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I Think She's Trying to Tell Me Something
By Dan Graziano HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2005 Dan Graziano
All right reserved. ISBN: 006077875X
Chapter One
"I had this dream last night," Jeff says, and for some reason I ask him what it was about.
"I dreamed that I killed every dog that lives on my hall."
Coming from anyone else, this would sound weird.
"I had set these traps, right outside my door," he goes on, "and whenever one of the little bastards came running past, yelping and barking and doing all the things that keep me from getting to sleep every night, he would get yanked right back into my apartment through a trapdoor. And then, once I had him, I drowned him in the bathtub. It went on for about four or five dogs."
"What about their owners?" I ask, after a gulp of my orange juice. "Were they pissed?"
"They weren't in the dream," he says, momentarily puzzled. But then he continues. "It's not that I hate dogs -- "
"You do hate dogs," I say.
"Okay, I do hate dogs. But at least with most of the dogs in this city, I respect their right to live. Not these dogs. These little buggers I hate the way Bernie hates salad. These, I think we'd be better off without."
Jeff is off on a rant, and all I can do is stand here, trying to remember if he's even told me why he has come to my apartment at eight o'clock in the morning to wake me up and tell me about his dog dreams.
He is stretched out on the sofa in the middle of my living room, his brown suede jacket still on but his shoes off. His very long legs are hanging over one end of the sofa, each one capped in a brand-new sweat sock as brilliantly white as a snowball, and his head is propped on a pillow at the other end. Jeff has very short, sandy brown hair that never looks messed up. He used to have a goatee, but he shaved it off, and this has had the effect of making him look even skinnier, which I never thought was possible.
Another thing I never thought possible was that I would be up at eight o'clock this morning, listening to a story about dogs. Dream dogs, at that.
"When I signed the lease, it said in red letters, right at the top of the page: No Pets Allowed," Jeff says. "And I thought, 'Great, no pets in the building.' But instead, it turns out that the only apartment in the whole building that's not allowed to have pets is mine. Turns out every other apartment in the building actually came with a dog."
It's at this point, groggy and barefoot in my big blue bathrobe, that I finally decide to cut Jeff off and ask him what the hell he's doing in my apartment so early on a Friday morning. But before I can swallow my current mouthful of cornflakes and get the words out, he has changed the subject.
"So," he says, swinging a pair of blazing white feet onto the floor and folding himself into a seated position that brings his knees too close to his chin. "Tell me about this chick you met at the Fairway."
And I am totally blown away.
How in the world could he know about the girl at the Fairway? It's been about sixteen hours since I met the girl at the Fairway, and I'm not even sure I've told anybody about her.
"Bernie told me," he says, before I can say anything. So apparently I told Bernie. Still . . .
"She hot?" comes the inevitable question, and the answer is yes.
To sum up:
Yesterday afternoon I was in the express line at the Fairway supermarket on Broadway between 74th and 75th streets. The place was mobbed, of course, as it is every day, and I was about sixty-seventh in line, cradling a half gallon of orange juice under one arm and holding a pint of Ben & Jerry's Phish Food in my other hand. From behind me, I heard a woman singing.
"How you gonna do it if you really don't wanna dance . . ."
Surprised, I turned, found her smiling at me, and told her she sounded good. But I guess I mumbled. I do that sometimes.
"What?" she asked. "It didn't sound good?"
"No, no," I said. "I said it did."
"Oh," smiling again. "Thanks."
She was dressed all in black -- black leather jacket over a black turtleneck, short black skirt, black stockings and black boots. She even had a pile of curly black hair to top it all off. Then she asked me a question about my coat, which led to a conversation about what we both did for a living (long line, remember?), and before I knew what was happening, she had taken a CD out of her purse, opened it, written her phone numbers on the inside of the liner notes and handed it to me.
"Call me," she said, "and let me know what you think."
It was her CD, and by that I mean she had recorded it. Her picture was on the cover, along with her name, which was Linda Lane, and she had given me a CD of her own music to listen to. And her phone numbers -- home and cell -- to call and let her know if I liked it.
It was a dazzling experience, and the kind that perfectly illustrates the difference between merely visiting New York City and living your actual everyday life here. For every oblivious jerk who stops in front of you to let his dog relieve itself, there's a pretty recording artist just dying to give you her phone number while you wait in line at the grocery store.
"Gotta love New York," Jeff says upon hearing the story. "So, you gonna call her?"
"Of course I'm going to call her," I say. "I'm not exactly in a position to turn down offers like this."
"You listen to the CD yet?"
Continues...
Excerpted from I Think She's Trying to Tell Me Something by Dan Graziano Copyright © 2005 by Dan Graziano.
Excerpted by permission.
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