Kirby’s building was a large tan brick tower with a driveway that curved off of Seventy-ninth Street. It was a middle-class building, but the driveway, which was probably more inconvenient than useful, was meant to lend the building a touch of class. Under the overhang were two sets of revolving doors and a sliding glass door that opened automatically, like the kind found in airports. Inside was a large desk, behind which sat a doorman who exuded a stormy persona.
“Kirby Atwood, please,” Nico said.
“What?” the doorman said, being deliberately obnoxious.
Nico sighed. “Kirby Atwood.”
The doorman glared at her for no particular reason other than the fact that she seemed to be disturbing him by requiring that he perform his job, and flipped through a three-ring folder. He picked up the phone and dialed a number.
“Wasyername?”
Nico paused, reminded of the fact that she had never done this before and wasn’t sure of the protocol. Should she give her real name and potentially open herself up to the possibility of getting caught? If she gave a fake name, however, Kirby probably wouldn’t get it, and that would lead to more awkwardness.
“Nico,” she whispered.
“What?” the doorman asked. “Nicole?”
“That’s right.”
“A Nicole here for you?” the doorman said into the phone. And looking at her suspiciously, said, “Go on up. Twenty-five G. Turn right when you get off the elevator.”
Three hundred two East Seventy-ninth Street was an enormous building, with apartments like shoeboxes piled up one on top of the other. The building was 38 floors with 26 apartments on each floor, designated by letters of the alphabet. That was 988 apartments in all. She and Seymour had lived in a building just like this one when they were first married. But they’d quickly moved out and up.
She heard a door open, the sound echoing down the narrow corridor. She expected Kirby’s beautiful head to pop out of one of the doors, but instead, a giant dog came bounding down the hallway at her, leaping joyfully at either the prospect of company or the fact that it had managed to escape from its box. The beast was close to a hundred pounds with a brindled coat, and sleek enough to make Nico guess that it was half greyhound and half Great Dane.
Nico stopped short, prepared to grab the dog on each side of its neck if it tried to jump on her, but just before the dog reached her, Kirby appeared in the hallway and said sternly, “Puppy! Sit!” The dog immediately came to a halt and sat down, panting happily.
“That’s Puppy,” Kirby said, striding toward her with a confident grin. He was wearing a dark blue shirt, open save for one button he’d fastened in the middle of his chest as if he had just thrown on the shirt, revealing washboard abs. Nico was impressed with his body, but she was even more impressed with his dog-training skills. It took a particular type of patience and benign authority to train a large dog so perfectly, she thought.
“How ya doin’, pretty lady?” Kirby asked casually, as if it were perfectly normal for an older woman to come to his apartment in the middle of the afternoon for sex. Nico suddenly felt shy. How was she supposed to behave? How did Kirby expect her to behave? How did he see her—and them? Having no other reference points by which to categorize the situation, she hoped he envisioned them as Richard Gere and Lauren Hutton in American Gigolo. Maybe if she pretended to be Lauren Hutton, she’d be able to get through this scene.
And what was up with that phrase, “pretty lady”?
“I’m sorry I was so stupid about you coming to my apartment,” Kirby said, starting down the hall. He turned back and gave her a smile that was so sweetly contrite, her heart melted. “And I really wanted you to see my apartment, you know? From the minute I met you, I don’t know, I just thought, I’d love to get her opinion on my apartment. Weird, huh? How you can just meet someone and want to know what they think? Because I’m thinking of moving. Downtown is cooler, but I just finished renovating my apartment and it seems kinda stupid to go through the hassle of moving again, dontcha think?”
Nico stared at him blankly. How was she supposed to respond to this? She and Seymour lived downtown, in a large town
house in the West Village on Sullivan Street. She supposed it was “cool,” but the real reason they lived there was because it was quiet and pleasant and within walking distance to Katrina’s school. Perhaps she should commiserate with him on the trials of an apartment renovation. It had taken a year to renovate the town house, but she hadn’t really been involved. Seymour had done all the work, and then they’d stayed at the Mark Hotel for three days while the movers came and the decorator did the finishing touches, and someone had given her a set of keys, and one day after work she’d gone to the new town house instead of the Mark Hotel. It was a matter of convenience, but thinking about it now, she suddenly realized it sounded spoiled and she would come across as thinking that she was better than he. She smiled awkwardly. “I really don’t know, Kirby . . .” she murmured.
“Well, you tell me,” Kirby said, opening his door with a flourish and holding the door open with his arm so that she had to walk underneath it to get inside. Her body brushed against his chest and the sensation made her blush. “Do you want some wine or water?” Kirby asked. “I said to myself, she seems like a white wine person to me, so I went out and got a bottle.”
“Really, Kirby, you shouldn’t have,” she said, feeling like a tongue-tied schoolgirl. “I shouldn’t drink in the middle of the day.”
“Oh, I know. You’re a busy lady,” Kirby said, going into the kitchen, which was a narrow slot located just to the right of the door. He opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of wine. “But you gotta relax, you know. It’s not good to always be going a hundred miles an hour.” He turned around and grinned.
She smiled back. Suddenly, his head darted forward like a snake and he ambushed her, closing his mouth down on hers. Still holding the bottle of wine in one hand, he pulled her closer with the other. She willingly curved her body into him, thinking that his mouth was like a soft juicy fruit—a papaya, perhaps—while his hard body provided an irresistible contrast. The kiss lasted for what felt like several minutes but was probably only thirty seconds, and then she started feeling overwhelmed and claustrophic, like she couldn’t breathe. She put her hands on his chest and pushed him away.
He took a step back and looked at her searchingly, trying to read her reaction. “A little too much too soon, huh,” he said, tenderly touching her cheek. In the next second, he changed gears, however, like a child who suddenly discovers a different toy. “Let’s have some wine, hey?” he said, swinging the bottle onto the counter as if pleasantly surprised to find that he was holding it in his hand. He opened the cabinet and took out two wine glasses. “I just got these at Crate and Barrel. You ever been there? They have everything on sale. These were only five dollars apiece and they’re crystal,” he said, uncorking the wine and pouring it into the glasses. “One time?” he continued, with a youthful questioning lilt, “I went on this rich guy’s yacht? And all the glasses, even, like, the juice glasses were crystal. But what I love about New York is that you can get really great stuff for cheap. You ever notice that?” He handed her a glass and she nodded, watching his movements, unable to speak. Desire had made her mute.
The dog squeezed into the kitchen, mercifully diverting their attention. Nico patted the dog on the head, then slipped her hand under its chin and turned its face up so that it had to stare her in the eyes. The dog stared back, submissively. “He’s a good dog,” she said. “Does he have a real name?”
Kirby looked sheepish. “I was waiting to see what his personality was like before I named him, you know? Because sometimes you name a dog right away and then you realize it’s not the right name and you’re stuck with it. You can’t change a dog’s name, you know? They’re not that smart. They get confused,” he said. “Like kids. What would happen if a kid was five, and all of a sudden, the parents changed its name? It probably wouldn’t even know what school it was supposed to go to.”
Kirby looked at her expectantly, and Nico laughed, which seemed to please him. She hadn’t known what to expect, but she hadn’t been expecting this—this naive, charming, unexpected . . . intelligence? Well, maybe not intelligence, she thought. But there was certainly something about Kirby that was more interesting than she’d initially thought. “Hey! I forgot,” Kirby said suddenly. “I just remembered that I was supposed to show you my apartment. That’s how I lured you here, right?” he asked. “Except I got distracted. By a pretty lady.” He looked at her pointedly, and Nico winced slightly. Maybe he wasn’t stupid, but she did wish he would stop using that word, “lady.” It was making her feel old, like she was his mother or something.
“Kirby, I . . .”
He walked by her and turned, suddenly embracing her again with a long kiss. Maybe he called every woman “lady,” she thought, as he pulled out her blouse and slid his hand up her back, expertly unhooking her bra. In any case, he certainly wasn’t treating her like his mother, she thought, as his hand gently cupped her breast. He knew how to touch a woman, and as he lightly circled the top of her nipple with his finger, she felt herself yielding to him in a way she never had with Seymour . . .