Keep Calm and Carry a Big Drink (11 page)

Seema turns off her car and begins to gather up her purse, the box with her veil, and the box with the rest of the cupcakes. “You know, if you write back to him immediately, the chase is over.”

“The chase went on for over ten years,” I say as I hit send. I look up at her and smile. “I like it better now.”

“Just be careful.” She opens her car door. “Can you bring in my dress with yours? I have too much to carry.”

“Done.” I grab both her wedding gown and my maid-of-honor dress from the rack in the backseat.

I take our gowns out of her car and we head into the house. As we walk up the flagstone pathway, Seema asks, “Do you want me to ask him what his intentions are?”

“Yeah, that would be perfect,” I say, trying to make my voice drip with sarcasm. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you ask him how many children we’re going to have, and if he sees himself having a summer or winter wedding?”

Seema gives me an amused look. “Point taken.” She looks down at her stomach and sighs. “Man, I’m huge. I should not have had that second cupcake.”

“And to think you were only going to order one?” I mock. “I knew it wouldn’t get out of the car alive.”

Seema points to me. “You are a bad influence.”

She puts her key in the lock, and we open the door to find a stunningly beautiful redheaded woman posing on a stool, naked, in the middle of our living room. To her right is Scott, covered in red paint, an easel with canvas in front of him. Scott, paintbrush in hand, lights up when he sees Seema. “Hey, you’re home early.”

“Yeah, I am,” she nearly spits as she storms in, crazed, and heads right to him. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

I keep the door open and try to neutralize the situation. “Clearly you’re working,” I say, even though I’m not even sure he is. “We can come back.”

Scott ignores me, instead giving Seema an exasperated look. “Honey, you said you wanted me to give up the loft. If you want me to work from home, you have to be ready to see stuff like this, and not freak out.”

“Oh, I am going to freak out all right,” Seema challenges. “I am going to freak
the fuck
out! Seriously, what the hell were you thinking?”

The model instinctively tries to cover up her privates with her hands. “I thought your wife was cool with all this,” she says to Scott as she walks over to our white chair and grabs a button-up shirt.

“Oh, I’m so
not
cool with all this!” Seema bellows at the model. Then she turns her anger back to Scott. “You got paint all over my hand-knotted wool rug.”

“Wait,” I say, a bit confused. “You’re mad about the mess? You’re not mad that he has a naked woman in the middle of the room?”

“I would be if he covered her in paint and let her roll all over my rug,” Seema yells, then grabs a wet rag, drops to the floor, and tries to clean up a giant red splotch in the middle of the floor. “Seriously, the rug’s black-and-white. You’re covered in red paint. What is your next piece called?
Newlywed Murder
?”

I silently close the front door as the model quickly buttons up her shirt and shimmies into a pair of underwear.

“That’s it! I give up!” Scott exclaims, looking as if his head is about to explode. “You want me to give up my loft, but you don’t want me to actually do my work here. How the hell am I supposed to win, Seema? Huh?” He looks up at me, takes a millisecond to calm down, then turns to Seema to assert himself. “And by the way—I hate the sheets.”

Seema, now resembling Cinderella scrubbing the floor so she can go to the ball, looks up from the smeared mess. “What are you talking about?”

“The sheets you wanted to register for?” Scott begins, a teakettle about to blow. “I hate them. They’re beige.”

Seema stands up, ready for a fight. “They’re off-white.”

“Which means they’re beige!” Scott shouts. “And by the way, no sheet color should be called
linen
. You know what linen is? It’s a sheet!”

I turn to the model, now squeezing into a size-zero pair of jeans. “Would you like some coffee?”

“I’d love some,” she says nervously, and the two of us skedaddle to the kitchen to give them privacy while the fight continues.

“Are you really trying to turn a fight about your sloppiness into a fight about what we registered for?” Seema challenges.

“It’s beige! Which is brown, and I hate brown with the fire of a thousand suns!”

“Oh my God. ‘The fire of…’ Who actually says that?”

“You know I hate beige! You don’t care! You know I don’t go to Burbank! You don’t care!” Scott yells over her. “And listen, lady, if you can’t deal with the mess, maybe I should keep my loft!”

Model girl and I stare at each other in the kitchen while the living room goes dead silent. I try to lean around the doorway to see what’s going on. But before I can, I hear a door slam.

I peek through the doorway. Scott is standing by himself in the middle of the room, trying to figure out what to do next. He takes his palette and throws it down in frustration, but on a drop cloth. I see him walk over to Seema’s door. “Okay, I didn’t mean that. I’m willing to get rid of the loft. But you can’t complain when I make a mess. You’re marrying an artist. I’m not gonna change, and I’m not gonna suddenly like brown. This is who you’re marrying. For better or worse.”

Silence from the other side of the door.

Eventually, Seema slowly opens her door. “I’m sorry,” she says quietly, almost timidly. “You’re completely right, and I totally overreacted.”

She pulls him into a hug, and the two hug in silence for a bit.

“I’m really sorry,” Seema repeats. “Planning this wedding and dealing with our families has been way more stressful than I thought it would be, and I’ve been taking it out on you and I’m sorry.”

I watch Scott kiss her forehead. “Well, you’re pretty cute, so I guess you’re forgiven.”

Seema smiles, looks at her ring finger, and twirls around her engagement ring nervously. “So you wanna get the eggplant sheets instead?”

“The dark purple ones? God, yes,” Scott says, his shoulders visibly relaxing.

And the two of them get back to their Happily Ever After.

Which, overall, is a very good thing.

I just wish I hadn’t bought them those beige sheets. Now I have to go back to the store.

F
IFTEEN

It’s three o’clock in the morning, and I’m now officially in my clingy phase. Some women deny the clingy phase—insisting that it turns men off. Yes, well, of course it does. So does nipple hair—which is why we do our best to try to hide it from them at all costs. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Any woman who says she hasn’t gone through the clingy phase is either lying through her teeth or completely delusional. For me, the phase starts the second a guy doesn’t respond to my phone calls, texts, or e-mails fast enough. The phase is an inescapable step in the natural progression of dating for me, and it took me all of two days to become a freakin’ lunatic over Jay.

Monday went great. We texted each other throughout the day. He called me from his hotel room before bed that night, we talked until both of our eyes were heavy, and I nodded off to sleep feeling wildly content and wanted.

Then Tuesday hit. Tuesday morning, before I even brushed my teeth, I texted him a quick
Good morning!
. Two minutes later, I regretted writing it, as I didn’t want to look too available.

Then again, I reasoned, didn’t I clue him in that I’m available the minute I got naked with him?

I checked my iPhone and e-mails compulsively all morning. All for naught. He finally wrote back around lunchtime, but then only to say:

SF beautiful. Wish you were here.

A nice sentiment, to be sure, but that’s it??? All that talking back and forth yesterday, and now I’m downgraded to a sentence? My local bakery sent me a longer text this morning,
and
they offered me a dollar off cupcakes.

I spent an hour constantly checking my phone screen for more, and worrying about what to write back to his one sentence. I debated: I couldn’t write too much, as that would show too much interest. But if I wrote nothing, would that imply I’m not really interested and encourage him to go find another girl to write texts to? One sentence back was probably my best bet.

After a mental debate that proved to me that I need a job without so much summer vacation, I settled on the following:

Me too.

Then I waited five more hours for a response.

At six, I shot him another text:

Off to dinner. Are you around later so I can whisper sweet nothings …

Delete, delete, delete.

So we can have phone sex?

Ugh—no. Delete. I settle on:

Are you around later?

Two hours later (!) I get this back from him:

I don’t know. Let me call you later. Work not going well—been tied up in stressful meetings all day, now off to a stressful dinner, followed by stressful drinks. I’m exhausted, and wish I could just climb into bed with you and sleep.

And sleep?
What on earth did I say in my texts that ever implied sleep?

So that was at eight. It is now five hours, three glasses of wine, two red-velvet cupcakes, a bag of M&M’s, and one personal pan pizza with pepperoni and extra cheese later.

And I am in my room, staring at his last message on my phone.

Damn it! I played it wrong again. I have been dating for almost two decades, and I’m still just as clueless as when I asked Kent Rogers out to the Sadie Hawkins dance via a note confiscated by my English teacher, who then read it aloud to the class.

I hear the TV go on in the living room. I tiptoe over to see if it’s Scott or Seema watching.

I push my door open slightly to see Seema, curled up on the couch dressed in Grinch pajama bottoms and a matching Grinch T-shirt. I can’t help but notice the box of Entenmann’s cheesecake on the coffee table in front of her. No plate for a slice, just a box full of cake and her fork. I open my door completely. “Whatcha watching?”

She presses the buttons on the remote control. “I have no idea.”

I walk out and take a seat next to her. “Is that Entenmann’s up for grabs?”

She hands me her fork. “Go for it.”

As I dig in for a giant forkful, Seema asks, “So, are you obsessing over my brother?”

“No!” I say immediately, trying to sound insulted. She hikes one eyebrow up at me. “Yes,” I admit, deflating my shoulders. “But I know I shouldn’t.” I stuff a chunk of cheesecake into my mouth, then say through the midnight snack, “Speaking of family, how did the big dinner with both sets of parents go tonight?”

Seema squints her eyes, thinking. “Mom asked Scott when they’d be hearing news about the annaprashana.”

I can tell from her tone of voice, she’s irked. But for the life of me, I have no idea why. I can’t remember what an annaprashana is. “Which would be the…?”

“It’s the ceremony when a baby eats his first rice. Sort of like a christening or a bris in terms of inviting everyone to welcome the baby into the world. You light incense, say a prayer to the gods, the baby eats a little rice pudding, and you do this thing where he or she picks from a variety of objects to determine his or her future. It’s basically a big party. It’s pretty cool actually.”

“Oh,” I say. “Well, if it’s fun, then why are you upset?”

“Because I’m not actually pregnant yet, so my mother’s comment was annoying as shit. Heaven forbid she just get excited about the wedding. Nope. Instead, let’s jump ahead and make her daughter feel bad about not giving her grandchildren yet.”

I rub Seema’s shoulder sympathetically. “Parents do that. They don’t mean to.”

“I know,” Seema says, rolling her eyes. “Also, she’s hideously worried about the snake charm I pulled and assured me in front of the entire table that if anything goes wrong with the wedding, she’ll smother Nic with a pillow.”

“So, at least everyone’s staying calm,” I say dryly.

“Yeah. Oh, and after she explained what an annaprashana was to Scott’s mother, Janet, Janet decided to smile exuberantly and declare how wonderful it was to be in LA, where everyone’s so exotic.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound—”

“
Exotic
seems to be Protestant code for ‘weird.’”

“Ah. See, I did not know that.”

“Then she announces that she”—with this, Seema’s voice changes, going up two octaves while her face lights up with false cheer—“absolutely insists that before we do the first rice, we go back to the church where Scott was christened after we have each baby. Oh, it will be such fun.”

I wince in sympathy. “Each?”

“Each,” Seema repeats in her normal voice. “At which time Scott’s father bellows and says we need to have at least one boy, hopefully three, to carry on the James name. Because you know that name will die out if we don’t breed immediately. Just ask Etta James, Henry James, Harry James…”

“Who?”

“Bandleader. Married to Betty Grable. Jesse James, LeBron James.”

“Okay, I get it,” I say, shaking my head. I hand the fork back to Seema. “You need this more than me.”

Seema takes the fork from me, breaks off a big piece of cheesecake, and eats it. “Enough about me. What’s going on with my idiot brother?”