he spent twenty-three dollars and maybe seven hours of his life reading Allentown Blues doesn’t mean that I owe him anything.

But…he had connections with Hanover’s! And they had a huge display window!

And it was Frank!

And maybe David and Denise didn’t always know what was best for me, anyway.

“Don’t,” said David and Denise in unison, bracketing me on the couch.

I gave him my address, ignoring my friends until they disappeared again.

“I’m leaving right now. Give me twenty minutes.”

That gave me just enough time to shower, shave, and throw on some fresh clothes.

And then he was there.

He entered the apartment warily, taking tentative steps as he scanned the living room. It occurred to me that this was probably the first time Frank had ever knowingly walked into the apartment of a homosexual. I imagined that he felt much more secure in a relatively public place like Benedick’s, especially since he seemed to spend all his time holed up in the private office off the back hallway.

But now it was just the two of us. And we were on my home turf.

“Can I get you a drink?”

“What do you have?” His voice was soft and hesitant.

“Anything you want. As long as it’s Miller Lite or scotch.”

“Beer is fine.”

I grabbed two bottles from the refrigerator as he sat, tellingly, not on the couch but in a chair, where he could be assured that I wouldn’t violate his personal space. I handed him his beer and picked a spot on the couch that respected his distance.

“Nice place,” he said, as he now surveyed the room with less wariness. He spotted a print on the wall. “Hockney?”

“Yup,” I said, nodding. “Hockney prints are de rigueur for Upper West Side apartments. Hadn’t you heard?”

He fell into silence, staring vacantly at the David Hockney print as he absently scratched at the label on the beer bottle. Part of me wanted to break the mood and plunge us into conversation; the other part of me wanted to just sit and watch him.

And so I let him stare for a few moments, until he finally turned his gaze on me. “I really liked Allentown Blues. It was—I dunno…It was kind of…uh…God, I can’t think of the word I want. But…It really felt personal. Like I was getting this intimate glimpse into your life.”

“I guess you were. I mean, I changed some things, of course. But basically it was all about me.”

“Poignant!” he said suddenly, snapping his fingers. “That’s the word I was looking for.”

Oh, dear…I tried to conjure up the images of Denise and David, but they were nowhere to be found. Frank was sitting six feet away from me, using just the right words, and I was defenseless.

“Poignant?” I asked him, not sure if I could trust what I heard.

He looked uncomfortable. “Isn’t that the right word?”

“Yes!” I said, surprised to hear myself shout. I turned my voice down a few decibels. “It’s just that I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone call it that before. Except me. Not even Ted”—when I said his name I felt a twinge somewhere deep inside me—“called it poignant.”

That broad smile swept across his face. “Well, it was. And I really enjoyed it. I can’t wait to read the mall book.”

I waved a dismissive hand. “Even I don’t think The Brewster Mall is poignant. It’s just fun.” Which reminded me. “Of course, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be displayed in Hanover’s window.”

He didn’t seem to mind that I lunged right into business.

“I think it can be arranged.” His smile flickered for just an instant, as if he was trying to remember all the strings that come attached to promises. Then, out of the blue, he asked, “Did you always know you were gay? Like Grant in the book?”

“Did you always know you were straight?” I replied, too glibly and maybe too defensively. He just looked at me blankly, the smile fading away, so I continued. “Yeah, I did. As soon as I graduated from high school, I couldn’t wait to get out of Allentown and come to New York. This was a wild town then.”

“I thought it still was.”

“Not like then,” I said, digging back in my memory to my early days in Manhattan. “At least, not for me. Maybe it’s just that I’m getting older. But I think AIDS has changed things a lot. I moved to New York before anyone knew any better, and…well…things have changed.”

His brow creased and he awkwardly asked, “Are you…um…okay?”

“Yeah. But just because I was lucky, not because I was a Boy Scout.”

“Did you know a lot of people—?”

I interrupted him tersely. “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

“Sorry.” He returned his eyes to the Hockney print.

And I gave myself another lecture. Oh, good. This poor, confused, beautiful guy walks into my life, and even if he is straight, he wants to be friends and he may be able to help me sell a few more books. And just because he asks a few obvious questions to help educate himself about gay people in general and me as an individual, I cut him off. Open up to him, dammit!

“A lot,” I said quietly, this time obeying the lesson of my lecture.

“Huh?”

“I’ve lost a lot of friends.”

He looked at me, and then at the floor, mumbling an apology for asking in the first place.

“Don’t apologize. It’s just that it can be difficult to talk about.”

“I know that feeling,” he said, still staring at the floor. “Not about AIDS…but about other things.”

“Like?”

“Things.” He finally lifted up his head and looked me in the eye. I thought he was about to open up—maybe he did, too—but all he did was mutter “Things” one more time.

We sat there, looking at each other across six of the eleven feet of my living room, not speaking for the longest time, studying each other.

He broke the spell with a laugh and shook his head. “I must be fuckin’ crazy.”

“Why’s that?” I asked, holding back from joining in his laughter.

“I’m—You’re…Ah, geez…We’re not—I mean…It’s just—crazy!”

I allowed myself a small smile. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

He stood and stretched his well-proportioned frame, still laughing and shaking his head, and set his barely touched beer bottle on the coffee table.

“I gotta get home. I’m sorry I kept you up so late.”

“No problem,” I said, playing along. “I’m glad you came over. And thanks for your help with Hanover’s.”

“I liked your book. I wouldn’t have offered to do it if I didn’t.”

I walked him to the front door and was just starting to turn the knob when he stopped me by putting his hand over mine.

“I want to be friends,” he said softly, his face very close to mine. “I really like you. Uh…as a guy.”

“Friends,” I agreed. “And I promise I’ll stay a guy.”

His eyes never left mine, but his hand, still over mine, started to turn the doorknob. When we heard the click of the latch, he released it and shook his head again. “I must be crazy…”

“What?”

The Frank smile returned, this time just six inches from me. And then, although the smile began to slip away, his face was five inches from mine. Four inches…three inches…two…

Oh, God.

Ohhhhh…

And the amazing thing—the thing that once again kept me up most of the night playing the scene over and over again in my head—is that Frank was the one who took the initiative and kissed me.

And that Frank kissed me on the lips.

And that Frank let the kiss linger.

And that Frank slipped me his tongue.

“Don’t tell me. I distinctly do not want to know.” That was how David Carlyle greeted me as I dragged my ragged body into the offices of PMC the next morning, a half-hour late for work despite the fact that I’d barely slept since 1:00 A.M.

Four or five hours of sleep over the previous two nights had left me a mental and physical wreck. Deep, dark semicircles were etched under my bloodshot eyes, my skin was ashen, my back ached, my posture sagged from exhaustion, and my brain activity faded in and out like bad television reception.

And despite David’s protest to the contrary, he did want to know, which is why he followed me as I hauled my broken body through the office to my cubicle. He waited until I slumped in my chair before he spoke again.

“I think you were better off when you were heartbroken and miserable. Please tell me that you’ve just been very sick, and that this Frank fellow hasn’t been the cause of all this.”

I leaned back in my chair and focused my tired eyes on David. “I know that you’ve got a problem with him, but…”

“Oh!” he exclaimed as his suspicions were confirmed, throwing his arms wildly like a two-year-old in mid-tantrum and attracting the attention of at least half the people in the office. “You’re just too much, you know that? Just because Ted left you doesn’t mean you have to—Good Lord, Andrew! Have you lost your mind?”

“He’s not anything like you think he is,” I said, feebly trying to defend Frank even though I wasn’t quite sure what he was really like. “He’s just a nice guy.”

Exasperated, David sputtered and threw his arms around some more, unable to verbalize his disgust with me, Frank, and the whole situation. Finally, he calmed down enough to say, “You have a bright future as a writer, Andrew. I’ll admit that I was a bit skeptical at first, but I’m warming up to the reality of your talents. Good things are starting to happen to The Brewster Mall and, if we can keep things rolling, maybe your next book will be your breakout novel. But I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble if you’re going to throw everything away on some low-life nightclub owner who’s just screwing around with your head! I might as well just go back to my office right this minute and call Hanover’s and tell them not to waste their precious window space on you!”

With that, David stormed away from my cubicle. It took a few seconds for his individual words to filter down into my brain and reform themselves into sentences, but when they did, a second wind whipped through my body.

“Hanover’s?” I gasped to myself, before I leapt out of my chair and chased through the office after David. “Did you say Hanover’s?”

He was almost to the elevators. Calmly, he turned and nodded. “They called this morning. Apparently, someone over there read The Brewster Mall and thought it was fabulous, so they want to help promote it. At no cost to PMC, either, which thrills me to no end.”

“But that’s—that’s—Frank did that!!” I said too loudly.

David frowned at my comment and pushed the elevator call button.

“Last night he came over and said he’d read Allentown Blues, and he told me he knew people at Hanover’s who could get me a window display for The Brewster Mall.”

David raised one eyebrow, not quite believing me but not quite dismissing me, either.

“It’s true, David,” I said, almost begging him to believe me.

A ding announced the arrival of the elevator. In parting, David simply said, “Maybe it is true, although the thought of this Frank being able to read much beyond pornography is a stretch for me. But if it is, then it only reconfirms what I’ve been telling you: Stay away from him.” Those last words of warning were delivered through clenched teeth.

“But—”

David stepped into the elevator. “We’ll discuss this later.”

“David Carlyle is so bizarre,” I said when Denise answered her phone. “Wouldn’t you think that he’d be overjoyed to have one of his authors in Hanover’s window?”

“Uh…yeah,” she replied, but there was no commitment in her voice. “So, what’s the problem?”

“He’s upset because Frank made the arrangements to get me the window.”

At the mention of Frank’s name, Denise sighed deeply.

“Oh, Drew,” she moaned. “Not Frank again.”

“Do you think David has some kind of crush on me or something? I mean, that would explain why he hates Frank so much…”

“I’ve never met Frank, but I don’t think he’s any good for you, either.” I could tell from her voice that she instinctively knew that our friendship had advanced to a slightly different level, even if she didn’t know the details of the kiss. “And, no, I don’t have a crush on you, loverboy. It just sounds like a really bad situation.”

“You’d like him if you met him.”

“Well, I doubt that will happen, so—”

“Do you still have those extra tickets to Rent tonight?”

Denise was silent for a long time. Finally, and without answering me, she asked, “Why?”

“I thought it would be a nice gesture to take Frank out. To thank him for getting me in the window.”

“Drew—”

“Do you still have the tickets?”

She exhaled unhappily into the mouthpiece of her phone while she tried to think of a way to avoid the situation without having to eat one-hundred-fifty dollars in theater tickets. Finally, realizing she had been beaten, she mumbled, “I’ll meet you in front of the theater at seven-thirty.”

Of course, I made the arrangements without talking to Frank, and without even knowing how to get in touch with him during the day. I called Benedick’s, but, not unexpectedly, there was no answer. So…

“Hanover’s. How may I help you?”

I was quickly connected to the manager’s office, where a tired-sounding woman answered the phone. I explained who I was—she had never heard of me; so much for the concept of instant fame through a window display—then asked her if she had a daytime phone number for Frank DiBenedetto.

“Who?”

“Frank DiBenedetto.” I repeated the name slowly. “He has some kind of connection to your bookstore. If you ask around, I’m sure someone there knows him.”

“Sorry,” she said crisply. “I don’t know him. Let me take your name and number, and I’ll check around.”

A half-hour later, the phone rang on my desk.

“You Westlake?” asked a gruff male voice. I said I was. “Why are you looking for DiBenedetto?”

“I…uh…lost his home phone number.” I was a bit frightened by his tone. “And I need to get in touch with him this afternoon.”

“So, why’d you call here?”

“He said he knew people there. You see, yesterday he told me that he had talked to someone at Hanover’s about promoting my book in the window and—”

“Oh.” The gruffness in his voice hardened. “You’re talkin’ about Frankie. Frank Junior, that is.”

“I guess so.”

“Why do you want him?”

“We’re friends. Listen, I just need—”

“Friends who don’t have each other’s phone numbers?”

“I lost it. Listen, I just need to call him because I have theater tickets for tonight and I thought he’d like to go.”

“Theater tickets?” The man at Hanover’s didn’t sound impressed. In fact, it’s fair to say that he sounded contemptuous.

“Can I just get—”

“All right. Hold on a sec.” He set down his phone. A few moments later he was back on the line with Frankie’s home phone number.

Just before our conversation ended, he said, “You tell Frankie that Paulie Macarini tells him to have a nice time at the theater.” With that, he snickered and hung up on me.

As for the name Paulie Macarini, well…it was a name I would hear again.

When I finally reached him, Frankie thought that taking a night off from Benedick’s sounded like a great idea. And I was pleasantly surprised that he seemed to have no embarrassment about the previous evening’s extended good-night kiss.

Granted, we didn’t talk about it. But part of me was fully prepared for him to dodge me altogether, or feebly offer up the boy-was-I-drunk-last-night defense.

But, no, even though the subject of the kiss didn’t come up, he didn’t dodge, evade, avoid, or lie. He sounded happy to hear from me and easily agreed to meet me outside the theater at seven-thirty.

At seven-fifteen, I was the first one to arrive. I was bundled warmly against an icy wind that picked up speed as it rolled south down Seventh Avenue and into the theater district, where it rounded the corner onto Forty-first Street and swept past me as I huddled in front of the Nederlander Theatre. It was still almost an hour before the curtain would go up, so I stood with my back pressed against the building, almost alone on the sidewalk that soon would be crowded with theatergoers and theatergoer-gawking tourists, trying to retain as much body heat as I could.

Slowly, as the minutes crept past, a sparse crowd of people began assembling with me on the sidewalk, blocking at least some of the wind. Some paid for their tickets at the box office then milled around on the sidewalk, waiting for the doors to open so they could get out of the cold. Others, like me, stood waiting for their companions. And yet others just stood there, hands pressed deep in the pockets of their coats, staring at the marquee and the patrons and vicariously drinking in the Broadway theater experience.

Frank’s cab arrived at seven-thirty on the nose, and I was greeting him when the cab hauling Denise and two of her friends from work pulled to the curb behind it.

“It’s about time,” I said, shivering. “Let’s go inside before I freeze to death.”

“We said seven-thirty,” said Denise, who then motioned to her co-workers. “Do you remember Jenny and Paula?”

“Yeah, hi,” I said, not really remembering them. It was my turn, so I put my hand on Frank’s shoulder. “And this is Frank.”

“Hello,” said Denise distantly, with a forced smile.

“Nice to meet you,” said Frank, ignoring or oblivious to Denise’s antipathy as he offered her his hand. She gave it one abbreviated shake, then quickly returned her hand to her pocket.

I slipped Denise cash for my tickets, and she walked to the line at the box office window, dragging Jenny and Paula with her.

“I’m sorry about Denise,” I said. “I think she’s been having a bad day.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “I’m not one of those people who believe that you can’t change first impressions.” He laughed. “If I was, then I’d still think of you as a woman.”

At one point during the performance, as two male cast members sang of covering each other with one thousand kisses, I bravely reached over and squeezed Frank’s elbow.

He grinned.

On the other side of me, I heard Denise hiss a muted, “Andrew!”

I ignored her and squeezed Frank’s biceps, as the actors sang of finding a new lease on life through love.

Of course, I already knew that one of the lovers would die later in the show, but I had a knack for ignoring such fine points.

All that mattered was the illusion of romance. Whether the illusion was on the stage or part of my very real life didn’t matter very much. I was flexible.