Engaging Men

Now do you understand how I’ve gotten so wrapped up in being wrapped up every day of the week? Kirk and I might as well get married at this point. What would be the difference, anyway?

“The ring,” Michelle explained somewhat impatiently when I complained the next day about how much I am suffering and wondering, really, what it’s all going to get me.

“When a guy buys you a ring, it means something.”

So I sat tight for yet another night, telling Kirk I had a monologue I was working on. “Oh yeah?” he said with surprise. Of course he was surprised. I hadn’t done any auditioning since Rise and Shine became a cable-access phenomenon. Why should I? I was on the road to superstardom in a yellow leotard.

But suddenly there I was, reverting to my former self. The actor who had played Fefu in Fefu and Her Friends. (Don’t let the name fool you—this was a serious role.) The woman who had once wowed crowds at the Classic Stage Company with my powerful rendition of Miss Julie. In case you were wondering, I was once a force to be reckoned with. But an actor has to earn a living….

“What are you doing home?” Justin asked, loping in from God knows where. He’d turned down the last production gig he’d been offered, so I knew he hadn’t been working on the set all day. In fact, he seemed to be working less and less ever since he had landed a few commercial spots for a long-distance telephone service a year ago, which I thought was pretty ironic, considering the number of long-distance relationships Justin had been in (yes, Lauren wasn’t the only one. Denise, his previous girlfriend, was from Oak Park, Illinois, Justin’s hometown—a place Justin hadn’t lived in himself since he was twelve, although his romance with Denise had begun on a visit to relatives one summer when he was in college). The commercial, which featured Justin looking frazzled and gorgeous as he ran across a campus and up the dormitory stairs, all in time to pick up a long-distance call from his mom, was so well received that they made two more. One in which Justin leaped across buildings to pick up a call, and another where he hijacked a campus security cart. His success had mostly to do with that utterly beatific smile on his face as he picked up the receiver and said, “Hi, Mom.” Ironic, too, since both of Justin’s parents had been killed in an auto accident, leaving him an orphan at the tender age of twelve, shipped off to live in New York with his aging Aunt Eleanor and Uncle Burt, who were now gone a good nine years themselves. Maybe there was something of the yearning I knew he still felt for his parents injected in the smile he projected from the small screen once he picked up that telephone. Whatever it was, the commercial ran so often—it even made Superbowl Sunday slots—that Justin was still coasting on the pile of residuals money he’d racked up. Perhaps that was making it harder and harder for him to get out of bed for the odd production job that came his way.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” I replied, defensive. Sometimes the ease of Justin’s life annoyed me, I have to admit.

He ignored my irritated reply, plopping down next to me on the couch.

“Where’s Kirk?” he asked. Even Justin realized my life was so intimately entwined with Kirk’s that my being home on a weeknight meant something.

“Don’t know. Home, I guess,” I said, picking up the remote and surfing through, hoping my expression showed my indifference. I didn’t really want anyone to know what I was up to, especially not Justin. It was downright…humiliating. But utterly necessary.

Then the phone rang and I was completely unmasked. “If it’s Kirk, I’m, I’m…not home,” I blurted as Justin reached for the receiver.

He turned to look at me, one eyebrow raised, as he spoke into the phone. “Hello? Hey, Kirk, my man, what’s up?” he continued, his voice belying the suspicion in his eyes as he gazed at me. “Angie? Naw, she’s not home. But then I didn’t check under the rug….”

I glared at him, despite my humiliation.

“Okay, I’ll tell her you called,” he said. “Take it easy.” After he hung up, he turned to stare at me full in the face.

I ignored him, lost in my own quagmire. “What the hell is he calling me for anyway? I told him I was busy.”

Justin’s eyes widened. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing!”

“God, Ange, don’t tell me you’re playing games,” he said. “I didn’t think you were like that….”

“I’m not!” I insisted. But suddenly it seemed glaringly apparent that I was one of those women I despised.

5

A rose by any other name…might still do the trick.

I would have despised myself even more for shamelessly avoiding Kirk if I didn’t come off the Saturday shift at Lee and Laurie to find him waiting out in front of the building for me.

“Hey,” he said, a smile lighting up his features as I came out the front doors.

“Kirk!” I said, surprised, realizing that he hadn’t done anything so spontaneous, so…romantic, since the early days of our relationship. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you, stranger,” he said, putting his arms around me and tugging me close. “I missed you.” Then he kissed me so tenderly I felt a rush of warmth toward him.

Now I ask you, can you blame me for playing these stupid games? Especially when Kirk led me back to his apartment and made love to me like it was our last night on earth together.

Two simultaneous orgasms later, I was a goner.

Which is probably why I found myself sitting across from Michelle at a tiny table in the back of a bar by our office on Tuesday night, plying her with drinks while I smoked cigarette after cigarette from her pack, reveling in my relationship revival and anxiously awaiting advice on my next maneuver.

Hanging out with Michelle after hours was a peculiar enough event as it was, because we hadn’t really been social since high school—specifically, since just after Grace moved to Long Island and I had moved on to my first serious boyfriend, Vincent. At the time, Michelle had been dating Vincent’s cousin Eddie, and we bonded simply because it was always useful to have a girlfriend around all those nights we roamed the streets with the guys, restlessly searching for adventure and usually winding up at a diner or the movies, blowing what little money we had. Though Michelle was a bit of a fair-weather friend (or a fair-man friend—we parted ways when she moved on to Frankie, who ran with a different crowd), at least for a while I had someone around to tell me whether I had lipstick on my teeth or if some cheerleader had been spotted at school that day flirting a little too hard with Vincent. In truth, Michelle and I wouldn’t even be friends now, except that when I gave up my job in the garment district four years ago, my mother had told the whole neighborhood (including Michelle’s mother, whom she’d run into at the supermarket) that I was jobless, penniless and about to pursue a career with no pension plan. Mrs. Delgrosso had happily told my mother about her daughter’s illustrious career and flexible hours at Lee and Laurie and put me in contact.

But despite all my doubts, I couldn’t help turning to Michelle now that step one had succeeded in at least a quarter turn on Kirk’s lid. Suddenly I was ready to be persuaded that the art of persuasion was my only resource when it came to Kirk.

“Make him jealous,” Michelle said with a definitive crack of her gum.

“Jealous?”

“Yeah, that’s your next step,” she continued. “You need to convince Kirk that he’s not the only man who’s pining for you.”

This was not as easy as it sounds. Kirk was just not the jealous type. In fact, during the first months of our relationship, when we were caught up in the throes of new passion, I was suddenly the object of every man’s desire. So much so that one overzealous suitor even followed me home from Lee and Laurie one night, trying to get my phone number. Kirk, who had been waiting out on the stoop for me (yes, there was a time when he did that), had found the whole thing quite amusing.

“That’s because he didn’t see the guy as a serious threat,” Michelle advised. “You need to bring on the heavy artillery.”

I looked at her. “Heavy artillery?”

“Yeah. You need to show him some other guy is serious about you,” she said, her eyes narrowing speculatively. Then, realization lit her face. “Flowers,” she said. “You need to get flowers from another guy.”

“What other guy is going to send me flowers?” I said, going through my catalog of men and coming up short. The only man who’d ever bought me flowers was Randy, romantic that he was. But Randy had been married for five years, and was not inclined to buy me anything nowadays except the odd drink whenever we happened to get together.

“That’s the beauty of this plan,” Michelle said. “You don’t need another guy. You can send the flowers yourself.”

“Myself?” This plan was starting to seem ridiculous. And expensive. “Do I sign the card from myself, too?” I asked.

“No, no,” she said, shaking her head at me as if I were the insane one. Then her dark eyes lit up, as if my faux Prince Charming had just stepped into the bar. I even turned my head to see if, in fact, there was some bouquet-wielding charmer waiting in the doorway. Then swung it back just as quickly when I heard her say, “Jerry Landry.”

“Jerry Landry?” I asked, incredulous. Jerry was our boss and—at least according to his calculation—the Office Stud. He made a point of hitting on every available woman—and even some of the unavailable ones, depending on how short they happened to wear their skirts—who worked for Lee and Laurie Catalog. It was rumored that he slept with at least fifty percent of the incoming trainees, but I had a feeling Jerry himself started these rumors. Because although we all laughed at his stupid jokes and even batted our lashes playfully at his off-the-mark flirtations (after all, he was the man monitoring both our phone calls and our break times), I seriously doubted any woman in her right mind would find him attractive. Maybe it was the amount of Brylcreem he used to get his suspiciously dark hair (suspicious for a forty-two-year old with gray chest hairs peeking out beneath his oft unbuttoned collars) slicked back, guido-style (hello? The eighties are over, Jerry). Whatever it was, something made Jerry utterly unappealing to most of the female population. Men, however, thought he was the greatest. Probably because he was the one buying the rounds during those rare after-office outings. And because the guys actually believed all those conquest stories he told. Even Kirk had, during his short stint at Lee and Laurie. So much so that, on more than one occasion, he had sidled possessively toward my cubicle when Jerry was leaning over me, giving me his usual schtick while trying to look down my shirt. Hmm, maybe Michelle wasn’t so far off in this far-off scheme of hers….

Then I remembered that it wouldn’t be Jerry’s credit card that took the hit. “How do you propose I pay for these flowers?”

“Look,” she said, “do you want to land this guy or what?”

Apparently, I did. Because suddenly I was willing to forgo that seventy-eight-dollar pair of pants I had been coveting in the Lee and Laurie Catalog (that was the other problem with this job—it fed my shopping disease) for the sake of my future.

That’s when I got caught. No, not by Kirk. By Justin. Which seemed worse, somehow.

I was on the phone ordering flowers for myself. I know, I know. Stupid, right? On my budget I was the last person who should’ve been dialing up for a dozen long-stems, but I was a different woman. I didn’t even recognize me. The thing is, I had invited Kirk over to my place for our usual Friday night together and, according to Michelle, I had to undo some of the damage I had done by sleeping with him with a quick follow-up maneuver.

So, I’m on the phone, ordering up flowers from Murray’s 24-Hour Florist—New York City is probably the only place in the world where you can get anything delivered at just about any time. It’s this type of convenience that makes a girl capable of anything, right? And I wouldn’t have felt so bad about my behavior if Justin hadn’t strolled through the door just after I had handed over my credit card number.

“…if you could deliver those flowers promptly, I would appreciate it. Thanks.”

“Who died?” Justin asked, heading for sofa #3 (he always developed an especial fondness for the newest sofa as if to prove to me, and the rest of the world, the worthiness of salvaging it) and picking up the remote.

“Died?” I asked, puzzled, as I hung up the phone.

“Didn’t I just hear you ordering flowers?” he said, his gaze seeming somewhat speculative despite the way he was already cruising through the TV channels.

Humiliation shot through me. Then panic. Justin wasn’t supposed to be home tonight. Fridays he often frequented the open-mike night at the Back Fence, watching musicians try out their material and, I imagined, gathering the courage to get up there himself. Or something. Because ever since he had left film, and then acting, ostensibly to pursue music, he seemed to have lost his energy to do anything but strum a few chords on his guitar now and then as he gazed dreamily at his assorted artifacts around the apartment. The only reason I knew he was still pursuing anything was his vigilant attendance of Friday night’s open mike. It was one of the reasons I had picked tonight for this wretched little plot. I didn’t even want to bear witness to what I was about to do, and I certainly didn’t want one of my best friends to. “Aren’t you going to the Back Fence tonight?” I inquired, ignoring the fact that he had settled on a program and sunk deeper into the sofa.

“Nah. I’m beat,” Justin said. After a few moments, he finally looked up at me, probably because I was hovering over him, anxiously trying to figure out a way to get him out of the apartment. It wasn’t so much the fact that Kirk was coming over. After all, Kirk had accepted Justin’s presence in my life, albeit grudgingly. It was just that I was absolutely appalled at the idea of Justin discovering my plot to win Kirk’s pledge of undying love.

“What’s up?” he asked, studying me with concern.

“Nothing!” I protested, completely blowing my cover. Then I glanced up at him from where I had begun to pick at a nonexistent piece of lint on the sofa. “It’s just that…Kirk’s coming over.”

“Oh yeah?” he replied with some measure of surprise. It wasn’t that Kirk never came over, it was just that we spent more time at his place. Probably because of my roommate factor, but I feared mostly because of my (or should I say “our,” meaning Justin’s and my) clutter factor. Kirk had a decided distaste for the disorder Justin and I so willingly chose to live in, and when he was here, he couldn’t help but point out the problems that resulted from irregular removal of recyclables (I had an increasingly bad habit of saving all the newspapers, magazines and trade papers I never seemed to get around to, in the hope that I would, one day, get around to them) and accumulation of other people’s irretrievables (You-know-who was responsible for that). I couldn’t help but agree with Kirk. There was something wrong with living with six lamps, three sofas and a stack of newspapers and magazines that rivaled the periodical room of the New York Public Library.

“Anyway, I was gonna cook him dinner.”

This got a raised eyebrow.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing,” he replied, turning his attention back to the TV. But I knew he was thinking of the time I threw a dinner party for all our friends, which was nothing short of disaster. Thank God, Justin had come to the rescue and pulled together a quick pasta fagioli. For a guy from the Midwest who was a mixture of every ethnicity except Italian—English, French and even a dash of some sort of Scandinavian—he certainly had a way with Italian cuisine. It was as if he had inherited the Italian gene that I hadn’t. “You need help?” he asked as I continued to stand there looking at him uncertainly.

“Not exactly…” I began, not sure how to tell him that I simply needed him to go away. “What’s C.J. up to tonight? You haven’t seen him in a while,” I hedged. C.J. was Justin’s best male friend, who somehow managed to be married, successful, and yet still one of the coolest people I knew. He was vice-president of an independent record label that had found phenomenal mainstream success and yet still managed to maintain its indie roots. Though C.J. lived in Westchester now, he often came in on weekends when one of his bands was scheduled to play. “Maybe he’s in town tonight. Isn’t that new band he signed supposed to play CBGB’s?”

Finally Justin got it. “Oh, I see,” he said, his gaze falling on the table, where the candles from his weekend with Lauren were still strewn. “You want to be alone…with Smirk.” “Smirk” was what Justin called Kirk when Kirk wasn’t around. It wasn’t that Justin didn’t get along with Kirk. He just despised everything Kirk stood for: material success, technological innovation. The future. I had to forgive Justin for it—being an East Villager before the dot.com gentrification, I was on the same wavelength. Sort of.

“Do you mind?” I said, hoping he would suddenly find some other venue for his slacker revue tonight.

“Nah.” He shrugged. “I’ll just watch the game in my room.”

So much for getting him out of the apartment. I had forgotten about the Yankee game. There was no way I could hide my embarrassing little ploy now, I thought, heading for the kitchen to tackle my next project: domestication. It wasn’t that I couldn’t cook at all—I make a mean marinara—it’s just that I stuck pretty much to those things which wouldn’t kill anyone if I messed them up. But if I was going to make Kirk pine for the woman he could possibly lose, I had to tackle something a guy like Kirk could understand: meat.

I headed for the fridge, where I had stacked a package of perfectly cut—or so said the butcher at Lenny’s Meats—perfectly thick and perfectly frightening sirloin steaks. I wasn’t a veggie or anything, I just was a little afraid of foods that had the capability to inadvertently poison me if undercooked. I put the steaks carefully on the counter, wondering just how long I had to grill them on the George Foreman (a Christmas present from Sonny that I had yet to take out of its original packaging) to destroy any of that malicious bacteria I seemed to know way too much about for a woman with such limited culinary experience. Fortunately, my mentor in man-catching, Michelle, had loaned me her copy of Cooking With Style, which, despite the suspiciously bright platter of vegetables that graced the cover, had a section on grilling.

Flipping the book open, I was amazed at how easy it all seemed. Six minutes for each side? No problem. Knowing that timing was everything, I set the asparagus to steaming and tossed the potatoes in the microwave. This was easy, I thought, laying the steaks on the hot grill just as the buzzer rang.

“I’ll get it!” I yelled, running for the intercom, though Justin hadn’t budged from the couch.

“Hey, it’s me,” came Kirk’s voice as I pushed the listen button. I depressed the door buzzer with something like dread. Then I immediately went to the front door and waited, as if by greeting him at the door I could protect him from my own madness—or Justin’s all-knowing gaze. When I heard him ascend the third flight, I stepped into the hall.

“Hey,” I said, as he approached.

“Hey, Noodles,” he said, his face creasing into a smile that made me feel guiltier and guiltier. Clearly I wasn’t cut out for this level of subterfuge.

He kissed me, his eyes roaming over my face as if he could see the deceit there. And there must have been something in my expression because he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” I said quickly, turning and leading him down the narrow hall toward the living room.

“Hey, Captain Kirk, what’s up, man?” Justin said with a wide grin from his—semipermanent, I hoped—position on the couch.

I felt Kirk stiffen with tension beside me. Though Kirk had been forced to accept the fact of Justin’s presence in my life from day one, it was clear he didn’t always approve of Justin’s seemingly carefree lifestyle. Justin must have sensed this, as he seemed to revel in his slacker ways in Kirk’s presence. But Justin did make some attempts to bond, I suppose. Like the whole Trekkie thing. When Justin discovered Kirk was a fellow Star Trek fan, he took great delight in rehashing the finer plot points of what he considered the Great Episodes, while Kirk couldn’t get past the way Justin took the good captain’s name in vain every time Justin greeted him.

“Justin,” he said with a curt nod. And while I was pointedly rolling my eyes toward Justin’s room in a silent message that I hoped said, Time for you to go, Justin was gazing happily at Kirk as if he was his new best friend.

And apparently he was, judging by the way Kirk’s own eyes lit up when he spied the television screen. “Is that the Yankee–Red Sox game?” he said, swiftly leaving my side and planting himself cozily beside Justin on the couch.

Oh, brother. Now how was I going to get Justin the hell out of here?

I decided that the best I could do at the moment was hit the kitchen. After all, I had bigger things to tackle at the moment. Like meat.

I headed for the kitchen, where those bloody red steaks still sizzled. Thank God I had asked the butcher to cut an extra steak. It looked like I would be cooking for three.

I can do this, I thought, when I had flipped all the nicely browned steaks and began placing the freshly steamed asparagus on a serving platter and pulling the baked potatoes out of the microwave. Studying my handiwork, I realized I was practically a Domestic Goddess.

Once the six minutes designated for side two were up, I pulled one of the steaks off the grill and cut into the middle, just to make sure they were good and cooked and I wasn’t about to poison myself, my best friend and my, um, future husband. Red juice rushed out, sending a shiver through me. There was no way we could eat these like this, I thought, my head filled with visions of dancing microbes. That cookbook couldn’t have been right….

I threw the steak back on and closed the lid on the George Foreman, just as the intercom buzzed.

“I’ll get it!” I said, rushing for the intercom with an anxious glance at the sofa. Kirk continued to stare at the TV, unfazed. Justin, on the other hand, looked over at me, his eyes narrowed.

Hands trembling, I pushed the talk button, praying my beloved roommate wouldn’t betray me now. “Yes?”

“Flower delivery,” said a voice with a thick Spanish accent. I glanced over at the couch. Now I had Kirk’s attention, I realized. But the thrill of victory was quickly squashed by the look on Justin’s face as he sat back, folding his arms across his chest. He knew what I was up to. With a quick don’t-you-dare-say-a-word glare that I hoped Kirk didn’t pick up on, I headed for the door and swung it open.

Only to discover the deliveryman holding what looked like some sort of flower bush. A very large flower bush. “What the—” I stopped myself, glancing back into the living room, where Kirk and Justin looked on. Where are my roses? I wanted to scream but couldn’t for obvious reasons.

“Flowers for Miss—” the man began, studying the order slip he clutched in his free hand. “DiFranci?”

I sighed. A florist who couldn’t even get a name as easy as DiFranco right obviously hadn’t been the best choice for this ridiculous plan of mine. Correction, Michelle’s. Why had I listened to her anyway?

As I stared at that large pink bush, I realized this screwup by Murray’s had left me with a way out of this ridiculous scheme. “There must be some kind of mistake,” I began. “I didn’t order a…a…plant.” That was the truth, right? I had ordered roses. One dozen long-stemmed ones. At $54.95.

A frown creased the man’s features. Lifting the order slip closer to his face, he squinted at it. “Miss, the order here says I am to deliver these flowers to Miss Angela DiFranci?”

“I’m sorry but, I can’t accept—” I glanced back when I realized that Kirk now stood at the end of the hall. Of course, Justin stood just behind him, the smirk on his face even more pronounced now.