Slightly Single Page 6

  “Did that bother you?” I ask Buckley. “Your mother dating?”

  “Nah. I hate that she’s alone. My sister just got married and my brother’s in the service now, so it would be good if she met someone else. I wouldn’t worry about her so much.”

  What a guy. I find myself thinking that maybe he’s too nice for Raphael. Not that Raphael isn’t wonderful, but when it comes to romance, he can be sort of fickle. He’s broken more than a few hearts, and I can’t stand the thought of nice, sweet, noble Buckley getting his heart broken.

  Which reminds me—Buckley’s ex. I wonder what happened there, but I couldn’t ask for details when he’d already shown a reluctance to talk about it. Just then, the waiter appears. He’s flamboyant and effeminate, and he’s practically drooling over Buckley as we order a couple of beers and the potato skins. The thing is, Buckley isn’t movie-star handsome. He’s nice looking enough, but something about him is even more appealing than his looks. Maybe it’s the warm expression in his crinkly Irish eyes, or his quick smile or his genuine Mr. Nice Guy attitude. Whatever it is, it’s not lost on the blatantly gay waiter, and it’s not lost on me.

  Too bad he’s not straight.

  It’s becoming my new mantra, I realize. If Buckley weren’t gay, and I didn’t have Will…

  But if Buckley weren’t gay and I didn’t have Will, we probably wouldn’t be here together, and I sure as hell wouldn’t be ordering potato-cheddar-bacon skins or blabbing about my excess flab, which is what I do when I’m with Raphael or Kate.

  Anyway, I doubt I’d be Buckley’s type.

  Then again, it still amazes me, three years later, that I’m Will’s type. After all, he is movie-star handsome, and I’m no goddess. Luckily, relationships go deeper than looks. At least, ours does. Physical attraction was a huge part of why I was drawn to Will, but I think he was drawn to me because I was one of the few people who ever understood his dream of breaking out of a small midwestern town and making it in New York. That burning ambition to escape the mundane lives to which we were born was the thing we had in common, the thing that ultimately brought us together.

  Now it seems to be driving us apart. Christ, Will is leaving me behind. Maybe not for good, but for now, and it hurts. It hurts enough that when the waiter leaves and Buckley looks at me again, he immediately asks, “What’s wrong, Tracey?”

  I try to look cheerful. “Nothing. Why?”

  “You’re down about something. I can tell.”

  “I’m not surprised. I can never hide anything from you, Buckley. You always have known me better than I know myself,” I say in mock seriousness.

  He laughs.

  Then he says, “You know, it really does seem like we’ve known each other awhile.” I realize he’s not kidding around.

  I also realize he’s right. It does seem like we’re old pals. And it would be great, having a friend like Buckley. A woman living alone in New York can never have too many guy friends.

  “Yeah, we should do this again,” I say to Buckley as the waiter brings our beers. “I love seeing movies on rainy weekend afternoons.”

  “So do I. Almost as much as I love beer and cheddar-and-bacon potato skins.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  “Cheers.” He lifts his bottle and clinks it against mine.

  We smile at each other.

  Can you see it coming?

  Well, I sure as hell didn’t.

  He leans over and kisses me.

  Yup.

  Buckley—nice, sweet, noble, gay Buckley, leans toward me and puts his mouth on mine in a completely heterosexual way.

  I’m too stunned to do anything other than what comes naturally.

  Meaning, I kiss him back.

  It only lasts a few seconds, but that’s slo mo for what could have been a friendly kiss topping off a friendly toast to transform into a romantic kiss. The kind of kiss that’s tender and passionate but not sloppy or wet. The kind of kiss that you feel in the pit of your stomach, in that quivering place where the first hint of arousal always flickers.

  Yes, I am aroused by this kiss. Aroused, and stunned, and confused.

  Buckley stops kissing me—not because he senses anything wrong, though. He merely stops because he’s done. He pulls back and looks at me, wearing a little smile.

  “But…” I just stare at him.

  The smile fades. “I’m sorry.” He looks around.

  We’re the only people in the place, aside from the bartender, who’s watching a Yankee game on the television over the bar, and the waiter, who’s retreated to the kitchen.

  “Was that not all right?” Buckley wants to know. “Because I didn’t think. I just felt like doing it, so I did it.” He looks a little concerned, but not freaked out.

  I’m freaked out. “But…”

  “I’m sorry,” he says again, looking a shade less self-assured. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “But you’re gay!” I tell him, plucking the right words from a maelstrom of thoughts.

  He looks shocked. “I’m gay?”

  At least, I thought they were the right words.

  “Yes, you’re gay,” I say in the strident, high-pitched tone you’d use if you were arguing with a brunette who was trying to convince you she was blond.

  “That’s news to me,” he says, clearly amused.

  There he goes with that deadpan thing again. But this time it’s not funny.

  “Cut it out, Buckley,” I say. “This is serious.”

  “This is serious. Because I always thought I was straight. Maybe that’s why it didn’t work out with my girlfriend.”

  He’s kidding again. At least about that last part. But maybe not about the rest.

  Confused, I say, “I thought he was a boyfriend.”

  “He was a girlfriend. She was a girlfriend.” He twirls his stool a little and leans his elbows back on the bar behind him. He looks relaxed. And definitely still amused.

  I need to relax. I need a drink. I sip my beer.

  “Tracey, I promise you I’m not gay.”

  I gulp my beer.

  “Why would I be on a date with you if I were gay?” he wants to know.

  I sputter beer and some dribbles on my chin. I wipe it on my sleeve and echo, “A date?”

  “Wait, you didn’t think this was a date?” he asks, brows furrowed. “I thought you asked me out.”

  “Who am I, Sadie Hawkins? I asked you to go to the movies with me. Not as my date. I wanted you to date Raphael.”

  “Who?” He looks around, then says, “Oh, Raphael. The guy from the party. You wanted me to date him?”

  “Yes! You’re perfect for each other,” I say in true yenta fashion, though I suspect it’s a bit late for that now.

  “Perfect for each other.” Buckley nods. “Except for the part about me not being gay.”

  “Right.” I’m just aghast at this news, now that I’m positive he’s not teasing me.

  I take another huge gulp of my beer, trying to digest the bombshell.

  Physically, I’m still reeling from the kiss. I mean, he’s a great kisser. Great. And I realize how long it’s been since I’ve been kissed like that. Will and I never really kiss anymore. We just have sex—and like I said, even that doesn’t happen very often these days, and when it does, there’s no kissing involved and it’s blah.

  Oh, hell. Will.

  “I have a boyfriend,” I tell Buckley, plunking my beer bottle on the round paper coaster with a thud.

  “You do? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I didn’t think to. It didn’t occur to me that you thought we were on a date.”

  A date.

  It’s just so incredible how the whole situation could’ve blown right by me. I guess I was so distracted by what’s going on with Will that I wasn’t paying enough attention to what was going on with Buckley. Rather, to what Buckley thought was going on.

  I’ve cheated on Will. Completely by accident, but still, it’s cheating. A
nd right here in his own neighborhood, in a bar that we sometimes come to together. What if someone had seen me here with Buckley? Kissing Buckley?

  Again, I scan the bar to make sure nobody’s here besides the bartender, who isn’t paying the least bit of attention to us. The place is definitely deserted.

  So I wasn’t caught cheating.

  Will never has to know.

  Still, I’m mortified.

  I look at Buckley. He doesn’t look mortified. He looks amused. And maybe a little disappointed.

  “So you have a boyfriend?” he says. “For how long?”

  For a second, I don’t get the question. For a second, I think that what he’s asking me is how much longer do I expect to have a boyfriend. I bristle, thinking he just assumes Will and I are going to break up after being separated this summer.

  Then I remember that he doesn’t know about that. His true meaning sinks in, and I inform him, “I’ve been with Will for three years.”

  “That long? So it’s serious, then.”

  Naturally, I’m all, “Yeah. Absolutely. Very serious.”

  Well, it is.

  “You know what?” I hop off my stool. “I just remembered something I have to do.”

  “Really?”

  No. But I’m too humiliated to stay here with him any longer. Besides, that kiss really threw me.

  Basically, what it did was turn me on, and I can’t go around being turned on by other men. I’m supposed to be with Will, and only Will.

  I pull on my raincoat and fumble in my pocket for money. I throw a twenty on the bar.

  “You’re really leaving? Just like that?”

  “I just…I have to run. I can’t believe I forgot all about this thing….”

  The thing being Will.

  “Well, at least give me your number. We can still get together. I can always use another female pal.” He grabs a napkin and takes a pen out of his pocket.

  Yes, he has a pen in his pocket. Dammit. How convenient for him.

  “What’s the number?” he asks.

  I rattle it off.

  “Got it,” he says, scribbling it on the napkin.

  No, he doesn’t. I just gave him my grandparents’ number with a Manhattan area code.

  “Take this back,” he says, shoving the twenty at me. “This is on me. You’re not even going to get to eat any of the skins.”

  “That’s okay. I’m not that hungry after all.”

  He’s still holding the twenty in his outstretched hand, and I’m looking down at it like it’s some kind of bug.

  “Take it,” he says.

  “No, that’s okay. I can’t let you pay.”

  “Why not? Really, I won’t think it’s a date if I pay,” he says with a grin.

  That does it. I’m getting out of here.

  He shoves the twenty into my pocket and I take off for the door, rushing out into the rain with my slicker open and my hood down.

  I’m drenched before I get to the corner.

  My first instinct is to rush right over to Will’s.

  If I were in my right mind, I would stop, reconsider and go with my second instinct, which is to slink home on the subway, take a hot shower and crawl into bed—rather, futon.

  Instead, I go with my first instinct.

  In the lobby of Will’s building, I buzz his apartment.

  Nerissa’s hollow voice comes over the intercom.

  “It’s me,” I say. “Tracey.”

  “Hi, Tracey,” says Miss Brit in her polished accent. “Will’s not here.”

  He’s not?

  But he’s supposed to be here. Packing.

  Well, maybe she’s lying.

  No, that doesn’t make sense.

  Maybe he had to run out for more strapping tape or a new marker.

  “Do you know where he is?” I ask her.

  “No, I don’t. I just got back from rehearsal. I’ll tell him you stopped by.”

  No offer to let me come up and wait for him, I notice. Well, the apartment is pretty minuscule, and she probably doesn’t feel like hanging out with me until Will comes back from wherever he is.

  But still, I have a right to be there if I feel like waiting for him. More right than she does, since Will’s name is on the lease, I think irrationally.

  “See you later, Tracey,” she says breezily. Her later comes out “light-ah,” heavy on the “t.” Tracey is “trice-ee.”

  “Yeah. Cheerio.”

  I stalk back out into the pouring rain.

  Six

  “You coming to lunch, Tracey?” Brenda asks in her thick Jersey accent, poking her long, curly, helmet-sprayed hair over the top of my cubicle.

  “If you guys can wait two seconds for me to fax something to the client for Jake,” I tell her, not looking up from the fax cover sheet I’m filling out. “Otherwise go ahead without me and I’ll order take-out.”

  “We’ll wait for you, hon,” Yvonne’s smoker’s rasp announces from the other side of my cube, just before I hear a telltale aerosol spurt as she sprays Binaca. She and my grandmother are the only two people I’ve ever seen use the stuff.

  Then again, they’re probably about the same age, although Yvonne looks a lot younger. She’s tall and super-skinny with a raspberry-colored bouffant and matching lipstick, which she re-applies religiously after every post-cigarette Binaca burst. Yvonne’s claim to fame, other than being secretary to the big cheese, our Group Director Adrian Smedly, is that she was once a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall. She likes to tell stories about the old days, dropping names of celebrities I’ve mostly never heard of—people who were famous back in the fifties and sixties.

  She’s what my father would call a real character, and she would take that as a compliment.

  What should have been a quick fax job turns into a dragged-out ordeal. All I have to do is send Jake’s memo over to the client, McMurray-White, the famous packaged goods company that makes Blossom deodorant and Abate laxatives, among other indispensable products. But for some reason, the fax machine keeps beeping an irritating error code.

  I hate office equipment. Whenever I go near the fax machine, the copier, or the laser printer, the damn things apparently sense my uneasiness and jam.

  This is not a good day. Earlier, I scalded my hand using the coffeemaker in the kitchenette adjacent to the secretaries’ bay. And just now, on my way out of the ladies’ room, I slipped on a patch of wet tile and went down hard on my butt. You’d think the extra padding there would have cushioned my fall, but now it’s killing me.

  Jake comes up behind me as I try to force-feed the memo into the slot for the fiftieth time.

  “Having trouble, Tracey?”

  I turn around to see him wearing a smirk. By now I know that it’s nothing personal. That’s Jake’s usual expression, unless the client is around. Really. No matter what the circumstances, Jake finds something to smirk about. If I tell him his wife is on the phone, he smirks. If I tell him the NBC rep canceled tomorrow’s presentation, he smirks. If I tell him a document is being messengered over from his broker, he smirks.

  Let’s face it: he’s the kind of guy I’d consider an asshole if he weren’t my boss. He leers at women behind their backs, laughs whenever somebody does something clumsy and—I’m starting to think—cheats on his wife, Laurie. That really gets me. They’ve been married a little over a year, and I’ve never actually met her, but she’s really sweet whenever I talk to her on the phone. Sometimes when she calls, Jake makes a face, rolls his eyes, and tells me to say he’s in a meeting. I always feel guilty when I do that, because Laurie is so disappointed, and it’s like she doesn’t even suspect I’m lying.

  Meanwhile, lately, no matter how busy he is, he always takes calls from a woman named Monique. Supposedly she’s a friend of his. If you ask me, married men shouldn’t have friends named Monique. And something tells me Laurie doesn’t know Monique exists.

  “Can you see me when you’re done with that?” Jake says, as the fax machine s
tarts beeping an error code again and latches on to the first sheet of the memo in a death grip.

  “Can it wait until after lunch?” I ask, tugging the paper in a futile effort to free it from the machine.

  “It’ll only take a second,” Jake replies. He adds, “Whoa, careful—don’t rip that or you’ll have to reprint it,” before he goes back down the corridor to his spacious office. A moment later, I hear the telltale thump of a small Nerf basketball hitting the wall behind the hoop above his desk. I can picture him sitting there, his polished black wingtip shoes propped on his desk, idly making shots.

  Don’t get me wrong. He’s a busy guy with an important job, and he’s really good at what he does. But when he’s not in a high-powered meeting or working on a pitch or a presentation, Jake likes to kick back and have fun. He eats in the best restaurants in town. He orders stuff from the most expensive catalogues. He’s really into golf and tennis—gentlemen’s sports. I heard him on the phone the other day, ordering fishing equipment from Orvis that cost more than I make in a month. Lately, he’s been looking at property up in Westchester for a country house, and he says it has to have a private pond or stream so that he can fish.

  “Hey, you need a hand with that?” Latisha asks, behind me.

  I turn around, exasperated. “Thanks. And you guys should probably go to lunch without me, because Jake needs to see me after this. He says it’ll only take a second, but…”

  “It’s okay, we’ll wait,” Latisha says, pressing a couple of buttons on the machine. The paper slides right out. Moments later, the machine is humming and my fax is going through without a problem.

  “How’d you do that?” I ask her.

  She shrugs. “I’ve been a secretary a lot longer than you have, Tracey.”

  Secretary. I hate that.

  Okay, it’s what I am. But it’s not what I meant to be, and it’s not what I plan to be for long. Though there’s a part of me that’s convinced that it’s better to be a secretary in Manhattan than an anything back in Brookside, I keep telling myself that it’s only a matter of time before I find something better to do. But for now, I’m stuck here at Blaire Barnett Advertising, working for Jake.