Chapter 8 -- New York City

Larry and Nadine take a trip to New York City. I'm being bold and posting all 18 pages in one action-packed Sunday edition.

Chapter 8 -- New York City

September 4, Larry’s car

“It’s OK to cry about it.”

Those were the first words spoken during the long drive home from a day at Lake Lanier. One of Nadine’s nurse buddies had family with a house on the lake, and we went. It was our first “we” event. I guess you could call that a milestone, since we started screwing in late July.

Vince died six weeks ago. It was a bit eerie, with both of us a bit tired and sunburned, that she pointed out exactly what I was thinking.

“I know,” I replied, and that was the end of that one.

***
September 10, Larry’s place

The phone rang.

This was not an unexpected thing at my house. It was, however, somewhat unusual at 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday. I was in the midst of a long and, so far, successful seduction of my fair maiden. Her bra was on the floor but she had yet to allow me to cross the border of her scrub bottoms. I thought if I could survive one more segment of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, I was in like Flynn.

I don’t have a land line, because that’s so 90s. My cell phone always is within hand’s reach. It’s a sign that I am a little more OCD than I’d care to admit.

I took the phone into the bedroom and Nadine watched the rest of the show. The upside was that I could stop pretending to care about four gay men helping two overweight Long Island slobs. The downside was that by the time I went back into the room, the bra would be back on and the window would be shut for the day. Nadine had a lot on her mind after a shift, and only an hour or two of some of the worst TV in history could calm her down. It was best to make subtle moves during that first hour. I couldn’t be too lax, because once her mind had cleared, she could barely make it back to her place before passing out for most of the day.

I slapped the phone closed and dropped it on the near couch cushion. Nadine turned off the TV. Her bra was still on the floor.

“Who was that?” she asked. Darn it all, she probably expected me to answer.

“Want to go to New York with me?”

***
We all have artificial guidelines that tell us when a relationship is going to the “next level.” I say artificial because people are easily swayed by friends and especially Oprah. If two friends and one Dr. Phil column tell a woman that third-date sex means commitment, gosh darn it that’s gospel, regardless of the surrounding reality. Some women have a deadline for saying I love you. It’s almost always two weeks before a guy is ready.

The trouble with knowing when a relationship has morphed into something serious, and by serious I mean something that will require therapy to overcome, is not that one person is ready before the other. It’s that one person brings it up before the time is right.

“Could you say that into my good ear?” she asked. I could ask this woman to set me on fire and she’d have an obscure movie quote in response. How many women have good memories of Ace Ventura, Pet Detective?

“New York City,” I replied. “You, me, the apple.”

“I can dig it.”

Nadine doesn’t mull over her decisions. She did keep me waiting for nearly 12 hours that one time.

“You’ll have to get off work.”

“Just tell me when. I’ve taken one vacation day in nine months.”

“I’ll have to pass it by my boss,” I replied. It was a bad joke but it didn’t stop me from rolling it out time after time.

“What’s this trip all about?”

“My benefactor requested a meeting.”

“Benefactor?”

“My main client.”

“People still meet in person? They probably don’t even know what you look like.”

“Actually I’ve never officially met the client. The guy who hooked me up with them is kind of like an agent.”

“But only kind of.”

“As far as I know, he just deals with this one company. When they need people, he’s the guy to contact.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to go directly to the source?”

“The client never would have hired me otherwise.”

“Which client is this?”

“All top-secret, my dear.”

“I was mildly interested. Now I’m bored.”

“Does that mean you’re not going to take off your top?”

She yawned theatrically. “I’m suddenly very tired.”

“OK, I get it, you want to have a conversation before sex.”

“Not all the time, but sometimes. Especially in the morning when you’re a little too eager.”

“I have to talk to you long enough to forget that I want to take you to bed right now.”

Nadine blinked a couple of times. Clearly I had earned her attention. “We have to go all the way to the bed?”

I sat down. “What do you want to know about this arrangement?”

“Does he have a name?” Referring to my benefactor, I assume.

“Mo.”

“Mo?”

“He says it’s short for something, but I never pry.”

She smiled, and I thought about how I was going to get that shirt off. I obviously hadn’t talked enough.

“Do you ever get to know anyone?” she asked with sincerity.

“I’m not sure where you’re going with that one.”

“You’ve never officially introduced me to your friends.”

“Opportunity never came up.”

“I picked your drunk ass up at your fantasy football draft. You could have introduced me then.”

“I could barely stand up.”

“Phil was nice enough to say hi. He apologized for thinking that I was a prostitute.”

“Oh yeah, the NFL draft party. He’s good that way. I mainly do guy things with them. I don’t get invited to couples stuff very often.”

“Wasn’t there a party that night? Families invited and all?”

Yikes. “There was.” The cookout was the second to last event in the EHFL (Extremely Heinous Football League) draft weekend. Most of us were hung over due to consuming massive quantities of alcohol at the draft, which for some crazy reason started at 9 a.m.

“I was working that night.”

“You were.”

“I needed the shift,” she said, letting it go, at least for the moment. “You were funny.”

“I was?”

“Be sure to thank whoever cleaned you up.”

“My friends are good that way.”

“You already said that.” She licked her lips. That could be an indicator, or she had really salty Chinese food last night. Too early to tell.

I paused and she picked things up. “When you get too drunk at the fantasy draft, what do they do when it’s your turn to pick?”

“They give you Ron Dayne.” The draft was 18 rounds. I had an affair with a bottle of peach vodka that came to a bad ending at round 12.

“I assume that’s bad. Didn’t the Broncos just cut him?”

“They did at that.”

“Your friends aren’t good that way.”

“Sometimes, you gotta play hurt.”

She stood up, kissed me on the forehead, and walked to the door.

“You don’t have to go so soon,” I said.

“Apologies to the morning wood. I need to start packing.”

“The trip’s not for two weeks.”

“I’m a slow packer.”

***

I didn’t always just do guy things with my friends. On Wednesday nights a group of us met for trivia night at Jocks and Jills. It’s a generic sports bar, but at least they have Newcastle. Regulars include Tom, Brian, Wade and his wife Charlotte, and Joseph. Tom always hit on the waitress, even if he brought a date, which was often. If Natalie, Joseph’s sickeningly gorgeous wife, was there, we never missed a question. She’s wicked smaht.

The group never gave Tom crap about bringing a killerette who rarely returned for a second week. Tom had a company softball game on Wednesdays, and since his firm had a dozen or so employees, so he was always hunting for ringers. If she happened to have a good arm for slow pitch, it was a bonus.

Nadine worked most Wednesdays, but not all. It was an unspoken off night. She’d come over Thursday night for dinner and we never discussed what we did the previous evening. I was convinced that the lack of “How was your day honey?” was a good thing.

***

September 23, really early

“Please tell me that you’re packed.”

It was 5 in the morning. To make our 6:59 flight, we had to leave pretty soon to find decent long-term parking near Hartsfield-Jackson. Nadine looked tired. Since I was somewhat under her spell, I thought the unwashed look was flattering.

I couldn’t see why she might be tired, considering her work schedule transformed her into a nocturnal creature.

“Sleeping at night is so weird,” she replied, opening the door for me. Behind the door was a suitcase the size of Orlando Pace, the behemoth of a left tackle for the St. Louis Rams.

I commented not. Instead I walked to her bag and picked it up. It had four wheels. Impressive.

“You’re not going to comment on the bag?”

“You’re probably just smuggling one of your friends in here.”

“Just clothes, dude.”

I would prefer to take Marta, the maligned mass-transit choice of Hotlanta, but the trains didn’t start running until six a.m. We drove and despite a slow shuttle bus from the distant parking lot we got to the terminal on time. Surprisingly, Nadine’s bag failed to exceed the 50-pound maximum for a single checked item. Due to the liquid restrictions, I checked a bag for the first time in years.

Nadine initially gave me crap for taking the laptop. I had it because I needed to see if Donte Stallworth practiced on Friday, because he was a key member of the Buckhead Obstructors of Justice, my dynasty fantasy team. It was her idea to watch OK Go’s “Here We Go” video four times. Instead of slapping in a DVD, I downloaded some of the best of youtube.com. I thought the video, of four guys dancing around on treadmills, was clever in a low-budget way. Nadine was ready to push Astaire and Rogers aside and crown the new kings of dance.

I slept through most of the flight. The meeting with Mo wasn’t until Saturday evening and we had planned a lot of sightseeing beforehand. While I had more or less kept up my exercise regimen with Tom, I knew that the streets of New York City were going to take a lot out of me.

Normally I’d be a cheapskate when it comes to getting a ride from La Guardia to lower Manhattan, where our hotel was located. Two days earlier I received a package that included tickets of many shapes and sizes along with five hundred dollars in cash. Travel money. The tickets would get us into most tourist traps. Statue of Liberty, Museum of Natural History, Empire State Building, a Broadway show (I greedily hoped for Spamalot), passes for the subway, and finally, our plane tickets. There was a neatly folded piece of paper hidden in the enclosed NYC Guidebook. The front of the paper showed our hotel confirmation, and the back included a short note. “Take advantage of the free drinks in the hotel bar from 5:30 to 7:30 every night. I know I will.”

I rented a limo. Nadine found the bottle of champagne before we even started moving. Forking over $50 for a bottle of Korbel didn’t seem like an extravagance at the time. It was a few minutes after ten in the morning and neither of us had eaten much of a breakfast, but it was New York City. The rules were damned.

The driver, who had a build like Grady Jackson after hitting a Chinese buffet, was courteous and friendly and even gave me the “nice catch, brother” look after helping Nadine out of the car. I tipped him $20 and he told me to ask for Bruce when we arranged transportation back to the airport. He also wrote the name down of a nightclub where he was a bouncer. We could get in for free, but I had other evening plans.

Bruce was right; Nadine had that on-vacation glow about her. I checked us in as quickly as possible. While our room was on the third floor, it was as far as it could be from the elevators. The keycard didn’t work the first three times I tried it in the door.

“Good God man, why are you in such a hurry?”

“I want to get inside.”

“Let me,” she replied. The indicator showed green on her first try. “You didn’t mean inside the room.”

“You’re good.”

“I don’t know, Romeo. I didn’t shower this morning. I’m a little smelly.”

“You’re just going to get more smelly walking around New York.”

“This isn’t a room. This is bigger than my condo.”

We were in the living room of our suite. This Mo character was a solid guy. The art on the walls was a bit abstract for my tastes but we weren’t there to look at the walls.

“I told you that I’d take you places.”

“I think this is the destination you had in mind,” Nadine said, motioning toward the bed.

We only touched about a quarter of the king-size bed, and that included a couple of rollovers. I had a bit of a glow myself as I changed into my NYC walking clothes. It was warmer than I expected, so I went with the shorts and t-shirt look. Nadine was more layered in her approach. The gardening clogs stood out, though.

“They’re called crocs,” she replied.

“They’re hideous.”

“I’m on my feet twelve, sometimes fifteen hours a day. These suckers are field-tested. I’ll take the Pepsi Challenge against your space shoes any day.”

Nadine referred to my silver and blue Nike Shox as space shoes. They’re comfortable.

“Let’s go look at some tall buildings,” I replied.

“Aye aye captain,” she said, taking my arm.

The plan was to get to the nearest subway station and head for Battery Park, where we could catch the ferry for our afternoon appointment at the Statue of Liberty. The ferry tickets were open until March 2007 but the ticket for the statue, actually just the pedestal, was timed. I wanted to get an early start even though it was eleven in the morning and our tickets weren’t good until 1:45. As we approached the subway station, it was hard to ignore the site to our right. It used to be World Trade Center buildings one and two. We lingered. I didn’t get the shakes because I anticipated this side trip.

I prepared myself for the view of a large gaping hole where the tallest buildings in New York used to be. What surprised me were the aggressive street vendors. Who sends a postcard that displays a picture of the exact moment that the plane hit the second tower? Even a particularly nasty ex-girlfriend didn’t deserve that. There were vehicles and workers on the site, but most of them looked like ants and their ant-sized trucks.

Half a block away we found a collage of pictures from the day, along with a timeline of the day’s events. There were a couple of signs asking for donations for a memorial.

It was surreal to look at pictures and descriptions of events that represented the first true national traumatic event since the assassination of JFK. I lost track of time, but Nadine was at my side the entire time, her warm hand on mine.

We noticed the giant discount department store Century 21 across the street and decided to move on. Around the corner we came across the Firefighter’s Monument. “Dedicated to those who fell, and those who carry on,” Nadine whispered, reading the message on the bronze monument. I had read a little about the monument online, from the designer’s inspiration to show the towers before their collapse to the detail of the actual equipment that the men used that day. It was much nicer in person.

I absolutely hate to change my plans, but the moment dictated that we go into a nearby pizza place and get a slice. I had a list of top pizza joints in town and this place wasn’t on it. The champagne and the view made us hungry and a little bit overwhelmed, so the pit stop made sense.

“My uncle was a firefighter,” Nadine said before biting into a cheese slice. I went with pepperoni. The crust was light and crisp but the rest was pedestrian.

“Here?”

“In Detroit.”

“Oh.”

“He and some of his buddies from his company drove here that afternoon. They stayed for a couple of weeks. He still won’t talk about it.”

“Really.”

“Actually, no. He won’t stop talking about it. Well, he did stop talking about it because he died last year.”

“The job?”

“Lung cancer. Runs in the family.”

“Where were you that day?”

“I was three weeks into my second junior year at Wayne State. It was the first time all semester that I showed up on time for my 9 a.m. Sociology class. They put the local news on the big projector screen. After the towers collapsed I went outside and wandered around for the rest of the day. It was so weird for there to be no planes in the sky. I didn’t know about my uncle until the next day.”

“It was a day.”

“What about you?”

I exhaled through my nose and took a sip of my Coke. “I took a sick day from work. I wasn’t exactly sick, but I did have a few too many at the pub the night before.”

I paused, knowing that Nadine would be interested in the typical nocturnal events of my 22-year-old self. I was out with a British friend. He happened to be married, so every time a woman fell under his spell, he’d refer her to me. Sometimes it worked, other times it didn’t. The nine pints of Stella and three Jaeger shots were a good reason why the shapely brunette, name withheld, who made her best effort to make out with me in an alley, did not go home with me. I didn’t throw up until 8:56 the following morning.

“I turned on the TV and as soon as I saw the first tower smoking I switched on my computer. I had a piss-ant little Web site and a mighty expensive DSL connection. What I did was start posting on what I saw on TV, along with CNN, Fox News, and any other news source that I could find. As the day went on and the picture grew clearer, I created a quasi-alliance with some other posters. I don’t even think the word blogger was invented yet.

“Most of the main news sites went down, and so people started looking for any site posting any news. I was that site. People eventually started responding to me and sometimes I’d have information and other times I wouldn’t. A couple of the posters had friends or relatives working in one of the towers. Obviously I had nothing for them.”

I thought about that day. Only five years later could I be amused at the mini-fridge that sustained me. I didn’t get out of my chair until midnight. There were a lot of Cokes and candy bars still buried in my gut.

“If you had nothing, why did people come to your site?”

“It was national trauma day. It was like a really tiny support group.”

“So people depended on you that day.”

“They did.”

“And you liked that.”

“It was empowering. It was also over by Thursday. I had to get a new job.”

“You weren’t in Atlanta yet.”

“Charlotte, North Carolina.”

“You don’t talk about the past much.”

“Not so much, no.”

“Me neither,” she replied, patting my hand. “Don’t we have a schedule to maintain?”

I looked at my watch. “We’re doing fine.”

Instead of taking a taxi or the subway to Battery Park, we decided to walk. For late September it was quite warm. We didn’t hold hands or even talk the whole way down. I had the way memorized and she followed. I thought about buying a soda from one of the street vendors. Atlanta could use some of these guys.

After passing approximately 400 vendors selling that one picture of John Lennon wearing a sleeveless New York City t-shirt, we got to the line for the ferry. There was a dirty guy in a rasta hat playing a steel drum. His tip jar was full of pennies. I appreciated his effort to perform the Miami Vice theme song. Ten minutes later we snaked through the line, went through security, and then sat in a stuffy windowed room with about a thousand of our closest friends. The accents and languages in New York are cute, but it’s a fact that none of these people have ever heard of deodorant.

The ferry took off, almost as full as the ones bringing people coming over from Europe in the first few decades of the 20th century, at least as far as I could tell. We took a seat on a green wooden bench upstairs and I tried not to think about getting motion sickness. Nadine took pictures with my $400 digital camera that I didn’t know how to use. The view of the receding Manhattan skyline was worth watching.

Once we reached the platform at Liberty Island, I told Nadine to hang back with me. I thought that waiting the crowd out was a good strategy. I’m sure that Eugene Robinson thought it was a good strategy to talk to that undercover cop posing as a prostitute the night before the Falcons got crushed in their only Super Bowl appearance. We were equally crushed as another thousand people rushed onto the boat before it was completely empty.

Our tickets for the pedestal were good at 1:45. We made it a few minutes shy of 2. Late! Even though we went through metal detectors at the ferry, we went through them again, including a “sniffer” that blew up my shirt as my belongings went through the x-ray machine. If our magnetic room key card still worked, I would consider it a miracle.

No one is allowed past the top of the pedestal. That was high enough for me. I picked up plenty of trivia. The original conception of the statue was to be the “guardian” of the Suez Canal when it opened in 1869. The original flame that Lady Liberty holds was full of holes and had to be replaced, and was now inside. When the statue was rebuilt in New York, it was supposed to be a lighthouse but failed miserably. I think it more than earned its keep in gift shop sales alone. I bought a cool green shot glass, and an embarrassed Nadine took a picture of me as I stood in front of a recreation of the nose in its original copper color. I stuck my finger in the right nostril right as the flash went off.

We went outside at the top of the pedestal and saw another breathtaking view of the city. Nadine decided that it was time to go when I took a picture up the Statue’s skirt. A fellow tourist mentioned in passing that Lady Liberty has a rat tail.

We skipped Ellis Island and took the ferry back to the pier. My first tactical error of the day was walking back to the hotel. A cab ride would have been quick and easy but I was seduced by the waterfront path. For a vertical city, New York paid a lot of attention to its green spaces. My feet ached but I was glad for the experience. Nadine’s smile told me that she agreed. We were a block from the hotel when I made a sudden right turn. She grabbed my arm.

“Hey, buddy, hotel’s that way.”

“I need a moment.”

She released me. “I won’t stay up for you,” she said, turning away.

I continued on my path. Just for a few minutes, I needed to be alone.

Truth be told, you’re never alone at Ground Zero. I heard snippets of Spanish, Italian, and some vague Eastern European language as I stood close to the chain-link fence. There were more people working there than I remembered. The breeze was light and refreshing. I closed my eyes and went somewhere else.

A cross-country flight is no picnic, but at least the plane isn’t full. The taxi and takeoff are normal. I see a grandmotherly type give me a friendly smile before I decide to take a nap.

I wake up to chaos. Two Arabic men brandishing knives yell at the passengers to stay in their seats. Countless others rush the pilot’s cabin. A stewardess screams as she’s gutted. I expect the plane to start violently moving, like during turbulence, but it doesn’t.

A man comes over the intercom and speaks in a calm voice. I can’t understand the exact words. He has the plane. We’re going back to the airport. Stay in your seats. Looking out the window, I see a few disperse clouds and the ground. If we were heading back, the Atlantic would be visible, if not now, soon.

A short time later, I see buildings. The plane swerves and I see only one.

I almost had a panic attack while walking back to Ground Zero. It wasn’t because of any memories. My schedule told me to go back to the hotel, and my schedule was my life. Also I left the relative comfort of my weekend companion. I didn’t completely abandon her. She had a room keycard. I needed to go back to the spot, and although I couldn’t explain the reason why, I knew.

The sight of nothing, or at least nothing rising out of the ground, in lower Manhattan is jarring enough. We’re all immune to violent images, after a thousand war movies or a week’s worth of the evening news. This location is a reminder that there are no safe places anymore. We can minimize risk as much as we like, but tragedy can find us, no matter what.

Vince didn’t know that when he got on his bike that morning that his life was about to end. He put on his clothes, enjoyed the cool air, and took off. Maybe he had a moment before the car hit him, to reflect on his life. Maybe not.

Standing on the site made me uneasy. I could no longer trust the ground beneath me. Signs explicitly prohibited it, but I grabbed the chain link fence anyway. I had to touch something. If the fence were electric I would have welcomed the shock.

I felt a pain in my chest. It wasn’t a physical pain. My focus changed to the fence, and without consciously thinking it I knew that it was there because thousands of people died on this spot.

The first tear trickled down my cheek. I didn’t fight it. There’s no way to measure the value of a life, except by those who were left behind. My hands gripped the fence like it was family. The first hand on my shoulder was a bit distracting. I felt a gentle slapping of another hand on my back. The crowd was trying to comfort me. Within a minute two strong hands pulled mine from the fence. Turning around, I saw Nadine in my blurred vision. She might have been crying too. Before I could comment she pulled me into an embrace.

A few people started taking our picture, because nothing in New York goes unphotographed. One guy with a digital camera showed me his work and agreed to e-mail it to me. Nadine’s face is clear, and she is crying. My chin is on her right shoulder, and though only a sliver of my face is visible, there’s one drop of saline hanging on near the middle of my jawline, a moment from falling to the ground.

***

A short nap and two much-needed showers later, we got gussied up and took a cab to a recommended spot in Little Italy. I chose a spot that leaned more American Italian than anything else, because I liked seeing things on the menu that I could get at an Olive Garden, although this stuff was about a hundred times better. We made a deal to try different things, but somehow signals were crossed and we both ended up with the same shrimp dish with cream sauce. It was incredible. A bottle of pretty good Chardonnay, which is as good as white wine gets in my book, rounded out the meal. After a giant salad with esperanza dressing, rosemary bread drizzled with olive oil, and our entrees, we were stuffed.

Nadine wore her version of the little black dress. It was sleeveless but flared to her ankles. The dress fit her snugly, according to reports, a few pounds ago. I liked her strappy heels, although she must have kicked them off during dinner as I felt her foot brush my leg a few times during the meal.

We walked a couple of blocks to a bar. Upon entering, we noticed that the bar was about twenty feet across but much deeper. We had to squeeze our way past the entrance. I found us a couple of seats on the stick and had Nadine turn around and read the menu. It was a shots bar. The feature of the evening was the Snakes on a Plane shot. I wanted nothing to do with it.

“Let’s do it,” Nadine said. She used hand signals to get the bartender’s attention.

The wine slowed my reaction time. I ended up with a shot and a bottle of Brooklyn Pennant Ale ‘55, and both left a bad taste in my mouth.

“The look on your face is precious,” Nadine said. She downed her drink like it was water.

I offered my beer and she took a sip. “Oh God is that terrible. Is that grapefruit?”

Some say that pale ale tastes like grapefruit. If a grapefruit tastes as bitter as your last breakup, then that’s the taste.

“I think we need another,” I said.

“No more of that crap,” she replied, doing the hand thing again.

I had an Incredible Hulk, which was green, and she had a Grape Ape, and you can guess what color that was. The second round was much sweeter. I pretended to be interested in the baseball game on the multiple flat screens, but it was no use.

“It’s been a long day,” Nadine yelled because that was the only way I could hear her.

“It’s time,” I replied. She nodded.

We found a cab in no time and got back to our hotel in just under twenty dollars. Less than half of our trip cash remained. Only after we exited the taxi did Nadine take her shoes off.

“I’ll walk on New York sidewalks but I won’t put my feet on the floor of a taxi.”

“Makes sense to me,” I replied, letting her go first through the automatic revolving door.

I was somewhat body tired when we got to the room. My mind was OK, though. A new city is a lot to absorb in a day. Nadine didn’t give me a lot of time to reflect. She sat me down on the edge of the bed, removed the appropriate clothing, and did something that she had never done with me. I was pretty sure that she had done it before.

One slightly awkward kiss later, Nadine pushed me down. Her look asked me if I minded and my inaudible response was a no, so she removed her undergarments and gave me a close-up.

Half a moon later, we took turns in the bathroom and got ready for sleep. There’s a lot of room in a king-size bed, and we were comically far from each other. Nadine had nicely touseled hair, and wore a white man’s t-shirt and green boxer shorts. I reached my arm as far as I could and didn’t reach her.

I turned to face her, and Nadine’s entire body was pointed in my direction. The green flecks in her left eye seemed brighter than usual.

“You think it’s gonna be weird?”

“Sleeping in a king-sized bed?”

“No, spending the night together.”

“I guess we should start pretending that we like each other.”

“So it’s not weird?”

“Is it going to be weird for you to sleep at night?”

“I did it the past two nights.”

I slid a little closer. “So you don’t have a problem flipping your entire schedule? Doesn’t your body protest a bit?”

She slid a little closer. “Just as long as I get my four or five hours, there are no worries.”

“You only sleep five hours a night?”

“Usually.”

“And you’re not yawning all day?”

“When you’re in the medical profession, caffeine is a given, so no.”

“You are an impressive woman, Nadine Walker.”

“Anna Nadine Walker is my given name?”

I did a double-take. “Anna, really? I kind of like that.”

“That’s not an ex-girlfriend’s name, is it?”

“I was thinking of Anna Benson.” I wasn’t.

Before she could respond, I continued. “Her husband used to pitch for the Mets. She said that if he cheated on her that she’d screw the entire team including clubhouse guys.”

“That’s one way to get in the news.”

“Thanks.”

“Thanks for what?”

I was thinking of something she did earlier, but instead I said “Thanks for telling me that.”

“Anna is my mother’s name. By age 12 I wanted my own name, so Nadine stuck.”

“It’s distinctive.”

“Say I look like a Nadine and I’ll smother you with a pillow.”

“My feet are still throbbing.”

“You shouldn’t be surprised. You sit on your ass all day.”

“Are you jealous?”

By this point we were inches away. She wore a sweet-smelling body lotion that complimented the perfume that I had kissed away an hour ago.

“I love what I do.”

“That’s how it’s supposed to be,” I said, turning away for a moment.

“Don’t you feel the same way about what you do?”

“Not all the time.”

“I have to ask. What do you do for this client?”

“I blog.”

“OK, but what about? Sports?”

“Oh, it’s never sports. It’s some kind of think tank. I get assignments, write on this topic, and I pretty much do with it as I choose.”

“Are we talking lobbyists here?”

“Someone has to tell America what to think.”

“Give me one topic that you wrote on.”

“Remember the controversy in Michigan about inoculating high-school girls for cervical cancer?”

“My mom said something about it.”

“Oh yeah, that’s your home state. I forgot. It got a little national play, since it involved middle-school girls and sex.”

“And that’s the angle you took?”

“I played it from a few different angles. Some parents didn’t like it because you could take it to mean that girls might have premarital sex because of the shot.”

“Like anyone doesn’t have premarital sex anymore.”

“More parents didn’t like the fact that it would be required for girls to go to school.”

“It’s a shot. I say anything that eliminates one thing that might kill you is a good thing.”

“So I should get in line for that flu shot.”

“Indeed. How often would you write for these people?”

“Every day, just about.”

“And how much do they pay you?”

“Sometimes, nothing.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Mo has a strange reward system. His client pays based on how much feedback they get on a particular posting. The first few posts on the subject got tons of feedback. When I wrote about the mandatory nature of the inoculation, the feedback dropped. When I wrote about the sex angle, feedback went through the roof. It’s a blog, so I have to change subjects fairly quickly or I lose the audience.”

“That’s wild. So you’re not going to tell me how much you make.”

“On average, about 200 bucks a day.”

“Holy schnikes.”

Tommy Boy. “It’s a lot more than I made freelancing elsewhere.”

“You must be good.”

“I got the gig through a friend, but I like to think that I kept it due to skill. What I’d really like to do is never piss off this client.”

“Props to you,” she said, offering her fist. We bumped. “What do you think this Mo wants from you?”

“Probably just wants a face-to-face,” I said, although I was privately worried.

“I’m glad you invited me here,” she said, changing the subject just in time.

“It’s going to be a fun weekend.”

“This might be my last vacation in a while, so I’m going to enjoy it.”

“Did you tell me that you have a ton of vacation time saved up?”

“I’ll probably just hang around the house.”

“You don’t like to travel?”

She rolled over. I did the manly thing and spooned her.

“If you want the truth,” she whispered. “I’m pretty much flat broke.”

“Is it that bad?” I asked ineffectually.

“I have like six bucks in my checking account, and I don’t get paid until the end of the month.”

“What happened?”

“I can’t really afford my mortgage. I thought that if I scrimped I could pull it off but it’s been hard. I’m sorry that I’m venting a bit but I’m still a little drunk.”

I got up, found the sink across from the bathroom, and filled one of the glasses with water. I sat down at Nadine’s feet and offered her the glass.

“Thanks,” she said, sitting up. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Bringing water to the thirsty is nice?”

“Withholding comment on my financial situation is nice.”

“Before I got this job, I wasn’t far from your situation. I know what it’s like to count pennies.”

She put the empty glass on the bedside table. “I need to pee, then we need to go to sleep.”

“Why do you say that?” I replied, trying not to gape at her nipples poking through the thin material of her shirt.

“When you’re ahead at the blackjack table, it’s a good idea to get up before your luck changes,” Nadine said. She kissed me on the forehead and went to the restroom.

I didn’t totally understand her statement at the moment. It wasn’t until the following morning, after I made a transaction on my laptop, that it came to me.

She told me her first name.