Sweet Talk by Cara Bastone
Chapter Nine
Jessie
I spend the next day catching up on work for Pops. Being at other people’s beck and call is not my idea of a good time, but he passed this job over to me when I moved down here three months ago. We need the money and the apartment comes with the job so when he proposed I suck up my pride and take over for him, I didn’t have a good reason to say no. The fact that he has come to really care for these people unfortunately also really matters to me. Because most of them I’d like to kindly request that they jump up their own asses. But for Pops, I answer their calls and run errands and do menial chores all day everyday. Because that’s what he’d be doing if he was here.
In my old life, Saturdays used to mean something. I was an office manager at an education-based nonprofit in midtown, and I was good at it. To just look at me, you might not be able to immediately picture me in a collared shirt and tailored slacks, but that was me. Buttoned up and ready for work. My coworkers were scared of me just enough to not come to me with trivial problems. But whenever they did need something to be fixed or solved, I attacked the problem ruthlessly. The office was always immaculately organized. Every piece of mail catalogued, every broken-down desktop computer retired and replaced, old food in the fridge, gone without a trace.
And then the weekend would roll around, and it was almost like the office absolutely ceased to exist. I’d cruise around Queens on my bike. Go to concerts, go on dates, go to bars. I’d work out at my old boxing gym and head down to Brooklyn to make dinner for Pops while we watched the Yanks or the Knicks, depending on what season it was. I wouldn’t even glance at the half of my closet that housed my work clothes. Weekends were when my real self emerged from the chrysalis for a glorious forty-eight-hour stretch.
But I quit that job when Pops got too sick to keep up with his work. We made the same amount of money, but with his free apartment in the mix, it only made sense for me to quit paying rent on mine and move down here to take everything over for him. And now, my weekends mean literally nothing. Because there’s nothing these people won’t ask me to do.
But at nine o’clock on Saturday night, I finally draw the line. Anyone who calls me now is going to get my voicemail until at least 10 a.m. tomorrow. I need to blow off some steam. I take a shower and even blow-dry my hair. I put on my I mean business lipstick. And decide that, yup, tonight is the night for my single pair of tight jeans. I slap on a sports bra and a tank top because, blow-dried hair be damned, I’m still me. And I’m out. Into the chilly spring night and practically jogging through Brooklyn to get where I’m going.
“Hey, Eliot.”
“Remember the other night when you were giving me a list of things that you do when you can’t sleep?”
“Yeah?”
“And one of those things was a pedicure.”
“Uh-huh?”
“Well, how does one do that?”
“Do what? Give themselves a pedicure?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re gonna give yourself a pedicure?”
“Obvi.”
“Oh. Well, you need stuff. Stuff you probably don’t have around your house.”
“I figured. I’m at the drugstore right now.”
“To buy pedicure stuff?”
“To buy pedicure stuff. Are you all right? You sound like you’re having trouble hearing me or something.”
“No, I can hear you, I just . . . didn’t know that men gave themselves pedicures.”
“Well, I never have before, but I’m clearly open to the idea. Sounds kind of nice, actually.”
“Okay, well, are you in the drugstore on Vanderbilt? Around the corner from the church.”
“Yeah . . .?”
“Well, go to . . . I think it’s aisle five or six. They have these, like, pedicure kits. It’ll have everything you need.”
“Hey, JD?”
“Yeah?”
“How the hell did you know which pharmacy I was in?”
“Oh. Shit.”
“Is this where I find out that you’ve implanted a GPS tracker up my nose while I was sleeping?”
“No! Oh, my God.”
“You hacked my phone and have been reading all my titillating work emails?”
“No! Eliot. No, it’s nothing like that.”
“Are you some all-knowing being? A poltergeist or something? Oh, crap, is this like The Sixth Sense? Am I about to find out that you’ve been dead the whole time?”
“How could you joke at a time like this?”
“A time like what?”
“You’re not freaked out in the least that I guessed which drugstore you were in?”
“All right, hold on. First off, is there a difference between the expensive pedicure kit and the cheap one?”
“If you’re gonna use it more than once, get the expensive one.”
“Great. Hold on, let me check out.”
“. . .”
“Thanks, appreciate it. Have a good day! Okay, JD. I’m back. And no. I’m not freaked out.”
“How is that possible? You should be, like, calling the police right now!”
“JD, I’m gonna go ahead and assume that we know one another from the neighborhood, yeah? Either you live here or you work here, and since you know which neighborhood I live in, you were just taking an educated guess that I was at the one drugstore in walking distance. Right?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“See? That’s not scary at all. I’m sorry I made jokes about you stalking me. I obviously don’t feel like you’re stalking me.”
“You swear you’re not freaked out?”
“I’m not freaked out.”
“I just can’t help but think about if this were reversed. If you were the one who wasn’t telling me who you were and you suddenly happened to know my exact location. I’d . . .”
“Report me?”
“Probably. I’d block your phone calls at the very least. And I’d check the expiration date on my mace.”
“Well, the situation is not reversed. It’s you and me, and I’m not scared of you, JD. If anything, you’re keeping this whole secret because you want privacy from me, not because you’re trying to butt into my life. In fact, I wish you wanted to meet me more. That way I could find out who you were.”
“You don’t think I’m . . . creepy?”
“You’re allowed to have secrets, JD. Spider-Man, remember? I don’t think of that as creepy. Especially because I’m a man who lives in your neighborhood and up until recently was pretty much a complete stranger. I get why you might be cautious about revealing personal information to me. I’m not entitled to your identity just because we’ve been talking on the phone.”
“Eliot . . . that’s not why I’m not telling you. It’s not because I don’t trust you yet.”
“Then why is it?”
“. . . It’s complicated.”
“Well, tell me later sometime. After you figure out that I really like you and I really like complicated stories.”
“I . . . you’re so . . . frustrating sometimes.”
“Me? How?”
“You keep getting me all . . .”
“Getting you all what?”
“Nothing.”
“What? Lay it on me. Why am I frustrating? What am I doing to you?”
“I take it back. You’re not frustrating. At least not intentionally. It’s my fault, really.”
“If you explained it to me, maybe I could help figure it out.”
“Just . . . never mind. It’s not a big deal . . . You’re gonna go do your pedicure now?”
“Yeah, I was hoping you could tell me how to do it.”
“As much as I’d love to talk you through cutting your toenails, I’m actually out tonight.”
“Oh. Wait . . . really?”
“Don’t sound so shocked.”
“I am shocked. You’re a person who . . . goes out?”
“Oh, my God. Rude.”
“No! I don’t mean that you’re, like, a recluse or something. But we’ve been talking every night for, I don’t know, a while, and you’ve never gone out.”
“It’s only been four nights, Eliot.”
“Wait. That can’t be right.”
“It is. It was just Tuesday that we talked for the first time.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“We’ve really covered some ground in four nights.”
“I know.”
“So, now it’s a Friday night and you’re bailing on pedicures just so you can do something boring like go out in New York City?”
“Indeed.”
“Where are you going?”
“. . . To a club.”
“. . .”
“What’s with the pointed pause?”
“Nothing. It’s just, I’m learning that . . . you are someone who goes to clubs.”
“So?”
“I’m just . . . recalibrating.”
“Oh, my God. Are you judging me right now?”
“Absolutely not. Like I said, I’m recalibrating. No! I’m integrating this brand-new information about you . . . How often do you go to the club?”
“Maybe once every month or two.”
“And what do you do there?”
“Drink. Dance. Stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“I knew you were going to fixate on the stuff.”
“JD . . . are you telling me that you go to the club to hook up?”
“Eliot.”
“Right! Right! It’s none of my business. Sorry, sorry, I’ll butt out. Man, I haven’t been to a club in years. I kind of forgot that people still did that.”
“Yes, Old Man River, people still go to clubs.”
“I’m learning so much about you tonight, JD.”
“Apparently I’m an open book right now.”
“Okay, then. What’s your name?”
“Minus ten points for stupid questions.”
“Dang! Fair enough. So, you sound like you’re outside. Are you already on your way to the club?”
“Yeah. I’m almost there now. Just a block away.”
“Wait, you walked there?”
“Yeah.”
“And I just learned that we know each other from my neighborhood. And there’s only one real club around here. So . . . hold up. Are you going to Lights Out?”
“No comment.”
“Oh, my God! You are! You’re going to Lights Out. I haven’t been there in years.”
“Eliot?”
“Yeah?”
“Why do I feel like you’re about to tell me that you’re going to come?”
“I mean . . . am I specifically not invited?”
“It’s a free country. I can’t tell you not to come.”
“Yes, you could.”
“Huh?”
“I know I’m pushy, but if you actually don’t want me to come, of course I won’t.”
“If you come, I’m not going to show you who I am, Eliot.”
“But I might recognize you.”
“It’s a crowded club. There’s no way you’d see me if I didn’t want you to.”
“Well, that’s fine! That’s cool! I’ll come and just see the club! Like I said, I haven’t been there in years. I just want to see the vibe. I want to see what you do on a Friday night every month or so. I won’t look around for you, I promise.”
“Do people ever say no to you, Eliot?”
“All the time. You should meet my sister. She derives great joy from shutting me down. It’s like, her favorite pastime.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. All right. I’m here. I’m going to hang up now.”
“I’m dropping the pedicure thingy off in my apartment and then I’ll run over. Be there in twenty or so.”
“Eliot.”
“Yeah?”
“I meant it when I said that we’re not going to see each other tonight.”
“I know. I won’t get my hopes up.”