"I'm going to introduce you to a guy, and I know you're going to fall in love with him, but don't," Carolyne said to Cici. So she did.
Ben was forty, a sometime restaurateur and party promoter who'd already been married twice (in fact, he was still married, but his wife had gone back to Florida) and been in and out of rehab a dozen times. Everyone in New York knew about him, and when his name came up, people would roll their eyes and change the subject. After all his drinking and coke snorting, he still possessed a residue of what he was before—charming, amusing, handsome—and Cici fell in love with the residue. They spent two great weekends together, even though they never actually had sex. Then they went to a party, he disappeared, and Cici found him rubbing up against a sixteen— year-old model who had just come to town. "You're disgusting!" she screamed.
"Oh, come on" he said. "You've got to let me live out my fantasies. I have a fantasy of being with a sixteen year old." He grinned, and you could see that his teeth needed to be rebonded.
The next morning, Cici turned up uninvited at his apartment. His three-year-old daughter was visiting. "I brought you a present," she said, acting hke nothing had happened. The present was a baby bunny. She put it on the couch, and it peed several times.
Meanwhile, Carolyne sort of moved in with Sam. She kept her apartment but spent every night at his and always left something— shoes, perfume, earrings, dry-cleaned blouses, six or seven different kinds of face cream—behind. This went on for three months. The night before Valentine's Day, he exploded. "I want you out," he said. "Out!" He was screaming and breathing heavily.
"I don't get it," Carolyne said.
"There's nothing to get," Sam said. "I just want you, and your stuff, out of here now!" Sam cranked open a window and began throwing her things out.
Carolyne said, "I'll fix your wagon, buster," and she smacked him hard across the back of his head.
He turned around. "You hit me," he said.
"Sam. . she said.
"I can't believe. . you hit me." He began backing across the floor. "Don't come near me," he said. He cautiously reached down and picked up his cat.
"Sam," Carolyne said, walking toward him.
"Stay back," he said. He grabbed the cat under its armpits so its legs were sticking straight out at Carolyne; he held it up like a weapon. "I said, get back."
"Sam. Sam." Carolyne shook her head. "This is so pity-ful."
"Not to me," Sam said. He hurried into the bedroom, cradling the cat in his arms. "She's a witch, isn't she, Puffy?" he asked the cat. "A real witch."
Carolyne took a few steps toward the bed. "I didn't mean …"
"You hit me," Sam said in a weird, little-boy voice. "Don't ever hit me. Don't hit Sam no more."
"Okay. .," Carolyne said cautiously.
The cat struggled out of Sam's arms. It ran across the floor. "Here kitty kitty," Carolyne said. "C'mere kitty. Want some milk?" She heard the TV click on.