I wake you?” I ask, tiptoeing to kiss his cheek, which is barely covered with stubble.
“It’s okay.” He yawns and pads to the kitchen area, where he fills a glass from the Poland Spring cooler that’s jammed into the corner between the stove and fridge.
“How was last night?”
“Exhausting. A bunch of dowdy East Side dowagers and their philandering husbands. A martini bar and beef carpaccio, even though carpaccio’s been over for years.”
“What about martinis?”
“With this crowd they’re always in.”
I should mention that Will works for Eat Drink Or Be Married, a Manhattan caterer. He makes excellent money waitering at private events like weddings and charity dinners. Most of the guests are high profile, and sometimes he’s privy to great celebrity dirt, which I find fascinating.
“Listen, Trace, I know we’re supposed to go to your friend’s party tonight, but I have to work.”
“What?” Stabbing disappointment. “But we’ve been planning this for weeks! It’s Raphael’s thirtieth birthday.”
I have to wait for Will to drain the full glass of water, something he does eight times a day, before he says, “I know, and I had asked Milos to let me have off tonight, but he got into a bind. Jason fell at the rink yesterday and twisted his ankle.”
Jason, one of the other waiters, happens to be Jason Kenyon, the former Olympic figure skater. I’m not that big on following sports, but even I’ve heard of him—I think he got a bronze medal a few years ago in Japan. Now he’s trying to make it as an actor here in New York, and he must be as broke as anyone else, because he’s willing to wear a Nehru jacket while lugging monstrous trays around and clearing away rich people’s plates. Not that it isn’t worth it. They make twenty bucks an hour, plus tips.
“Can’t Milos find somebody else to fill in?” I ask.
“He doesn’t want just anyone. It’s a big celebrity wedding out in the Hamptons, and he only wants a certain quality of waiter there.”
“Flattering for you, but where does that leave me?”
Will puts his glass in the sink, then leans over and kisses my cheek. “Sorry, Trace.”
I pout, then ask, “Which celebrity?”
“I can’t say.”
“You can’t say?” I gape at him—or rather, his back, since he’s retreated to the other side of the room. I follow him. “Not even to me?”
“I’m sworn to absolute secrecy,” he says blandly, removing his long-sleeved thermal T-shirt and tossing it into a nearby laundry basket. “You’ll know tomorrow, though. It’ll be in all the papers.”
“So tell me now. I’m dying to know.”
“I can’t. Look, I don’t even know exactly where the wedding is going to be held. They don’t want anyone calling the press with the details. I’m supposed to give a code word to the car service driver who picks me up at the train station, and then he’ll take me there. That’s how undercover this whole thing is.”
Pissed off at this whole ridiculous secret agent scene, I say, “Christ, Will, what do you think I’m going to do, tip off Page Six?”
He laughs, taking off his flannel boxers. “You’ll know tomorrow.”
“Along with the rest of the world,” I grumble, watching him reach for the laundry basket again.
Unlike me, he’s extremely comfortable naked. I could never walk around without clothes in front of anyone, even Will. Especially not Will. I’d be too conscious of him watching my thighs doing their Jell-O dance and my boobs swinging somewhere around my belly button. Then again, even if I had a perfect body, I don’t think I could ever parade around nude.
Although everyone says that changes when you have a baby. According to my sister Mary Beth, who’s had two, giving birth pretty much entails lying spread-eagled in some room with total strangers regularly coming along to stick their hands into your crotch up to their elbows. She says you don’t even care who sees you naked after that. It must be true, because Mary Beth just joined a health club and started getting massages and taking steams. This from a girl whose mother had to write her a permanent excuse to get out of showers after fifth-grade gym because she was so traumatized by public nudity.
Naturally, I was traumatized about it, too. But by the time I hit fifth grade, my mother had already gone through my three brothers, who were so wanton that they would pull down their pants in front of me and my friends, bend over and fart for fun. So when I tried working the modesty angle for the gym shower excuse, my mother was in no mood to coddle. “You don’t want to take a shower in front of everyone? Get over it!” was pretty much her attitude with me.
“Anyway, I really need the money,” Will informs me. “I’m leaving in a few weeks, and I won’t be making much over the summer.”
“I thought they pay you.”
“They do, but it’s a fraction of what I get with Milos. I’m going to take a shower.” Will heads for the bathroom. “Then we’ll go out and get breakfast.”
“Lunch,” I amend, pulling out a cigarette and my lighter.
“Whatever. Hey, you know what? Could you not smoke in here?”
I pause with the butt midway to my mouth. “Why not?”
“It bothers Nerissa. She says her clothes smell like smoke whenever you’ve been here.”
“Oh.” I slowly put the cigarette back into the pack, trying to think of something to say to that.
I don’t have to. He closes the door behind him.
No more smoking at Will’s place?
Dismayed at this turn of events, I drift over to the couch and sit, grabbing a magazine from the pile on the floor. Entertainment Weekly. Will subscribes. I flip through it absently, stewing. It’s not that Nerissa doesn’t have a right to not smell like secondhand smoke. I understand where she’s coming from. But I feel vaguely unsettled and, I guess, embarrassed. Like I have this dirty, disgusting habit that’s infringing on other people’s lives.
Which I suppose is the truth, but Will never seemed to mind me smoking at his place before. Sometimes he even bums cigarettes from me when we’re out, and he says that if he weren’t a vocalist, he would definitely be a smoker.
There’s a part of me—granted, an irrational part—that wonders why Will didn’t stick up for me to his roommate. He could have told Nerissa that I can smoke in their apartment if I want to, and that she’ll just have to deal. After all, he moved in first. His name is on the lease, not hers. The more aggravated I get thinking about it, the more I want a cigarette.
I’m not one of those girls who started smoking behind the bleachers in junior high, or grew up in a smoker household. In my family, only my sister’s soon-to-be-ex-husband Vinnie and my grandfather smoke butts, and my grandfather’s had lung cancer for almost a year.
You’d
