and there was a pretty good chance he’d be able to screw her. He’d actually done this one time just for fun, to see if he could pull it off. He called a couple of dozen women, pretending he was a cable guy from Time Warner. Well, that was the opening, but when the women starting talking to him, he turned on the Johnny Long charm. Yeah, a bunch of them hung up on him, and some were going to let him come over to check out their cable, but he wasn’t convinced he’d score with them. But it was all about percentages and he finally hit pay dirt with a woman on Staten Island. She was in her sixties and had gone back for seconds on the ugly line, but what difference did that make? She invited him over to her house, where he checked out her cable- actually fixing a problem receiving premium channels- and then screwed her twice and got away with a few hundred bucks in cash and jewelry. It proved that Johnny Long wasn’t just eye candy. He could use his voice and charm to seduce women, too.
Johnny invited Marissa to spend the afternoon with him at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and naturally she thought it was an amazing idea. She’d actually said, “Wow, that’s an amazing idea.”
He met her at two o’clock on the top of the steps at the main entrance, and when he saw her approach he was impressed with how good- looking she was. In the bright sunlight her hair looked shinier than it had last night, and there was no doubt that she had a hot little body. She was in preripped jeans, some trendy- looking black lacy top, and a short black leather jacket.
To sound like he knew his shit, before he’d met her he’d gone to Burger King and logged on to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Web site and memorized info about twenty or so paintings. So when they went inside and she asked, “So what do you want to see first?” he said, “How about The Storm? That’s one of my all- time favorites.”
“Oh my God, I love nineteenth- century French romanticism,” she said, obviously trying to impress him.
He’d only picked The Storm because it looked so sappy, so girly, with the guy and the girl running in the wind, their clothes coming off, and him trying to protect her. It looked like something that would be on one of those faggy books with Fabio on the cover, and he figured every girl in the world was looking for a guy like that, a guy who would save his girlfriend, do anything to keep her safe, even if she was kind of fat and not very hot.
As they looked at the painting, he told her some of the crap he’d read online about it, going on about the romance and passion in the painting and how he tried to get “that feeling” into his own work. She said, all serious, “The Storm always reminds me of Rodin’s sculptures, such as Eternal Spring.” He knew she was just repeating some uppity crap some uppity teacher at Vassar had told her or she’d read in some book. Johnny wondered how much Adam Bloom had spent to send Marissa to college- probably a hundred grand. A hundred grand and she didn’t know any more than Johnny did after spending one morning in Burger King.
They went into one of the little rooms off to the side-“the Impressionist wing”- and she showed him some of her favorite pictures, acting like she was a tour guide, going on and on about them, using big college- type words like “symmetry,” “aesthetics,” and “illusionistic.” Johnny didn’t understand half the shit she was saying, and he wondered if she did either. She took him to other “wings” of the museum, walking him around until his feet hurt. All the pictures looked the same to Johnny, and the artists sounded the same, too- Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Picasso, how did anybody keep track of who painted what? While she was blabbing away, trying to impress him with how much she knew about paintings nobody except other uppity people gave a shit about, Johnny was looking at her with an interested expression, like he was totally gripped, but inside he was laughing his ass off, thinking about the things he was going to do to her and her family when the time was right.
After the museum, he was expecting her to invite him back to her place. Taking her up to see that Storm painting, showing his deep, sensitive side, had pretty much sealed the deal. Walking down Fifth Avenue, alongside Central Park, she even hooked her arm around his and said, “It’s amazing. I feel so normal around you, I feel like I can be myself.”
“Yeah, me too,” he said, trying to look sincere.
She invited him out to some party later on, but he said he couldn’t make it, that he had plans. His only actual plan for the night was to hit some bars and pick up a woman or two, but he’d already spent a couple of hours with Marissa today and didn’t want to spend too much time together too fast. If he wanted this to turn out right, it had to be a slow build.
They stopped at a Starbucks for Frappuccinos; then he walked her all the way downtown to the subway at Fifty- ninth Street. He offered to ride with her back to Forest Hills, but she said it was okay, she could go alone, and he decided not to push it. He made out with her for a long time near the subway entrance, and when she was all worked up he said good- bye, leaving her wanting more.
He didn’t suggest seeing her again on Sunday, figuring three days in a row might’ve made him seem too available, and a girl always wanted a guy to be a challenge even if she was dying to tear off his clothes. But they got together again on Monday, going to see a movie. He was hoping she’d ask him to pick her up at her place, so he’d have a chance to meet her father, but for some reason she insisted on meeting in front of the movie theater on Forty- second and Eighth. They saw a horror movie- her idea- which was perfect as far as he was concerned because they spent the whole time snuggled in the back, making out like teenagers, pawing at each other like they hadn’t gotten any in years. Yeah, right.
At one point she whispered in his ear, “God, I want to fuck you so bad.” He was surprised- she was a raunchy little thing; he didn’t expect that. He knew he had to handle this right, and he whispered back, “I want to take it slow.” He saw her again on Tuesday, for lunch at Dojo in the Village. Yeah, it was a cheap place to take a date, but that was the whole point. He had to play up this starving- artist thing because he knew that was what turned her on. If he was trying to scam a Paris Hilton type, he would’ve been wearing Armani and it would’ve been Le Cirque all the way. But with a wannabe bohemian chick like Marissa, talking about how he couldn’t pay his rent next month and how he’d been living on ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese was the way to go.
On Wednesday night something happened that nearly ruined everything. Johnny met Marissa in the East Village, and after a couple of drinks at a bar on Avenue A, they went to the Knitting Factory, where the Limons, some new retro Latin punk band she was into- she’d called them “the Ramones meet Ricky Martin”- were playing. They’d been in the place for only a few minutes when Johnny felt a tap on his shoulder and heard, “Frederick, is that you?”
Johnny looked over his shoulder and saw a woman- not so bad- looking, late twenties, maybe thirties, with straight brown hair and bangs. She didn’t look at all familiar, but he’d used the name Frederick with various pickups.
“Sorry,” he said, “you got the wrong guy.”
He turned back toward Marissa, rolling his eyes slightly, but he had a feeling the woman wouldn’t let it go. She didn’t, saying, “Like hell you don’t, you son of a bitch. Where’s my fuckin’ money?”
He looked at her again and said, “Look, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Actually, she was starting to look familiar, but he couldn’t place her face yet.
As he started to turn away again, she grabbed his arm and said, “You took two hundred fucking dollars from my pocketbook and, oh, yeah, some jewelry, too, but it wasn’t worth shit.”
Now he remembered. A couple of months ago he’d picked her up at a bar, Max Fish on Ludlow, not far from where they were now, and he’d stolen some cash and some jewelry that had turned out to be gold plated; waste of his goddamn time. He usually didn’t like to return to neighborhoods where he’d scored for at least six months for this very reason.
“I’m telling you, you have the wrong guy,” he said, shaking his arm loose. He noticed that Marissa was starting to look a little worried, but he couldn’t tell if it was because he was being hassled or because she was starting to believe the woman’s story.
“Give me my money back or I’m calling the fuckin’ cops,” the woman said, flipping her cell phone open.
“You’re out of your mind,” Johnny said. Then he took Marissa by the hand and said, “Come on,” and led her toward the other end of the bar.
The woman followed them, shouting, “I want my money back, Frederick!”
A bouncer came over and asked what was going on. Johnny calmly explained that he had no idea who the woman was. The woman continued to go on about how Johnny had stolen money from her, sounding more and more crazed and hysterical. At one point she shoved the bouncer, and he grabbed her and pulled her out of the bar. Then the bouncer apologized to Johnny and Marissa for the “inconvenience” and bought them a round on the house. Johnny, turning on his charm, bonded with the bouncer- they were both from Queens, around the same age- and after a few minutes they were like old buddies.
Johnny and Marissa bonded, too, talking about how “weird” it was that the woman had mistaken him for
