Adam's Rib

I tried to quit last week but I was too addicted and so it was through a haze of cigarette smoke that I first saw her, walking into the room in a dangerously short red dress, her hair all wind-tossed and the color of an expensive Cuban cigar, her eyes the color of the thunderclouds outside, and I thought to myself that she was what God had in mind when he created women from the rib of man, maybe she had come from my rib in some cosmic sense, maybe she was mine, maybe I could have her, look she’s coming closer now and the smoke from my guilt-tripping cigarette is dissipating around her perfect body and she’s so close maybe she’ll notice me oh God do I have something in my teeth maybe I shouldn’t smile just hold the cigarette behind your back so she won’t see; but she’s gone now, passed through the haze and into the next room without so much as a glance my direction, leaving me alone with a cancer stick and my fourth shot of something that burned. I stuck the cigarette between my lips and placed my hands on either side of my torso. It didn’t feel like any of my ribs were missing.

“Lost something?” The bartender was conspicuously fat and he sweated more than any other human I’d met, I could see the growing wet stains under his arms and down his sternum, I wondered if he had all his ribs or if one of them was at his apartment, worrying about when he’d be home, sitting with his cold dinner at the table. I worried for the fourth button of his plaid shirt that looked like it was keeping Noah’s flood at bay. I took another drag, I didn’t understand what he meant, but he nodded at my hands that were still at my sides. He thought I’d misplaced my wallet or keys.

“No,” I said, getting up from the barstool and leaving my half-finished glass with him and walking to the pool table even though I didn’t know anyone playing. With any luck, they’d think I was a drunken loser and let me alone to pretend I was watching them.

“Get away from our game, fag,” one of them said, poking at me with his cue, maybe my luck had left on the hem of her dress. This man was tall, almost as tall as I was, but with perfectly shabby blond hair, not a long and tangled red mop. I was skinnier than he was, I was skinnier than most, but I figured I could have taken him if I’d wanted to, but then again I wasn’t really the fighting kind of guy. Cigarette stuck in the corner of my mouth again I put up my hands, a sign of surrender, a white flag, and backed off, thinking that if I didn’t have the nerve to stand my ground at a pool game there was no way I’d actively make an effort to go look for her, no matter how much I couldn’t get her out of my head.

I backed into something slight and fragile and hiccoughed I was in such a state of shock; the cigarette dropped out of my mouth and I left it on the ground, it occurred to me I might be drunk. She had found me all on her own, but had she meant to? I turned around and steadied myself by holding onto her shoulders, so far beneath my own, they were so smooth and warm and I didn’t want to let go so I didn’t.

“Gosh, I’m sorry,” I said like I had been the one to bump into her. Had I been?

“It’s okay,” she said and I wanted to ask her something just to hear her voice again.

“What’s your favorite kind of flavor?” That hadn’t come out right I thought I’d try again, “Ice cream, I mean. Your favorite flavor of ice cream.” She looked confused, I thought I’d made myself clear, but maybe I should try again, “You know, ice cream….”

“Strawberry, but why do you want to know?”

Of course it was strawberry. I should have known it was strawberry. Red and tangy and sweet and perfectly juicy.

“Are you saying I’m juicy?” she asked, I must have said that last part out loud.

“Are you?” I asked. She looked like she didn’t know whether to laugh or slap me, I thought she could have done both, but I was glad she stuck with the first one.

“I’m Annabelle.”

“Annabelle,” I felt it had to be said again, it was so pretty. “Anna. Belle. Beautiful Anna. Does belle mean beautiful?” I was forgetting my high school French but she nodded, my trivia-memory brain cells weren’t all dead yet, maybe I needed another drink. “In 1986, Bill Buckner let that ball go through his legs at the Mets Sox game, you know,” I thought she should if she didn’t already.

“The bastard,” she said, and she had the loveliest smile I think I’d ever seen, I smiled back because she knew what I was talking about, women who are sexy and know their sports history are in short supply these days. “You’re drunk.”

“I’m Matt.”

“Drunk Matt.”

“No, just Matt.” Some part of me wanted to tell her my last name, it was Fletcher, but then I thought that wouldn’t be fair, because I didn’t know hers, but I asked her, in my gentlemanly manner, “Would you like to sit and have a drink with me?”

“I don’t think so,” she said, I was horrified to feel my throat close up a little bit.

“Why not?” Even in my own head I sounded like a four-year-old whose parents wouldn’t get him the extra-big candy bar at the grocery store.

“One more drink would put you over the edge from endearingly out of your mind to disturbingly out of your mind.” She’d left a loophole.

“Will you stay and talk to me if I don’t have another drink?” I tossed some hair out of my eyes and hoped I didn’t look like too much of a fool, she wasn’t to type to be around fools, I could tell by her shoes and the way she walked.

“It’s actually kind of loud in here, do you want to go across the street to the park or something?”

I thought for a moment that maybe this entire thing was an alcohol-induced hallucination and maybe she wasn’t here, maybe she never existed, that’s why the barman was looking at me so oddly, maybe the barman wasn’t even real, maybe I wasn’t here –

“Matt? Did you hear me?”

She was still there in all her glorious beauty, looking up at me from beneath thick, dark lashes, her lips were painted a shade darker than her dress and they were full and plump and slightly parted, my mind was becoming a romance novel despite my best intentions.

“That sounds great,” I managed to say.

We made it out of the pub with little trouble, though the bartender frustratingly wanted to be paid, so I had to pause to take out my wallet and shove a few bills his way before Annabelle and I could escape to the cool air of the late evening. The rain had stopped about an hour ago and a swift wind had carried the overhanging clouds away to the East; the stars were backlit pinpricks in the swath of the night sky. It was cold I offered her my work blazer she took it. Goose bumps erupted over my arms and chest, my button-down was thin and I didn’t have another shirt under it, but I didn’t care she was even sexier in my jacket. Something I wore by my ribs was touching hers.

There were no streetlamps deep in the park you weren’t supposed to go there at night but it’s where she was heading and I wasn’t going to argue, that’s rule no. 1 of How To Deal With Goddess-Like Women 101. Follow and don’t argue, they’ll just keep going their own direction whether you’re behind them or not, you’re disposable baggage. She found a bench on the side of the paved path, she must have known it was there from before because I couldn’t see it hiding behind night’s cloak before she pointed it out.

“So what do you do, Matt?” she asked and all I could hear for a moment was her voicing my name, she hadn’t forgotten it, I was elated.

“Oh, uh, I teach. English.”

“Where?”

“Right down the street, actually. At the University.” I couldn’t see her face I couldn’t read her reaction I didn’t know whether to be proud or ashamed of my job.

“I wanted to be an English major once.” I could hear wistfulness in her voice now, I decided I could be confident.

“I enjoy teaching it a lot. What did you end up doing?”

“Oh,” she said noncommittally, “a little of this, a little of that.”

“Vague.”

“Drunk.” She had me there. There was a pause in the conversation because I couldn’t think of a comeback or a question so I tried to make out our surroundings. I didn’t come here much despite the fact it was so close to my work and my apartment, piece of crap lodging that it was, but I thought I recognized the shady cluster of trees over to my right. If I was right there should have been a memorial stone bench just over… yep, there it was so this was the courtyard area dedicated to the Kensington family, didn’t one of the youngest sons just die a few weeks ago, I don’t watch local news much it depresses me.

“What’re we doing here?” I asked Annabelle.

“Well, Matt, when a man and a woman love each other very much….”

“I mean here. In the park.” Silly girl.

“We’re sitting on a bench.” I couldn’t tell if she was being flirtatious or if she was just annoyed, I was starting to feel tired and I was going to need a bathroom soon. A thought flitted through my mind – I think I was starting to sober a little – that maybe something wasn’t exactly right.

“Wait, no, seriously, why did you bring me here? To Kensington Square, I mean. Wasn’t I the one coming onto you?” Genuine confusion expressed. Anomaly in men occurring only when inebriated.

“You know a guy named Frank Shulman, right?” The dame wasn’t making sense or at least wasn’t answering my question.

“Now you’re scaring me. Yet you’re still sexy and in my jacket. Maybe I should get that back.”

“I just need to know what you know about him.”

“I… uh….” Truth was, I really didn’t know much about the man. I tried to run my fingers through my hair but I go caught in a tangle I extracted my fingers as elegantly as I could and just smoothed down the curls. I mowed Mr. Shulman’s expanse of lawn every Saturday evening and he paid me well I guess he liked to keep good appearances I didn’t blame him. Being a professor doesn’t pay much, so this was just a way for me to get a little extra cash. I couldn’t see what Annabelle wanted. “He likes a mowed lawn,” I came up with.

“Two weeks ago when you went to work for him an abnormally tall man – he’s probably about your height, come to think of it – he came to the front door do you remember that?” she asked, turning oddly intense and looking straight into my eyes like maybe she could read something there though the words were blurred by alcohol. I’ve been thinking for some time now that maybe I’m going senile a little early I’m only thirty-eight but I honestly think I might be losing my memory, I can’t even remember what I had for lunch yesterday; so imagine my surprise when a sudden vivid image shot into my mind.

“Was he wearing a weird bowler hat? Looked like he should have been in the 1940’s?” I asked, her eyes lit up and I was so damn proud of myself.

“That’s the guy. Now, Matt,” she put her hand on my forearm, “this is really important, what you say right now.” I nodded with as much sincere understanding as I could while praying harder than I ever had for her not to remove her hand. “Do you remember anything else about that night? That man in the hat or Mr. Shulman or anything?”

I wondered for a second if I should be asking why she wanted to know, was I under any sort of employee-employer contract or something I couldn’t be sure, but she wanted this so much and there was that one thing….

“Mr. Shulman paid me himself that night, actually,” I said. “Usually it’s his henchman or something, Henri, but Shulman came out of the side door as I was heading for the servants’ house and shook my hand himself, sweaty as I was, and paid me in cash. A little bit more than usual, come to think of it. I guess I didn’t think much of it because I’d been working for him for exactly one year that night and I thought maybe he was being sentimental or something, but apparently not…?” I thought a little too late that maybe he’d paid me more so I wouldn’t do exactly what I was doing now, but… whatever.

Annabelle nodded and smiled appreciatively and squeezed my arm and I could have made it a bright summer day with a wave of my hand with birds and daffodils and squirrels chasing each other all over the place. But I kept it in my lap because she still hadn’t let go of my arm and I wasn’t going to initiate that.

“Okay Matt, um…. You’re going to work for him again tomorrow, right?”

“Is tomorrow really Saturday?”

“Yes.”

“Then yes.”

“All right.” She paused to think for a moment her eyebrows drew together and she ran the hand that wasn’t holding onto me through her hair, much more gracefully than I had through mine. She took a deep breath, “Matt, this is all going to seem a little strange to you – ”

“Already does, don’t worry about it.” She laughed at that.

“Well if you could just… be subtle about it of course, but if you could peek in some windows or even get in the house for some reason and poke around, but don’t get them suspicious. The man with the hat should be there again tomorrow night and, well, all the information I could get about why he’s there, exactly, would be very valuable. Oh! That reminds me,” she patted my arm, the red-painted nails showing from beneath the huge cuffs of my jacket, “you’ll be paid for this.” I could feel my ears perking up. “Liberally.”

“I, uh, I didn’t even think of that, but yeah, thanks,” I stammered sounding like an idiot. “Do I get to know, you know, why exactly you need me to do this?”

“It’s… personal? Kind of a need-to-know basis, I suppose.” She was tensing up, becoming defensive, I wanted her openness back.

“Totally understood” I said, smiling, she looked at me and smiled back. We stayed like that for a while, I’m not sure how long, she was the one who broke it but I like to think there was a small hint of regret in those gray eyes.

“If you could come back here tomorrow night and tell me what you saw – ”

“Say no more, your wish is my command,” I proclaimed perhaps a little too loudly.

She stood and I was face-to-face with those gorgeous, toned legs for a prolonged moment before it occurred to me to stand as well; she handed me my jacket and brushed her hair back with her hands.

“Do you have a pen with you?” she asked abruptly; I reached into my breast pocket, there was a red correcting pen there. She took it and grabbed my hand, turning it palm-upwards; my breath hitched I hoped she didn’t notice. She wrote her phone number on my skin it looked like I had bled it out. “In case of an emergency,” she explained, tucking the pen back in my shirt pocket for me. She splayed her hand on my chest, “Thank you, Matt, for doing this.” Her eyes were downcast but I could see a grateful smile on her lips.

“You’re, uh, you’re welcome,” my voice was gruffer than I wanted it to be; she took her hand away and I ached somewhere inside.

“Here tomorrow night, say nine o’clock?” she asked, walked slowly backwards away from me, I nodded.

“Yeah,” lamely, with a small wave of my hand. She winked, turned around and was gone.

I stood there for an undeterminable amount of time, watching the place where she’d been, blazer over one arm and my other hand in my pants pocket. Her legs, she had amazing legs, I wondered how they’d feel under my hands, around my waist, I needed a cigarette. I reached into the pocket of my jacket, the smokes were gone.

“Minx,” I growled under my breath, I had another pack at home so I walked there.

To be continued…