Perfect on Paper (4 page)

In my opinion, everyone has at least one thing they do exceptionally well, and in my case, it’s crossword puzzles. This is more a result of solving them every day—even the humdrum Monday-through-Wednesday run—than innate acumen or a stratospheric IQ. On Sunday mornings, it was my custom to sit myself down and, after the hard news and real estate sections, but before Styles, Arts and Leisure, and the Book Review, devote my undivided attention to filling in the squares—always in pen, ideally without errors, and preferably in under twenty minutes (which sounds impressive, unless one is aware that a Sunday puzzle is really just a Wednesday with a weight problem, and nowhere near as challenging as a Friday or Saturday).

But that day the clues seemed to hover in blurry streaks above the page; threes morphed into eights, and the grid strobed like op art. My reading glasses didn’t help at all; a magnifying strength of 175, as it turned out, was no match for a “Rorer” 714. When I filled in 18-Down with SST (“Retired boomer”), only to realize its rightful place was one square to the right, in 19, I tossed my pen in disgust and reclined on the bed. There was nothing to do, I concluded, but ruminate on the late Ray Devine.

I’d begun to nurture a crush on him less than an hour after beginning my illustrious career at Prints on Prince, my first job out of the gate—and
the only one I could get—when I arrived in town with my useless BFA in studio art and dearth of experience. He was cute. Really cute. But just unkempt enough to convince you that he never gave his appearance so much as a thought. And when he looked at you, he
looked
at you, and all of a sudden you felt like the wittiest, most desirable woman in downtown Manhattan, if not all five boroughs. Or maybe even the entire state. East Coast. Time zone.

Within a week or two I’d discovered the man was a walking testosterone bomb, one who held universal appeal. The other salesgirl and the gay guy who worked alongside Ray in shipping and framing had been instantly smitten as well. Plus the married (but not to each other) co-owners had issued him a standing invitation to join them in a threesome.

“Caligula himself would turn down that offer,” he said after confiding in me one evening when I was stuck in the gallery until its nine p.m. closing. “Man, I hope there’s no such thing as hell. I can just see myself arriving there and being ushered to a room with a heart-shaped bed. Bernie and Felicia are lying on it, naked, of course, opening up a tube of K-Y Jelly while Lionel Richie—the
real
Lionel Richie—croons ‘Endless Love’ in the background.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said. “Now I’m going to have to squeeze in a lobotomy over the weekend just to permanently delete that image from my mind’s eye.”

“He sounds dangerous,” Elinor Ann said when I called Pennsylvania that night. “And what a thing to tell you about Bernie and Felicia!”

“Are you kidding? That’s spectacular dirt. Everyone gossips about their bosses.”

“I doubt that. You never hear me gossiping about my boss, do you?”

“That’s because he’s your father.”

Back in those days, Elinor Ann was being groomed to take over the
brass factory her family founded three generations earlier. She proved to be a natural.

“What I’m really concerned about is the health of this guy’s marriage,” she went on. “What’s he doing hanging around the store so late? I thought you told me he worked ten to six.”

“He was just keeping me company. There’s no foot traffic in SoHo at that time of night, unless it’s the weekend. You wouldn’t believe how boring those last few hours can be.”

“Yeah, well, I still think he sounds dangerous.”

She was right, and I was stupid. And I stayed stupid for the next five months, while Ray went from keeping me company one or two nights a week to every night I worked late. I stopped bitching about being stuck at my post until closing and happily swapped my early shifts for the other salesgirl’s late ones. I stayed stupid while his wife graduated from greeting me with a warm smile, to a disinterested nod, to a wordless glare.

In retrospect, I now realize Rhea declared all-out territorial warfare the afternoon she dropped off a set of lithographs with her daughter in tow. Renée burst through the door with a delighted “Daddy!” while her mother looked on in smug satisfaction. At the time I interpreted Rhea’s expression as maternal pride, and chalked up her increasing remoteness to the vagaries of the female menstrual cycle.

None of this was playing well in Kutztown.

“You haven’t talked about anything other than Ray Devine for the past half dozen phone calls,” Elinor Ann accused. “You’re in love with that guy.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! It’s a harmless crush. Believe me, nothing’s going to happen. Don’t you think I know better than to squander my youth on a married man? And he’s old, remember?”

“Oh, right. I keep forgetting. How old?”

“At least forty. Although he could easily pass for ten years younger.”

“
Ha!
You
are
in love!”

“What I was
going
to say was that even if he
were
ten years younger, he’d
still
be too old for me, so
ha
yourself.”

Then the gallery experienced a post-holiday slump, and Ray got laid off.

“I never thought you’d be the one to go,” I told him after I heard the news. “Guess Bernie and Felicia can kiss their threesome goodbye.”

“Guess business trumps pleasure. I make more money than anybody else on staff; it makes sense to get rid of me first.” He shrugged. “You know, Dana, I’m really going to miss hanging out with you.”

“Same here,” I replied, wondering why he was staring at me so intently. It seemed I had an uncommon flair for staying stupid.

On his final day, we went out for a drink to celebrate his freedom.

Somewhere in between the fifth and sixth rounds, Ray blurted out that he loved me, that he’d been in love with me for months, only he’d refused to face facts until his wife started leveling a string of unfounded (at the time) accusations at him, but he didn’t care about that—or anything, other than our evenings together in the gallery—but now that he’d been laid off, he might as well confess since we were never, ever going to see each other again, because the last thing he’d want to do was screw up my life, which was exactly what would happen if I got involved with the likes of him, which I should absolutely never, ever do under any circumstances.

Then he kissed me.

Next thing I knew, a year had gone by. I’d spent most of it on the phone with Ray Devine.

Yes, the phone. We considered ourselves lucky if we could arrange one afternoon a week together.

But who cared about the remaining hundred-and-sixty-two hours
when she was gazing into the eyes of Ray Devine, listening to him tell her how wonderful and funny and talented and clever and beautiful she was?

Poor Lark,
I thought to myself. I knew exactly where she was coming from.

And poor me. She wasn’t any more likely to take my advice than I’d been at her age. Meaning I’d be hearing about Sandro for months—if not years—to come.

A frantic pounding on the floorboards interrupted my reverie: Vivian, my employer, the proprietress of the vintage clothing boutique on the ground floor. “Not today,” I slurred, pulling a pillow over my head.

Today,
Vivian insisted with her broom handle, refusing to let up.

I glanced over at my cat, blissfully stretched along the entire length of the radiator in the corner. If the pounding didn’t bother Puny, it didn’t bother me.

Five minutes later she was still at it. Vivian is a bullmastiff disguised as a petite, blond fairy-tale princess. Dockworkers would quail at her epithets. Oil company executives would shudder at her avarice. Bloods and Crips would advise her to peace out. One day someone will murder her, and the building’s tenants will gather in hushed circles and ask one another, “What took them so long?”

Sadly, that day had yet to arrive. Once the bedroom floor stopped shaking, the phone rang. I let the machine pick up.

“Dana, what the fuck. I know you’re home. I heard you come in. Answer your phone right now—I have fantastic news! Dana?
Dana!
All right,
fine
.” She slammed down the receiver.

Vivian’s fantastic news was going to have to wait. I was still preoccupied with my devastating news.

I’d been the one to finally end it, although it took more attempts than I needed to quit smoking, which was—well, maybe only a million, but it
felt like more. I would march into one seedy, out-of-the-way bar after another and announce we were wasting our lives. I would never break up a family. I didn’t like the person I’d turned into. I wanted to actually sleep with the man I was sleeping with. Along with assorted other clichés that the girlfriends of married guys spew the way Mount Kilauea spews lava.

Ray would agree. And then he would lean in and kiss me, and I’d lose my train of thought for the next couple of months.

I finally determined there was only one way to make a clean break.

“I’m going to pretend you’re dead, and you’re going to do likewise with me, and that’s the way it’s going to have to be.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Because every time I see you—”

“I know. And you’re right.” He gave me a long, mournful look and shrugged on his coat. “I’ve been saying it all along, Dana. You deserve better than this—meaning me.”

He disappeared through the door, and I slumped on my barstool, mentally kicking myself for pretending to possess deep reserves of inner strength, which, of course, I didn’t.

And that was it, except for the hang-up calls, which started about a month later, after a ten-pound weight loss had turned me into a living Giacometti sculpture and I’d taken the Quaalude in and out of its box several thousand times. A day.

I became convinced it was Ray on the line when I answered the phone to silence, then a click, on two consecutive Thursdays, our traditional seedy-bar, back-to-my-place afternoon. At first, I literally had to sit on my hands to keep from calling back, even though the prospect of Rhea answering was equal parts likely and terrifying. But after a few months, the calls became comforting. I’d know Ray was thinking about me, and, in the only safe way he could, he was looking after me. He became my gold standard, my exemplar, my invisible protector against bad boyfriends.

And God knows I’d had my share of them: the fashion-forward fop who left my bedsheets reeking of Chanel Égoïste. Or Mr. Frugal, who split dinner tabs right down to the penny. And who could forget the infamous Darryl, who’d presented me with a toaster one dismal Christmas? I might have dated my share of losers over the ensuing years, but with Ray Devine’s unspoken opinion to guide me, I hadn’t dated any of them for long.

It wasn’t much, but it was better than being an adulteress—sort of.

The calls would come in clusters, sometimes as many as four or five a month, only to be followed by an interminable stretch of nothing. But eventually, they’d always start up again. I’d utilized all available technology to uncover the presence on the other end of the line, installing Caller ID (only to read the words “unknown number” on the screen) and dialing *69 (“out of range”).

But I’d never really doubted who was calling. Now I had to wonder: Was my conviction nothing more than a case of wishful thinking? If Ray was no longer with us, then who was the mysterious caller who dared not speak his name—or any other words, for that matter?

I’d pondered the question through all nineteen stops on the journey back home. There’d been no other significant relationship dating from the time the phone activity had begun, no creepy stalker-type lurking around my building’s front stoop. And even if Rhea had been the one keeping tabs on me, wouldn’t she have stopped bothering once Ray stopped breathing?

I jolted upright and swung my feet around to the floor. Ray Devine was dead. I was never going to see him again. Ever.

And I’d needed to see him again. I needed answers. I needed to know if we’d really been in love; if he’d really adored me the way he’d claimed; if what we’d had together was as singular as I’d made it out to be for fully half my life. Because if the answer had turned out to be “no” to any of those questions, it would confirm the pathetic truth: I was unlovable, and therefore destined to lead a solitary existence—one that would be
alleviated only by occasional, subpar swains who presented me with kitchen appliances on major holidays.

The phone rang again, and I looked at my watch. Twenty minutes had passed since Vivian’s call, an astonishing display of self-control on her part.
What the hell?
I thought. I might as well find out about the fabulous Givenchy suit she’d stumbled upon at Goodwill, or the client who’d just tossed her a set of keys to the family compound in Saint Bart’s, or whatever enviable endowment had fallen into her charmed lap this week. I reached for the receiver.

“Hello?”

Click.

Had the Quaalude just caused me to hallucinate the sound of a ringing telephone, or was something potentially paranormal going on?

Whatever the reason, my brain was sufficiently addled to inspire an action that was as brash as it was illogical. I punched in the digits I’d committed to memory twenty-one years ago but never had the nerve to dial. I held my breath while I waited for a voice to come through the line.

“Hello?”

Click.

Now I was the one hanging up. But for good reason.

Ray Devine was alive.

Before I could let the air out of my lungs, the phone jangled again. I grabbed it halfway through the first ring.

“I thought you were dead,” I said.

“Why, Dana Mayo, that’s just about the silliest thing I’ve ever heard in all my born days! Have you gone and lost your mind? Good heavens! Whatever would give you that crazy idea?”

In that instant, it became obvious that Quaaludes have a much shorter shelf life than I’d given them credit for.

“Hi, Mom,” I sighed.

CHAPTER FOUR
YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP