"You're going to be okay. I have to go to work now. Right now.
You're keeping me from work." "Can you help me?" Carrie asks.
"No," he says, sliding his gold cufflinks through the holes of starched cuffs. "You have to help yourself. Figure it out."
Carrie puts her head under the covers, still crying. "Call me in a couple of hours," he says, then walks out of the room. "Goodbye."
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says, watching her as he crosses the room. She's quiet now.
"Goodbye," he says. "Goodbye. Goodbye." It's the tenth day in a row of suffocating heat and humidity.
MR. BIG'S HEAT RITUAL
Carrie has been spending too much time with Mr. Big. He has air conditioning. She does, too, but hers doesn't work. They develop a httle ritual. A heat ritual. Every evening at eleven, if they haven't been out together, Mr. Big calls.
"How's your apartment?" he asks.
"Hot," she says.
"What are you doing then?"
"Sweating."
"Do you want to come over and sleep here?" he asks, almost a httle shyly.
"Sure, why not," she says. She yawns.
Then she races around her apartment, flies out the door (past the night doorman, who always gives her dirty looks), and jumps into a cab.
"Oh, hiiii," Mr. Big says when he opens the door, naked. He says it half-sleepy, as if he's surprised to see her.
They get into bed. Letterman or Leno. Mr. Big has one pair of glasses. They take turns wearing them.
"Have you ever thought about getting a new air conditioner?"
Mr. Big asks.
"Yes," Carrie says.
"You can get a new one for about $150." "I know. You told me."
"Well, it's just that you can't always spend the night here." "Don't worry about it," Carrie says. "The heat doesn't bother me."
"I don't want you to be hot. In your apartment," says Mr. Big.
"If you're only asking me over because you feel sorry for me, don't," Carrie says. "I only want to come over if you miss me. If you can't sleep without me."
"Oh, I'd miss you. Sure. Of course I'd miss you," Mr. Big says.
And then after a few seconds: "Do you have enough money?"
Carrie looks at him. "Plenty," she says.
There's something about this heat wave. It's loosening. You feel almost drunk, even though you're not. On the Upper East Side, Newbert's hormones are up. He wants to have a baby. In the spring, his wife, Belle, had told him she could never be pregnant in the summer, because she wouldn't want to be seen in a bathing suit.
Now she says she could never get pregnant in the summer, because she doesn't want to have morning sickness in the heat. Newbert has reminded her that, as an investment banker, she spends her days behind the green glass walls of a coolly air-conditioned office tower. To no avail.
Newbert, meanwhile, spends his days puttering around the apartment in a ripped pair of boxer shorts, waiting for his agent to call with news about his novel. He watches talk shows. Picks at his cuticles with blunt instruments. Calls Belle twenty times a day. She is always sweet. "Hello, Pookie," she says.
"What do you think about the Revlon stainless-steel tweezers with the tapered ends?" he asks.
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"I think they sound wonderful," she says.
One night during the heat wave, Belle has a business dinner with clients. Japanese. A lot of bowing and shaking hands, and then they all go off, Belle and five dark-suited men, to City Crab. Halfway through dinner, Newbert makes an unexpected appearance. He's already quite drunk. He's dressed like he's going camping. He decides to do his version of the Morris dance. He takes cloth napkins and stuffs them in the pockets of his khaki hiking shorts. Then, swinging napkins in both hands, he takes a few steps forward, kicks up one leg in front, takes a few steps backward, and kicks up the other leg behind. He also adds in a few side kicks, which, technically, are not part of the original Morris dance.
"Oh, that's just my husband," Belle says to the clients, as if this sort of thing happens all the time. "He loves to have fun."
Newbert pulls out a small camera and starts taking pictures of the clients. "Everyone say robster," he says.
Carrie is at this new restaurant, Le Zoo, having dinner with a bunch of people she doesn't really know, including the new "It" boy, Ra.
The restaurant has about three tables, and it's overbooked, so everyone stands on the sidewalk. Someone keeps bringing bottles of white wine outside. Pretty soon there's a party on the street. It's the beginning of the heat wave, and people are nice: "Oh, I've been dying to meet you." "We have to work together." "We have to see each other more." Carrie is talking to everyone and not hating anyone. Not feeling like everyone hates her for a change.
Inside the restaurant, Carrie sits between Ra and his female manager. Someone from the
New York Times
keeps taking everyone's picture. Ra doesn't talk much. He stares a lot and touches his goatee and nods his head. After dinner, Carrie
goes back to Ra's manager's house with the manager and Ra to smoke. It seems to be the right thing to do at the time, in the summer, in the heat. The smoke is strong. It's late. They walk her to a cab.
"We call this place the zone," the manager says. She's staring at Carrie.
Carrie thinks she actually knows what she's talking about, what this "zone" is, and why they're suddenly all in it together.
"Why don't you come and live with us in the zone?" Ra asks.
"I'd like to," Carrie says, meaning it but also thinking, I've got to get home.
She rides uptown, but before she gets home she says, "Stop the cab." She actually gets out and walks. She's still thinking, I've got to get home. The city is hot. She feels powerful. Like a predator. A woman is walking down the sidewalk a few feet in front of her.
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She's wearing a loose white shirt, it's like a white flag and it's driving Carrie crazy. Suddenly Carrie feels like a shark smelling blood. She fantasizes about killing the woman and eating her. It's terrifying how much she's enjoying the fantasy.
The woman has no idea she's being stalked. She's oblivious, jiggling along the sidewalk. Carrie envisions tearing into the woman's soft, white flesh with her teeth. It's the woman's own fault, she should lose weight or something. Carrie stops and turns into her building.
"Good evening, Miss Carrie," says the doorman.
"Good evening, Carlos," Carrie says.
"Everything okay?"
"Oh yes, everything's fine."
"Good night now," Carlos says, sticking his head around the open door of the elevator. He smiles.
"Good night, Carlos." She smiles back, showing all of her teeth.
In the heat, going outside is bad. But staying inside, alone, is worse.
Kitty is knocking around in the big Fifth Avenue apartment she hves in with Hubert, her fifty-five-year-old actor boyfriend. Hubert is making a comeback. He's shooting a film in Italy with a hot young American director, and then he's going to L.A. to shoot the pilot for a TV series. Kitty will join him in Italy in a couple of days and then go to L.A. with him. She thinks: I'm only twenty-five. I'm too young for this.
At five o'clock, the phone finally rings.
"Hello, Kitty?" It's a man.
"Yeeeees?"
"Is Hubert there?"
"Noooooo."
"Oh, this is Dash."
"Dash," Kitty says, somewhat confused. Dash is Hubert's agent.
"Hubert's in Italy," Kitty says.
"I know," Dash says. "He told me to call you and take you out if I was in town. He thought you might be lonely."
"I see," Kitty says. She realizes he's probably lying, and she's thrilled.
They meet at the Bowery Bar at ten. Stanford Blatch eventually shows up. He's a friend of Dash's, but then again, Stanford is a friend of everyone's.
"Stanford," Dash says. He leans back against the banquette.
"Where's the new place to go? I want to make sure my ward here has a good time this evening. I think she's bored."
The two men exchange glances. "I hke the Blue Angel," Stanford says. "But then again, I have particular tastes."
"The Blue Angel it is," Dash says.
The place is in SoHo somewhere. They walk in, and it's a seedy joint with plywood platforms for dancing girls. "Slumming is very big this summer," Stanford says.
"Oh please. I've been slumming for years," says Dash.
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"I know. You're the type of person who will be talking on his car phone and say, 'Could you hold on please? I'm in the middle of getting a blow job on the Palisades Parkway and I'm just about to come,'" Stanford says.
"Sunset Boulevard only," Dash says.
They sit down right in front of one of the platforms. In a little bit, a woman comes out. She's carrying a bouquet of daisies that looks like she plucked them out of a crack in the sidewalk. She's totally nude. She's also skinny with cellulite. "You know something's really wrong when you see a skinny girl with cellulite," Kitty says, whispering in Dash's ear.
Dash looks at her and smiles indulgently. Okay, I can handle this, Kitty thinks.
The woman grabs a feather boa and begins dancing. She plucks out the flower petals. She's totally sweaty. She lies down and rolls on the dirty platform, and when she gets up, she has bits of chicken feathers and ragged petals and dirt stuck all over her body. Then she opens her legs and thrusts herself toward Kitty's face. Kitty is certain she can smell the woman. But she thinks, Okay, I've survived this.
Then a dyke couple comes out. They perform. The little woman moans. Then the bigger woman starts choking her. Kitty can see the veins sticking out on the little woman's neck. She's really being strangled. I'm in a snuff club! Kitty thinks. Stanford orders another glass of white wine.
The big woman grabs the little woman's hair and pulls. Kitty wonders if she should try to do something. The woman's hair comes off, and it's a wig and underneath she has a fuchsia crewcut.
"Show's over," Dash says. "Let's go home."
Outside, it's still hot. "What the hell was that about?" Kitty asks.
"What else did you expect?" Dash says.
"Goodbye, Kitty," Stanford says smugly.
By the tenth day of the heat wave, Carrie was too attached to Mr.
Big. Way too attached. That was the night that she had her breakdown. It started fine: Mr. Big went out alone to a business dinner. No problem at first. She went to her girlfriend Miranda's.
They were going to sit in the air conditioning and watch taped segments of
Ab Fab.
But then they started drinking. Then Miranda called her drug delivery guy. It continued from there. Carrie hadn't seen Miranda for a while because she'd been busy with Mr. Big, so Miranda started in on her.
"I'd like to meet him, you know. Why haven't I met him? Why haven't I seen you?" Then she dropped the bomb. Miranda said she knows some girl who was dating Mr. Big during the first month he was dating Carrie.
"I thought he only saw her once," Carrie said.
"Oh, no. They saw each other several times. Se-ver-al. That's why I didn't call you for a whole month. I didn't know whether to tell you or not."
"I think this is bad stuff," Carrie said.
The next morning, after the freakout, when Carrie was lying in Mr. Big's bed, she tried to think about what she really wanted. Life felt hke it had changed, but had it really? She thinks: I'm still not married. I still don't have kids. Will it ever happen?
When?
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It's the zone or Mr. Big, she thinks. The zone or Mr. Big.
That afternoon, Mr. Big sends her flowers. The card reads:
"Everything will be okay. Love, Mr. Big."
"Why did you send me flowers?" Carrie asks him later. "That was so sweet."
"I wanted you to know that somebody loved you," Mr. Big says.
A couple of days later, on the weekend, Carrie and Mr. Big go to his house in Westchester, so Mr. Big can play
golf. He leaves in the morning, early. Carrie gets up late, makes coffee. She goes outside and walks around the yard. She walks to the end of the street. Walks back. Goes back inside the house and sits down.
"Now what am I going to do?" she thinks, and tries to imagine Mr. Big on the golf course, swatting golf balls impossible distances.
How to Marry a Man in
Manhattan—My Way
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A couple of months ago, an announcement appeared in the
New York
Times
that "Cindy Ryan" (not her real name) had gotten married.
There was nothing particularly interesting or unusual about it, except to people who had known Cindy and lost contact with her, like me, to whom the news was astounding. Cindy had gotten married! At forty! It was nothing short of inspirational.