soon as it connected and began to ring, his stomach gurgled. An image that he’d blotted out returned. He remembered yelling, and a piano. Oh, crap, he’d gone to her place last night, drunk as Caligula! Had he…what the hell, had he told her he hated her? Oh, no. This was really bad. The floating white lightning returned to his vision, only bigger. It kind of looked like a hovering alien spaceship.
He’d said worse things, too. He tried to remember them, then tried even harder not to remember them. In his mind’s eye, she was looking at him through a crooked, half-open door. Its length had dwarfed her, making her appear fragile and childlike. So very un-Audrey. He’d been so blotto that for a moment, he’d genuinely been worried that the ceiling of that place had been about to collapse. He was worried about her now, too. Something about that apartment building had been wrong. Or had he only imagined those humming walls?
Her cell phone clicked directly into voice mail: “I’m not here right now…” His pulse raced, and his stomach jake-braked. He owed her an apology. Big-time…
But until those movers showed up yesterday, it hadn’t hit him that she really was leaving. She’d had so few boxes that he’d felt compelled to send along some dishes, a couple of blankets, and the piano. Girls are different from men. They need nests. He’d thought about the money he’d poured into Lines, so that all he’d been able to afford was a broken-down wreck in Yonkers. It had only occurred to him then, that while he wanted kids, unless she worked full-time or he gave up freelance, they’d never be able to afford the health insurance, let alone the diapers. And then he’d thought about all those rich Wall Street scions in her office, who probably presented their wives with diamond-crusted nannies every Christmas, and he’d started to wonder if she’d hadn’t left because she’d needed more space at all but because she’d been looking to trade up.
So, the drinking. And more drinking. And inevitably, the late-night antibooty call.
Audrey’s message beeped. Saraub hung up. Yeah, he’d tell her he was sorry. But not right now, when his head was about to explode, and any moment, the toilet might beckon.
Who else to ring? The sun outside was bright. A perfect fall Monday. Great weather for a hot dog in Carl Schurz Park. He dialed Daniel’s number. After the movers, he and Daniel had gone out for steak at Hooters yesterday afternoon, and then to Dick and Jane’s Cabaret on 71st Street. Six strippers slathered in Crisco had swung from poles. The girl on his lap had assured him that she liked tall Indian men, which, even after four whiskies, had seemed like a convenient coincidence. After six whiskies, he’d taken her to the backroom and paid her three hundred bucks to strip to her birthday suit, then get on his lap again, and dance.
“Oh, big man,” she’d said, while feeling his turgid crotch. The whole thing had been pretty humiliating, mostly because he’d wanted to tell her to stop but hadn’t wanted to be rude. So instead, when she’d asked for three hundred more to suck him off, he’d given her fifty, and said, “I’d really rather you got dressed,” then walked out. He waited at the bar another hour for Daniel, who apparently liked getting sucked off by twenty-four-year-old mothers who commute from Queens and dream of one day becoming Vegas showgirls, just like that movie.
Daniel’s voice mail beeped. Saraub didn’t leave a message with him, either. He’d been going out with Daniel a lot lately, and it was starting to hurt his liver. More importantly, his wallet had gotten a lot thinner. So he dialed the only other person he knew would be happy for him.
“Hello?” Sheila asked. She had a slight British accent, because that was where she’d gone to prep school.
“Mom?”
“Saraub!” she cried. “How are you?” He kept in contact with his cousins and siblings, but hadn’t talked to Sheila in almost a year. He’d brought Audrey to meet her only once, and that meeting had gone badly. Sheila had referred to her as “that farm girl” all night and suggested that their dinner was unnecessary because the relationship was clearly a fling, before he settled down with a nice girl like Tonia. Despite all that, he’d hoped that over time his best girl and mother would learn to get along, but when Audrey got home that night,