Chapter 5
Bless you, Cusack. Bless fucking you.
I probably want you more than I should in the middle of a first date, but you want me too.
Fifteen minutes into the Best Movie Ever, Kate Beckinsale pulls a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera out of her bag.
You look at me, and I look at you. Sparks. Serendipity-do-do-zippity-yay.
I go in for a whisper. “Score one for books.” You knock your leg into mine.
Zoinks! Beckinsale won’t give Cusack her number even though they have chemistry, but she will scribble it in her Cholera and sell it to a used bookstore.
My man Cusack is aghast, exasperated. He just wants her fucking number.
But she believes in fate. She says that if they are meant to be together he will find her Cholera and call her.
It is the right movie at the right fucking time and you put your hand on my leg and whisper in my ear. “Okay, Bookstore Babe. Let’s see where this goes.”
My Portnoy chimes in the dark. That touch. Your breath. Every part of my body yearning to lean into you. You, who spends the rest of our time in the dark finding any excuse to bring your lips to my ear. I will buy a new Moleskine notepad so I can remember all your sweet somethings…
You kind of remind me of John Cusack.
He and Jeremy Piven are best friends in real life.
Molly Shannon is excellent casting.
This movie is like a master class in location scouting.
The lighting people killed it. And at a night shoot, that’s impressive.
John has good range, right? He’s so not Aidan, you know?
No, I don’t know, Vail. I don’t give a fuck about any of these people. Except the part where you said Cusack looks like me. And that’s gonna be at the top of my Moleskine:
#1 I LOOK LIKE A MOVIE STAR, A GOOD ONE
The movie ends. I rise and you pull at my sleeve.
You are one of those people who sit through the credits.
Or maybe you just want to sit by me. And then we’re up.
The haze of exiting the dark of the theater and entering the light.
You are all but skipping down Houston. Revved up.
Sprung. Pontificating like a little overzealous professor.
“It was brilliant of them to cast real talent like Jeremy Piven and Molly Shannon but not force them into a relationship at the end. There was a narrative confidence that stands out, you know?”
I smile at you. Can I kiss you again? Is that normal? “Mm-hmm.”
You elbow me, shy. A little self-conscious. “ ‘Mmm’ what, mister?”
My eyes are the Polaroids now. “Vail,” I say. “You lied to me.”
You blink. Puzzled and doe-eyed, channeling Kate Beckinsale.
“Vail, you are a reader. Just now…I saw a movie. Cool movie, sure, but you…You read that movie the way I read books.”
You look down at your little hands. “A lot of guys get annoyed with my commentary in the theater…”
“Yeah,” I say. “But I’m not some dick in your sitcom.”
You smack me. Again, with your inability to keep your hands off me. The thrill. The lust. The snow just starting to fall. “Watch out, Cusack. Sex and the City is not a sitcom.”
“Point taken, Miss Beckinsale.”
You like that. You like me. You murmur. “Come here, Cusack.”
This time, Mr. Tongue plays it cool. This time, you don’t say anything after we kiss. You just nuzzle me, nose to nose. “It’s snowing.”
“I know.”
That’s another entry for the Moleskine:
#2 REDEMPTION FOR MR. TONGUE
I am about to insist on taking you to the kind of late lunch that turns into dinner when your phone rings—your bossy boss—and you can’t eat with me. Duty calls. I watch you cross the street. If you turn around, you like me and want more, and if you don’t turn around…
#3 YOU LOOK OVER YOUR SHOULDER AND YOU WANT ME TO WANT YOU
You shake your ass and laugh, and that’s when you become my girlfriend.
I call your home phone the second you go underground and leave a voicemail.
I want to be in your house, waiting for you like a bouquet of fucking flowers and it’s scary, the waiting.
Did I go too far? Was I supposed to fuck with your head?
But then you call! You love my flowers and I am smart enough to send you to voicemail.
And then I listen to it, your second lovely love letter.
Well, hello to you too, Cusack. So I have a crazy week, but maybe we can grab drinks? Just not frozen hot chocolate. I mean, we don’t want to move too fast, you know?
I pop into the nearest stationery slash pepper spray store and drop a few bucks on a shiny new Moleskine and the kind of pen you don’t ever lose. I jot down the first three wins and then it’s the fourth one, best one yet.
#4 YOU WANT TO MOVE FAST
If you didn’t, you wouldn’t say shit like that. Slow and steady wins the race and all that bullshit. Life is different now. Work’s not a drag. I’m preparing to be your man. I say things like “My girlfriend loves Lucinda Rosenfeld” and “My girlfriend’s really into the new Ursula Le Guin.”
I read. I know girls, girls, girls. I know that if you wanted to move slowly, you wouldn’t say yes when I call you and ask to hang out two days after Serendipity.
“A little soon but…oh, fuck it. Do you know that bar we passed near the Angelika?”
I know they card. I know I am underage. “I was thinking maybe we get coffee…”
“Ah,” you say. “I like it, Cusack. Coffee it is. Also you don’t have to say it, but I was just on antibiotics for a throat thing last month and ugh it’s awful when you can’t drink.”
I’m not on antibiotics—ha!—and I need handsome sleep to look my best but I can’t sleep. But it’s okay. I’m young. It’s the longest shift and it’s dead in the shop and Mooney catches me at the door.
“What’s the rush?”
You. “I, um, I have to bring a book to this guy…”
He slaps me on the back. “As long as you get your dick sucked, boy.”
I don’t think that’s in the cards—it seems like a third-date kind of thing—but I’m feeling good and looking good as I saunter into the romantic-as-fuck coffee shop in the West Fucking Village.
You’re already there and we do that quick hug hello thing.
I pay for the coffees and after a couple minutes of nervous weather chat, your Polaroids widen. “Can I ask you something?”
“You never have to ask if you can ask me something.”
“How old are you?”
Fuck. “How old are you?”
You squint. “Mmm…I asked you first.”
“True,” I say and I have to get a fucking fake ID. “But it’s kinda like books.”
“Oh boy. I guess I did sign up for this with NYC Bookstore Babe….”
“The page count doesn’t matter, Vail. It’s the style, the pacing. A Dan Brown book…You fly through it at ninety miles an hour. But you get your hands on some Joyce, same number of pages, and it’s a whole different thing. You take your time. You go slow.”
For a second there, our second date is scary, the way you don’t mount me. But then you burst out laughing in the good way, with me, not at me. “Well played, Cusack.”
I wipe my forehead, and we are in it now, trading stories about our lives.
You talk about your time at U of M and the angst over doing the undoable…
moving to Manhattan. You share a tiny two-bedroom with crazy, slutty Cynthia in…
New York. You leave it at that, vague, but I Know What You Did Last Week.
It’s a good thing when a girl keeps a secret.
Like Mooney says, The best strippers take it off one piece at a time.
You don’t know what you want to do with your life.
Sometimes you want to be in the industry, but sometimes you think it’s ridiculous.
You love dinner mints—there’s a sea of them in the bottom of your messenger bag—and your parents blah blah blah, because I don’t fucking care.
We’re moving fast and my mind is a happy broken record.
I like you, Vail, I like you. You notice I’m not drinking my coffee and leap up to go get more cream.
You pour and tell me to say when. You stroke the back of my head as I take that first, second sip.
And then you rub your hands on your thighs.
Jeans this time. Blue and tight. I like you, Vail.
I like you. You sit. “So where were you on September 11?”
I cough. I hate it; I hate that I have to lie to you. “You first.”
You scratch your little nose. “Well, it’s more about where you were before, right?”
I was locked in a basement, and it’s almost like you relate. “Totally.”
“See,” you say. “I think of 9/11, and I go back to September 6. I was at the VMAs dancing my ass off to Britney Spears…Everything about it, the boa and the song. It felt like life was about to become this nonstop dance party, you know? ‘I’m a Slave 4 U’ is just…”
“I prefer ‘Nothing Compares 2 U.’ ”
SHUT THE FUCK UP, GOLDBERG, but you smile like you care, like you know that I know that that was a lot. “Anyway, you know how it is, Joe. You’re living your life. A few days later, I’m pissed at Cynthia for bringing a random home from Passerby and the next morning…”
“Everything changes.”
“Yes, Joe! The three of us sat there staring at the TV. It felt like no one’s ever gonna dance again, and I hated myself for thinking about dancing when people were…. Kinda the loneliest day ever.” Your smile is a baby and a mother all at once. “So, where were you, Joe?”
I was hoping you’d forget about me, and I don’t want to lie to you about something like 9/11, but what choice do I have? “I was in the bookshop.”
“Yeesh, you guys open that early?”
I won’t go there in my head. I was locked in the cage, in the basement. The only person in the whole fucking city who didn’t know about the big bad day. “Well, we weren’t open for business, but I was supposed to sign for some packages and do deliveries and…”
You pull lint off your cape; no girl is perfect. “And that never happened.”
We go silent and I get scared. Is my secret gonna ruin us? But then you say you didn’t mean to go there, that you’re not that girl who talks about it nonstop or dwells.