Dear Girls Above Me: Inspired by a True Story (27 page)

I had imagined a million different scenarios in my head for what
it would be like to bump into my ex for the first time since our breakup. Somehow I forgot to visualize this one.

“I’m great. How are you?” I said, responding the only way I knew how to from a sink.

“Are you stuck in there or something? I mean, do you need my help—”

“No, no. I’m good. Just lounging. Doing some Internet browsing,” I said back to her.

We sat there in silence—well, I sat there; she was standing, unencumbered. I had no idea why after all this time she’d shown up to my apartment unannounced. Did she need some cash? She had about twenty times more money than I did, but maybe after our breakup, she had turned to gambling as a coping mechanism. Or was it a possibility that she had come to collect her electric toothbrush? I sure hoped not, because during my anger stage in the phases of grief, I had used her Sonicare to clean the Thai food streaks I had left in my toilet.

“Can I come in?” she sweetly asked.

I pretended to consider her question for a short time. I didn’t want her thinking she could just march back into my life so easily, regardless of the fact that she could. “Sure.”

She wore the vintage 1987 Lakers T-shirt I had let her borrow the first time she spent the night at my apartment. I couldn’t help but believe this was a conscious decision on her part. She looked the same, possibly a few pounds skinnier, but this was only noticeable because it had been so long since I had last seen her. As she walked toward me, I was surprised by how dispirited she seemed. I was used to seeing her as the life of the party, bubbly, zestful, and always prepared to sing a number from the musical
Rent
. Now she looked disheartened and lifeless.

“You have a beard.”

“I do.”

She came in to hug me. I tried my best to reciprocate, but I had trouble lifting my upper torso. I could tell she felt as if I were being standoffish, which seemed to make her more interested in me. If I had only had the restrictions of a kitchen sink to sit in during our relationship, we very well might still be together.

“Why are you sitting in a sink, Charlie?” she asked. Fair question.

I could have told her all about the girls above me, but I wasn’t sure how not to come across as super creepy. So I whipped up an alternative. “This is where I’ve been eating my meals.”

“Not at your dining table anymore?”

“No. Why? Because it’s a table surrounded by chairs? What if everyone always colored inside the lines?”

“That’s a point.… So, how’s the writing been going? Still working on that ‘great screenplay’ you used to talk about?” she asked.

“Oh, you mean ‘Channeling Erica’? Yeah. I’m almost done, actually. Just polishing up the ending.” Truthfully, I was on page eighteen and I had completely made up that title. The actual name was “Untitled Charlie McDowell Shitty Ball Hair.”

“I can’t wait to read it,” she said in the most genuine way she knew how.

“So … What are you doing here?”

She looked up at me with her beautiful eyes, not knowing how to respond.

“I just feel so lost.”

“How come? Everything seems to be going well in your life. A wonderful career, family, and I would bet you have a special someone as well.…” Thanks to Facebook I already knew the answer, but I wanted her to think I didn’t check her page daily and hadn’t discovered she was indeed “in a relationship.”

“We broke up.”

“I know. You don’t have to rub it in.”

“No, not you and me. Me and Tone.”

“Tone? Please tell me that’s his DJ name,” I begged.

“I’m pretty sure that’s the name his mother gave him.”

“So you went from dating me, Charlie, to a guy named Tone?”

“Well, there were a few in between, but yes,” she said, hitting me with another dagger.

“ ‘A few’ meaning ‘three,’ though, right?”

“I don’t know, Charlie!”

I was beginning to come to the realization that relationships are mostly about the balance of power. If you have all of it (her), then there is very little hope for the other person (me) to gain any sort of respect. This Tone guy sounded like a real asshole, but who knows, maybe he was just a normal guy with a ridiculous name who got his heart broken like me. And maybe that was her superhero strength: to lure men into her charmingly decorated lair, where she gradually sucks the “relationship power” out of them.

“You know, some people might think Charlie’s a weird name,” she said.

“Yeah. So did you just come over to give me a pep talk or …?”

“Charlie, I came here to tell you that I think I made a big mistake.”

Damn it, she really was my kryptonite. Deep down I knew that she wasn’t the amazing person I had made her out to be, but up until this point I had been so infatuated by the idea of her that I wasn’t able to think clearly. And even still, somehow she found a way to point her tractor beam directly into my heart. I needed to break free from her Jedi mind trick, but I couldn’t do it alone. I wasn’t strong enough. I needed something, a sign, an immunity, or at least a foreseeable way out of my sink.

And just like that, a miracle happened. Through the stucco and plaster ceiling I heard the ringing of a cooking timer going off. For me, it was a spiritual awakening; for the guardian angels who live above me, it was the alarm notifying them that their green bean casserole was ready. Without liquid soap or any other lathering lubricant, I shot out of the sink like a cannonball. It’s funny how a little motivation can give you the power to accomplish impossible feats. This was my version of the mother who lifted a car to save her child (mine was easier on the back). I realized that while catching up with my ex-girlfriend, I had completely forgotten about the girls above me, who were nowhere to be heard.

“Don’t you have a response?” My ex-girlfriend examined me, realizing that I wasn’t the same guy she used to walk all over. But all I could do was picture Cathy and Claire’s casserole smoldering in their oven. Due to the timer miscommunication, I now had less than five minutes to track them down and try to find a way to shepherd them back into the kitchen.

“Hold that thought,” I said as I ran out of the kitchen, searching for an audible signal from the girls.

I stopped and listened for them in the living room. They weren’t there. Next I checked Pat’s room (he was away at work). Still nothing to be heard. I did, however, spot an opened condom wrapper in his trash can. For a moment, I was offended that he hadn’t gossiped with me about it the next morning.

I continued my search in the bathroom. I imagined how annoyed my ex-girlfriend was getting in the other room, but I kept my focus on my priorities. Suddenly, I remembered that I had my own casserole to tend to. The cooking timer was still ticking, but I didn’t want to follow in the steps of the girls above me and forget about my dish.

“Hey, do you mind taking my green bean casserole out of the
oven?” I called out to her while I listened for the girls through my bathroom window.

There was a lengthy pause. “Are you serious? I don’t know how to do that. Charlie, what’s going on with you?” she yelled back at me.

“Just take out the casserole with an oven mitten and place it on the counter!” I couldn’t believe she was messing around with my casserole.

Sadly, this was probably the most I had ever asked of her. She made that rather apparent in my kitchen with her overly theatrical scoffing noises. “You never cooked anything for me before,” she muttered under her breath. She was right. I only did
everything else
.

I proceeded into my bedroom (directly below Claire’s room), where I found the girls still analyzing Jen’s breast implants.

“I think the right one is a little lopsided.”

“Hmm. I don’t know. It probably just has to do with those hideous bras she always wears,” Claire said.

“Okay, I’ll bet you a soy chai latte that her boobs, or at least the left one, is at least a double D,” Cathy proposed.

“You’re on, bitch. There’s no way she’s two cups bigger than Gisele.”

It became fairly clear the girls had completely forgotten about their casserole and hadn’t heard the cooking timer from the other room. Speaking of cooking timers, mine finally expired. The twenty-five minutes were up. From now on, with each second that ticked away, so did the chances of my somehow saving their casserole. I looked around my room for an object that I could use to bang on the ceiling, hoping the noise would jolt them back to reality.

Between a skateboard, a
Dora the Explorer
beach towel, a floor fan, and a large wooden salad bowl (please don’t ask what that was doing in my room), I decided that the skateboard was going to make the
most racket. I could only imagine the horror on Mr. Molever’s face if he knew I was planning on attacking his precious ceiling with a transportation device. But that wasn’t enough to stop me. Something needed to be done. So, I stood on my bed, gently bounced up and down to give myself some extra momentum, cocked the skateboard back, and flung it up toward the ceiling.

With my eyes closed, I expected to hear a thunderous echoing sound bouncing off every wall in my apartment. Instead it sounded more like what I imagined I would hear if someone punched a fist into a bucket of Jell-O. I glanced up at my ceiling, which my skateboard was now a part of. The wheels had punctured the cheap plaster job, and it dangled there on its own, looking like some bad hipster art installation.

“Did you just fart?” Cathy asked her roommate.

“No. Did you?”

I needed to find another way to get to them. Not only to have a chance at salvaging their casserole, but to save them from burning down their apartment as well.

I left my skateboard suspended and headed back into the kitchen, where my ex-girlfriend was sure to be pissed off. For the first time ever I had no interest in seeing her. I imagined that partly had to do with the casserole mayhem, but I also believed that I was starting to realize she was not “the one.”

She stood there with an oven mitt on her hand and a bitchy look on her face. My perfectly baked casserole sizzled on the counter beside her.

“What was that noise?”

“Oh. I think my neighbors farted.” I shrugged. Admittedly, I’m not the world’s fastest thinker.

“Don’t you have anything to say to me?” she desperately asked.

The hundreds of things I had rehearsed over and over in my head to say to her were nowhere to be found. I couldn’t even muster up one of them. I think she realized this and decided to get closer to me so I would get a whiff of her blissful scent. This was something that had always worked in the past. As she approached me, she transformed from irritated bitch to seductive wench: slightly pouting her lips, running her finger along the collar of my favorite T-shirt, tilting her head down and gazing up at me with her giant blue eyes. Being the typical male that I am, this was very hard for me to resist.

She leaned in and pressed her lips against mine. It was exactly as I had remembered. Peerless. Passionate. And powerful … But not as powerful as the burned-casserole smell that came wafting in from the window. My eyes opened wide, while she remained in the moment.

“Wait, stop,” I said as I pulled away from her.

I could tell she didn’t believe I was strong enough to resist her powers. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just can’t do this.” The scent of smoldering casserole grew stronger.

She paid no attention to me (reminiscent of our relationship) as she leaned in to kiss me once again. But I pulled back.

“I’m sorry, but I just don’t want to be with you anymore.” I finally said it out loud. It was a good thing my family wasn’t there to witness this, because they would have cheered at the top of their lungs and done a jig.

“But I thought you loved me. You texted me ‘Everything I have ever done has been for you’ just recently.” I could see how that would be confusing to her.

“I did love you. Even recently. But I don’t anymore.” I had no idea
what had come over me. But I felt content for the first time in a while.

She eyed me, searching for a way to look deep into my soul to see if I was speaking the truth. I let her in, just so she knew that we were over. When she finally got it, she appeared to be upset, but not anywhere close to breaking into a scream cry. We stood there in silence.

“So now what?” she asked.

“Well … First I’m going to give you a hug. Then you’re going to leave. And then I’m going to go save the lives of my upstairs neighbors. Okay?” How’s that for taking initiative, biotch? Oh, I forgot to mention that she used to tell me that I never took initiative.

I could sense that she was in shock and didn’t want to be touched, but I hugged her anyway. We said our good-byes: “I wish you the best of luck,” “Send love to your parents,” “This doesn’t mean we have to block each other from looking at our Facebook profiles”—you know, typical stuff like that. In the hallway I gave her one last “sexy face” look (but it was more something for her to remember me by) and then bolted up the stairs.

When I arrived at Cathy and Claire’s apartment, the smell of charred canned green beans was at an all-time high. Did they think these were normal cooking smells? Oh … I guess probably. I was so disappointed that they had ruined yet another meal, especially one that I had given so much of myself over to. But I put my feelings aside and tried to come up with the best plan of action.

I didn’t want the girls to see me. All I really had to do was get their attention to the kitchen and let them discover their catastrophe on their own. So I rang the doorbell, probably seventeen times. I was pleased with my approach until I saw Sally (my agoraphobic old neighbor) staring at me in terror through her cracked-open door.

“Sorry, Sally. Everything’s all right. No need to worry—” She immediately closed the door, but not before reminding me that I had to pick up Marvin’s poop from the grass out front.

I darted back downstairs to my own apartment just in time to see—I mean hear—my plan work flawlessly before my very own eyes—ears!

“Holy Kardashians! Our casserole is burning alive!”

I sat back, this time in a chair, with a piece of casserole cooked to perfection and listened as Cathy and Claire stomped all over the place, attempting to clear the smoke from their kitchen. Even though I knew it was their own fault, I felt remorseful that they had gone to all this trouble and just happened to get sidetracked by a pair of fake boobies. Who knows, maybe if I had seen a picture of those breasts, I might have also forgotten all about the casserole.