I'm Glad About You(19)

“You’re uptown, right?” Seth said. “We should split a cab.” He downed the end of his beer, leaned back into the kitchen, left it on the counter, and sauntered toward the doorway. He had framed the announcement with the kind of impartiality that made it impossible to tell if there was any hidden meaning in it, but in the lexicon of young New Yorkers, “We should split a cab” could mean “I find you kind of hot and I’m interested in going home with you if it turns out that something develops in the back of that cab.” Or it could mean “We should split a cab.” Alison had no interest in splitting a cab with Seth for any reason whatsoever, but there was no way Lisa could read Seth’s careless announcement that he was leaving with Alison as anything other than a rejection. At the very least, “We should split a cab” meant “I’m not sticking around to have sex with Lisa, in whom I am less interested than she seems to think.”

“Oh!” Alison laughed, trying to sound as uninterested in the subtext of all this as she possibly could. “I was going to stop and pick some things up on the way.” This didn’t come off as smoothly as she wished; it sounded more like she was making a fake excuse to cover the fact that she was walking off with Lisa’s boyfriend. Seth raised that eyebrow again and said, “Well, but you’ll still need a cab, I’m guessing.” With that he opened the door and with a wave of his hand indicated to her after you, as if this dual exit were the most natural thing in the world.

Alison hesitated, then smiled back at Lisa and said, “See you! Thanks again!” which also sounded phony. But there was nothing else for it. She preceded Seth out the door and pushed the button to call the elevator. They both waited in silence while the wall hummed and clicked with the sound of the lift approaching. The elevator door slid open, and Alison silently stepped inside the tiny cubicle, which was lined with faux-wood Formica paneling. She concentrated on the line of buttons in front of her, and pushed “Lobby.” There was another tense pause until the door finally slid shut. Seth glanced down at her, grabbed her by the waist of her jacket, and pulled her to him.

“Hey,” said Alison. “Hey.”

The fleeting worry that this would really piss Lisa off was obliterated by the thrill of having a man’s torso up against her own and his tongue halfway down her throat. Alison’s brain vaguely noted how quickly Seth’s right leg shoved itself between hers as he actually lifted her up against the wall, how his hand slid up the back of her shirt, but after that, her brain went on hold, and there it stayed. Her lonely spirit and young body were severely in need by that point, and the brain’s concerns seemed less and less relevant with every passing second in that elevator. Seth was momentarily surprised at the visceral power of that first kiss, and so was she, and the heated cab ride home did nothing to diminish their sudden and demanding physical hunger. So when they finally made it into an actual bed the sex was long, complicated, and satisfying.

After they had finished, Seth stretched his arms toward the wall, yawned, and glanced at the cheap LCD alarm clock plugged into the wall at the side of the low futon. “What time is it, three?” he noted. “Shit, I have to go.” He stood, naked, and drifted into the bathroom, peeling off the condom he kept so handily in his wallet. He returned moments later and idly picked up a corner of the strewn sheets and blankets, carelessly searching for clothes which had been torn off in an unself-conscious frenzy hours ago. Reason reasserted itself and as he located his boxers and stepped into them, Seth’s maneuvering mind moved back into place.

“That was great,” he told Alison, as if to reassure her that in fact he hadn’t already forgotten how great it was.

“Thanks,” she replied.

“I’ll give you a call, okay?”

“You have my number?”

“Oh. No, I guess I don’t. Hang on. Let me get my pants on . . .” He slipped into his jeans, and found his socks, barely paying attention to her. “You have a pen?” he asked. “Something to write on? You don’t have a card, do you?”

“What? We just had sex so you want my card?”

Seth sighed; he remembered this about her now—she was difficult. This really was the problem with so many of these women: They wanted a career and a life in the fast lane and love and commitment and a man who would almost f*ck you in the backseat of a cab and then pretend that it was love. He had appreciated the fact that Alison was so receptive to his come-on, and that once things were moving in the right direction she didn’t seem all that interested in talk. He regretted the fact that she seemed to want to talk now.

“Look, I said it was great, and it was great,” he reminded her, successfully keeping the impatience out of his tone. “I want your number, I think is what I said.”

“Well, I’m kind of lying here naked, so I don’t actually have a pen, or a card, on me.” She didn’t mean to sound like she thought he was an idiot, but there was something about this all that bugged her, even in the languid throes of satiation. She wasn’t mad at this guy, she really wasn’t; she wanted to tell him how much she enjoyed the meaningless sex, the way he was telling her the same thing. There was something vaguely bemusing about this onset of manners.

“I don’t need you to say you’re going to call me,” she said.

“It’s not whether you need it,” Seth told her, zipping up his fly. “I want to. I think you’re great. Didn’t you think that was great?” Some writer, she thought, the only word he can come up with is “great.”