“I was talking about hypothetical women. As far as you know, I’m a virgin.”
I nearly swallow my tongue in shock. “Wait, are you a virgin?”
He bursts out laughing. “No. I’m not. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you.”
“Well, I’m not either. Is that a disappointment?”
“No. Pushing past that particular barrier has never been a fetish of mine.”
“So you have fetishes?” I can’t help myself.
He chokes. “Hold on a minute.” I hear a rustle and then a door closing. “I’m in my office and I don’t know if I should be talking to you with the door open. Someone might come in at the wrong moment. I don’t know if I have fetishes. I’m pretty sex agnostic, if there is such a thing. Do you have fetishes?
“I don’t know. While I’m not a virgin, I don’t have a lot of experience.” I shrug, but since he can’t see it, I tell him, “Adam, my ex, wasn’t anything to write home about.”
He makes a tsk sound. “I don’t know whether to be glad that Adam was so inept in bed or whether I should find him and punish him for being such a poor representative of the male gender. Your sex life should be fucking spectacular, sweetheart.”
It occurs to me that I’ve never asked him about a wife or girlfriend or anything. I’ve just assumed he is single, but now that seems spectacularly dumb. “When’s the last time you were horizontal with someone, and was it spectacular?”
“I broke it off when it stopped being spectacular.”
I don’t like the kind of sex talk where he admits to having great sex with some other woman.
“Is this your hypothetical woman or some piece you’re currently banging?” I ask, and I can’t keep the snideness out.
“And I don’t love hearing about your past sex life either,” he growls back immediately.
A silence so long that two moon cycles could have taken place passed before either of us says another word.
“I’m afraid,” I finally admit.
“Of what, sweetheart?” He’s no longer growly. Instead he sounds relieved.
“Of everything. You know that. I’m afraid to open the door. I’m afraid of being outside. I’m afraid of talking about your past sex life because I don’t think I could please a man like you.”
He snorts. “What kind of man do you think I am?”
“A really wonderful one,” I say, getting tearful again.
This time the quiet that settles makes me feel prickly and hot.
“I want you,” he says with calmness. “Think about that and forget the rest. I’ll call you when I get to your place tonight.”
I want you.
Those three words ping-pong around my head all afternoon. I manage to pound out a few words on a page, but they look like gibberish and I end up deleting everything.
I ignore the inbox that contains three emails from Daphne, each of them wondering where my next chapter is. I wish I knew. The medications that Dr. Terrance has prescribed sit in a precise row on the edge of my desk. I’m tempted to push them over, right into the wastebasket.
I hate not feeling. It’s almost worse than being anxious. Daphne says my writing is completely toneless when I’m on the drugs, and I end up having to do major revisions on those pages that I do write.
From the middle drawer, I dig out my journal. Even though I didn’t agree with Dr. Terrance’s therapy direction, the small, red, leather-bound notebook has been more helpful than all of the prescriptions and breathing techniques.
It holds the history of the times I’ve left the apartment and how far I got. It took me 108 tries during the first year to open the door and then 74 tries to push the elevator button. That process took about a year and a half. After that, each step took fewer tries, with a lot less time in between each step. I remember the days I spent sitting in the lobby like a statue, getting up and looking out the glass doors and then returning to sit on the chairs.
The doorman at the time was Chris Murphy, a young man who was taking night classes at SUNY. He helped support his mother and his teenaged sister. Chris is now the night doorman. He takes classes during the day because of a new building scholarship. He doesn’t know that the scholarship was made up by Oliver and me.
I trust Chris, but not the new daytime doorman, who always looks at me like I’m a crazy person and makes the winding gesture next to his head when he thinks I’m not looking.
Those glass doors are like mirrors! How can he miss that? But I guess he’s prettier than he is smart.
With the leather journal in hand, I walk back to the door. So it took me 108 tries before. I’m going to beat that this time.
By five o’clock, I’m a sweaty mess, but I feel triumphant. I didn’t get the door opened, but I had my hand on the knob, and I’m going to count that as a success. Dr. Terrance says to celebrate every victory, even the small ones.
While I’m not supposed to open the door for Jake, I still won’t feel attractive or wonderful unless I shower, do my hair, and put on something sexy. Although he can’t see me through the curtains he’s instructed me not to open, I’m going to do everything I can to make this a real date. Because it is. It is a goddamn real date. We’re just not sitting across from each other.
It’s like he’s deployed and we’re having a Skype chat. Maybe later we’ll do something naughty together. A girl can hope.
At precisely fifteen minutes to six o’clock, Jake rings. “I’m on my way.”
“You are so punctual,” I tease.
“I don’t want to keep you waiting,” he says in his warm, honeyed voice.
“So you have my noodles?”
“I’ve got everything you need.” His tone is matter-of-fact despite the innuendo-laden words.
It breaks my heart a little to tell him I can’t open the door. “I tried to open the door and I think it’s going to happen soon, but maybe not tonight. How’re we going to do this?”
“I’m going to sit on your balcony,” he says, as if having dinner with a glass door and closed curtain between two people is an everyday occurrence.
“How?” Do I take a pill and run into the bedroom and wait for him to walk through?
“Your neighbor is letting me look at his balcony. I have to tell you that the security in this building bites.”
“That’s not making me feel better,” I say, and then the full import of his words hits me. Is he going to leap from my neighbor’s balcony onto mine? I rush over to my French doors and peer out. From inside, it’s hard to judge the distance but it appears to be over six feet. I have trouble jumping over a puddle. “How do you know my neighbor?”
“It’s my business to know.” I hear the sound of a car door closing and then the throaty purr of an expensive engine. “The good thing is that before we eat, I’m installing proximity sensors to make your place safer.”
“Won’t you need a power source?” I try to figure out how all of this is going to work. I’ve learned that if I have control over my environment, then I feel safer—unfamiliar things can cause more anxiety. Inside this apartment, I feel safe, but now Jake is introducing new things and new fears.
He doesn’t seem to mind the questions, though, and explains, “It uses a mix of solar energy and a permanent wired source. For now they will run on battery power. If the battery power is turned off by someone, there is enough energy stored from the solar panel to send a signal to our base. That alert will send someone over to check out the intruder right away.”
“I like that.”
“Good. It’s not perfect, but it will be a start.”
“What would be perfect?”
It’s a throwaway question, but his response is not.
“My home is more secure than a bank.”
My heart skips two beats. “I—I—” I stutter because I don’t have a response to that.