150 Pounds Part 9

"Okay, just asking. 'Cause if ya had a backblast I wouldn't judge you for it."

He was eyeing her, his dark eyebrows raised. She realized he was amused, and crossed her arms over her chest. "Can you just keep your eyes on the road, please?"

"Sure will. But bombs away in here, if you must. 'Cause me and Oliver, we don't care. That's how we roll in here."

She had turned her face to the window. She'd started to smile and didn't want him to see.

"Hey, remember that tune, about farts?" he asked. Without warning, he broke into song: "When you're sitting in your Chevy and you feel something heavy, its diarrhea. Diarrhea."

It must have been the early nineties, because her mother had that short haircut and she was smiling, looking back at Alexis in the silver Mercedes Alexis's parents had had for two years before trading it in for something newer. And Mark was next to her, they'd just picked him up from football practice because he still had his cleats on, and they were driving to the boat that would take them to Nantucket, where they had a house they went to every summer. Her mother looked radiant, her strawberry-blond hair tucked behind her ears, her long model legs and still-good figure stretched out in the seat. Alexis and Mark were trying to come up with more verses for the diarrhea song, and she'd won, even after their parents had threatened twice to turn the car around and head home if they continued to sing those dirty lyrics, but they'd known, of course, as all children do, that their parents were just bluffing.

"No, I don't," she said now jaggedly, still turned to the window. He seemed to not hear the anger and sadness in her voice, or was ignoring it.

"Oh, man, I used to know all the verses and everything," he said. He shifted from third gear to second to turn the corner, and she watched the muscles in his chest flex. "When you're sliding into first, and you feel something burst ... Not even that one? Or the cla.s.sic, when you're on the seat for hours and it doesn't smell like flowers, diarrhea."

"No!" she shouted. "I don't know that song and I don't want to sing it with you, okay?"

He looked sheepish. "Sorry," he said. "Sometimes I get carried away."

They were stopped at a red light. A motorcycle pulled up next to them, its engine idling. They pa.s.sed an Irish bar, plants hanging from above its doorway, people huddled smoking around the entrance. He turned to look at her.

"Okay, change of subject. So what do you do with yourself when you're not acting as a weapon of self-destruction, Alexis Allbright? I'm down. So what's your job? Let me guess. You're a clothing designer."

"I wish. Guess again."

"Model?"

"Ha! Not nearly tall enough. My mom was, though. So you're getting warm."

"Well, I know you're not a chef. Not yet, anyway."

She glared at him.

"Okay, I give up."

She shifted around in her seat. Lowered the pa.s.senger-side mirror down. Took out a tube of bright red Chanel lipstick from her purse and swiped it over her lips. "I run a blog for women," she said, a note of pride creeping into her voice. "It's called Skinny Chick."

Noah laughed. "Blunt. I like it."

"Do you know anything about blogs?" she asked. Now they were on her turf. She loved talking about her work. She was d.a.m.n good at it. Dogs, babies, ice-cream sandwiches-these all fell into the "No Interest" category. The Internet was home territory.

"Not a d.a.m.n thing," he said. "And by the way, I should probably ask you where you live. As much as I enjoy driving around with you."

"Oh, right," Alexis said. "I live right above the Container Store."

"The what store?"

"Don't tell me you've never heard of it. Where are you from, a barn?"

"Close. I was doing the biking thing before going to the Culinary Inst.i.tute."

"Biking as in ... biking? Motorcycling?"

"No, the first one. The less cool, less-need-for-a-handlebar-mustache one. You know, two wheels, open road, the whole bit."

"Oh! So you were doing this professionally? Like getting paid to race?"

"Yes, ma'am." Every time he talked he took his eyes off the slick, gleaming road and glanced over at her, like he was somehow ... absorbing her.

"Why'd you leave?" she asked.

"I was wanted for a bank murder and had to leave the state."

"Oh."

"I'm kidding!" he said, throwing his head back and laughing. "You should have seen your face. I really left to train to be a chef. I'll tell you all about it later. I want to hear more about this Skinny Chick blog. I want to know more about you, Alexis Allbright."

So she told him, and their voices ran parallel to the silence they'd shared inside the cafeteria. Their words felt tangible and filled the car and floated out the top of the roof and into the cloudy sky and upward, up and up, and she forgot about the pulsing pain in her finger from the st.i.tches and the guilt over the ice-cream sandwiches she'd scarfed down.

She wasn't someone who naturally divulged aspects of her life, but in the darkness of Noah's car, surrounded by the smell of dog, the stories poured out of her mouth: how she'd worked her whole life, thinking she'd be a lawyer, how her father had pushed her into the law office where she interned and clerked every summer break in Greenwich, how she'd moved in with Billy and taken the LSATs and burned through night after night studying at the Forty-second Street library, then taking the bus home, staring out the window and wondering what the h.e.l.l she was doing with her life, wondering why she was doing so well and yet felt so empty.

Noah quietly drove, one sure hand on the wheel as she described her reverent obsession with America's obesity epidemic, her fascination with diet and exercise stories in magazines and on the news, and how Skinny Chick was launched with a little help from a techie guy Billy was dating at the time. How she'd subsequently lost everything, her parents' respect and love, the five million dollars she was set to come into when she turned twenty-one. And how it had all been worth it, every last bit. She lived now with her best friend and ran her blog, got hundreds of endors.e.m.e.nts, and got to be on Oprah. She wasn't rich, but she was able to support herself on her own dime, and she felt enormous pride in that.

She'd never talked so much in her whole life, and Noah just sat there listening. Alexis realized with a start that they were parked in front of her building. He turned the engine off and silence filled the car like a third pa.s.senger, a presence. Her light was still on in her room and its yellow beam lit a nearby tree. She'd left it on out of habit. Billy was always out working, and she didn't want to open her apartment door only to be greeted by darkness. Also she was kind of terrified to run into Vanya with the light off.

Alexis had never had a date inside her apartment before, but since this was certainly not a date, she didn't see the harm in inviting Noah in.

Other nights she stopped by Eastern Bloc after working on her blog all afternoon (she liked whiskey, neat) and would perch her perky tush on top of a stool and chat with Billy and the other bartender, Mike, who was short, was missing his left arm but wouldn't talk about it. Billy would be backlit by strobe lights, which reflected off her fake diamond hoops, splashes of red, green, yellow lights streaming across the faces of young, sweaty people in fabulous outfits swaying to the new indie band of the moment, the Fiery Furnaces, Florence and the Machine, Matt & Kim. Girls in sparkly silver tube tops, miniskirts, and jumpsuits would flirt with Billy in order to get served, then pout when he'd serve the handsome businessman in the gray and white pin-striped suit standing next to them first.

Even though Eastern Bloc was a gay bar, there were always a few straight men who wandered in for the trendy atmosphere and would come up to her all night. She never liked talking to guys who strolled in with a large group because it meant they were weak in character; they traveled in a pack for solidarity like a wolf. If someone shorter than her spoke to Alexis she pretended she didn't hear. The same protocol went for chubby men bold enough to saddle up to the barstool next to her. Alexis liked them successful, arrogant, handsome, and smart. Stockbrokers, doctors, business moguls. Married.

Most were pleased with this arrangement, at least at first. Later they'd start to get emotional about it, wanting more. Would she travel with them, would she ever want to meet their kids? The answer? No and no. What if he left his wife? as one Upper East Side record label president had asked her last year. No f.u.c.king way. She'd changed her phone number to be sure he couldn't contact her again.

She didn't feel guilty about these exchanges. If anything, she figured she was probably helping their marriages. Husband has a little fun on the side, goes back to his wife with a renewed sense of loyalty and dedication.

Noah was the kind of guy she would have completely ignored at Columbia. He belonged stuck to the side of a rocky mountain in a harness, not standing next to her in Chelsea in her fabulous leather boots. But there was something about the way he made her feel. She suspected that she amused him. She didn't think she'd ever amused anyone in her life, save maybe her brother.

"So what were you thinking for my restaurant?" he asked her, startling her out of her thoughts.

"It's the old fur store that closed," she said. "Just across the street."

They ran across the street, Noah strangely holding her hand as though he were her father. On a normal night she'd have shrugged him off. She wasn't big into the touchy-feely stuff. But her defenses were down. She was exhausted, and her finger really hurt. A group of loud teenage boys pa.s.sed them on the sidewalk, and one threw what appeared to be a gla.s.s soda bottle onto the sidewalk. The other boys whooped at the sound of the smashing gla.s.s. She felt suddenly glad for Noah's huge presence next to her. Strange, that she'd made her way around the city for so many years on her own, and suddenly she felt appreciative of a male presence, as if she were some damsel in distress. Then again, what was wrong with easing off the tough New York att.i.tude for one night? She pounded the streets with such armor. Even her favorite purse was silver with big metal studs adorning it like a shield.

Someone, maybe the landlord, had left a light on in the fur store. Alexis saw that the door was ajar. She cupped her hands around her eyes and peered inside. Racks lined both sides of the wall, and hangers still looped around them. The store's weathered white wooden sign-f.a.n.n.y'S FURS: SINCE 1920-was broken in half on the ground. Splinters and nails showed. Two mannequins still stood in front of gold-etched mirrors. One had a fur collar on and nothing else. Alexis guessed the owners had forgotten to take it with them.

Suddenly Noah's arm shot out beside her and tried the k.n.o.b. The door creaked, then opened.

"Noah!" Alexis hissed. "What are you doing?"

"Looking for opportunity," he whispered back, wiggling his thick eyebrows like some insanely tall Groucho Marx. She followed him, thinking she didn't have a choice, and prayed to the breaking-and-entering G.o.ds they wouldn't be found and arrested. The room smelled of mothb.a.l.l.s.

"And there we have it, folks, the very first smile of the evening, and it's all due to my corny sense of humor."

He pulled Alexis into his arms and started twirling her around, humming a tune she didn't recognize. Dust kicked up around their feet. She caught a glimpse of herself in one of the smudged full-length mirrors in the store, and was surprised that the two of them didn't look as ridiculous as she'd imagined, given their difference in height. She put her bandaged hand up to her cheek. Her face flushed, and her twin in the mirror did the same.

"You know, when you're annoyed the tops of your ears turn pink," Noah said to her, bending down to whisper in her ear, even though they were the only people in the room. Traffic sounds congested outside the large window, but a heat rose inside Alexis as she realized that Noah wasn't stupid, or simple, or any of the things she'd a.s.sumed he was. It wasn't that he didn't get her sarcasm; he chose to ignore it. Alexis had been acting like a b.i.t.c.h for so long she wasn't sure where her true self and the famous blogger of all things skinny and mean ended. She was sure there had been a time, she knew there had been, before Mark was killed, when Alexis had been happy. When she'd enjoyed life more, not feeling so angry all the time.

Something about Noah's wide-eyed optimism was so antiNew York and anti-Alexis, and yet ... and yet he was exactly like Mark, who could always wring a smile out of her, who laughed off her suggestions that he was the favored child, who signed up for the Marines and therefore ditched a football scholarship that would have eventually brought him millions. There was something of Mark in Noah's mischievous smile. His dimples. She was sure of it now as she allowed him to pull her into his arms and foxtrot around the store. She realized she was smiling.

"Oh! A second smile! Call the presses!" Noah yelled. He took the fur collar off the mannequin and wrapped it around the top of his head. It looked ridiculous, like a racc.o.o.n was sitting on his forehead. He kept dancing, and as the cars honked outside and the sky finally opened up and the rain rushed back in big, fat drops, Alexis felt a warmth spread all the way to her fingertips.

So when she found herself asking, "Do you want to come over for a drink?" she figured it must be the painkillers talking.

"Sure," he responded easily, shrugging his shoulders like it was the most natural procession in the world. When she began walking back to her building with Noah, she suddenly realized two things: how bone-tired she was, and the fact that there was a large green bicycle strapped to the back of his car next to the kayak that had been there all along and she hadn't noticed it.

"So you still bike?" she asked him. He had to take the key from her shaking, bandaged hand and open the door for them both. Noah had spent ten minutes folding up the bike and was now carrying it under his arm. Apparently it was worth a month's rent and he couldn't afford to have it stolen. She waited on the sidewalk as he unhooked straps and removed the kayak from the car's roof.

"Any other sports equipment coming in with you?" she asked sarcastically. She checked her mailbox, full of invitations to various fashion and PR events around the city and magazines and bills. Their mailbox had a black-and-white Johnny Cupcakes sticker on it that read MAKE CUPCAKES NOT WAR that Billy had affixed when they'd moved in together.

"Yeah, I live in Brooklyn, so when I need to come into the city for these cooking cla.s.ses I usually bike over the bridge. Tonight I drove, though." She could picture his apartment: the essence of male everywhere, dog hair on his futon couch, sneakers scattered w.i.l.l.y-nilly, a bike rack attached to the wall, a collection of jade plants on top of his refrigerator, a Taxi Driver poster as art above the couch, a brick wall facing his bed, soft gray sheets, a new stainless steel oven being the only extravagance, as surely a cook needed one.

"Do you think the bike and kayak will be safe down here?" he asked her, easily depositing both in the small entryway as if he were carrying feathers.

"No." Alexis responded. "Better bring them into my apartment."

She was aware of his eyes on her b.u.t.t as she climbed the stairs, and was suddenly immensely grateful to Sarah and all her tough personal training sessions with squat after grueling squat.

Princess Pinkerton streaked out in front of the door as she opened it, and Noah had to do a little maneuvering to get inside her apartment door with the kayak, and after placing that in her tiny kitchen, the bike. The letters 3R were in bra.s.s and hanging crookedly by a nail.

"Is that your cat?" Noah asked, bending down.

"Yeah, but don't ... Oh." Princess Pinkerton, who never let anyone but Billy pick her up without scratching them silly, was twisting and flipping onto her back to let Noah pet her fat stomach. This man could charm anyone, she thought. She said a silent prayer that Princess Pinkerton wouldn't choose this moment to show off her p.o.o.ping-in-the-plant routine.

"I share her with my roommate, Billy," Alexis said.

They sat on the couch, an eggplant-purple cashmere throw making a soft pillow for her back. Alexis crossed her legs and held up her bandaged finger, examining it. It was still throbbing.

"Why don't you take one of those painkillers?" Noah asked. He got up, Princess Pinkerton jumping off his lap reluctantly, and walked over to her kitchen, which was a tiny letter-C-shaped alcove with tacky seventies brown and orange cupboards Billy had tried cheering up by lining their insides with poppy wallpaper. Maneuvering around the kayak and bike, he opened the fridge and poured her a gla.s.s of water from the Brita.

Alexis's stomach clenched as she heard a door open down the hallway. The apartment was a railroad, so she could just make out two coal-black eyes peering at them from Vanya's room, a trail of silver smoke drifting out from the bottom crack. Surely she wasn't casting spells in there? Alexis shivered, picturing some poor man who was being spiked with pins from her voodoo doll.

"Hey, there!" Noah called down the hallway.

"Shhhh!" Alexis hissed at him as he set down her gla.s.s, using one of the Playboy bunny coasters Billy had brought home from a photo-shoot set to be ironic.

But Noah wasn't listening and was, terrifyingly, strolling down the hallway to talk to Vanya, the witch. Alexis's breath caught in her throat; she was that scared. She watched his tall frame maneuver away from her, her heart thudding in her chest. "She will put a spell on you!" she stage-whispered, but he ignored her. She heard his deep, soothing voice but couldn't make out the words, and then he actually stepped across the threshold of Vanya's room and entered, the door seeming to suck closed behind him.

Alexis paced up and down in the living room for an eternity before Noah returned, tossing a "Talk to you soon" over his shoulder at Vanya, then came back to the couch and put his humongous feet on the coffee table. He put his muscular arms behind his head, the image of a man of leisure.

"What happened in there?" Alexis whispered. "I thought you were a goner for sure!"

"Oh, I was just chatting with your roommate Vanya. She's hilarious!" he said, grinning. His teeth were perfectly even and glowing white. She wondered if he'd had braces. "All that goth stuff is great, isn't it? I used to be really into Ozzy Osbourne in college."

She continued to stare at him.

He laughed his loud, goofy laugh. "He went a little far in his pigeon-head-biting-off days, but ya gotta admit the guy's got some killer tunes." He held his hands up in the universal rock-on symbol, his middle and ring fingers bent down with the others up like horns, and stuck out his tongue, which strangely turned her on.

Alexis scooted an inch closer to him. His hair smelled like coconuts and summer.

"Are you smelling me?" he asked.

Her eyes popped open. She realized she'd shut them for a moment. "Um..."

"'Cause if you are, I can't say I blame you. The ladies love the eau de Noah." He laughed.

She glared at him. "I was definitely not smelling you. Get over yourself."

"Sure you weren't." But he just kept grinning at her. "How's the hand?"

"Fine!" she sniffed.

"So what's that scale doing in the kitchen?" he asked. "Do you use it to cook?"

She blinked. "No, I use it to weigh food."

He raised his eyebrows. "You care that much? You're such a tiny little thing, I can't imagine you'd have to fight fat that hard. You're like a small bird."

She rolled her eyes. People were always telling her she didn't need to watch her weight. It got old after a while. How did they think she got such a great bod? Maintenance.

"The idea is to prevent getting fat in the first place, to get to your adult size and stay there," she responded. It was like reading from a script. "Mine is a two. Every girl I went to college with is now fat with three kids. That's not going to be me. That's the whole point of Skinny Chick, to promote healthy eating and smart food choices."

Noah smiled. "Yeah, but it sounds like you've gone a little coo-coo crazy about it. I mean, I practically had to put that ice-cream sandwich in an IV to get you to eat it."

She huffed out air. "Listen, I'm doing just fine without your opinions or help. I have my way of living and if you don't like it, maybe this should be good night." She stood up and teetered on her high heels for a second, before a wave of nausea hit her.

"Whoa." Noah stood and leaned her against him. She felt his hard chest beneath his jacket. "Let's get you off to bed." And before she could protest, Noah had picked her up like a knight in shining armor and was manhandling her down the hallway to her room. He slid her onto the bed, fully dressed.

"Why don't you stay on the couch?" she whispered to him in the dark, after she felt the coolness of her pillow against her cheek and moved onto her left side, the way she liked to sleep. "There's a blanket in the wooden chest."

"Oh, I don't want to trouble you," Noah said. "Besides, Oliver will be majorly b.u.mmed if I don't come home." He grabbed one of her boots and pulled. She wore her unicorn socks, which she'd had since high school. They'd been a Christmas gift from Bunny and there was a small crystal in the eye of the unicorn and pink pom-poms around the edge of each sock. They were hideous and Billy kept threatening to burn them, but they held sentimental value to her. She would have been mortified Noah was seeing this kooky side of her, if she wasn't so d.a.m.n tired.

"Unicorns. Cute!" Noah said. "Well, you pull off a woman's shoe and there's a whole host of surprises underneath. Go figure." He pulled off her other boot and placed them carefully on the floor next to her bed. She felt like a child.

"So, Alexis." He spread his large hands. "I hope your finger heals really quickly."

She was seized with a sudden panic at the idea of him leaving. "Please?" she asked. Had she ever said that word, much less to a man? "Can you get someone to feed your dog, maybe?"

He seemed to be thinking, although she couldn't see his face in the darkness. "You know what? Sure. I have this neighbor across the hallway from me, Maria. She's a nurse, has five kids, and is always asking me if I got the flu shot. She has keys to my apartment and works nights, maybe I can catch her before she leaves for the hospital." He dialed her, his phone a spark of white light against the darkness. After speaking to her briefly, he flipped his phone closed. "She said no problem."