Beautiful Lies

six

I walked up the flight to Jake’s floor. But at the top of the stairs I hesitated. The fluorescent ceiling light hummed and flickered, casting the hallway in an eerie glow. I looked at the wine bottle and glasses in my hands and thought, Who is this guy? What am I doing? Before I could answer myself, the door opened and he was standing there in a black T-shirt and faded Levi’s button-flies. He reached out to take the wine and glasses from my hands and smiled. It was a tentative smile, shy.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

I’ll tell you something about myself. I can get my head turned by a good-looking guy as much as the next girl. But sexy doesn’t impress me. Smart impresses me; strength of character impresses me. But most of all, I’m impressed by kindness. Kindness, I think, comes from learning hard lessons well, from falling and picking yourself up. It comes from surviving failure and loss. It implies an understanding of the human condition, forgives its many flaws and quirks. When I see that in someone, it fills me with admiration. I saw it in him. His eyes, a deep brown, almost black, heavily lidded with dark lashes, made me want to confess all my sins and secrets and do penance in his arms.

“You don’t have to apologize,” I said, nodding toward the note still in the wineglass. “I would have been annoyed, too.”

He stepped to the side and held the door open for me and I walked in. He closed the door quietly behind me. I turned to look at him and I must have seemed skittish.

“You want me to leave it open?” he said, concern wrinkling his brow.

“No,” I said with a small laugh.

“I’ll just pour the wine,” he said, disappearing into the kitchen.

Where my apartment looked out on the back of the building, his looked out onto First Avenue. The street noise was not much diminished by the thin windows, and a cold draft made the sills freezing to the touch. He had the heat on high but the room was still uncomfortably cool. He had the same bleached wood floors as I did but that’s where the similarities ended. In my place, I strove for absolute luxury and comfort. Four-hundred-count cotton sheets, down pillows and comforters, plush area rugs, warm blankets. I liked bright colors, fresh flowers, scented candles. Not in a girlie way, but in a way that indulged the senses.

Jake’s place looked like a prison cell, albeit in an urban-industrial cool way. A sheet-metal sculpture, with jagged geometric shapes overlapping one another, dominated one wall. A glass-and-brushed-chrome table was surrounded by six elaborate wrought-iron chairs. A futon and a few scattered wooden Eames chairs provided an unwelcoming sitting area. In the corner a laptop glowed on a spare black table. There were no photographs, not one object of any personal nature, not even a scrap of paper out of place. I glanced over at the door that I imagined led to his bedroom and wondered if a peek inside would reveal a bed of nails beneath the glare of an interrogation lamp.

“It’s a bit spartan, I know,” he said, coming out with the wine.

“Just a bit,” I said.

“I find I don’t need that much,” he said.

He handed me a glass and raised his to mine. The tone that sounded when they touched together told me that they were crystal.

“To getting off to a better start,” he said.

We looked at each other for a moment and I felt that electricity again. It brought heat to my cheeks. There was a silence between us but it was comfortable. The lighting was low; a few pillar candles were burning and the overhead light was turned down to little more than a glow.

“So where did you move from?”

“Uptown,” he said. “I had a cheap place up by Columbia. But the neighborhood was getting so bad that I felt like I was living in a war zone. The gunfire was literally keeping me up at night.”

“So you moved to the safety of the East Village?”

“I like a little grit in my neighborhood. I’m not into posh,” he said, and that shy smile came back. My heart did a little rumba.

“What do you do?” I asked him, even though I hate the question.

“Do you want to sit down?” he said, leading me by the arm over to the futon. He sat beside me at a polite distance, but still close. I could smell just the lightest scent of his cologne. If I reached out my hand just an inch, I could touch his thigh.

“Was that a stall?” I asked, and he laughed. It was a nice laugh, deep and resonant.

“Maybe. It’s just that when I tell people what I do, it seems to dominate the conversation for a while. And it’s really not as cool as it sounds.”

“What are you…a cabaret dancer?”

“I’m a sculptor,” he said, pointing to the piece I’d noticed on the wall.

I took a sip of my wine. “That is cool,” I said, looking at the object with new eyes. Hard lines but with the look of liquid to it, like a steel waterfall. There was a strange power to it and something alienating as well. Metal has that quality, doesn’t it? Beautiful to the eye but cool to the touch.

“You make your living that way?”

“That and the furniture,” he said, nodding toward the table. “And a few other things here and there. It’s not easy to make a living off your art.”

I nodded. I understood that.

You know that feeling you get when you step into someone’s aura and you feel as though you’ve known that person all your life, as if their energy is as familiar to you as the sound your refrigerator makes? I didn’t have that feeling with Jake. Everything about him felt new and electric. He was utterly unfamiliar, a stranger who intrigued me like a mind-bender. With Zack every new moment was like a memory of a life I’d lived already—I could predict exactly what would happen between us and most of it was pretty nice. But I didn’t want my life to be like a riddle to which I already had the answer. Some people find that kind of predictability comforting. I don’t.

The conversation flowed easily as we chatted about my work, some about Zack, the usual getting-to-know-you stuff. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine. Now that I think back on it, it seems as if I told him a whole lot more than he told me. He kept pouring wine and I kept feeling warmer, more relaxed. We had somehow shifted closer to each other. He’d laid his arm across the back of the couch, and if he’d lowered it, it would have been resting on my shoulders. I could feel the heat of his skin, see the stubble on his jaw. Did I say sexy didn’t impress me? Well, maybe a little.

“So you had a pretty big week last week,” he said, pouring some more wine.

“Are we still on that first bottle?” I asked. He’d gotten up a couple times to refill my glass and I’d lost track of how much I’d had to drink.

“No,” he said. “Not by a long shot.” I could see that his skin was flushed. And there was a looseness to him that I found appealing. It made me realize that he had been nervous as well when I first arrived. And I liked that. It made him real. It meant he wasn’t arrogant.

“You heard about that?”

“Who didn’t? It was all over the papers.”

“Yeah…” I said. The mention of it brought me crashing back down to earth, remembering the picture, my parents. It must have been all over my face. I’m not so great at hiding my feelings.

“Hey,” he said, touching my shoulder. “What did I say?”

He leaned into me and I could see the concern on his face. I looked away from him because somehow his compassion made me want to cry.

“Ridley, I’m sorry,” he said, putting his wineglass down. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

But it was too late. He’d opened the floodgates and the whole story came rushing out in a tumble, everything from leaving my apartment that Monday morning to seeing my parents earlier tonight. I hadn’t told anyone except my parents about the picture. He was perfectly present, listening, making all the right affirming noises. He was totally focused on me.

“Wow,” he said when I was done.

“I bet you’re sorry you asked,” I answered with a little laugh.

“No,” he said. “I’m not.”

He touched my hair lightly, pushing it away from my eyes. It was a gentle gesture, intimate. He held my gaze.

“So you believe your parents. You’ll just leave it at that?”

“What’s not to believe?” I answered weakly, not really convinced myself. “The whole thing is ridiculous. I know who I am.”

He nodded, looking at me with those eyes, seeing something in me that I was distantly aware of but neglecting.

“Still,” he said after a moment. “You’re not even curious enough to call?”

It’s funny when you meet someone who you think is so different from you and then they manage to connect you to a part of yourself you ignore. The curiosity was a flame inside me, one that had flickered in my parents’ assurances but which burned still. Jake breathed butane on it.

“I don’t think so,” I said, standing up.

“I’m sorry,” he said, rising with me. “I didn’t mean to scare you off.”

I smiled. “I don’t scare that easily.”

He nodded, looked uncertain. I was glad he didn’t try to convince me not to leave because it would have been so easy. Every nerve ending in my body was aching to kiss him, to feel that smooth, muscular flesh against me. I wanted to see the rest of that tattoo, the one that snaked out of his collar and curled out of his shirtsleeve. But I felt something for Jake, something too powerful to sleep with him or even kiss him that night. I wanted more. And I wanted to take my time.

I was exhausted when I got into bed, the stress of everything, the wine, Jake. So I fell out quickly, almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. But I dreamed of Ace. I chased him in a darkened urban landscape where shadows moved quickly across my path. Doorways through which I tried to pass warped and disappeared. Then I wasn’t chasing Ace but being chased by a dark form. I came to a house that resembled my parents’ home, but once inside, I found myself in the lobby of my building. I turned to see the form rattling at the gated door, though I still couldn’t see his face. I woke, startled in the dark, my breathing heavy as I tried to get my bearings and shake the dream-terror that still lingered. I sensed a malevolent presence in the apartment and sat paralyzed for a moment, listening for the intruder who I was sure would slip from the shadows any minute. The fear faded as the images from my dream slipped away.

I was wide awake. I got up from bed and rummaged through my pants pockets and found the photograph and the note. I crumpled both in my hand and put them in the garbage. I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and sneakers and left the apartment with the garbage bag. It was after three and the building was asleep, except for the faintest sound of a television I heard somewhere in the distance. I crept down the stairs and through the hallway to the back of the building. I pushed open the dead bolt on the heavy metal door and flipped on the light. Rats skittered away from the sound and the stench of refuse rose up to greet me as I tossed my garbage bag in the nearest can.

I knew that Zelda would come before the sun rose and roll the cans out to the sidewalk, that the garbage would be picked up early in the morning even before I got out of bed, and the note and the photograph would be gone as if they’d never existed. What about this flame of curiosity I was talking about? It wasn’t out. It was just that I could not imagine the consequences of knowing the answers. I’ll admit it wasn’t exactly a noble decision but I chose ignorance.

I headed back up the stairs feeling lighter with relief. I was halfway up when I saw a shadow on the landing above me, the figure just out of the line of my vision. I stopped in my tracks and my heart started to race.

“Is someone there?” I said. I knew everyone in my building and had never once had a moment of feeling unsafe there. Any one of my neighbors with a genuine purpose for being on the stairs would have answered me. I heard a shuffling, someone moving against the wall. I looked behind me and the light on the landing below had started to flicker, then went dark. The sound of my own breathing was loud in my ears, adrenaline started to pump through my veins, and every nerve ending in my body throbbed with fear. I didn’t know whether to go forward or backward.

“Who is it?” I said, louder.

I looked around for something to defend myself with but there was nothing. Then I heard footsteps hard and heavy in a run. I pushed myself against the wall, as if I could disappear by making myself very flat. I was about to scream when I realized the footsteps were moving away from me. I crouched down and looked up through the space between the staircases and saw the figure of a man. He had a large build and I saw his gloved hand on the banister. He ran up the last flight and exited the door that led to the roof. I braced myself for the sound of the fire-door alarm but it didn’t go off.

I sat weak with relief on the staircase and wondered how he would get off the roof. Then I heard the groaning of the fire escape ladder out front. I wondered if anyone else had heard it, too. But after a minute, the building was silent again, as if none of it had ever happened. I walked cautiously back to my apartment and closed the door. A second later I heard another door close and lock. I couldn’t be sure whose door it was, whether it was above or below me.