Been There, Done That Read online

  “I’m having dinner with Dennis, and I’d rather make it a group thing,” I told her. “Besides, I need to talk to you about Jeremy.” I’d told Marcy about Dennis, whom she’d just missed meeting that long-ago day in Filene’s Basement, but I wasn’t sure if she remembered much. She called Dan, and he, miraculously, said he’d shoot to be home at six-thirty. “So he’s working shorter hours?” I ventured.

  “No. But the bigger I get, the more frightened of me he becomes.”

  Dennis and Marcy were engrossed in conversation when I arrived at the restaurant. “You found each other,” I said.

  They beamed up like old friends—of each other, not me. “Marcy said you were rescuing her from another night of chicken nuggets and Nickelodeon.”

  “Dennis likes SpongeBob,” Marcy announced, rolling her eyes dramatically.

  Dennis squeezed her arm. “She’s a snob, this one,” he laughed. He turned to Marcy. “Give it one more chance.”

  Marcy shook her head. “That’s just asking too much.”

  When Dennis went outside to use his cell phone, Marcy, without even looking up from her menu, remarked, “When you told me we were meeting Dennis, I thought you meant the Dennis who had a thing for you.”

  I squinted, trying to get her drift. Her stomach was so enormous, she could hardly pull up her chair. Yes, Dennis was being awfully nice to her, but did she really think he was hitting on her? What I really wanted to talk to her about was Jeremy, and she didn’t even care enough to ask.

  I was trying to come up with a suitable response to Marcy’s inquiry when Dennis reappeared. He looked nice tonight, I had to admit, in a white tab-collar shirt, black jeans and black oxford shoes. He smelled good, too, like a freshly sliced pear.

  “What do you think of this place?” he asked, pulling back his chair and smiling at me. I glanced at Marcy to see if she’d noticed the shift in his attention. Didn’t she see he was just being polite to her, that he was hoping to win me over by sucking up to my friends?

  I looked around lazily. “The whole exposed-pipe thing has been overdone,” I proclaimed. “Although I like that they’ve painted the pipes different colors. Makes me think of the, you know, that museum in Paris.”

  “The Pompidou,” Marcy offered.

  I ignored her. “But the black walls . . .” I wrinkled my nose and shook my head.

  “What would you do?” Dennis asked. “Royal blue? Red?”

  I considered. “Parchment. With colorful prints on the walls. That way, the ceiling would be the focus.”

  “But I thought you didn’t like the ceiling,” Marcy said. She wasn’t being especially contrary; she was always like this. Tonight, though, I just wasn’t in the mood.

  “If you’re going to have exposed pipes, it’s striking to paint them different colors,” I reiterated carefully. “Hey! There’s an article idea—exposed pipes and vents and stuff as art! Taking the industrial look a step further . . .” I pulled my notebook out of my bag and wrote it down. Dennis gave me the name and number of a designer who specialized in industrial chic. “Any other ideas?” I asked Dennis.

  “Black walls?”

  “Yes . . . yes! Black: bold or bleak?” And we were off.

  After dinner, Dennis, who lived around the block, asked us back to his place for coffee, and I finally felt grateful for Marcy’s presence (she still hadn’t asked about Jeremy, even in a whisper). Dennis seemed almost appealing tonight, I had to admit, but I still wasn’t ready for any kind of physical contact. But who knew? Maybe Marcy had allowed me to see him with new eyes. Really, he was just the kind of sensitive, artistic guy I should be hooking up with.

  Dennis lived on the second floor of a lovely brownstone. The South End was still dangerous in places, but over the past twenty-five years or so, it had been reclaimed and restored to much of its original glory. The apartment itself was anything but traditional: plum, mustard and ochre walls, leather arm chairs, blond wood intermingled with cherry. Black and white photographs mounted on broad white mats lined the walls. The overall look was part contemporary, part retro: striking and stylish, certainly, but not quite original. I’d seen the look before, I was certain. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

  “Cappuccino? Latté?” Dennis asked, heading for a massive espresso maker that took up most of a black granite countertop. Then it hit me: Dennis’s apartment looked just like a Starbucks.

  “Latté,” I said. “Decaf if you have it.” It was really, really hard not to add, “venti, nonfat, with a shot of vanilla syrup.”

  Marcy asked for a glass of milk as she gazed around in wonder. “Snazzy place, Dennis. You really have a knack for decorating.”

  He shrugged. “Not me—my ex.”

  Marcy made sympathetic noises, while I peered at Dennis anew. He had been loved and desired. Maybe I had missed something. Maybe I should open my mind and my eyes.

  “At least he had nice taste,” Marcy said. “Your ex, I mean.” I spun around, tried not to gasp. She often spoke without thinking, but with this, she’d hit a new low. Why would she assume Dennis was gay, just because he had style? The evening had been going so well. Dennis was a sensitive sort. His self-esteem might never recover.

  I smiled at Dennis, tried to find words to make the whole thing into a joke. He looked remarkably unperturbed. He pushed a button on the espresso machine, which made a loud whooshing noise. When it was quiet again, he sighed. “I don’t know. The place is a little too in-your-face for me. I was pushing for a tweedy, masculine look, but he had to have his way. As always.”

  thirty-two

  So you can’t really blame me for going to bed with Jeremy again.

  It’s not like I went to his room intending to rip his clothes off. I just tapped on his open-just-a-crack door, smiled shyly and sat down on his unmade bed. Sloppy though I am in my own home, I felt a whiff of superiority. It’s one thing to be slovenly behind the locked doors of an apartment no one ever visits, quite another to leave your bed unmade with your door open. The beige sheets looked familiar. Surely he had washed them since our romp. Right? Anyway, the bed was really the only place to sit; it was that or the floor. Jeremy was at his desk, his bendy aluminum desk lamp illuminating an over-highlighted textbook. The thing is, though, he got up and closed his door and came back to sit next to me on the bed. He cupped my face in his hands and gazed at me with those green-gold eyes with such pure heterosexual lust that I thought, “This may be the last straight man on the planet—and he likes me!”

  That’s another thing. After we left Dennis’s place, Marcy gushed about what a nice guy he was. She illuminated this niceness by saying, “Dennis told me how you said all your old friends had gotten married or moved away. So he thought you needed a shoulder to lean on.” There you have it, from the mouth of Marcy: Dennis had been calling me nonstop because he felt sorry for me. I had reached the very lowest rung on the Ladder of Loserdom. I was so mad, I never told her about Jeremy, even when we were finally alone, and she never bothered to ask.

  Still, I contained myself and forged ahead on my quest to set things right with Jeremy. “About the other night—” I looked down at my lap. I fiddled with the braided silver ring on my right hand. After Tim moved out, I’d bought it to replace the turquoise non-engagement ring he had given me for our five-year anniversary. “It wasn’t supposed to happen. It just wasn’t . . . right.”

  “I know,” Jeremy said softly. I looked up in surprise. Was he about to express his undying apathy? I wasn’t sure I could take it. He dropped his hands from my face and stroked my fingers. “When you told me about that music teacher in high school, I just assumed . . .” He looked up at me and smiled gently.

  “What?” I asked, honestly perplexed.

  “Well, that it was more than, you know, emotional.” Oh, God. Not another retread of my romantic past. I didn’t mind the sobbing and lying, really; I just wasn’t sure I could remember all the details. “What do you mean?” I asked carefully.

  “I thought,
you know.” I looked at him expectantly. “That you had slept with him.”

  Okay, now I was truly confused. “What does it matter whether or not I did?” I asked, hedging my bets and sounding a bit defensive.

  “It’s okay,” he said, squeezing my hand. “I just wish I had known. I would have made it more, I don’t know, special or something. But I’m really honored to be your first.”

  So there you have it: I was so bad in bed that Jeremy thought I was a virgin. What choice did I have, really?

  Afterwards, I crept out of the bed and tried not to feel smug. (In the heat of passion, Jeremy had murmured that I was “a quick study.” Ha!)

  The hall was mercifully empty. As I turned the key in my door, I said a silent prayer that Ethan wouldn’t be there. And he wasn’t. Some pimply kid with greasy black hair was there instead. “Huh?” he grunted, the hall light waking him as it hit his face. His exposed shoulders were white and bony and sprinkled with yet more acne. He lifted his head slightly and then let it fall back onto Tiffany’s pillow. She never woke up. More likely, she was faking sleep. She usually snored when she was really out.

  I closed the door more loudly than was necessary. Slipping back into bed with Jeremy was more appealing than I liked to admit, but sneaking out unseen in the morning would be impossible. Besides, the door had locked behind me as I left, and I wasn’t about to wake him up.

  At the end of the hall, the orange fire door swung open: Amber. Maybe I could sleep on her floor. But she breezed right by, yapping into her omnipresent cell phone.

  I had no choice: I had to go home. Fortunately, I had my backpack with me, car keys inside. So I’d miss another day of classes and another day of investigating. Maybe more. I’d poked around all I could and found nothing, unless you counted Dean Archer’s sleazy behavior, but I’d come to the conclusion that the girls weren’t hookers, after all. I’d kept a close eye on Brynn and never saw her with anyone else. Besides, if Archer was paying her for her sexual services, wouldn’t he take her to a hotel rather than a restaurant? And the other girl; I spent a bunch of nights hanging around her dorm and never saw her again. If she were a hooker, she’d be in and out a lot more. It was time to give up, I suddenly realized. The articles for Sheila were more important than this hopeless investigation, and I’d never get them written from my dorm room.

  I heaved a sigh of relief as my Civic pulled out of the dorm parking lot. As unpleasant as my adult life was right now, I was tired of playing make-believe. I’d shared some sweet moments with Jeremy, but my gut ached when I imagined his face the moment he learned my true identity.

  My gas tank was approaching empty, so I pulled into a convenience store parking lot. The store was closed—it was almost three A.M.—but the pumps were still open, thanks to the miracle of credit cards and auto-pay. Just a mile from the college, this spot lacked even a whiff of quaintness. Next door was a tire superstore, one of those chains you see everywhere. Across the street was a stark brown apartment building fortified by a cinder block fence. Lights twinkled in two windows several apartments apart, and I wondered if the insomniacs inside knew there were others awake at this lonely hour.

  As the gas whooshed into my tank, I leaned against the side of my car and stared up at the sky. It was inky black tonight, without a single star peeking through. The pump shut off, startling me with its loudness.

  A light blinked off in the apartment building across the street. I started my car and was about to pull out of the parking lot when I remembered my apartment keys. Sometimes I shoved them to the back of my desk drawer. There was no point heading back to the city unless I had them, and I hadn’t been doing so well on details lately. I pulled into a parking space on the edge of the lot, and killed the engine. Afraid of running down my battery, I shut off the lights. I rummaged through my backpack. The keys weren’t in the outside pocket where they belonged. I took a deep breath and stared out at the empty parking lot. Now what was I supposed to do? I opened the backpack’s main compartment and came up empty again. Desperate, I dumped the pack’s entire contents onto the passenger seat: disintegrating tissues, granola bar wrappers, a syllabus, a dull pencil, a pink gel pen. No keys. I was coming to terms with the idea of sleeping on one of the vinyl couches in the dorm lounge when he walked into the parking lot, head down, hands in the pockets of his oversized pants.

  I froze. Had he seen me? I had every right to be here, of course, just as he did. But Troy gave me the creeps. I’d been keeping my eyes open for him, walking by his house at every opportunity, but I wasn’t prepared to face him on my own, especially in a dark and deserted parking lot.

  He shuffled over to the side of the building, where a sporty silver BMW sat parked under a burned out street-light. As he pulled out of the lot, I sat paralyzed for one more moment before turning the key in my own ignition and slipping behind him on the deserted streets. At first I kept my lights off, but then I flicked them on. Hot shot investigative reporter or not, I respect the rules of the road. Besides, it was really dark, and I couldn’t see.

  He drove a few blocks, then, surprisingly, pulled into a residential area. He wound through a few streets, very, very slowly, almost as if he were lost. The houses here were solidly middle class, wandering neither into the lower or upper ranges of the socioeconomic scale: ranches and raised ranches overlooked tidy hedges and lawns that were turning brown for the season. Little Tikes cars sat neatly parked beside closed garages. There were no street lamps back here, but a porch light was left on every now and again, rescuing the neighborhood from total darkness.

  Finally, I had to turn onto a different street; we were the only cars out at that hour, and I didn’t want to arouse suspicion. I pulled over and turned off my lights, wondering what was going on, wondering what to do. I went back to where I’d last seen Troy’s car, assuming he wouldn’t recognize my Civic as the one that had been tailing him earlier.

  I would have passed him if I hadn’t paused too long at a stop sign, contemplating my next move. I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw the hatchback parked on a side street, lights off, and two still, dark figures in the front seat. They were still there the next time I rounded the block. And then they were gone.

  As I pulled into Marcy’s driveway, I glanced at the clock: 4:59 A.M. I groaned. Another time of the year, the sky would be glowing with the first hint of morning, but today it was as black as midnight. After I let myself in (Marcy hides a spare key under the mat because burglars would never look there), I crept as quietly as I could toward the television room. When a tall figure loomed in the darkness, I yelped, less from fear of death than from the terror of not being able to sleep for two hours before Marcy got up with the kids.

  “What are you doing here?” I gasped at Dan when he turned on the hall light, clad in a flannel bathrobe and holding a mug of aromatic coffee.

  “I live here,” he said with as little sarcasm as he could muster.

  “Well, yeah. I mean, I’ve heard the rumors. But what are you doing up?”

  “Six-thirty meeting.” He sipped his coffee, and then used the belt from his flannel bathrobe to rub the steam from his glasses. “Coffee?”

  I rubbed my eyes with my fists and shook my head. “I haven’t even gone to bed yet.” Then I thought of Jeremy and said, “Well, actually, I did go to bed, but I didn’t sleep much. Oh, never mind. I hope I didn’t scare you.”

  He shook his head. “I heard your car pull up and looked out the window. I was just coming to unlock the door.”

  “I was hoping to crash on your couch for a couple of hours.”

  He nodded toward the stairs. “Jacob’s bed’s empty. He had a nightmare and ended up with us last night. I’ll leave a note for Marcy.”

  So, rather than waking up in either of my beds or even in Jeremy’s, I greeted the morning—which was almost afternoon—from under a Star Wars comforter. As with the television room, Marcy had decorated Jacob’s room without any input from me. On the ceiling directly over the bed was a poster o
f Yoda wielding a sword or saber or whatever you call those laser things. No wonder the kid was having nightmares.

  I shuffled downstairs to an empty, tidy kitchen. A note on the counter read,

  K.,

  I’ve waddled off to the grocery store.

  Help yourself to breakfast. (Lunch?)

  M.

  P.S. I expect a full report.

  On the counter she’d left assorted whole grain cereals and fresh fruit. I ignored them and dove instead for the walk-in pantry.

  She caught me. “Cocoa Puffs?” With some effort, she hoisted a brown paper bag onto the granite countertop. Her car keys followed with a clang. The door to the attached garage was open, her white minivan parked inside.

  “I can’t believe you feed this crap to your kids,” I said between spoonfuls. The chocolate had leached into the milk, turning it almost as brown and sweet as the cereal.

  “It’s the organic kind,” she said mildly, presenting me with a towering cardboard cup of hot, expensive coffee.

  “You do love me,” I said.

  “Someone’s got to.” She meant to be funny, but it stung. Stupidly, my eyes filled with tears. “Honey!” she said, coming over and giving me a squeeze. “Lots of people love you! Everybody loves you!” She then proceeded to list all the people who loved me. It was a pretty good list, even if most of the people on it were blood relatives and therefore obligated to feel some affection.

  “Dennis likes you better than me,” I whimpered.

  “Gay Dennis?” She looked astonished. I wondered why she felt the need to tack his sexual orientation onto his name until I remembered that there was supposedly a Straight Dennis who couldn’t wait to get into my pants.