Bad Boy (37 page)

“Not from the cold,” he told her.

“Come here,” she said, and he took off all of his wet clothes, right down to his shorts, and climbed into bed next to her. She wrapped her arms around him and for a moment they lay still under the blanket. She could feel his hipbone against her thigh. His breathing was shallow; then she realized it matched her own. As if on cue, as if the moment was preordained, they turned toward each other. She felt him hard against her and shivered again.

“Are you still cold?” he asked, and in answer, she kissed him.

Tracie awoke, the afterglow of wonderful sex still surrounding her like an aura. She turned her head on the pillow. Jon was awake beside her, looking at her face with love and wonder. “You are so beautiful,” he told her.

_p. 371
“Oh, come on. I
‌
—”

He covered her mouth with his hand. “You are so beautiful. So beautiful,” he repeated, and though she had thought she didn’t have any tears left in her, they filled her eyes again. With wonder, he ran his hand from a rib to her waist and then around the swell of her hip. “You’re so . . . beautiful,” he said. “Your breasts are perfect, so soft, so vulnerable. They make me think of new puppies
‌
—blind, but so alive and responsive.”

“Puppies!” She laughed. “Where did you get that idea?”

“I don’t know. My mother said I should get a dog.” They both laughed; then he kissed her again, long and hard. She pulled away.

“Jon, I’ve been really stupid.”

“You’re adorable.” He said it in a way she had been hungry to hear all her life.

But she had to tell him. She had to apologize for how ridiculous she’d been. How blind and foolish “No. No. I didn’t know what I wanted. Molly told me . . . scrambled eggs . . .” Oh, how could she explain? “I just didn’t see
‌
—”

Jon kissed her. It was another perfect kiss. Then he looked at her. “Did you major in cute at school? Or do you still take lessons?” he asked. “Did you know I love your earlobes? I’ve always loved them.” He bit one gently and she shivered. “They’re adorable.”

He stretched out, luxuriating in the bed. “I feel like we’re the only two people in the world. Like Adam and Eve on a raft.” He
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paused and lifted himself up on one elbow. “Will you let me eat poached eggs now?”

“Right this minute?” Tracie asked. She thought she was pretty cute, but he was gorgeous.

“Well, not right this minute,” Jon said. “There’s something else I want to eat first.”

“Again?” she asked, and hugged him. She was so happy, her chest hurt. The strangest thought flitted into her head. She wanted to die right then so that she would always be this happy. “You can eat anything you like,” she told Jon. “Just promise you’ll never leave me.” She looked deep into his eyes.

Very seriously, Jon looked back at her. “I have to leave you,” he said. “I have to pee.”

She laughed, relieved. “Okay, but just this once. And hurry.”

Jon got up and walked past her desk. He crossed to the bathroom, but on his way, he noticed all the Polaroids Tracie had tacked up. They were arranged in a before-and-after format. Tracie’s eyes opened wide. She sat up. Oh my God! Did I ever begin to tell him . . . to ask him . . . Her mind raced to everything she had there, every stupid, shallow observation, every silly adjective, and, worst of all, the bet. She closed her eyes and made a futile prayer that he would just turn and keep heading to the bathroom, but he didn’t. He read a few of the Post-its. Then he saw the printout of the article. Again, she breathed a silent prayer that he wouldn’t pick it up, but he did. His face dropped.

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Tracie couldn’t believe that she could go from such total joy to such complete misery in less than a minute. She wanted to cry out, to tell Jon to drop the article, to ignore it. Oh, she knew she should have told him about it so long ago.

Jon’s face had gone white and he put the draft back down on her desk. He walked over to the damp pile of clothes beside the bed and began to fumble with his shorts, then his jeans.

“Jon, don’t,” she said stupidly.

“I have to go,” he told her, his voice dead. Then he looked up at her for the first time since he’d seen the snapshots. “I don’t like to stay over,” he said. “I like to sleep alone.”

She recognized the words she had taught him. She jumped up, wrapped the sheet around herself, and stood up. “Are you using the bad-boy treatment on
me
?” she asked. Then it occurred to her that maybe all of this
‌
—standing her up, following her, seducing her
‌
—could have just been an elaborate part of his new persona. God, was that it? Had all of this been just an act, a taste of her own medicine? She began to shiver again. “What am I? Just another notch on your floppy disc?” she asked him.

He was already pulling his shirt on. “And what am I? Your chance at being the next Anna Quindlen?” Jon snapped at her. He thrust his arms into his jacket, snatched up the article, and threw it in front of her. “You did this to me so you could get a big byline?” he asked.

“Of course not. I did it because you asked
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me.” How could he think that? And even if part of it was true, hadn’t what they just shared transcended all that went before? “I began the article because
‌
—”

Jon turned his back on Tracie and walked out of the bedroom. She ran behind him, clutching the sheet around her. “Jon! Wait.”

He was at the door, but he turned to her. “I can’t believe it. I’m a photo op. A story? ‘A nerd.’ That’s how you saw me? ‘A corporate weenie’? Very complimentary.”

“Jon, once I began writing it, I knew I could never submit the thing.”

“But this is the way you once saw me,” Jon said, looking at one of the photos he still clutched in his hand. He shook his head, crushed the photo, and threw it onto the floor. “You know, I was a little afraid when we made love that you might be doing it for the wrong reason. But until now, I never thought I was just a career opportunity.” He smiled, but it was a mean smile, one she had never seen. “What was this going to be? The climax of the piece?”

“Jon, I
‌
—”

He shook his head. “You say you love me, but you mocked me and used me in this stupid newspaper piece. You and Marcus must have had some good laughs over this. How about Beth
‌
—was she in on it? And Laura? Did she see it? Did you and Phil read it in bed together?”

“Jon, when I started, I thought it was a good idea. I put a lot of you and a lot of my love for you into it. And it’s good. But I’ll just
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tear it up. I always meant to ask your permission, and then, somehow, it all got too sensitive and
‌
—”

“Sensitive! Ha, that’s a laugh,” he said. “There will be a special on
Nightline
the day you become sensitive. You’re the one who taught me to hurt people,” he reminded her. “You’re the one who taught me the fun of being Mr. If-I-Tell-You-a-Lie-I-Can-Fuck-You-and-Forget-You. Sensitive?”

“Forget the piece.”

“Forget
you
!” He turned to go.

“Wait! Five minutes ago, you promised never to leave me. You’ve been my friend for seven years. I told you the article was a mistake. I was going to dump it. But you treat me like this now?”

Jon moved to the door. “Hey, it’s how you like to be treated. Didn’t you teach me that? All the tricks. Women seek pain, right? They want to be treated badly. I’m a good student, even if you didn’t let
me
take notes.”

“Please. Jon, I love you.”

“What does love mean to you? Betrayal? Forget this. This is . . . nothing.” He opened the door, then turned back to face her. “Are you going to tell Phil about this?”

“About what? Nothing happened, right?”

Jon turned and closed the door behind him. Tracie could only manage to wait until he’d safely gotten out of range before she burst into sobs.

_p. 376
Tracie hadn’t slept all night, but she looked as if she hadn’t slept for a week. She’d been caught coming in late
‌
—real late
‌
—and she hadn’t even been able to duck her head in the traditional gesture of apology. So, an hour or so later when Marcus called her into his office, she knew the news wouldn’t be good. She’d also heard from Beth, who’d heard from Sara, who’d overheard Allison talking to Marcus, that he was furious because Allison had dropped him. That wouldn’t sweeten his mood. He was such an ass.

But as ridiculous as Marcus and his romantic life was, hers was worse, and she knew she was in no position to judge. Molly had been right about everything: She was a fool, and it was depressing to think of how she’d hurt Jon, been hurt by him, ruined the most important friendship she had, as well as all chances for true love.

Because she did love Jon. And it wasn’t because he looked good now, or that she’d finally discovered what a thoughtful and gifted lover he was. It was because she’d always loved him. She had simply been too stupid to know that she did. And for that, she’d be punished, probably for the rest of her life. She’d called Jon more than a dozen times, in an imitation of Beth. The irony wasn’t lost on
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her. Jon hadn’t called her back and wouldn’t take her calls at the office. She wasn’t sure that she could get him to forgive her.

Now, however, she had to see Marcus and probably get another lousy assignment. Marcus sat at his desk with his sleeves rolled up. He looked like he was in the middle of some major editing job. His blue pencil had already slashed veins and arteries on whatever story corpse he was working on. He was slashing so energetically, he even had a streak of blue along the side of his mouth, as if he might have been editing what he said, though Tracie knew better than to believe that.

She looked at him and suddenly felt that she couldn’t bear one more snotty remark, one more insult. She took a single step into the room. “Yes?” she asked.

“That Father’s Day article was pretty good,” Marcus admitted. “With Allison’s help,” he added. She just stood there. It’s odd, Tracie thought; once the worst thing has happened, other things that frightened you before no longer have any power. She remembered feeling this way just once before, after her mother died. The two girls who used to tease her mercilessly, her teacher, who frightened her, and even the Rottweiler at the end of her block in Encino had no longer held any terror for her at all. Let them all do their worst; she didn’t care. In a way, the desolation then had been peaceful, just as it was now. She looked at Marcus calmly. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do to her.

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“Yup. Couldn’t have done it without her. But it’s too bad it was cut down so much,” she told him calmly. “Maybe on my next assignments, they can be longer. But just try not to make them holiday pieces.”

“That’s a deal,” he said rather affably. He picked up the papers he was working on and tossed them onto the credenza. “Sit down,” he said.

“No thanks,” she told him, and leaned against the doorway. There was a time when she would have done that to be insolent, but now she just didn’t care.

“Well, I’m going to run the nerd makeover. It’s actually pretty funny,” he said. “I thought we might also run a sidebar with Ted Waite; Steve Balmer, the new head of Microsoft; and maybe Marc Grayson
‌
—you know, the head of Netscape. And maybe Kevin Mitnick, the hacker that just got out of jail. I thought we’d show him in his orange jumpsuit as a before and then I’d have the photo department do a montage on all of them after. Mitnick has got to find some girl to support him, since they won’t even let him work at a McDonald’s. Poor bastard. Live by the computer, die by the computer.”

At that moment, Tracie wished Marcus would die by his computer. Her equilibrium, her dead calmness, had disappeared as he spoke. Jon might never forgive her for what she had done, but he’d certainly kill her or himself if the article was published. “You can’t run the article,” she said.

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“Look,” he told her, “I know all about your little talks with
Seattle Magazine.
But you can’t publish there if I put in a first claim. We have the option, and I’m sure you did this on company time.”

“Marcus, you can’t publish it,” she repeated.

He picked up the pile of papers off the credenza and waved them at her. “After all the time you put into that? And the time
I
put into it? It’s the only good thing you’ve done.”

“Marcus, you can’t run it . . .” How could she explain? Why would she explain to an idiot like him? “It . . . it will hurt people,” she said.

“Oh. Well,” he intoned, deeply sarcastic. “Well, if it will hurt people . . .”

She looked at him and knew that she couldn’t stand him for one more minute. He was an egotistical, self-important, bullying hack and she was sick and tired of it.

“Look, if you run it, I quit,” she told him.

“Really?” Marcus said with that same sophomoric tone. “I have a better idea. You’re fired.”

“Great,” she told him. Her calmness returned. Sometimes complete desolation, a totally empty landscape, was best. “I’ll go clear out my desk,” she said.

To any observer, it would have been clear from the detritus on the bed that Tracie had been lying there for several days. There were the remains of a take-out pizza, empty ice-cream containers, half-f cereal boxes, magazines,
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rumpled newspapers, and books. She couldn’t read much. Mostly, she cried, slept, and watched
Ricki Lake.
Sometimes she watched
Jerry Springer
, but it made it her feel worse about herself. Today, Ricki had brothers and sisters who slept with each other and who wanted the world to recognize their love. Either the show or the mud-pie ice cream she had eaten along with some Ritz crackers was making her queasy. So she hit the remote, turned on her side, and pulled a blanket up over her head. The phone rang and she listened to see who was leaving a message, but it wasn’t Jon, so she didn’t take the call.