“Thanks.” He considered the bottle, then me. “See that girl over there?” He pointed at a girl about my age with short, dark hair and striped leggings.
“Yeah.”
“In twenty seconds, she’s going to come over here and ask what I’m working on for my show. I don’t want to tell her.”
“So don’t.”
As if on cue, the girl saw Kevin and walked over. It was the first time I experienced him as a charmed person, and it would not be the last.
“It would be better if she didn’t ask. My paintings are secret before a show. If I tell her, she’ll own them. Her soul will own them. I can’t explain it.” The kitchen was crowded, slowing the striped leggings’ progress and pushing us together, forcing us to whisper.
“I get it,” I said. I would have gotten anything he said at that point. I would have claimed to understand quantum mechanics if he explained it to me. “They aren’t born yet,” I continued. “If she sees them while they’re being made, she knows them as children. Their insides.”
“My God, you get me.”
I had no snappy reply. I wanted to get him. I wanted to get everything he said from now on. He touched my chin. “If I kiss you, she’ll turn around and go away.”
In retrospect, that was the lamest come-on imaginable from him. He’d done much better in the year following. But at the party, the word “kiss” breathed from his beautiful lips, was all I needed. I put my hand on his shoulder, and he slipped one around my waist. Our lips met, and I held back a groan of pleasure. I’d only ever been with Darren, and I loved him. I would always love him, but kissing that man, like that, with his taste of malt and chocolate, uncovered physical sensations I didn’t know could come from a kiss. I felt every pore of his tongue, every turn of his lips. The world shut off and my identity became a glow of sexual desire.
I went home barely able to walk from wanting him and completed my breakup with Darren the next day. If desire was supposed to feel like that, I needed more of it. I felt awake, alive, not just sexy, but sexual. Thoughts of him infected me until I saw him again and we tumbled into bed, screwing like wild animals.
When I finally walked away from him, weeping, I realized I’d let my sexuality control and manipulate me through him. He took my music and crushed it under the weight of his own talent. He ignored what I created, dismissing it, degenerating it, so that within three months, I couldn’t sing a word and any instrument I picked up became a bludgeon. I’d never felt so creatively dead and so sexually alive.
When I got the strength to walk away from him, I vowed never again.
eight
I snapped my locker closed, thinking about those Dodger seats on the first base line. A corporation gets a skybox. A real fan gets tickets at field level, luxuries be damned. I’d never seen a game from that angle.
Debbie came into the locker room, buzzing with talk and flirting and locker doors banging, and handed out our tip envelopes. “A good night for everyone,” she said, then got close to me. “Someone is waiting for you at the front exit. If you want to avoid him, go through the parking lot, but be nice. He’s a friend of the hotel.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Quickly, I have to count out.”
“How many drinks did he have?” I asked as quietly as I could.
Debbie smiled as if I’d asked the exact right question. “Two. He nurses like a baby.”
“I know you don’t know me that well yet, but… would going out the front be a mistake?”
“Only if you take it too seriously.”
“Thanks.”
Debbie walked off to hand out the rest of the envelopes. What she said had been a relief, actually. It made the boundaries that much clearer. I could hang out, be close to him and feel the buzz of sex between us, but I had to be careful about climbing into bed with him. Fair warning.
nine
Jonathan stood in the lobby, talking to Sam, laughing like an old buddy. I wasn’t going to approach him with my boss right there. Sam seemed like a fine guy for the fifteen minutes we’d talked. With his white hair and slim build, he looked like a newscaster and had an all-business attitude. I just pushed through the revolving doors, figuring fate had lent a hand in deciding whether or not I’d see Drazen outside a rooftop bar.
I was three steps into the hot night when I heard him call my name.
“You stalking me?” I asked, slowing my steps to the parking lot.
“Just wanted company to walk to my car.”
We strolled down Flower Street, the long way to the underground parking lot. Any normal person would have gone through the hotel.
“How do you know Sam?” I asked.
“He introduced me to my ex-wife, which I’m trying not to hold against him.”
“You’re a good sport,” I said. “Have you always been blue?”
He tilted his head a few degrees.
“Dodger fan,” I said. “I would’ve taken you for more of an Angels guy.”
“Ah. Because I have money?”
“Kind of.”
“I like a little grit,” he said, that smile lighting up the night.
“Is that why you met me after work?” I asked, turning toward the parking lot entrance.
“Kind of.”
He let me go first into the underground passage, and I felt his eyes on me as I walked. It was not an uncomfortable feeling. When we got to the bottom of the ramp, we stopped. I parked in the employee level and his car was in the valet section. I held up my hand to wave good-bye.
“It was nice to talk to you,” I said.
“You too.”
We faced each other, walking backward in opposite directions.
“See you around,” I said.
“Okay.” He waved, tall and beautiful in the flat light and grey parking lot.
“Take care.”
“What do I have to say?”
“You have to say please,” I said.
“Please.”
“Where do you think you’re taking me?”
“Come on. Text a friend and tell them who you’re with in case I’m a psycho killer.”
ten
The early hour guaranteed a traffic-free trip to the west side. I’d gotten into his Mercedes convertible thinking most killers don’t drive with the top down where everyone could see, so I just let the wind whip my hair into a bird’s nest. Jonathan drove with one hand, and as I watched his fingers move and slide on the bottom of the wheel, the hair on the back of it, the strong wrist, I imagined it on me. I grabbed the leather seat, trying to keep my mind on something, anything else, but the leather itself seemed to rub the backs of my thighs the wrong way. “So, you pick up waitresses a lot?”
He smirked and glanced over to me. The wind was doing crazy shit to his hair as well, but it made him look sexy, and I was sure I looked like Medusa. “Only the very attractive ones.”
“I guess I should take that as a compliment.”
“You definitely should.”
“I’m not sleeping with you.”
“You mentioned that.”
So maybe the rumors were true, and he was a total womanizer. Well, I’d already told him sex was off the table, so he could womanize all he wanted. Didn’t matter to me at all. I was driven by curiosity. Who was this guy? What was it like to be him? Not that it mattered, I told myself, because again, I had no time for a heartbreak.
“What’s your instrument, Monica? You said you were a musician.”
“My voice, mostly,” I said. “But I play everything. I play piano, guitar, viola. I learned to play the Theremin last year.”
“What is that?”