LIFE
First Kiss
It’s just a drink — it doesn’t mean anything
I get off the A-train at 86th and Central Park West and climb the steps to the street. It’s three blocks to the address on a piece of paper I’m holding in my hand. My breath is coming fast. I try to quiet the butterflies with reassuring, grown-up wisdom: It’s just a drink, just two friends getting together.
Half an hour, one drink. Then I’ll tell him it’s time to leave for the concert. I don’t want to be late, I’ll say. I don’t want to miss Seals and Crofts performing one of my favorites, The Boy Down the Road.
The late spring sun spreads a peachy glow over the flowering trees in the park. I turn down 89th Street, pausing to allow enough room for two riders on horseback to nudge their mounts around a taxi waiting at the curb.
When Michael told me he had tickets to see Seals and Crofts at Carnegie Hall, my heart bounced.
“I’ve got tickets, too!” I told him.
“First show or second?”
“Early show, the seven o’clock.”
His face fell. “I’m going to the ten. Wow, what a coincidence, though.”
We were at Hazard Powder Company again. Since we’d met at that bar a few weeks before, I’d found excuses to part from Patti and Ellen on their nightly crawls so I could stop in and ask the bartender if he’d seen Michael that night. If the answer was, “Not yet,” I would linger at the bar and order a drink, hoping he might show up and talking up the bartender to discourage men with roving eyes.
So far, Michael had been there almost every time. When he failed to appear, the sharp stab of disappointment came as a surprise. I liked him, that was clear. And I was pretty sure he liked me. But I had a boyfriend. The truck driver, such as he was. Our dates were simple: he’d show up at the Queens apartment, hinting that Patti and Ellen should make themselves scarce so we could commandeer the single bedroom. They’d always comply. The same rules applied to us all.
Besides, Michael had a girlfriend. Flora or Fauna or whatever her name was. It didn’t matter. We were friends, just having a few laughs and a few drinks, and the occasional transaction, like the lid of Acapulco Gold he’d scored for me. Still, I thought about him every day. While I was at work, or when my roommates and I were getting ready for a night on the town. Tiring of my constant wheedling to detour over to Hazard, they’d started shooing me off on my own.
“Saturday May twenty-third. Stop by my apartment and we’ll have a drink before you go to the early show,” Michael said then, and handed me a scrap of paper with his address. No phone number. My heart sank a little. Even though neither of us was free, I wanted to be able to call him.
Drinks on the twenty-third, it’s a date.
Now, in Michael’s apartment, two cats, one orange, one gray, wind themselves around our ankles as we sit with our drinks on the low platform bed covered with pillows. Behind us is a wall of cork tiles, fashioned into giant bulletin board and covered with Grateful Dead posters, restaurant receipts, and a welter of photos, some with their edges curled. Trees and street signs. Homeless people on the sidewalk. Little kids with their faces alight.
“You take these photos?” I ask. He nods, then gets up and grabs his camera and quickly snaps a picture. “Hey!” I yelp, laughing. He grins. “I’m just capturing life in the city,” he says, and turns the lens toward the gray cat loudly lapping water from a bowl on the floor.
“Who’s this?” I ask, pointing to a larger photo tacked to the cork board with push pins. The black and white print shows a young woman, probably still in her teens, with no top on. She is outdoors, in a park or at a pool, maybe, leaning on her elbows and laughing up at the photographer.
“That’s my best friend’s girlfriend,” he says. “Well, used to be girlfriend. She’s moved on.”
“Why do you have this picture on your wall?”
“I stole it from him,” Michael says. “As a joke.”
I ponder this. “Does he know you have it?”
Michael hesitates. “Sure. Yeah, he knows.”
It’s getting late. I don’t want to leave, but I cringe at the prospect of climbing over a row of knees in a darkened theater. “I should get going.”
Michael takes the empty glass from my hand. My eyes lock on the bracelet, the one that caught my eye the first night we met. Burnished silver leaves wind around the sinews on his wrist. The air between us stands still. After half a beat, he leans in for a kiss. His lips are pillowy and sweet, like milk with a hint of caramel. I fall into the kiss, my hand on his chest. And then I pull myself away.
“I have a boyfriend,” I say.
“I have a girlfriend,” he says.
“Oh yeah, Fern.”
“Her name is Lise.”
“Yeah. So, we’re friends. Enjoying a drink. And a coincidence. We like the same artists.”
“We like kissing. Another coincidence.”
I can feel the blush creeping up my neck, and smile a little as I turn away, my pulse pounding.
“Have fun at Seals and Crofts.”
“No, you have fun at Seals and Crofts.”
He hands me my raincoat and walks me to the top of the stairs. The door to the apartment at the end of the short hallway is ajar, and I can hear scraps of conversation, a man and a woman, probably making dinner. A voice comes through the open doorway.
“Hey Mikey, we’re eating Italian tonight. Want to come over?”
A dark haired, blue-eyed, lantern-jawed hunk sticks his head out the door. He sees me and registers surprise before looking back at Michael, one eyebrow cocked.
“Craig, this is Donna. Donna, Craig. Pat’s inside. Apparently cooking Italian tonight.”
“Nice to meet you, Craig. Gotta fly.”
I start down the stairs, flustered now, and torn. I want to stay and have Italian with the neighbors. I want to return to Michael’s apartment and keep talking, occasionally stroking the cinnamon-colored cat curled up on the daybed.
Out on the street, my body is quaking as if there’s a chill in the air. It almost feels like fear, except I’m not afraid.
