Dumping Billy (22 page)

“Coming,” he said, and gave the group a dazzling smile before he disappeared into the crowd.

“My God,” Brice said. “He’s gorgeous. Can I come, too?”

Elliot gave Brice a look, then turned back to Kate and gave her a more searching one. Before he could say anything, Bev began to high-five everyone at the table. Next, Kate thought, they’d do the Wave. “Nice work,” said Barbie, slapping Kate’s palm.

“Good save,” Bunny agreed.

“I think he believes he’s going out with you, Kate,” Brice said.

“Well,” she told the table, “he’ll find out differently when he meets Michael. Anyway, he has Bina’s number.”

“Thanks, Katie,” Bina said, and looked totally exhausted. Kate smiled at her but wondered how she would talk Michael into a Wednesday night of bowling.

Chapter Twenty-two

K
ate felt guilty as she pressed the buzzer, then she remembered she had Michael’s keys. Silently she cursed herself. She checked her watch and was even more concerned when she realized it was a quarter to one. She was sure he was sleeping and equally sure she had more beer on her breath than she would like him to smell. Somehow it was all right to go out with friends because of obligation but not to have a good time.

When Michael came to the door, still dressed but obviously rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, she greeted him with a quick hug and passed him in the narrow foyer.

“You shouldn’t have waited up,” she said. What she meant was, she should have gone home to her own apartment or, better yet, not gone to Brooklyn at all.

But Michael just yawned and stretched. “Time to go to bed,” he said. Kate agreed with a nod but headed to the bathroom.

“I have to pee,” she said.

Once she had the door closed, she washed her face, brushed her teeth, gargled, and then brushed her teeth again. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she reached for the face towel. She looked so . . . furtive. For a moment, Kate saw—in her jaw, the set of her eyes, and her hairline—a frightening similarity to her father. It sent a shiver through her. Then she realized that more than the physical resemblance, it was the guilty, skulking body language and expression that had conjured up his image. She stood immobile under the light of the bare bulb in Michael’s bachelor bathroom and looked herself in the eye. You have nothing to feel guilty about, she told herself. If Michael is rigid with his schedule, there is no reason for you to feel guilty. Having drinks with your girlfriends is nothing to feel guilty about.

But Kate knew it wasn’t just that. Her thoughts about Billy Nolan were unsettling. She didn’t want those thoughts; she didn’t want the feeling she had had as she’d flirted with him. And even if she had done it for Bina, and even if she was only tricking Billy, the fact was she had acted as if she were making a date with another man and the other man had believed it. Wasn’t that kind of cheating on Michael? Raised as a Catholic while her mother was alive, Kate had never quite gotten over the concept of sins of commission and omission. Was she guilty of the latter?

Now she was returning to sleep with her lover, and she felt uncomfortably like a slut. It wasn’t the beer on her breath or the smell of cigarette smoke on her clothes that embarrassed her. It was her own feelings.

Kate washed quickly and emerged from the bathroom in her panties and bra. As she walked into Michael’s bedroom, she was dismayed to see that he was completely undressed under the sheet and had lit the candle on his nightstand. Michael usually slept in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. The lack of them and the lighted candle sent a clear signal.

“May I borrow a shirt?” Kate asked meekly.

Michael nodded and gestured to the bureau. She took out a plain white Fruit of the Loom and slipped into it, then slid into bed beside him.

“Was it fun?” Michael asked, putting his arm around her.

“Not really,” Kate said. “And I’m so exhausted.” She paused. Michael was good with this kind of sexual nuance. She waited a minute. “Can we just spoon?” she asked, and turned her back to him, feeling his chest against her shoulder blades.

“Sure,” Michael said, and Kate was relieved not to hear disappointment in his voice. He shifted for a moment, blew out the candle, and pressed his body up to hers. Kate sighed, and out of either shame, exhaustion, or too much beer, she closed her eyes and was asleep in moments.

Sunday morning, she and Michael fell into their comforting ritual. He had bought
The New York Times
and bagels, and they spent two hours reading bits of the paper to each other and nibbling on cream cheese and pumpernickel. Kate opened the “Styles” section to read a continuation of a story about beauty parlors in Afghanistan and accidentally ran into the Weddings/ Celebration page. It was something she tried to avoid, something unsettling, like stepping around a dead pigeon on the sidewalk.

She then went on to read the rest of the section, as she always had to when she forgot to avoid it. It was a bad mistake. Column after column describing happy unions, listing the groom’s parents, the bride’s family, with quotes from their siblings and descriptions of the celebrations that always left her feeling depressed and different from everybody else. If she married Michael, what would the
Times
possibly run about her wedding? “The bride, close to her 32nd birthday and an orphan, elected to have a small wedding. ‘I couldn’t really afford a big party, and I don’t have enough family and friends to attend one,’ Katherine Jameson-Atwood said. ‘In fact, I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing, but then, who is?’” Covertly, she peered over the top of the paper at Michael and wondered how he would look in one of the grainy gray photos, his head leaned toward hers. She closed the paper and put it aside.

Restless, she got up and went to the window. Michael’s building, a large white brick postwar complex, consisted of several hundred boring apartments, but the views from the upper floors were spectacular. She looked out the window down at Turtle Bay. She could even see a glimmer of the East River. “It looks like it’s clouding over,” she said.

Michael came up behind her and wrapped one arm around her chest and shoulder, like a high collar on a coat. “Well,” he said, “we could either go out and skateboard competitively or we could lie down in the bedroom. The choice is yours.”

Kate laughed and let him take her hand, leading her to the bed, though she wasn’t certain she was in the mood. But when they were lying down and he had undressed her, she relaxed into his kisses. When he bit her, gently, on the back of her neck, it sent a pleasant shiver down her spine. She began to forget herself in the trance of sexual pleasure that began to rise slowly like a tide at full moon. She felt his hands slide over her, deft and knowing, if a little predictable. When he rolled from his side on top of her, she wanted him. Swept away by the rhythm of his movements and her hungry response, Kate felt good for the first time that weekend. She closed her eyes and felt the rise of an orgasm about to take place. At the edge she whispered, “Yes.” She squeezed her eyes shut, and then Billy Nolan’s face flashed before her, as clear as it had been the night before. She caught her breath and groaned, but it was not with pleasure.

When Michael came, Kate realized to her dismay that she was relieved.

As they lay there together, she thought about the bowling plan. She couldn’t imagine Michael running down the lane, but she had to go with him or Billy would continue to believe that she was his date. She couldn’t take Elliot, because any man could tell there were no vibes between them—at least not the sexual kind. And her guilt compelled her to end the charade as quickly as possible. “Michael,” she whispered, “are you asleep?”

“Not quite,” he murmured.

“I want to ask you something.”

He turned to her with that deer-in-the-headlights look men got when they thought you were going to talk about “the relationship.”

“How do you feel about bowling?” Kate asked.

Chapter Twenty-three

P
ee-yeuw!” Bina said as she, Kate, and Michael struggled to get their rented bowling shoes on.

“Strike!”

“You lucky son of a bitch!” Behind them, a bunch of blue-collar bowlers were in some sort of fierce competition, either bowling or drinking—or perhaps both.

They were at Bowl-a-Rama. The noise was thunderous as pins fell and madmen screamed. “The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat!” Kate chirped.

“The agony of de feet is only starting,” Michael quipped, looking down at the smelly shoes. It seemed that Bina had qualms, too, but they were more fashion-related.

“Do you think this red goes with my outfit?” she asked Kate nervously.

“Sure,” Kate told her, though the shoes were hideous, as was Bina’s new outfit. Kate could see that Barbie had “helped” dress Bina for the big occasion.

Thinking of that, Kate scanned the crowd, looking for Billy Nolan. All was chaos. In the lanes next to them, a league was just finishing up, and the clash of orange-and-brown shirts was almost nauseating to look at. Kate herself was wearing a simple white shirt and jeans, while Michael was wearing a sports coat, perhaps the only sports coat in a ten-block radius.

Bina stood up. Kate reassessed her outfit and realized that the short black miniskirt would reveal all when she bent over to release the ball. Her clingy green top was set off by a fuchsia scarf, Barbie’s trademark color. Unfortunately for Bina, the scarf gave her face a mauve cast that clashed with the blouse. Oh well, Kate thought, nothing would make this double date from hell work anyway.

They were assigned an alley, and as they slipped into the molded plastic seats, Michael, ever the gentleman, asked if they would like something to drink. Bina asked for a cola, and before she thought about it, Kate ordered a beer. She imagined that Michael raised his brows before he went off to the bar.

The moment he was gone, Bina turned to her. “Where is he, Katie?” she asked, eyeing the entrance. “He said he’d be here on time. Maybe he’s going to stand me up. Oh, I’m so nervous.”

“Calm down, honey,” Kate said. “He’ll be here.” In truth, she was nervous herself. She knew she had deceived Billy, though Bina hadn’t a clue. And if she couldn’t make the transition gracefully and make it look as if any confusion were a natural mistake on Billy’s part, she was afraid of the fallout. Billy Nolan wasn’t going to be thrilled when he realized that he’d been tricked into an evening with Bina.

“God, I’m sweating through my blouse,” Bina said. “I’m going to run to the ladies’ room and check my makeup one more time.” She stood up and wound her way through the bobbing heads and fat bellies in the crowd.

Michael returned with the beverages, and Kate saw he had also bought some snacks.

“Bina’s looking . . . um, different since the last time I saw her,” he stammered.

“Well, I think you only saw her when she was having a case of the hysterical fantods,” Kate reminded him.

“No, that’s not what I mean,” Michael said. “She looks . . . jazzier.”

“Please! She looks like she belongs in the cast of
Forty-second Street,
” Kate told him. She realized she sounded as tense as she felt. She put her arm out and took Michael’s hand. “It was sweet of you to come,” she said. “Launching Bina in her new life is really important after what she’s been through.”

“Well, it didn’t seem to take her long to recover,” Michael said. He sat down and picked up a paper cup of soda. For a moment Kate felt irritated. Because of her background, she had always looked for a man who avoided drinking to excess, but perhaps never drinking at all was a bad thing. It occurred to her for the first time that Michael might be terribly afraid of losing control.

He squeezed her hand. “It was sweet to see you at work last week,” he told her. “I suppose that you could do that anywhere. Or even have a private practice.”

“I like working in the school setting,” she said, her mind elsewhere. “You get more feedback about behavior and change.”

He didn’t respond, and she craned her neck, looking first to the ladies’ room and then to the door, hoping that this mad scheme with Billy would work out. At that moment, Billy walked into the bowling alley. He spotted Kate before she could even raise her hand and walked over to their lane. Damn Bina, Kate thought. It was going to be difficult enough to subtly show him who his date was; now it would be virtually impossible. What the hell was she doing in the ladies’ room for so long, taking a shower?

Kate introduced Billy to Michael. They shook hands. Kate couldn’t help but notice how incredibly attractive Billy looked. He was wearing very old black jeans and a slightly clingy T-shirt of the same color that revealed the body of a natural athlete. She could see his arms and figured the guy didn’t have 2 percent body fat. Typical narcissist, she thought. He must be a gym rat to have that kind of bicep definition. And she was amused to see that he had his own equipment. She hadn’t known anybody who owned their own bowling ball in fifteen years.

Billy dropped his bowling bag on the seat next to Kate. “Let’s rock and bowl!” he said, looking down at her a little too intensely.

Kate stood up quickly, scanning the bowling alley. “Bina will be back in a moment,” she told him.

“Fine,” Billy said, clearly not at all interested in Bina’s whereabouts. To her alarm, he put his arm around Kate’s shoulder. “Hey, you look great,” he said, his voice way too personal.

Kate quickly stepped out of his embrace and moved closer to Michael, who was still seated. She put her hand on Michael’s shoulder. Billy paused for a moment, then sat down and began to put on his own shoes. Kate, feeling both guilty and awkward, sat beside Michael. Michael, as if in response to Billy’s overly warm greeting, put his arm across the back of the seats and rested it on her shoulder.

Billy looked up from his laces and eyed the two of them. “You two just meet?” he asked. “Or are you related?”

“No. We’ve been going out for a while now,” Michael replied innocently. Kate thought she saw Billy’s face color up, but he looked down again at his shoes.