“What am I missing?”
“Happy Tisha B’av!” said Andy.
“What is that again?” I asked. “All I know about it is that when I was a kid in day camp this girl in my group, Hope Moskowitz, said she couldn’t go swimming because of that holiday. She was religious. It was a boiling hot day in July and I felt bad for her.”
“Well,” said Andy, “it was my favorite holiday to study when I was in Hebrew school, and believe me, I wasn’t one of those nerdy guys or anything. But Tisha B’av was when not one, but two temples in Jerusalem were destroyed. Then for three weeks after that you go into this, like, period of mourning when all these tragedies can strike. Very cool. So—do you want to go out and do something sometime?”
“Ummm,” I said, aware that “yes” should not be my first response, based on the information at hand. “Maybe,” I mustered.
“Do you have someone specific in mind?”
He made me laugh. What the hell, Andy was alive and full of energy, and I thought he was funny.
A few nights later we had dinner. Andy was really nice. He took me to an Italian restaurant on Cornelia Street where he knew the chef.
“Let’s order an appetizer. Maybe some clams,” I suggested.
“Let’s see what happens,” said Andy.
“What can happen?” I didn’t get it. But Andy had gone into the kitchen, and Mario agreed to surprise us. I liked the smoked mozzarella and tomatoes. I liked Andy trying to impress me.
We went on a tour of the handball courts in his neighborhood. Andy knew every punk personally. I got an introduction. They were really nice. I thought someone could lend us their paddle ball rackets. Fifteen minutes. Andy asked. He knew how to handle them.
“It’s not cool,” he told me. We split.
We went back to his apartment. He put on a jazz album. He put on the fan. He dimmed the lights. Then Andy turned to me.
“Wanna dance?”
Andy had taught dance at Fred Astaire studio before he was a boxing coach. He was a good dancer. The music stopped. We clapped.
“You want to dance another tune?”
“No, thank you. It’s getting late.”
“Yeah, it is our first date,” he said, as he kissed me. Andy was aggressive but not pushy.
I went home. Andy paid for my taxi. He called me when I got home. I wanted to go rowboating in Central Park. He said we should rent the movie The Lonely Guy. Andy felt bad. I was going to Connecticut. I told him not to feel bad. I would be back from Connecticut. It was a visit not a move.
Andy called me when I returned. Many times. Too many times. Andy called from work. Now he was a trader. He traded at least fifteen stocks on each message he’d leave on my machine. The messages were long. It took a very long time when I beeped in.
Finally we talked. We made plans for Sunday. As we were about to hang up, he got a call-waiting beep.
“Damn, I know who this is and I don’t want to talk to her,” he said.
“The ex-fiancée from Paris?” I asked.
“No, someone else. Forget it. Look, call me tomorrow.”
I was getting a headache. This wasn’t so much fun anymore. “I can’t call you tomorrow,” I said, “but I’ll talk to you early on Sunday.”
I called him Sunday. His machine said it was Friday night at eight-thirty and he’d be back in half an hour. Andy called me Monday. Apologetic. He thought the plans were tentative. Could we try again?
I was tentative.
He called a bunch of times over the next ten days. We made plans for Saturday. Definite plans. I was to call him from my parents’ home upstate and tell him what time I’d be back in the city. That morning I called in to my machine.
“Hi. It’s Andy. I’m sick. I’m really, really sick and I won’t be able to make it tonight. But call me.”
I did. His machine said it was Friday night at eight-thirty and he was out.
“Gee, I’m sorry you’re sick,” I told his machine. “Maybe you went out to get some medicine or something.”
I called him again that night when I got back to the city. His machine still said it was Friday night at eight-thirty and he was out. I wondered where?
I’ve never spoken to Andy Ackerman again so I don’t know. However, several days later I wondered if perhaps he had died or something, death being the only really good excuse under the circumstances. I called his machine. It said it was Friday night at eight-thirty, and anyone who wanted to hang out at his apartment could show up at midnight.
I didn’t go.
7
Roman Holiday
My Birthday
Gramercy Park, NYC 1991
Second Avenue. A rainy night. A night to remember. But more on that later.
His name was Roman. I had met him at the 86th Street bus stop a few weeks earlier. My scene partner from acting class was paying me forty dollars to feed his cats for a few days while he went up to Syracuse to see his girlfriend play Blanche in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire. I was waiting for the bus to take me across town, back to the Bohemian familiarity of the Upper West Side, when I heard someone talk to me. His friends talked to me first. His head was down. When he looked up I thought he was one of the cutest guys I’d ever seen.
I think he just asked me out on a dare. But when I got his message about a date, I immediately said yes. He was fairly new to the city. A stockbroker, a Yale grad. He’d gone to Yale on a soccer scholarship, stopped playing and wound up getting a great job on Wall Street. We would go all over New York. I showed him the city.
“Where would you like to go, young lady?” I got to pick the places and he got to pay. He set up the arrangement. I rather liked it. I’d go to Bloomingdale’s and buy clothes to wear just for my dates with Roman. I remember a pair of short wide orange palazzo pants with a matching sash. I wore it with white pumps and a long-sleeved white tee. I thought it very chic. So did Roman. He was enamored of me. I was his first New York City girl. And Jewish to boot. And he wasn’t. And it wasn’t an issue, because he wasn’t someone Jewish or Not Jewish. He was Roman. And that was perfect. However, he was still an East Sider, something bigger for me to overcome, but I was working on it.
The first night we went out, he told the waitress in Little Italy we were going to fly to Toronto for dessert. He knew a place that made great cannolis. I was wearing a purple scarf my friend, Fred, had brought back for me from Spain. Roman said it became a prop for me. A third hand. He thought it exciting that I was an actress. I thought it exciting that he made a living. That he was sensitive with a sincere edge. That he had big green eyes and wavy brown hair, and a voice that threaded together so many pieces of what the world had to offer.
“I
