A Lady's Man

Saliva catapults through her curtained piglet lips, then lands on warm spinach pie.

What a shame.

Our pork roast spread is contaminated by my date’s devotion.

A white overhead light flickers on.

The sixth sense a man acquires after enough time with women perks up too.

She’s caramelized herself twice in the bathroom mirror.

She’s sugarcoated a dozen more times in the taxi cab.

She’s glazed the apples of her cheeks pink five times over.

I see it all under the heavy fluorescent light.

“I really enjoyed tonight with you, John. You’re much kinder than I’d expect a Wall Street financier to be.”

She jabs at the sublime elk meat.

“Oo! Oo! I got a good one.”

Her head jerks up.

“Just wait for this. How do bankers stay cool?”

“How?”

“They work in liquid assets!!”

The counterfeit good chuckles, huffing meaty breath across the velvet booth like it’s just made a joke.

I give the waiter—a fine, coily-haired fellow—a wink as I rub the women's sandpaper hand in phony assurance.

I slip two unweathered hundreds under my porcelain dinner plate.

I leave my date with a pomegranate chocolate tart and the generosity of my time.

And I go home.

The next evening, my Mommy mists my velvet vest with sandalwood cologne.

“I pinky promise this time,” she says.

“If this next woman for you, I got no more.”

No more spilling my false congeniality over Beef Wellington and breaded pork chops.

I’m listening.

Her thumb cups the apple of my sagging cheek.

“Got you!” she teases.

My limousine has arrived.

I halfheartedly wipe away the mark of my mommy's lipstick with a plaid handkerchief, then tell my driver, “Take me to the usual.”

“No problem, sir,” he responds.

As we pull out, my eyes latch onto my mommy's sorry frame. She wheels herself out the front door, her head bobbing, her wrinkled body jiggling over the limestone street.

“I love you, baby,” she bellows.

I can’t help but chuckle at her floundering about.

She's littered her love all over my street.

“Change in plans,” I tell the driver. “Take me away.”

“Sir, am I mistaken? Your mother’s booked your usual—the rooftop table for two at Lenny’s Supper Lounge. They’re expecting—”

“You heard me,” I say. “Now.”

“No problem, sir,” he responds.

As the car jerks right off the main road, I pop the cork on a bottle of complimentary champagne and empty it over my gelled hair. The alcohol trickles through my freshly pressed suit and seeps into the soles of my burgundy loafers.

“Everything good back there, sir?” my driver asks.

“Never better.”

The champagne settles sweetly. I raise my glass to my misadventured women.

“I didn’t ask to be born such a ladies’ man.”

In the rearview mirror, my mother’s saffron sleeve flips and flutters in the evening wind, as if gathering the rhythm to lift up and fly.

“Don’t forget what I’ve taught you, my handsome angel! Remember to be polite, darling!”

I raise my glass to her oblivion.

Rolling down the window, I shout, “Cheers, Mother!” to the wretched darling chasing the exhaust of my black limousine.

How typical.

I still inventory them—laughs, knees, orders—desire moving like money: passed, counted, untouched, leaving nothing behind except the certainty that I remain intact, unspent, and bored.

Women and their pathetic desperation for that thing they yearn so deeply for—love.

Later I ask “Jeffery?”

The man with the absence of hair and the wheel of the car in his palm responds.

“Yes, sir?”

“Do you like Beef Wellington? Pork chops?” My spine flinches at the suggestion.

“I’m a vegan. Thanks for the offer, though, sir,” he responds.

“Oh. No worries. I understand.”

We ride on in silence. He hums to the melody of Frank Sinatra’s My Way. The champagne feels frustratingly sticky on my skin, and it’s dried crusty in my hair. Pieces awkwardly stick up in all directions.

“How about sweet potatoes?” I eventually spit out. “Do you like sweet potatoes?”

I’m internally repulsed. I can visualize his degrading sympathy.

Yet he responds instinctively and in a rather sing-song pitch.

“How’d you know, John? Sweet potatoes are my favorite.”

“Lucky guess,” I say, chuckling as we ride down a dirt road away from the eyes of the phony models plastered on billboards.

The silence thickens. The driver’s humming tapers off, replaced by the soft rasp of his breath through his nose. I become acutely aware of the space between us—the glass partition, the leather seats, the air we’re sharing unwillingly.

“You know,” he says, clearing his throat, “my partner hates driving at night. Says it makes the city look lonely.”

I picture a man—faceless, reasonable—waiting in a modest kitchen, sweet potatoes cooling on a plate. I imagine the driver’s hands rinsed clean at a sink, his sleeves rolled, his laughter unguarded. The image irritates me. I press my tongue to the back of my teeth.

“Lonely?” I repeat. “This city?” I gesture vaguely at the skyline bleeding neon. “Hardly.”

He chuckles, easy. “Guess it depends on who you’re with.”

My collar itches. I loosen it, then tighten it—too much collarbone feels indecent. It becomes awfully juvenile to be contemplating the state of my disheveled suit considering my status. I pinch and twist my skin. The skin of a sticky, absurd man now drowning in his own cologne.

“What I meant was,” I say quickly, “some people mistake noise for company.”

He nods. “Yeah. Some do.”

The car halts at a red light. I reach into my jacket and fumble through white pills before pulling out my wallet. It’s bursting at the seams. I slide two bills forward through the partition slot.

“You don’t have to—”

“I know,” I cut in. “But I want to. For the inconvenience.”

I wink.

I watch my reflection ghost across the windowpane—hair stiff, smile crooked, eyes searching for something to recoil from.

Nothing obliges.

The vast city stretches on, indifferent to the decrepit state of its largest and most successful financier.

What a shame.