How to Meet Cute Boys (19 page)

“You’re wearing
sweatpants?
” she said, standing in the doorway, looking me up and down.

“Hi, fuck off, wanna grab a bag or something?”

“That’s a nice way to talk to your mother.” She took some bags out of my hands and fixed me with a smile. “Fuck you, too,
darling.”

I explained that I’d be changing my clothing after I warmed the quiches in the oven, tossed the wild greens salad in the homemade
Dijon vinaigrette, arranged the fruit salad on platters, assembled the flower pot desserts, uncorked the champagne, mixed
the mimosas, and made the coffee—all in the next forty minutes. The Mother, with a bemused look, said she would make the coffee,
drinks, and salad dressing, and plucked the recipe from my hand. Then she shoved me toward the bathroom and encouraged me
to groom. I’d just managed to shower and towel my hair dry when guests started to arrive.

“Oooooh!” Audrey said, inspecting the spread as I laid it out on the buffet. “The quiche looks fabulous. I
love
the flowers … What are those flower pots for?”

I hugged her, suddenly overcome with happiness and my first two glasses of champagne. (The Mother mixes a mean mimosa.) Grandma
arrived, choosing a seat in the corner where she told anyone who would listen about her mole biopsy and gave me queer looks.
The bridesmaids, whom I secretly dubbed the “So Sisters,” gushed over all the girlish touches. (“Oh my God those quiches are
so
cute!” “Oh my God this salad is
so
yummy!” “Oh my God those flowers are
so
gorgeous!”) Even Jamie’s mom came. A grand woman whose name I can never remember. She picked at the nubs on her St. John
suit and looked severely disturbed when I gave Aud the requisite vibrator with a note that guaranteed her a lifetime supply
of D batteries.

All day I fussed over Audrey like a perfect maid of honor, getting a mimosa for her, and one for me. And one for her, and
one for me. Aud opened a huge present that contained a KitchenAid ultra power mixer—the Rolls-Royce of bridal shower gifts—and
she squealed with delight, so I squealed with her. “Rock on!” I yelled, jumping up and down while punching my fist in the
air. “You got it!”

Between gifts and dessert, I found myself in the kitchen, watching the Mother make coffee. I was
so
grateful (I was so wasted), I started rhapsodizing to Kiki about how much I loved the woman who gave me life.

“She gives the
best
advice!” I said. “The fucking
best!
Right, Mom?”

“I’m glad you’re starting to realize that,” she said.

“You know what Mother always says? Move
on
. Move on! No out-of-town hi? Who needs it?” I snapped my fingers in the air:
“Move ’em on out!”

“I love it!” Kiki said, clapping (she’d been matching me, as I matched Audrey, drink for drink). “
Genius
.” She turned to the Mother. “You are a total genius.”

“Now if only you girls would
take my advice
.” The Mother rapped her knuckles on the Formica counter with each word for emphasis.

“Mmmm …” Kiki said. “But I mean, my mom gives me advice and I don’t listen. I just don’t. Dunno why.” She shook her head and
scratched at the quiche she had somehow gotten stuck on the knee of her Prada pants.

“Well. I’m not actually your mother, so you just might listen to me,” the Mother said. “Ben’s mentioned your little problem
with that producer fellow, and
you
need to move on. Have a one-night stand. Or find a husband like Audrey did. Men are
everywhere
. All you have to do is leave the house. Take a walk, and you’ll find one.”

“You really think so?” Kiki said. And then … if only I could turn back time, as Cher would say … she said, “You should write
a column for
Filly
! An advice column! Instead of asking their own mothers, who our readers won’t listen to anyway, they could ask
you
. Ben, wouldn’t that be great?”

“A-
ma
-zing.” I sighed, gleefully sticking rosebuds into the fake Oreo dirt. “
Bril
liant. I
looove
it.”

So that’s how it happened. And even though I was supremely annoyed, I didn’t have the heart to tell the Mother I didn’t want
her to write the column after all. I could have told Kiki, but I doubted she could do much about it; apparently the Whip thought
the Mother was Candace Bushnell meets Ann Landers.
It’s my job,
I reminded myself, pushing the proofs aside and laying back down in bed,
to immolate myself for the entertainment of others
.

Then there was the question of my actually “moving on,” that brilliant idea of the Mother-turned-dangerously-empowered-advice-columnist.
(She’d already sent me an e-mail asking if I knew any good lit agents.) It wasn’t working. I spent the morning wondering if
Max, who was surely back from Vegas, got a lap dance while he was away, and how long he’d wait to call me. The phone rang
and I leapt for it. Just Nina, calling to tell me about some guy she’d picked up at a Jungian seminar last night. After discussing
his finer points, along with possible weak spots (she thought it was suspect that he asked for both her cell and regular phone
numbers, as opposed to just one or the other), we returned to my topic of choice.

“I have a question,” I said. “Do you think Max got a lap dance when he was in Las Vegas?”

“I don’t see why he wouldn’t,” Nina said. I could hear her grinding coffee in the background. “I’m sure Max, like every other
man, enjoys the fantasy that strippers provide.”

“What’s that?”

“The idea that a beautiful, naked woman exists just to satisfy his most secret desires and that she secretly prefers him to
every other man in the club.”

“You mean, men don’t just desire the woman, but they believe she wants them, in particular?”

“Precisely.”

Somehow this was more disturbing than the scenario I’d come up with on my own.

“But why would he want to be desired by someone he pays,” I said, “when I desire him for free?”

“Because. With a professional he can have a pair of enormous fake tits in his face without commitment or obligation, which
he can’t have with you. Most guys find a stripper the perfect antidote to an actual girlfriend.”

It was getting worse.

“Nina?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think breast size is important?”

“Do
you
think breast size is important?”

I was way too hungover for this. So I said, “Do
you
think that
I
think that
you
think breast size is important?”

“I don’t know, Ben,” she said. “Do
you?
”

I hung up on her.

The phone rang again and I answered right away. “I know, I’m sorry,” I rushed in, before Nina could bite my head off. “I’m
having a shit day, my mom gets more action than I do,
and
she’s getting more assignments.”

“Have I been gone that long?”

“Max?”
I said.

“Hey.”

“I thought you were Nina.”

“What’s this about your mother?”

“Don’t go there. So … how are you?”

“Good,” he said. “How are you?”

“I don’t know. Wait, did you get a lap dance?”

“What?”

“In Vegas. Lap dance. Did you get one?”

“Damn, B.” He laughed. “Cut to the chase why don’t you.”

“Seriously, did you?”

“I don’t like lap dances.”

“Come on.”

“No, really. Those girls wear too much makeup, their hair gets in your mouth. Your friends watch you get a hard-on, which
is just plain weird. I’m way too much of a control freak for that sort of thing. You?”

“Did I get one or do I give them?”

“Do you
give
them.”

“I should think so.” This was a happy turn of events. “Definitely.”

He laughed. A deep, rich, filthy chuckle.
He still likes me! He still likes me!
I grabbed a pillow and held it tight. Max proceeded to tell me about his trip, how much money he’d lost at craps, and about
how his friends dragged him to the Olympic Garden strip club, which he insisted was lap-dance-free. I chose to believe him
(at least he had the decency to lie convincingly about it) and filled him in on the near disaster but ultimate success of
the bridal shower. I left out the horror of the magazine column, though. Didn’t want to give Max a heads-up that my mom was
advising me to dump him. And then, miracle of miracles, he said, “So I have an idea.”

“Does it involve a G-string?”

“Depends on what you want to pack.”

Did he just say “pack”?

There’s only one thing better than the out-of-town hi (besides an invitation to move in together). The weekend away.

Palm Springs was Max’s idea. Not because Palm Springs is that great, but more because in L.A. we don’t have the equivalent
of a Martha’s Vineyard. All we have are acres of empty desert filled with serial killers. A place once called home by Charles
Manson and the Dinah Shore golf tournament, featuring a town overrun with spring-break-esque partyers who come to cruise up
and down five sweltering blocks of cheesy gift shops while wearing
HARD ROCK CAFÉ
T-shirts. Put it this way, the OD scene in
Less Than Zero
wasn’t set in Palm Springs for nothing.

Nevertheless, I left home with visions of Bob Hope’s tan, martinis, and Neutra houses dancing in my head. Max was going to
lavish me with attention for
two whole days in a row
. Unprecedented.

He was being very cute. Arrived at my house to pick me up holding a bottle of sunscreen tied with a bow, and he brought a
stack of CDs he thought I would like to listen to on the drive. Even the traffic on the 10 and the guy in the Nissan next
to us who picked his nose for two solid miles didn’t get me down. Nor did those creepy steel windmill things that you have
to pass on the way. The tall stalks, with their two knifelike propellers, generate electricity. But to me they look like the
dangerous vestiges of some otherworld civilization that the government is trying to keep hush-hush.

We finally arrived at the hotel—a midcentury marvel with a turquoise pool, an Eames marshmallow chair roasting in the sun,
and tasteful cacti planted around like impassive aliens. At the check-in desk, my heart leapt when the extremely tan concierge
said, “Suite Two-Oh-Four, Max and Ben.”

“Yay!” I said.

“Did you just say, ‘Yay’?” Max asked.

I shrugged, but inside I let out an orgasmic
Yay! Yay! Yay!

The concierge let us into our room and Max immediately stretched out on the king-size bed and started looking for the remote.
I carried my suitcase toward the closet and, after unpacking the four skirts, three sundresses, two pairs of jeans, and four
pairs of shoes I packed so I’d be ready for anything, went to inspect the bathroom situation. I was hoping there’d be a noisy
fan or a radio inside that would camouflage any nongirlie activities. No such luck.

“Do you see the remote in there?” Max yelled.

“In the bathtub?” I yelled back.

“Well, it’s not out here.”

I came out and looked around. “Wait,” I said. “Do you see a TV? Hold on, here’s a note.”

I picked up the printed card that lay on top of the dresser, where a TV
should
have been, and read aloud, “Dear Guest. Welcome to the Resort at the Desert. We want you to enjoy everything our soothing
environment has to offer, so all rooms are without television sets. Also, please be PC and do not smoke in your room. A $200
fine will be charged for smoking.”

Max looked pale. “Be PC?” he asked. “So the fact that I smoke makes me, like, as bad as a homophobic racist?”

“Smoke on the patio, evil one, and enjoy the soothing environment.”

“Hm.”

With that, Max went outside with a plastic cup filled with water to use as an ashtray. He didn’t look happy. I wasn’t so psyched,
either—I’d picked the hotel because
Filly
once did a photo shoot here and everyone said it was fabulous, which meant if anything went wrong it would be my fault.

After washing my face and carefully reapplying my lip gloss, I went outside and found Max smoking glumly in 110-degree heat.

“Look at this, B,” he said, holding up the cup of water. It was almost empty.

“Did you spill?”

“Hunh-unh.” He shook his head and exhaled. “It’s
evaporating
.”

Max lay down to take a nap while I read the information booklet and discovered the hotel didn’t have room service, either.
I resolved to keep this little factoid to myself for as long as possible. When Max finally woke up, we drove into town and
had dinner at a gourmet Mexican restaurant the concierge recommended. The place was very popular, and self-consciously trendy.
There were muted taupe linens and hand-ground blue corn tamales; they had a gas fireplace that was on, along with the air-conditioning.
The menu boasted one hundred different exotic drinks. Max seemed tired, so I tried to engage him by babbling about the ridiculous
thing I’d done while he was taking a nap earlier.

“So I go outside?” I said, pausing to take a sip of my persimmon margarita. “And the hotel has this, like, welcome-to-the-desert
whatever cocktail thing by the pool where you schmooze with the owners?”

“Uh-huh.” He was pushing his tamale around on his plate with a morose look on his face.

“And so the guy who was at the front desk, who it turns out runs the joint, was there with his wife. And she looked a lot
like that socialite Jocelyne Wildenstein from New York?”

“Who?”

“The one who had so much plastic surgery she looks like a cat?”

“Right.”

“So I was standing out there and I noticed that the other couples looked like they were at least fifteen years older than
we are. Oh, I mean, than I am. Twenty-two years older than you.”

Max didn’t laugh. I persevered.

“You know, the kinds of people who wear gold jewelry with their bathing suits? And they were getting
bombed
on the complimentary cocktails while lounging around in the sun. So the owner guy, who introduced himself as ‘Stephen, with
a
ph,
’ asked me where you were. And I said, ‘Oh, he’s in the room crashed out like a vampire who will die if exposed to daylight.’
”