Misery Loves Cabernet (2 page)

But then the sex went to Paris, and now I’m just abstaining because I really enjoy getting road rage, eating enough in a day to sustain a small horse, and constantly wanting to slam my head through a wall.

My home phone rings. I pick up on the second ring. “Hello?”

If you ever become a rock star, whether you have one hit or twenty, you are still never entitled to have a CD entitled
The Essential Collection.

“Huh?” I ask.

“That’s my advice for your book,” my best friend Dawn says. “I mean, you know, the Beatles could get away with it. But Hall and Oates? Tom Jones? Please.”

“Not bad,” I say, writing down her advice.

“Or
The Ultimate Collection
,” I hear my other best friend, Kate, say in the background on Dawn’s end of the line.

“Who has that?” I hear Dawn ask Kate.

“Shalamar and Ace of Base,” Kate says.

I hear Dawn mutter “Ugh,” as I ask her, “Where are you guys?”

“The Grove. Kate dragged me here so we could do a little Christmas shopping.”

Ah, yes, the last week in October. The week most stores start putting up Christmas decorations—and Kate becomes a raving Christmas lunatic. You would think one of the city’s top political radio show hosts would view the holiday season with a certain sense of perspective and decorum.

You’d be wrong.

Last year, Kate’s apartment included one dancing Santa, two Christmas trees, and a life-size flying reindeer.

“Tell her about the New Year’s resolutions,” I hear Kate say cheerfully.

“The what?” I ask.

“Don’t ask,” Dawn says under her breath. “Poor girl’s got issues, and should not be encouraged. Now listen, I got the e-mail you forwarded from Jordan.”

“Good. What do you think it means?”

“It means you are one crazy heifer,” Dawn says emphatically. “You’ve become the girl who forwards a man’s e-mail to all of her friends. You made the right decision: get rid of him for now. Men are like trains: one doesn’t just come every twelve minutes, it usually doubles back eight hours later, during the afternoon rush hour.”

My phone beeps. “Hang on, that’s my call waiting,” I click over. “Hello?”

“Don’t listen to her!” Kate counters from her cell phone. She’s probably all of two feet away from Dawn. “Breaking up with Jordan just because you’ve had previous problems with long-distance relationships is making him pay for the mistakes of his competitors. It’s important that you greet every relationship with your mind completely open and emptied for the joy that is to come.”

“Did you just tell Charlie to be an airhead every time she dates a new guy?” I hear Dawn ask incredulously in the background of Kate’s line.

“You’re paraphrasing my words in a foolish manner to defeat my position of love and openness. This is a reflection of your pain, not a condemnation of my hope. According to this book I’m reading—”

“Don’t make me come over there with a shoe!” Dawn counters.

“Well, I’m not going to let you sabotage Charlie’s love life just because you can’t make yourself emotionally available to a man,” Kate says firmly to Dawn.

“Can you hold on a sec?” I ask Kate.

“Sure.”

I click back over to Dawn. “What the hell is she talking about?”

“I begged her to stay out of the self-help section,” Dawn tells me, and I can almost hear her shaking her head, “but not only did she sneak in, she bought books, took notes, and is trying to drag us into her sick little world. . . .”

Kate’s voice suddenly comes in loud and clear, meaning she has taken the phone away from Dawn. “Sometime next week, you’re both coming to my house so we can do our New Year’s resolutions.”

“New Year’s isn’t for more than two months,” I remind her. “And I haven’t finished ignoring the ten pounds I planned to lose last year.”

“No, no. I just read this amazing book:
Dream It, Do It, Deal with It
. It’s all about figuring out what you really want in life, then forcing yourself toward your goals every day. One of the tricks is to make New Year’s resolutions every month, instead of once a year.”

“Tell Charlie what the
Deal with It
part means,” I hear Dawn say dryly.

I hear Kate sigh. “That’s the negativity talking,” she insists to Dawn.

“Ya think?” Dawn asks sarcastically.

“What does the
Deal with It
mean?” I am curious to know.

“Oh, that’s for when you get your dreams, but you’re still not happy,” Kate says quickly, trying to skirt over that part. “But I’m telling you, the rest is genius.”

“Boo, can I have my phone back?” Dawn asks, “I want to text Charlie.”

“Sure,” Kate says. “Charlie, click back over to my phone.”

I click back to Kate’s phone, and hear Dawn hang up. “You really think Jordan still likes me?” I ask Kate.

“Of course he does,” Kate assures me.

My iPhone gives me a little explosion to let me know I have a new text. Hoping to God it’s Jordan, and not following my earlier advice to my great-granddaughter:

Don’t wait by the phone
.

I immediately click on my text inbox to see Dawn’s number, followed by the message:

Blow him out of the water, and leave him for dead.

What are you wearing to the Halloween party? Be sexy, but not desperate.

Love,

Dawn

P.S. (Note how I did not dare write xoxoD)

That’s easy for her to say. Dawn is stunningly beautiful. The product of three interracial marriages (her grandparents are Hispanic, Jewish, Japanese, and African American), she seems to have swum through the world’s largest gene pool, and come out perfect. Well, not perfect. She flunked Physics back when we were in college together. But I’ve yet to hear a man ask her about that.

Don’t obsess about your looks, but don’t ignore them, either. Potential suitors can’t see your brain from across the room
.

“Do you think I need eyelid surgery?” Kate asks.

The girl has rendered me speechless for a moment. “As opposed to what?” I finally ask.

“Well, a boob job, I suppose. Or maybe the collagen lips thing.”

“Trout pout’s over,” I hear Dawn warn in the background.

“Fair enough,” Kate concedes. “But I have to do something. I haven’t been out in the dating world for nine years. I need something to spruce up my image.”

“Hey! Size four!” I hear Dawn yell, “For the love of all that is holy . . . put the diet book down!”

I hear Dawn take the phone from Kate. “We gotta go. I have to get the girl to a hot fudge sundae before she completely loses it. Are you gonna be okay?”

I stare absentmindedly at Jordan’s e-mail. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

“Good. We’re meeting at your place at eight. Call me if you need to talk. Bye.”

“Bye,” I say, and hang up the phone.

I let my bottom lip puff out in self-pity as I read again:

Charlie, you’re overthinking this. Have fun at the Halloween party. Talk to whomever you want. As you said before, we’ll figure this out when I get home. No worries.

xoxo

J

I stare at my computer, and click on my inbox. An e-mail telling me I’ve just won twenty-five million pounds in the British lottery, and another one trying to sell me Viagra. (I am curious as to how I got on
that
spam list.)

I force myself to walk away from the computer, only to see a different pack of unopened cigarettes beckoning me from the dining room table.

I purse my lips together as I stare at them.

Cigarettes. I really should quit buying them. Although I’ve decided to quit, I like keeping packs of them around. It’s like a little black book of old boyfriends’ phone numbers: just knowing they’re there in an emergency makes me feel better.

My iPhone rings. I check the caller ID. My boss, Drew Stanton.

The butterfly has emerged from his cocoon.

I pick up. “Hi, Drew.”

“What does a manic depressive act like?” Drew asks me, sounding like he’s in a state of utter distress.

“Well,” I begin, trying to come up with a succinct definition. “They act sort of like you, only they get depressed sometimes.”

“Okay, then that’s not it,” Drew says quickly. “Then I think I’m having a panic attack.”

“Did you accidentally climb into that crocodile exhibit again?” I ask sternly.

“No.”

“Are you hanging three thousand feet in the air without a net?”

“No!” Drew blurts out. “And I thought we agreed you would never speak of that incident again.”

“My bad,” I apologize. “Are there any sharks, snakes, or hitmen within ten feet of you?”

“No.”

“Then you’re probably not having a panic attack,” I conclude. “You only tend to have those when there’s a genuine need for panic.”

“Okay,” Drew concedes. “So then, what does a heart attack feel like?”

“You know, this would go a lot faster if you’d just tell me what happened.”

“I’ve been fired,” Drew says, sounding like he’s hyperventilating. “The head of Pinnacle called my agent to say that they don’t think they should be spending two hundred million dollars to make
Men in Motion 2
. I’m out of a job!”

Oh, crap. If Drew is out of a job, that means he’s going to spend the entire holiday season filling his days by trying to find the perfect religion, the perfect woman, or the perfect Pre-Colombian pottery. And he’ll be dragging me along with him on that quest.

Before I can respond, Drew’s voice changes completely, going from a tone of sheer terror to one of contemplation and calm. “You know, he’s telling the
Hollywood Reporter
it’s ‘creative differences,’ but, really, I think he’s mad about the hippo.”

The hippo
. I think to myself.

Drew is silent on the other end, waiting for my response. Finally, I oblige him. “And by hippo you would mean . . . ?”

“Ida.”

“Ida,” I repeat, trying to figure out what clever wordplay he’s used for his latest animal acquisition. Last month it was an elephant named Cindy (short for Cinderelephant—isn’t he clever?).

So Ida must be . . . “Is it short for, ‘Ida thought I wouldn’t do something so insane as to adopt a hippo’?” I ask.

“Nah,” Drew says, and I can hear by his tone of voice that he’s waving me off with his hand. “I named her after my aunt Ida. They’re both short and fat, and have huge legs. I rescued her from an estate in Costa Rica.”

I’m dead silent. It’s like joining an in-progress conversation that includes the phrase “Dirty Sanchez.” You won’t be able to catch up, and you won’t have anything interesting to add, so just stay quiet.

“I was going to name her Hippocrates,” Drew continues. “But then I thought, that’s a little on the nose. Besides, she’s a girl. What would people think if I gave her a boy’s name? Then of course, I thought of naming her after my uncle: but it turns out the word hypocrite has a ‘Y’ in it.”

I still stay quiet.

“Are you still there?” Drew asks.

“Barely,” I say, sighing.

The next words out of my mouth are words I never thought I’d have to utter in my lifetime. “Didn’t I specifically tell you that you couldn’t get a hippo?”

“Yes, you did,” Drew says breezily, “but then I remembered that you work for me, I don’t work for you. Which means you’re not the boss of me.”

Well, he sure told me
.

“In my defense . . . ,” Drew continues.

“Can you hold on a second?” I ask Drew.

“Sure,” he says.

I jot down in my notebook:

No good has ever come from a conversation that began with the words, “In my defense . . .”

“Okay, you were saying . . . ?”

“In my defense, there were a bunch of hippos that were about to be destroyed if no one took them. It was on the news. A bunch of zoos took the other hippos, and the only hippo left was Ida. So, I found this wildlife refuge that agreed to take Ida if I could get her to them, and pay for the ninety pounds of food she eats every day. And all that was supposed to happen was that I was supposed to pay to have Ida transported to the refuge. Only, the company in charge of the move I guess got confused, because they sent her to my house.”

What the fuck? Who sends a two-ton hippo to the middle of Brentwood?

“Only, they didn’t actually send her to my house,” Drew continues. “Because I specifically told them I live at 3592 Greenlawn. But they sent her to 3952 Greenlawn. Which, the good news on that is, the owners of 3952 have a pool, and they’ve graciously allowed her to stay for the next hour or two while we get someone to bring her to the refuge.”

I shake my head and sigh. “And the bad news?”

“The bad news is the owner of 3952 Greenlawn is also the head of Pinnacle Studios. And I’ve been fired due to ‘creative differences.’ ”

“And by creative differences you mean . . .”

“He thought sending a hippopotamus to the head of a studio was not particularly creative.”

“Ah.”

Figures. This is just so typical of Drew. Working for a movie star is like working for an unhousebroken puppy with a Black American Express card: You spend part of your life cleaning up after him, part of your life wanting to yell, “Sit. Stay,” and part of your life wondering how someone so stupid can be so successful that they have a Black American Express Card.

Drew continues, “I need you to come here with one hundred pounds of grass, and by that I don’t mean pot, I mean actual grass. Plus a pastrami on rye for me, light mayo, extra tomatoes.”

I roll my eyes as I jot down his demands on a notepad. I went to college so I could ask my next question, “You want fries with that?”

“Yes, the curly kind. Oh, and call whomever it is one would call to wrangle an amorous hippo.”

“Wait,” I say, closing my eyes to wince as I unconsciously lift up the palm of my hand in a “Stop” motion. “What do you mean ‘amorous’?”

“Um . . . amorous. It means lovesick, in heat, horny as a teenage boy on Jell-O shots. . . .”

“I know what it means,” I interrupt. “I meant,
why
is she amorous?”