You Have to Kiss a Lot of Frogs
Laurie Graff

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For my mother,

Lonnie

and for my brother,

Steve

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to…

All the family members, friends, peers and people who have inspired and encouraged me. You know who you are!

Margaret Marbury at Red Dress Ink for picking me out of the slush pile and saying “yes,” and the RDI committee in New York, Toronto and the U.K. for agreeing with her.

My editor, Melissa Jeglinski, who is a joy to work with. Who helped me create a road map for Karrie Kline. Who has great ideas, and great taste in restaurants!

The entire RDI team for their wonderful and creative work on all aspects of this book, and special thanks to Zareen Jaffery for her help.

Robert Youdelman, Danielle Forte and Dianne Jude for their terrific work, and Mark Pedowitz for pointing me in that direction.

Nancy Kelton whose class, Writing from Your Personal Experience, started something. The “Los Angeles Writer’s Bloc” and “The WorkShop Theater Company.”

Lisa Forman and Ruth Kreitzman for pushing me to write.

Jill Cohen for the serendipitous act that led to publishing this book!

Jamie Callan for oh so much, for everything!

Nancy Giles for the delicious brainstorms!

Ellen Byron, Steve Keyes and Matt Graff for support from the beginning.

Stewart Zuckerbrod, Tracy Tofte, Sandy Eisenberg, Pam Clifford and Susan Banerjee for always listening to me read. Phyllis Heller for ideas. Mary Gordon Murray for living through the rewrite process with me, and Marlene Kaplan who’s going in the white limo!

And in memory of David Stenstrom who was the first one to say, “Laurie, you should be writing this down.”

CONTENTS

You Have to Kiss a Lot of Frogs

April Fools’ Day

Hell’s Kitchen, NYC 2003

Wake Me When We Get There

Flashback—Easter Week

Brooklyn, NY 1969

Nottingham Forest

Memorial Day Weekend

The Catskills, Upstate NY 1988

David’s Dad

Rosh Hashana

Central Park West, NYC 1988

Whose Party Is This Anyway?

Daylight Saving Time Ends

Grand Central Station, NYC 1989

A Clue in Time Saves Nine

Tisha B’av

Greenwich Village, NYC 1990

Roman Holiday

My Birthday

Gramercy Park, NYC 1991

My Worst Date…Almost

New Year’s Day

Chelsea, NYC 1992

The Clan of the Cab Bears

Passover

Port Authority, NYC 1992

Wherefore Art Thou?

Valentine’s Day

Upper East Side, NYC 1994

That’s All, Folks

An Hour Later

Ten Blocks North, NYC 1994

Joy to the World

Flashback—Last Christmas

Charlottesville, VA 1993

That’s Really All

Present—Fifteen Minutes Later

Back in the Elevator, NYC 1994

The Truth About Men and Astrology

Flag Day

The Upper West Side, NYC 1994

From the Top

Election Day

The Theater District, NYC 1994

Eating out of His Hand

Veterans’ Day

Soho, NYC 1994

Feast Your Eyes

Twenty Minutes Later

Fifth Avenue, NYC 1994

The Lightbulb at the End of the Tunnel

Three Months After That

Midtown, NYC 1995

Cheesecake Delight

Labor Day

The Great Lawn, NYC 1995

Life in the Fast Lane

First Day of Autumn

Los Angeles, CA 1995

The Lion’s Share

Groundhog Day

West L.A., CA 1996

What’s the Big Deal?

Hanukkah

Studio City, CA 1996

The Call of the Wild

Mother’s Day

Beverly Hills, CA 1997

Weight-Listed

First Day of Summer

Los Feliz, CA 1997

Starry, Starry Night

Last Day of Summer

Hollywood, CA 1997

There’s No Place Like Home 250

Two Weeks Later

Hollywood, CA 1997

We Have So Much in Common 262

The Next Night

Hollywood, CA 1997

You Should Be So Lucky

Presidents’ Day

West Hollywood, CA 1998

A Eulogy for Henry

My Fortieth Birthday

West Palm Beach, FL 1998

The Wedding

Father’s Day

Brentwood, CA 1998

How Personal Do You Want to Get?

Halloween

Columbus Avenue, NYC 1998

Putting Back the Pieces

Thanksgiving

West Palm Beach, FL 1998

In Motion

St. Patrick’s Day

Baltimore, MD 1999

Unscrambled

Liberation Day

NYC Underground 1999

I Can Do That

Martin Luther King Day

My Kitchen, NYC 2000

Modem Operandi

Columbus Day Weekend

Henry Hudson Parkway, NY 2001

Shiksa Syndrome

Counting the Omer

West End Avenue, NYC 2002

In Search of the Regular Ultimate Hold

Fourth of July

East Hampton, NY 2003

The Water in the Walls

New Year’s Eve

Brooklyn Heights, NY 2003

About the Author

Coming Next Month

1
You Have to Kiss a Lot of Frogs

April Fools’ Day

Hell’s Kitchen, NYC 2003

I like being a woman. I also like being friends with other women. I don’t, however, like feeling forced into participating in some ritual with an entire flock of them I’ve never even met. It’s like having to wear those dumb party hats, and blow on those even dumber paper things at midnight with a bunch of strangers on New Year’s Eve. You’re thrown in with people you don’t know and don’t want to be with, but you’re all going to share this intimate event with glee. If it kills you. And that’s how I feel at this bridal shower.

Here I am. Tuesday. 6:00 p.m. Right after work, if you actually have a normal job, and I’m standing in a Mexican restaurant in midtown Manhattan, holding a margarita I’m not drinking because I don’t like the salt. I’m stuck wearing gray wool slacks because I came from an audition for a soup commercial, à la Winter in Vermont, and realized way too late that the bag with my dress was at home on my bed, and not with me. The bright fluorescents highlight the brown roots on my red head, and a silver barrette is holding together a few strands of hair, attempting to disguise a bad bang trim. That time-of-the-month bloat is making my size-four pants feel tight, and my hair feels hot around my neck. I can’t help but compare myself to everyone around me. They seem perfectly coiffed, and groomed, and excited to be here. I’m one of fifty overeager women waiting for Marcy to arrive to surprise her because, finally, after twenty-five years of dating, she’s met some guy she’s going to marry. And everyone’s gabbing how they’re sooooooo happy for her. Frankly, I don’t believe it.

The married ones must be remembering their showers. The too many toaster ovens and Crock-Pots, the friction between the maid of honor and the other best friends, and now the contemplation if the marriage has lived up to the fanfare of the shower.

The single ones are standing with plastic smiles, wondering if the person getting married is really better off than they are. That’s me. I wonder, is Marcy really Happy Now? And is that to say she really never was before? After the years of angst and dates and therapy and plans for when The One arrives, when It happens, what does It feel like? What does it feel like to be with Mr. Right. Mr. It. Does it feel great? Does it? Does it feel better than it did before? Does it feel better than I feel standing in the middle of it? Watching. Comparing. Are other people unconditionally happy for this person or is it just me?

“Sssshh, she’s coming.”

“AAHHHHHH!!!”

“QUIET…QUIET…quiet…”

The lights in the restaurant are out, and there’s chatter coming up the stairs to the balcony. Everyone pushes together in the middle to see. To see how Marcy will react. She thinks her mom and aunt are taking her to see The Phantom of the Opera. Aunt Tessie’s visiting from Philadelphia and wants to see it, she’s heard “The Music of the Night” sung so much over the years. Marcy thinks they’re coming to Fajita Fajita for a bite before the show. Little does she expect that tonight, eight weeks before her wedding, years after attending God knows how many showers herself, instead of seeing Phantom, she would see every important female she knows tell her, “I’m so happy for you. I told you it would happen. It happens for everybody. It just has to be your time.”

“Watch it, Marcy,” I hear a gravelly voice say. “You stepped on my toe.”

“Oops. Sorry, Mom.”

“I can’t see,” says the other one. Obviously Tessie. “Go ahead of me, Marcy, dear. It’s dark.”

“SURPRISE!”

The lights snap on, and Marcy sees every woman she’s ever known in her entire life before her—wide-eyed, drunk from waiting and wishing her well in her new life. Marcy is heroic, because Martin has found her. Marcy is elevated to another level, because Martin has picked her. Marcy is thrown to the other side. The side that is validated. She’s no longer going to be Single. It’s happened. It’s happening now. And as a result, Marcy can’t move.

I lift my five-foot-one-inch frame onto my toes so I can get a better look. Marcy’s leaning against the banister of the balcony. She turns to face us. Her bright auburn hair falls back, and her smile spreads so far across her face it’s inside her ears. She looks like she may faint. The banister is holding her up for dear life.

Marcy’s face is frozen in terror. No. Not terror. Happiness. Terrorized happiness. Her small body’s wobbling. Will all this happiness make her keel over?

“Ehhhhhhhh!” Marcy cries out. Her grotesque smile opens wider and wider, and her eyes bulge out. “Ehhhhhhhh!”

We are happy for Marcy. We are. But now we are worried. Our smiles are plastered to our faces as we watch her meld into the banister.

“You’re getting maaarried!!!” a cousin calls out. Her red nails wave at Marcy, and her gold-and-diamond rings catch the glimmer of the light shining above the picture of a bullfight that’s painted on red velvet.

“Look at all your guests!” shouts her sister-in-law to be.

“Everyone sit!” says her maid of honor, who’d been spending the last few minutes at the banister trying to catch Marcy if she were to fall.

Marcy is walked over to a table by her mother and aunt Tessie, each holding half of her up. They smile at everyone, as if they were in a procession. Marcy remains in shock, until she passes the pile of one hundred beautifully wrapped presents that should cover almost every item on her registry. She is suddenly composed.

“Let’s eat!” announces Marcy, taking her seat in the center.

We watch a moment. Marcy has caught her breath, and so we catch ours. We sit down to eat the guacamole. I take a seat near the gifts. I want to get a good look at what I’m missing.

Seven weeks later I wake up in the middle of the night. I have just turned forty-five and no Martin came and saved me from it. I am still in my apartment, or what I hope is still my apartment. The notice to buy me out of my rent-stabilized lease arrived the day before my birthday. My unemployment claim expired, and my acting prospects quietly disappeared in my forty-fourth year, just to make my forty-fifth as frightening as possible. I never bought that “Forty” was the “NewThirty,” and feel petrified to find out that “Fifty” is the “New Forty.” I am currently boyfriendless and in no shape to date.

Perhaps I should kill myself.

This seems like an interesting idea. I can kill myself tonight and just slip away. What am I supposed to do tomorrow anyway? Gynecologist appointment, gym, audition for a vacuum cleaner commercial… Now might be a good time. I have to slip away one day anyway. At least I’d have the say as to when and how.

I’d no longer have to worry about money. That would be a relief. I wouldn’t be afraid I’d get raped running the reservoir, hit by a car or blown up by a terrorist. I wouldn’t have to keep up with fashion trends, do laundry or search for the perfect haircut. I’d never have to overhear another ridiculous cell phone conversation on the bus, or waste my time running ridiculous errands. I wouldn’t have to wait on hold for a representative to come on the line while simultaneously waiting for AOL to get me online, only to waste more time deleting junk e-mail when I finally got there. Never again would I have to press one for more options, or watch Dubya, looking oh so presidential in jeans and cowboy boots, give another inspiring speech recited off a TelePrompTer. I’d never have to hang around and watch people I love grow sick and die, or witness my young face and body turn old. I’d never get some awful disease, shrivel up in the hospital, and lose my dignity while chin hairs grew unruly and unattended. I wouldn’t have to look for a new agent, and I could finally stop dating.

Good idea. Now. How?

Instantly every idea seems awful. No guns. No razors. No noose and no ovens. The only possibility would be pills, and who am I kidding? I don’t have a prescription and I’m not going to get one, because I’m never going to do this. I don’t want to die. I want to get a great acting job, and fall in love, and get married. I want to honeymoon in Italy, and buy a huge co-op on Central Park West. I want to go to Zabar’s, and eat cherry cheese strudel.

With the exception of the cherry cheese strudel, dying seems easier to accomplish. But if I screwed up, which I would because I don’t want to do it, it would only be interpreted as a call for help. Then I’d have to use the balance of my medical insurance to go to some kind of rehab and therapy, and for sure I would lose my apartment. By the time I got back rents would be even more expensive, even more of the good guys would be taken, and everyone would point at me as the one who tried to off herself. It would probably go on my permanent record. No. It’s easier to take two Tylenol, warm up some hot milk, read a chapter of Heartburn and a few tarot cards until I fall back to sleep.

Forget that. I cannot sleep. I am obsessed. Forty and single. My God, wait, I’m forty-five and single! How did this happen? Oh, so what if I am forty-five and single. So was my mother when she married Henry. No, Millie was just forty. And she was Divorced With Child Single, not Never Been Down That Aisle Single. Still, how much worse is it than when I was thirty and single? Or thirty-five and single? Or fort— Oh… Ohh…

Much worse. Much, much worse.

Decades of people’s good-intentioned sayings flash before me.

“It only takes one.”

“There’s lots of other fish in the sea.”

“When it’s right, you know.”

“You’re next.”

“Every pot has a cover.”

“When it’s your time, it will just happen.”

“Let go and it will come to you.”

“You never know what a day brings.”

“What’s yours is still out there.”

“Trust in the universe. All unfolds according to plan.”

Decades of dates flash before me. I think about those men. What were their names? Oh yeah, I remember…and then there was that completely idiotic…and, OH!!, that was truly…

Hmmm… I can think about that. Those stories. Count them like sheep. Instead of feeling mortified, maybe I can laugh. Embrace it. Rejoice. This is it. This is my life!

Well, I don’t have to go that far, but it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to simply accept it as mine. I’m still here. I’m not dead and I can still date. And maybe it’s really not so horrific. Maybe it’s not such a big deal. Maybe you just have to kiss a lot of frogs.

2
Wake Me When We Get There

Flashback—Easter Week

Brooklyn, NY 1969

My mother took me to my favorite store, The Little Princess, on Queens Boulevard to buy the dress. It was dark-blue velvet with an empire waist, and a white satin ribbon that tied under the breasts, though I didn’t have any yet. I wore it when she married Henry.

It was a nice wedding. I was the flower girl. I walked between the folding chairs, and threw rose petals on the hardwood floors of Rabbi Bernstein’s study. Millie, my mother, thought that was a goyishe thing to do, but I had insisted since they always did it that way on TV. The rabbi forgot to pour the wine into the glass, and Henry pretended to drink it during the prayers so as not to hurt his feelings. My mother laughed so hard she shook, and my grandma Rose thought she was crying.

“Now she’s finally taken care of,” my grandma told me when she tucked me into bed that night. I got to stay with my grandma while my mother and Henry went to Miami for their honeymoon. I was sleeping in Grandpa Lou’s bed. My grandparents had had single beds throughout their marriage. Grandpa Lou died three years ago. I was eight. The year before he died my mother brought me to Brooklyn for my Easter vacation to learn how to swim at the local YMCA. It was a special program that guaranteed that in just five days every child would learn how to swim. Faithfully every morning, Grandpa Lou and I walked what felt like miles to the Y. He waited in the lobby while I took my swimming lesson. The instructors called me Blue Eyes and told me I had the prettiest bathing suits. I wore a different one each day. But I hardly got them wet. I only sat on the ledge of the pool like a beauty queen or waded in the shallow end. I didn’t want to go in the water. It was cold. I was scared. After every lesson I would see Grandpa Lou and cry. He didn’t want me to go back. He and Grandma Rose had a big argument about it.

“Gants gut meshuggeh with the swimming lessons,” I heard him tell Grandma Rose in the kitchen. “She’s going to get pneumonia.”

“Sha! The kinder will hear.” Grandma Rose talked in a loud hushed voice. She talked in English and Yiddish. “Millie wants her to learn how to swim,” said my grandmother.

I didn’t want to stop going. I just wanted to stop being scared, and I didn’t know how to do that. So every day we went. Every day I cried. Every day they fought.

At the end of the week my grandmother came down with hives, and my mother came to the final class to see my progress. Every kid swam the length of the pool except me. With much coaxing I was able to do a ball float. I didn’t learn how to swim until Henry taught me.

I lay in Grandpa Lou’s bed and thought about how he would come in the locker room after each lesson. “Cover up,” he said, while he took off his coat and put it over my bathing suit. I could tell Grandma Rose was thinking about him, too, as she tucked me in.

“Are you in tight, mamala?” she asked. She brushed a few wisps of hair off my face and stuck them behind my ear. “You’ll see, Karrie, one day you’ll be a bride. You’ll marry a rich man. He’ll buy you a big diamond ring, and he’ll take care of you. And you’ll do it right the first time. Not like your mother. Okay. That’s finished. Henry’s a good man. A mensch. Not like your father, that clown.”

She wasn’t joking. My real father had run off to join the circus when I was four. At least that’s what I thought. For a few years we received postcards from around the country saying, “Hi, Cookie! What’s doin’ tips and all? The circus has come to town. Love, Mel.”

My mother said he wasn’t really at the circus, he just wrote that. And I wasn’t sure if writing to “Cookie” meant writing to me or my mom. But I always pictured him eating fire and jumping through hoops. Traveling across the country, and putting up circus tents. After a while the cards stopped, and I forgot about him.

Then about a year after the swimming lessons, my mom told me one night that Maggie McGraw from the apartment upstairs would be watching me because she had to pay a shiva call. She told me that Henry Eisenberg’s wife had died. I knew Henry Eisenberg from the neighborhood and he was always nice to me. He lived in the apartment building around the corner.

My mother went to his building that night and took the elevator to the sixth floor. When she got off the elevator she saw an open door. She looked at the name on the door and walked in. Millie said it was raining and she left her wet umbrella in the hall.

My mother went in the living room and sat down. A lit memorial candle burned on the end table. The only person there was an old man. He was sitting on a cardboard box that was supposed to look like a wood crate. That’s what people sat on when they had to sit shiva.

“Where is everybody?” Millie asked. “Where’s Henry?”

“Who’s Henry?” the old man asked. He had an Eastern European accent.

“Who are you?” asked Millie.

“I’m Bernard Aisenberg. I just lost my wife. Who are you?”

“I’m Millie Klein. I was looking for Henry Eisenberg. He just lost his wife.”

Bernard looked at my mother. Then he looked disappointed.

“Does this mean you’re not staying?”

My mother collected her wet umbrella and went across the hall to pay the right shiva call. Apparently her story won a piece of Henry’s heart. It happened slowly, but three years later they wed.

“You’re a whole family now. A mother. A father. You have a stepbrother, Lenny. He’s all grown up and away at college, but still…” said Grandma Rose as she slipped into the bed next to mine. “Better at that age he’s away. The long hair and who knows what else.”

She took out her teeth at night. It made her whole face sag, and her voice sound funny. Grandma Rose looked much, much older. I used to be scared when I was little, but now I was used to it.

“You have a brand-new apartment with your own bedroom,” she said, turning off the night-light. The room was quiet. I heard her breathing and rearranging her blankets. “You have a normal life now. It’s what I always wanted for your mother, and what I want for you.”

A light from the street shone in through the cracks of the venetian blinds. I heard the sound of a car driving by. Brooklyn seemed different to me than Queens. Older. They were both okay, but nothing like Manhattan.

Grandma Rose called Manhattan New York. My mother and I called it The City. I think that had something to do with being from Brooklyn or Queens, but I wasn’t sure. Grandma Rose said when my mother and Henry got married, she would take me to New York to see Radio City and the Rockettes.

“You’ll have to wear sunglasses,” she had told me, “because there are so many bright lights in Radio City it hurts your eyes. Chandeliers there. And colored lights on the stage. Everything glistens. And all the girls are dancing, and wearing sequins, and everybody applauds when they kick their legs in the air. It’s a whole line of girls, but when they kick it goes up like one leg.”

We would be going tomorrow. Tomorrow. I couldn’t wait. I would watch everything the girls did, because when I grew up I would be a Rockette and live in The City.

“A nice normal life for all my girls,” Grandma Rose repeated. I heard her reach for a tissue and blow her nose. “Wouldn’t you like that?”

I didn’t want to lie, and I didn’t want to tell her I was going to be a Rockette, so I didn’t say anything.

“Are you sleeping mamala? She must be asleep. Gai shlofn,” I heard her say, and in the half-lit dark saw her put the tissue under her pillow.

I felt private and secretive as I drifted off to sleep, thinking of everything but a normal life in Queens.

3
Nottingham Forest

Memorial Day Weekend

The Catskills, Upstate NY 1988

“I bought extra just for you,” said Henry, taking a slab of lox and tucking it into an onion-and-garlic bagel. “You know you can have another one. You’re thin. You can afford it.”

“I’m really not that hungry,” I said, picking up the Sunday Daily News and fishing for the comics. The Parade section caught my eye and I started to read. “My husband and I are having a disagreement. I said that David Cassidy was the only son of Shirley Jones on The Partridge Family, but my husband insists that Shaun played the youngest Partridge. Life here hasn’t been the same since. Who is right? Conflicted in Connecticut.”

“I’m making eggs,” my mother yelled out from inside the house. I positioned myself near the screen door to be able to carry on a conversation with both of them. I watched my mother pour the yellow liquid into the frying pan. “This is the best part about being up here,” she said, stuffing the eggshells down the garbage disposal and flicking the switch. “I wish we had one of these in Queens.”

“The modern miracles of the Catskills,” I said, picking up the I Love My Grandparents mug Lenny’s wife Sharon had sent from Boston. It had pictures of their two-year-old twin girls on it. “Good coffee, Ma.”

“Henry made it.”

“I love it up here,” said Henry, setting up his bagel, cigar, paper, radio and fisherman’s cap on a plastic table, ready to embark on a day of sitting out on the deck and watching the resort community of Nottingham Forest walk by.

“Maybe when you retire you guys should live here all year,” I said.

“No, too cold,” said Henry.

“The winters are too cold,” yelled out my mother, who kept up her end of the conversation from the kitchen.

“Too much ice in the winter,” said Henry.

“You know how icy it gets up here in winter?” said Millie.

“We’ll stay in Queens, and when we retire we’ll go to Florida,” said Henry.

“We’re going to Florida. I want to be near my brother. We’ll live by Uncle Sy and Aunt Cookie,” said Millie.

“We want to be near family,” said Henry, from the deck. “In Florida it’s warm.”

“It’s warm,” said Millie, from the kitchen. “Why should I freeze?”

“We don’t need to be cold,” said Henry, getting up and sliding open the screen door in an attempt to hear.

“Shut it. The mosquitoes.” Millie turned to me. “Karrie, come in here and help me carry this platter.”

I nibbled at a piece of lox and stared down the whitefish with its bulging eyes before I went into the house.

“Have you called your machine since you’re here?” Millie asked, removing the eggs from the frying pan and putting them on a Lucite platter. She handed it to me, then lifted the arm of the faucet and drew some water into the pan to unfasten the pieces of egg that stuck to the nonstick Teflon.

“No. Not since Friday.” I brought the platter out to the deck and put it on the outside table.

“Maybe someone called. Maybe you have an audition,” she said, wiping her hand with a dish towel as she joined me at the table outside. “Henry. Eggs?”

Henry looked up from his beach chair and shook his head.

“You just want to know if that doctor guy from the park called.” I took a fork and started eating the eggs from the serving platter.

“Put it on a plate,” said Millie.

“I don’t want a lot.”

“I don’t care how much you want. But if you want some, put it on a plate. Don’t eat like that, Karen, it’s not nice.” My mom put some eggs on my plate. I knew she meant it because she called me Karen, and not Karrie. “It doesn’t matter if I care if the doctor called you or not. It matters if you care. It’s your life.” She took a bite of her eggs. “So, did he call?”

“Yes. He’s working this weekend. He called to say he’s on call. Don’t get so excited. We’ve only been out a few times.”

“Who’s excited? I’m not excited. It doesn’t matter to me.”

It mattered to her. And it mattered to me but I didn’t want to tell her. I had just turned thirty and I had met a Jewish doctor. I was a cliché. What’s more, I really liked him, but he seemed a little remote. I was trying to be cool, something I wasn’t very good at.

“I had a blind date last week,” I said, opening up a new can of worms, giving more information than necessary, illustrating just how cool I was not. I needed to take the attention off the doctor guy because I didn’t want to appear overly interested in case it didn’t work out. I had enough trouble dealing with my own feelings about these things without having to worry about my mother’s. “My voice coach set me up with his high school buddy.”

“How was that?”

“Delightful.” This was easy. A straight case of an idiot guy. I was off the hook. “We ate in Chinatown,” I told my mother, “we walked around. Then we got on the subway, he said he’d take me home. When we were approaching Times Square he asked if he’d be able to come in when we got uptown. I told him if he wanted we could watch the news and I’d make some tea. He said he didn’t want tea and he wasn’t interested in the news. He wanted to make out with me on my couch. And if I had no interest in making out with him I should let him know, because Times Square was where he made his connection and he didn’t want to wind up uptown and have to pay another token to go home if, ultimately, he wasn’t going to get what he wanted.”

My mother looked heartbroken. “I don’t know what’s wrong with these guys,” she said, finishing her eggs. “I think the whole world’s crazy.” Millie paused. “You didn’t go home and make out with him after that I hope.”

“You want me to even answer you?”

“What can I tell you,” Millie said, when there was really nothing to say.

“Let me clean up,” I said.

“It’s all right. I’ll do it.” Millie collected the dishes and brought them inside the house.

Henry waved to the neighbors across the way. Molly Berger, and her husband, Hal, were on their deck playing with their grandchildren. The kids saw Henry and waved back. Henry was a kid magnet. He started to play with them by throwing his cap in the air and pretending not to be able to catch it. The children watched from across the court. Whenever the cap seemed to almost touch bottom, they squealed with delight, only to get more excited when Henry actually caught it.

Molly motioned for Hal to keep both eyes on the kids when she saw me on the deck. She left hers and walked across to ours. Her gold sandals clacked against the wood as she made her way up the stairs.

“Karrie, hello,” she said, pulling me into her large frame and hugging me. “How are you? When did you get up?”

“Two days ago.”

“Really? I didn’t see you. What have you been doing?”

“You want a cold drink?” Henry asked her. “It’ll only take a minute. We’ve got iced tea, seltzer, sodas, whatever you want.”

“No. I just had something with the kids. I’m running back,” said Molly, pulling over a chair and sitting down.

“So tell me…” she said, as if I knew what it was I was supposed to tell.

“Tell you…?”

“Everything!”

“About?”

“You know…”

Molly and I were in cahoots. And the fact that I was clueless didn’t seem to make any difference. She looked at me and crossed her arms. “Karrie, you’re a smart girl. What do you think I’m talking about?”

“Molly, no offense. I have no idea.”

“You seeing anybody? I love to talk with single girls,” she confessed to Henry. “I know you just turned thirty so you must be interested in settling down.”

I looked up at Henry and smiled a closemouthed smile. Actually it was much more like a grimace.

“How are your grandchildren?” I asked Molly, changing the subject. “They look cute. How old are they now?”

“Jessica’s three and Zachary’s five next month. Wendy has her hands full. But my Scotty does very well, thank God, and she has help. You know, they have a very big house in Roslyn. You should visit. Maybe Scott has some friends for you.” She winked.

“Yeah,” I said, standing up and walking a few feet away. I put my leg up against the edge of the deck and knelt over it, stretching my calves as I contemplated a run.

“Grandma Molly, come here.” Molly turned her head to see Zachary on the deck calling her. “We’re hungry.”

“I should be getting back.” Molly stood and waved to Millie through the glass door. “See you later,” she said, walking to the edge of the deck and putting her hand on the handrail for support. “Don’t worry, Karrie. In this world all you need is a little mazel.”

“What was that?” I said. Henry went back to his paper. He didn’t want to get involved. “What was that, Henry? What’s the matter with her?”

“Keep your voice down,” he said, reaching to light his cigar. “She only meant well.”

My mother came back outside wearing a green-and-black-striped bathing suit with a white chiffon kerchief wrapped around her head.

“Who meant well?” Millie asked as she unfolded a reclining beach chair. She lay down on the chair, pulled the straps of her bathing suit down and basked in the sun.

“Do me a favor and don’t talk to anyone about me, Ma, okay?” I decided I would go for a run around the lake. I decided I might jump in.

“What did I say?”

“Nothing, no one said anything,” said Henry.

“She comes over here,” I said to my mother, pointing my head toward the Berger house, “and has a one-way dialogue with me, about my life. Asks the questions and even answers them herself.”

“Don’t pay attention,” my mother said. “I just wouldn’t answer her.”

“Just don’t pay attention,” said Henry.

I stopped stretching, stood up and leaned over my mother in her reclining position.

“What do you mean? Just have someone sit and invade my privacy and not care? Not answer? Just sit and let people talk at me as if they were talking to a wall?”

“I don’t know why you’re getting so worked up about this,” Henry said, flicking his cigar ashes into an ashtray. “She means well.”

Millie folded her right hand across her chest, holding her bathing suit up, while she used her left to prop up her body.

“I don’t know why you take everything so personally,” she said.

“She’s talking about me. It’s personal.”

“She doesn’t mean anything by it. It’s just conversation, Karrie.”

“Mom. It’s condescending.”

“It’s not condescending, it’s talk. If you were happy it wouldn’t bother you.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just what I said. If you were happy it wouldn’t bother you.”

“What makes you think I’m not happy?”

“I don’t want to talk anymore,” Millie said, lying back down. “Talk to Henry.”

“People just want to see you happy,” he explained.

“People just want to gossip,” I said.

“So what?” said Millie. “What do you care?”

“Would you like people to come to you and feel they can comment on your life?”

“There’s nothing to comment on in my life,” said my mother. “My life is normal.”

“And what does that mean?”

“My life is a normal life,” my mother said defiantly. “I have a normal job, a husband, a daughter, a house. Normal.”

“By whose standards?” I was furious. “What makes you think anyone around here sets the standard for normalcy?” I made a grand gesture to the entire development of Nottingham Forest. It was just built and in its first year. I didn’t know anyone there so it was doubtful Molly and Hal did set the standard, but it proved my point. Or at least it tried to prove the only point I had.

“All right,” said Henry, putting out his cigar, “let’s drop it.”

“Let’s not,” I said.

“Let’s,” said my mother. “Let’s not ruin this day. You’re upset because you just turned thirty and you’re not married.”

“That’s absolutely not true! You’re upset that I just turned thirty and I’m not married. I’m not.” I wasn’t. But I was a little upset that I had just turned thirty. And I was a little more upset that I didn’t currently have a steady boyfriend. And I was really upset that I had just been released from being on hold for three national commercials. But that wasn’t the point. None of this was. Molly Berger was an annoying Yenta and nobody came to my defense. Nobody would let me say what I feel.

“I’m not upset about anything. I’m completely happy,” I said. “Completely.”

“Good,” said my mom. She resumed her reclining position on the beach chair. “Just keep in mind that it gets harder to meet someone as you get older. People meet when they’re in college. That’s the place to meet.”

“That’s where Lenny met Sharon,” said Henry.

“First of all, Henry, Lenny met Sharon after college. After graduate school. Years after. In a bar in Boston. You may have college mixed up with college town. Second of all, I didn’t want to get married to anybody in college. I don’t even want to get married to anybody now. I’m an actress.”

“So what does one thing have to do with the other?”

It was the first question my mother posed that made any sense and I started to think about it. I wanted to talk about it. What did one thing have to do with the other?

“Okay, I’ll tell you something, Mom.” I wasn’t sure if this was an answer, but it felt like the beginning to understanding the question. “This is the thing.” I looked across to see that the Bergers were safely ensconced in their house and out of earshot. “I have a much more interesting life than Wendy. I’m an actress. I live in the city. I go out all the time to concerts, theater. I take classes. I date all these guys. I’m single!”

“Keep your voice down,” said Henry. “We don’t need the neighbors to know our business.”

“Why not? They know it anyway. They may as well hear it from the horse’s mouth and get it straight.”

“Do you want to go home?” my mother asked. “If you’re going to be like this just go home and don’t ruin my weekend.”

“I’m trying to talk to you.”

“And I’m talking to you. Wendy is a lucky girl that she met Scott. And Wendy has a very interesting life. She has a husband, Karrie. Children. A house.”

“How interesting can that be? Come on, Ma. They live in the suburbs. They go to malls. She’s a dental hygienist.”

“Fine. Don’t get married. Don’t have children. Don’t do anything normal. Stay in the city. Stay single. Just leave me alone and don’t complain.”

I walked away from the conversation and into the house. I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand my mother. I didn’t understand Henry. I thought I understood Molly, but so what. I didn’t understand why anyone thought there would be any consequences to not marrying by thirty. I didn’t understand why anyone thought that was remotely important. I didn’t understand why it all bothered me so much, and I certainly didn’t understand how to understand it.

I always had a date. I met a lot of guys. I just assumed that by the time I was, oh, I don’t know…thirty-seven or -eight, or my God, even forty, one of these guys would just work out. Meanwhile, all I wanted was to work and make money acting and have a boyfriend and have fun. I wanted to go with the flow. I admit it often felt like going against the tide, but I really wanted to enjoy my life and enjoy being me.

I bent down to put on my running shoes. I would run. I would run it out of my system. And I would feel. Better.

“Oh!!!” I turned around and saw Henry behind me. He had followed me into the house, but I didn’t see.

“Don’t say anything,” said Henry as he slid the door closed. “Let’s just drop it and keep the peace with you and your mother. But you’ll see,” he said, all-knowing. “One day you’ll meet someone and you’ll forget about the acting and the city. You’ll have a change of heart. Settle down. You’ll feel different.”

I looked at my stepdad. I knew he meant well, and I knew he believed his theory. Perhaps for some it was that easy, and perhaps for others it was that true. But in my gut I knew he was wrong.

4
David's Dad

Rosh Hashana

Central Park West, NYC 1988

Rosh Hashana. One of the holiest days of the year in Judaism. And I was in rehearsal for a show. To be a nun, no less.

I was invited to spend the holiday with David’s family and was pretty happy about this. I had met David a few months back in Central Park. We were both running the reservoir. We passed each other and smiled. When we passed each other on the second lap I gave him a flirtatious little wave, one finger at a time, then dashed out of the park. About five minutes later I heard, “Hey, wait up. Aren’t you the woman who was running?” I turned around to see David standing on the corner of Fifth and 90th Street catching his breath and waiting for my response. David said he was a little out of shape. He was a first-year surgical intern at Lenox Hill Hospital and spent most of his time off call asleep.

The adrenaline was pumping as I showered and changed at the rehearsal studio downtown. The show was rehearsing in New York, but would be running in Philadelphia. I’d be leaving town the following week for an open-ended run. I was superexcited about spending the holiday with David and his family. I hadn’t met anyone yet, and was told that everyone would be at his aunt and uncle’s, including Grandpa Max who was a little deaf.

We were to meet at five o’clock at his parents’ apartment off the park at West 92nd. Five o’clock sharp I arrived with a bottle of wine, a shopping bag filled with my tap shoes, and a big hand puppet that looked like a nun. A prop for one of my numbers.

His mother answered the door.

“Hi! I’m Kitty. Come in.” I was taken with this very attractive and svelte woman. The apartment was open and pretty too.

“You can put your things over there. David tells me you do something creative. What is it?”

“I’m an actress,” I said, hiding Sister Mary Annette. I stood for an awkward moment. “Uh—thanks for having me. It’s real nice to be with a family on the holidays. I’m working, and my folks are in Florida with my aunt and uncle.”

“A Jewish girl?” Kitty looked shocked. “With that light coloring and those blue eyes! Sid, come out here. Your son brought home a Jewish girl.”

Sid bounded from the bedroom adjusting his bow tie.

“Hi, there,” he beamed. “Welcome.”

Kitty went into the kitchen to prepare some hors d’oeuvres, and suggested Sid and I get acquainted. We sat on the big beige sofa.

“David tells me you’re a retired gynecologist,” I said. “My doctor’s on 79th and Park.”

“My practice was across the street. You know, Karrie, lots of my patients were artists. Writers, actresses, painters. Sometimes they couldn’t afford to pay me in money, so they paid me with their work.”

He pointed to several beautiful paintings that hung in the living room.

“I love these. We had more, but when we sold the house in New Jersey we couldn’t take everything. Actually, these mean more to me than the money.”

Kitty came in with drinks. We talked about my show.

“May I see what you’ve got in that shopping bag?” she asked. “I’m dying of curiosity.”

I pulled out “Sister” and let her sing a few bars.

“I love it when she projects her voice like that!” said Sid.

“You could give David some lessons,” said Kitty. “Speaking of—where is he?”

“I bet he’s asleep,” I said.

Kitty went into the kitchen to call.

“David works hard,” said Sid. “It was rough when I did it too. We’ve been getting lots of David’s mail. All sorts of literature on orthopedic surgery. I’ve been reading it all, so in my spare time I can become an expert on orthopedics.”

Sid was warm and proud.

“I know what’s next for you, Karrie. A white picket fence, a couple of children…”

“Oh, God,” I said. “I guess in time, but what would I do all day? I’d go crazy. I have to work.”

“You’re right,” Sid agreed. “It’s different now. A woman needs to work too. Right now Kitty works and I stay home. People need their own interests. Their own validation. A couple can’t be together twenty-four hours a day all the time. But having kids is great. My three children were educated right from the start. And this is the result. My son Greg is a CPA, Stew is a dentist and David is following in my footsteps.”

It was obvious his youngest was special to him. And David felt the same. The day I met David he told me he was having dinner with his “Daddy” that evening. He wanted to spend as much time with him as possible since his dad suffered a severe heart and kidney problem. Diabetes. Looking at this man aglow, I’d never have known it.

“I’m going to give David a buzz too,” he said. “Knowing him, he fell back to sleep.” As he moved toward the phone he looked at me. “Just wait. After tonight we’ll have you married off!”

“Oh!” I wanted to sound surprised, as if the thought had not occurred to me. However, I’d been thinking about it a little more seriously all summer. Well—not that seriously, and not with much intensity. A boyfriend, a steady boyfriend, a relationship, that was important. That was imminent. But marriage? When college ended, I considered myself too young. I was always “just in my twenties.” But now I was thirty. That was an age, as everyone made certain to keep reminding me. But more important, I liked how this felt. I liked David, his mother, and I was really liking his dad. They liked me, and art and culture. It was everything all rolled into one. And best of all, they lived in the city!

About half an hour later David arrived. His dad pulled him around in a big bear hug.

“How’s my boy? Sit down next to me and tell me how you are. You look great.”

I watched the two of them, side by side, and noticed similar mannerisms. Particularly a certain way they would convey comprehension.

“Uh-huh,” nodded Sid.

“Uh-huh,” nodded David.

I could see David thirty-five years from now. I began wanting to see David thirty-five years from now.

As we got ready to leave, David asked to borrow one of his father’s ties. Sid and I watched him knot the tie in the mirror.

“He’s the apple of my eye,” his dad told me. “I love all my children very much and never played favorites, but my youngest, this one, he’s the apple of my eye. I adore him.”

We went across the street to David’s aunt and uncle’s apartment for dinner. The table in their dining room was surrounded by family. His cousin, Paul, was there with his wife, Judy, who was seven months pregnant with their first child. We ate and laughed and enjoyed ourselves. After dessert Sid sat next to me and looked to his dad, Max, a psychiatrist who was talking with David.

“That’s Dr. Friedman Number One,” he said, pointing to his father, “Dr. Friedman Number Two,” he said, pointing to himself, “and Dr. Friedman Number Three,” he finished, as he pointed to David. “Three Dr. Friedmans!”

“Isn’t it nice to spend the holiday with your family, David?” Kitty asked several times during the meal.

“I remember when all these kids were little and running around this table,” said Sid. “Now everyone’s grown up and most of them live away. This is what’s left of the New York contingent. It’s up to this generation to carry on. Start the cycle all over again.” It was a warm family. Smart, cultured and most of all, welcoming. For the first time I realized the implications of being, virtually, an only child. I didn’t have much of a relationship with my stepbrother, Lenny, or his wife or kids. Unlike David’s family, with siblings and the promise of nieces and nephews and generations to come, in mine it would be up to me to start the cycle all over again. I was feeling eager to oblige.

The evening came to an end. We rode down in the elevator and said our goodbyes on the street. Sid walked over to me and David. “Take care of her,” he said. “She’s bright, she’s articulate, she’s a nice kid. Take care of her.”

Then Sid turned to face me. “Take care of him, okay?”

We all hugged goodbye. Sid looked at us once more.

“Take care of each other.”

“So…” I said, as David and I walked west towards the park. The evening was a complete success. I had been uncertain as to how things were progressing between us, and I thought tonight had clarified them. It certainly had for me. I knew where I wanted to stand. I turned to David, expecting him to put his arm around me with possession and pride. I had been completely accepted by his family. His dad. I smiled at him.

“That was fun,” I said, breaking the silence. “Thank you.”

“Yeah,” he said, putting his hands in his pocket. “I don’t make that much of these things. I’m glad you came though. I’m worried about my dad. Okay if we walk back to your place instead of a cab?”

There it was again. Nothing that said this is great and nothing that said it was over. We walked south on Central ParkWest toward my apartment on 78th Street. We walked in the relationship silence. Not the good kind where you know you can’t wait to get each other home and into bed, but the ambivalent kind. The kind where one person has more power because they know they’re the one who’s holding back. But they’re not telling you they’re holding back, and since you don’t really know this for sure, and you certainly don’t want to make a big deal out of nothing and create a problem that may not even exist, you decide you’re overly sensitive, paranoid, insecure. All of the above. You have no choice but to smile sweetly, keep your unspoken agreement in the relationship silence, and hope the other person will break it. That any second it will be broken by him seductively pushing you up against the bricks of the next building, off to the side of the burgundy awning, gently moving his hands across your cheeks, pulling back your hair and tenderly, deeply, passionately kissing you and kissing you and whispering in your ear, “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go home.” On the other hand, you could suddenly find yourself on 78th Street turning right to Amsterdam Avenue and wonder how you got there.

“David, do you want to come up?” The telling moment that can make or break it.

“Sure, I’ll stay.”

We rang for the elevator and I thought about the summer. One night in July I had just gotten back home after a weekend on the Cape. I felt really good, my skin was a little tanned and my hair had that great windblown look from sailing. I was wearing a pair of white shorts and a short sleeveless green tank top. My best friend Jane had come over. I looked at her when the buzzer rang.

“Expecting someone?” she asked.

The abrupt sound of the buzzer caught us in the middle of “haircut interruptus.” Jane had just gotten back from ten months on the road doing the lead in a national tour. She played a character in a fairy-tale musical where people appeared to be destined to live unhappily ever after. Despite her better judgment she got her hair cut in Detroit, just before returning to New York. We were in my bathroom pushing her thick black hair in every direction desperately trying to make it right. We had met on a national tour years earlier, rocking and rolling our way through high school in the fifties. Jane was full of passion and insight, loved her work and family. And even in the face of the haircut drama had the great vision to know that ultimately “it would grow.” I really admired her for that. I pressed the intercom and heard David’s sleepy voice.

“Hey—can I come up?”

“Yeah,” I said, before even checking with Jane. “That’s him! That’s the doctor guy. You’ll get to meet him.”

David came up to my apartment and had his bike with him. He had been riding around the city and missed me. I was very excited he showed up. But the excitement of surprising me, meeting my friend and telling me I was beautiful quickly evaporated, and the three of us just sat there in an awkward quiet till Jane said it was time for her to leave.

“I’ll walk you down to the lobby, Janey,” I said. “David, hang out. I’ll be right back.”

I stood in the elevator with Jane waiting for approval. Nothing came.

“So?” I wanted her to say something great about him.

“He’s cute,” she said.

“Yeah. He is, isn’t he? The dark hair and eyes.”

“And he seems to like you a lot.”

“Yeah? Yeah.”

The elevator opened and a couple with a little terrier got in. We stood in front of the glass double doors.

“What, Jane. You can tell me.”

Jane looked at me with eyes that said she wanted to be a good friend and didn’t want to hurt me.

“I’m just not a fan of ambivalent relationships,” she said.

“Oh. That.” My heart sunk. I knew she was right. I wound up missing David even when I was with him. He was far away when he was right next to me. Was it the hospital, his schedule, his dad, me? Or was it just David? When I went back upstairs David was already asleep.

Now, almost two months later, nothing between us had become any more clear. Except now I would be working in Philadelphia for an unknown amount of time. I decided the distance would be good. Our visits would be great. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. And I decided it wasn’t me, it wasn’t David, it wasn’t us and it wasn’t work. I decided David was just concerned about Sid.

He talked about his father our last night together before I left town with the show. “You do know, David, that you’re really lucky to have a dad like that.”

David knew. David also knew his father’s health was failing. So as the year progressed he did all he could to get through the intern program and make his father proud. But David was unhappy. He probably suffered more from sleep deprivation than unhappiness, but his undefined unhappiness gnawed at him. It colored our relationship gray. Murky. Ambivalent. Still, I wanted David. I wanted to belong to what seemed so appealing during the holiday. I spent the next six months in Philadelphia missing David, playing a nun and living like one.

In the spring David and I took a vacation to St. Barts. I had high hopes. The island was gorgeous and David and I were great travel partners. We rented a Jeep and he drove through the hills like James Bond. Every night we drank a bottle of wine on a new beach and brought in the sunset. We skinny-dipped and ate fabulous French food. We hiked and took a boat to St. Marten. We did everything you do on a vacation but make love. By the end of the week David went back into his ambivalent silence and we broke up on the plane coming home.

I was very sad to lose David and, as time went on, realized I was very sad to lose Sid. The night David brought me home from Philly, we stopped up to see Sid and Kitty. Sid had been in bed all day. His birthday party was canceled. He was not receiving guests. When we arrived, Sid came out of his room wearing a Dartmouth sweatshirt and jeans. He looked ten years older than when we had first met.

“Do you know how close Sid feels to you to be able to have you visit?” Kitty asked while I was helping her in the kitchen with the coffee.

Sid was quiet that night, but let me know how important I was. How good I was for David.

“I hope David thinks so,” I told his father. I wanted to tell Sid to make David stop it. To wake up. To open up and let go. But a father cannot do that for a son. A person can only do that for himself. I needed to think about me and what I was really getting from David, and not what I hoped I would get from David “if only.”

I called the Friedman house a few times after our breakup, and ran into Kitty once in H&H buying bagels. Then one night as I was drifting off to sleep, finally feeling better having turned the corner on David, he called.

“My father died,” David cried into the phone. “He was in his bed at home, in his sleep. I just saw him that day. He told me his disappointment in our breakup. He had told me I could never do better than you. I miss my daddy.”

David came over and we made love. Real love. Free and unencumbered, tender and a little wild. We decided to try again after Sid was buried. And it worked. For a little while. A very little, little while. Perhaps I represented a link David had to his dad. However, it did not make him more appreciative of me. He was just going through the motions. I was reactive. I would react to David’s moods. His advances and withdrawals. I twisted into positions like a Gumby, until I finally made myself stop.

David missed his father. I missed his father too. And I missed my father. My idea of a father. I sure loved Henry, but it never was a substitute for not knowing my real father. Mel had become a fictional character in my life. The clown who threw all the emotions of my childhood up in the air and juggled them like colored balls, unconcerned if they stayed up there or crashed to the floor.

In my mind, David had had the perfect suburban childhood. I assumed the love David received from his dad made everything easy for him. I assumed anyone who had a dad like David’s grew up happy. I didn’t get David’s darkness. I made an open-and-shut case that didn’t hold water. Perfect father equals perfect life. Not true. Nonetheless, I kept to my theory and hoped it would turn David into who I wanted him to be. And I thought my connection to David and Sid would turn me into everything I wanted to be. That it would erase everything Mel was unable to be. Mel. An embarrassment. My secret. On dark days, the likes of Mel made me question myself. Made me think I could never get a guy like David. But what was a guy like David? Only over time could I see that a guy like David wasn’t worth having.

Life moved on and I chose to keep David out of mine.

5
Whose Party Is This Anyway

Daylight Saving Time Ends

Grand Central Station, NYC 1989

I stood at a pay phone on the corner of 42nd and Madison, checking my answering machine in the hope there would be a message that anyone called to hire me to do anything. New York City was in a recession. I suppose the rest of the country was too, but they were not my concern. I was concerned about me on the island of Manhattan. My unemployment claim was about to expire, I only had two regional commercials running and I needed a job. There were no messages. I thought I’d check again. My change fell back down into the slot and then dropped on the ground. I bent down to pick it up, but I couldn’t see a thing. We had moved the clocks back last night and now I was well rested, but felt blind. I could barely see. It was so dark out and still so early! It couldn’t be much past lunchtime, I thought. I tilted my watch up toward the streetlights and saw, in fact, that it was almost rush hour. As I gathered up my dimes and nickels, I noticed a pair of familiar feet walk by.

“Fred,” I called out, stopping my friend in his tracks. “Where are you going?” I stood up, putting my change back in my purse.

“To work.”

“Wow! Work. What do you do?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m working at Whiting and Ransom,” he said. He was totally not excited. “They call it a law firm, but it seems more like a cover for white slavers to me. Ransom indeed… Right.”

“Oh. So. Really. What do you do there?”

Fred paused for dramatic effect before he finally answered.

“Proofreading.”

“Proofreading,” I said. “Really! You know how to do that?” I was impressed.

“Any idiot can learn.” Fred had just finished doing a showcase production Off-Off B’way where he played a woman. He looked pretty good with red lipstick and dangling earrings. It had gotten him great attention and an agent, but apparently it hadn’t readily turned into income.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Me? No place. I have no job. Hey,” I said, “I’ll walk you to yours, okay?”

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll have to go through Grand Central. I’m working there two days and I already know all the shortcuts.”

I loved rush hour in New York. Swarms of people moved by us in rapid succession. It was like a movie montage of people hurrying, scurrying to buses, trains and planes. Fred worked the graveyard shift and went to work at five o’clock when everyone else went home.

“This is great!” I said. “I don’t get this in my apartment.”

I accompanied Fred through Grand Central Station, onto the escalator into the Pan Am Building, and continued to ride the elevator with him to his office. I walked him down the hall and into reception, when he finally turned and blocked me with his hand.

“You have to stop! Now! You can’t go farther than this. You can’t come with me to work,” said Fred.

“But what am I going to do?” I walked Fred to the end of the reception area, peeking through the archway into the long hallway. “Hey. How do the guys look here? Have you had time to check anyone out?”

Fred and I had met in acting class five years earlier. The teacher assigned us a scene where I played a girl whose plans to hang herself were put on hold until she met her new next-door neighbor. Just in case he turned out To Be Somebody.

A nice-looking guy whisked by us down the corridor. I followed him with my eyes until I saw the band of gold glittering from a stack of briefs. “Too bad,” I told Fred. “So, any cute lawyers around here you can fix me up with?”

“I’m looking for the same thing myself,” said Fred.

“Well, keep your eyes open! For both of us!”

“We’ll double,” said Fred, pointing for me to walk back to the direction of the elevator bank. “I don’t want to be late.”

“How are things going with Larry? Good? Maybe one night you and Larry, and me and a lawyer cou—”

“I’ll talk to you later,” said Fred, literally pushing me toward the elevator.

“Maybe tomorrow,” I called out after him. “Maybe tonight,” I said, getting into the elevator. “I can call you here. I bet I can get a job accompanying people to their jobs. What do you think?”

The elevator doors shut tight before I found out.

Earlier that day I tried to sign up with a Temp Agency. STAR TEMPS: YOU CAN STILL BE A STAR WHILE YOU WAIT FOR THAT BREAK! The moment I walked in the door I knew I did not want to be there. They gave me a written test.

Here are three numbers: 162, 539 and 287.

Which number is the biggest?

Which number is the second biggest?

Which number is the third biggest?

Not the smallest, the third biggest. There were thirty-five problems. That made a page of one hundred and five sets of numbers. My eyes were starting to cross. 1086975, 1097656, 1086456. There were no commas. I was losing my mind. I went to the guy at the desk. I did not want to take the test.

“I do not want to take this test,” I said to the guy at the desk. “I am a college graduate. I know how to count.”

“If you want to be a file clerk you have to take this test,” he said.

“I don’t want to file.”

“Are you saying you don’t want to be a clerk?”

“I’ll be a clerk,” I said. “But I don’t want to file.”

“All clerks have to file. Unless you type. You type?”

“I do. I’ll be a typist.”

“Clerk-Typist,” said the guy. “Is that what you want to be?”

“Yes. Yes! That’s exactly what I want to be. And Receptionist.”

“What?”

“Receptionist,” I said. “I can answer the phone.”

“Well, which? Clerk-Typist or Receptionist?”

“Both.”

“Both? What do you mean?”

“Clerk-Typist Slash Receptionist. That’s what I mean. I can type. I can answer the phone.”

“I don’t get it.”

“There’s nothing to get. I can do both. I can type. I can answer the phone. Clerk-Typist Slash Receptionist,” I said looking into his blank face, feeling the need to repeat it as if I was speaking Greek.

“Oh. Then you have to take a typing test.”

I left.

It had started to rain. I reached into my bag for my umbrella and pulled out a recent copy of Backstage. There was an ad for an audition cross-town in Hell’s Kitchen for a show. A nonpaying show. A showcase. A musical. The call was for WOMEN: TWENTIES AND THIRTIES. I fit.

I walked from STAR TEMPS until I saw a small sign pounded into the brick wall along the side of an alley on 52nd Street near Ninth Avenue. The sign had the initials ACT. Artists Creating Theater.

I entered. The place looked like an old-fashioned casino in the Catskills that had been ransacked. An unkempt, overweight man sat next to his disheveled-looking ten-year-old son who was singing along with the out-of-tune piano. Finally the man playing the piano spoke.

“Would you like to sing something a cappella?” he asked me.

Actually, no…I did not want to sing something a cappella.

“What are my other options?” I asked.

“I can play a couple of chords,” he said.

He kept his word and played a four-chord introduction. My song was from the musical Fiorello.

“What a situation, ain’t it awful,” I sang a cappella.

The phone rang.

“Keep singing,” said the big guy. “Come on, Timmy,” he said to his son. “Let’s go answer it.”

The guy at the piano who had played the four chords stopped my singing. He told me he was really a songwriter and began teaching me a song from the show.

“What’s the piece about?” I asked.

“Well,” he said. “I wrote ‘It’s No Party.’ Remember that song? ‘It’s No Party.’”

“Sure, I remember,” I said.

“This is a musical about that song,” he said. “It’s about all of those people.”

“What do you know!” I was speechless.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Remember Ditzy left with Donny? Well, they got married. Now it’s over thirty years later and they’re getting divorced.”

“You don’t say!”

“You’d be Ditzy’s daughter who moved back with her mother because she’s also getting divorced. She and her ex-husband-to-be have a great number together where they fight over who gets the furniture.”

“Is it good furniture?”

The songwriter took a moment to chuckle at this. He looked to me to respond.

“Gee, what an interesting concept,” I told him. “When do you open?”

“We are open. We’re running,” he said. “We play Monday nights. I’m double-casting the show. It’s a big hit, you see, a really big hit, and the guy who plays your ex just got picked up for a new show. He’s hot. They saw him in this show and everybody wants him. I can’t afford to lose any more actors. That’s why I’m double-casting. Everybody in this show is hot. Really hot.”

“That’s, um…great!” I said. “Really great.”

“Hey, you’ve got to take this call,” the big guy yelled across the casino. “It’s California. Important. Someone who might want to do the show.”

“Well, thanks,” I said, gathering my music.

“Please don’t go yet,” he said. “I like your voice. You have a good sound. This will just take a minute.” He walked over to the black dial phone that was mounted under the sign that read Things Go Better With Coke.

I sat a few minutes and waited.

“Hey, Timmy knows every song from the show,” said the big guy. “Listen to him sing. He’s terrific. Timmy, sing a couple of songs for the girl. You don’t mind?”

“No,” I said. “No, not at all.”

Timmy sang. And sang. And sang. Timmy wasn’t bad. Fifteen minutes later he pooped out. The songwriter was still on the phone. I bid Timmy adieu, wished him luck and headed for the door. I stopped by the phone and tapped the songwriter on the shoulder.

“It’s getting late. I have to go,” I said. “Thanks.”

He stopped talking and cupped his hand over the mouthpiece. “I like your voice,” he said. “You have a really good sound. I’ll invite you to see the show. You’ll get a call.”

Out in the alley I could still hear him talking. Long-distance.

“Send me your tapes. I need to hear your sound. Can you send them overnight express? We’re moving fast on this one. It’s a big show. I wrote it. Remember the song ‘It’s No Party’? You do? Well, I wrote that. Yeah, ‘It’s No Party.’ That’s my song.”

I hoped for the songwriter all would go well. It was, after all, the darkest day of the year.

6
A Clue in Time Saves Nine

Tisha B’av

Greenwich Village, NYC 1990

He was funny. At first, nothing special to look it. On a closer look—still nothing special to look at. But definitely funny. He had definite appeal.

Fred, and his boyfriend, Larry, were having a picnic in the park. It was supposed to be a big group, but turned out to be the three of us and a couple and their baby from the next blanket who visited for a while. Just as we were finishing the Brie, a friend of Larry’s from his gym showed up. Some guy he recently met who decided to show Larry the proper way to use free weights.

“You’re only two and half hours late,” said Larry. He started to pack up the small remains of what had been a feast. You come late, you don’t eat. He didn’t say it, but he said it. “Where were you?”

The guy went into an elaborate explanation of not being able to find us.

“The Turtle Pond, in front of the rocks in the middle, directly to the side of the Delacorte Theater,” said Larry. “How hard is that?” Larry was an accountant. Everything was black or white.

“Did you know all the lampposts have the street numbers written on them? If you can decode it you can never get lost in Central Park. It took me hours till I could find someone to break the code. By then I was at 105th Street, looking at the gardens—which by the way are really beautiful—before I figured it out and came down here.”

I looked at him with his balding head and life jumping out of his pores. He was out of his mind. He could not have been that lost as to not realize he was miles out of his way. Still, I was interested to know about the lampposts.

“Come on,” he said, looking at the two guys lounging on the blanket with all the food obviously eaten. “Take a walk with me and I’ll show you.”

We walked and talked. Andy told me a lot about himself. Too much in fact. He had just come back from Paris where a fortuneteller told him that he, Andrew Ackerman from Bayside, Queens, was a reincarnation of his former self. A French lieutenant. A hero.

He was very excited about this. He was very excited about everything. If Andy got turned on to an author he’d read everything he could and then move on. The same about a food, a place and a profession, which he seemed to have many. It stood to reason he would be like that about a person too. But he was a trip to be with.

Andy called the next day. After the park. The phone call was interrupted by six call-waiting beeps. He wouldn’t answer any of them, because he said he knew it was his ex-fiancée from eight years ago.

“You know this?” I asked. “How do you know this?”

“It’s a long story,” said Andy. “You don’t want to hear it.”

“Okay.”

“So let me tell you what happened. I wanted to go to Paris. I love to travel, you know, and I needed a place to stay. My ex-fiancée lives in Paris now, and she told me I could always call her and she’d put me up, so I did. Jesus, what a disaster. She was so crazy. She was furious with me because I didn’t desire her anymore. She was attacking me. Finally, by the third night, I had to move out to the couch. And you know what I overheard her tell her neighbor? ‘Stay away from him. He devours people.’ Can you believe it?”

I think he had given me a clue to his personality. I was pretty certain he had given me a big, big clue.

“So,” he went on, “you know what today is? I’m also into holidays.”

“Uh, no,” I said. “What am I missing?”

“Happy Tisha B’av!” said Andy.

“What is that again?” I asked. “All I know about it is that when I was a kid in day camp this girl in my group, Hope Moskowitz, said she couldn’t go swimming because of that holiday. She was religious. It was a boiling hot day in July and I felt bad for her.”

“Well,” said Andy, “it was my favorite holiday to study when I was in Hebrew school, and believe me, I wasn’t one of those nerdy guys or anything. But Tisha B’av was when not one, but two temples in Jerusalem were destroyed. Then for three weeks after that you go into this, like, period of mourning when all these tragedies can strike. Very cool. So—do you want to go out and do something sometime?”

“Ummm,” I said, aware that “yes” should not be my first response, based on the information at hand. “Maybe,” I mustered.

“Do you have someone specific in mind?”

He made me laugh. What the hell, Andy was alive and full of energy, and I thought he was funny.

A few nights later we had dinner. Andy was really nice. He took me to an Italian restaurant on Cornelia Street where he knew the chef.

“Let’s order an appetizer. Maybe some clams,” I suggested.

“Let’s see what happens,” said Andy.

“What can happen?” I didn’t get it. But Andy had gone into the kitchen, and Mario agreed to surprise us. I liked the smoked mozzarella and tomatoes. I liked Andy trying to impress me.

We went on a tour of the handball courts in his neighborhood. Andy knew every punk personally. I got an introduction. They were really nice. I thought someone could lend us their paddle ball rackets. Fifteen minutes. Andy asked. He knew how to handle them.

“It’s not cool,” he told me. We split.

We went back to his apartment. He put on a jazz album. He put on the fan. He dimmed the lights. Then Andy turned to me.

“Wanna dance?”

Andy had taught dance at Fred Astaire studio before he was a boxing coach. He was a good dancer. The music stopped. We clapped.

“You want to dance another tune?”

“No, thank you. It’s getting late.”

“Yeah, it is our first date,” he said, as he kissed me. Andy was aggressive but not pushy.

I went home. Andy paid for my taxi. He called me when I got home. I wanted to go rowboating in Central Park. He said we should rent the movie The Lonely Guy. Andy felt bad. I was going to Connecticut. I told him not to feel bad. I would be back from Connecticut. It was a visit not a move.

Andy called me when I returned. Many times. Too many times. Andy called from work. Now he was a trader. He traded at least fifteen stocks on each message he’d leave on my machine. The messages were long. It took a very long time when I beeped in.

Finally we talked. We made plans for Sunday. As we were about to hang up, he got a call-waiting beep.

“Damn, I know who this is and I don’t want to talk to her,” he said.

“The ex-fiancée from Paris?” I asked.

“No, someone else. Forget it. Look, call me tomorrow.”

I was getting a headache. This wasn’t so much fun anymore. “I can’t call you tomorrow,” I said, “but I’ll talk to you early on Sunday.”

I called him Sunday. His machine said it was Friday night at eight-thirty and he’d be back in half an hour. Andy called me Monday. Apologetic. He thought the plans were tentative. Could we try again?

I was tentative.

He called a bunch of times over the next ten days. We made plans for Saturday. Definite plans. I was to call him from my parents’ home upstate and tell him what time I’d be back in the city. That morning I called in to my machine.

“Hi. It’s Andy. I’m sick. I’m really, really sick and I won’t be able to make it tonight. But call me.”

I did. His machine said it was Friday night at eight-thirty and he was out.

“Gee, I’m sorry you’re sick,” I told his machine. “Maybe you went out to get some medicine or something.”

I called him again that night when I got back to the city. His machine still said it was Friday night at eight-thirty and he was out. I wondered where?

I’ve never spoken to Andy Ackerman again so I don’t know. However, several days later I wondered if perhaps he had died or something, death being the only really good excuse under the circumstances. I called his machine. It said it was Friday night at eight-thirty, and anyone who wanted to hang out at his apartment could show up at midnight.

I didn’t go.

7
Roman Holiday

My Birthday

Gramercy Park, NYC 1991

Second Avenue. A rainy night. A night to remember. But more on that later.

His name was Roman. I had met him at the 86th Street bus stop a few weeks earlier. My scene partner from acting class was paying me forty dollars to feed his cats for a few days while he went up to Syracuse to see his girlfriend play Blanche in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire. I was waiting for the bus to take me across town, back to the Bohemian familiarity of the Upper West Side, when I heard someone talk to me. His friends talked to me first. His head was down. When he looked up I thought he was one of the cutest guys I’d ever seen.

I think he just asked me out on a dare. But when I got his message about a date, I immediately said yes. He was fairly new to the city. A stockbroker, a Yale grad. He’d gone to Yale on a soccer scholarship, stopped playing and wound up getting a great job on Wall Street. We would go all over New York. I showed him the city.

“Where would you like to go, young lady?” I got to pick the places and he got to pay. He set up the arrangement. I rather liked it. I’d go to Bloomingdale’s and buy clothes to wear just for my dates with Roman. I remember a pair of short wide orange palazzo pants with a matching sash. I wore it with white pumps and a long-sleeved white tee. I thought it very chic. So did Roman. He was enamored of me. I was his first New York City girl. And Jewish to boot. And he wasn’t. And it wasn’t an issue, because he wasn’t someone Jewish or Not Jewish. He was Roman. And that was perfect. However, he was still an East Sider, something bigger for me to overcome, but I was working on it.

The first night we went out, he told the waitress in Little Italy we were going to fly to Toronto for dessert. He knew a place that made great cannolis. I was wearing a purple scarf my friend, Fred, had brought back for me from Spain. Roman said it became a prop for me. A third hand. He thought it exciting that I was an actress. I thought it exciting that he made a living. That he was sensitive with a sincere edge. That he had big green eyes and wavy brown hair, and a voice that threaded together so many pieces of what the world had to offer.

“I tell the guy who comes by with the coffee in the morning that he and I are just the same,” Roman told me one night over a Courvoisier.

He felt guilty about his success. He thought he didn’t deserve it. That wasn’t true. He wasn’t on a free ride. He was working hard. He was trading the stocks. He was earning the money. It wasn’t Roman’s fault he got there by expertly kicking a ball instead of planning it out. It wasn’t Roman’s fault he came from a loving, not-well-to-do Catholic family in Boston and did well for himself. It also wasn’t Roman’s fault that he had outgrown his post-college girlfriend, Julie, who was still in Boston going back to nursing school. It wasn’t his fault he was moving on.

A party. My acting class. Me in a short jean skirt, red tights. Roman in a purple-and-blue-striped shirt. A Heineken in one hand, the other wrapped around me. Us on a terrace that wrapped around Manhattan. A great night.

Now the night. The one to remember. My birthday. Roman said that there were two types of people. Those who liked to ignore their birthdays, and those who liked a big fuss. Which was I? When he found out it was decided that he’d pick out a fabulous place, while I went off to Bloomingdale’s and picked out a fabulous dress.

I felt victorious as I combed through the racks of dresses in the Nightlife department, remembering years of birthdays and birthday dresses. This one was going to take the cake!

My birthday had always been a big deal to me. An event. It started in elementary school with a birthday tradition in my class that was passed on from Joni Wolf’s older sister, Debbie. We would take a bow used to decorate a package, attach pieces of ribbon to the back of it and put an ornament at the end of each ribbon. If a girl were turning eight, there would be eight ribbons with, let’s say, Tootsie Rolls tied to the bottom of each ribbon. They were theme corsages. Candy, stationery, kitchenware. My favorite was from Rachel Smith the year I turned ten. Ten pink, plastic hair curlers at the ends of the ribbons with a little note saying, “After your birthday I want my rollers back.” But by that time a girl could barely carry the weight of all those corsages, each with ten heavy ribbons and one for good luck. Especially when tent dresses were all the rave.

My mother and I had shopped and shopped until I found the perfect Kelly-green ultrapleated tent dress with white polka dots. When I put it on that morning, I spun round and round in front of the mirror watching the dress whirl. I looked like I was about to take off! I got to school and all my friends had made me great corsages. Bazooka Joe bubble gum, pencils, spoons. So now all of the very lovely, but very heavy corsages were pulling my dress forward, and when I stood up to answer a question, Murray Binder, who was seated behind me, screamed out, “Oooh, look, she has matching polka-dot panties too!”

“They’re not panties,” I turned around and screamed at Murray, totally embarrassed, bent over my dress, supporting it with my arms so the weight of the whole thing didn’t make me fall over completely. “They came with it. It’s part of the outfit.”

“Where’d you get it?” Rina Biller snidely yelled out. “Alex or Bloomie’s?” Rina knew full well that I had not gone shopping in The City at the wonderful and exclusive Bloomingdale’s. Rina knew my mother always took me to Alexander’s in Rego Park, Queens, where I invariably got nauseous from the ringing bells, the sales tables and the fights in the overcrowded parking lot.

“Stop this excitement,” Mrs. Gorsky hollered. “This is stupidity.”

I stood mortified and angry that our crazy teacher was ruining my birthday.

“Take those bows off and put them away. You can take them home at three o’clock. What’s the matter with you kids? Doesn’t anyone care about what’s going on in this world?”

Mrs. Gorsky paused for a moment. I looked at her red hair standing up in the middle of her head like Bozo’s. Her dress came to below her knee. There was a run in her stocking, and her black laced shoes looked like my grandmother’s.

“Quiet!” Mrs. Gorsky went to her desk and picked up a small black transistor radio. She stood in the aisle between rows two and three, kept the radio to her ear and listened. The class was quiet. Watching. I was in the last seat of row three, soundlessly storing my corsages in the empty desk until the three o’clock freedom bell rang.

“No! No!” Mrs. Gorsky let out a scream. “ACHHH, NOOOO!!!” She threw the radio in the floor. We watched it break into pieces, the same as when she had thrown chalk, pointers and once Joshua Morris’s eyeglasses. We were afraid of her. No one would speak.

“The world is insane. My son goes to Columbia. There are uprisings all over the campus. They took over the administration building. He can’t get an education.”

I carefully looked at my corsages inside the back desk as evidence of an innocent childhood. I was only ten years old and today was my birthday.

A week later Bobby Kennedy was shot. Every few years since I had been in kindergarten there were major assassinations. I watched other people mourn John and Malcolm and Martin. But this one, Bobby, felt different. This one felt real, and this one really hurt.

The following year we stopped making our own corsages and upgraded to the local florist. For seventy-five cents, the florist would make a little boutonniere out of a carnation. Now each girl looked like a bouquet on her birthday, but no one toppled over. By the time we went to junior high our birthday traditions had dissolved. It no longer mattered if I shopped at “Alex” or “Bloomie’s.” Girls were finally granted permission to wear pants. With all the marches and sit-ins and antiwar rallies I often felt like I’d never see another birthday. I’d never see another spring. But the world kept ticking and somehow it all kept going.

Looking at myself now while trying on these dresses, I was pleased with the woman who reflected back three times in the triangular mirror. I had grown up and I could do what I wanted, date whom I wanted and shop where I chose. Another spring was ending. Summer beginning. I left Bloomie’s with the perfect dress. Baby blue. Silk. Bare shoulders. High heels. A matching shawl of pale blue chiffon.

My birthday night arrived with torrential weather. Rain. Pouring rain. Thunder and lightning. An emergency at work. A last-minute call.

“Jeans, okay?” he asked.

I looked at the blue silk dress laid out on the bed before I hung it back in the closet. Another time. The rain did not wash out Roman.

“Sure,” I said into the cordless phone as I unhooked a pair of jeans from its hanger. I wore them with a white tank top. A fringe of lace over the bust. A peach cardigan. A yellow slicker. Roman was knocked out by the outfit.

“What outfit?” Rain clothes. I didn’t see. I just felt. Beautiful.

After eating Mexican we walked up Second Avenue. People. Mist. Dogs. Restaurants. A taxi whizzing by.

“Come here, young lady.” Roman pulled me to the side. Fluorescent light from a candy store. A kiss. Not just a kiss. A dissolve. Lips. So soft, hard, so warm, slow. Long and forever and so quickly a change. Between us. Together. Falling together into something else. A burrow that enveloped us.

“Is this how they do it in New York?” he whispered that night.

“This is how I do it with you,” I said. “I will never forget this. Ever.”

I cooked him dinners and he brought wine and flowers.

“I thought I should bring you something else,” he said one night, handing me a bouquet of purple tulips. “I went into Barneys and looked around. I thought, ‘Would she like this belt?’ But then I decided to bring the flowers.”

He helped me memorize a script. Roman hadn’t acted since grade school. It was a good thing! But he loved doing it with me, and I loved sharing my world. He played hooky from work and we explored the city. We’d sit at an outdoor café sipping wine and watching the people pass. Roman was in awe of the city in the middle of the day in the middle of the week.

“I never see this,” he said, sliding his hand up and down my thigh. “I’m inside at work, but the world is going on. The city never sleeps.”

He saw Manhattan as if it were brand-new. I filled up with pride as if I had built it. We went boating in Central Park. We hiked up a path in the park that made us feel like we were backpacking together in Europe. At the top. Looking down on the city. Looking out. Green trim of the Plaza Hotel accented the lake like a picture frame. He stood behind me and moved his hands possessively over my body. I was happy and I told him. And then he told me.

“I’m being transferred back to Boston.”

The weeks that followed were sad. Every great moment slipped into the next and it slipped into time that would move Roman from my present to my past. Unless.

“My agent called today to submit me for a role in a play,” I told him over one of our last dinners. We were sharing a piece of apple pie, drinking decaf coffee and brandy. I went into the bathroom three times during dinner to splash water under my eyes to disguise the swelling from the tears.

“That’s great. When is the audition?” Roman had learned the lingo.

“I don’t know if I will actually get one. The casting director has to select which actors they will give appointments to after they get the agent submissions. But I really, really want to read for this,” I said.

“Is it a great part?”

“Who cares? The show would be six months of work. In Boston.”

Silence.

Awkward.

Head down.

Shut down.

“What? I thought you’d be happy.”

He took a long time to answer. “Don’t give up your dreams for me, Karrie.”

“Don’t what?” I felt so betrayed. Misunderstood. “My agent submitted me for a role. For a job. A job! I’m not exactly chasing you to Boston. Are you afraid of that? What’s going on?”

He felt guilty. He was supposed to stay at home and marry Julie and raise a family. Instead he came to New York. He loved it. He met someone new. No one approved.

“Did you ask for this transfer?” I needed to know.

“No,” said Roman. “I didn’t. But it happened. And it makes me wonder why.”

“So do it. Go back. Trade stocks. Make money. And in a year ask to be transferred back here. It’s not such a big deal.”

Roman wasn’t so sure. He was sure I was special. But he was unsure how we fit. He was still pondering the question the day he left. Ninety-five-degree heat, a dog day of August, apartment packed, boxes picked up from UPS, two suitcases loaded into the trunk of cab, Roman ready for the airport.

“I’ll miss you, young lady. Move on. And keep a little mystery when you meet someone new. Let them know you slowly. Be happy.”

“I don’t want to be mysterious. I don’t want to meet someone new. I don’t want to move on. I like you.”

“Me, too,” he said as the cab took off, and Roman flew away. I walked back home through the park. I knew time would turn Roman into a memory I could live with, and it would be some time before that happened. But it did.

Eleven months later he called from Boston.

“Do you remember me?” he asked.

Yes, I remembered. I remembered well. The voice. Those pieces. I hoped they would thread together the sound of Roman’s transfer back to New York.

“Do you remember me?” I asked.

“I sure do.”

“Tell me what you remember….”

Roman paused. “I wanted to tell you that I’m marrying Julie.”

I paused.

“It’s right for me,” he said. “It’s right for my life here, with the company. Our families are here. I’m sorry. I don’t feel I was fair to you.”

I wondered if he had been fair to himself. There was so much in New York he had yet to discover. Inside the city. Inside himself.

“Do you love her?” I held my breath hoping the right answer would not hurt too much.

“She would follow me anywhere,” he said. “Look, if you ever need anything. Money, anything, you can always contact me. Always. I’ll always remember you.”

“I’ll never forget.”

I never have. Sometimes on a moist and balmy New York night, when I take a walk, I can still see all the colors of the Roman rainbow.

8
My Worst Date… Almost

New Year’s

Day Chelsea, NYC 1992

The day after the party he called. I was bedridden, feeling comatose from the twenty-four-hour bug that had hit six hours earlier.

“I was so glad you gave your card to my sister,” he said.

I’d thought his sister was his wife. They were holding hands all night.

“Can we go out?”

“Okay,” I mumbled in my delirium.

“I’m so anxious to see you,” Arthur blathered. “I’ve never been this excited before. How’s Thursday? What do you like to do for fun? Am I too forward?”

“No. No.”

“Do you think it’s a possibility we’re going to have a great time?” he questioned. “I want you to come to this date really open with positive feelings. I’ll talk to you before Thursday. I can’t wait. This will be the best date of our lives.”

We never went out. He never called.

Arthur must have literally burst from anticipation.

9
The Clan of the Cab Bears

Passover

Port Authority, NYC 1992

“Need some help?” the homeless man asked while he watched me schlep my bags from the Airport Bus Center through the Port Authority.

“No, thanks,” I said, kicking the flowered one that was bigger than me and wouldn’t stay on my shoulder. The yellow cabs were all lined up on Eighth Avenue, just waiting to be hailed.

“We have to make a quick stop,” I told the cabby while I stood to the side and watched him put my baggage in the back seat. He was a big, chubby guy with wild, messy brown hair in baggy jeans and flannel shirt.

“It better be fast,” he said.

“Why? You have someplace to go?” I asked him, thinking that after he dropped me off, he’d probably like to go back twenty years, run over to the student union, lead a peace march and drop some acid.

“Well, no,” he said. “I just don’t feel like stopping.”

I opened the door to get out.

“But I will,” he said.

“Thanks a bunch.”

We sped between the traffic up the avenue.

“You just get back from a trip?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Where’d you go?” he asked, stopping the cab at a red light.

Through the window, I watched a man shoving leaflets at passersby.

“Check it out. Check it out,” he said, hoping to entice them into entering the House of Heavenly Delights. I looked up and saw an enlarged color photo of two women having their way with each other, while a man, dressed as the devil, held a pitchfork over their heads.

“Florida,” I said.

“Vacation?”

He was turning out to be pretty chatty, this…I looked to the front seat to see the name on his identification card. Alan Cohen.

“Passover,” I answered. Mom, Henry and I flew down to spend the holiday with Aunt Cookie and Uncle Sy. It had become a new tradition since my aunt and uncle had retired there five years ago. Uncle Sy’s Passover seder was so different from the holiday I remembered as a little girl when Grandpa Lou was still alive. He would recite the whole haggadah in Hebrew. My cousins and I would twist and turn in our seats for what seemed like a century until, finally, we could eat. After the meal, Grandpa Lou would hide the Afikoman, the magic piece of matzoh, and give a quarter to the kid who found it. All of us kids would search the Brooklyn apartment high and low only to find that, once again, our grandfather had hidden it in his suit jacket.

Some years later, after Grandpa Lou had passed on, Sy had stood at the head of his Long Island table and flipped on a small tape recorder. After a series of static sounds, Sy’s voice had filled the room. “Your mission tonight, if you choose to accept, is to skip the formalities and go directly to the Passover meal catered à la Cookie.” Everyone thought it was very funny, except for Grandma Rose, who was missing her husband and the days when “the holidays” meant her house.

“Yeah, Passover. Yeah,” said the cabby with the recognition I expected. “The folks glad to see you?”

“Thrilled.” There seemed no point explaining my folks didn’t really live there.

“Boca?” Alan Cohen asked in shorthand.

“West Palm.”

“Nice.”

Alan Cohen probably had family in Boca, I thought, and wished that he had gone down for Passover to see his parents. They probably lived in a development with two swimming pools, four tennis courts and a clubhouse. Alan would always think he was going to play tennis when he visited, but it never happened. He probably never went to see them much, being the black sheep of the family. Alan had probably had great potential. He was probably the salutatorian of his graduating class at Midwood High School in Brooklyn. His parents had thought he would be a doctor, or at very least, a dentist. But he went away to college, did too many drugs and never got out of the Sixties.

“So…” he said. He was determined to keep the conversation going. “Does your family do a whole seder thing, or do you just eat?”

I pictured Sy standing at the head of the table wearing a blue satin yarmulke on his head, a gold Jewish star around his neck and a yellow-and-white kitchen apron tied behind his waist.

“Why is this night different from all other nights?” he asked. “Because tonight we’re not going to ask the four questions. Every year you ask me the same questions, and for thirty years I’m giving the same answers. So, if you don’t know the answers by now, you’re out of luck.”

“We did a little seder,” I told Alan the interested cabdriver. “You know, the usual stuff.”

Sy was in rare form this year. “Now I want everyone to listen to the instructions on how we will proceed with tonight’s seder. First, this will be an abbreviated version of the abbreviated version we generally have. Only, I will say the blessing over the wine and that’ll be it. There’s no reason for us to go around the table and have everyone say the kiddush. So I will say the blessing and you all say Amen. Are you with me so far?”

“Like what’s your usual?” asked Alan. “How many minutes is yours? Ours were like about fifteen minutes. Me and my cousin, Ricky, always tried to sneak in some decent wine. That Manisohewitz crap is not anybody’s idea of a great vintage year.”

“I know,” I said. “You know what else is funny? They always have the yarmulkes from all the affairs they went to over the years. There were three white velvet ones that said ‘Wedding of Mark and Mindy Sokoloff, May 15, 1982,’ written in gold and nobody knew who the Sokoloffs were!”

“I wonder if anybody still has the ones from my Bar Mitzvah?” Alan Cohen wondered aloud. “Oh. Did you use the coffee books?”

“Yes! What is that about?” This was turning into a fun cab ride. “How appropriate is it that a coffee company publishes the most popular Haggadah! You read this horrific tale of the Jews fleeing Egypt with a picture of a piece of matzoh on the front of the book, and a cup of hot coffee on the back!”

“Well, we as a people like to eat!”

“No kidding,” I said, glimpsing a look at Alan’s back taking up a broad part of the front seat.

“So, what do you do?” he asked me.

“Well, Alan,” I said, feeling it might be a little personal to use his name, but also as if I knew the cloth from which he was cut. “Why don’t you guess?”

“Drugs?”

“That’s it! You got it on the first try. Amazing!”

“Really? You’re kidding.”

“Of course I’m kidding. Do I look like a drug dealer? Look, we’re here,” I said, pointing to the white doorman building on Eighth Avenue. “Stop. I’ll be just a second.” The cab stopped near 52nd Street. I ran in and picked up the yellow manila envelope that said FOR PICKUP—K. KLINE from the doorman.

“What’d you get?” he asked when I got back into the cab.

“I had to pick up a script.”

“An actress!” he said, driving up Eighth Avenue.

I received a last-minute call from a casting director asking me to fill in for an actress who wasn’t going to be able to do the reading. I pulled out the script and started to read. The play was a political farce about a presidential campaign that totally revolved around junk food. It was called Eat This. I flipped to where Mac, the campaign manager, and the candidate come into the diner where they always eat and come up with their campaign strategies. In this scene, Mac and the waitress, Addie—that would be me—try to convince the candidate to hold rap sessions at fast-food chains across the country and give the voters free food. The casting director said they hoped to bring the show to Broadway. It was a stroke of luck that I got in on the project.

“I’m sorry,” said Alan, breaking the silence.

I realized I had suddenly stopped talking after having that whole Passover conversation. Now I felt guilty. Well, that was ridiculous. I didn’t have to entertain the cabdriver. I was a passenger, he was doing his job and now I wanted to read my script.

“Sorry for what?” I looked up at the back of Alan’s wavy head

“For thinking you were dealing.”

“Don’t worry about it. It happens all the time.” I held the script high so he would see me reading in his rearview mirror. I was way too involved in this relationship.

“So… Uh… You’re an actress?”

“Uh-huh.” I didn’t want to talk anymore.

“What have you been in lately?”

“Nothing. Really.” I always hated that question.

“You have an audition?”

“Uh-huh.” Here we go. Why was I so friendly before?

“What’s it for?”

I put the script down. It seemed easier to have the conversation than not to. I’d be home in a few minutes and I could read then. What could it hurt to talk a little more to Alan Cohen. I was sure I had known him all my life. He seemed like a boy who would have summered at my bungalow colony in the Catskills when we were kids. Someone a few years older than me, I would have looked up to for a while just because he was there and he was older. Someone who would have been a counselor at the day camp and led you in Color War when you were little, then put that stuff down, grew his hair long and tried to get you to smoke when you were big. Someone whose mother would say she didn’t understand him, as she played her Bingo card in the casino on Wednesday nights, and waited for her husband to come back upstate after working in the city all week, because she couldn’t handle Alan alone.

“Do you do anything in addition to driving a cab?” I asked, curious to see if I did have him all cut out.

“What do you mean?”

“Anything particular that you aspire to do?” I figured him for a comic book collector.

“Does anybody ever get what they want?” he said. “An actor, a musician. Even a doctor or lawyer. Does anybody really get what they aspire to in life? Does it really pay to even care?”

“I’m sorry. Just making conversation. I didn’t mean to be condescending,” I said. We were gliding past 72nd Street, a few blocks from my apartment. “Driving a cab is great. Anything you want to do is great. Really.”

“You think so?” he asked, turning the corner on my block.

“Oh sure,” I said. “People should do whatever makes them happy.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.

“YES,” I said. “Yes. Yes, I do!”

He pulled up in front of my building. The meter clicked off.

Alan Cohen turned and faced me. “You have a steady boyfriend?” he asked. His eyes looked vacant behind the dirty divider that was meant to protect the people in the front seat from the people in the back.

“Very steady,” I said. I took a ten from my wallet, shoved it in the tray and dipped it toward the front. “Can I have back three dollars?”

Alan Cohen didn’t move.

“How about you keep your money and have a date with me instead?”

“I really can’t do that. I have this boyfriend. I can’t. May I have my change?” That’s what you get for being friendly, I thought. The change wasn’t forthcoming, so I collected my bags and opened the door. Alan Cohen was standing in the gutter, blocking my exit from his cab.

“Are you going to go out with me or not?”

My eyes came level with his stomach. It was protruding through the buttons on his dirty navy-and-green flannel shirt.

“I need to get out of this cab,” I said as calmly as possible.

“Oh yeah?” he said, getting in the back seat and slamming the door behind him. He threw my flowered bag to the floor of the cab. It had been the only thing between us.

“So, you think you could go for a guy like me?” he asked, leaning over me.

“Alan…” I didn’t know what the hell to do.

“I really like how you say my name.” Alan Cohen leaned in closer. I could tell he had consumed a few beers. “Say it again.”

I inched backward against the other door, hoping I could open it behind me. He pulled my hands into his and gripped them tightly.

“Say it again. You’re really hot. Say it again.”

“Uh, Alan,” I said, trying to grasp what was happening. A few possible scenarios crossed my mind, none of them particularly appealing. “Alan,” I repeated, trying to appease rather than seduce.

“Kiss me,” he said, moving closer toward me. I could feel his breath on my neck. I thought I would puke. “Come on…”

“Stop it, Alan. Just stop! What’s the matter with you? Get off me. Leave me alone!”

He didn’t move away, but he didn’t move closer.

I tried to figure out how much trouble I was in. I didn’t know what to do when I found out, but I searched his eyes trying to assess if Alan Cohen was Nebish Gone Astray or On Track Psychopath. I opted for number one. We were both breathing harder. Obviously for different reasons.

“You were flirting with me,” he said.

“I was talking to you.”

“Bullshit.”

“I was…friendly.”

We were face-to-face in a stare-off. No one was winning.

“Why won’t you go out with me? Don’t you like me?”

“I’ve known you fifteen minutes. That’s not long enough to like or dislike you. I just got home from Florida. I hailed a cab. Please…be a mensch and just let me out of here.”

“If you weren’t going out with that guy would you go out with me?”

“Perhaps,” I said, wondering if someone had once dropped him on his head for him to wind up like this. “Perhaps if you asked like a gentleman instead of scaring the shit out of me.”

“Are you scared?”

“Yes! Of course I’m scared. I’d have to be lobotomized not to be scared.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Alan Cohen said. He sat up straight and tucked his shirttails into his khaki pants. “I just wanted you to like me.”

“I think you can use some improvement on your courtship skills, Alan,” I said, feeling out of danger although I was not yet out of the woods. “Some men bring flowers and candy. Wine and dine a girl. You trap me in the back seat of your taxi, act like you’re going to rape me, and, by the way, now you owe me money because suddenly I don’t feel like tipping.”

He looked right through me and got out of the cab. I grabbed my bags and bolted out the door. I could feel my hands shaking underneath my bravado. I approached the first step down into my building. A hand touched the back of my neck.

“AHHHHHHHHHH,” I screamed. My bags rolled down the cement stairs. I could see my tampons tumbling over my curling iron.

“Don’t scream. I won’t hurt you. I’m sorry,” he said, putting his pudgy hand in his pocket. “Really.”

“It’s okay,” I said. My heart beat so hard I thought I’d find it on the stairs next to the tampons and the curling iron. “I have to go.”

“I just don’t want you to think bad of me,” he said. “Do you like me?”

Out of my right eye I watched my blow-dryer fall out of my bag and cascade down. I heard a small crash.

“Yeah, Alan, I like you. In fact, I’m crazy about you. Jesus Christ!” I screamed. “JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!”

He ran into the street back to his cab. The engine had been going all this time. I knelt to pick up my broken belongings. My script was still in the cab. Fortunately, the envelope with my name on it was in my purse.

“Are you absolutely sure?” I heard him yell from the street. “I live in Park Slope. We probably won’t ever see each other again. I can leave my number on the car over here or, if you…”

Alan Cohen was still yelling when I rang for the elevator. I couldn’t make out the end of the sentence.

10
Wherefore Art Thou?

Valentine’s Day

Upper East Side, NYC 1994

“Have whatever you want,” Henry told me. “You’re our little girl, it’s Valentine’s Day, and your mother and I don’t want you to be alone.”

“Look, Karrie,” Millie said. “There’s a Valentine’s Day Special. You can have a tender, juicy chicken breast à la Romeo with artichokes and mushrooms. You’re the artichoke eater here, and an Idaho baked potato with fresh asparagus and hollandaise. I don’t like hollandaise sauce, it has no taste, but you like that. And it comes with dessert. Juliet Surprise: A chocolate brownie topped with whipped cream and a cherry. How does that sound?”

“Chicken and artichokes make me think of Jack,” I said. I reached for the miniature blackboard that had the daily specials written in pink chalk.

“Why are we talking about Jack?” asked Millie.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, contemplating the chicken breast. “Maybe because he was my boyfriend for a year, and it’s only six weeks since we broke up and I’m despondent about the whole thing. Maybe that’s why. But I could be wrong.”

“It’s Valentine’s Day,” said Henry. “We’re all together. Why are you even thinking about him when you’re with us?”

“I don’t know. I can’t imagine what came over me.”

We were seated in a corner nook of the heated indoor café. A candle illuminated the table. Outside on Second Avenue couples walked by, huddled in down coats, romping through the gray of the city, hailing cabs and kissing. I turned to my parents. “What are you going to have?”

“I’m going to have the fish,” Henry said.

“Me too,” echoed Millie.

“So will I.” I made it unanimous.

“Since when do you eat fish?” asked Henry.

“Always. I always eat fish. What is the fish tonight?”

“Snapper,” Henry said. “Red snapper. You like that?”

I nodded.

“You’re sure now?” Henry grilled me. “I don’t mind ordering anything you want, but I want to make sure you like it. Don’t do it on my account.”

I took a deep breath. This would have been Jack’s and my second Valentine’s Day. Last year at this time I was so excited. It was still early, we’d only been dating two months. Jack surprised me with a warm blanket, a cold bottle of champagne and an easy climb in Central Park to a rock that overlooked the lake. It was a little cold, but totally romantic! This year I thought I’d cook an indoor dinner, but we broke up soon after Christmas. That disaster. Somehow I knew from the start it could never work. A Jewish actress and a born-again Christian comedian. It would have been easier to not have the relationship and to have just sold the movie rights.

Jack and I met at a second staged reading of Eat This just before Christmas in 1992. Eat This still looked like it could happen for Broadway, but the money the producers thought was there was not. In almost two years, there had been four readings with one more to go. My part had been cut to shreds, but I was still a contender so I was happy. Anyway, the second reading, the one where I met Jack, was the best. I say this objectively, even though my part was a lot bigger in that version! I was flying that night, and really up when we all went out after for a drink. My friend, Jane, was dating Philip Moore, an actor in the show, and came to the reading. And Philip invited his stand-up friend, Jack Whitney, whom I’d once seen emcee at The Comic Corner. The four of us got a booth and a round of drinks. Jane and Philip were pretty cozy, and I thought Jack was cute and funny. It was a pretty instant attraction. After they left, we lingered over a glass of Merlot and the rest, as they like to say, was history.

“It comes with dessert,” said Henry. “You’ll have the dessert too?” he asked, bringing me back.

“Yes, she’ll have the dessert,” my mother answered for me. “She needs to put on a little weight. I think you lost some weight. What do you think? Your face looks thin.”

“I think I lost some weight.” It felt easier to agree.

The waiter came over to our table. He was a tall, gangly-looking man with an earring in his left ear. He wore wire glasses and a befuddled expression.

“Three snappers,” Henry told him. “And make them all on the special.”

The waiter smiled pleasantly and looked at me.

“Don’t I know you from The Comic Corner?”

I had no recollection of him whatsoever.

“I took Jack Whitney’s ‘Intro to Stand-Up’ class at the Learning Annex and we went to see him perform. You’re his girlfriend, aren’t you?”

“Well…”

“I wasn’t sure at first it was you. We went again last night and it looked like your hair was lighter, but you were sitting close to the stage with Jack and we were in the back. It’s hard to see at night. Up close, though, I remember you. He was great, wasn’t he? All that new material about all the bad relationship stuff that happens on the holidays, and accepting Santa into your heart.”

I twisted the swizzle stick from my drink.

“Well, let me put your order in. I’m sure you want to get over to the club early for the special Valentine’s Day show.”

I stared at my place setting and took a sip of my Virgin Mary.

“That was unnecessary,” said Millie.

“He obviously found a new one,” said Henry.

“Did you change the message on your machine yet?” my mother asked.

“I’ll do it soon. It’s funny,” I said.

“It’s not funny, Karrie. It’s pathetic. Change it tonight.”

The message played in my ear.

Hi, this is Karrie. Jack and I just broke up so I can’t come to the phone right now. Actually, I can’t even get out of bed. But if you leave your name and number, someday I’ll get back to you.

Beeeeep.

“And after you change your message, set your alarm so you wake up at a decent hour tomorrow,” Millie continued.

I had made the mistake of confessing to my mom that unless I had an audition I’d been sleeping half the day away, waking at 12:59 p.m. in order to make it into the living room by one, just in time to watch my favorite soap, All My Problems.

“Maybe she was just a date, “ I said. “Or it could have been a friend. Who says he has a new girlfriend? Anyway, what’s the difference?”

Silence.

“I spoke with Aunt Cookie,” said Millie. “She said she spoke to her friend, Phyllis, and her son Seth, the chiropractor, is still talking about you from last Passover. I know he’s not exactly your type…”

“No.”

“Just for an evening out,” Henry chimed in. “No one’s saying marriage, but just to get out. There’s no reason for a young girl like yourself to stay home alone staring at the four walls.”

“I’m not staring at anything. Besides, he’s a geek. He’s a nerd. He even liked the Manischewitz wine. No.”

The waiter came by and served the salads. Henry reached for the pepper.

“No salt,” said Millie.

“No salt,” said Henry. “Pepper. I’m just using pepper.”

“He’s not allowed to have salt,” she told me.

“He’s not having salt,” I said.

“I’m having pepper, Millie.”

“See, he’s having pepper, Ma.”

“That’s okay. Pepper he’s allowed to have.”

“I have an audition tomorrow,” I said as the food arrived. The fish stared up at me, alongside the baby red potatoes, the stewed zucchini and the waiter. “For a commercial.”

“What’s it for?” asked the waiter. My new best friend.

“Some fast-food chicken chain. I’m a perky waitress.” I smiled at him to prove my point.

“Well, bon appetit and bon chance,” said the waiter. He winked at me before he walked away.

“This is good,” I said.

“Very good,” said Henry.

“I like mine too,” said Millie.

“Anyway, I have to make it an early night,” I said before I barely started my meal, let alone finished it. “You know, with the audition in the morning.”

“It’s all right,” said Millie. “I’m tired too. I don’t mind an early night myself.”

I watched my mother delicately mash her potatoes. Her pink nail polish shone under the candlelight, and her diamond ring glimmered. She was trying so hard to be nice to me. So was Henry. I was so unhappy about Jack. I just felt so bad.

“No, Ma. No rush. Really.”

“It’s okay,” Millie said through knowing eyes. “We don’t have to get indigestion, but I am tired.”

“I’m tired too,” I said.

I took my fork and mashed the baby red potatoes, pasting them together with some of the snapper. I was tired, I thought. I really, truly was.

11
That's All, Folks

An Hour Later

Ten Blocks North, NYC 1994

I walked my parents to the garage to get the car and watched them take off down Second Avenue, the fumes from the engine trailing behind. I walked south to get the crosstown bus back to my apartment, but felt a tug that pulled me in the opposite direction.

My oversized orange fake fur wrapped around me like a warm blanket and I pulled my black earmuffs down around my neck so I could hear the street sounds. I walked past liquor stores selling wines to woo with. Past a Hallmark gift shop where the window displayed the little redheaded girl sending Charlie Brown a valentine. The next thing I knew I was standing in front of The Comic Corner. I looked up at The Comic Corner logo. To go or to stay?

I was about to go. I was about to stay. For a moment I felt like I lost my balance. I was in the circus, walking a tightrope. I was struggling to keep on a straight course, but I could not. I looked around for help. I saw a man below me. I waved. I kept waving and waving, but he never looked up. It was clear that I was going to fall. But I didn’t. I was at the end of the rope. It was over and it became instantly clear I had to get out of there. I had to escape before I found out what more there was to lose.

I turned away and the door slammed against my back.

“Ouch!”

I spun around and came face-to-face with Jack.

I stood, frozen, taking him in. Jack’s blond hair was longer in the back, and he had started growing a beard. The beard was darker than the hair on his head. It looked like he had dyed either one or the other.

“Oh my God. Hi. Hello. Jack. I never expected to run into you.”

Jack stood and looked at me. Actually, he stared.

“It was an accident,” I said. “Kind of.”

He smiled as if he understood that it was. A collision of sorts. Of which sort, he was uncertain.

Being in Jack’s presence for the first time in almost six weeks was like finding that glove you gave up on. You had lost one so you couldn’t wear the other. You could try, but one hand was always left out in the cold. Even though there were new gloves to be bought in stores all over the city, some of them even on sale, none would ever be that pair. None of them would be broken in. Comfortable. But you wouldn’t throw out the mate. You just kept it with your hats and scarves as a reminder. A hope. And then one day, when you were moving the couch to get the pen that had dropped behind it, there it was. Your glove. Your favorite one. It had been waiting for you to reclaim it, you just didn’t know where to look. And later that day, when you went to the deli, you slipped the pair on in the elevator, and a warmth and familiarity consoled your body. You were only going out for a container of milk, but however far you went, you felt fine.

I smiled in spite of myself. Then I laughed.

“What’s so funny?” asked Jack.

“You!”

“Me? I thought we broke up because you didn’t laugh anymore.”

“Did I say that?”

Jack nodded yes.

“When did I say that? You’re lying,” I chided.

I waited for him to laugh, like in the old days, but he didn’t. I waited for him to do something, anything, so I could feel normal.

“How was your set?”

“Great. They loved me.”

“They always do, Jack.”

“You always used to laugh at my stuff and then you stopped.”

“No.”

“Yeah. That last time you were here.”

“Well, we were breaking up. I was upset. I think you’re the best.”

“You do? You really do?”

His eyes softened and his lips turned up into a smile. “So, little Miss Orange Coat, you think I’m the best?” He extended his arm and spun me into him like I was Ginger Rogers. He dipped me over the cracks in the sidewalk, then dramatically pulled me up. He parodied the song “You Don’t Send Me Flowers Anymore.” Looking deliberately into my eyes, he sang from his heart.

You don’t think I’m funny anymore—

I threw my arms around his neck. He picked me up.

“Oooo, Ouch, Oooo!” Jack mimicked Curly from the Three Stooges. “It’s a giant Twinkie,” he said, poking at my coat.

“What goes good with Twinkies?” I whispered in his ear.

Jack’s eyes looked at me. Then he looked through me, as if to answer a question without having to actually ask it. Again his lips broke into a smile. I laughed.

“I haven’t felt this good since we broke up,” I said, laughing.

“Which time?” he asked.

“This time. The last time. How many times did we break up?”

“Altogether? Over the whole year?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.” I nuzzled my head into him so that my hair warmed his neck.

“We broke up three times,” Jack said.

“Right. But that would be counting the time in the Chinese restaurant and I thought we said we weren’t going to count that time.”

“Didn’t we break up twice in a Chinese restaurant?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

“I thought so. Once in ChowFun in Chinatown, and once somewhere around here.”

“Szechuan East.”

“Szechuan East. So which one doesn’t count? Szechuan East?”

“No. ChowFun,” I said. “Szechuan East counts.”

“Remember we got those great fortunes.” He put me down as he recalled them. “Mine said, ‘You will soon go from rags to riches,’ and yours said, ‘Something you don’t think is possible will soon surprise you!’”

“Right! So we figured why break up? This was an omen for everything to change.”

“What were we fighting about again, hon?” he asked.

“Oh, your career, my career, competition, money, marriage, religion, children. The usual.”

“I knew it wasn’t anything important.” Jack moved into me and put his arms around my waist. He rested his chin on top of my head. His lower lip was slightly chapped and his red scarf hung loosely around his neck.

“This is new,” I said as I untied and retied it.

“Yep. My mom made it for me. Remember. For Christmas. This was the gift that wasn’t finished that she said she’d send. She made one for you, too. She sent it even though I told her we broke up. You know, just in case we got back together. Mom’s a real optimist.”

“How’s your dad?” I asked while I pictured Jack’s mother sitting in her kitchen, shucking oysters for her famous oyster dressing.

“Good. Still a gentleman farmer. He also sent a book for you on Jews for Jesus.”

Oy gevalt, I thought. “So, Jack… You’ve got a lot of stuff for me in your apartment!”

“I guess I do.”

We took a breather. We let it all sink in. Whatever it was, and looked at each other a long while before we kissed. My lips brushed his cheeks inside his right dimple. They moved down his straight nose and back up to his green eyes to gently tug on his long lashes. Jack’s breath felt warm on my neck. His hands were inside my hair.

“Let’s get a cab home,” said Jack, and before I could blink we were sailing through the park going west on 79th Street. We were silent until we got out of the cab on Amsterdam Avenue. I turned to Jack, put my hands in my pockets and started to walk to my apartment. He took my left hand out from inside my orange coat and held it tightly as he walked, quietly, alongside me. Saying anything would spoil the moment. This moment was swell. I didn’t want to spoil it about thinking about what would happen next, because it was “the moment after” I was afraid of. I thought I had come too far in the healing process to blow it all just for one night of delicious, passionate, uninterrupted, erotic love.

Then again…

Actually, I hadn’t healed that much. Quite frankly, I had been pining. Obsessing. I’d practically been carrying Jack around in my pocket. If I spent the night with Jack, I would still wake up with yearning as I watched happy couples stand in movie lines, but at least I would have a memory of a nourishing, tactile and filling night.

And what if I got hit by a truck on the way to my audition tomorrow? Then I would have given up the last Valentine’s Day of my whole entire life with my best male friend and lover, to date, just because it wasn’t permanent. What was permanent in this world? Hardly anything. This was the moment to take and to seize. Spending the night with Jack Whitney was not only the smartest thing I could do, in fact, it was my only option.

I turned to him as we passed an open deli.

“You want me to get those Chips Ahoys you like?”

“I’m cutting back on sweets,” said Jack, placing his free hand on his stomach.

“Oh. That’s nice.”

I took out my keys and opened the double door leading into the lobby.

Gomez, the super, was wheeling out a barrel of garbage with a hand truck. He was wearing a red bandana around his neck and used it to periodically wipe his moustache.

“I fix the kitchen sink for you, Miss Karrie,” he said. “It won’t be leaky anymore.”

“Thanks, Gomez.”

“Nice to see you again, Mr. Jack. You been away making people laugh?”

“I like to think so,” he said, opening the elevator door for me to get in.

He pressed the button numbered three, with the assurance of someone who knew where he was going and where he had been. I stood on the other side of the elevator. Leaning against the banister I took solace in deciding that I really wasn’t in my life, I was just watching the dailies.

Jack unbuttoned the big, black buttons on my coat. I unzipped his leather jacket and slipped my cold hands up the back of his sweater. His skin felt warm against my palms. He pressed close to me and filled the gap between us.

With a sudden burst, I jumped onto Jack, straddling his waist with my legs. He fell backward, me on top of him. Our bodies made a loud thump as we landed. I fell all over him, my body pressing into Jack’s under the canopy of my fake fur. Jack pulled me toward him, massaging my shoulders as my breasts dangled over his face. Our mouths seemed to search each others for reasons why they had been apart these weeks.

“Not that I care, but I don’t remember the elevator being so slow,” Jack murmured as he nibbled on my upper lip.

“It isn’t.”

“It is,” he said while expertly moving his hands under my sweater to unhook my bra. Jack knew all of my bras hooked in the front, except for the strapless, which hooked on the third set of clasps in the back.

I waited to feel his fingers cup my left breast before I spoke. I knew you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out if didn’t take more than forty seconds to ride from the lobby to the third floor.

“We’re stuck,” I said, allowing my body to move into the swirling motion of his hands. By this time his two hands had successfully located my two breasts.

“I guess we are,” Jack said. “I love your body. Let’s put our differences aside tonight. You’re right. We’re stuck with each other.”

“Not us. The elevator. We haven’t moved in a while.”

“What do you mean?”

I removed my tongue from Jack’s ear and whispered, “I think we did something when we fell. We’re not moving. The elevator is stuck.”

He looked up at me, his brown eyes dancing.

“You’re kidding.” He laughed. “This is great. Let’s not call for help. Let’s do it here.”

He went to unzip my jeans.

“Wait,” I said, stopping him. “Gomez will be back to get more garbage any minute. He’ll find us. I’d be mortified.”

“Well.” Jack tried to salvage the idea. “Maybe just a quickie. Under your coat.”

I didn’t want that. “I like when we have time for a whole, you know…”

“We can have another session in the apartment. But how many times can you say you had sex in an elevator?” he asked.

“Six hundred fifty-three. At least.”

“This will be exciting. Come on. Let’s do it fast. Before Gomez gets back.”

We unzipped each other’s pants. He slid his right hand beneath my pink lace panties.

“Wait. We can’t.” I stopped him again. “We don’t have anything.”

Jack’s face lit up. He reached into his coat pocket. “I’ve got,” he said, pulling out a brand-new package of three lubricated latex condoms.

My body came to an involuntary halt as I stared at the man and woman embracing on the misty blue box. The Natural Way To Love That Special Someone, it read.

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