Reality Check Read online

  “Girl talk,” Nell said.

  “So scram,” Jem added.

  Jack scraped the floor with his chair as he pulled it away from the table. He loped over to the bar. I saw him order another Scotch. His behavior just now had upset me. Just when I’d started to really like him and feel entirely comfortable in his presence, he’d gotten weird and pulled way back. And now he had the presumption to think he’d be welcome at our table. “Why do guys think they can do that? Just barge in on a bunch of girlfriends having a heavy discussion. We wouldn’t do that to them.”

  “Jem would.” Nell reached for the pack of Virginia Slims. “Can I have one?”

  “You don’t smoke, Nell,” Jem said, pushing the box across the table.

  “I know. I’m not going to put it in my mouth; I just like to hold it.”

  “That’s what my wife always says,” heckled a burly guy who had overheard us.

  Nell flipped him the bird, then giggled at her own gutsiness.

  Suddenly, I was no longer in the mood to rehash the episode, contestant by contestant. It was just forty-eight hours after I’d had the allergic reaction to the lobster and I wasn’t yet back in fighting shape. I fished through my purse for a vial of pills that had been prescribed by Dr. Michaels. I probably shouldn’t have been drinking a beer, but what the heck? I swallowed the capsule with a swig of Sam Adams. “I need to get some sleep, you guys,” I told my roommates. “I got through the first episode on sheer adrenaline.”

  Nell and Jem looked at each other. “We’re going to stay a while longer,” Jem said. “I could use another round.”

  I got up, tossed a few bills on the table, and started to head for the door. The smoke had begun to get to me anyway. Jack reached out and touched my sleeve as I walked past the bar. “Leaving already?” he asked me.

  “I’m beat.”

  “Mind if I walk you home?”

  “Yes. And I’m taking a bus. I live two and a half miles uptown.”

  “Then, can I ride with you?”

  “It’s a free country, Jack.” I left Pinky’s without waiting for him. He had a drink to finish and lot of nerve to presume that I desired his company right now. Thinking about it as I walked alone to Eighth Avenue to catch the bus, I’d been angry with him ever since he’d told me that our little lobster dinner wasn’t a “date.” In my head, I assumed it was. And why shouldn’t I have done so? He’d extended the invitation, paid for everything, carried me up to his hotel room like my White Knight . . . and then . . . there was that kiss. On my planet, all that definitely adds up to a date. I couldn’t think of anything else on the bus ride home. Jem feels that no one should leave it up to men to make the rules, because they keep changing them! For example, they pursue us and as soon as we allow ourselves to be caught, they back off. I wonder if there is any other species in the animal kingdom that behaves the same way.

  It was a short walk from the bus stop down Seventy-sixth Street to our apartment building. When I heard footsteps behind me, I naturally accelerated my pace. The footsteps at my back increased their speed as well; they clearly belonged to someone with much longer legs than I had. I didn’t even want to take the time to look back to see who was following me. I clutched my purse to my chest and started to trot, but it made the rash on my legs start to throb a bit, so I gave up.

  My pursuer caught up with me, and spun me around by my right arm. Before I realized what was happening, Jack’s arms were around me, his tongue was doing amazing things to mine, and I was responding with an intensity that matched his own. My body wanted his so much that my mind forgot I was angry with him.

  Suddenly, my brain switched into high gear and I stomped on his left foot with my black suede stilettos. Taken completely off guard, Jack ended up biting his own lip. He yelped in pain. “What the hell did you do that for, Liz?” He pulled away, totally stunned by my response.

  “Because you’re a nut. You were stalking me!” I said, out of breath, adrenaline pumping. “What did you do? Follow my bus in a taxi?” Jack nodded. “How do I always manage to attract the nuts?” I said, turning and starting to walk away.

  “Liz, wait! Stop. I won’t touch you. I’ll stay right here, I swear.”

  I turned back. “Then you want to let me know what that was just about? You tell me in the hospital lobby in front of my roommates that we weren’t on a ‘date’ on Friday evening. Then, you completely ignore me until you try to horn in on my conversation with Nell and Jem in Pinky’s tonight—and now you follow me home and just grab me in the middle of the street and kiss me. What the hell is your deal?”

  Jack stood there, shaking his head. “You think you attract all the nuts in this world? Every woman I seem to have ever been wildly attracted to turns out to be a toxic bachelorette. I thought when I met you, I’d finally broken the cycle. You seemed to be so ‘together.’ I guess I was mistaken.”

  “You’re wrong on both counts, Jack.” I kept my distance from him. He looked at me as though he expected me to expound, so I did. “First of all—and this should come as no surprise—I’m not nearly as ‘together’ as you seem to believe. Secondly, I’m not ‘toxic,’ and I resent that categorization.”

  “Well, you could have fooled me,” Jack replied. “You were so much fun the other night. And those kisses weren’t exactly . . . dispassionate. Then, tonight, it’s like you’re another person. At Pinky’s—and then just now, you stomp on my foot, for chrissakes! I try to do something nice for a woman . . . maybe I should just become an asshole, because you women seem to find that more attractive!”

  Was steam coming out of my ears? “Okay, Jack, drop the ‘you women’ thing. This is not about paleolithic archetypes. It’s about you and me. I was about as vulnerable as I could possibly be the other night, all helpless and hospitalized. You were so solicitous, so caring—and then you turned on a dime. My reaction tonight . . . was a reaction . . . to your reaction.” By now, I was as confounded as he was. “So what kind of game are we playing here? Do you actually care about me or even like me, or are you acting out a revenge fantasy against every woman who’s ever wronged you, and you decided to place the target squarely over my heart?”

  Jack flattened his upper lip into his lower one in an expression of grim determination. He looked at me, then looked away as I tried to hold his gaze. He exhaled deeply. “I do like you. In fact, I’m extremely intrigued by you. Your effervescence, your sense of fun, your warp-speed brain. Plus, I think you’re gorgeous.” He paused. “But . . .” I could see that ‘but’ coming a mile away. “Listen, Liz. I realized that I would be creating potential problems for us on the show if I pursued my interest in you. And since I somehow got off on the wrong foot with your roommates, I didn’t think it was such a good idea to take you home from the hospital and tuck you in and sit by your side until it was time for me to catch a cab to the airport—which is, in fact, what I wanted to do then. I would have kissed you as much as you would have let me. At the studio this evening, it seemed like the right thing to do to keep my distance—because of the no-fraternization clause in our Bad Date contracts. And then tonight at Pinky’s, the atmosphere was none too conducive to conversing either. But I wanted to tell you that I’d like to see you again—and God’s honest truth, I really wanted to kiss you again. And I couldn’t do that in Pinky’s. I’m not into exhibitionism.”

  “So that’s why you accepted a role on a TV reality game show. You are a nut case, Jack Rafferty.” He looked so earnest, yet I had a hard time believing him.

  “On the day of the Bad Date auditions I was in town to judge a yo-yo contest. So that’s what I was doing in New York and when I saw the ad in the paper, I decided on a flight of fancy to see if they had any appointments left. They didn’t, but once I visited their offices I refused to take ‘no’ for an answer and said I’d wait until they would see me.” Jack took the red yo-yo from a pocket in his blazer and executed an intricate trick. “ ‘Man on the Flying Trapeze.’ This is my lucky yo-yo; I had it with me tonight
and you saw me with it the afternoon we met. Back in my misspent youth I won the Florida state championships with it four years in a row as well as two national titles. I love toys and games. It’s really sad when you meet someone who looks like they never get any fun out of life— or haven’t done so for decades. You’re fun—when you’re not jabbing a spiked heel through my metatarsal. Your fun-ness is one of my favorite things about you so far.” He did another spectacular trick. “That one’s called ‘Double or Nothing.’ I wanted to appear on a reality TV show for two reasons. First, because game shows are my trashy passion. I won the Jeopardy college tournament when I was a senior at Florida State, and I still watch the show whenever I get the chance. It helps me unwind from a busy day. That’s how I knew the Oreo question, remember? I’m a Match Game fiend, too.” Jack put the yo-yo back in his pocket.

  I wasn’t sure what to make of him and he’d probably regard me as a nut job if I confessed that I’d been carrying his business card around like a lucky charm—the equivalent of his yo-yo. “So, what’s your second reason for airing your romantic dirty linen on live television?”

  He smiled and ran a hand through his hair. His eyes glinted. “Free publicity. Every on-air mention of Tito’s Famous South Beach Salsa is worth a suitcase full of advertising dollars.”

  “As an adwoman, I could view that as taking the bread out of an agency’s mouth.”

  “Or you could view it as smart marketing.” He grinned at me. “Want to hear my bonus round reason?”

  “Bring it on.”

  “I’m only half-kidding when I tell you that I had this wacky notion that if I met a great lady through the show who’s had really bad luck with men, then we’d be a perfect match for each other.”

  I laughed. “Perfect!”

  Jack laughed, too, and shook his head.

  “Look, I’m not a toxic bachelorette, Jack. Quite the opposite, in fact. But my two best friends are convinced that you’re attracted to me because you want something. And I’ve known Jem and Nell for so long that experience has taught me not to dismiss their theories out of hand . . . despite evidence to the contrary. You seem to win at every game you play or any competition you enter; so already I feel like a wishbone—with you and my attraction for you tugging at one arm—and Nell and Jem on the other. And I don’t know whether to follow my instincts or my libido.”

  Jack took my hands in his. “Your roommates are right about me, Liz, I do want something.”

  I broke our connection and pulled my hands away.

  He tried to grasp them again, but I shoved them in my pockets.

  “Did it ever occur to you that the ‘something’ I want is to get to know you better? I’m just trying to figure out how to do that without busting our Bad Date contract. If we’d all gone to the after-show party in the Green Room, we could have chatted and pretended that we were just getting to know one another in a fellow cast member kind of way. It was sheer coincidence that I ran into you tonight; I was planning to hang out in the Green Room but I wanted a good Scotch, so one of the stagehands sent me over to Pinky’s. The fact that you and Jem and Nell share an apartment was a fact that existed before the Urban Lifestyles Channel came up with the concept for this show. No one at the station can reproach roommates for sharing a beer outside the studio after the telecast, although I think the three of you might want to consider whether Mr. and Mrs. America know that you’re roommates or whether Rob Dick and company are keeping it under wraps, since it’s technically in violation of their own contract.”

  He shook his head in frustration. “However once I saw you in Pinky’s, I took the chance on ‘fraternizing’ with you. I was happy and high on the fact that we’d hurdled the first episode. But the main reason I couldn’t talk to you in the bar was because you and your friends shooed me away from your table. I took the risk that I’d be seen chatting with you all because I want to get to know you better, Liz. And after two Scotches, I cared a lot less about what the producers might say, if they even had cause to.”

  “So when we sent you packing and you went to the bar . . . ?”

  “That was my third Macallan you probably saw me order.”

  My two roommates came skipping tipsily down the street toward us, their purses swinging from their shoulders. Considering we’d just been discussing their opinions of Jack and my conflicted emotions about all of this, he and I quickly dropped hands. It was the better part of discretion.

  “With the thoughts I’d be thinkin’, I could be another Lincoln, if I only had a brain.” Their voices were unmistakable. We girls always sing stuff from The Wizard of Oz, especially when we’ve had a lot to drink. “Liz, don’t you think you should be getting upstairs? After all, you said you still weren’t feeling well,” Jem said, shooting a glare at Jack.

  “Excuse us, please.” Nell wrinkled her nose at Jack and slipped her arm through mine.

  Jem took hold of my other arm. “I’m afraid that prescription Dr. Michaels gave you clouds your judgment, Liz.”

  Nell feigned sympathy. “He told us that might be a side effect.”

  “See? Wishbone,” I said regretfully to Jack, then turned to Nell and Jem. I was really annoyed with their behavior, but short of breaking out of their arm-lock and causing a scene in the middle of the street, I didn’t know what to do. “You two are full of . . .” I began to say. I looked back at Jack standing on the sidewalk as my girlfriends steered me into our lobby. His expression was grim. It certainly felt like he and my roommates had started a tug of war for me. And it was already driving me crazy.

  14/

  By the Numbers

  “Welcome back to our little celebrity!” Jason Seraphim chirped as he thrust a split of champagne into my hands. I’d just walked in the door, ten minutes late, and was greeted with a round of applause. “Happy Monday!” F.X. said, shaking my hand. “I hope you haven’t grown too big for your britches.”

  I laughed. “I made it through one episode, guys. It’s probably a bit too early for bubbly.” I looked at the bottle in my hand.

  “It’s a new client,” Jason said. “A Long Island sparkling wine. We’ll talk about that later.” He pulled me over to my desk and backed me up so I was sitting on the desk top. “I want all the dirt. What’s Travis Peters like in person?”

  “As thick as a dictionary. On the air, anyway. I didn’t have an actual one-on-one conversation with him, so for all I know he may be an Einstein once you get to know him. I would have thought Milo would have been more your type.”

  Jason looked me straight in the eye. “Oh, puhlease, Liz.”

  Demetrius came into my office and seated himself at my desk, putting his size fourteen Converse Hi Tops on my blotter. “So, what is dis Travis like?”

  I could not understand the mania for Travis. “He’s practically nonverbal and he’s probably not much older than twenty-one. He’s a boy!”

  Jason looked at Demetrius. “Exactly!”

  I shook my head. “The guy’s only got one helix in his DNA. What would you two creative, educated, intelligent guys have to say to a man like that?”

  My colleagues regarded one another and dissolved into peals of laughter, leaving me out of their loop. “Fuck me!” Demetrius said.

  F.X., having overheard the conversation, entered my room. “I always come in during the best parts,” he said grinning. “Speaking of . . . you know . . . I wonder if Candy Fortunato charges by the hour.”

  “She’s not a hooker, she’s a stripper,” I said. “An ex-stripper, actually. And you’ve got a wife and kid, so what do you care? Unless you want to buy your wife an erotic outfit to play dress-up in from Candy’s ‘Snap Out of It’ line. She showed me her catalogue while we were in the dressing room.”

  Francis Xavier Avanti’s eyes seemed to bulge out from behind his thick eyeglass lenses. “You share a dressing room? Can I come visit?”

  I ignored his question. “And she’s got a Web site, too, so you can buy her fashion designs online. She models them herself.
”

  F.X. turned on his heels and wheeled out of my office. “I’ll be back!” he announced. I’m sure he scooted back to his office to fire up the Internet. Browsing Candy’s domain should keep him occupied for most of the day, I figured. People had the strangest taste.

  In the “strange taste” department, today’s lunch was really weird. Gwen served a carpaccio, which is raw something, but I’m not even sure what, with a brown sauce that tasted slightly fermented. When I asked her what we were eating, she told me that it was raw beef sliced very thin with a sauce, in my honor, made from—guess what—bad dates! She assured me that we weren’t being poisoned from what I was afraid was rotten fruit.

  When Jason and F.X. popped ’round to my office after lunch and asked “What have you got for us?” I had no idea what they were talking about. F.X. reminded me that my Numbers Crunchers ideas were due. After the Snatch debacle, I didn’t think it was the best idea in the world to admit that I had totally forgotten about the snack food assignment. The box of crispy treats had been staring me in the face for the past few days, but after the first hour or two on my desk, it had begun to blend into the general chaos of my office. “Give me a couple of hours,” I told F.X. and Jason, closing the door behind them. I remembered our conversation about the client’s demographic— everybody, basically—so I sat down and scribbled some notes. Lucky for me, Demetrius hadn’t yet smoked his two P.M. spliff, so he was still on planet Earth and thus managed to whip out some terrific artwork. By three-thirty, I’d almost convinced myself we’d been working on the project for the past week. If our presentation to the bosses went over well, I was ready to take the Rastaman up on his offer to share the joint. Maybe I should have indulged beforehand; I would have been considerably mellower. I buzzed Jason and F.X. over the intercom and they came down to my office.