The meeting did not go well.
*
“You and I deserve a drink,” says Frank as we leave the real estate client’s bland midtown offices. “Or twelve.”
We go to an Irish bar around the corner that smells of salted nuts and disappointment. I think Frank is worried about losing the client, which I assume is why he orders three whiskeys for every one of my wine spritzers. Soon he is looking at me as if trying to make me out through dark and murky water.
“All right, Mr. J. Daniels,” I say. “Let’s get you home.”
I try to hail a cab for him on the street while he weaves around me in a looping half dance. He grabs a parking meter and leans his cheek against it forlornly, blinking at me through his glasses.
“I don’t want to go home,” he says.
My heart lunges. What can I say to this? Why don’t you come home with me to New Jersey, just try not to wake my mother?
“Your wife will be worried about you,” I say.
He sighs. “You’re right,” he says. “When you’re right, you’re right!” He twirls around the meter without taking his eyes off me. “You are such a nice person, Eleanor.”
“You’re a nice person too, Frank,” I say over my shoulder as I flag down a free cab.
Frank shakes his head blearily.
“No, I’m not,” he says. “I’m a bad man.”
The cab pulls up, and I open the door for him.
“Bad, bad man,” he repeats as he heaves his way into the back seat.
I lean down to speak to him before I close the door.
“You’re not a bad man, Frank,” I say. “You’re just drunk.”
“Same thing,” he says, falling backward across the seats.
He is laughing as I close the door, but it doesn’t sound like he thinks it’s funny at all.
*
In the email inviting us all to the office holiday party, there is a warning that the company will not pay the bail of anyone arrested this year. I ask Myke if this is a joke.
“You didn’t hear? Two years ago, an intern and an account exec got caught doing blow on the street. Frank had to bail them out. Legendary.” Myke shakes his head in awe. “Absolutely legendary.”
*
I spend approximately three and a half hours getting ready for the party, which is the longest I’ve ever prepared for anything in life, including my SATs. I have been soaked, scrubbed, rubbed, shaved, plucked, and slicked with lotion. My hair has been washed, blow-dried, re-curled, and doused in hair spray. I have applied every cream and powder I own to my face. I have spritzed perfume into the air and walked through its wet cloud.
*
I have also done something I never do, and that is buy clothes. I take a fresh pair of stockings out of their packaging and slide them on. They were insanely expensive, more expensive than one would imagine two tiny sheaths of nylon fabric could ever plausibly be, but the world of fashion is full of such oddities. I put them on with the utmost care, knowing that if I ladder them with one of my hobgoblin toenails, I will surely have to kill myself. I zip up into my new black dress and slip into a pair of patent high heels. I grab a birthday-cake-flavored Lip Smacker I’ve had since high school and throw it in my purse, just in case.
Finally, I stand in front of the mirror, and I see … soft belly, coarse hair, thin lips, thick waist. I am a Jewish man in drag.
*
Okay, so I am not pretty. Some people have diabetes. Some people have six toes. Some people get caught in forest fires and suffer third-degree burns all over their body. Some people have headaches they ignore for months, then finally go to the doctor only to find out it’s a brain tumor that kills them within weeks having never achieved their life’s potential. I did not end up pretty. Big whoop.
*
I’d like to sneak out unnoticed, but my mother is in the living room, poured over one of her gardening books, waiting for me. She looks up with her glasses hooked on the end of her nose.
“Oh,” she gasps. “You look beautiful.”
I smooth the front of my dress.
“Not like a Jewish man in drag?”
“This nonsense you speak,” tuts my mother. She gets up and gives me a kiss, squeezes my waist. “Go have fun. And remember to suck in.”
*
I take the PATH train into the city. There are two college students sitting in front of me talking loudly about the club they’re going to. Something about bottle service. The ends of their sentences all flip up, like whale tails, into questions.
Still, it must be nice to have the company. I’m carrying my mother’s tiny satin evening bag, which could barely accommodate the Lip Smacker, let alone something to read. Sometimes it does not pay to make an effort, I’m learning.