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it we’re both getting into it againand it looks like school may be out the window, but then I remember my little problem, plus the phone rings so we both step back gasping for air and he goes, I’ll call you—his voice all sexy like it’s been smoked and sandpapered, then doused in hot pepper sauce—and I go, you better.
    Not that I wouldn’t call him. I will if I want, when I want. I hate waiting for anything, including for the phone to ring. Why wait? is my motto. I don’t understand these girls who think the guy has to call them, like its some kind of deviant behavior for females to touch the push buttons on a phone.
Ooh, icky. I couldn’t possibly
! My mother was always like that. Even after I know she’s screwing the pool man, she has these little formulas for ladylike behavior she picked up at Miss Porter’s or someplace—
a lady never calls a gentleman
. Probably wears white gloves when she gives a hand job.
    My mother. She called last night just before I went out to dinner wanting to talk about her boyfriend. Carl owns a construction company supposedly and she’s trying to decide whether she should break up with him since he’s shiftless and lazy—those are her words, she talks like a plantation belle—but she’s been trying to decide for five years. Anyway, it gives her something to think about besides Dad. She used to do charity work and paint watercolors, really beautiful landscapes, at least I thought they were really beautiful when I was a kid. I used to love to watch her paint out on the sunporch, we had this great house on Long Island when I was a kid and my parents were still married, I loved all the shades of blue in her paint set,these blue disks that between them contained all the moods of the sky and the ocean. But the pictures got smaller and smaller until they were about the size of postage stamps, she was using these brushes with one bristle, painting transparent mountains the size of pimples, then she stopped completely. I think it was Dad making fun of her that did it. Every time she tried to do something it was a joke. From what I can tell, now she just watches the religious shows on TV and drinks wine all day. This is someone who wouldn’t think of carrying a handbag that wasn’t made out of alligator or wearing a party dress twice but she’s buying Gallo Chablis by the gallon. Finally I got sick of hearing about Carl so I told her I’d call her later. My opinion of Carl, if you really want to know, is that the best thing that could happen to Mom is if some of his nice associates in the so-called construction business would dress him up in a cement wet suit and send him scuba diving without a tank.
    Down on the street I get a cab driven by a crazy Russian. He wants to tell me the story of his life, starting with the fact that he’s Caucasian.
    I White Russian, he says. White!
    Hey, I can see that already. It’s kind of racist to keep insisting on it, if you ask me. I don’t know, maybe he wants me to think they named the drink after him or something. Every ten seconds or so he rolls down the window to spit whenever he wants to show what he thinks of Communism. At least I think that’s the idea. I kind of hug the right side of the cab so I don’t catch any of the spray.
    In America, he goes, you eat caviar for breakfast every morning if you are wanting. (I bet this is news to the girls in the typing pool.) He goes, not so Russia. (Window down—hock, spit!)
    Then he goes, what do you do, fashion model?
    I go, I’m an actress.
    Oh yes, he goes. Movies. I know.
The West Side Story
.
    That’s a good one, I go.
    You ever come to Brighton Beach, you look up me, the Russian says when he lets me off in front of my apartment.
    And I’m like, is that in the Hamptons, or what? Never heard of it. Then I ask him if he’ll wait and he goes sure.
    In the elevator I’m hoping Didi and Rebecca won’t be there, or at least that they’ll be asleep. It’s kind of hard to get started on