Homesick for Another World(55)
“I’m definitely going to think seriously about the couch,” I said. I was scared I’d mispronounce the words “chaise longue.” She gave me her business card and smiled falsely. “Gee, thanks,” I said. She said nothing. And so I left, stumbling over the legs of a wicker rocking chair and waving back at her like an idiot. I went straight home and lay in bed, moaning in ecstasy, over and over, each time I read the letters of her name: Britt Wendt.
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“That’s not a name, it’s the beginning of a sentence,” Mark Lasky said over coffee the next day when I told him I was in love. It was Christmas Eve. “And you met her where? Working at a furniture store? Nick, you went to Yale, for Christ’s sake.”
Mark was my oldest friend, the first of many to suddenly quit smoking, lose his hair, get married, and buy a brownstone in a part of Brooklyn he wouldn’t have set foot in five years earlier. Some of these friends had even conceived children already, which seemed preposterous to me at the time. I was nearly thirty-four, approaching the end of my “Jesus year,” as it’s often called. In Christ’s honor, I’d grown my hair out past my ears. I had to use a rubber band and bobby pins to keep loose strands out of my eyes when I went running.
“She makes the furniture herself,” I explained to Mark. “She refurbishes the furniture herself, I mean. She has her own business. She’s an artist.”
“An artisan,” Mark corrected me. “Did you sleep with her already? Has she seen your apartment—excuse me—your room?”
“Well, no.”
“I don’t see why you can’t date Becky or Elaine or Lacey Freeman,” Mark said.
“Gross,” I said. “Lacey Freeman?”
“Okay, not Lacey. But Jane? Jane Germeroth is perfect for you. Jane Germeroth is smart and she has good boobs. Listen to me, Nick. Cut your hair. You look like a drummer in some shitty band. You look like a fucking bartender. Also, your scarf is gay.”
My scarf was gay indeed. It had cost several hundred dollars, but it was beautiful—red and white checkered silk with long tassels.
“And it’s offensive,” Mark went on. “It’s supposed to look like what Yasir Arafat wears on his head. Now teenagers are wearing polyester versions like it’s some hip-hop thing.”
“This is silk,” I protested. “From Barneys.”
“You know you can buy that shit on the street in Chinatown for ten dollars?”
“Well, you look like a gynecologist,” I said. Mark was wearing a monogrammed cable-knit sweater and khakis.
“What does that even mean?”
“It means you look old,” I told him. “And, you know, perverted.”
“What do you want me to do? Wear tight jeans and roll my own cigarettes? I’m a grown man.”
“Rolling your own is better for you,” I said quietly, collecting the last crumbs of my cinnamon scone. “Less tar.”
Mark groaned and finished his coffee. “You’re not in love,” he said. Then he paused to watch a girl in a short skirt bend over to tie her shoe. A few days earlier I would have clung to the image for weeks—the lines of her panties under the opaque black tights, the soft dimpling down the backs of her thighs. When she stood back up, her thick brown hair seemed to undulate around her shoulders in slow motion. Her face was irreverent, almost pug-nosed, mean and adorable. But I was unaffected. I had Britt Wendt now. Other girls meant nothing to me. “So are you going to buy the couch?” Mark asked finally. “Where would you even put it?”
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For the past year I’d been renting a room month to month for $350 cash in a flophouse owned by a Hasidic slumlord. I had to myself an eight-by-eight, windowless corner of the building, which had once housed a plant that manufactured little tongue-colored erasers. The place still smelled vaguely of burning rubber. My room was on the top level. The other tenants up there were all hip young people. I didn’t know anyone’s name. Downstairs, Middle Eastern gypsy cab drivers slept in shifts on bunk beds, their black sedans parked outside like a presidential cavalcade. Streetside, there was a soaped-up storefront full of car parts and broken computers. The building should have been, and probably was, condemned.
The only furniture I had was a twin mattress and a low glass coffee table, on top of which I piled my shoes, each pair in a Ziploc freezer bag to keep the vermin and roaches out. The walls between the rooms were single sheets of gypsum board. Hand-drawn signs in the crumbling hallways read: NO BEDBUGS! NO STREET MATTRESS! NO HOMELESS! The place had two communal bathrooms full of silverfish and a shared kitchen full of mice. I was constantly looking for a sublet or a room in an apartment or a cheap studio, but nothing seemed good enough. I couldn’t commit. Plus, I was always broke. I kept spending all my money on clothes.
Christmas morning, I was woken up by my neighbors having sex. Usually I’d pound on the gypsum, but that morning, in the spirit of the holiday and in honor of true love, I let the grunting slide. I stayed under my comforter with my laptop on my crotch, listening to the sex sounds and Googling Britt Wendt for the thousandth time. The Britt Wendt I found on Myspace was twelve years old, lived in Deering, New Hampshire, and posted inspirational photos of nature scenes with captions about how to be your best self, jokes about periods, links to articles about Olympic skating and beauty pageants. The only other Web pages that came up for “Britt+Wendt” were Swedish genealogies. My Britt Wendt was a mystery. I looked at her business card again. It was minimal, just her name and e-mail address and the words “redesigned antiques.” The font was generic, Arial bold. The card stock, flimsy. It was like she just didn’t give a shit. After my neighbors finished, I heard them walking down the hall to the showers. I considered visiting my go-to site for porn but chose not to. With Britt Wendt to pine for, watching videos of strangers having sex felt sacrilegious, like squirting a mayonnaise packet into your mouth while riding the elevator up to Per Se.