The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating (17 page)

Instead she found herself drinking a third shot of tequila, and then a fourth. In hindsight she should have left the building with Richard somewhere between her second and her third tequila. That would have been the smart move. Instead, she insisted on talk. It was what they did, after all, in the movies. There was repartee, a natural progression. Conversation and small glasses of booze.

Then a notable thing occurred some time between when the movie star entered the room and the dark hours of morning. Claire lost her virginity as a widow.

Let’s watch it out of order, because the middle part is best. Here’s the scene: Claire faceup on her bed in her apartment, eyes glued to the ceiling, skirt hiked up to her hips. Her legs are pried apart like a wishbone. Her stockings have slouched and her garter’s askew. A bottle of tequila is on the nightstand alongside her antique hand mirror.

She was struggling with a headache. She was struggling to know what happened. Where was she, how did she get here, what did she do, and who with? Jack Huxley had been wearing a dark suit, she remembers that clearly, but it wasn’t the one that was crumpled on her chair across the room. Jack Huxley from the magazines in waiting rooms, the man her dead husband was writing a book about, the object of human desire, of Hollywood, the rogue nephew of Aldous, was in a dark suit at one point and they were talking. And now a different man was on top of her.

“Come on, baby, put on the shoes,” he said. It was Bradley Hess. It was the romantic rival, the jerk in the movie, the supporting actor, not the star. Bradley Hess’ jacket was on her chair.
What?
Fuck!

He had one of Claire’s shoes in each hand, not the ones she’d been wearing, but two different shoes from her closet. They were both red but mismatched. Between thrust and parry, to-and-fro, he tried to shove them onto Claire’s feet, one at a time. It made her motion sick. Songs about shoes rushed through her head—“Red Shoes,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Goody Two Shoes.”

RULE #8
: Make sure you’re having sex with the right guy.

“C’mon, honey. Put on the shoes.”

Hess was handsome enough in his own right, and in any other universe, coming around like this in a bed, not yet clear on everything but clear enough to know you are having sex with Brad Hess, would not have been unpleasant. But where had he come from? Brad Hess was not Jack. As her widow cherry popped, Claire attempted to piece it together. Jack, yes. They were talking, he’d left early. Claire drank tequila, a lot of it. Oh my God, quite a bit. He said to go slow, and she didn’t. Why not? She used bawdy language. She remembered saying
ass-fuck
.

Jack Huxley left and Brad Hess stayed. Now he was here in Claire’s apartment, stripped bare to his socks. Charlie would never have left on socks; God knows Jack Huxley wouldn’t. Here, however, was the actor who plays Eric Stone in
The New Guy
with his socks on; the hardwood floors in Claire’s rooms were cold. Behind him, her television was on Channel 1079 and it was costing her fourteen dollars an hour. He succeeded in getting one shoe on her foot.

Claire became absorbed in the images on the screen, two women and a man. One woman, a blonde, was on top of the man, bouncing up and down without expression. Claire wondered if she was happy or sad. The other woman rubbed the blonde’s back, squeezed her breasts as they bounced, reached her hand around to where the man’s penis went in and out. The blonde threw her head back and let out a high-pitched noise. Huxley said something to her, before he left. What did he say?

“Come on, baby.”

Right: Bradley, the shoes. He got the other shoe on, finally. He quickened his pace for a few moments, then stopped. His face contorted, he breathed in sharply, then let his breath back out slow. He was still for a few moments and then he dismounted and moved to Claire’s living room. Left alone, Claire surveyed the wreckage. In addition to the tequila, an ashtray on Claire’s dresser held the remains of a joint.

Minutes later, from the living room, music pierced Claire’s four-in-the-morning air. Singing—big, booming, operatic singing. She recognized the song. She got up to peek out her bedroom door, and Brad Hess was sitting naked on her tiger-print couch, bellowing out “Jesus Christ Superstar” like Pavarotti. On the coffee table sat Charlie in his urn, silent and condemning—or else laughing his late ass off.

“‘Jesus Christ, Superstar.’”

Claire lit up the half-smoked joint, choked inhaling, and tried to process the scene.

Brad Hess looked over at her. “I’m classically trained.”

She felt dizzy, but in a nice way. It could have been worse. There was a handsome naked man sitting upright in her living room, with good posture, feet shoulder-width apart, chest taut, singing show tunes. He had a water glass in his hand.

Oh my God
, Claire thought.
What just happened?

She felt relief to have it over.

“I liked your movie,” she offered weakly.

“I know, baby. You told me like a hundred times last night. Fuck, you were wasted, weren’t you?”

For better or worse, it was the beginning, for Claire, of actors.

22

Claire went not to Lowenstein with her news, but to Spence. He had the radio on low. He was trimming a primrose in a small pot on his lap.

“Okay. Well, I met a man at a movie premiere last night, an actor. The star, actually. Well, I met the star and then also the supporting guy, who I guess isn’t a star but is still in the movie.”

“Yes.”

“So we flirted, a little, afterward, after the premiere at the reception. And then we had sex.”

Spence put down his plant. “Well, this sounds like a welcome turn of events. This is what you’ve been talking about, isn’t it? You’ve been tormented with this idea of virginity hanging over you.”

Claire smiled weakly but didn’t answer.

“Who did you have sex with?”

“The actor.”

“The actor you were flirting with.”

“No, no. I didn’t. Well, I mean, I did.”

Spence looked puzzled.

Claire took a deep breath.

“I flirted with the star. And then I had sex with the not-star. It gets … blurry.”

“Okay.”

“I think I blacked out. I’m pretty certain I did. Actually, I did. And when I woke up it was like I was in the middle of a scene. One minute we’re in a room of pretty people, dressed and bantering, and I’m flirting with Jack Huxley—”

Spence put his hands together atop his lap and made no attempt to respond. He’d earlier that morning had dental work, Claire knew, and was putting great effort into the movement around his mouth; it was still partially numb. He moved his hand there, unconsciously, several times in the course of a minute, and to her it appeared that he was trying not to laugh. She fidgeted in her seat. She looked around at the walls and windows.

“So, yeah. Jack Huxley. It was the premiere of his movie. And there was tequila. And he kept, well, someone kept giving me little glasses of tequila. And then the next thing I know we’re on my bed flanked by, well, marijuana … and more tequila, and he’s shoving my feet into these shoes. Only it’s not Jack’s suit jacket on the chair, it’s a different one, and then it’s actually Bradley Hess shoving my feet into the shoes. I can’t even piece it together very well.”

Spence picked up the primrose again. “Well, the substances are a concern, but let’s shelve that for now. This is directly tied to what we’re working on. You want intimacy, but you also want sex. You fear you’re incapable of blending the two—you’ve been told this, in fact, by your late husband, who stood behind research. So, how do you feel about last night?”

“I’m not incapable of blending the two. Charlie was. Charlie said it wasn’t possible.”

“Do you think it’s possible?” Spence uncrossed his legs.

Claire thought he seemed smug. “I don’t know. I think so.”

“Okay, so you’re ambivalent.”

“I kept thinking how absurd it was. I mean, he’s an actor, it seemed unreal. From what I can recall, it felt like we were just doing a scene on my bed. A disastrous one—I never would have written it.”

Evan Spence did not take a note and did not look down; he just looked at Claire and waited. Was he captivated or bored?

“I was trying not to laugh. He wanted me to put on these shoes … and then later, he sat naked in my living room, on my tiger-print sofa, and started singing.”

“What was he singing?”

“‘Superstar,’ you know, from the musical. He has a very nice voice. I wasn’t expecting that … but I couldn’t stop thinking about my neighbors across the hall, waking up at four in the morning to a bellowing Brad Hess. The entire transaction, from the premiere party to the sex to the singing and his exit was seven hours. It was completely unplanned. I went to the premiere to be introduced to Huxley and ended up screwing his costar. That’s fucked up. Maybe I need a sex therapist.”

“You might be getting ahead of yourself.”

“My dead husband had a pathological obsession with sex. Can you get it from a partner?”

“Obsession is not a communicable disease.”

“Then it’s learned behavior. His, and now mine.”

Spence tilted his head slightly, narrowed his eyes, continued the conversation. “Charlie affirmed all of your internal doubts about yourself and your relationships with men, and then he left before you had a chance to dispute him or prove otherwise. He made it okay for you to be this way. You made it okay for him, as well. You said he had one or maybe two other girlfriends?”

“Sure. For comedy’s sake, let’s call them ‘girlfriends’ and let’s say ‘one or two.’”

“Perhaps he hadn’t found anyone who would accept this in him until you. Someone who would let him remain emotionally withdrawn but still be loyal. You looked at Charlie and saw yourself, and the two of you were attracted to that in each other. Now that he’s gone, the trouble’s been where to restart.”

“That’s all I want to know.”

“You’ve recognized that you want to have intimacy, both emotional and physical.”

“Maybe I’ll have a promiscuous phase.”

“Having a sexual encounter does not equate with promiscuity.”

“He doesn’t know my number; it will be awkward if we meet again. He’s probably done this a thousand different times.”

“Is Jack Huxley aware that your husband was writing a book about him?”

Claire shrugged. “I’m not really sure. We didn’t get to that.”

Spence nodded.

“I liked the water glasses,” Claire said.

“The water glasses?”

“Yes. Afterward, after he was singing, Brad Hess smoked a cigarette. He asked if he could smoke in my apartment, and then he did, and then he had a glass of water. We both did. We both drank out of water glasses, and then left them there. So when I woke in the morning, there were water glasses on the table. Two of them.”

“And?”

“And I liked that. Maybe that was what I wanted.”

P
ART III

Love Is a Drag

23

The following Tuesday, while Sasha drowned her childless angst in a proper old-fashioned—cubed sugar, muddled bitters, three shots of Canadian Club—Claire went back to Beatrice.
What the hell
, she thought.
What do I have to lose?

What the hell, indeed.

There, in the stiff-backed chair of Beatrice’s sterile little office, Claire handed over a photograph. It was the one from
New York
magazine, it was the one with her soul in her eyes, the one that Charlie had confused with her talent. Beatrice studied the picture; she held it at different angles; she held it close to, then away from, her face. She was intent. For Claire, the bar was lower now. She was just killing time. But Beatrice was a career gal, a professional. She took her job very seriously, and she was on the clock. Her long fingers jerked and twitched as she squeezed Claire’s hand and then relaxed. She mumbled things as she studied the picture, things that Claire could not understand. Claire did see her smile. There was a smile on Beatrice’s face: a small, smirky smile that began to stretch out into a broad one. She squeezed Claire’s hand once more, quickly, then released it. The excitement was spiked with the claustrophobic air of Beatrice’s office. Claire gasped. Something had clearly happened.

“Yes!” Beatrice shrieked. She actually shrieked. This was not the same Beatrice that Claire had experienced before. “This is good. Before you see me again, you’ll find love!”

This time it was Claire who was skeptical. “Love?”

“Yes. Love.”

“Where? Who?”

With intense concentration, Beatrice studied Claire’s hand. “I see it, it’s remarkable. Your cheeks are flushed pink. You’re sitting at a bar, and you’re wearing a flower-print dress.”

*   *   *

I
T WAS SIX
days since the night Claire, legs askew, wore mismatched shoes for someone she thought was Jack Huxley. Predictably, Bradley Hess hadn’t called. She didn’t own a flower-print dress. Her phone rang on her way home, in the cab.
Unknown.

Did she believe in fate? The universe? Coincidence? It didn’t matter whether she did; Charlie and the events of the thin man had spoken for themselves.

“Hello?” she answered, cautiously.

“Claire!” It was Richard. He wasn’t the caller she thought he’d be, but he wasn’t unwelcome. “How would you like to flee this cold, cruel city for warmer climes?”

He continued without waiting for an answer. “I’ve just had a call from the manager of one Huxley, Jack. Seems he was impressed by you, especially when I dropped the fact that you’re working on a book about him.”

Jack Huxley, it turned out, was finishing up on the set of a new movie,
Chaos Effect
. He’d invited them to L.A. the following week to be his guests at a party he was hosting. He was curious (or so Richard claimed Jack Huxley’s manager had claimed) about Charlie Byrne’s book. Neither Richard, nor—Claire hoped—Jack knew about the night of the mismatched shoes.

It took two calls to Ethan’s voice mail, one to his landline, and a text to his new boyfriend to track him down. He hadn’t been coming around as much. “Where have you been?”