Cleopatra and Frankenstein(101)

An image of an attractive couple in black-tie appeared on the screen beneath the words “Find a mutually beneficial relationship …” The website was simple and corporate, remarkably untitillating, until Zoe clicked on the Sugar Babies tab to reveal image after image of girls. Most were taken by the girls themselves, pouting faces staring up at a camera lens raised above their heads, but there were also girls at the beach, girls in cars, girls on the couch, girls on boats, girls in bed. At the top of the page it read: “Want to provide companionship in exchange for getting pampered like the princess you are? Sign up here and connect instantly!” Zoe drained her mug and clicked.

She filled out her details quickly and mechanically. Under religion she put “Marlon Brando.” When it asked her to upload a photo, she scrolled through her pictures and chose a shot of herself in a black spaghetti-strap dress, taken after her opening night in Antigone. The sun had bronzed her skin and streaked her curls with gold; she looked honey-hued and wholesome. She pressed submit, and her profile populated onto the site. Hardly a rigorous screening process, she noted. She lay back on the cool tile floor. It had been almost too easy.

She was still lying there, balancing the empty bottle of rum on her forehead, when her laptop pinged with a message. Zoe was surprised to get one so soon. Did these men just sit around waiting for fresh girls to appear? She rolled up to face the screen, the bottle clattering behind her. It was from a man called Jiro Tanaka. She clicked on his profile before reading the message. He was Japanese, late thirties, with a wide tanned face that crinkled around the eyes. Under interests he had listed skiing, water sports, and Tina Turner. He was not what she’d expected. She had thought the men on the website would be gray and liver-spotted, like sex offenders in nicer suits. Zoe slid onto her belly and opened the message.

Hi Zoe!

What a beautiful name you have. And you are very cute!

Will you be free for a drink tonight? I know an excellent sake bar downtown I think you will enjoy.

Jiro.



She rubbed her eyes and read the message several times. Very slowly, using two fingers, she typed a response.

Hey Jiro,

You have a cool name too. I’m free to meet tonight.



She paused, replaced the periods with exclamation marks, and hit send. He responded almost instantly with the address and suggested they meet at 7:00 p.m. That gave Zoe just over an hour to get ready and walk there. It was all happening much faster than she expected. She pressed her cheek to the floor and moaned.

Zoe hurtled north on Bowery and looked for someone to bum a cigarette off. Three girls in jewel-tone coats skittered past, trailing perfume. The emerald girl on the end had a cigarette pinched between her lips. Zoe turned to approach them, but they spun away, laughing, refracting like light. Under her leopard coat she was wearing the same black dress she’d had on in the photo, and she wished she’d worn something else. She tried to reach into her bag for her lipstick, but she kept careening off-balance. Her fingertips touched the sidewalk. What difference could lipstick make anyway? She laughed. She was what she was!

The sake bar was tucked at the bottom of a slim building on a residential street. She stopped in a deli on the corner, to buy gum, she thought, but she left with a can of beer instead. She walked to the middle of the block and stood across the street from the bar in the shadows. She held her jacket closed with one hand and drank. Through the lit windows she could see a row of people sitting at the narrow gold counter. Only one man was alone, his hair a dark, shiny black. Clusters of pink cherry blossoms hung from the paper screen above his head like thoughts. What an adventure she was on. Just like a character in a film. It struck her that adult life was endlessly harsh and exciting, something to be overwhelmed by again and again, like a wave beating her down as she tried to stand.



Jiro in the flesh was, to her relief, not drastically dissimilar to his photograph. Same wide, bronze face and curious eyes. In fact, he looked slightly younger than he did in his picture. He had what Frank called the “money glow,” a winter tan set off by an expensive-looking dress shirt, and the slight softness that comes from eating well and often. He was watching her approach along the narrow bar when his face momentarily twisted into an extravagant look of amazement; his eyebrows leaped an inch, his eyes bulged, his mouth flared open. Zoe blinked, and his features settled back into their previously serene gaze. It was the kind of face one might make at a child to amuse or frighten them, though it passed so quickly that she wondered if she’d been mistaken. Zoe paused an arm’s length away from him.

“Wow, Zoe,” said Jiro, hopping from his stool. “I’m so pleased you could join me.”

His accent was clipped and American, but with a slight overemphasis on the vowels. He placed his fingertips on her shoulders and pressed his cheek to hers. Fearing she might smell of beer, she pulled away quickly. She wished she had bought gum at that deli. She had meant to enter the situation confident and charming, to relish this bit of playacting as a professional seductress, but she was so tired.

“Hi Jiro,” she said softly.

“You are just as pretty as your picture,” he said.

Zoe noted that he had not said more pretty and was immediately disappointed. “Just as pretty” was practically an insult.

“You too,” she said. “Not pretty. I meant—I mean, thank you.”

“It’s okay if you think I’m pretty.” Jiro’s eyes crinkled with a smile as he climbed back onto his barstool. “Well, I hope you like sake.”