TWO TAXIS ON BROADWAY BY KELLY RILEY

September, 2005

          We’re walking out of the Common with the rest of the Boston bohemians and when we get to the corner of Boylston and Charles Street, Vinny stops to light a cigarette; he always uses matches because he thinks its classic. He hands the Camel Light to me and lights another for himself. After he shakes the match to put out the flame, he takes a drag and through a thin stream of smoke he says, “It's just another Wednesday. The calendar's full of 'em.”

          He’s quoting Rear Window, which we’ve just finished seeing at the Loews Theatre as part of their weeklong Hitchcock special. The quote is also a cloaked apology for missing my birthday on Wednesday. I don’t really care that he missed my birthday, but he doesn’t know that. Vinny thinks I hold grudges. He also thinks I’m a closet damsel-in-distress.

          “I’m on to you,” he told me once. We were lying in bed. I had the sheet up under my arms, suddenly shy, and there was an ash tray on the bed between us. For some reason I kept missing it and ashing all over the sheets. “You’re a shit brick house by day,” Vinny had said. “But there is no way you can keep that up all the time. I bet you bottle it all up and then break down, don’t you. I bet you cry yourself to sleep at night.” That was back when we first met, before he moved in.

          Vinny liked to chat me up after sex. He would prop himself up on one arm and smoke; sometimes he’d absent-mindedly play with locks of my hair that had fanned out across the pillow. And he asked questions. What was my childhood like? What was I currently reading? Did I speak another language? Would I say something to him in French?

          I don’t cry myself to sleep at night, and by now Vinny should know it, since we’ve been living together for just about six months. I don’t remember the last time I cried. I’m not saying I never cry. I just don’t do it that often. It bothers him. The light changes and as we cross the street, Vinny is still talking about Rear Window. “Seriously, that movie is worth it just to see Grace Kelly in those phenomenal clothes.”

          Vinny can say things like this because he’s gay. We’d been living together for maybe a month when he told me. He was taking a shower. We have one of those small cubicles with a glass door that’s all distorted so that you can’t really seen anything risqué. I was sitting on the edge of the sink with one leg hiked up so I could clip my toenails and the other leg stretched out to the top of the toilet tank to help me keep my balance.

          “What?” I had asked. It’s not that I thought I’d heard him wrong. The words “Miranda, I’m gay,” are pretty clear.

          Miranda, could my name be any more Midwestern? My mom was born in Chicago and we’ve all been trying to forgive her for it ever since. Dad is something crazy like a second-generation full Italian-American, his grandparents were off the boat, or something. He’s lived here his whole life, obviously. He always said that you only really lived in Boston if you knew a guy named Vinny, a guy named Frankie, and three different guys named Tony. It just so happens that I do know a Frankie and three different Tonys, and Vinny’s slept with them all.

          As our feet hit the curb Vinny says, “That black cocktail dress was fucking gorgeous.” He looks at me, waiting.

          The dress was gorgeous. Maybe it was even fucking gorgeous, what do I know? Vinny understands these things better than I do. But I have to say something, so I say, “Oh, yeah. Beautiful,” and busy myself with my cigarette.

          All this raving about Grace Kelly and the dresses is for my benefit, I know that. Vinny isn’t usually this flamboyant, but every now and again he’ll turn it on to convince me that he really is gay. Vinny doesn’t think that I believe him. I do, though. I mean, I guess I do. It just took me awhile. The night he told me I had followed him out of the bathroom, stunned.

          “What, so you’re bi?” I had asked. No, Vinny was not bi, Vinny was gay. He didn’t believe in being bi. Bi was just a word for people who were greedy.

          It made absolutely no sense to me. I was sitting cross-legged on our bed while he toweled himself off and got dressed. I had been so caught off-guard in the bathroom that I hadn’t finished clipping my toenails, and the hangnail on my baby toe kept getting snagged on the sheet if I moved at all.

          “But we’re sleeping together,” I had said.

          “Right,” said Vinny, as though this didn’t pose a problem.

          And we’re still sleeping together. In fact, when we get to our apartment in three blocks, we’ll probably go upstairs, order Chinese, and get right into bed. I guess our bed is pretty gross if you think about it. We smoke in bed, we eat in bed, we fuck in bed. I wash the sheets pretty frequently, but it’s not like I can afford to do it every day.

          Vinny links arms with me as we walk, and for a minute it’s awkward because he links up on the left side and that’s the hand I’m holding the cigarette in, so I have to switch it to the right and I almost drop it. The wind picks up a little, and Vinny asks me if I’m cold. I’m not cold, so I say so, and Vinny gives my arm a little squeeze.

          He asks if I liked the movie, even though he knows it’s my favorite Hitchcock film, and I indulge him. I tell him it was wonderful. He asks if I was surprised. I wasn’t, but I tell him that I was anyway, because he feels so badly about missing my birthday on Wednesday. He beams.

          Vinny thinks I’m in love with him. This worries him a lot. Vinny has a guilt complex. He’s afraid he’s ruining my life. I’m not in love with him, but Vinny doesn’t listen.

          The night after Vinny told me he was gay we invited his friends over to the apartment. We really have a very good apartment. Even when I lived alone, it was unbelievably cheap for the Back Bay. We have all of these red and orange tapestries and scarves draped over all the lights in the place. People think it’s very edgy, very urban, and maybe it is, but the truth is that I need dim lighting or else I get migraines.

          We had wine and I made shrimp scampi and we sat on cushions around the floor because Vinny and I only have two chairs. Frankie was stocky and athletic and brought tiramisu for dessert. I made up mental nicknames to separate the three Tonys. There was Pigeon-Tony, who had grown up on the beach and had gotten thrown out of Revere High once for carrying a knife. He told us that pigeons don’t actually explode if they eat rice. He’d tried it. Then there was Gay-Tony. Yes, all of the men present happened to be gay, but Gay-Tony was really gay. Every stereotype in the book, right down to inserting Barbara Streisand quotes into the conversation. Finally, there was Jesus-Tony. Jesus- Tony just really, really looked like Jesus.

          I had expected Vinny to be uncomfortable, which just proves how little I knew about him back then. He was entirely at his ease, and played the host remarkably well. Soon I was relaxed, myself, and I don’t know if Frankie and the Tonys had ever been uneasy, but by the time the glasses were refilled, they were all feeling fine. Vinny kept everyone laughing and talking. He doted on each of us, and we adored him. I don’t know how he did it.

          We left all of the dishes until the morning, and after Frankie, Pigeon-Tony, Gay- Tony, and Jesus-Tony had all departed, Vinny and I climbed, full and pleasantly drowsy, into bed. He asked me if I liked his friends.

          “I did,” I murmured. “I really did.”

          “Good.”

          Vinny wants a baby. I mean, he really wants a baby. We fight about it all the time. I don’t want one. Not right now. I’m only twenty-seven. What would I do with a baby? The fights get pretty bad sometimes. That’s the only thing we ever fight about, but we fight about it a lot. Sometimes Vinny will storm out of the apartment and go to stay with Frankie, or Jesus-Tony, or someone else, and this is supposed to punish me. But the truth is that just because Vinny’s sleeping with me doesn’t mean that he’s not also sleeping with other people, he made that clear. So it’s not much of a punishment, really, but it’s supposed to make me jealous. Sometimes, when he comes back the next day, I act like I’ve been up all night, unable to sleep for all the envy. It makes him feel better, and besides, he always comes back.

          When we get back to the apartment I notice that Vinny doesn’t take his coat off, and I wonder if I should be worried. Then he calls me by my name and reaches out to take my hands and I know I should be worried.

          Vinny is leaving and he isn’t coming back. It takes him a long time to say it, and he frames it with all kinds of other things that are supposed to make this easier, that I’m too good for him, that we want different things, that I’ll be better off on my own, happier in a more conventional relationship, but the gist of it is that he’s leaving and never coming back.

          Vinny is getting choked up. He keeps clearing his throat and looking at the wall instead of looking at my face. He doesn’t actually cry, though, until he apologizes once more for missing my birthday. And then a tear rolls down his cheek and he swears and blinks furiously to stop the rest from coming.

          Don’t be sorry about my birthday, Vinny. I want to say it. I want to shout it, even. Because if he leaves feeling guilty about my birthday I’ll never forgive myself. But I can’t say anything. So I don’t say anything, I just go over to the edge of the bed and sit down and stare at the floor.

          Vinny crouches down and kisses me, and that’s when I know he’s really leaving, he really means it. And still I don’t say anything. After a couple of minutes of silence there’s nothing to do really, so Vinny stands up and walks to the door and opens it. His eyes are all red, and he looks back at me and I hate myself and he says, “I love you.”

          And now it’s my turn to say something, but I can’t think of anything to say, except to quote Rear Window, so I do, and I say, “Oh, I love funny exit lines.”

          And Vinny stares at me, and I’m not crying, not at all, not a single tear. And I know that as soon as that door closes behind him he’ll hate me because I didn’t cry. And then the door does close and I am thoroughly alone. I flop back on to the bed and I tell the ceiling that I’m sorry. My hands feel their way to my stomach and then I tell my stomach that I’m sorry. My birthday was on Wednesday and that’s the day I went down to the clinic and had the abortion and Vinny didn’t even know that I was pregnant in the first place. I lie there, quietly, and I tell everyone and everything that I’m sorry, except Vinny, because I missed my one chance to apologize. So I take a deep breath and I wait for the tears to come.

          And I am waiting.

Kelly Riley is a 23 year old graduate from Ithaca College, where she spent 4+ tumultuous years earning a B.A. in Writing and a minor in English. Originally from the suburbs of Boston, she currently resides in Manhattan at the mercy of many dear friends gracious enough lend her their couches for an evening or a month. Come hell or high water, she continues to write.