The Rock Star in Seat 3A Page 7

  I got home to find some supper waiting for me in the fridge with a cute note from Wy, who was cooking for a client that night. I felt a twinge of guilt as I looked at his adorable handwriting, the hand that felt familiar from years of Post-its on nights of missed intersections when he’d leave to cater a dinner before I came home. Dear heart.

  Before flopping on my bed, I went to take a shower, and when I emerged, I quickly glanced at my phone. My pulse pounded with three little words: New. Text. Message: “Wanted to make sure you got home safe, little witch.” Bingo. Somehow my moral compass quivered, as if clutched by a magnetic schizo seizure, like War of the Worlds. All the warm feelings engendered by Wy’s Tupperware’d meal and precious note were somehow eclipsed by Finn’s soul-searing check-in. My quiet inner-cinematographer gulped. Action.

  Chapter 17

  A restaurant is a fantasy—a kind of living fantasy in which diners are the most important members of the cast.

  —Warner LeRoy

  The next day I woke up and got dressed for work, tiptoeing to let Wylie sleep, but then wanted to have some form of communication that didn’t involve a pen.

  “Babe?” I whispered gently in his slumbering ear. “Babe, I’m leaving for work. I loved my scallion pancakes and smoked salmon, honeykins, thank you.”

  I could tell by his comatose state that he must’ve come in really late. I was just about to back away slowly when I heard him mutter two virtually unintelligible whispered words: “human blanket.”

  I was almost at the door and frankly a bit warm in my jacket, but I obliged, per our tradition. I lay down on top of him and smashed him into the Tempur-Pedic. We always did it when we were not overlapping in waking hours and if one had to sneak off, we’d always at least stop for a human blanket.

  “Ahhhhhhh, my FAVORITE,” he said, this time clearer.

  “Hi, Wyliekins.”

  “Hi,” he said, eyes still closed. “Wait, lemme look at you, Velcro.”

  He rolled over and opened his big brown peepers. He really was James Franco–esque. “Beautiful girl,” he said, drunk on fatigue. “Welcome home.”

  We sometimes called each other Velcro ’cause when we had started dating we literally would stay adhered to each other in bed Sunday mornings until our tummies were growling so much we had to get up to eat.

  I smiled and patted his head on the down pillow.

  “Missed you.”

  “You didn’t check in enough,” he said, not accusatorily but kind of needily.

  I exhaled. “Babe, I was crazed. You know you were never not with me.” Lies.

  “Haze, you’re my family,” he said.

  Fuck. Pang of guilt scissored my guts, but at the same time a tsunami of claustrophobia crashed over me.

  “Shoot, honey, I have to go, I’m late.” I leaned over and kissed his forehead. “I love you.”

  “Love you so.”

  I walked out and when I got in the street, after fishing my MetroCard out of my messenger bag, my first order of business was a phone check.

  Nuthin.

  Fuck!

  Before crashing, I had texted back “How chivalrous . . . here safe and sound xoH,” which ever-so-slightly upped the flirtation ante with the casual insertion of kiss/hug, but it was benign and common in my e-mails to everyone; it was so routine I literally wrote it to my Poland Spring delivery service guy. For some reason I started to panic when there was no sign of life. Wait . . . was I totally delusional?! I was A NOBODY AND HE WAS A GRAMMY-WINNING quote unquote “RECORDING ARTIST.” Was I just some insane dysmorphic freak who was so swept up in fantasy she couldn’t get a grip? Oh my god . . . was I like those fat people who line up for model-search auditions? Shit.

  I walked to the station and hopped on the L train to Brooklyn, got my morning iced coffee at Blue Bottle in Williamsburg, which Noah also frequented, though he rather grossly announced he doesn’t take his first sip until he sees the front door of the office because if he so much as sniffs it he can feel the intestines a-chuggin’. Nice. Basically it’s the equivalent of Roto-Rooter for humans. Also known as the SNL fauxmercial sketch ColonBlow. I walked to the office and arrived early enough that most of my colleagues hadn’t yet cruised in on their skateboards, motorcycles, Segways, or some other mildly alternative mode of transport.

  I sat down at my desk, and while I was catching up on all the e-mails I’d blown off in California my phone buzzed.

  “Guess what my 1st thought of the day was?” read the text. Finn!

  “What?” I wrote back.

  “Menu item #1 for Topless Tapas. QuesaDDillas.”

  I howled at my desk as people started to meander in.

  “GENIUS.”

  Fuck, I loved him. I was texting with a fucking ROCK STAR. Okay . . . I rubbed my hands together mentally, gotta add to the game here. Lightbulb.

  “Chips platter: I’m Nacho Bitch.”

  I waited for his response.

  Shwing!

  “LOL!!!!!!!” he replied.

  “Haze, whatcha got?” Noah asked, entering in his normal Tasmanian devil flurry. “Brad, Mike, Severin, Paco, conference room.” He walked by all of us, and we obediently rose from our various areas, following him to the all-glass-and-steel room overlooking the river.

  “Boss in—gotta bolt, more in a bit,” I texted Finn.

  We went into the room, each plopping on a sleekly designed-yet-ergonomically correct three-thousand-dollar-but-doesn’t-look-it swivel chair Noah had had flown in from Copenhagen.

  “How was California?” Noah asked as everyone took their seats.

  “Insane,” I pronounced. “I’m glad you’re all sitting down. ’Cause you’re gonna faint.”

  I’ve always had a flair for the dramatic, what can I say?

  “Out with it!” Sev demanded.

  I began with a description of my harrowing yet heavenly flight. The barf, the comfort, the convo, and the denouement at LAX.

  My office mates were literally on the edge of the $3,000 ergonomic seats Noah had proffered after his yogi touted their praises.

  “He’s literally obsessed with our stuff. He plays it all the time at home and on the road with his band and he freaked when I said we were doing our launch in L.A. this time. And when I said I was touring raw spaces downtown he offered me his building.”

  “Just like that?” Paco asked, incredulous.

  “Just like that,” I gloated. “And at no charge.”

  “Finn Schiller has a building?” Mike asked. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Real estate investment, maybe potential empire headquarters for The Void empire? The point is, it’s ours. And it rocks.”

  “No way he wants no dough,” Noah probed, leaning back in his chair.

  “Goose egg. Gratis,” I said, hand raised, as if in a witness booth. “All he wants is to bring a few friends.”

  “Wait a second . . . are you saying he’d come?!” Sev asked, mouth agape.

  “Holy shit!” Noah beamed. “Good going, Haze! I’m so psyched you puked your little brains out! That’s for taking one for the team.”

  He leaned across the conference table and high-fived me.

  We went over other logistics and the meeting wrapped with a huge pat on the back for yours truly.

  After a flurry of editor phone calls and fine-tuning a press release, my phone buzzed with a text.

  “Chicken Flautata’s.”

  I giggled in my chair. My creative juices were flowing. My turn.

  “Enchilaaaahhhhdas.”

  I went back to my computer until he TM’d me again a half hour later “for our COCKtail menu: Tres Equis beer XXX.”

  I was pulled into a meeting with the design department, but as they showed me options, my wheels were turning.

  “Shimmychangas” I surreptitiously sent him under the table.

  I went to lunch with Brad, who actually was a sick guitar player in his own right, and snuck a couple peeks at my phone.

  The first was ano
ther addition to our cocktails (“SINgria”) and then the next made my heart skip a beat. “What date are you coming back, bewitching girl?”

  “What’s wrong?” Brad asked as he saw my eyes widen into saucers.

  “Oh, uh, nothing. Let’s go back to the office.”

  I called my sister, asking if I could come up and see my nieces and have a much-needed drink, I had deets to download and craved her advice.

  “Anytime,” she said, almost begging. “You know the corkscrew hits the pinot noir the second the door closes behind my nanny.”

  I texted back Finn with the dates for my next trip, plus one more for good measure (Sopa de Whoretilla—not my best, I know), and within minutes he wrote back that we would have dinner that night. Then another buzz.

  “And I’d love to scoop you up from LAX if you don’t have a ride.”

  I was breathless. I thought I was going to explode. Because of his text flurry, including what he was up to and the weather there, my day flew by. Work was actually a blast, and because he was so into what we were doing at Badass, suddenly, so was I. It was like he renewed my vigor for what I do every day, just when it was getting monotonous.

  Chapter 18

  You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.

  —Dr. Seuss

  I blew out of there at five on the dot, feeling like I was going to explode. I couldn’t go home. I just started walking. And walking. My legs led me to the Brooklyn Bridge, a place I love to stroll, often with thoughts as heavy as the steel girders supporting it. I felt like someone had shot a cannon through my midsection, but just like the liquid metal Terminator 2 guy, it kept closing so no one could see it. But the scar, the pain is still there, even though the oozing silver fills it to the naked eye. The memory of the hollowness haunted me as I put a hand to my tummy, as if to prove to myself I’m still actually me because I feel so utterly changed.

  I’ve had butterflies. Everyone has. First days of school, a new job, a budding romance. But this wasn’t a giddy Aurora in the woods singing with bluebirds abuzz on love shitting on her fucking shoulder. This was different . . . better . . . worse. Because the drama factor was spiked so high, thanks to the Squeeze song forbidden fruit aspect. Each step I took felt like the last before a high jump in the Olympics, or a plummet with a bungee cord. Or an aerial like those psycho X Games people. Ever since I’d returned home, each forced bite of food felt like a Last Supper before the electric chair and then the next was like filet mignon after wandering the desert drinking cactus juice. I was officially a mess. A beautiful mess.

  The astonishing thing about hitting a milestone birthday is that on some level, you feel like you’ve crossed a finish line, arrived. But I think the pit of despair and mystery of life widens when it dawns on you, with a vertebrae-tingling chill, that you never “arrive.” It’s always the run before the high jump. After any medal ceremony there can always be another and another. You can always get better or, gasp . . . grow. I thought I was done growing up, or at least had chosen to not grow up. But I had my perfect life and now I actively felt myself changing, morphing from all that I was even a month ago. And it hurt. Like the cannon. And now I realize why they call it growing pains. Kirk Cameron (who I heard is now a Bible thumper) and the gang were onto something.

  Just then Wylie called.

  “Hi, babe!” I said, at once happy to hear his cute chirp but also feeling oddly like my wings-of-fantasy flight had been clipped by reality.

  “Hi, sweet pea,” he said. “I miss you . . .”

  “Me, too.”

  “I feel like I’ve barely seen you and you’re leaving again. I want to cook for us, but my boss is entertaining like crazy.”

  “That’s because they know they’re losing you soon! They want to impress all their friends before you bolt,” I suspected aloud.

  “Nah, they’ve been so great, and last night they brought me out and told the guests they would be backing me and they all oohed and ahhed and stuff.”

  “Any ideas for the name yet?” I probed.

  “A couple . . . ,” he teased. “Oh shit, that’s them—I’ll call you later, honey.”

  “Bye, Wy,” I said. “I love you.”

  So now what? My control freak self was in unchartered territory. Do I flush thoughts of Finn out of my brain? I tried . . . but then I’d reach for my phone to see if he’d texted. But it made me feel good to rewind and play the film stills of our cinematic movie flight together. It felt like a small little black-and-white photography flip book in my mind’s hand that I could buzz through with super 8–style haziness, then flip it again to reveal a new moment, and another: his hand on my back, his saying there was no one like me, his jacket creaking as he moved. I felt the pit in my stomach return, that unfillable hole. As much as I tried to brush it off and walk through the motions of my evening without dwelling on its growing presence, deep down I suspected that it would haunt me until I threw down ropes, rappelled to its core, and explored it further.

  I arrived on 212 soil and called Kira.

  “Hi, I’m two blocks away,” I said, panting. “I need to see you.”

  “Come on over.”

  The subway I’d taken might as well have been a rocket ship crafted by Houston NASA dorks. When I detrained on Seventy-seventh Street, I was in another universe: the Upper East Side. My sister lived on a tree-lined block on Fifth Avenue facing Central Park. The leafy vista was so calming and serene and my nieces, Iris and Maeve, were still in their adorable hunter green Chapin pinafores with Peter Pan collars when I arrived.

  “HAZEL!!!!!!” Iris shrieked, flying into my arms with a leap worthy of Usain Bolt.

  “Hi, gals!” I said, kissing each on the head.

  Kira came out, already sipping her vino, which she did crack precisely at 4:59 with her Rabbit bottle opener, right as the nanny headed home to Queens. Sometimes Vern’s coat isn’t even on when Kira’s unwrapped the foil over the cork.

  “Hi, Ki,” I said, kissing her. “I’ll take one of those. Or four.”

  The girls went off to play a bit before dinner, and my sister and I plopped on her delicious sofa, legs curled up, facing each other, wineglasses in hand.

  “Talk to me,” she said.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Wylie is proposing,” I said, the air almost trapped in my lungs as I sputtered it out.

  Kira didn’t react. “You don’t seem too off-the-wall excited about that . . . ,” she observed.

  I described my ceiling revelation.

  “Oh shit,” she said, taking a swig.

  “Kira, I love him. I do. I really do—he is the sweetest, most devoted, most loving guy. I mean, they don’t make them like this. He tells me he loves me with all his heart and all his soul. I almost feel like if I didn’t say yes, it would destroy him.”

  “Don’t be so conceited. I know you’re fabulous, but he is, too, and he’d be fine.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I said, knowing my boyfriend was such a catch he’d be gobbled up by the single-girl piranhas that swarmed New York.

  “What the fuck is wrong with me?” I asked her. “He’s so smart, so gorgeous, he’s an incredible and probably soon-to-be illustrious chef. He’s got it all!”

  “So why are you worried?” she asked, eyebrow raised. She knew me so well and read my indecision.

  “Because I can’t stop thinking about Finn.”

  “You just met him.”

  “I know! I’m being ridiculous. Maybe this is all in my head, who knows.”

  “I know it’s not,” Kira said. “You’re always the girl who says the guy doesn’t like you, doesn’t notice you, even when they do. You must be on to something.”

  “Kira,” I started slowly. “I know this is going to sound so cocky and so absurd but . . . there’s this . . . crazy weird tension with Finn. It’s fun and there’s chemistry and it’s real. I feel like . . . we have this thing. This instant, deep connection
. My stomach is filled with butterflies, and they are going shithouse in there.”

  “I can tell,” Kira replied.

  “You know his song ‘Beautiful Mess’?” I asked Kira.

  “Of course. We played it on a loop that summer on the Vineyard scooping ice cream. When I had one huge arm and one skinny one.”

  “Okay, well, that’s him. He’s gorgeous and fierce and strong but also deeply anguished and broken. And I want to glue him back together.”

  “Oh nonononono,” she said, shaking her head like the mommy she was. “Nooooo.”

  “Why? What?”

  “Hell to the hell to the HELL to the no. GLUE? That is a very dangerous word.”

  “Why?”

  “What is glue used for, Elmer?”

  “Making things.”

  “Or fixing things. Broken things. The worst thing a woman can ever think is that she can heal a man. He is not Humpty Dumpty. You are not going to ‘fill him’ or complete him like the deaf people in Jerry Maguire.”

  “I disagree. It’s like The Missing Piece,” I said, reminding her of our absolute favorite childhood book. “The Pac-Man–shaped thing is literally able to roll when he gets his pie-shaped missing piece. It makes him whole, makes him speed up, see the world from a whole new perspective.”