I honestly thought it was Over-City with Bonnie. After her dramatic little revelation last night ("Are you married?" "Engaged.") I thought for sure my number would get way tossed. But here she was, on the phone, giving me her address and asking me to come over.
I'm halfway out the door when the phone rings and the machine picks up.
"Freddy Blue!" says a smoky voice. "It's Julie. Last night. The band. Call me. 234-8866. I'm going out now, but I'll be in tonight. Later."
I ran for the phone but she had already hung up. I quickly dialed, but she must have been literally out the door because her machine picked up. But it wasn't her voice on the machine - it was Dean's. "Yo, yo, yo we're not in." he said in a macho smart-ass voice, "Leave a message for Dean or Julie or Christie and we'll get back to you. Bu-bye."
I decided not to leave a message, but to try Julie back later. Maybe she called about another gig. Couldn't be anything else, right?
I took the IRT uptown and walked west through a slight drizzle to Riverside Drive. Dark clouds were rolling in from the east, and threatened a major downpour. Bonnie's building was right near the park, a quiet, residential street with a view of the Hudson. "Nice digs." I thought.
She buzzed me up and I entered the charming lobby, one of those old New York buildings with the high ceilings and the floorboard moldings. I took the ancient elevator to the second floor and found Bonnie's apartment, 2F.
"Hi." she said, opening the door. It was Sunday and she'd been lounging in a pair of sweats and a man's shirt. A half eaten bagel and coffee lunch sat on a Chippendale table, and the remains of Sunday Times lay strewn about the smartly furnished living room. There were no lamps on, and darkening day threw gray shadows across the walls.
"Been in all day?" I asked.
"Yeah. Hiding." she said, closing the door. "Want a drink?"
"Sure."
She poured me a smooth scotch from a mahogany liquor cabinet. A Gershwin album played, an actual 33, spinning on a turntable. Classy. Flowers, drinking up the last bit of daylight, bloomed in tasteful vases.
"Sit down." she said, plopping into a paisley chair. I sat on an antique divan, scooting aside the enormous Times Arts section.
"Nice place." I said, sipping my drink.
"Thanks."
We chatted a bit. Her parents had bought her this place years ago. "Bought", you understand, not rented, that meant the family had money.
We talked a bit more about the apartment, her parents, the house they had in Denver, yadda-yadda, and then finally she got to it. "I thought about this long and hard." she said. "I think I want to keep seeing you. Making love to you has been - an experience. And I haven't had a lot of experiences. So I think I want to keep seeing you. And I don't think I'm going to get married. Would you like a bagel or something?"
"Whoa, whoa." I said. "Bonnie, don't throw away a marriage because of some guy you met in a bar."
"I'm not. He doesn't make me feel like you do, that's all."
"And how's that?"
"Let's just say I've had three orgasms in my life -- one alone, and two with you, so you do the math."
Bonnie clearly had a frigidity problem that melted away the other night at the Bitter End. We talked some more. The only other time she felt that uninhibited, she said, was one night when she and some girlfriends went to a U2 concert and she managed to snake a finger under her dress and masturbate herself to orgasm while watching Bono. We both guessed that the crowd had something to do with it to - she was clearly turned on by the possibility of getting caught.
"Tony is a very traditional kind of guy," she explained, "and he wouldn't go for anything weird."
"How about just a little different?" I offered. "Have you two ever done it in the kitchen?"
"We haven't even done it in the daytime!" she laughed. "No, Tony's not the kind of man you can talk to about stuff like that. I'd be afraid to ask him. Actually, I'm afraid to ask him anything. I don't to talk about him. He's coming over here tonight. We had a fight on the phone today. I was trying to tell him I'd like to postpone the wedding and he figured that I was trying to end it, which I was, and we had a fight, and he's on his way in from Long Island, so I really just want to get out of here. Can we go to your place? Look, don't freak out, you might have a girlfriend for all I know. I'm not looking for that, anyway, I just want to be someplace else right now."
There was nothing I wanted more than to take this woman back to my place and, let's face it, fuck her. Even in her sweat pants she looked taught and yummy. But for some reason I found myself saying, "Maybe you should talk to Tony first."
"No, no." she said. "You don't know him. He's huge. Well, you saw him the other night."
Thick-neck. He with the broad shoulders and the cement in his dancing shoes. I had figured it was him.
"Are you afraid of him?" I asked.
"Not like that." she said. "He wouldn't hurt me. I wouldn't marry someone like that. He's sweet, really, but he wants things his own way. Like where we're going to live after the wedding. He's in Long Island right now looking at houses, and I don't want a house, I have my job here, my friends, and this apartment. We could live here. But, no he wants me to quit and..."
"Okay, I get it." I said.
She was getting upset.
"Sorry. I'm just panicking. I wish I weren't so - intimidated by him."
Just then the door buzzed.
"Oh my God!" she said. "That's him! Already! He must have done ninety down the L.I.E.! You've got to go!"
"Wait a minute." I said, peeking around the blind out the window. Looking down I saw Tony standing on the stoop, his car parked in front of the building. It was getting late, the clouds covering up the sunset, and a misty rain falling. "Don't let him up." I said.
"What? I have to." she replied.
"Talk to him from here. It's perfect. You're way up here, towering over him. Tell him you want to stay in the city, and that's fucking final."
I could see she like the idea. Something about my being there emboldened her, and she went to the window. She was about to roll the blind up, but I stopped her.
"No." I said, "leave the blind down."
She wasn't sure what I was up to, but went under the blind to call down to Tony. From his point of view, with her standing in from the of the pulled down blind, he could see her from the chest up, and nothing else in the apartment.
"I want to talk to you!" she said.
