Coopersmith.”
“Jack Gardner,” he replies, taking my hand tentatively, then crushing it. “High school? I could swear Lizzie said she went to Spence.”
“Mmm-hmm,” I say, freeing my hand.
“He means summer camp,” Liz interjects, “since Spence is an all-girls school.”
“Summer camp!” I laugh. “She was an absolute beast during Color War.”
“Coopersmith,” says Jack, rubbing his chin. “No relation to Casey Coopersmith …?”
“You know my cousin Casey?” I slap Jack on the knee. “He’s the best.”
“Casey’s a she.”
“Well, sure,” I say. “Since the operation.”
Liz, who’d been smiling wryly, allows herself a soft giggle. Nate returns with the beers and I make introductions all around. I don’t bother with my ridiculous new alias as I doubt Nate remembers my real name.
“You have a lovely daughter,” Nate says to Jack, nodding toward Liz and moving way up my admittedly short list of people I like. With a bullet.
“I do,” Jack manages through clenched teeth.
“She’s thirteen and lives in Boston with her mother.”
“Good for you, old man!” says Nate. Now it’s his turn to slap Jack on the knee. “So the plumbing’s still in order then?”
“The plumbing is in excellent condition,” he replies with surprising pride. “I should know. I’m a urologist.”
“You’re a cock doc?” screams Nate, once again capturing the attention of the Sonics’ bench.
“Brilliant! You probably get this all the time, but I’ve got this spot on my wanker….”
I look at Liz, expecting to see mortification.
Instead she’s biting her lip, determined to keep the giggles from becoming guffaws. “I’m going to get a pretzel,” I announce, already on my feet. I’ve just planted myself on line when Liz appears behind me.
“Want to smoke a chonger?” she asks.
We settle on a service corridor off the upper deck. She pulls a joint out of her clutch. I do my trick with the Zippo. “You’re just full of surprises, Biff,” she says, blowing a cloud of smoke over her shoulder. “But thank you for not, you know, just blurting it out. It’s only our third date. Too early to tell him I have my own weed dealer. Your name’s not really Biff, is it?”
“Third date’s a biggie. You two done the wild thing yet?”
“The wild thing?” She folds her arms. Playfully.
Maybe even flirtatiously. Then again, I misread the signs with K.
“I’m not judging,” I say. “We can’t control who we’re attracted to.”
“It’s not as if …,” she sputters. “I mean, he’s handsome. . ”
“Bald.”
“Distinguished,” she counters.
“Rich?”
“He is that,” she sighs. “Look, you don’t know me at all. . ”
“Not yet. But I do know this. You could be doing a lot better than the Cock Doc.”
Her cheeks redden. “That’s sweet of you to say.”
“I speak only the truth, milady. I know plenty of young bucks who’d be honored to lay their horns at your doorstep.”
“I have no idea what that means. Is that supposed to be some kind of metaphor?”
“Meta-what?!” I am already buzzed. “The truth is I don’t know what I’m talking about. My brain’s been running low on oxygen from the minute I saw you tonight.”
“You’re bad,” she says.
What happens next isn’t a kiss, exactly. She darts in, touches her lips to mine, and pulls away.
“It’d be a shame to miss the rest of the game,” I say.
Five minutes later, we’re making out in the back of a cab, destination Upper East Side. Arriving at her building, I peel off another twenty and tell the cabbie to keep the change. We fast-walk into the building, trying not to giggle at the door-man.
The charade falls apart in the elevator. We’re laughing. Tears stream down our faces. Then the tongue- mashing resumes. My hands are in tactile wonderland, sliding between the fuzzy sweater and the textured tights. I run my hand under her sweater, cupping her carriage. She moans and presses toward me. I risk a move to the front of her hose, gently tracing a line up her thigh. Two fingers pause between her legs. I can feel her wetness through the nylon.
The elevator opens and we stumble into the hall.
Liz leads me by the hand to her apartment. She’s fumbling through her clutch for the keys. I try to kiss her again but she places a finger over my lips. She unlocks the door. Inside, a redheaded girl, fourteen maybe, looks up from the TV.
“You’re home early,” the redhead says.
“Everything okay?” Liz asks.
“Not a peep,” the redhead replies. She’s already putting on her coat.
Liz thanks her and hands her some money.
Double-locks the door behind her. She turns toward me like she’s going to explain something, but my lips are already back on hers, my hands again finding their way below her belt. We fall onto the couch. Her hand slides inside the waist of my jeans as far as it can — I’m rock-hard and there’s not exactly a lot of room to maneuver. She uses both hands to rip down my pants and boxers — problem solved. My cock springs out. She squats in front of me and runs her tongue up my shaft, beginning at the base. Reaching the tip, she stands up, satisfied at the view from above. She retrieves a condom from her clutch and tosses it to me. I wrestle with the wrapper while she wiggles out of her tights. She waits for me to finish, hand on hip, a few threads of sweater to protect her modesty.
In the next room, an infant begins to cry.
Privately I’ve always considered myself to have some talent for measuring a woman’s mood. But the expression on Liz’s face is forcing me to reconsider. Not blank, but the opposite. Regret coexisting with pride, with hints of resentment, joy, frustration, shame, resignation, and curiosity. When it comes to emotions, women know how to paint with the full set of oils, while men are busy doodling with crayons.
Liz mumbles a few words of apology and exits in the direction of the intensifying wail. I sit on the couch and look at my raging hard-on, feeling ridiculous. So I slip on my under-wear, grab my pants, and beat a path for the door.
The wailing disappears — I can hear Liz whispering some-thing soft and reassuring. Just ditching her is starting to feel like the wrong play. I look around for a telephone: I can write down her number and call her later to apologize.
“Classy,” I hear Nate saying in my head.
I tiptoe into the bedroom. Having ditched the sweater, Liz sways bare in front of a vanity mirror.
She’s nursing a baby, sex indeterminate at this distance. The scene in the mirror confirms I’d been right about the attention-demanding breasts. But I’d missed altogether on their target audience.
Maybe I hadn’t been totally full of shit during my last conversation with Tana. Maybe it’s not about scoring, but about giving.
Liz looks up at the mirror, catching me grinning like Buddha. I recognize her current expression: puzzlement. I wonder if she’s awed by what I imagine to be beams of pure enlightenment shooting out of my eyes, until I realize her focus is stuck on my lower chakras. I glance down at the source of the commotion. Not Buddha, but a boner, back at full mast. By the time I look up at her again, she doesn’t look so puzzled anymore. Something else entirely has moved in.
Still cradling the baby, she sits down at the edge of the bed and falls slowly sideways, until mother and child are horizontal. I sit beside her, resting my hand on her arm. She scissors her legs, an invitation to complete the circuit. Give to receive, I think as I enter her. Give to receive. I thank the universe for serving up such an excellent
