Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It seemed insane, but it felt so right that I didn’t really have to think too hard.
Ever since our first night together, Gabriel and I had been spending all our free time together. Whenever we ran into one of his friends, of which he had many, he’d introduce me as his girlfriend.
Just the other night, we went to CBGB’s to watch a metal band from Northern Ireland, and he said, “You know…I have never in my life wanted to spend every waking minute with a person until you. Now I just want to be with you all the time.”
It was exactly the same for me. And even though it had only been four weeks, I couldn’t imagine that changing anytime soon.
But I didn’t want to repeat the same mistake I’d made with Annika so on Sunday morning when Gabriel ran out to buy bagels and a newspaper, I punched in the million digits for the international calling card followed by her equally long phone number and paced the living room, waiting for her to pick up.
It was four in the afternoon in Paris. She was probably out buying baguettes or drinking French wine on a sunny terrace.
The call went to her answering machine. Her roommate spouted off a message in such rapid-fire French that my four years of high school French might as well have been Greek for how little I understood.
After the beep, I left a message, in English, obviously. Then I dropped onto the sofa and stared at the phone in my hand. When it rang, I startled and threw the phone across the room like it was a ticking bomb.
“Hello?” I said when I’d retrieved the phone.
“Why do you sound so weird?”
“I just had a near-death experience with my phone.”
“Wow. I’m glad you came out the other side.”
“It was touch and go there for a minute,” I said, wandering into the kitchen and rearranging the fridge magnets while Annika told me about a rave she went to on Friday night in an old theatre.
A magnetic bottle opener held Gabriel’s To-Do List:
Buy a coffee maker and roach killer
Read: Jesus’ Son and The Things They Carried (Discuss with Chuck)
Gigs: Knitting Factory 6/3. Mercury Lounge 6/11. The Fez 6/30?
Work on the song about the long, cruel winter/the homeless population/the church visit
Write an ode to Cleo’s vagina/a dark, sacred place/brings me to my knees/the only church where this sinner worships
Sex in a confessional booth
Oh my God. I grabbed a pen and drew a devil and flames, adding my own note: You’re going to hell!
“It was house music all night long and we danced until four in the morning,” Annika said.
“So did you join the naked dancing girls?” I asked.
“No, but a bunch of us jumped in a fountain and had an orgy,” she said.
I laughed. “You did not.”
“We jumped in the fountain and nearly got arrested but sadly, there was no orgy,” she said. “So what’s up with you?”
I cleared my throat. “I have some news and I know it sounds crazy and it’s all happened so fast and I really, really don’t want to upset you, but?—”
“Oh my god! You’re pregnant!”
“What? No. No, I’m not pregnant. Why would you even?—”
“Don’t tell me you eloped. If you cheated me out of a wedding, I will be so pissed off. We need to plan it and I need to be your maid of honor and we’ll need to find the perfect?—”
“I didn’t elope. I’m not pregnant. And I have no intention of getting married or having a baby anytime soon, if ever. But thank you for all that insanity because now my news is anti-climactic.”
“Don’t tell me. Let me guess. Since you never got off your ass and looked for a new roommate because honestly, I’m irreplaceable…Gabriel is moving in with you.”
“Uh, yeah?” Not sure why I’d posed it as a question, but way to steal my thunder . “I wanted to run it past you before I made any commitments, so I haven’t agreed to anything yet. Would you be okay with it?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? Okay, sure, my best friend is shacking up with my ex, but it could be a lot worse. You could be shacking up with David, and I’d have to buy him a lifetime supply of socks.”
“Stop,” I laughed. “So you’re not mad?”
“I’m not mad. I’m happy for you.” She sounded genuinely happy for me, and that was the mark of a true friend.
“You don’t think I’m crazy for moving so fast?”
“Oh no, I definitely think you’re crazy but I think you’re both crazy in the same way, so it works,” she said. “It sounds like everything is going really well though.”
“It is.” I wandered into my bedroom and picked up the discarded clothes from the floor.
Cradling the phone between my ear and shoulder, I folded Gabriel’s T-shirt and jeans and stuffed them in his duffel bag.
Half of his clothes were already in my apartment.
“But sometimes I worry that it’s too good to be true. It almost feels too easy.”
“Cleo,” she chastised. “That’s a good thing. Relationships don’t have to be hard work or painful to be the real thing. This is how it’s supposed to feel when you meet your person. And I think Gabriel is your person.”
We talked for a few more minutes and as soon as we hung up, my mom called so I told her the news too.
“This is great news,” she said. “I have a really good feeling about this. You’ll have to bring him to our summer party. It’s the third weekend in June. Gabriel will love it.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. I wasn’t even planning to attend. “I think Gabriel has a gig that weekend. In fact, I’m almost positive he does so I’ll probably skip this year and stay in the city. For his gig,” I added.
“Mmhmm.” She wasn’t buying it. “Make sure you invite him. You’ve skipped the last two years. Everyone misses you, Cleo.”
I moved to the window and watched a flock of pigeons congregating on a rooftop. “I’m sure they won’t even notice I’m missing.”
“Well, I will,” she said. “And I think Gabriel will get a kick out of the lads.”
They were lads, all right. The exact kind of lads I prayed that Gabriel wouldn’t become when he signed a record deal.
Gabriel moved in the following Saturday. It was Memorial Day weekend.
Everything he owned fit in Devin’s car. He added his CDs to my collection, his books to my shelves, propped his guitars in the corner of the living room and hooked up his stereo in the spare bedroom.
To celebrate our new living arrangement, we had sex on the sofa and danced a drunken tango across the living room and all the way up to the roof where I hugged the chimney and fisted Gabriel’s T-shirt while he sat on the ledge with his legs dangling over the side.
As if we weren’t six stories above a brick courtyard.
I thought he needed boundaries; he was ready to fly.
He turned to me. “Everything feels possible. All our dreams, our hopes, our future…it’s just waiting for us to reach out and grab it.”
“Yep, I hear you. But could you just get off that ledge, please?”
“Do you hear that?”
All I could hear was the pounding of my own heart. I didn’t want him to fall off the roof. But Gabriel told me to listen more closely, and then I heard it.
A man singing opera music. Rigoletto.
Gabriel joined in… Le donna é mobile …moving his arms like he was conducting an orchestra… è sempre misero .
I held on tighter. It was crazy, but beautiful. And so was he.
Only in New York City could you sit on a rooftop on a warm spring night and listen to opera music under the stars while down below, taxis honked their horns and sirens wailed and couples made love and argued.
The scent of curry and sauteed garlic in tomato sauce and fresh tortillas and all the neighbors’ cooking aromas filtered from open windows and filled the air.
Our wild, adventurous life together was just beginning. Not perfect, but ours.
I wanted to remember every second. Not only remember it but live it.
So I boldly, bravely climbed onto the ledge and sat next to him.
Life, from a bird’s-eye view.
Gabriel held my hand and never let go.
A few days later, when I got home from work, I followed the music to Annika’s old room and peeked inside where I found Gabriel, shirtless and sweaty in nothing but boxers, with a paint roller in his hand.
We’d chosen the paint together. Gabriel thought it was a good color to promote creativity. “ It looks like you. Passionate, creative, and sexy .”
That pretty much sold me on the dark purple, and now that I saw it on the walls, I thought it was the perfect choice. It might have had something to do with the paint streaked across Gabriel’s chest.
He was lanky but he had really great arms and he had abs which had surprised me the first time I saw him naked. He told me he did chin-ups on the scaffolding and push-ups every day to burn off steam.
What he hadn’t mentioned was that he did the push-ups when he was in a handstand, something I’d witnessed last week.
I wanted to live up to the sexy part of the equation, so I slipped away before he noticed me and returned a few minutes later, theatrically draping myself against the doorframe in my little getup.
It only took Gabriel a few seconds to look over, and when he did, he did such an exaggerated double-take that I couldn’t stop laughing.
He dropped the roller onto the paint tray and strode over to me with a little more swagger in his step than usual.
“Welcome home, baby.” His gaze roamed over my lacy black lingerie.
I was a B cup but the underwire did wonders for my boobs and made me look like I had actual cleavage.
Gabriel traced his finger over the scalloped edge of the bra and dipped inside, circling the tiny pearl sewn into the black bow. “I could get used to this.”
“Don’t expect this every night. By tomorrow I’ll be back to slouching around in my ratty T-shirt with no makeup and my unwashed hair in a lopsided bun.”
“I love it when you talk dirty,” he said, skimming his hands down my sides and gripping my hips. “You’re wearing the boots that almost got me into a fight.”
“I can’t even imagine you fighting.”
“I’m a lover, not a fighter.” He kissed me and it was such a dirty kiss that my whole body flushed with heat. “But I’d fight for you,” he murmured against my lips.