Dear Girls Above Me: Inspired by a True Story (26 page)

As I stared at my upstairs neighbors examining a can of green
beans, I couldn’t help but feel sadness about our one-sided friendship. I had never before heard such completely uncensored and honest conversation. Not even my ex-girlfriend spoke to me as candidly when we were together. But the truth is that Cathy and Claire know very little about me. Not only that, but most of the time they don’t even remember who I am or they still think I’m Stephanie’s boyfriend. And for some bizarre reason, watching them in the canned-food aisle at Whole Foods made me want to change that. I wanted these girls to know me—the real me, not the eavesdropping me.

Still crouched behind the eggplants, I got ready to make my move. I had no idea what I was going to say to them. Maybe I would help them shop for the green bean casserole ingredients while voluntarily giving them the CliffsNotes to my life? I was sure if they knew I got my first hand job with SPF 50 sunscreen as lotion they would feel a lot closer to me. At least I would hope so. Or if that didn’t do it for them, then the story about the time I went to see
Love Actually
in the theater and ended up getting into a hair-pulling fight with the enraged little man who was kicking the seat behind me was sure to bond us.

As I stepped away from the ugly purple vegetables, allowing myself to be detected once again, I got a whiff of a familiar pungent smell. A body-spray fragrance that only a d-bag would dare wear. And judging by the amount that was forcing its way into my nostrils, this d-bag was close. Real close. I turned around.

“I like staring at their asses too. Downloading some visuals for your spank bank? File saved,” said the Con-Man, who was inches away from my face.

“Huh?” Couldn’t he just get sucked into the black hole that was where his personality should have been?

“How about this … I’ll take the blonde, you take the brunette, and then we’ll do a switcheroo.”

“What? No,” I replied, backing up to regain my space once more.

“Fine. You take the blonde, I’ll take the brunette, and then we’ll do the switcheroo? Bro, that’s the last scenario I can think of, so if you say no, then I’ll have no other choice but to assume you like dudes.”

“I’m okay with that,” I responded.

While he thought about this for a while, he made a face that looked as if he were constipated. I wondered if this was actually his “thinking face” or if he felt the need to show me his clogging problem in the supermarket. Both were equally likely. “You’re okay with liking dudes or you’re okay with the plan of me macking on the brunette?” he replied.

I figured the best thing to do at this point was pretend as if I had lost my hearing. At the very least that would confuse him enough to give me time to make a run for it. When I looked up to see what the girls were doing, they weren’t there. I glanced over at the dairy aisle, knowing that milk was a key ingredient to the casserole, but they weren’t there either. I examined every inch of the store in plain sight, but the girls were nowhere to be found. On top of that, Conor (I refused to refer to him as the Con-Man in my inner voice anymore) was still blabbering on about “tag-teaming the bitches” who lived above me. Due to a particular aversion to Axe body spray, a general distaste for Conor’s overall being, and a bizarre protectiveness I had for the girls above me, I lost my shit.

“Conor?”

“I think you mean the Con—”

“Conor?”

“Yes?” he replied.

“If you ever refer to my neighbors as ‘bitches’ again, I’ll hit you so hard that not even mama will be able to say I knocked you out,” I growled out loud while simultaneously realizing it made no sense; my apologies to LL Cool J. Today was a good day. He stood there traumatized, or maybe confused, having no idea how to react. I glanced at his pulsating biceps, which were about the same size as my waist, and at full flex they could grow to dimensions similar to my chest size. At any particular moment he could have literally destroyed the face where my beard grew. Instead he looked at me with what I believed to be respect, something he had never given me before. He and I both knew I had no chance against him. But that didn’t matter. I had earned admiration from the biggest douchebag in my building.

Just then a familiar voice caught my attention at the checkout counter. Cathy and Claire were in the middle of purchasing their items, well on their way to preparing their green bean casserole. I needed to get a move on.

“Are we good?” I asked him.

“We’re good, bro,” he replied.

“Enjoy your protein shake.”

“I always do,” he said as he took a sip, leaving a chocolate mustache above his lip.

I grabbed a shopping cart and made a speedy dash for the canned green beans, stopping only a few times to sample the weird cheeses. Whole Foods has a lot of weird cheese samples.

THE GIRLS ON READING

Dear Girls Above Me,

“Wait, when it’s a hardcover, it’s a novel, and when it’s floppy, it’s just a book?” All you need to know is it’s available on tape.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“So this is fiction or nonfiction? I’m confused, why can’t we just say real life or fake life?” Okay, Harry Potter is fake life.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“The Bible is an actual book you can read? I thought people just did chants and stuff from it.” Oh dear God above me.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“He wanted to know the last book I’ve read and all I could think of was
Goodnight Moon
.” And didn’t your mom read that to you?

THEY COULD BE MOMS SOMEDAY

Dear Girls Above Me,

“Women always complain about getting older, but I’m totally excited for my MILF years.” So are your future son’s friends.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“I just saw a parent with her child on a leash! I’m so gonna do that with my kids.” You should also look into designer body armor.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“I watched a special on conjoined twins and all I could think about was karate chopping them to freedom.” You should be a doctor.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“I think I’m pregnant—Wait, does the Barneys sale last all of December?!” Umm, can I react to the first part instead of the sale?

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“Okay, so now we have to set the cooking timer thingy to twenty-five minutes,” Cathy screamed out to Claire, who sounded as if she were rummaging through the cupboard.

I sat in my sink, acutely focused, with a ready-to-cook casserole beside me. My glow-in-the-dark novelty cooking timer (thanks, Mom) was in hand and all prepared for synchronization.

“Found it. Oh, and it’s pink! So cute!” Claire giggled.

Yeah, but can it glow in the dark? I remember thinking. The one-sided cooking competition had clearly begun.

“Did you say set it for fifteen minutes?” Claire asked.

I waited patiently. How does the word
fifteen
sound even close to
twenty-five
?

“No, you idiot. I said twenty minutes.”

No, you didn’t,
you
idiot. You said twenty-five minutes. I looked up at the ceiling and prayed that she would correct herself.

“Setting the timer to twenty minutes … right … now!”

I had no plans to sacrifice my own casserole just to stay
synchronized with the girls, so I set my timer for twenty-five minutes. Anyway, it was safer for Cathy and Claire to come up a bit short than to discover their oven was up in flames. Plus there was a good chance it would take them some time to discover that Kleenex do not make effective cooking mitts, which would give the casserole the additional time it needed. Clearly, I took my casserole making incredibly seriously.

Now all I had to do was wait, and I happened to have the perfect amount of time to watch one of my half-hour TV shows saved on my DVR. My problem is that I always end up spending more time deciding which show to put on than I do actually watching it. You can’t blame me, given that I only record the stuff worth watching, like
Cash Cab
and
Sister Wives
. After scrolling back and forth between the two for several minutes, I realized I no longer had time to watch either and turned my TV off. I’ve tried watching
Cash Cab
in installments before, but you really lose the flow of the story. Like, where was this guy going again?

As my casserole baked, I sat comfortably in my kitchen sink, with my computer across my lap, watching YouTube videos and writing down the wisdom coming from above me. After listening to these girls for almost a year now, I’ve developed a strategy for when and when not to be attentive. This is not necessarily a rigorous plan to live by, but it at least gives my brain and ear canals a chance to know when I should be alert (because they are most likely going to say something interesting) and when I should relax (because I am about to be seriously bored).

ALERT

Around the time they’ve taken too many Patrón shots.

Anything to do with boys and dating.

Whenever they started off a sentence with “I’ve made a huge mistake.”

While they are on the phone with their moms talking shit about each other.

During any natural disaster.

RELAX

Around the time of year when
American Idol
auditions are nearing.

Anything to do with shopping and high heels.

Whenever they start off a sentence with “I need to tell you about this ingrown hair.”

While they watch
Sex and the City
reruns.

During any “fashion disaster.”

“Oh my God, did you hear that Jen got her boobs done?” Claire blurted out.

“No. Way. No. Way. No. Way!” Cathy responded.

Hmm, what category did this fall under? I guess I could have relaxed on this one, considering the conversation concerned one of their friends and not them, but at the same time boob jobs are almost always fascinating. So I decided to be on the alert.

“Supposedly she went all Anna Nicole Smith on us.”

“She died?!” Cathy screamed.

“No! She got boobs like Anna, but they are totally alive,” Claire reassured her.

“Oh thank God. I mean, I don’t really like Jen, but I don’t want her to be dead or anything.”

I was really happy I’d stayed and listened.

“Facebook! I bet she posted pictures of her new tatas on Facebook!” And with that the girls stampeded into their living room. In order for me to have gotten a full listening signal, I would have had to follow them into my living room. The only problem was I had really wedged myself and now I was stuck in my sink. I tried maneuvering my caboose from side to side, but due to an awkward angle and the maple donut I had wolfed down that morning, I wasn’t going anywhere.

Out of nowhere, I heard a timid knock on my door. There was a split second where I wondered if the girls could have made it down to my apartment within those seven seconds. As much as I might wish, tweets don’t self-destruct (Inspector Gadget style) after reading them, so these girls could conceivably discover my snippy 140-character jokes at their expense. Too bad Twitter doesn’t have some sort of fail-safe device that instantly wipes all the evidence, like in
Conspiracy Theory
when Mel Gibson flips a switch and it burns everything in his apartment. Knowing me, if I ever installed such a switch, I would accidentally flip it later that night when I got up to pee.

Anyway, it wasn’t them at my door, because I could hear the rumblings above me of a debate about breast size: “Those are D’s, Claire!”

Again, a knock at my door, this time a tad bit louder. I sat hopelessly among dirty dishes, unable to reach the door’s peephole to see who was on the other side. I felt just like the guy who got stuck between rocks and had to cut off his own arm in order to free himself, but instead of considering a dull knife to get the job done, I eyed the dishwashing liquid beside me.

I figured the worst-case scenario was that Tania and her frightening poodle, Penny, were at my door, wanting to pay Marvin an afternoon visit. The best-case scenario was that it was the delivery guy needing my direct signature for the
Shark Week: 20th Anniversary Collection
I had ordered on Amazon. I rarely, if ever, had let someone into my apartment just based on the sound of his knuckles on wood, but I really wanted to see the “Air Jaws” people had been praising in their reviews.

“Come in,” I hesitantly called out.

There was a long overly dramatic pause before my door slowly creaked opened. This could only belong to one person. The actual worst-case scenario … My ex-girlfriend.

She stood serenely in my doorway. I had no choice but to match her calm due to my restricted position. But on the inside I felt just like George Clooney’s fishing boat in
The Perfect Storm
, right as it was entering that huge wave of destruction.… Spoiler alert: Based on her expression she seemed to be just as confused to see me as I was to see her. Although her confusion most likely had to do with the fact that I was hanging out of my kitchen sink.

“Are you okay, Charlie?” she asked.