Friends Without Benefits

Nico’s eyes searched mine, his expression wavering between fury and worry. Mimicking the force of my earlier strangle hold; he abruptly pulled me into his arms. “I want to lock you up. I want to put you in a safe, and only I’ll have the key.”

I felt his heart hammering against his chest. It was my turn to draw circles on his back, thread my fingers through his hair, and rub his neck.

“Hey, now . . . Everything is fine. Let me just tell you what happened, okay? It’s not that bad.”

“Elizabeth, you were about to knock me out with a frying pan. I saw the fear in your eyes. Don’t tell me it’s not that bad.”

I waited a beat then said, “It’s not that bad.”

He released a nervous laugh, and I smiled into his chest, pushed slightly against him so I could see his eyes. “I’ll tell you everything. Just come in and eat something first. Have some wine.”

He regarded me warily, but finally nodded his assent. He tucked me under his arm, and we walked to the dining room table, left his single small satchel by the front door. Rose had very efficiently set out a place for him piled high with ravioli, focaccia, and sautéed sunflower leaves. My mouth started to water even though I was still full from my earlier pig out.

We sat in silence for a while then I filled the quiet with mundane questions about his day, told him briefly about my day, Angelica’s treatment. He drank three glasses of wine in rapid succession, his dark eyes growing more liquid with each glass.

I waited till he seemed somewhat relaxed—which was not at all relaxed, but no longer on the verge of murdering someone—then told him of today’s strangeness.

He listened, fingering the stem of his wine, twisting it between his thumb and forefinger. I noted that his jaw flexed and his temple ticked a few times.

When I finished I met his gaze; his eyes resembled hot coals. I could tell he was trying very hard to keep his temper in check.

“This is so fu—” His voice was lethally low; he caught himself before he could finish the word. “We have to find a way to keep her away from you.”

I nodded. “Dan will be following me around the clinic from now on so I’ll have a guard with me at all times.”

His jaw ticked again. “I know this woman. She is dangerous.”

“Nico . . . Who is she? Is she the one you mentioned before?”

“Yes. I met her at a club, that night, when she put her hands down my pants and I—” Nico stood abruptly and walked away from the table.

I followed him. “Why do you think she is dangerous?”

He spun on me. “Because she attacked one of the dancers on my show.”

I stepped back. “Oh . . .”

“Yeah. Oh.”

“Why isn’t she in jail?”

“She was in jail, for two years. She was released last year.”

“Why did she attack the dancer?”

“Because I was dating her.”

I took another step back, felt like I’d been slapped. “Oh.”

He studied me. An extremely uncomfortable moment passed. I concentrated on breathing.

Nico shifted his weight, placed his hands on his hips. “I don’t do that anymore.”

“What?”

“Date the dancers. It was only the one time.”

I nodded, wanted to tell him it was none of my business, but couldn’t seem to get the words past my throat. I hated that he’d been looking for girl C.

Instead I turned and called over my shoulder, “Come back to the table and finish your dinner.”

Nico followed me back to the table. I poured him another glass of wine and took the seat adjacent to his, fiddled with the napkin. I could feel his eyes on me, but I didn’t return his gaze.

“Hey, what are you thinking about?” Nico placed his hand over mine, drawing me out of my thoughts.

I pulled my hand away and tucked loose strands of hair behind my ears. I really needed to re-braid my hair. In fact, I really needed a makeover. For the first time in a long time I felt like maybe I needed to try a bit harder putting myself together; maybe doing my hair would be a good idea, or wearing makeup, or growing four inches.

“I was just thinking that if we were at your family’s restaurant right now skeevy Frank Sinatra would be playing on the jukebox.”

“Skeevy Frank Sinatra? Frank Sinatra isn’t skeevy.”

“You have to admit, he was kind of a jerk—him and his dumb women.” I felt strangely argumentative, hot, annoyed.

“What do you have against Frank Sinatra?”

“He just seems like the poster boy for chauvinistic men—that is until you came along with your show and picked up the torch.”

Nico’s eyes flickered over my features; he openly studied me, his gaze lost most of its warmth in favor of cool annoyance. After a prolonged moment he wiped his mouth with his napkin and placed it on the table, leaned forward on his elbows such that we were just a few inches apart. “Frank Sinatra once said, ‘I like intelligent women. When you go out, it shouldn’t be a staring contest.’”

I scratched my chin. “I’ve never heard that quote before.”

“That’s because you don’t know anything about Frank Sinatra. Just like you don’t know anything about my show.”

“I know you have bimbos dancing around in bikinis.” I felt better and worse as soon as the words were out of my mouth. The gathering thickness in my throat and my sudden irrationality reminded me of our conversation earlier in the week, when we’d discussed his girl B.

“No. I don’t.” His features darkened. He looked honestly wounded.

“Really?” I folded my arms over my chest and leaned back in my chair. “So those women, they’re not wearing bikinis? Or are they robots? Automatons? Fembots?”

“No. They’re women and they’re wearing dance costumes. But they’re not bimbos.”

I snorted. “Right.”

He shook his head. “They happen to be very bright, very intelligent women.”

“Who all happen to look like the freaks of nature also known as supermodels.”

“Not all of them look like supermodels. In fact, maybe only one looks like a supermodel.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes. Really, unless you consider yourself a supermodel. Erin, who is a graduate of Columbia with a degree in physics, is shorter than you are. Tamara is about your height and has a master’s in Russian literature from Brown.”

I squirmed in my seat and fiddled with the hem of my scrubs. “You only hire college graduates?”

“No. Cassandra, our lead choreographer, doesn’t have a college degree. But she’s a great dancer and a great mom. I’m also her oldest son’s Godfather. So you can imagine how it upsets me when you refer to her as a bimbo.”

I tore my bottom lip between my teeth; my eyes were caught by his disappointed, frustrated scowl.

Before I could respond to this new and interesting information, Nico pushed slightly away from the table and turned his chair so that we were fully facing each other. For a brief moment I didn’t know if he was going to give me a lecture or kick me out of his apartment.

“If you watched the show, or knew anything about it, you would know that each of my dancers play a key role.” I sunk lower in my seat as he launched an impassioned defense of his show, his work; “Three of them are writers on the show. Did you know that? All of them participate in the skits. In fact, Erin has her own segment called Are you Smarter Than a Bikini Model? She annihilates her opponents. We had Franklin Orin on—you know, that famous political scientist, always on the cable news programs? And she killed, wiped the floor with him. He was actually really nice about it.

“Over half of our viewership is women. Our main female demographic is between the ages of twenty-two and forty-eight. When asked why they watch the show, they overwhelmingly respond that it portrays women in a positive light.”

I bit the inside of my cheek and huffed. “You have to admit, the commercials do not portray the show to be pro-female.”

“Depends on what your definition of pro-female is. If you think pro-female is having a show where various kinds of women—all different ethnicities, with diverse backgrounds, talents, but also all healthy, in great physical shape—work together to make an exemplary product then, yes, it is pro-female.”

I blinked, nonplussed. “Your audience is naked!”

“Not the whole audience. Just the group closest to the dancers’ stage and it’s because they choose to be.”

“Come on! All the commercials have you wrestling—half-naked—in tubs of Jell-O. They show your girls doing gymnastics!”

He shrugged, but his grimace betrayed his frustration. “Gymnastics is an Olympic sport, but, I admit, some of the commercials don’t represent the show in the best light. I don’t make the commercials and I don’t have control over the marketing team. They work directly for the network and do what they need to do to bring in viewership.”

“But you can’t expect me to be okay with what I see on the commercials.”

“That’s a cop-out, Elizabeth. That’s like rating or reviewing a book after reading the first ten pages. Do you really think my sisters or my mother would speak to me if my show marginalized women? More importantly, how can you think so little of me?”