“Norah. I don’t know if I’m ready for Norah.”
Tony/Toni/Toné smiles, her teeth the same white as her collar.
“There’s no such thing as ready,” she says. “There’s only willing.”
She reaches over and puts her hand on top of mine. She’s not making a pass at me—she’s trying to pass something on.
“I have all the proof I need,” she says. “The proof is always in the dancing.”
Her glance escapes from me for a second. I follow it and see Norah emerging from the Laydies’ Room.
Tony/Toni/Toné stands up from her chair.
“One more thing?” I ask her.
She raises an eyebrow.
“Who’s Norah’s dad?”
The eyebrow slants higher, so it’s practically perpendicular to her eye.
“You really don’t know?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“That,” she says, “is brilliant.”
Norah isn’t looking over to the table—not looking over to me, I figure. She doesn’t see Tony/Toni/Toné slip away backstage. She doesn’t see me waiting for her.
I decide to check my wallet, to make sure I have enough money to pay for our cocktease cocktails (virginity sullied only by the umbrella’s reputation). But of course when she gets to the table, it looks like I’m itching to pay the bill. I quickly shove my wallet back in my pocket, only it gets tangled on its own chain and I end up spewing Washingtons all over the floor. I swoop them up before she sits down again, which only bumps me slightly lower on the spaz scale. Especially because it’s now I remember we’re being comped, so I didn’t have to take my wallet out in the first place.
She seems a little less rattled now.
“You look refreshed,” I tell her. Then I can’t help myself, adding, “Everything okay? Was it something I said? Or was my Johnny Castle impression just no good?”
She twinkles at Johnny Castle.
Thank you, Tony/Toni/Toné.
“Look,” she says, raising her Tina Colada, “I owe you a kind of explanation. I know you probably think I’m a horrid bitch from the planet Schizophrenia, but I’m honestly not trying to mess with your head. I’m just messing with my own head and I seem to have dragged you along for the ride. I think you’re nice to me and that scares the f**k out of me. Because when a guy’s a jerk or an ass**le, it’s easier because you know exactly where you stand. Since trust isn’t an option, you don’t have to get all freaked out about maybe having to trust him. Right now I am thinking about ten things at the same time, and at least four of those things have to do with you. If you want to leave right now and drive home and forget my name and forget what I look like, I wouldn’t blame you in the least. But what I’m trying to say is that if you did that I would be sorry. And not just sorry in an I-apologize-I’m-so-sorry way, but sorry in a sad-that-something-that-could’ve-happened-didn’t way. That’s it. You can go now. Or we could stay for Where’s Fluffy when Toni’s set is over. I think they’re playing a surprise show here tonight.”
Then, finally, she takes a sip of her drink.
A gulp, really.
And I take a deep breath. And I say:
“My jacket looks good on you.”
She puts the glass down. Stares at me. And I think, Fine, I’m a freak.
So be it.
“No,” I go on. “It does. And if I left, you’d probably want to give me my jacket back. And if you did, I wouldn’t be able to put it on, because the whole time I’d be knowing how perfectly it fit on you. How even though the sleeves are ridiculously too long and the collar is all f**ked up and for all I know some guy named Salvatore is going to come in this very club in two minutes and say, ‘Hey, that’s my jacket’ and strike up a conversation and sweep you off your feet away from me—even though all those things are true or possibly true, I just can’t ruin the picture of you sitting there across from me wearing my jacket better than I or anyone else ever could. If I don’t owe it to you and I don’t owe it to me, I at least owe it to Salvatore.”
There. I’ve said everything I wanted to say without actually having to use the words please stay.
“Pick up your drink,” Norah tells me.
I do.
She clinks her glass against mine.
“Cheers,” she says.
“Salud,” I reply.
“L’chaim.”
“Top o’ the morning to ya.”
“Sto lat.”
“May the road rise to meet you.”…and we go on like this, until Tony/Toni/Toné appears onstage to purr the filthiest “Do Re Mi” that Manhattan has ever seen.
People look at us every now and then. I guess some of them know Norah, or at least who she is. I’m the mystery. Or maybe I’m just the nobody. I don’t care. If I’m just The Guy With Norah, that’s cool. Right now, that’s all I want to be.
All the other things I am—they’re too complicated. I can feel them lying in wait, planning their return.
8. NORAH
“So say we’re at the Motel 6 on the other side of the Lincoln Tunnel and we’re having that threeway with E.T. Who gets to be the top and who gets to be the bottom?”
This question has actually escaped my mouth. Perhaps it’s not that I’m frigid—it’s that once I decide I like a guy, I turn into a raging idiot, unfit for public appearances. I wish Caroline could be here now, hiding out in a corner, feeding me lines, Cyrano to Nick’s Roxanne. Although Caroline-as-inspiration could easily land me right back in the bathroom, on my knees, and not in prayer. Which as a basic premise isn’t so objectionable, but now that I’m trying to get in sync with time, I need more of it than Caroline generally requires to reach room temperature with a guy.