Mike, Mike and Me
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Apparently, Gaile has no idea what I’m talking about.
“Never mind,” I say, giving up. “So, will you cover for me?”
“You’re going to stick me with all these greasy pans?”
“I promise I’ll clean the whole stage on my own the next time Janelle has that animal guy on the show.”
Gaile tilted her cornrow-and-turban covered head, considering it. “I’ll take grease over piles of monkey shit any day,” she concluded. “Deal.”
“Thank you!” I squealed, giving her a hug.
She laughed. “You knew I’d do it, Beau.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Sure, you did. You always get people to do what you want.”
I bristled at that until I saw the twinkle in her brown eyes. Still, I asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing bad. Just that you’re a little bit spoiled, girlfriend.”
“Spoiled? Me?” I feigned shock, but I’ll admit it: This wasn’t the first time I’d ever heard that. People were always saying it when I was growing up.
I guess, when you’re the youngest child of four—and the only girl—you grow accustomed to people doting on you. Back home, I was the princess.
Here in New York, I sometimes had to remind myself that not everyone was going to drop everything to cater to my needs.
Then again, people often did. Especially men.
“I’m going to go change my clothes,” I told Gaile.
“What did you decide on? The red or the black?”
“The red,” I told her. “What do you think?”
“I think that it’s the least blah out of two blah choices.”
I rolled my eyes and grinned. When it came to fashion, Gaile was anything but blah. She’d jumped wholeheartedly on the currently hot Afrocentric-garb bandwagon, decking herself out daily in exotic headdresses and flowing robes. The contrast of bright-colored native fabrics against her ebony skin was dazzling, but if you asked me—which she never did—her jewelry, invariably made of bones, tusks and teeth, made her resemble a one-woman archaeological dig.
And if I asked her—which I frequently did—my jewelry and my wardrobe were in desperate need of pizzazz. But whenever I tried to follow Gaile’s fashion advice, I wound up feeling as if I belonged on MTV with an all-male, eye-liner-wearing backup band.
“Let’s face it,” I told her now. “I’m a blah girl, Gaile.”
“You’re gorgeous and you know it.”
“Well, I have blah clothes. What can I say?”
“You don’t have to be blah.”
“Yes, I do. I have to be blah. Blah is my style.”
We deposited the tubs of dishes on an already cluttered countertop, next to a basket of bagels that had been sitting out since this morning, and half a dozen red-lipstick-stained, half-filled coffee mugs. Janelle was a caffeine hound, and she refused to drink out of the foam coffee-service cups. Only real porcelain—and just-brewed, steaming hot coffee—would do. As soon as the contents of her mug grew lukewarm, she pushed it aside and had an assistant—often, me—bring her a fresh cup.
But for today, I was finished with catering to Janelle’s every whim and cleaning up after her. Thanks to Gaile, I was free.
“Good luck, Beau,” she said as I headed for the door.
“Luck?” I stopped short. That struck me as an odd thing to say. “Good luck with what?”
“You know…”
“Not really.” I waited.
She looked me in the eye, as Gaile likes to do. “Your plans,” she said simply. “For you and Mike. I hope they work out.”
“They will.”
She ran water into the sink.
“They will,” I said again.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You said good luck.”
She shrugged.
“You don’t think Mike’s going to want to move here after all?”
“I don’t know what Mike’s going to want to do, Beau.” She squirted Palmolive into a pan.
“He’ll want to be with me,” I assured her with confidence.
But what if he didn’t?
What if, for the first time in my charmed life, things didn’t go my way?
In the ladies’ room, I slipped out of my blah black leggings and tunic and into my red dress. Being blessed with a good complexion and nice features, I rarely wore much makeup. But this was a special occasion.
I stood in front of the mirror and outlined my green eyes in dark liner, coated my lashes with black mascara and painted my lips the same color as my dress. When I was finished, I sprayed Obsession in the hollows behind each ear and each knee, and Aqua Net all over my head. I teased my bangs a little higher, sprayed again, and surveyed my reflection.
Perfect.
Okay, not perfect, perfect. I mean, I still looked like Elvis’s Priscilla, but by then Elvis was long gone and his ex-wife had faded from the spotlight. And I wasn’t really a dead ringer for bombshell model Cindy Crawford, despite frequent assurances that I was, from Ramon, one of the show’s security guards.
For one thing, I was almost a head shorter than Cindy. I knew that because Gordy and I spotted her in the Scrap Bar one night when she wasn’t famous enough to be recognized by anyone other than my celeb-crazed friend.
Nor did I have Cindy’s mole, nor Cindy’s voluptuous build.
My figure back then was straight and flat as the Long Island Expressway out East: no boobs, but no pesky hip, gut or thigh padding, either. Sometimes, I fantasized about cleavage, blissfully unaware that it would one day be in store for me—or that it would be bestowed only with cracked, sore, milk-spurting nipples and a baby attached to them 24/7.
Satisfied with my reflection, I snuck out of the studio and into the subway station. Too broke to pay cab fare all the way from Manhattan, I took the jam-packed, un-air-conditioned number seven train out to Queensborough Plaza, descended the elevated platform down to Queens Boulevard, and spent almost fifteen minutes trying to hail a taxi.
By the time I sank into a disconcertingly sticky back seat, my hair had wilted. Luckily, I’d tucked the can of Aqua Net into my oversize black bag, and I’d have plenty of time at the airport to repouf.
Fifteen minutes—and almost fifteen dollars—later, I did just that in a ladies’ room down by the gate.
Unfortunately, the lyrics to “American Pie” were still running through my head. I hoped it wasn’t an omen.
According to the monitors, Mike’s plane was on schedule, but I still had a couple of hours to kill.
Sometimes, even now, I look back and wonder what might have happened that night if I hadn’t forgotten my Danielle Steel novel back at the office.
Would I have plopped down in a chair and plodded my way through a few more chapters of Daddy until Mike’s plane landed?
Probably.
Would I have avoided the chance meeting that turned my life upside down and made me question every choice I’d made since?
I don’t know.
I mean, did I believe in fate?
Did I believe that my life was preordained?
Did I believe that what happened would have happened even if I hadn’t settled on the only vacant stool in an airport bar?
I ordered a gin and tonic, and drank it too fast, still uneasy about Mike’s flight.
Yes. I would look back on that day in years to come and see it as a turning point. Nothing would ever be the same again.
I would wonder time and again what would have happened if the television hadn’t been on above the bar.
Or if it had been a different night, any other night of the year.
Or if he hadn’t been sitting next to me.
five
The present
E-mail is an amazing new invention, don’t you think?
Okay, maybe you don’t think of it as a new invention. Maybe you’ve been online for years, along with the rest of the world beyond my cozy little domestic one.
Me, I’ve been online for three months, ever since my in-laws bought a computer for our family room. Technically, it was a birthday present for Josh, our middle son, and they gave him a shitload of Blue’s Clues and Disney software to go with it.
But Mike and I suspect the real reason they gave us the home PC is so that we can stay in constant touch with them now that they’ve moved to Florida year-round. Until recently, they’ve only spent winters at their retirement condo in St. Petersburg, and even then, they dropped hints that we need to call/write/visit more often.
Okay, not hints. They’ve been known to come right out and say, “You need to call—or write, or visit—more often.”
But Mike only gets two weeks of vacation from his job, and we always spend one in Vermont over Christmas with my family at a rented ski chalet. He doesn’t want to spend the other with his parents in Clearwater Beach. Naturally, my in-laws must assume that I, the daughter-in-law and only non-blood relative in the family, am the holdout.
In truth, I’d be thrilled to spend Mike’s second week off in Florida—or anywhere other than here, working on the house. But Mike doesn’t believe in hiring somebody to do something he can do himself—or misguidedly believes he can do himself.
Two Augusts ago, we dry-walled the basement; last August, we painted all the trim. I say we because although my job was technically to keep the kids out from underfoot and provide takeout pizza and ice water, I eventually wound up on my knees and on ladders right alongside my hapless home-improving husband.
This August, Mike wants to stick a half bath under the stairs. That’s how he says it—“stick a half bath under the stairs”—as though it’s as simple as sticking a magnet over Mikey’s latest crayoned depiction of a dinosaur on the fridge. Yeah. Right. Plumbing is not his forte. Is it anyone’s forte, other than a real live plumber’s?
But Mike doesn’t want to hire one of those. No, he wants to stick a half bath under the stairs all by himself.
Me, I want to stick my feet in saltwater.
Not necessarily the Gulf of Mexico, because according to my in-laws, it’s warmer than a bathtub in August. That, to them, is a positive thing.
That, to me, is not the least bit positive. I’m not sure why. Maybe because if August is so freaking hot in the New York suburbs, I sure as hell don’t want to go someplace where it’s even hotter. Or maybe because warm water makes me think of pee. For that matter, so does the word bathtub. That’s probably because I have a four-year-old who thinks of our tub as a walk-in urinal.
Anyway, re: the saltwater thing…I was thinking more along the lines of the refreshingly chilly North Atlantic.
You know, the beauty of being online is access to vacation information. I’ve been researching Cape Cod “family vacation packages.” For the unenlightened, “family vacation packages” come with accommodations that include bed rails and cribs, kiddie pools, well-supervised day camps and evening baby-sitters so that Mommy and Daddy can eat overpriced shellfish and drink watered-down frozen margaritas.
Yeah, yeah, I know. But trust me, it beats Kraft mac-and-cheese and Capri Sun fruit punch in a pouch.
Which is what I—and my two older boys—had for lunch this afternoon. Now, with the July midday sun too hot to venture outdoors, I’ve opted to keep the kids in the comfort of central air, at least for now. Mikey is building a Lego city in his room with Laura Carson’s daughter, Chelsea, and Josh is captivated by Dora the Explorer on television in the master bedroom and Tyler is dozing in his swing in the living room.
Here I am down in the family room at the computer, checking e-mail for the third time today. Why didn’t anybody warn me that it was so addictive? Every day, I wake up wondering who I’m going to hear from next.
Since I became Beauandco@websync.net, I’ve been in touch with my old friend Gaile, my favorite middle-school teacher and my campus alumni association. I’ve also heard from my in-laws on a daily basis, have deleted countless offers to enlarge my penis, and have been temporarily convinced that if I forward an e-mail to everyone on my list, Bill Gates will send me a dollar.
Since then, I’ve become more savvy about Internet hoaxes and spam, not to mention my mother-in-law. For example, I’ve learned not to respond to her e-mails during hours when she might actually be sitting at the computer, because then she’ll know I’m home and she might decide to call me and I’ll have to answer the phone and I’ll have to talk to her for an hour. More, if she puts my father-in-law on.
Now I know that the best time to respond to her e-mails is at four o’clock, when she and my father-in-law are likely to be at an early-bird special, or after nine o’clock, when they’re sound asleep.
Today, I sign on for the third time, and once again, I’ve got mail. Woohoo!
Okay, maybe not woohoo. I skim past two e-mails from MIL, several spams and a couple of lame jokes from my cousin in Ohio, who forwards everything that crosses her electronic path.
Then it happens.
A legitimate woohoo moment.
There, amid the junk mail, is a screen name that suddenly has my heart beating faster.
Okay, it’s probably spam, I tell myself as I grip the mouse and maneuver the arrow toward HappyNappy64@websync.net.
I mean, it has to be a coincidence. More than likely, a pornographic one. I’ll probably click on the screen name and be treated to a nude twelve-year-old girl reclining on leopard-skin sheets.
I stare at the screen.
HappyNappy64.
It can’t be him. It can’t be, yet I hear his voice echoing in my head from fifteen years and a lifetime ago.
You know what I feel like, Beau?
No, what do you feel like, Mike?
A happy nappy.
Then he’d pull me to the bedroom and we’d make love in broad daylight, then fall asleep in each other’s arms.
Happy Nappy.
That was what he called it, and it always made me laugh.
Somehow, despite all the details that have drifted back to me—especially lately—about the time we had together, I forgot all about Happy Nappy.
Now it comes back to me in a rush, all of it—not just the sound of his voice in my head, but the smell of his skin when I cradled my head on his naked chest, and the sunlight filtering through the crack in the blinds, and the way his mouth tasted when he kissed me after eating chocolate ice cream; his lips and his tongue sweet and cold and luscious.
Happy Nappy.
I forgot all about that, but not all about him.
I could never forget him if I tried.
And I had. Tried, that is. For a long time, I tried to forget him. I thought it would be better. Easier.
Then I realized nothing would ever be easy, and I stopped trying.
Lately, what I’ve been trying to do—maybe subconsciously, I realize now—is remember him. Remember Mike. Remember what we had.
Remember why the hell I was so willing to leave it behind, to leave him.
But for all the things I remember, I can’t remember that and I didn’t remember Happy Nappy.
Now, my heart beating in my throat as I stare at the screen name, I highlight HappyNappy64 and click on it.
Please, I beg silently as the battery-operated swing clicks back and forth behind my desk and animated televised Dora chatters in Spanish from the next room and Mikey and Chelsea argue upstairs over how many Legos are necessary for a properly tall Empire State Building…
Please don’t be porn.
Please don’t be porn.
Please be him.
Be Mike.
The Other Mike.
The Mike I didn’t marry.
The Mike I can’t forget.
Please, HappyNappy64, please turn out to be him.
And it does.
six
The past
“Can I get you another one?” the bartender asked, gesturing at my glass that now contained only melting ice cubes and a sliver of lime.
I contemplated the question. The first drink had gone down pretty easily, and I still had more than an hour to kill in the airport bar before Mike’s plane was due to land. But I didn’t want to be wasted when he got here, and the drinks weren’t exactly a bargain.
“Go for it,” a voice urged, and I glanced up to see that it had come from the guy on the next bar stool.
I immediately noticed that he was good-looking. I mean, how could I not? I was a red-blooded female, even if I was just biding my time until the love of my life stepped through the jetway.
Yes, this guy was good-looking. He had a brooding, Johnny Depp thing going on around the eyes. Plus he had style, no doubt about that. His dark hair was cut fashionably long on top, short on the sides, and brushed his collar in back. In other words, he had a mullet.
Don’t laugh.
Back in the summer of 1989, mullets were not reserved for rednecks and butch lesbians alone. No, mullets were the happening hairstyle of the moment, and this guy had one.
He also had on a pair of baggy jeans, a white T-shirt and a short black-and-white patterned jacket with shoulder pads.
Hair and clothes: A plus for effort.
But he was a babe even beyond those variables that were within his control. His dark eyes were fringed by thick, sooty lashes. There was a deep cleft in his chin and deeper dimples on either side of his mouth when he grinned.
He was grinning at me, and God help me, I found myself grinning right back at him.
He told me to go for it.
Yeah, and he was talking about the drink, I reminded myself.
Aloud, I said, “Go for it? That’s easy for you to say.”
“Well, why not? Oh, I get it. You’re a plainclothes pilot, right? You’re about to take off for Paris or something, and it would be irresponsible to take the controls after a couple of drinks.”
It wasn’t that hilarious, but I laughed as though it were the funniest thing I’d ever heard. “No, I’m not a plainclothes pilot. I’m just…”
“Broke?” he guessed, a little too close to truth for comfort.
“Not exactly.”
“Well, this one’s on me anyway. Another round,” he told the bartender, who nodded and headed for the top shelf and two fresh glasses before I could protest.
“Mine wasn’t Tangueray the first time,” I pointed out to the good-looking and fashionable guy, who shrugged.
“Mine was. And I’m treating.”
“Thanks. But…”
“But?”
I wanted to tell him that I had a boyfriend. But I didn’t know how to do it without making it sound as though I thought he was interested in me, which I didn’t. Or, even worse, as though I was interested in him. Which I wasn’t.
I mean, he was just a polite guy politely buying me a drink. To be polite.
Did I mention that in addition to being polite, he was very good-looking? Fashionable, too.
“Never mind,” I told him, and attempted to shift my attention elsewhere. Because he might be buying me a drink, but that didn’t mean we were now a couple.
I mean, he was a total stranger, and I was on the verge of being reunited with Mike.
“Mike,” the total stranger said just then out of the blue, and I looked at him, startled.
“Excuse me?”
What was he, some kind of mind reader?
Or maybe I’d just imagined it. Maybe he hadn’t said Mike at all. Maybe he’d said something similar. Like…
Might.
Or bike.
Oh, yeah. Bike. That made a lot of sense.
“Mike,” he repeated, sticking his hand out in front of me.
“Mike?” I echoed.
“That’s my name.”
No way.
He was Mike?
I decided the coincidence was some great cosmic sign. A sign that meant…
Well, to be honest, I had no idea what it meant. But it couldn’t be good.
“I’m Beau,” I said, because he was waiting.
“Nice to meet you, Beau.”
As I watched the bartender twisting lime into our fresh drinks, I told myself that I had to get out of here. Now. I would pretend I had to go to the bathroom and just not come back.
“Where are you headed?”
Again with the mind reading? I stared at him in disbelief, wondering how he could possibly know.
“To the ladies’ room,” I admitted, starting to slide off my stool.
I stopped when he burst out laughing.
“Hey, I hear it’s great at this time of year,” he said.
“Huh?”
“The ladies’ room. Never mind. Bad joke.”
The bartender set down our drinks. I reached for mine, needing it desperately.
He went on, “I meant, where are you headed from here? Flying someplace on vacation? Or business?”
“Oh! No, I’m just…I’m meeting somebody’s plane.” And I’m head over heels in love with him. So stop flirting.
Are you flirting?
Or is it my imagination?
“How about you?” I asked him, after taking a sip of my second drink. The second drink I shouldn’t have been having in the first place.
“I landed a while ago. My luggage missed the connection at O’Hare so I have to wait for it to get here on the next flight.”
“You’re in New York on vacation?”
“I just moved here a few months ago.”
“Oh.”
He just moved here. Which meant that he lived here. Unlike Mike. My Mike.
“So you live here, too,” he pointed out conveniently.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Upper West Side.” I didn’t want to ask him where he lived because it really didn’t matter because I was never going to see him again.
Then again, it seemed rude not to ask, so I did.
“Lower East Side.”
“East Village?”
“Lower.”
“SoHo?”
“Lower,” he repeated with a shrug. “Chinatown, really.”
“You live in Chinatown?”
“Yeah. But I’m not Chinese,” he said, deadpan.
“You’re kidding. You’re not?” I asked, also deadpan.
“No. People make that mistake all the time, though.”
“They do?”
“Yeah, you know, they’ll ask me for my recipe for kung pao chicken or they’ll want to know how to play piaji, and I—”
“Piaji?” I cut in.
“Yeah, it’s a traditional Chinese game.” He grinned.
“Really?”
“Really. And actually, I really do know how to play. You soak up a lot when you live in the neighborhood, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“Like, I bet you know how to eat Sunday brunch like nobody’s business.”
“What?”
“Living on the Upper West Side. Forget it. I was trying to be funny again.”
“Oh.” I cracked a smile.
“I should probably give up my dream of starring in my own sitcom, right?”
I laughed.
So did he. Then he said, “Actually, I’m serious.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. I really do want my own sitcom someday. Dream big, I always say.”
I honestly couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not, so I just shrugged and said, “Yeah.”
“But for now, I’m working entry level at an ad agency. What do you do, Beau?”
“For a living? I’m a production assistant.”
“What kind of production assistant?”
“You know that show J-Squared?”
“Janelle Jacques? Yeah, I know it. You work for her?”
“Yeah. I’m a production assistant on the show.”
“You’re in the industry?”
“The Janelle Jacques industry? You bet,” I quipped.
He was already reaching into his pocket. “Here,” he said, and pulled out a small pale blue rectangle.
“What is it?” I asked, though it was obviously a card. His card.
“My card,” he said unnecessarily. “So you can get in touch with me if…”
“If Janelle becomes a sitcom producer and is looking for somebody to star in a new show?”
He smiled. “Yeah, or if you just feel like, you know…”
I did know, and I again wanted to blurt out that I was in love. With somebody else. Some other Mike.
But we weren’t talking about love.
“…getting in touch with me,” this Mike finished with a shrug.
I felt guilty taking his card, but I did. I shoved it into my bag without looking at it.
“Thanks,” I told him. “For the card and for the drink.”
“You’re welcome. What time does your friend’s flight get in?”
“Any second now,” I lied, and looked around as though I almost expected to see Mike—my Mike—lurking behind a potted palm, spying on us.