Aftermath of Dreaming(92)

“And what was in that card you wrote?” the photographer asked. “She kept giggling and waving it around like she’d let us see, but she never did.”

Andrew was standing next to me holding the refrigerator door open, though it would have stayed open on its own, and I was filling the marble counter of the island with the containers and platters that had provided our recent meal. The photographer and the model were on the other side of the island across from us and I wanted them to stay there, if not leave.

“It said, ‘You’ll always be eight to me.’”

I knew as he said it that Andrew meant the age, but it registered in my mind as some kind of grammatically incorrect double entendre.

“Love that! And so did she.” This goddamn photographer-man would not shut up. “And what you gave her, it was her favorite. And she got loot, lemme tell ya, but those two dozen red roses you sent were the highlight of her evening.”

Oh, good God.

Roses. He sent her roses. Or rather, Patrick probably did, following a command from Andrew just that day, maybe even right after Andrew and I had talked on the phone making our plans, once he knew he wouldn’t go to Patricia’s birthday party. Andrew had had roses sent so she would know how much he cared about her even though he wasn’t there. Roses. Twenty-four tall and red and public emissaries of his love. To bloom in front of her and everyone else. And when they started to wilt, she could throw them out or press them or make potpourri and save the memory in her heart for eternity. Roses. For her and everyone to see.

I could feel Andrew looking at me. And I could hear the hum of the photographer’s words whirling on and on like a camera motor, but roses was all I could think in my head.

Andrew sends roses. He has sex with other women. And he was looking for a new girlfriend right in front of me.

The bowl of borscht was sweaty from the fridge. Andrew hadn’t covered it when he put it in earlier, just pushed it toward the back, and I had wondered if the chef would find it the next day and throw it out or rescue it with plastic wrap. As I lowered the bowl to the counter, it slipped out of my hands, and a long cold wave of bright red liquid went flying over the marble island, spraying, splattering, and covering the model and the photographer and the gleaming, shining room.



I will never know who cleaned it up. Sometimes I think Andrew couldn’t possibly have gone to bed with borscht congealing everywhere; other times I know he’d never dirty his hands with that, a damn spot that wouldn’t come out. Maybe Miss Lupine licked it up while photographer-man took pictures—Helmut Newton-esque, but real life.

I left without a word. Walked out of the kitchen as if I heard my name being called and wanted to find the source. Got in my truck, and thankfully (or not) didn’t hit the photographer’s stupid Bentley parked badly behind me as I flew down the winding driveway hill and went out the gate that opened automatically.

Okay, so maybe I was stupid not to see how things were for as long as I did, but I wasn’t so stupid as to ever see him again, I thought as I drove through the dark, empty streets in a blur of anger. Roses for one and a pimp-parade from another. Fuck that. And f*ck, f*ck, f*ck him.

I drove around for a couple of hours trying to calm myself down enough to be able to go home and sleep. I considered getting a bottle of Absolut, but realized I might not stop drinking. When I finally got home, the message light on my answering machine was flashing. It seemed to be quite a night for blinking phone lights. There were three messages from Andrew, if you could call them that. Andrew had stopped speaking on my answering machine once we started having sex, as if they’d be evidence, and I guess they would have been, but I could always tell the messages he left by a little sound he would make. A “hunh” noise. Unidentifiable if it was ever used publicly, but I knew it was him and he knew I did. That sound was on each of three messages and nothing else.

Lying on my futon, unable to sleep—I should have gotten the goddamn Absolut—I knew without any doubt that I would never see Andrew Madden again. Fuck him.



My phone rang the next morning at Andrew’s usual time to call. I was still in a daze. I had finally fallen asleep around five-thirty A.M., so I felt hungover even without the vodka. I lay on the futon listening to the phone ring, then my machine clicked on when I didn’t pick up. I heard a small hesitation, then a hang-up. Fifteen minutes later, it was the same: ring, ring, ring, ring, machine pick up, a hesitation, then hang-up. And on and on every quarter hour all morning long. I guess he thought it would be like that time in New York the morning after Suzy came to the Ritz-Carlton—a pseudoapology and everything back to how it was. But f*ck him, I wasn’t playing anymore. He could find someone else and I was sure he would. But he was going to be f*cked because no one else would love him without wanting to be in one of his stupid goddamn films, no one else would make his back feel new again, would love him in the way I had. But f*ck him—he had thrown it all away.

All that afternoon and night, my phone continued to ring. A couple of times, he left the “hunh” message, as if I hadn’t known the constant hang-ups were him. My phone continued to ring every morning at his usual time and every night around eleven. It rang and there were no messages. It rang and I didn’t pick it up. It rang and I listened to it. It rang like that for a month and then it stopped. It returned to the rhythm it had had before, but without Andrew’s melody in it.