I Like You Just the Way I Am (10 page)

“Our plan worked!”

“
Our
plan?” she said.

“Well, more mine than yours, but I wanted you to feel included.” I really am a great friend.

Reluctantly, Sarah agreed. I still don’t know why. I like to think it was my compelling argument, but in reality I think she just wanted me to shut the fuck up and stop calling her. I told her she could bring the chair, and I’d sit in the passenger seat in a wig and bikini posing as her “eclectic cousin in from Uruguay for the weekend.”

“No,” she said.

We compromised. I agreed to hide in her trunk.

*   *   *

The morning of the
drop-off felt like prom. Baz didn’t want to meet till eight, so I had ample time to organize my attack. I went to the hairdresser, had my roots done, and even got my toes painted You Don’t Know Jacques! gray. Technically, Baz wasn’t supposed to see me at all. I’d be hidden under a blanket in the back of Sarah’s SUV, but I was pretty confident that if I looked my best, my hotness would shine through anyway. Also, I fantasized about popping up and pressing my face against Sarah’s back window as she sped away in an attempt to make Baz think she was hallucinating. I always try to look super hot in people’s hallucinations.

The plan was for Sarah to hand off the chair, then launch into a series of casual remarks about how she thought they might have a friend in common: me. She’d then drop details about my relationship, my career, and my adventurous attitude toward sex.

Evil? Horrible? I swear I didn’t mean it to be. I just wanted Baz’s attention. And I would stop at nothing to get it back.

I positioned myself in the rear of Sarah’s SUV so that I’d still be able to see Baz’s face to judge how much older she looked than me. I also wanted to see her expression when Sarah, as instructed, disclosed my jeans size.

Sarah reluctantly stuffed me in the plush back section of her hybrid Lexus SUV, bitching the whole time that if I ever told anyone about this, she would break my face and ruin my career, which was like threatening to cut the balls off a dog that was already neutered.

Parked outside Baz’s house, I could feel anxiety-diarrhea boiling up inside me. From the front seat, Sarah made phone calls and waited for Baz to show up.

“I’m hungry. This is annoying. I’m missing a screening,” she bitched.

Roughly a half hour later, Baz pulled up.

“Sorry I’m late. This is so sweet of you!” she said.

I watched two legs move toward the right side of the car.

Then, standing there, her hip to my eyeball, I saw her. She looked like every picture I’d ever seen, except more eccentric. She wore these white furry yeti boots and a sequined beret. She had broad shoulders and a deep voice. Her hair was calico colored and her hands were rough and scarred, like she’d spent the last decade blowing glass. I tried to imagine my husband having sex with her, but I just couldn’t get past the yeti boots. I guess I wanted her to be softer, more vulnerable, broken. This didn’t look like a girl who was destroyed over her ex-boyfriend. This looked like a girl with the self-possession to stab me in the head if she discovered I was watching her from the trunk of an SUV.

Sarah helped Baz pull the chair from the backseat as I tried to give off a glow from my spot under a blanket. They carried it upstairs to her apartment and slipped out of view. They were gone for roughly ten minutes before I started psycho-texting Sarah’s cell phone.

Are you OK?

What is happening?

Did she kill you?

When Sarah did finally return, she got in the car and said nothing. As soon as we got around the block, I started in.

“So, what happened? What does her apartment look like? Did you guys talk about me? Please tell me you took a picture together!”

“Jenny, you need to move on.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Get over her! She’s completely over
you
.”

Was this true? Was Baz totally over me? And if so, why?!

Sarah would barely talk to me for the rest of the ride home.

It took a few days of cooling off before she could discuss with me what happened that night in Baz’s apartment. Jason did come up, but never by name. Baz just made reference to a really hard breakup. There was zero mention of her ex’s new fiancée, or sleepless nights spent thinking about what her ex’s fiancée looked like in lingerie. I almost believed Sarah was right. Maybe Baz had chosen the high road and moved on. For a minute, I contemplated the high road myself.

Then I decided that it sounded super boring.

There was no way I was gonna let Baz get away. We had something special and real. She was obsessed with me and I loved her for it.

*   *   *

A month went by
and I drove past Baz’s apartment twice a day religiously, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Sarah, meanwhile, wasn’t returning my phone calls and was being overly cryptic about her weekend whereabouts. Then one afternoon, I was accidentally CC’ed on an Evite to a wine party Sarah was throwing at her boyfriend’s house. When I read through the list of attendees, I spotted Baz’s name.

Sarah and Baz were friends now. And it was my fault.

“What the fucking fuck is this about?” I screamed on Sarah’s voice mail as I sped past Baz’s apartment, convinced I’d catch Sarah outside with an overnight bag. “You weren’t supposed to befriend the mark! You were just supposed to hand off a fucking chair!”

They’d obviously forged some kind of sick friendship that I was completely left out of. My abandonment neuroses kicked into high gear.

“I’m coming to that fucking wine party!” I texted her.

Seconds later, Sarah wrote back, “No. You aren’t. You are not invited. That Evite was supposed to go to a different Jenny.”

“See you there,” I wrote before powering off my cell in a fit of frustration. It was the first time someone had officially uninvited me to a party since that cunt Natalie Pierson tried to leave me out of her My Little Pony birthday party in second grade. (Her twinkle-eyed pony, Gingerbread, went mysteriously missing the next week. It was found hanging from the monkey bars the following morning, in an attempt to re-create the autoerotic-asphyxiation scenario I’d recently seen on an episode of HBO’s
Real Sex
with my mom.)

The Evite said cocktail attire. I racked my brain, trying to think of the sexiest dress owned by anyone in my circle of friends, and decided on a slightly whorish D&G hand-me-down from my friend Simone. I spent the rest of the day staring at myself in the mirror.

Jason could sense something was off between us, but didn’t know what. I was carrying around such a heavy load of guilt that it was almost impossible to connect emotionally. Every time he’d ask if I was all right, I’d try to deflect it by saying something like: “I just can’t believe how partisan our political system has become,” or “I was just thinking about how I’d totally kill myself if my name were Irene,” or “How weird is it that Steve Carell didn’t play the neighbor Steve on
Married … with Children
.”

The truth was, my thoughts were consumed with Baz. The more I focused on her, the further I drifted from Jason. She was providing me with something he couldn’t: a chase.

And just like that, I found myself cheating on my husband with his ex-girlfriend.

It may have been an emotional affair. It also may have been completely one-sided. Regardless, it was happening, and I didn’t have the willpower to stop it. Yes, I felt like fusing with her initially subdued my own insecurities and somehow helped me absorb her power. But I also felt I owed her something. I got invested. I started to believe it was my obligation—to understand her in her own words, to hike Runyon Canyon with her, to help her come to terms with the fact that Jason married someone else and she was almost too old to have children.

The more fulfilled you are by one person, the harder it is to maintain intimacy with another. And the longer it’s left unattended, the harder it is to come back from. Though I didn’t see it at the time, my pseudo-relationship with Baz was subtly sabotaging my marriage.

I managed to get out of taking Jason with me to the wine party (by not telling him I was going to a wine party). When I walked in, Sarah was already tipsy and hanging off the side of her couch.

“She’s not coming!” she shouted to me from across the room. “Didn’t say why.” She then slammed a fistful of Laughing Cow cheese cubes into her face.

Irritated, both by the fact that I wasted a spray tan on an event that didn’t bring me any closer to Baz and that Sarah would serve Laughing Cow cheese at a party that required jackets, I left.

Somewhere between unclipping my hair extensions and devouring three thinkThin bars in my kitchen, I had a moment of clarity. I was being pathetic. Like, attending-a-social-event-thrown-by-my-agent pathetic. Baz wasn’t reaching out to me in any way. In fact, she probably wanted nothing to do with me. I needed to be done.

*   *   *

The next day, I
woke up with an air of “I’m married and Baz is dying alone” confidence. I told myself I’d wasted enough energy trying to gain the affections of my husband’s ex and it was time to move on with my life. I kissed my husband extra hard, took in my amazing life, and tried to put all things ex-girlfriend out of my head. I agreed to meet my sister for lunch. Driving down Sunset, I had two options: turn down La Cienega to avoid Baz’s apartment or take Crescent Heights. I took Crescent Heights. But only because La Cienega looked congested and Baz lived on Crescent Heights.

I drove with purpose, not expecting to see anything. At this point, cruising past her apartment was more ritual than obligation, and since I’d recently gotten off Zoloft, I allowed myself small compulsions. I must have stopped for a pedestrian or small child (they’re not pedestrians yet), I don’t really remember, because when I looked left, I was staring at Baz. She was finally outside her place, walking the dog I’d started to believe must just shit in a colostomy bag because it never left the building.

Without hesitating, I did a huge U-turn in the middle of the road and drove down the block after her. Knowing this could be my only chance, I rolled down my window, honked my horn, and called out to her.

“Baz!”

She spun around and instantly her face went white.

“I’m Jenny!” I called out, as if she’d just won the lottery.

She looked both ways, no doubt trying to decide which direction to run. But it was too late. I’d trapped her. She was going to have to interact with me whether she wanted to or not. I threw my car into park in the middle of the road and hopped out.

“Hiiiii!” I said as I went in for a hug.

Baz looked like a disaster. She pulled the hood of her jacket over her calico head as she explained that she’d just gotten back from a wild night in Vegas. I wasn’t really listening, though, because I was too busy making a mental note of all her flaws in case I ever needed to draw a picture of her.

“I saw your photo in a pile of old stuff Jason and I were burning.… I was just driving through the neighborhood, looking another house for us to buy. You know, for our rental portfolio. I didn’t realize you lived up here!”

“Oh.”

“Well, I’d love to grab coffee sometime. I feel like we have so much to discuss. I don’t know why I’m crying, sorry.” I was tearing up the way I do after sex.

“Sure,” she said, completely weirded out by the mascara dripping down my face.

“Well, what are you up to in like an hour?” I smiled and wiped snot on my sleeve.

“Ummm. Not sure. Can I … text you?”

“Of course!” I gave her my number as she backed away.

Two hours went by and I still hadn’t heard from her. After lunch, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to check in.

“Hey you, it’s Jenny,” I texted like we were best girlfriends. “Just wondering if coffee is still happening? I’m avail. Let me know.”

“How do you have this number?” she texted back. “I didn’t give you mine, just got yours.”

Fuck. I’d forgotten the reason I had her number was because she’d given it to me when I was impersonating Sarah.

“Jason gave it to me,” I lied.

“That’s unexpected and cool, I guess,” she wrote back. “Can you meet at Hugo’s on Santa Monica around four?”

Could I ever! I’d have traveled to fucking Anaheim to sit face-to-face with Baz and her fake nose. This was turning into the best day ever.

Four
P.M
. rolled around, and Baz walked into Hugo’s in a sundress and Doc Martens with so many leopard scarves wrapped around her neck, I thought she might be hiding a tracheotomy. She reminded me of a Betsey Johnson store circa 1993. I stuttered at first, trying to figure out where to begin, before accidentally launching into my history with Lance and Carmen. My hope was to disarm her, to sort of say, “Look I’m just like you—except engaged to the man you thought you were going to marry.” On some level, it worked. I could see Baz wanting to hate me but at the same time being compelled to open up. Jason cut her off cold turkey, and I was like a crack dealer who had shown up at the end of her ninety-day rehab—just too hard to say no to.

She wasn’t stupid. If, as I told her, Jason knew about our coffee date, he would no doubt be hearing about what was discussed. Baz regaled me with stories of her relationship with Jason, and I was riveted. The man she described was in no way the guy sitting at home, folding my laundry. She made him out to be a controlling, self-involved douche. Some of her tales had me cracking up, laughing, like the one about him not letting her put a hot pink pillow she liked on his sofa because it wasn’t his taste. Others had me staring openmouthed in disbelief, like the one about him throwing a tantrum in Madrid because he was pissed at her for getting food poisoning. It wasn’t like he ever beat her or did anything outrageous enough to warrant arrest. It was just obvious that he wasn’t into her.

I left Baz that night caring about her more than ever. I tried to soothe her pain by saying things like, “Well, you both were young and he obviously had some shit to work out.” And, “If it makes you feel any better, he is
nothing
like that anymore.”