You Have To Kiss a Lot of Frogs
“I know,” I said. “You know what else is funny? They always have the yarmulkes from all the affairs they went to over the years. There were three white velvet ones that said ‘Wedding of Mark and Mindy Sokoloff, May 15, 1982,’ written in gold and nobody knew who the Sokoloffs were!”
“I wonder if anybody still has the ones from my Bar Mitzvah?” Alan Cohen wondered aloud. “Oh. Did you use the coffee books?”
“Yes! What is that about?” This was turning into a fun cab ride. “How appropriate is it that a coffee company publishes the most popular Haggadah! You read this horrific tale of the Jews fleeing Egypt with a picture of a piece of matzoh on the front of the book, and a cup of hot coffee on the back!”
“Well, we as a people like to eat!”
“No kidding,” I said, glimpsing a look at Alan’s back taking up a broad part of the front seat.
“So, what do you do?” he asked me.
“Well, Alan,” I said, feeling it might be a little personal to use his name, but also as if I knew the cloth from which he was cut. “Why don’t you guess?”
“Drugs?”
“That’s it! You got it on the first try. Amazing!”
“Really? You’re kidding.”
“Of course I’m kidding. Do I look like a drug dealer? Look, we’re here,” I said, pointing to the white doorman building on Eighth Avenue. “Stop. I’ll be just a second.” The cab stopped near 52nd Street. I ran in and picked up the yellow manila envelope that said FOR PICKUP—K. KLINE from the doorman.
“What’d you get?” he asked when I got back into the cab.
“I had to pick up a script.”
“An actress!” he said, driving up Eighth Avenue.
I received a last-minute call from a casting director asking me to fill in for an actress who wasn’t going to be able to do the reading. I pulled out the script and started to read. The play was a political farce about a presidential campaign that totally revolved around junk food. It was called Eat This. I flipped to where Mac, the campaign manager, and the candidate come into the diner where they always eat and come up with their campaign strategies. In this scene, Mac and the waitress, Addie—that would be me—try to convince the candidate to hold rap sessions at fast-food chains across the country and give the voters free food. The casting director said they hoped to bring the show to Broadway. It was a stroke of luck that I got in on the project.
“I’m sorry,” said Alan, breaking the silence.
I realized I had suddenly stopped talking after having that whole Passover conversation. Now I felt guilty. Well, that was ridiculous. I didn’t have to entertain the cabdriver. I was a passenger, he was doing his job and now I wanted to read my script.
“Sorry for what?” I looked up at the back of Alan’s wavy head
“For thinking you were dealing.”
“Don’t worry about it. It happens all the time.” I held the script high so he would see me reading in his rearview mirror. I was way too involved in this relationship.
“So… Uh… You’re an actress?”
“Uh-huh.” I didn’t want to talk anymore.
“What have you been in lately?”
“Nothing. Really.” I always hated that question.
“You have an audition?”
“Uh-huh.” Here we go. Why was I so friendly before?
“What’s it for?”
I put the script down. It seemed easier to have the conversation than not to. I’d be home in a few minutes and I could read then. What could it hurt to talk a little more to Alan Cohen. I was sure I had known him all my life. He seemed like a boy who would have summered at my bungalow colony in the Catskills when we were kids. Someone a few years older than me, I would have looked up to for a while just because he was there and he was older. Someone who would have been a counselor at the day camp and led you in Color War when you were little, then put that stuff down, grew his hair long and tried to get you to smoke when you were big. Someone whose mother would say she didn’t understand him, as she played her Bingo card in the casino on Wednesday nights, and waited for her husband to come back upstate after working in the city all week, because she couldn’t handle Alan alone.
“Do you do anything in addition to driving a cab?” I asked, curious to see if I did have him all cut out.
“What do you mean?”
“Anything particular that you aspire to do?” I figured him for a comic book collector.
“Does anybody ever get what they want?” he said. “An actor, a musician. Even a doctor or lawyer. Does anybody really get what they aspire to in life? Does it really pay to even care?”
“I’m sorry. Just making conversation. I didn’t mean to be condescending,” I said. We were gliding past 72nd Street, a few blocks from my apartment. “Driving a cab is great. Anything you want to do is great. Really.”
“You think so?” he asked, turning the corner on my block.
“Oh sure,” I said. “People should do whatever makes them happy.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.
“YES,” I said. “Yes. Yes, I do!”
He pulled up in front of my building. The meter clicked off.
Alan Cohen turned and faced me. “You have a steady boyfriend?” he asked. His eyes looked vacant behind the dirty divider that was meant to protect the people in the front seat from the people in the back.
“Very steady,” I said. I took a ten from my wallet, shoved it in the tray and dipped it toward the front. “Can I have back three dollars?”
Alan Cohen didn’t move.
“How about you keep your money and have a date with me instead?”
“I really can’t do that. I have this boyfriend. I can’t. May I have my change?” That’s what you get for being friendly, I thought. The change wasn’t forthcoming, so I collected my bags and opened the door. Alan Cohen was standing in the gutter, blocking my exit from his cab.
“Are you going to go out with me or not?”
My eyes came level with his stomach. It was protruding through the buttons on his dirty navy-and-green flannel shirt.
“I need to get out of this cab,” I said as calmly as possible.
“Oh yeah?” he said, getting in the back seat and slamming the door behind him. He threw my flowered bag to the floor of the cab. It had been the only thing between us.
“So, you think you could go for a guy like me?” he asked, leaning over me.
“Alan…” I didn’t know what the hell to do.
“I really like how you say my name.” Alan Cohen leaned in closer. I could tell he had consumed a few beers. “Say it again.”
I inched backward against the other door, hoping I could open it behind me. He pulled my hands into his and gripped them tightly.
“Say it again. You’re really hot. Say it again.”
“Uh, Alan,” I said, trying to grasp what was happening. A few possible scenarios crossed my mind, none of them particularly appealing. “Alan,” I repeated, trying to appease rather than seduce.
“Kiss me,” he said, moving closer toward me. I could feel his breath on my neck. I thought I would puke. “Come on…”
“Stop it, Alan. Just stop! What’s the matter with you? Get off me. Leave me alone!”
He didn’t move away, but he didn’t move closer.
I tried to figure out how much trouble I was in. I didn’t know what to do when I found out, but I searched his eyes trying to assess if Alan Cohen was Nebish Gone Astray or On Track Psychopath. I opted for number one. We were both breathing harder. Obviously for different reasons.
“You were flirting with me,” he said.
“I was talking to you.”
“Bullshit.”
“I was…friendly.”
We were face-to-face in a stare-off. No one was winning.
“Why won’t you go out with me? Don’t you like me?”
“I’ve known you fifteen minutes. That’s not long enough to like or dislike you. I just got home from Florida. I hailed a cab. Please…be a mensch and just let me out of here.”
“If you weren’t going out with that guy would you go out with me?”
“Perhaps,” I said, wondering if someone had once dropped him on his head for him to wind up like this. “Perhaps if you asked like a gentleman instead of scaring the shit out of me.”
“Are you scared?”
“Yes! Of course I’m scared. I’d have to be lobotomized not to be scared.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Alan Cohen said. He sat up straight and tucked his shirttails into his khaki pants. “I just wanted you to like me.”
“I think you can use some improvement on your courtship skills, Alan,” I said, feeling out of danger although I was not yet out of the woods. “Some men bring flowers and candy. Wine and dine a girl. You trap me in the back seat of your taxi, act like you’re going to rape me, and, by the way, now you owe me money because suddenly I don’t feel like tipping.”
He looked right through me and got out of the cab. I grabbed my bags and bolted out the door. I could feel my hands shaking underneath my bravado. I approached the first step down into my building. A hand touched the back of my neck.
“AHHHHHHHHHH,” I screamed. My bags rolled down the cement stairs. I could see my tampons tumbling over my curling iron.
“Don’t scream. I won’t hurt you. I’m sorry,” he said, putting his pudgy hand in his pocket. “Really.”
“It’s okay,” I said. My heart beat so hard I thought I’d find it on the stairs next to the tampons and the curling iron. “I have to go.”
“I just don’t want you to think bad of me,” he said. “Do you like me?”
Out of my right eye I watched my blow-dryer fall out of my bag and cascade down. I heard a small crash.
“Yeah, Alan, I like you. In fact, I’m crazy about you. Jesus Christ!” I screamed. “JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!”
He ran into the street back to his cab. The engine had been going all this time. I knelt to pick up my broken belongings. My script was still in the cab. Fortunately, the envelope with my name on it was in my purse.
“Are you absolutely sure?” I heard him yell from the street. “I live in Park Slope. We probably won’t ever see each other again. I can leave my number on the car over here or, if you…”
Alan Cohen was still yelling when I rang for the elevator. I couldn’t make out the end of the sentence.
10
Wherefore Art Thou?
Valentine’s Day
Upper East Side, NYC 1994
“Have whatever you want,” Henry told me. “You’re our little girl, it’s Valentine’s Day, and your mother and I don’t want you to be alone.”
“Look, Karrie,” Millie said. “There’s a Valentine’s Day Special. You can have a tender, juicy chicken breast à la Romeo with artichokes and mushrooms. You’re the artichoke eater here, and an Idaho baked potato with fresh asparagus and hollandaise. I don’t like hollandaise sauce, it has no taste, but you like that. And it comes with dessert. Juliet Surprise: A chocolate brownie topped with whipped cream and a cherry. How does that sound?”
“Chicken and artichokes make me think of Jack,” I said. I reached for the miniature blackboard that had the daily specials written in pink chalk.
“Why are we talking about Jack?” asked Millie.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, contemplating the chicken breast. “Maybe because he was my boyfriend for a year, and it’s only six weeks since we broke up and I’m despondent about the whole thing. Maybe that’s why. But I could be wrong.”
“It’s Valentine’s Day,” said Henry. “We’re all together. Why are you even thinking about him when you’re with us?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine what came over me.”
We were seated in a corner nook of the heated indoor café. A candle illuminated the table. Outside on Second Avenue couples walked by, huddled in down coats, romping through the gray of the city, hailing cabs and kissing. I turned to my parents. “What are you going to have?”
“I’m going to have the fish,” Henry said.
“Me too,” echoed Millie.
“So will I.” I made it unanimous.
“Since when do you eat fish?” asked Henry.
“Always. I always eat fish. What is the fish tonight?”
“Snapper,” Henry said. “Red snapper. You like that?”
I nodded.
“You’re sure now?” Henry grilled me. “I don’t mind ordering anything you want, but I want to make sure you like it. Don’t do it on my account.”
I took a deep breath. This would have been Jack’s and my second Valentine’s Day. Last year at this time I was so excited. It was still early, we’d only been dating two months. Jack surprised me with a warm blanket, a cold bottle of champagne and an easy climb in Central Park to a rock that overlooked the lake. It was a little cold, but totally romantic! This year I thought I’d cook an indoor dinner, but we broke up soon after Christmas. That disaster. Somehow I knew from the start it could never work. A Jewish actress and a born-again Christian comedian. It would have been easier to not have the relationship and to have just sold the movie rights.
Jack and I met at a second staged reading of Eat This just before Christmas in 1992. Eat This still looked like it could happen for Broadway, but the money the producers thought was there was not. In almost two years, there had been four readings with one more to go. My part had been cut to shreds, but I was still a contender so I was happy. Anyway, the second reading, the one where I met Jack, was the best. I say this objectively, even though my part was a lot bigger in that version! I was flying that night, and really up when we all went out after for a drink. My friend, Jane, was dating Philip Moore, an actor in the show, and came to the reading. And Philip invited his stand-up friend, Jack Whitney, whom I’d once seen emcee at The Comic Corner. The four of us got a booth and a round of drinks. Jane and Philip were pretty cozy, and I thought Jack was cute and funny. It was a pretty instant attraction. After they left, we lingered over a glass of Merlot and the rest, as they like to say, was history.
“It comes with dessert,” said Henry. “You’ll have the dessert too?” he asked, bringing me back.
“Yes, she’ll have the dessert,” my mother answered for me. “She needs to put on a little weight. I think you lost some weight. What do you think? Your face looks thin.”
“I think I lost some weight.” It felt easier to agree.
The waiter came over to our table. He was a tall, gangly-looking man with an earring in his left ear. He wore wire glasses and a befuddled expression.
“Three snappers,” Henry told him. “And make them all on the special.”
The waiter smiled pleasantly and looked at me.
“Don’t I know you from The Comic Corner?”
I had no recollection of him whatsoever.
“I took Jack Whitney’s ‘Intro to Stand-Up’ class at the Learning Annex and we went to see him perform. You’re his girlfriend, aren’t you?”
“Well…”
“I wasn’t sure at first it was you. We went again last night and it looked like your hair was lighter, but you were sitting close to the stage with Jack and we were in the back. It’s hard to see at night. Up close, though, I remember you. He was great, wasn’t he? All that new material about all the bad relationship stuff that happens on the holidays, and accepting Santa into your heart.”
I twisted the swizzle stick from my drink.
“Well, let me put your order in. I’m sure you want to get over to the club early for the special Valentine’s Day show.”
I stared at my place setting and took a sip of my Virgin Mary.
“That was unnecessary,” said Millie.
“He obviously found a new one,” said Henry.
“Did you change the message on your machine yet?” my mother asked.
“I’ll do it soon. It’s funny,” I said.
“It’s not funny, Karrie. It’s pathetic. Change it tonight.”
The message played in my ear.
Hi, this is Karrie. Jack and I just broke up so I can’t come to the phone right now. Actually, I can’t even get out of bed. But if you leave your name and number, someday I’ll get back to you.
Beeeeep.
“And after you change your message, set your alarm so you wake up at a decent hour tomorrow,” Millie continued.
I had made the mistake of confessing to my mom that unless I had an audition I’d been sleeping half the day away, waking at 12:59 p.m. in order to make it into the living room by one, just in time to watch my favorite soap, All My Problems.
“Maybe she was just a date, “ I said. “Or it could have been a friend. Who says he has a new girlfriend? Anyway, what’s the difference?”
Silence.
“I spoke with Aunt Cookie,” said Millie. “She said she spoke to her friend, Phyllis, and her son Seth, the chiropractor, is still talking about you from last Passover. I know he’s not exactly your type…”
“No.”
“Just for an evening out,” Henry chimed in. “No one’s saying marriage, but just to get out. There’s no reason for a young girl like yourself to stay home alone staring at the four walls.”
“I’m not staring at anything. Besides, he’s a geek. He’s a nerd. He even liked the Manischewitz wine. No.”
The waiter came by and served the salads. Henry reached for the pepper.
“No salt,” said Millie.
“No salt,” said Henry. “Pepper. I’m just using pepper.”
“He’s not allowed to have salt,” she told me.
“He’s not having salt,” I said.
“I’m having pepper, Millie.”
“See, he’s having pepper, Ma.”
“That’s okay. Pepper he’s allowed to have.”
“I have an audition tomorrow,” I said as the food arrived. The fish stared up at me, alongside the baby red potatoes, the stewed zucchini and the waiter. “For a commercial.”
“What’s it for?” asked the waiter. My new best friend.
“Some fast-food chicken chain. I’m a perky waitress.” I smiled at him to prove my point.
“Well, bon appetit and bon chance,” said the waiter. He winked at me before he walked away.
“This is good,” I said.
“Very good,” said Henry.
“I like mine too,” said Millie.
“Anyway, I have to make it an early night,” I said before I barely started my meal, let alone finished it. “You know, with the audition in the morning.”
“It’s all right,” said Millie. “I’m tired too. I don’t mind an early night myself.”
I watched my mother delicately mash her potatoes. Her pink nail polish shone under the candlelight, and her diamond ring glimmered. She was trying so hard to be nice to me. So was Henry. I was so unhappy about Jack. I just felt so bad.
“No, Ma. No rush. Really.”
“It’s okay,” Millie said through knowing eyes. “We don’t have to get indigestion, but I am tired.”
“I’m tired too,” I said.
I took my fork and mashed the baby red potatoes, pasting them together with some of the snapper. I was tired, I thought. I really, truly was.
11
That's All, Folks
An Hour Later
Ten Blocks North, NYC 1994
I walked my parents to the garage to get the car and watched them take off down Second Avenue, the fumes from the engine trailing behind. I walked south to get the crosstown bus back to my apartment, but felt a tug that pulled me in the opposite direction.
My oversized orange fake fur wrapped around me like a warm blanket and I pulled my black earmuffs down around my neck so I could hear the street sounds. I walked past liquor stores selling wines to woo with. Past a Hallmark gift shop where the window displayed the little redheaded girl sending Charlie Brown a valentine. The next thing I knew I was standing in front of The Comic Corner. I looked up at The Comic Corner logo. To go or to stay?
I was about to go. I was about to stay. For a moment I felt like I lost my balance. I was in the circus, walking a tightrope. I was struggling to keep on a straight course, but I could not. I looked around for help. I saw a man below me. I waved. I kept waving and waving, but he never looked up. It was clear that I was going to fall. But I didn’t. I was at the end of the rope. It was over and it became instantly clear I had to get out of there. I had to escape before I found out what more there was to lose.
I turned away and the door slammed against my back.
“Ouch!”
I spun around and came face-to-face with Jack.
I stood, frozen, taking him in. Jack’s blond hair was longer in the back, and he had started growing a beard. The beard was darker than the hair on his head. It looked like he had dyed either one or the other.
“Oh my God. Hi. Hello. Jack. I never expected to run into you.”
Jack stood and looked at me. Actually, he stared.
“It was an accident,” I said. “Kind of.”
He smiled as if he understood that it was. A collision of sorts. Of which sort, he was uncertain.
Being in Jack’s presence for the first time in almost six weeks was like finding that glove you gave up on. You had lost one so you couldn’t wear the other. You could try, but one hand was always left out in the cold. Even though there were new gloves to be bought in stores all over the city, some of them even on sale, none would ever be that pair. None of them would be broken in. Comfortable. But you wouldn’t throw out the mate. You just kept it with your hats and scarves as a reminder. A hope. And then one day, when you were moving the couch to get the pen that had dropped behind it, there it was. Your glove. Your favorite one. It had been waiting for you to reclaim it, you just didn’t know where to look. And later that day, when you went to the deli, you slipped the pair on in the elevator, and a warmth and familiarity consoled your body. You were only going out for a container of milk, but however far you went, you felt fine.
I smiled in spite of myself. Then I laughed.
“What’s so funny?” asked Jack.
“You!”
“Me? I thought we broke up because you didn’t laugh anymore.”
“Did I say that?”
Jack nodded yes.
“When did I say that? You’re lying,” I chided.
I waited for him to laugh, like in the old days, but he didn’t. I waited for him to do something, anything, so I could feel normal.
“How was your set?”
“Great. They loved me.”
“They always do, Jack.”
“You always used to laugh at my stuff and then you stopped.”
“No.”
“Yeah. That last time you were here.”
“Well, we were breaking up. I was upset. I think you’re the best.”
“You do? You really do?”
His eyes softened and his lips turned up into a smile. “So, little Miss Orange Coat, you think I’m the best?” He extended his arm and spun me into him like I was Ginger Rogers. He dipped me over the cracks in the sidewalk, then dramatically pulled me up. He parodied the song “You Don’t Send Me Flowers Anymore.” Looking deliberately into my eyes, he sang from his heart.
You don’t think I’m funny anymore—
I threw my arms around his neck. He picked me up.
“Oooo, Ouch, Oooo!” Jack mimicked Curly from the Three Stooges. “It’s a giant Twinkie,” he said, poking at my coat.
“What goes good with Twinkies?” I whispered in his ear.
Jack’s eyes looked at me. Then he looked through me, as if to answer a question without having to actually ask it. Again his lips broke into a smile. I laughed.
“I haven’t felt this good since we broke up,” I said, laughing.
“Which time?” he asked.
“This time. The last time. How many times did we break up?”
“Altogether? Over the whole year?” he asked.
“Uh-huh.” I nuzzled my head into him so that my hair warmed his neck.
“We broke up three times,” Jack said.
“Right. But that would be counting the time in the Chinese restaurant and I thought we said we weren’t going to count that time.”
“Didn’t we break up twice in a Chinese restaurant?” he asked me.
“Yes.”
“I thought so. Once in ChowFun in Chinatown, and once somewhere around here.”
“Szechuan East.”
“Szechuan East. So which one doesn’t count? Szechuan East?”
“No. ChowFun,” I said. “Szechuan East counts.”
“Remember we got those great fortunes.” He put me down as he recalled them. “Mine said, ‘You will soon go from rags to riches,’ and yours said, ‘Something you don’t think is possible will soon surprise you!’”