Chapter 28
28
Saturday 14 May
A knock on the door. Waited for Linda to open it since she has colonized the living room, even though there is a perfectly functional second bedroom with a proper double bed. Maybe she is now allergic to the sight of double beds.
Waited for a full two minutes before I realized that Linda was not budging. Walked out and saw that Linda was sleeping, naked as a daisy, on the couch surrounded by an empty bottle of vodka, a bottle of Chinon red, half a bottle of Patrón, a small bottle of Evian, and several bottles of Tiger beer. Maybe she wasn’t even sleeping; maybe she was dead.
I opened the door. It was Eric Deng, standing in the hallway in a pale lemon polo shirt and khakis.
“Are you going to gawk at me or invite me in?” he said, after a few seconds of stunned silence had passed from my end.
I collected my dignity (I was in a god-awful Ramones T-shirt and a pair of graying cotton shorts) and said, “My friend Linda’s naked in my living room. You can’t enter.”
“Well, get dressed. I’m taking you out to champagne brunch.”
I pretended to hesitate; he had me at “champagne.”
“I’ll wait in the car,” he said, a small smile curving his lips. “Take your time.”
We arrived at the St. Regis twenty-five minutes later (I had taken ten minutes to complete my toiletries, apply makeup, and throw on a respectable flowered sundress). It was only while I was
in his car that I realized that my pretty peep-toe sandals were exposing, in all their glory, the remnants of a month-old pedicure. I tried to angle my feet away from his sightline, but I was sure he had seen them: Eric Deng was not a man who missed such details. I’d felt like a fraud in his gleaming, immaculate car, even though he himself was delightfully, gently rumpled, in hair and clothing.
“I got you a gift,” he said after we’d ordered. He pressed a small, brown paper–wrapped parcel in my hands. He raised his eyebrow. “I’m not sure it’s as good as flowers, but I think it’ll last longer.”
“Oh!” I said, my manners forgotten. I felt a bolt of excitement in my stomach. “What’s . . . what’s it for?”
“For being such a lovely companion,” he said. “Companion.” What an odd choice of words. We could have been knitting buddies.
“Open it,” he urged. I tore through the wrapping like a kid, thinking it was a Moleskine or something practical.
“Oh!” I said in a tiny voice when I saw the cover. Then I opened it, trembling. It was a first edition, signed hardcover of
It Catches My Heart in Its Hands
, my favorite book of Charles Bukowski’s poems. A poet I had once mentioned in passing, over two months ago, at the Sexless Book Club. He’d remembered.
The inscription in his elegant cursive read:
Andrea,
Here’s to the beginning of new, poetic exchanges.
Eric
“Eric, this is too much,” I murmured, embarrassed, pushing it across the table to him. “I can’t accept this.”
“You must. It’s got your name on it.” He pushed the book back. “I can’t return this, you know.”
During the champagne brunch he regaled me with stories of his recent business trip throughout Mongolia and China, meeting with potential codevelopers for his passion project, the Dulit
Group’s Lana brand of luxury eco-hotels. His passion for the project, and his fascinating anecdotes on his travels and his business, made the hours pass quickly. By the time we’d finished around three o’clock, he had to go for a coffee with a colleague and I was reluctant to leave his side. He was just so easy and nice to be with. I had the sense that when it came to him, I was struggling upstream when I could be cruising with the current to him, the inevitable conclusion to the tale of the woman I wanted to be, if I would just let him be that to me.
And—I cast a sidelong glance to him, my heart beating faster when I caught him looking at me in his frank, admiring way—why not? The attraction was there.
He walked me to my door like a gentleman, waited to see if I could find my keys, opened the door for me after several fumbles at the doorknob, and once the door was ajar, bid me goodbye with a soft peck on my right cheek.
“Wait,” I slurred, grabbing his sleeve and pulling him close, even as I was unsure of what I wanted to achieve as I did so. But he put his free hand on my shoulder and held me at arm’s length.
“You’re drunk,” he said.
“I’m sober,” I said, trying again.
“Don’t make this . . . it’s . . .” He swore in bahasa Indonesia. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you soon,” he said. Then he turned on his heel and left. I watched him go, let myself in, locked the door before I stumbled into the living room, humiliated and definitely less sober than I had initially thought myself to be.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Linda said snidely, in the exact same spot on the couch. She had barely budged, except her entourage of bottles now included three new empties of white wine and two bags of Kettle chips.
I walked over, dropped my tote bag (and the book, secure in its wrapping again) on the floor, sank into a bean bag, and slept.