Thirty-Six
Clara was aware seconds before she was fully aware—in a way that had become darkly familiar—that she was in someone else’s bed.
Her head hurt, but it was a gentle twang, not an all-out battering ram, so she could be grateful for that at least. She turned her head as quietly as possible and opened one eye.
Alone in the bed. She rolled over and opened the other eye.
Alone in the bedroom. This was very good.
She let out a soft groan as she stretched her arms and straightened her legs, sat up and looked around.
Not a clue as to where she was, but it was bright and sunny outside, and the room had two nearly floor-to-ceiling windows opposite the bed.
She could see the tops of trees and the rear of a row of townhouses in the distance.
On the nightstand next to her were an untouched glass of water and two aspirins.
Whoever had taken her home couldn’t be a complete asshole based on that gesture.
She popped the aspirins into her mouth and chugged the water.
She pulled back the bedcovers and gingerly sat on the side of the bed.
She was wearing the tights and tank top she’d worn to work under a blousy dress yesterday.
She stood and looked on the floor for her dress or shoes.
Nothing. She desperately had to pee. She stood and tiptoed to the other side of the room listening for sounds of life beyond the door.
All was quiet. She opened a different door to find a closet full of men’s clothes.
She shut it quickly, not ready to face that appraisal.
She was pretty sure she’d glimpsed a few Hawaiian shirts.
Not good. A third door opened onto a bathroom, and as she sat on the toilet and relieved herself, she wondered who in her world had enough money to have a bedroom with its own bathroom.
She put her aching head in her hands and tried to remember the events of the previous night.
After a long day food styling for a cereal print ad, everyone on the shoot had gone out for drinks at Fanelli’s.
A tugging at her consciousness. Philip. Philip Woolf the photographer was at the bar.
Had she gone home with him? No, she wouldn’t have done that.
She pulled up her tights and an image surfaced of her struggling with the same tights last night in a bathroom in a dingy bar.
A second location with a pool table and a mix of friends and strangers doing shots.
She splashed her face with water and put a little toothpaste on her finger and swished it around her mouth.
She gently opened the medicine cabinet filled with standard-issue pharmacy stuff.
Pain relievers. Shaving cream. Ah, an aging stick of Secret antiperspirant on a higher shelf behind a box of condoms. A few lipstick containers and an expensive moisturizer.
She opened the lid on the pot of moisturizer, but the cream inside had yellowed on top.
No one had used it in a while. What kind of person didn’t have a single prescription for anything in their medicine cabinet?
She didn’t see a discarded condom or wrapper in the trash can.
Not a definite sign she hadn’t had sex, but a promising one.
She wiped off last night’s makeup from beneath her eyes and tried to arrange the bangs of her chin-length bob into some kind of order.
She gave her cheeks a quick pinch. She felt queasy, mostly about this early morning, post-blackout searching that had become far too frequent.
She still had glue under her fingernails from the shoot.
She’d used watered-down Elmer’s in place of milk so the cereal wouldn’t get soggy and the flakes would float properly.
Lucy! Her sometimes-assistant Lucy had been at her side yesterday while the agency’s creative director badgered them to find cereal flakes that weren’t “flimsy.” She remembered Lucy at the second bar urging her to drink a soda or have some pretzels.
She remembered she and Lucy on a small stage singing along to Southside Johnny’s “I Don’t Want to Go Home” and that someone had handed her a toy saxophone she pretended to play as Lucy screamed along to the reach up and touch the sky part.
She remembered dancing and dancing and then a flash of dancing a lot with one person.
Not someone from the shoot. This guy had spun her around and around until—until they fell?
Yes, they’d been holding on to each other’s forearms like they were playground friends and somehow (her good friend Tanqueray?) she’d lost her center of gravity and had pulled him down with her.
She stood on her tiptoes and turned away from the mirror and lowered her tights enough to see the blossoming livid bruise on her left buttock. She touched it. Ouch.
From downstairs (was this a duplex?), a jangle of keys and locks being deployed, the sound of a door opening.
She grabbed the robe hanging from a hook on the back of the bedroom door and wrapped it around her.
Please, she silently prayed to an unnamed deity, the goddess of loose women maybe. She gingerly walked downstairs.
“Good morning! I got us coffee. Cappuccino for you, right?”
“Right,” she said, holding the robe a little closer at her neck. “Thanks so much,” she said, walking toward him and his familiar face. Philip Woolf. Shit.