The Bobby Gold stories - Anthony Bourdain [27]
She was in a black leather motorcycle jacket, jeans and a T-shirt, but something was different about her. She was wearing makeup — a little around the eyes, he thought — and was that lipstick? He thought it was.
"I'll wait till you sober up a little before I apologize," she said, tearing off a piece of toast with short but polished fingernails, the nails cut or chewed in parts, her hands pocked with pink welts.
"I'm okay now," said Bobby. "You don't have to apologize. For what?"
"For not making it last night. I'm not like that," she said, looking away and fumbling for a cigarette. "I got loaded," she said. "Pissed fucking drunk . . . and I fell asleep."
"It happens," said Bobby, trying to be noncommittal. "No big thing."
"Irregardless . . . It happened to me," said Nikki, reaching across the table and taking his hand. "And I'm sorry." She squeezed his fingers and withdrew her hand awkwardly. "You know, not for nothin' —but I got all dressed up and everything. I put on a fuckin' dress."
She laughed suddenly, Bobby smelling vodka on her for the first time, realizing that she too was drunk. "I even waxed my cat," she said, an unbecoming half laugh, half derisive snort escaping from her mouth.
"Your what?" said Bobby — picturing his own cat, shorn of hair, trying to imagine her putting up with such a thing.
"My pussy, jerk," said Nikki, lowering her voice. "First date and all. I wanted to make a good impression."
Bobby didn't know what to say. He stared into his coffee, feeling dizzy, imagining the cleft between her legs devoid of hair, partially groomed, au naturel . . . When she pretended to pick a piece of lint off the sleeve of her jacket, betraying a welcome nervousness, he said, "Fully waxed? Or like . . . only some?" astonished that the question had escaped his lips.
"I left a little bit over the top," said Nikki, standing up and calling for the check.
"C'mon. I'll show you."
"Where we going?" he asked, seeing things more clearly, yet somehow even more out of control. "Where you live?"
"Let's go to your place," she said, tugging him west. "You live near here right? The door guy —the big one - said so."
Making a mental note to fire the loose-lipped doorman, Bobby stopped in his tracks and considered things. No one had ever been inside his apartment. He tried to picture it, as if for the first time, trying to imagine what it would look like to an outsider.
"I need to look at your record collection," she said, taking his arm in hers and leaning against him. "I see any Billy fuckin' Joel in there and this ain't gonna happen."
"Jesus? What you got in here? Fort Knox?" complained Nikki, her hands inside Bobby's jacket as he fumbled with the last lock - a custom-made deadbolt put together for him by an Albanian thief when he'd moved in. The place was clean, he knew. Any guns or cash or "evidence of wrongdoing," as he'd once heard such things referred to, were — as always — securely put away in the concealed floor safe. But Bobby was embarrassed when he flicked on the light. There was something too severe, almost fanatical, about his apartment, he knew. The too-clean, too-polished hardwood floors, the raw brick walls, the always-dusted sound system, the set of free weights neatly arranged in the corner and the heavy bag hanging from the ceiling. His mattress, squared away as usual and tight as a snare drum, rested on a low unfinished wood platform, a copy of Grey's Anatomy on the simple, mail-order nightstand. The refrigerator, he knew, was empty save for a V-8 and a few wedges of leftover pizza in the freezer.
But there was no Billy Joel to be found, he comforted himself. Returning from a long piss in the too-clean bathroom, he found Nikki smiling by his collection of old vinyl, a copy of the first Modern Lovers album in her hand.
"You're an interesting man," she said, putting the record back in its place, alphabetically between Harold Melvin and Ennio Morricone. She got up, sat down on the bed and began peeling off her clothes, Bobby instinctively looking away for a second before