Bad Boy (20 page)

“Are you trying to talk me into taking some kind of straight gig again?” Phil asked, sitting up now.

Uh-oh. Not this argument tonight. “No. I just think . . .”

“I just think you don’t have much confidence in me. I don’t appreciate that.” Phil threw his long legs over the side of the bed and began to push one foot into his boot.

“Look, I’m sorry. I just thought he’d be a good connection for you. Then, afterward, I thought maybe you’d come back here and . . .”

“Forget it, Tracie. I’ve got a late rehearsal.” He put his other boot on.

“Fine,” she told him. “I want to work on my article about the makeover anyway.”

“Fine,” Phil repeated. “Then we’re both busy. Too bad I didn’t know that before I wasted all this time waiting for you.” He
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stood up and put his guitar in its case. “Good luck with your sow’s ear.”

“That’s not nice,” she snapped.

“Oh, I think it’s nice,” he said. “Nice for you. Nice for your ego.” He paused, then cocked his head and raised his voice. “You could be the next Emma Quindlen,” Phil said, imitating Jon almost perfectly.

“Anna, not Emma,” Tracie snarled at his back as he left.

Tracie was driving over to Mom’s, a diner on the other side of Seattle, where they served things like baked macaroni and home-style chicken potpie. She’d been turned down on the makeover article, but the idea of the best meat loaf in town was worthy. She sighed. After thinking for a while, she’d come up with an angle she liked: Guys in films noir always seem to have a cup of joe and some meat loaf, so she was getting Mr. Bill from the video store to find a few of the restaurant scenes from the thirties and she was going to sample all the meat loaf in town, as Jimmy Cagney or Humphrey Bogart might. Needless to say, Jon had insisted that she include Java, The Hut’s, although
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Tracie didn’t feel it was necessary to do any favors for the place. It wasn’t as if they gave her good service.

After Mom’s, Tracie was going to meet Jon at Java, and over another meat loaf sampling, she’d fit in another lesson. Despite his mission impossible at the airport
‌
—she giggled when she thought of it
‌
—she could see he was getting close to scoring, or whatever it was that guys called it. The fact that he’d even try on his own was incredible, given what a mess he’d been. But now that he was close, she also knew that Jon needed preparation in one more area. Tracie had thought long and
‌
—excusing the pun
‌
—hard about discussing sexual etiquette with Jon. She shrank from it, though.

The two of them were really best of friends, but while they talked about virtually everything else, she had never talked to him about sex. Somehow, while she could describe to Laura
‌
—or even Beth
‌
—the exact dimensions of a man’s private parts and any peculiarity thereof, the idea of doing that with Jon gave her the willies. Of course, she didn’t
have
to talk to him about willies. He had one and, one presumed, he knew how to use it. But what she knew from sad experience, as well as from the experiences of her friends, was that most men had not read the operating instructions for women’s parts. If her work on Jon made him look good and sound good, it still wouldn’t be enough, as far as she was concerned, if he couldn’t also put them over the top sexually.
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She told herself she shouldn’t expect too much from Jon
‌
—after all, she knew he hadn’t had that much experience.

Freud had pondered on what women wanted, but he must not have asked his wife, or any of his female patients. Because, based on her own sex life and what she’d heard from her friends, what women wanted was oral sex, and plenty of it. Not that they necessarily liked giving blow jobs, though Tracie herself enjoyed it. The problem was that no matter how good you became at playing the skin flute, men usually left you with a lick and a promise. That is, if they went south of the border at all. Tracie was always deeply offended by men who had an aversion to going down on her but who expected her to look at their own private parts as if they were ice-cream cones with sprinkles. One of the things she loved about Phil was how much he seemed to like all of her body, and her secret place the best. It was also so much easier to have an orgasm if a man knew what he was doing. God, when she thought about the oafs she’d occasionally been with in college who’d thought that pumping away until a girl came passed for good sex! She had to tell Jon about delicacy and teasing, about developing a pattern and then, just when the next touch or stroke or flick was expected, to withhold it and go on to something new until a woman was almost out of her mind.

She crossed her legs, then realized she needed her brake foot. She was so deep in
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thought that as she was about to pull into the right lane for her exit, she didn’t see the blue Maxima to her side. She swerved, got back into the exit lane, and reminded herself to keep her eyes on the road, even if her thoughts were “in the gutter,” as her stepmom used to say. As she stopped at the off-ramp light, she thought again of Jon and winced at the idea of leaving him completely unprepared. It wasn’t fair to him, or to women. And then there was the question of the real sexual politics: where you slept, whether you slept over, condoms and creams and all the rest. God, she hoped he didn’t need help with that, too! She could just imagine having to take him into a pharmacy and asking for ribbed Trojans for him.

As she turned onto the main road, she smiled. She remembered the days back in Encino when she herself was so embarrassed that she couldn’t buy tampons if there was a guy anywhere near the pharmacy counter. Instead, she’d have to go into a supermarket and buy Clorox, Ritz crackers, some Oreos, a carton of 2 percent milk, Rice Krispies, a few Lean Cuisines, Wonder bread, and
then
a box of tampons, which would, oh-so-casually, be sandwiched between the sandwich cookies and sandwich bread.

Those days were long gone. She could walk up to any clerk at any convenience store and ask for a dozen lubricated, spermicidal Ramses with reinforced tips. If the guy even raised his eyebrows, she was capable of smiling sweetly
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and telling him, “Make it two dozen. I’m having a gang bang.” As she pulled into the parking lot of Mom’s, she smiled at the thought.

A very full belly later, Tracie looked down at the second plate of meat loaf she had to face that day and then glanced up at Jon. “It’s not as good as Mom’s,” she said, gesturing with her fork at the pallid slice.

“It’s better,” he told her.

What a lie! “Have you ever had Mom’s?” she asked, whispering so Molly couldn’t hear.

“No,” he admitted. “But it couldn’t be better than this.”

“Oh, how would you know anyway?” she asked. “You’re a vegan.”

“No I’m not,” he said. “You remember? Vegans eat
‌
—”

“Caught you!” she said, jumping at the chance. “You’re
not
supposed to be talking about your dietary laws to any woman.”

“I didn’t know this counted,” he said, defending himself.

“
Everything
counts. That’s the whole point of what I’m trying to teach you.” She steeled herself for another bite of meat loaf and an opening for her little planned discussion about the birds and the bees. She needed an opening, but she couldn’t really think of one. “Look, we have to talk about . . . seduction,” she said, and swallowed hard.

Just then, Molly came over to the table.
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“Is everything okay ’ere?” she asked, perhaps too sweetly.

Tracie actually had to look up from her plate just to be sure it was really Molly. “Everything’s fine. Why do you ask?”

“Just doing my job,” Molly said, and refilled their water glasses. Tracie looked at Jon to see if he was curious about this new behavior. But nothing registered on his face. God, now she’d probably hang around, and Tracie could
not
talk about sex with Molly listening. “If you need anything, don’t ’esitate to ask,” Molly said, and left them their table.

That didn’t add up. “You told her didn’t you?” Tracie said accusingly.

“Told her what?” Jon asked.

“About my meat loaf assignment! She’s never filled our water glasses in all the time we’ve been coming here. I don’t even think she’s served us water until today. You rat!”

Jon, his mug at his lips, choked a little bit of coffee back into it. “What do you mean?”

“Well, there are . . . rules. I’m supposed to be treated like an average customer.” She felt herself flushing.

“So what if I tipped her off? She’s always treated you worse than average. Look at it this way: Molly’s finally being nice to you.”

“Jon, you aren’t allowed to
‌
—”

“Hey, it’s not a Micro/Con tech breakthrough. It’s just meat loaf. Anyway, get back to the seduction. What do you mean by that?”

“Just that there are certain ways you
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should . . . do things. And certain things you should . . . avoid.”

“What do you mean,
things
?”

God, he wasn’t making this easy. “ ‘What do you mean,
things
?’ ” she imitated. “What I mean is that you need to have a way to get women hot for you.” She thought of her afternoon’s sexual review, the one that almost made her run off the road. “And the best way is to . . .” She just couldn’t get right to the nitty-gritty. She would have to segue into it. “Look, sex is like a dance,” she told him. “You know those Fred Astaire movies?”

“Is he another bad boy? Tracie, I don’t think I have time for any more videos. I’m getting way behind at work as it is.”

“You don’t have to watch him. It’s just that he was that skinny bald dancer, but he had some kind of sex appeal, because in every movie he’d do this dance with Ginger Rogers or some other woman, but it was always best with Ginger. She’d be angry with him, but when they started to dance, she’d pull away and he would pull her back. Then the moment he let her go, she’d pull away again.” Tracie, still sitting, gestered with her arms and shoulders to demonstrate. “But then he’d grasp her hand or her wrist and pull her to him again. And in the end, his persistence and his grace would win her over. And then you’d feel her give in, when her body would melt into his. It was a conquest, sexier than sex.”

Tracie felt herself heating up again. She paused, recovering herself. “Anyway, the
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whole thing about a seduction is that you have to be strong enough, magnetic enough to pull the woman toward you. But then you have to abandon her so that you can replay the seduction. It’s that conquest thing that makes women
crazy for you.
”

“They want me to conquer them?” he asked. “Didn’t that go out with Tarzan? Anyway, that’s not what James Dean does.”

“Right. James Dean’s characters were oblique. They never admitted that they wanted someone, though they yearned. You have to be like that, too. Act like you don’t care, but let women
imagine
the yearning. If you actually yearn and they see it, it’s kind of a pucker.”

“Tracie, I think this is too complicated for me,” Jon said, putting down his fork and wiping off his mouth with the napkin.

“Oh, come on. You are the guy who is figuring out Parsifal. You can do anything.” She took a deep breath. “Look, it’s best if they see you as a tragic figure. And if they feel that they can help you and heal you, that’s cool.”

“But my life isn’t a tragedy,” Jon protested.

“No, it’s a travesty. That’s the problem.” She paused. How could she get him to understand? “You have to try and find some secret to tell them and be sure that you tell them you never told anyone. Make them feel as if they’re the only ones that could ever understand you. Because you’re so complex and they are so sensitive. That will make them feel special and important.”

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“What kind of secret? I never told anyone that I wet my bed until I was about twelve, but I don’t think that’s what you have in mind.”

“Good thinking, Sherlock.” Tracie didn’t even want to know if what he’d admitted was true or not. As she leaned back to think for a moment, Molly swooped down on them again and silently collected Jon’s plate, wiped up the crumbs off the table, and brought him a fresh napkin and the dessert list.

“Are you still working on yours?” she asked kindly. Tracie couldn’t take this sort of treatment. Now she’d be forced to say something good about Molly’s meat loaf. She wished she could have her plate taken away. She couldn’t eat another bite. Not that it wasn’t good, but she was sick to death of meat loaf.

“I’m still working on it,” she told the lying limey waitress. As soon as the hypocrite left with the dirty tray, Tracie was ready to continue. “Jon, just make something up. Tell them that you saw your father shoot your mother. Or that you saw your mother shoot your father. Or they both shot each other and you’ve inherited millions but that you’d never touch the blood money.”

“They’d like that?” he asked.

“Only if they believed you. And if you said you never trusted anyone else enough to share that. Then they’ll trust you enough to sleep with you.” Jon just shook his head.

“Now listen.” Tracie continued. “When you
do
sleep with them, it’s important that you don’t sleep over. No matter how tired you are,
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or how late it is, you have to get out of bed and go home. Rule Number Five, and the most important: Don’t sleep over.”
[rule5]

“Never? But Phil sleeps over all the time,” he protested.

“Well, he never did at first,” Tracie admitted. “The point is, it leaves her wanting more. It’s best if you can sneak out while she’s sleeping.”

“Without even saying good-bye?”

“Leave an elliptical note.”

“Like what?”

“Like . . . like . . . ‘You made me go.’ And don’t sign it ‘love.’ And
don’t
leave your phone number.” Jon’s mouth was hanging open in disbelief.

“They make me come and then I write a note to tell them they made me go? Come on! Am I supposed to seduce masochists exclusively?”