Two of a Kind Read online

  Except now, here he was, alone on a steamy night in late June, feeling like things had been totally upended again. Was it too late to phone her? He checked his watch; it wasn’t even nine. Still, he’d never called her outside of business hours. And even if he did call, what would he say? Hi, I’ve been thinking about how great you looked in that wet shirt.

  Andy realized he was standing in front of the florist again. The gate was partially down, but the lights were still on and he could see Gus moving around inside. When Gus looked up and saw Andy, he waved and motioned for him to come in. Andy bent down to slip under the gate as Gus unlocked the door. “I didn’t expect to see you again tonight, Dr. Stern. How did she like the flowers?”

  “She loved them,” Andy said. God, he sounded glum.

  “Good,” said Gus. “We aim to please.” He swept a large pile of leaves and stems into a green garbage bag, and then wiped down the work space with a sponge.

  “You’re here late,” Andy observed.

  “Last-minute request from an old customer,” Gus said. “And I never like to say no to an old customer.” He straightened a pile of green aprons—they reminded Andy of scrubs—on a shelf above the sink. “Remember, anytime you need another bouquet for the lady, you let me know,” said Gus. Reaching up, he started switching off the lights.

  “Probably not for that lady,” Andy said. As soon as the words were out, he knew it was true. Something had changed in his perception of Jen tonight; everything about her felt suddenly wrong.

  “Oh,” said Gus. “I see.”

  “I thought she might be the right one, but now I’m not so sure.” Gus nodded sympathetically and walked to the door, Andy following. When they had both gone under the gate, Andy stood there while Gus finished pulling it down and locking up.

  “How long have you been married?” Andy surprised himself with the question. He’d never talked to Gus in this way before.

  “Thirty-seven years,” Gus said. “Thirty-seven years, three kids, five grandkids.” He fished in his pocket to retrieve his phone and scrolled down. Then he held out the phone so Andy could see the attractive woman with ash-blond hair and a wide, easy smile. Tiny wrinkles fanned out from her eyes, and her arms were extended around a bevy of children.

  “Nice family,” Andy said. They were standing on the corner of Sixty-ninth Street and he had no desire to go home. “I was just going to stop in somewhere for a glass of wine.” Not exactly true, but as soon as he said it, he thought, Why not? “Maybe you’d like to join me.”

  “You know, that would be great. The wife’s out in Jersey this weekend; she’s helping our daughter throw a birthday party for the three-year-old. The place seems kind of lonely without her.”

  Tell me about it, Andy thought as he and Gus headed uptown and east, to a wine bar just below Seventy-second Street.

  “So this lady—what’s she like?” Gus asked when they were seated. While Andy told him, their order arrived.

  “Give it another chance,” Gus said, reaching for a slice of his mini-pizza.

  “You think?” Andy sipped his white wine. If he hadn’t already eaten, he would have ordered one of those pizzas—it was topped with golden peppers and roast duck breast and looked delicious. But no way was he eating dinner twice.

  “I do. You said she’s the first woman to make you feel anything since your wife’s death. That’s big, Dr. Stern. Really big.”

  “Please—call me Andy.”

  Gus took a long sip of his red wine. “Andy.” He put down the glass. “Maybe she was just having an off night with her kid; everyone loses it once in a while.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Andy said, raising his glass. Gus raised his too and for the first time all evening, Andy actually felt okay. When he saw that Gus’s wineglass was empty, he added, “How about another round?”

  By the time they left, it was almost midnight. Andy walked into his building, nodding to the night doorman. When he opened the door to his apartment, he found it still and dark; Oliver had texted him to say he was spending the night with a friend. What else was new? Andy went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of filtered water; whenever he drank wine, he always made sure to take this precaution against a hangover the next day.

  He walked into the living room. There was the bar-shaped-like-a-trunk that Christina had found for him; lined up on its shelves were the crystal glasses she’d urged him to buy. On the far wall hung that crazy mirror she’d found at the estate sale; they had thought it would work in the bedroom, but they both thought it looked better in here.

  Andy drained the water from the glass. He’d decided to give it another chance with Jen, and that was what he would do. But he was now pricked by the desire to ask Gus to create a small yet stunning arrangement, of white—and only white—flowers, and when it was complete in its snowy perfection, send it to Brooklyn, to the home of Christina Connelly.

  EIGHT

  Oliver walked into the Dakota, a ginormous structure on the corner of Seventy-second Street and Central Park West that looked like a cross between a wedding cake and a castle; Delphine had just texted him that it was okay to come over and so here he was. He gave his name to a guy in a fancy uniform with gold buttons and gold braiding everywhere. He waited while Gold Buttons called upstairs and waited some more before he was directed to the elevator.

  Delphine was at the door. “Hello,” she said. Except it sounded like Allo and it gave him an instant boner. She’d said her parents would be out; could that mean she was interested? On Sunday, she was leaving for the summer, so this would be his last chance for a while. “Hey,” he said, and leaned over for the kiss-kiss thing on either cheek that she’d taught him. But since she was taller, he ended up kissing her chin. As she led him through the apartment, he noticed a lot of paintings, statues of naked girls, and a bronze fountain filled with tiny, glittering stones instead of water.

  “Your parents have some interesting stuff,” he commented.

  “My dad’s an art dealer,” Delphine said with a shrug of her perfect shoulders.

  Finally, they reached her room and she invited him to sit down. He did not dare to join her on the bed—big, brass, and covered in a velvet spread the color of an eggplant—so he took the only chair there was, a carved, thronelike thing.

  “You’re headed back to France on Sunday, right?” he said.

  Delphine nodded, her head bent in concentration over the joint she was rolling. Her clothes were the usual Delphine-ish jumble of things: a lacy white top under a shrunken T-shirt, a short polka-dot skirt revealing her pale, sculpted legs, and battered cowboy boots.

  “I’ll bet Paris is a way cool city,” he said. “I’d love to go to Paris.”

  “We’re not going to be in Paris,” she said. Par-ee was the way she pronounced it. “In the summer, we go to Provence.”

  “Provence, right,” he said. “Provence is cool too.” Though how would he know? He’d never been to either place.

  But Delphine just smiled and offered him the joint. As they smoked, Oliver cautiously permitted himself to relax. He wondered whether he could make his way—casually, of course—over to the bed. Not that he would dream of doing anything that she would in any way consider gross. Oliver, like all the guys he knew, was on good terms with Internet porn; he and Jake routinely sent each other links to new sites they found; SexyBabe and FuckBunnies were two of his current favorites, while Jake liked TitsOnParade and CumNow. But though the images of naked bodies doing, like, everything were certainly hot, they had nothing to do with how he felt about Delphine. Delphine was not a sexy babe or a fuck bunny. And she would never put any part of herself on parade. No, she was a goddess, his goddess, and he wanted to worship her body, not just get off on it. Her body was just a portal to her soul.

  When she handed him back the joint, their fingers touched for a brief and, to Oliver, electrifying second, but if she felt
it too, she gave no sign. She waited for him to take his toke, and then when it was her turn, she inhaled deeply, closing her eyes. Then she opened them again, and her smile reappeared, this time even wider and more welcoming.

  “Come,” she said, patting the place beside her on the bed, “sit with me.”

  Oliver actually tripped in his eagerness to comply. He could smell her now: crushed rose petals, rock candy, and maybe a little vanilla thrown in there too. He was high, and he was having yummy olfactory hallucinations. He laughed.

  “What’s funny?” she said. The joint was barely more than a glowing ember; she put it out in a water-filled wine goblet.

  “Nothing,” he said, easing his way a little closer to her. “Or everything.”

  She looked at him carefully, as if trying to decide something. “Oliver”—Ah-lee-Vair—she began. “Do you know why I invited you over?”

  “To say good-bye before you went to Paris? I mean Provence,” he ventured.

  “Well, yes and no.” She had reached for the embroidered silk pouch where she kept her weed. “I wanted to say good-bye. But not just because I’m going to Provence.”

  “Huh?” He was not following her.

  “I’m saying good-bye, Oliver. Good-bye to you. Good-bye to us.”

  “Oh,” he said. She might as well have dropped a refrigerator on his head; that was how flattened he felt.

  “I do like you,” she went on. “I like you so much. But I don’t want to go out with you. You’re like my brother.” As she spoke, her fingers delved into the little pouch and began rolling another joint. When it was done, she lit it and handed it to him. “You first.”

  Oliver accepted the joint and took a deep hit. He wanted to . . . what? Start sobbing and beating his fists on the floor? But he just sat rigidly on her bed, smoking her dope and saying stupid shit like, Yeah, I understand, and It’s cool, and stupidest, shittiest of all, Sure, we can be friends. I’ll always be your friend. They listened to some music—all in French; he couldn’t tell what the words meant—and she told him some more about Provence. He kept nodding his head, all the while thinking, When can I go—please, can I go now?

  When the second joint had fizzled out next to the first one in the goblet, Oliver finally saw a moment to make his escape. He got up, stretched, and let Delphine escort him back through the series of rooms that led to the front door. This time he noticed that one of those mammoth paintings had a big gash—shaped like an evil grin—at the bottom left corner and the statues were headless. Inside the fountain, the stones looked vicious, like broken glass.

  He had a brief, fleeting impulse to walk over to one of the large windows, open it, and calmly step out. But the moment passed. He miserably endured the kiss-kiss on either cheek again, the light brushing of her lips against his skin a small agony, and then went down in the same elevator that had brought him up.

  When Oliver reached the street again, he had no idea of what to do or where to go. He started walking uptown, just to be moving. Jake. Yeah, Jake would talk him down. Jake was a friend, a real friend. Would Jake be home, though? He could have texted him, but he didn’t want to give Jake a chance to say no—that is, if he was in fact home. So Oliver continued up Central Park West, passing the San Remo, the Beresford, and the Eldorado. Had he not been so upset, he would have stopped to check them out. He liked old buildings, liked them a lot better than the tacky tower his dad had chosen as their home. His mom hadn’t liked it either, but because it was so near the hospital, his dad won that round. Now his mom wasn’t even here anymore and Oliver supposed he’d be stuck in that sterile box until he left for college. If he even got into college.

  When he reached Jake’s house on West Ninety-seventh Street, Oliver texted: U there? Got to c u. Urgent. He waited for a few seconds and then the reply came. Yeah. No weed tho. My mom is getting nosy. Oliver was so relieved he started trembling a little. Weed or no weed, Jake would know what to say. Jake let him in and they went up to his big bedroom on the top floor. It was as messy as Oliver’s. Funny how his mess didn’t bother him but Jake’s grossed him out. Books, papers, empty cups from Starbucks—Jake was an iced cappuccino hound; he practically mainlined the stuff—greasy food wrappers, balled-up napkins. How about that pile of laundry? It was pretty rank. Still, he flopped down in Jake’s beanbag chair and stretched out his legs; he had a feeling he would be here for a while.

  “Delphine dumped me,” he began.

  “No shit,” Jake said. “When?” He was sprawled on the couch that opened into a futon; Oliver had spent plenty of nights on that thing, getting high, talking, watching movies.

  “Like, an hour ago.”

  “Dude, that sucks.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “Here,” Jake said, springing up. His nickname at school was “Jake-in-the-box.” He opened the small fridge that was on the far wall, producing two bottles of beer. “Good for what ails you. And my mom won’t ever have to know.” Popping the tops, he handed one to Oliver. Oliver took a serious swig and then burped.

  “Gross,” said Jake, but he was grinning.

  “Like you’re not,” Oliver said. “Look at this place. It’s a fucking sty.”

  “And your room is any better?”

  “A sty,” Oliver chanted. “A piggy, piggy sty.”

  “Oink,” said Jake, “oink, oink.”

  Jake made a very convincing pig and despite his massive heartbreak, Oliver let out a little snort that might have been construed as laughter.

  “Good to hear you laugh, dude,” said Jake, swigging his own beer. “You’re getting too upset. It’s not like you were fucking her or anything.”

  Oliver’s smile calcified and he had to restrain himself from flinging what was left of his beer in Jake’s face. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Well, that would be, like, different.” Jake seemed oblivious to the change in Oliver’s mood.

  “Says who? You? And who are you anyway? Some dumbass douche bag? Some clueless dickwad?” And he had thought Jake was a friend.

  “Whoa, dude, settle down.” Jake set his beer on the floor and reached over to touch Oliver’s arm.

  “Keep your hands to yourself,” Oliver said, flinching like he’d been burned.

  “All right.” Jake pulled back. “Whatever.” He ambled over to the fridge and pulled out another couple of beers. “Why don’t you have another beer and chill?”

  “Why don’t you fuck off?” Oliver stood up. That was when he saw it, the book, splayed and facedown on the wreck of Jake’s floor. He picked it up by the dog-eared corner, as if it were contaminated. “Toujours Provence,” he read.

  “Give me that,” Jake said.

  Oliver ignored him and started leafing through it. Whole sections were underlined in neon green highlighter, and there were scrawled notes—all illegible; Jake had the penmanship of a chimp—in the margins. “Since when do you read anything when you’re not in school? Excuse me—like, when do you read anything at all?”

  “I told you—give it back!” Jake lunged, but Oliver swiveled and held the book high above his own head, where Jake could not reach.

  “Why can’t I see it?” Oliver said. “What’s the big deal?”

  “You just can’t,” Jake said. He stared at the floor.

  Suddenly, Oliver understood. Delphine. “She invited you to visit, didn’t she?” he said. “Her parents have a place. She told me they weren’t going to Par-ee; they were going to Provence.” He dropped the book on the floor.

  “I didn’t want to tell you, dude.” Jake looked at him then; there was pity in his eyes.

  “I’ll bet you didn’t,” said Oliver. Jake’s expression made him seethe; not only had Oliver been dumped, but he had officially been rendered pathetic in the eyes of his former friend, and now rival. “So, like, are you fucking her?” Jake’s slow pink flush, from h
is neck up to his forehead, told Oliver all he needed to know. “Traitor,” he spit. “Scumbag, cocksucker, ass wipe.” Jake did not attempt to defend himself; he just stood there while Oliver fumed and swore. This made Oliver even angrier. “I thought I could trust you,” he said. “My buddy, my pal, my homey.”

  “Sorry, Ollie,” was all Jake said. Now, when had Jake ever called him that? Only his father used that nickname. And his mother, but she was dead. She was dead last year and she’d be dead next year. She’d be dead forever. His heart was ready to combust with sorrow. And although he no longer felt the least bit drunk or high, the next few seconds, seconds in which he drew back his arm and clenched his fist, seemed suspended in that slow-motion-high-as-a-kite kind of way. But the punch, when it landed, happened in real time and the impact was so startling that he felt that he, not Jake, was the one who’d been hit.

  There was an awful sound, flesh and bone hitting flesh and bone. Jake crumpled instantly to the floor, hands flying up to cradle his face. His nose was bleeding, thin, bright trails from each nostril; blood dripped down his chin and onto his pale green shirt. One dot, two, and then a third. Soon the shirt would be covered in them. “Son of a bitch,” he murmured. “Son of a fucking bitch.”

  “Shit, are you okay?” Oliver had never hit anyone in the face in his entire life; his fist and his whole body were shaking. It was horrible. Horrible. His hand was like this foreign thing. This weapon. He thought he might puke and he pressed his splayed fingers over his mouth just in case.