«I think I'm jet-lagged. It's nine in the morning where I live so I'm wide awake!»
Without a thought, I slid over and put my arms around his big sleep-warmed body. We lay there for a little while and then fell asleep again.
The next time I awoke I smelled good things in the air, but was disappointed to discover he wasn't there to smell them with me.
I like men's shoulders. Always have. The first thing I saw of Danny that morning was his shoulders moving and jumping around as he worked at the stove cooking breakfast. I leaned against the door and watched while he moved here and there amidst cooking sounds and flying hands. He seemed to know exactly what to do. And he had great shoulders. High and broad, they spanned the top of a thin, well-kept body. I had spent the night with that body and the thought made me smile; I had never slept with anyone without fooling around before. I felt like a newly minted coin. What had happened last night reminded me of a story out of the Middle Ages: one of those great ones, where the virtuous knight sleeps with his lady-fair in the same bed, only he's placed his trusty sword between them on the sheets to keep them both virtuous.
The only part of the story that didn't fit so well was that Ms. Drew Conrad was Danny's lady-fair at the moment, while I was just his pal in need.
Had I fallen a little in love with him only because part of me was nasty-competitive, or because everything he'd done since he'd arrived the day before had been supremely adorable?
Without knowing I was there, he turned on the radio to a disco station. Spatula in hand, he started dancing around. He was pretty good.
«Do you have any pictures of you when you were a little girl?»
I was startled that he'd known all along that I was there. He turned around and, flipping the spatula, caught it with two fingers.
«You're a real bag of tricks, aren't you? Pictures of me when I was little? Yes, I have a big bunch of them somewhere in a drawer.»
«Terrific! Let's eat first and then you can get them out for me.»
«How come you want to see them?» I sat down at the table. He'd already taken my usual spot, but I liked to see him sitting there.
«I want to see if you were as pretty then as you are now.»
He said this while putting a plate of scrambled eggs, toast and sliced tomato in front of me. There was even a thin sprig of bright green parsley laid over the eggs. It added an unnecessary, albeit lovely touch of color and care to the whole thing that made it a hundred times better. Danny _cared_; for the food he cooked, for me . . . for everything.
«I'm not used to being told I'm good-looking.» Very unprettily, I shovelled a large load of food into my mouth.
«Men don't tell you because they don't want to admit your advantage over them. The better-looking a woman is, the more insecure a man gets.»
«Why's that? How ridiculous! Would you pass the salt?»
«Because it's hard to walk down the street with someone who makes other people walk into walls when they look. Plus, no one looks at _you_ when you're with that pretty person. It's very humbling.»
«Is Drew Conrad pretty?» I stopped chewing and realized my fork was hanging in midair.
He hesitated a moment, then nodded bashfully, but he wouldn't look at me.
«What advertisements has she done? Anything over here I would have seen?»
«I don't know – all of the big ones, I think. They brought her over from New York, so I guess she's known over here too.»
«Do you bump into walls when you see _her_?»
«Every so often.»
I pushed my plate away a little too hard and it skidded across the table like a hockey puck. «Okay! All right, I admit it – I'm jealous. No, I _hate_ her, Dan! I look at you and I'm thinking there are neat men in the world. Look, there's one right here in front of me. So where the hell are they? All I ever meet are squeenys and mud-balls.»
«What's a squeeny?»
«Hey, just walk into any Singles' Bar and take your pick. Computer dating. The New York Review of Books Classified Section: 'Docile Virgo seeking intrepid Lion to run through the dunes with.' After some time in that world, 'Pay-ter' seemed like Clark Gable.»
A big silence followed. I was beginning to worry that once again I'd somehow put my foot in my big mouth, when Danny finally spoke.
«Cullen, there's no Drew Conrad!»
«_What?_»
«Just what I said. She's what you might call a figment of my perverse imagination.»
«Danny, what _are_ you talking about?»
«Nothing. It's just that there's no Drew Conrad. I made her up. _Basta_. That's all!»
My spirit hoisted five flags. «But why? Whatever for?»
«Whatever for, Cullen? Because the truth of the matter is, I'm scared to death of you!»
«Of me? James, are you cracked? Look at me, damn it!»
He sighed and looked at me with the saddest expression in town. «It's very simple, don't you see? If I had a woman like Drew to tell you about, then we would be on safe ground. You wouldn't have to worry about someone else being forward with you. And if I pretended convincingly enough that she _did_ exist, then I was hoping you wouldn't see how gone I am for you. See, Cullen, I had it all figured out: I would just rhapsodize about you, but call you Drew Conrad, and I'd be all set.»
His face had the calmness of truth in it. He looked me in the eye while he spoke and after a while _I_ was the one who began to feel uncomfortable.
«When you wrote me about your abortion, I realized I had been in love with you for a long time. Maybe even when we were in college, right at the end of senior year! Anyway, when I got your letter over there and I started imagining you alone in that hospital bed having to go through such an ordeal . . .»
I was a few feet away from him but I could plainly see there were tears in his eyes. Tears for me! Who had ever cried for me? What man had ever cared so much?
My heart turned in my chest, but the tears and obvious depth of his emotion scared me and made me want to be alone so I could catch my breath and think all this over for a minute, an hour, a few days.
«I'm sorry, Cullen. I _really_ don't want to create any more problems for you. I promised myself I wouldn't tell you any of this.» He got up tiredly from the table and walked into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.
Loving someone is easy. It's your car and all you have to do is start the engine, give her a little gas and point the thing wherever you want to go. But being loved is like being taken for a ride in someone else's car. Even if you think they'll be a good driver, you always have the innate fear they might do something wrong: in an instant you'll both be flying through the windshield toward imminent disaster. Being loved can be the most frightening thing of all. Because love means good-bye to control; and what happens if halfway or three-quarters of the way through the trip you decide you want to go back, or in a different direction, and you're only the codriver?
DUMB! You wanted to be loved, Cullen? Loved by a special, wonderful man? Okay, here you are – right in your hand. What happens? What's your reaction? You get scared. Dumb!
I rubbed my face with both hands and snorted at my stupidity.
«Danny?»
No answer.
«Danny!»
The door opened slowly and reluctantly. He stood there stooped in his dandy green pajamas, vulnerable and from the look on his face, expecting the worst.
«Please don't say anything sweet, Cullen. Don't be sweet or pitying; I couldn't take that.»
«Come in here and finish your breakfast.»
His . . . I don't know what you would call it . . . declaration? Anyway, it did funny things to us. Made us shy of each other, but very intimate at the same time. When we were walking down the street a few hours later, he took my hand, which sent a bolt of flaming orange lightning across my brain. What courage it must have taken for him to do that! To reach right over and take my hand, after what he had said with no response from me one way or the other . . . I'd wanted to grab hold of his hand too, but hadn't had the guts to do it in that still, tense interval in our relationship between nothing and everything.