The Woman Before You: An intense, addictive love story with an unexpected twist...

On his second mojito, Luke said, ‘Audrey got me an audition for the older brother in a cereal commercial. I didn’t get a callback. I guess they figured out that I’m twice Cereal Boy’s age.’

Three times Cereal Boy’s age, I thought, but didn’t say.

‘How old do I look?’ Luke asked.

‘Hard to tell,’ I white-lied. He was twenty-six, a year older than me. He looked fifteen. He looked thirty. He looked awful.

How old did Matthew think I was? I liked having a secret. Luke, can I tell you something? Promise not to tell. I played weird sex games with a stranger in the store when Steve was out to lunch.

‘Hey, are you in love or something’ Luke said. ‘You have this … glow. Promise me you’re not pregnant.’

‘I promise,’ I said. ‘I’m the same.’ I loved that Luke noticed something different about me. It made me feel almost hopeful. Maybe it was the mojitos kicking in, but suddenly I realised Matthew knew where I worked. He could stop by the store, maybe he would…

‘Are you hungry?’ Luke asked. ‘I know a pretty good Thai spot near here.’ Pretty good Thai spot was his not-so-secret code for even cheaper than Cielito Lindo.

‘That’s okay.’ My stomach heaved at the thought of chopsticking up the gummy, stuck-together, greasy Pad Thai that Luke would want to split. I wanted to go home and think about The Customer and what we’d done—and jerk off and fall asleep.

I said, ‘Next time, okay? I don’t know why I’m so tired. I think I’ll call out for Chinese and watch TV and pass out.’

Walking to the subway, I felt the mojitos wear off within minutes, and I got sad again. Why was I so stupid? Why couldn’t I just text Matthew? But I would never text Matthew first. Back in my apartment, I called my mom, who had gotten home from the faculty picnic.

‘Honey,’ she said. ‘Is something wrong? I can hear it in your voice.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘Really, I’m fine. I’ve been out with my friends. I had a couple of mojitos, maybe that’s what you’re hearing.’

‘As long as you’re having fun,’ Mom said.

‘Oh, I am.’

What a liar I was becoming. And the lies were only just starting…

On Tuesday, the store phone rang. Steve answered. There were no customers. He put the phone on speaker.

I heard Matthew’s voice from across the store. I would have known it anywhere. I closed my eyes for a moment. Then I went closer to the phone.

I heard him say, ‘I’m calling to order the mattress I looked at in your shop a few days ago. That nice young woman helped me … Isabel, is that right?’

He was taking this whole role-playing thing to a new level.

Steve gave me a thumbs up sign. He switched the phone off speaker, put on earphones and began typing into the computer. Numbers came up on screens that dissolved into other screens.

Steve said, ‘Sure thing. You’ll have it tomorrow. Thanks for doing business with Doctor Sleep. Yes, certainly, I’ll tell her. Goodbye.’

‘Tell her what?’ I said.

‘Nothing,’ said Steve. ‘I can’t remember.’

I could have tortured him to find out. Steve walked over to me, so close he was practically standing on my toes. I shrank away.

‘Good work, Isabel,’ he said. ‘That was your friend from last week. He went for the Super Deluxe. He said that the floor model would do, if that was all we had. I think the guy has the hots for you. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense. Guy like that should have an assistant ordering for him, he doesn’t do shit like that himself. You know what I think? I think the guy was hoping you’d answer the phone. I’ll bet you would have liked to talk to him, too.’

I wanted to smack him. But he was right. Why wouldn’t Matthew text me? Maybe he lost my number and this was the only way he could reach me? Maybe that was my last chance. I would never get another.

Steve said, ‘Am I right? Huh? Am I right about you and that guy? Something … funny? As in, funny business? I definitely got that vibe when I walked into the store that day he was here.’

That Steve noticed made me blush, and it made me strangely happy. It was all I could do not to ask what made him think that something funny was going on. I liked having evidence that whatever happened between me and Matthew wasn’t entirely in my imagination.

I said, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, Steve. Maybe the guy just wanted to buy a mattress. Maybe he’s got more money than he knows what to do with.’

Who was I angry at? Steve? Matthew? What had Matthew done except play a fun little game and leave me more unhappy than I was before I met him? It’s not like I hadn’t done the same thing to countless guys before him.

‘Whatever,’ said Steve. ‘And FYI … No one has more money than he knows what to do with. People with that much money know what do with it.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ I said.

‘I don’t suppose you would,’ Steve said.

The next day the guys from the trucking company took away the mattress. They carried it away … bye bye.

It left a giant gap on the sales floor. Steve let the spot stay empty for a while, to remind himself of the amazing deal that he (already taking credit) had made. I couldn’t stand to look at the bare space, the only evidence of my hot, five-minute scene with The Handsome Customer. Now I would grow old and sell mattresses until I retired and died.

I looked up Matthew’s order on the store computer. There was no name, just an address in Brooklyn Heights, a charge to an Amex card listed to the Prairie Foundation and a note (in Steve’s writing) that said, Contact assistant.

The next day the phone rang. I knew it was for me before Steve said, ‘Isabel?’ He put his hand over the receiver. ‘It’s your rich boyfriend.’

Somehow, I’d known who it was. My friends never called on the store phone. None of them had that number. My mom would have called on my cell.

‘Isabel, it’s me.’

I didn’t have to ask who me was. I couldn’t speak. Or breathe.

He said, ‘The mattress is set up. I’m wondering if you would be willing to come over to check out the feng shui. I would hate for it to face in the wrong direction.’ He laughed, meaning it was a joke and not a joke. The feng shui line was a joke. But my going to his place wasn’t. After all, we had a history. We were more than friends.

‘I could do that,’ I said.

‘Isabel?’ he said. I loved the way he said my name. ‘Excuse me. I think we may have a bad connection.’

‘I could do that,’ I repeated. Maybe I’d been whispering, or maybe he wanted to make me say it again. Our connection was fine.

I felt something warm and moist and unpleasant on the back of my neck. Only then did I realize how close Steve was standing.

‘When?’ I said. ‘Where?’

‘Is tomorrow evening too soon?’

I should have said, yes, way too soon. I should have invented dates I couldn’t break. A boyfriend I was seeing. But what if this was my last chance? I wasn’t busy tomorrow evening. If I were, I would have cancelled, no matter what it was.

‘Tomorrow evening would be fine,’ I said.

‘What time do you get off work?’

‘Six?’ Why did it come out as a question? Why was I asking him? I could probably leave any time I wanted if I told Steve where I was going. But the following day, Steve might try to make me tell him everything we did.

‘Perfect. Come straight here,’ Matthew said. ‘We can watch the sunset.’

‘Great,’ I said. ‘Can you text me the address? On my cell.’

‘No need for that,’ he said. ‘It’s in the system at your store.’

Suddenly, it was as if I heard Mom’s voice. Put the phone down. Don’t talk to this man again. Don’t go there tomorrow night.

Sorry, Mom, I thought. I have no choice. After my dad’s death, my mom never remarried or even (as far as I knew) dated. So there was a lot my mother didn’t know about the modern world. Anyway, I wouldn’t have listened if she had been standing beside me. The desire made everyone else disappear.

When I hung up the phone, Steve said, ‘You’re not supposed to get personal calls on the store phone.’

I said, ‘This was business, Steve.’

I’d never felt that I had the power to make Steve step back. Yet now something—some new note—in my voice made him take a big step backward. Something in me had changed just from talking to Matthew.

I should have taken that as a warning, a hint of changes to come.

I couldn’t sleep all night. I obsessed over what to wear. Sexy but not so sexy that it would look weird in the store—and send the wrong message, first to Steve and then to Matthew. But what message was too sexy after what I did on the mattress?

I bought new underwear, black lace with a slim red ribbon threaded through the bra and panties. I wore a short denim skirt and a black T-shirt. I carried a jacket, just in case. The weather seemed changeable, low clouds, wind. Stormy weather. I went light on the make-up. At the end of the day, I could put on more in the broom closet that Steve called ‘the staff lounge.’

‘You look nice,’ said Steve, when I got to work. ‘Nicer than usual. Going somewhere?’

I didn’t answer. He knew.

Maybe I should have dressed up every day. Business was booming, for a change. There had been a bedbug scare in the NYU dorms, and the place was jammed with kids using their parents’ credit cards to (they hoped, ha ha) fix the problem. They bought the cheapest mattresses, but so what? In Steve’s words, we were ‘moving product.’ I liked the college kids, mostly. Their needs were simple. Their purchasing decisions were all about price. Not one of them wanted to act like a jerk trying out a mattress while a stranger (me) watched. Fine, they said. I’ll take it.

Steve felt good about the day, and when I asked if I could leave early, he said sure, if I was willing to come in early a couple of mornings next week and open up. That sounded fair to me. I would have agreed to anything.

I redid my makeup. And when Steve was in the toilet, I put on high heels and skittered out of the store.

I spent a big chunk of that week’s paycheck on the cab fare to Matthew’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights. Google Maps said that it was blocks from the station, and my heels were too high to walk that far. Besides, I was eager to get there.

I had four condoms in my purse, just in case. I was a nice Midwestern girl, but not that nice. Hey, this was New York, 2016.

From all the way down the block I knew which building was his: the luxury high-rise designed by a famous architect. There had been a battle between the Landmarks Commission vs. the architect and the developers. The outcome—who was going to win—was never in doubt. The structure was a twenty-four story middle finger raised to the city.

That was where Matthew lived. The house of the neighborhood destroyers. Though (to be honest) I knew that I would live there too if someone offered me an apartment.

The lobby reception desk was raised, like a throne. Seeing it from below added to the height and size and heft of the two enormous doormen, both in olive green uniforms. What if they asked me for Matthew’s last name? I didn’t even know it.

I gave them the apartment number. Could they ring Penthouse Three, please? I was asking them to ring someone whose name I didn’t know.

‘And you are?’

‘Isabel,’ I said. ‘Isabel Archer.’ I hardly recognized my own name. It sounded like two nonsense words. What did it even mean? Part of me had left my body. The nice Isabel, the cautious one, was trying to understand why this reckless new Isabel was here—doing this.

The doorman hung up the house phone. ‘Go on up,’ he said. ‘This elevator goes as far as the tenth floor, where there’s another desk for our premier floors. They’ll tell you what to do from there.’

A double layer of doormen.

The elevator whisked me through a column of air and let me off ten floors up, where a second pair of doormen directed me toward another elevator. I pressed PH3. This elevator was glass on all sides, so I could watch the rooftops of Brooklyn fall away beneath me.

There was only one apartment on the floor. I rang the bell.

A middle-aged housekeeper opened the door and took my jacket.

She said, ‘The Señor is out on the terrace.’ Did I want a cocktail? Absolutely. Bueno. Already poured. A young man, also Hispanic, also friendly, brought me a martini glass on a tray. Balancing the glass—filled to the brim with orange-golden liquid—I followed the maid through a huge living room that looked like a modern art museum, with white couches, white marble floors, walls whose perfect whiteness was defiled only by the violent splashy energy of the large abstract paintings. Was that a real de Kooning?

The glass wall to the terrace was open. The Customer stood with his back to us, looking out over the edge. I gulped down half my drink.

‘Thank you, Maria,’ he told the maid, without turning around.

The maid—Maria—asked me, ‘Are you all right, Señora?’ I wondered how many girls she’d watched stop dead in their tracks, barely able to move.

He didn’t turn around or acknowledge me in any way. I went and stood beside him. He was wearing jeans and a crisp white shirt, open at the neck. He looked even more handsome than he had at the store. I grasped the edge of the low brick wall and hung on. The view made me dizzy, or maybe it was being near him. Or just possibly it was the drink. It was all very confusing, but I loved it. I loved the last rays of daylight twinkling in the windows, the giant red ball that was the sun bouncing on the water.

Now I knew what it meant to feel like you owned the city. The Manhattan skyline spread out before us, lay at our feet, begging us, its rulers, to tell it what to do. Though maybe I was confused again. Maybe that was how I felt. Like a queen.

I took another sip of the cocktail. It was intensely delicious. Tequila, I thought. Edge of chili, edge of something fruity but tart.

‘Hibiscus flower,’ The Customer said.

The strong drink went straight to my head, especially since I’d skipped lunch. I’d been too nervous to eat. But now I kept drinking till it was done. I’d never tasted anything so amazing. I felt tipsy, terrified, and happy.

The sun dipped into the river. Matthew moved closer to me, and like a reflex or afterthought, as if he wasn’t paying attention, he rested one hand on my ass.

‘Lovely,’ he said. ‘No?’

‘Yes,’ was all I could say. But what was I agreeing to? The loveliness of the sunset, or the lovely warmth of his hand?

‘Come take a look at the bed.’

He smiled as he stepped back and let me precede him into the apartment. He took my arm and guided me down a long corridor lined with small vitrines, cut into the wall, displaying classical Greek and Egyptian statuettes. I paused in front of a figure of a human with a dog’s head.

‘Anubis,’ he said. ‘The lord of the dead and the underworld.’

I wanted to say I’d been reading poems about the underworld, but I was afraid of sounding pretentious. And I’d dated enough to know that too much anxious chit-chat could kill the sexual buzz. And there was plenty of buzz.

The bedroom was as stylish as the rest of the apartment. There were windows on three sides, so it seemed to be perched, like an eagle’s nest, above the city below. Could you have sex in a room like this without thinking about all the strangers who might be watching? Or maybe that would be part of the fun, the excitement.

Was it really me thinking that? I was shy about my body. I’d always preferred to have sex with the lights out. But now I was ready to do it any way, anywhere…

In the center of the room was the bed: the mattress from our store. Not that I would have recognized its organic cotton and hand-knotted tufts covered by a simple but beautiful midnight-blue silk bedspread and a half dozen matching throw pillows. Was he married? Would a single guy have a bed like that?

Maybe this was how rich men lived, men who never made their own beds. It shamed me to think of my bed at home, a tangle of rumpled sheets and blankets piled with books and, right now, with the entire contents of my closet, clothes I’d tried on for this evening.

Why had I bothered? I could read his mind, sort of. And I had the definite sense that he wasn’t getting ready to throw me down on the mattress. He wasn’t even going to ask me to repeat what I’d done in the store. We stood there in the doorway, looking into the room. He was still holding my arm.

He said, ‘Do I have to have it moved?’

‘What?’ I said.

‘The feng shui,’ he reminded me. ‘Does it work?’

Was he serious? I didn’t know him well enough to ask. I was ready to have sex with him, but I wasn’t comfortable enough to find out if he was joking.

From a strict feng shui point of view, the bed should have been diagonal to the door, which it wasn’t. But I wasn’t going to say that. There was really no place else in the room that the bed could go.

‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘Perfect.’ If he had bad luck, or got sick, or developed insomnia, it would be my fault. Fine. Anyhow, I didn’t even believe in feng shui. It was just a way to sell mattresses.

He said, ‘That’s odd … I had the impression that the bed was supposed to be diagonal to the door and facing the other direction.’

My face burned with shame. ‘Probably,’ I said. ‘That’s probably right…’ Then why had he even asked me?

‘But I think I’m going to leave it where it is,’ he said. ‘Live dangerously, right?’

‘Right!’ I said. ‘That’s right.’

Standing beside me, he reached around and put his hand under my T-shirt, on my bare skin, on my back, just above my waist. My breathing quickened. It didn’t take much. He could feel it.

‘What now?’ I said. It was up to him. I would do whatever he wanted.

He took his hand out from under my shirt.

He said, ‘Thank you, that’s great. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.’

‘But…’ I couldn’t help myself. Something could still happen.

Or did I fail some sort of test when I’d lied about feng shui?

Only later I would learn that I’d passed the test when I lied.

He said, ‘I’m looking forward to getting to know you better, Isabel.’

Was he trying to make me beg? Maybe I would have, if I could have figured out how to beg a man for sex without humiliating myself. I was ready to humiliate myself, but I didn’t believe that it would work.

‘Could I ask you a question?’ I said.

‘Ask me anything,’ he replied. But I could feel him tense. What did he not want me to ask? What was he hiding?

‘Well. I suppose we might call this our second date. And you haven’t confessed to any other names. But what’s your last name?’ I said. ‘I was terrified one of the doormen would ask me for it on the way up tonight.’

He laughed. ‘I assumed you knew.’

‘I don’t,’ I said.

‘Well, I’m Matthew,’ he said. ‘Matthew Frazier.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Frazier,’ I said, and stuck out my hand.

He looked down at my hand but didn’t take it. My arm dropped back to my side.

He guided me back down the hall and through the living room towards the front door. Halfway there, he handed me on to Maria, who gave me my jacket and opened the door.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Goodbye.’

I stood outside the door in the hall for a long time, though I was pretty sure that I was being watched on a security camera. Let them watch. I couldn’t move. Why had The Customer—Matthew—brought me there? What did he want from me? Why had he even called? He couldn’t have meant that he cared about the feng shui. And then when he caught me in a lie … I didn’t know him well enough to know if my tiny white lie had been a deal breaker.

Well, I told myself, I would be better off if the whole thing ended right here. I’m a truthful person. I don’t need a relationship with a man I’d started lying to, even before I had met him.

Over the next few days, even Steve could tell that something was making me miserable. He seemed weirdly pleased about it. Luke and Marcy treated me like a person who had a life-threatening disease but who didn’t want to discuss it.

When Marcy and Luke and I met at Cielito Lindo at our usual time on Sunday, Marcy made sure that my drinks from the bar were double strength and doubly delicious. But that only reminded me of the cocktail I’d drank at Matthew’s apartment. Nothing would ever taste that wonderful again. Nothing else would ever get me high in that same way. I’d been offered magic, and I’d lied and spoiled everything. I should have told him to move the bed. Maybe I’d be in that bed right now. Did he ever think of me when he lay on the mattress?

One night, after not having heard from him for days and not having thought of anything else, I dreamed I gave him a present. It wasn’t clear in the dream, what the present was, but I woke up remembering his smile, how in the dream he’d hugged me, how warm and happy I felt.

I thought: It’s a sign. I’ll send him something. A little thank you present. Thanks for the lovely drink. Thanks for buying the (I wouldn’t need to say ‘most expensive’) mattress. Businesses sent thank you gifts all the time. They showed their appreciation. That’s how you built customer loyalty, which was something Steve talked a lot about, though no one had ever bought anything from us twice. So what would customer loyalty have meant?

But what could I give The Customer? Matthew? What did a man like that need? How could I base my decision on a coffee shop exchange, a sex game in the store, and a chaste drink on the terrace? And a dream I only half remembered.

Every day, on the walk from the subway to Doctor Sleep, I looked in every window. I was shopping for The Customer. For Matthew. But nothing seemed right.

Then one warm afternoon—on my lunch break—I was going to meet Luke for a quick picnic in Tompkins Square Park. I passed this funny little store, part joke shop/part kids shop, the kind of place you hardly see anymore in New York except in the East Village. In the window was one of those Mexican card games, Loteria, like bingo but with pictures, beautiful old paintings of the world, the sun, the musician, the jug, the cactus, the tree, the heart—and words in Spanish on the card and the board.

The image that caught my eye was El Melon. A cantaloupe, sliced open, pinkish orange, juicy and full of seeds. A picture of a cantaloupe. A picture of sex.

I bought the set, and sent the card to Matthew’s penthouse, in an envelope addressed to Matthew Frazier. I hoped that he would open it himself, rather than the assistant he’d listed on his sales receipt—whom I’d never met—or the housekeeper.

Nothing happened. No reply. I imagined him throwing my card in the trash. What a stupid gift I’d chosen. Why would a hot rich guy who sipped cocktails on the terrace want a funky old picture of a cantaloupe?

A week later the package came back to me. The stamp on the slightly battered envelope said that no one by that name lived at that address. Why had he done that? Did he not want to hear from me? Why had he gone so far as to pretend he didn’t live there?

Meanwhile, I couldn’t stop thinking about Matthew. His hands, his body, the way he smiled at me from across the table at the coffee shop, the sound of his voice when I’d lay on the mattress at the store. I got interested in sex—obsessed, you could say— in a way I’d never been before.

Now, when Steve went out to do whatever he did at lunch, I watched porn on my computer. I’d found a little clip in which a guy who looks like Matthew is interviewing a girl for a job and he somehow persuades her (I watched it without sound) to have sex on his desk in many different positions. I’d come every time I thought about Matthew’s voice saying, ‘Lie down. Please. Let me see.’

Matthew

Sooner or later everyone wants a do-over. Sooner rather than later, everyone reaches a point when they say, Okay, guys, roll it back. Let’s try something else. Begin again. Give it another ending.