Part 9 (1/2)
”Okay, just asking. 'Cause if ya had a backblast I wouldn't judge you for it.”
He was eyeing her, his dark eyebrows raised. She realized he was amused, and crossed her arms over her chest. ”Can you just keep your eyes on the road, please?”
”Sure will. But bombs away in here, if you must. 'Cause me and Oliver, we don't care. That's how we roll in here.”
She had turned her face to the window. She'd started to smile and didn't want him to see.
”Hey, remember that tune, about farts?” he asked. Without warning, he broke into song: ”When you're sitting in your Chevy and you feel something heavy, its diarrhea. Diarrhea.”
It must have been the early nineties, because her mother had that short haircut and she was smiling, looking back at Alexis in the silver Mercedes Alexis's parents had had for two years before trading it in for something newer. And Mark was next to her, they'd just picked him up from football practice because he still had his cleats on, and they were driving to the boat that would take them to Nantucket, where they had a house they went to every summer. Her mother looked radiant, her strawberry-blond hair tucked behind her ears, her long model legs and still-good figure stretched out in the seat. Alexis and Mark were trying to come up with more verses for the diarrhea song, and she'd won, even after their parents had threatened twice to turn the car around and head home if they continued to sing those dirty lyrics, but they'd known, of course, as all children do, that their parents were just bluffing.
”No, I don't,” she said now jaggedly, still turned to the window. He seemed to not hear the anger and sadness in her voice, or was ignoring it.
”Oh, man, I used to know all the verses and everything,” he said. He s.h.i.+fted from third gear to second to turn the corner, and she watched the muscles in his chest flex. ”When you're sliding into first, and you feel something burst ... Not even that one? Or the cla.s.sic, when you're on the seat for hours and it doesn't smell like flowers, diarrhea.”
”No!” she shouted. ”I don't know that song and I don't want to sing it with you, okay?”
He looked sheepish. ”Sorry,” he said. ”Sometimes I get carried away.”
They were stopped at a red light. A motorcycle pulled up next to them, its engine idling. They pa.s.sed an Irish bar, plants hanging from above its doorway, people huddled smoking around the entrance. He turned to look at her.
”Okay, change of subject. So what do you do with yourself when you're not acting as a weapon of self-destruction, Alexis Allbright? I'm down. So what's your job? Let me guess. You're a clothing designer.”
”I wish. Guess again.”
”Model?”
”Ha! Not nearly tall enough. My mom was, though. So you're getting warm.”
”Well, I know you're not a chef. Not yet, anyway.”
She glared at him.
”Okay, I give up.”
She s.h.i.+fted around in her seat. Lowered the pa.s.senger-side mirror down. Took out a tube of bright red Chanel lipstick from her purse and swiped it over her lips. ”I run a blog for women,” she said, a note of pride creeping into her voice. ”It's called Skinny Chick.”
Noah laughed. ”Blunt. I like it.”
”Do you know anything about blogs?” she asked. Now they were on her turf. She loved talking about her work. She was d.a.m.n good at it. Dogs, babies, ice-cream sandwiches-these all fell into the ”No Interest” category. The Internet was home territory.
”Not a d.a.m.n thing,” he said. ”And by the way, I should probably ask you where you live. As much as I enjoy driving around with you.”
”Oh, right,” Alexis said. ”I live right above the Container Store.”
”The what store?”
”Don't tell me you've never heard of it. Where are you from, a barn?”
”Close. I was doing the biking thing before going to the Culinary Inst.i.tute.”
”Biking as in ... biking? Motorcycling?”
”No, the first one. The less cool, less-need-for-a-handlebar-mustache one. You know, two wheels, open road, the whole bit.”
”Oh! So you were doing this professionally? Like getting paid to race?”
”Yes, ma'am.” Every time he talked he took his eyes off the slick, gleaming road and glanced over at her, like he was somehow ... absorbing her.
”Why'd you leave?” she asked.
”I was wanted for a bank murder and had to leave the state.”
”Oh.”
”I'm kidding!” he said, throwing his head back and laughing. ”You should have seen your face. I really left to train to be a chef. I'll tell you all about it later. I want to hear more about this Skinny Chick blog. I want to know more about you, Alexis Allbright.”
So she told him, and their voices ran parallel to the silence they'd shared inside the cafeteria. Their words felt tangible and filled the car and floated out the top of the roof and into the cloudy sky and upward, up and up, and she forgot about the pulsing pain in her finger from the st.i.tches and the guilt over the ice-cream sandwiches she'd scarfed down.
She wasn't someone who naturally divulged aspects of her life, but in the darkness of Noah's car, surrounded by the smell of dog, the stories poured out of her mouth: how she'd worked her whole life, thinking she'd be a lawyer, how her father had pushed her into the law office where she interned and clerked every summer break in Greenwich, how she'd moved in with Billy and taken the LSATs and burned through night after night studying at the Forty-second Street library, then taking the bus home, staring out the window and wondering what the h.e.l.l she was doing with her life, wondering why she was doing so well and yet felt so empty.
Noah quietly drove, one sure hand on the wheel as she described her reverent obsession with America's obesity epidemic, her fascination with diet and exercise stories in magazines and on the news, and how Skinny Chick was launched with a little help from a techie guy Billy was dating at the time. How she'd subsequently lost everything, her parents' respect and love, the five million dollars she was set to come into when she turned twenty-one. And how it had all been worth it, every last bit. She lived now with her best friend and ran her blog, got hundreds of endors.e.m.e.nts, and got to be on Oprah. She wasn't rich, but she was able to support herself on her own dime, and she felt enormous pride in that.
She'd never talked so much in her whole life, and Noah just sat there listening. Alexis realized with a start that they were parked in front of her building. He turned the engine off and silence filled the car like a third pa.s.senger, a presence. Her light was still on in her room and its yellow beam lit a nearby tree. She'd left it on out of habit. Billy was always out working, and she didn't want to open her apartment door only to be greeted by darkness. Also she was kind of terrified to run into Vanya with the light off.
Alexis had never had a date inside her apartment before, but since this was certainly not a date, she didn't see the harm in inviting Noah in.
Other nights she stopped by Eastern Bloc after working on her blog all afternoon (she liked whiskey, neat) and would perch her perky tush on top of a stool and chat with Billy and the other bartender, Mike, who was short, was missing his left arm but wouldn't talk about it. Billy would be backlit by strobe lights, which reflected off her fake diamond hoops, splashes of red, green, yellow lights streaming across the faces of young, sweaty people in fabulous outfits swaying to the new indie band of the moment, the Fiery Furnaces, Florence and the Machine, Matt & Kim. Girls in sparkly silver tube tops, miniskirts, and jumpsuits would flirt with Billy in order to get served, then pout when he'd serve the handsome businessman in the gray and white pin-striped suit standing next to them first.
Even though Eastern Bloc was a gay bar, there were always a few straight men who wandered in for the trendy atmosphere and would come up to her all night. She never liked talking to guys who strolled in with a large group because it meant they were weak in character; they traveled in a pack for solidarity like a wolf. If someone shorter than her spoke to Alexis she pretended she didn't hear. The same protocol went for chubby men bold enough to saddle up to the barstool next to her. Alexis liked them successful, arrogant, handsome, and smart. Stockbrokers, doctors, business moguls. Married.
Most were pleased with this arrangement, at least at first. Later they'd start to get emotional about it, wanting more. Would she travel with them, would she ever want to meet their kids? The answer? No and no. What if he left his wife? as one Upper East Side record label president had asked her last year. No f.u.c.king way. She'd changed her phone number to be sure he couldn't contact her again.
She didn't feel guilty about these exchanges. If anything, she figured she was probably helping their marriages. Husband has a little fun on the side, goes back to his wife with a renewed sense of loyalty and dedication.
Noah was the kind of guy she would have completely ignored at Columbia. He belonged stuck to the side of a rocky mountain in a harness, not standing next to her in Chelsea in her fabulous leather boots. But there was something about the way he made her feel. She suspected that she amused him. She didn't think she'd ever amused anyone in her life, save maybe her brother.
”So what were you thinking for my restaurant?” he asked her, startling her out of her thoughts.
”It's the old fur store that closed,” she said. ”Just across the street.”
They ran across the street, Noah strangely holding her hand as though he were her father. On a normal night she'd have shrugged him off. She wasn't big into the touchy-feely stuff. But her defenses were down. She was exhausted, and her finger really hurt. A group of loud teenage boys pa.s.sed them on the sidewalk, and one threw what appeared to be a gla.s.s soda bottle onto the sidewalk. The other boys whooped at the sound of the smas.h.i.+ng gla.s.s. She felt suddenly glad for Noah's huge presence next to her. Strange, that she'd made her way around the city for so many years on her own, and suddenly she felt appreciative of a male presence, as if she were some damsel in distress. Then again, what was wrong with easing off the tough New York att.i.tude for one night? She pounded the streets with such armor. Even her favorite purse was silver with big metal studs adorning it like a s.h.i.+eld.
Someone, maybe the landlord, had left a light on in the fur store. Alexis saw that the door was ajar. She cupped her hands around her eyes and peered inside. Racks lined both sides of the wall, and hangers still looped around them. The store's weathered white wooden sign-f.a.n.n.y'S FURS: SINCE 1920-was broken in half on the ground. Splinters and nails showed. Two mannequins still stood in front of gold-etched mirrors. One had a fur collar on and nothing else. Alexis guessed the owners had forgotten to take it with them.
Suddenly Noah's arm shot out beside her and tried the k.n.o.b. The door creaked, then opened.
”Noah!” Alexis hissed. ”What are you doing?”
”Looking for opportunity,” he whispered back, wiggling his thick eyebrows like some insanely tall Groucho Marx. She followed him, thinking she didn't have a choice, and prayed to the breaking-and-entering G.o.ds they wouldn't be found and arrested. The room smelled of mothb.a.l.l.s.