Pleasure Palace, page 12
Now, several weeks after his tennis party, he waited uneasily behind his locked door for the rap of his daughter’s small fist. It was only 2:12; he was expecting her in exactly eighteen minutes. Propped up on one elbow reading Rolling Stone, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, the shameful layer of dust that coated the laminated top of his dresser. He’d been meaning, for days now, to get out the can of Endust from under the kitchen sink and take care of it, but somehow, inexplicably, he just hadn’t managed it. There were, he knew, stiff dots of toothpaste spattering the bathroom mirror, long loose hairs wrapped around the drain in the shower, piles of unopened mail on the counter in the kitchen. And thirteen thank-you notes to be written for his birthday gifts. There were some things, at least, that he was still able to handle: he showed up at work faithfully day after day, shopped for meals on the way home, cooked relatively nutritious dinners for Sophie every night (well, almost every night—once or twice a week, he scooted across Lexington Avenue for pizza or an order of roast pork fried rice and two egg rolls), ran the shower for Sophie until the water was just the right temperature, played limitless rounds of gin with her, read to her for fifteen minutes while she lingered over her bowl of Triple Caramel Explosion ice cream, then slipped away just as she fell asleep. Sometimes he nodded off himself as he lay beside her, awakening in time for the late news and a movie he might have rented. Occasionally, while his daughter slept, he took the elevator to the basement of his apartment building and threw a load of laundry into the washing machine, hurrying back in case Sophie awoke crying for him. In the laundry room was a bulletin board cluttered with notices that had been tacked up by tenants and people in the neighborhood: index cards announcing a secondhand baby stroller or a laptop for sale, Xeroxed sheets from housekeepers and babysitters looking for work, business cards left by piano teachers, French teachers (Learn in your own home from a native Parisian!), and bridge instructors. And from time to time, scraps of paper with threatening messages regarding laundry thieves: “TO THE FUCKER WHO STOLE MY RALPH LAUREN NIGHTGOWN FROM THE DRYER—BEWARE—GOD WILL GET PERVERTS LIKE YOU!!!” Remembering this, Marc laughed out loud, and then suddenly stiffened, watching as the stainless steel doorknob rotated quietly, tentatively, then more rapidly, rattling frantically now.
“Go back to bed, sweetie,” he said in a monotone.
The rattling continued. “I can’t sleep,” said Sophie.
“How about some Tylenol PM?”
“What?”
“This is unacceptable,” said Marc. “You’re too old for this.”
“My eyes won’t stay closed. I tell them to, but they won’t listen.”
“Take your hand off the doorknob, Sophie.”
“If you let me in, I’ll only stay until I’m ready to fall asleep and then you can bring me back to my own bed, okay?”
“Not happening, kiddo. Get back in your room.”
A few moments passed in silence as Sophie considered this. “I love you,” she said coyly. “I really really really love you.”
“Me too,” said Marc. “But in this household everyone sleeps in his or her own bed.”
“Mommy doesn’t.”
“Mommy is no longer a member of this household,” Marc said, and got up to open the door.
In the morning, he found Sophie lying diagonally across the bed, the tip of her index finger resting in her belly button. He stroked her fine, tangled hair, traced the outline of her small perfect ear. Opening one eye, she smiled at him.
“Get back where you belong,” he said. “Scram.”
“Buy me a kitten and I’ll sleep in my own bed for the rest of my life.”
“Promises promises,” Marc said.
At noon he lunched with a client who told him how terrible he looked.
“Define ‘terrible,’” Marc said. He leaned forward and his tie grazed a little tin cup of cocktail sauce.
The client, a best-selling author of a trio of self-help books, was thinking of writing her next book about either survivors of incest or preschoolers on Ritalin. She shook her head at Marc. “Your color’s ghastly and there are these big pouches under your eyes,” she said disapprovingly. “And you’re certainly not your usual buoyant self.” She was dressed in a flame-red suit without a blouse underneath and Marc allowed himself a good long look at her cleavage from time to time.
“I don’t seem buoyant?” he said. “Well, maybe I need a nap.”
“Two hundred units of Vitamin E wouldn’t hurt, either,” said Kristine. “Did you know it prolongs the life of your red blood cells? Four hundred units a day would really perk you up.” Stretching toward him, she lifted his tie out of the cocktail sauce.
“You have, what, two kids?” Marc said.
“I’ve got three,” said Kristine. “Three very special boys, though the four-year-old’s a big pain in the ass. He’s sweet and adorable, but his energy level’s way up there, which is why we’ve got him on Ritalin, if you know what I mean.”
“Any of them ever try to come into your bed in the middle of the night?”
“Is the sky blue?” said Kristine. “Do birds have wings? Did you read chapter four of my last book?”
“Yes, and yes, and, I’m ashamed to say, I can’t remember a thing about it.”
“Well, every child in the world wants to sleep in his parents’ bed. And you’ve got to let them know that’s a major no-no. You’ve got to nip it in the bud before things get out of hand.”
“And I won’t forget about those four hundred units of Vitamin C,” Marc said.
“E,” said Kristine. “C’s for warding off colds.”
Marc nodded. He slid his credit card from his wallet and signaled to the waiter. He took another leisurely look at Kristine’s cleavage.
“So,” Kristine said, “Ritalin or incest, what do you think?”
Someone had posted, on the laundry room bulletin board, a notice that was unlike anything he’d seen there before. It was printed on mint-green paper and said:
Too busy to deal with your personal correspondence? Columbia grad student with excellent writing skills can make your life easier. I can send weekly letters to your widowed mother in Florida, birthday cards, anniversary cards, thank-you notes, etc. Reasonable rates.
Leave message and I’ll get back to you.
HoneyRose 722-3636
“HoneyRose,” Marc said aloud, and it sounded like the name of a stripper, or maybe even a hooker. Certainly not a Columbia grad student with excellent writing skills. He’d forgotten to bring down a laundry bag and his arms were loaded with toasty, neatly folded towels and sheets. It was time for the eleven o’clock news. Upstairs on the eighteenth floor, his daughter was sound asleep, her arms wrapped around the preternaturally gentle, very expensive Himalayan kitten he’d bought from a breeder in Manalapan, New Jersey. “HoneyRose,” he said again, and memorized her number, at least for the short term. In the elevator he wondered if it was too late to call this alleged graduate student. His birthday had come and gone almost two months ago and the thank-you notes were still nothing more than a hazy, guilt-provoking thought that plagued him once in a while. His widowed mother in Boca Raton had always been big on such niceties. (Someone gives you a gift, you need to write a few lines to show your gratitude. If you don’t, you’re just being plum rude. How many times during his childhood had he heard that from her?) She was currently in the habit of sending him sweet little notes, usually twice a week, which he couldn’t be bothered answering. He felt bad about it, but not bad enough. He was a single parent, for Christ’s sake; a phone call to Boca Raton every couple of weeks was the best he could manage.
Maybe this HoneyRose, with her promise to make his life easier, was on to something here.
Upstairs, he checked on his sleeping child, shoved the towels and sheets into the linen closet, and called HoneyRose. Her machine said she was unable to come to the phone, and he left a halting message that made him sound, if not exactly stupid, then ill at ease and inarticulate. Ill at ease about what? He had no idea, really.
After the news, he watched Jay Leno for a while. His guest was Carly Simon, who looked, Marc thought admiringly, pretty damn good for someone over fifty. He dozed off listening to her talk about her ex-husband. When the phone rang, his mouth was dry and there was a damp spot on his shirt sleeve where he’d drooled. “Hello?” he said drowsily, and sank back into his seat on the living-room couch.
“This is HoneyRose. So what can I do for you?”
She didn’t sound like a stripper; she sounded businesslike and a little impatient. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say to her. Was this like a job interview? If so, he was the one doing the interviewing, wasn’t he? “I’ve never done this sort of thing before,” he said, as if she really were a stripper or even a hooker, as if there were something vaguely illegal going on here. At his feet, Jazzmine the kitten meowed piteously; it was more like a whimper and so poignant that Marc reached down to pull her into his lap, saying, “What do you want, darling?”
“What do I want?” said HoneyRose. “I want to know if you’re serious about hiring me. Because if you’re not, you can’t call me ‘darling,’ okay?”
“Actually, I was talking to the cat, but I do want to hire you. Or at least I think I do.”
“Okay, look, what I can be is kind of like your social secretary, okay?”
“I have no social life to speak of,” Marc confided. “I’m a single parent and I don’t get out much. But I do have a load of thank-you notes that I can’t bring myself to write.” He paused. “You probably think I’m incredibly lazy, don’t you?” he said apologetically.
“I never pass judgment on my clients,” said HoneyRose. “How many of these notes do you need?”
“Thirteen.”
“Well, let’s see, how about … a hundred and thirty dollars for the whole deal? And I don’t take checks or credit cards.”
“No problem.” That he was willing to blow more than a hundred bucks to dispense with some thank-you notes surely didn’t speak well of him. You lazy bastard, he thought. “Did I mention my widowed mother down in Boca Raton?” he heard himself say.
“That’s another one of my areas of specialization,” said HoneyRose. “I know just how to deal with those old ladies. Too bad, I could have helped you pick out a Mother’s Day present last month. I charge twenty-five dollars an hour to act as your shopping consultant.”
“Sounds reasonable to me,” said Marc. He could feel himself growing lazier and lazier as the conversation progressed, the will and energy to take care of anything at all draining swiftly from him. Even the thought of rising from the couch and going into the bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth before bed seemed wearying. And showering and shaving tomorrow morning—forget it. Ever since Carole had flown the coop, he’d been scrambling urgently to keep the gears of his daily life properly meshed, and sometimes—big surprise—the effort exhausted him. It was a big surprise. As it turned out, he’d underestimated what it would take to keep a seven-year-old happy. A couple of mornings ago, after he’d braided his daughter’s hair to the best of his limited ability, Sophie looked in the mirror, frowned, and told him it was pigtails she wanted after all.
“With scrunchies at the top and the bottom,” she said, like a diner in a restaurant decisively adding mushrooms and onions to her order.
“I don’t do pigtails,” he told her.
“You do,” Sophie insisted. “It’s easy. You make a part in the back, a straight part, and then you do the rest.”
“I’m not good at those things.” Why can’t you just do it yourself, he almost said.
“But you have to be,” Sophie told him. “You’re the only one here, right?”
“Right,” he said. He was close to tears, which frightened him. He contemplated calling Carole and ruining her day with a few casually chosen words. How had he fallen in love with a woman willing to abandon her child in greedy, self-indulgent pursuit of her own fucking happiness? He’d underestimated a lot, it seemed, and recalled another one of his mother’s incantations: You wheel with people and you deal with people but you’re a fool if you think you can ever really know them.
Not even your own wife?
Apparently not.
He’d done a crummy job on his daughter’s pigtails and could tell he wasn’t going to get any better at it.
“So when do you want me to come over?” HoneyRose was saying.
The sooner the better.
He vacuumed and dusted in honor of her arrival, and printed out a list of names and addresses of everyone who’d been at this fortieth birthday, along with the gifts they’d given.He put Sophie and Jazzmine to bed together, and shaved for the second time that day. He swept the coffee table clean of magazines and newspapers and videotapes, and put out a bowl of low-fat vegetable chips. His khakis were pristine, the cuffs of his denim shirt neatly rolled past his wrists.
HoneyRose was, he realized, the first woman to set foot in his apartment since his wife had vanished from the scene.
“Hey,” she said. “How are ya?” She dropped her briefcase to shake his hand.
“It’s nice to meet you,” he said.
Well, it was and it wasn’t. She was slender, with a slightly sharp nose and pretty, hazel eyes. Her black jeans were very tight and her cropped T-shirt revealed an impressively flat stomach. The blazer that went over the T-shirt had a pin about the size of a half-dollar stabbed through the lapel; a Star of David was printed on it. Marc squinted at it, as if he were near-sighted, which he wasn’t. “Oy vay, I’m gay!” the pin proclaimed in bright yellow, and it was like a kick in the teeth. He hadn’t had sex in six months, a fact that was on his mind more than he’d like to admit. Without sex, you had no life to speak of, not really. Or at least the life you had was a sadly incomplete one. There was no getting around it; he lusted after this girl with her exposed stomach ornamented with a gold ring that gleamed so compellingly in his living room. Never mind that he hadn’t a prayer of getting his hands in her nearly pitch-black hair that was swept away from her face with two tortoise-shell combs, or that his mouth would never come anywhere near her breasts with their nipples that had hardened in the breeze of his air-conditioner. Of course, if she’d been straight, he still might have lost out on everything, but surely there would have been a chance of winning her over one night while she worked composing clever, heartfelt expressions of his gratitude to his friends. Or so he imagined.
“Would you like some chips?” he asked indifferently as she sat herself down on his couch.
“They’re pretty weird-looking,” she said. “What are they?”
“Oh, yucca, taro, parsnip, all kinds of stuff that’s probably good for you.”
“I generally don’t like stuff that’s good for me.”
“No?”
“I’m a drinker and a smoker,” she confessed, “and I sleep about four and a half hours a night. But that’s all going to come to an end soon enough.” She took off her blazer and squashed it into her lap, then crossed her legs. He watched her every move with great interest; he just couldn’t help himself.
“Really?” he said.
“Absolutely. My girlfriend and I are planning on having a baby as soon as we can, and since I’m the one who’s better suited for this pregnancy, I’m obviously going to have to turn over a new leaf. But let’s get back to the thank-you notes.” Unbuckling her briefcase, she took out a large manila envelope and opened the flap. “I brought some samples of my work. Everything will have to be on the computer, of course, since I can’t possibly duplicate your handwriting, but don’t worry, it’s all going to be very personal.”
“Why are you the one who’s better suited for the pregnancy?” Marc said recklessly. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
HoneyRose shrugged. “Well, I’m twenty-nine and Lily’s forty-one, does that answer your question?”
“What about graduate school?”
“One more semester and I’ll have my master’s.”
“Raising a child is an enormous effort,” he said. “It ain’t easy, trust me.”
“Thanks for the warning,” HoneyRose said.
“And what about your parents?”
“Excuse me?”
“What do they think about all this?”
“I wouldn’t know,” HoneyRose said brusquely. “We don’t speak. I mean, we haven’t spoken in a long, long while.”
“I’m sorry,” said Marc. “As a parent myself, I was just wondering, that’s all.”
HoneyRose smiled at him. “You’re a very nosy person,” she said. “But I don’t mind, I’m nosy as well.”
Was she? She hadn’t, after all, asked him a single question about himself. “Well, my life’s an open book,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
“What style would you like to have the notes written in? Gracious? Affectionate? Funny?”
“All of the above,” Marc said.
“Okay. I’ll have them here for you in a week so you can sign them. Either I can mail them to you or I can come back and we can go over them together, just to make sure you’re happy with them, but I get paid no matter what. Oh, and your mom in Boca Raton? What are your, uh, needs regarding her?”
To tell the truth, he’d forgotten all about her. “Could you write to her twice a week?” he said. “Something short—four or five sentences ought to do it.”
