What Men Want

I smiled briefly, to trivialize the compliment, not knowing how else to handle it. He was right about the picture. I photographed like a deer caught in the headlights.

“Is this where you usually hang out after work?” I said, trying to gloss over my discomfort. He leaned over to whisper in my ear.

“If I can’t actually slip behind the velvet curtains.”

I turned back to him and studied him briefly—noting the worn jeans teamed with a black cashmere sweater and black leather Pumas. But while I was surveying his outfit, the silky nightgown slipped from my grasp. We nearly collided as we simultaneously kneeled down to get it. He got there first, and handed it to me, amused by my discomfort.

“Thanks,” I said, pulling it back to me. “Nice to see you,” I said, unable to come up with anything better than a platitude. I turned abruptly toward the cashier ready to pay for the nightgown, although at that point I had decided the thing was plain, boring and matronly and that I didn’t want it. I considered telling him to keep away from dressing rooms or he’d be the subject of my next column, but then decided to keep quiet and head off without starting up a dialogue.

“Wait,” he said, reaching out to touch my arm to stop me. “I want to show you something.” He led me over to a designer rack and took out a long, low-cut charcoal-gray silk nightgown with a deeply cut back that was held together with delicate crisscross laces of pale yellow satin. He held it up to me.

“This is the one that will knock your guy’s socks off,” he said with a small smile on his face. To be honest, it was heavenly, beautiful and sexy in an elegant, sophisticated way that nearly made me swoon. If I had seen it I would have grabbed it.

“Hmm,” I said. “Not bad.” He nodded. I looked at the price tag, then shook my head. “Can’t afford it. They must pay more generously at the Trib.”

“A gift from me,” he said, starting to lead me to the cashier with his platinum card in hand. “A peace offering.”

“No thanks,” I said. “I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I was sleeping with the competition.”

“I wouldn’t either. I’m all for the naked truth.”

I looked back at him briefly and then looked away, swiping the nightgown from his hand and hanging it back on the rack. He picked it up again and tossed it over his shoulder.

“Too nice to pass up,” he said. “I’ll buy it for a friend.”

“Lucky girl,” I said, regretting the words just a nanosecond after I said them, knowing how he’d misinterpret them.

He nodded, amused.

“Well, merry Christmas,” I said, scooping up the underwear that I had tried to hide beneath my handbag. I was about to head across the floor to another register to pay.

He pointedly stared at the underwear that was squished up in my fist and narrowed his eyes.

“Lucky guy,” he whispered, then walked off the other way.

Chapter Four

“So where do we have dinner with a mountain man who probably eats grilled roadkill for dinner?” I asked Chris when I got home from Bloomingdale’s.

“Moose?”

“Who else?”

“He’s easy,” Chris said. “He eats meat when he has to, but he prefers vegetarian.”

“Hmm,” I said. I thought of a local health-food restaurant, but then remembered the soy burger that I had there that tasted as if it was made from corrugated paper. Mexican? We could have fajitas with beans and rice and guacamole—and margaritas.

“He does drink,” I said, more as a statement than a question.

“Everything except the worm in the mescal,” Chris said. We agreed to meet at a Mexican restaurant in the Village. Characteristically, Chris and I walked. Since both of us spent our days sitting and didn’t have much time to exercise, we looked forward to a chance to take long walks together. Even when we weren’t talking, we usually felt very much in sync. I knew when he was quiet, he was absorbing things around him, which usually ended up, in one form or another, in one of his ads or TV commercials. There were talking beagles in a commercial for dog food that reminded me of the sad brother and sister up for adoption in the neighborhood pet store. In a commercial for packaged deli meat, Chris incorporated a character with black beady eyes and curly hair who looked like a man who worked in Todaro, our favorite Italian grocery.

“Life is all ad copy,” he said. I knew what he meant. Half of the things I experienced day to day worked into upcoming columns. We walked down First Avenue past Bellevue Hospital and New York University Hospital and then past apartment complexes. Chris thought of what he could use in commercials for pain relievers, while for me, the scenery triggered thoughts of the latest hospital mergers, Medicaid and the best emergency room to go for gunshot wounds.

“When was the last time you saw Moose?”

“I visited him a couple of years ago,” Chris said. “He had just split with his girlfriend and was having a tough time, so we went skiing during the day and drank a lot of beer at night.”

“It must be hard for him to meet the kind of women who’d like the same lifestyle that he does.”

“Just the opposite,” Chris said. “Women love his mountain life—at least for a while. They’re fed up with the big-city bullshit. Land is cheap, you have all the space and quiet that you want, and you only concern yourself with the basics, like survival. You don’t go to four-star restaurants, you don’t go out to Broadway shows. You don’t run down the street and shop at Victoria’s Secret.” (How did he know?) “You’re together a lot at home working on your house or cooking and canning and doing blue-collar stuff, so you find out very fast if you’re compatible.”

“So what happened to his relationship?”

“I guess when the initial fascination faded, she felt cut off and she wasn’t pulling her weight.”

The image of a woman as a member of a dogsled team came to mind. “What do you mean?”

“He wanted to share his life and for Moose that means someone who could help him cut down trees for firewood and build an addition to the house. She liked to cook and help him fix up the house, but that was it.”

“You mean she couldn’t even chop down trees?”

He nodded, laughing.

“He’s liberated—to a fault,” I said.

Chris shrugged. “He has a lot to give, but he hasn’t found a girl who’s big enough to take it.” I thought about Ellen. I hoped that wouldn’t be a big mistake, unless he wanted someone to stand by him to fight with local industry about polluting the air or water.

When we got to the restaurant, neither one of them was there yet so we sat down in a booth and ordered a pitcher of frozen pomegranate margaritas. After sipping half of one, I started to forget about Moose and Ellen.

“We should do this more at home,” I said to Chris. His knees touched mine under the table and he reached down and took my hand.

“You’re wasted already?”

I started to laugh. I spotted Ellen as she walked in, but then wasn’t sure if I was waving at the right girl. Something was different, and then I realized that I was seeing more of her face. The haircut was short and almost boyish, an impossible style for most women, but on Ellen it looked delicate, pixieish and feminine, not to mention that the red color looked richer than I remembered. It framed her face and pale complexion. Ellen is five-four with big blue expressive eyes. She’s almost thirty-three, but could pass for ten years younger. I think it’s because she works mostly indoors, away from the sun. With less hair, her eyes seemed to pop.

“Love the hair,” I said as she took a seat. She smiled.

“I cut it off because I was fed up, but it turns out that everybody likes it. At work they call me Peter Pan.”

Chris poured her a drink and she sat back and sipped it and then shook her head. “I had a day…I’m beginning to doubt—except for present company—that there are any honest, upstanding citizens in the world.”

“There aren’t,” I said flatly. “That’s why we’ll never run out of copy.” Ellen just shook her head.

“What are you working on?” Chris asked her.

“Shabby contractors, bogus long-distance phone charges, car complaints, spoiled dog food, unsafe toys…” She shook her head. “I could go on and on.”

I looked up to see a giant standing next to our table wearing a thick suede jacket. He was bearlike, maybe six foot five, with a beard and brown curly hair.