Plan C (27 page)

A group of small children desperately in need of a bubble bath and a double-rinse shampoo stare at Kitty and me. A few other volunteers have just entered the room. Kitty
hangs back from the rest of the group by hovering at the bookshelves. We’ve been assigned two little girls – Daisy and Freida – who stare at us with eager faces.

“Did you bring your Purell?” whispers Kitty to me, all the while staring down the little girls as though they might bite.

I ignore her.

“You’re going to get the flu from them,” says Kitty. “We need hand sanitizer and we need it now.”

I still ignore her.

“Look how they wipe their noses on their sleeves,” says Kitty. “You’ll be sick for Paris.”

“Pay attention,” I whisper.

Kitty tunes into the group leader, an overzealous woman whose looks could double as the singer Lauren Hill. She’s named “Orange Blossom” whose day job is a one-man-show poet on a Times Square corner right next to the Naked Cowboy. Orange Blossom explains that we’ll be breaking into small groups, before escorting Kitty and I to four tiny desks near the coat cubby. Kitty cautiously lowers herself down on a red plastic seat sizable for a five year old, but not for our fat asses.

Our first assignment is to take questions from the children in hopes that they’ll learn from our answers about life, values, careers and even fears. My assigned child, Daisy, kicks the metal rungs on the bottom of her chair, her head cocked to the side in deep thought. Then her eyes light up and she becomes all smiles. “I’m a leap-year baby,” announces Daisy. “My birthday is on February 29
^th
so I’m really only three.”

“Oh, that’s so cool,” I say.

Kitty says nothing. She’d be enthused if the leap-year baby were offering a free round of dirty martinis served by an even dirtier shirtless waiters.

“Ummmmm, let’s see…” says Daisy. “What’s your
favorite
place in the
whole
world?”

“Paris!” say Kitty.

I smile and nod at Kitty as though to say, “See that wasn’t so bad.”

“What are you most afraid of?” asks little Freida.

“Rats!” I say. “And sometimes snakes.” I make a slithering sound toward little Daisy and Freida’s faces, sending them into a flutter of contagious giggles.

Now they look at Kitty. “What are
you
afraid of?”

Kitty ponders. “Loneliness. The depths of misery. Running out of Prozac.”

Daisy and Freida share a look before shrugging their shoulders.

“Ummm…..” says Daisy thinking, “Um, um, um - what’s your favorite color?”

“Green” I say, “Like the planet earth.”

Daisy looks toward Kitty who doesn’t answer.

“I’m thinking,” says Kitty scrolling her Blackberry. “I guess my favorite color is chartreuse. Maybe taupe. Occasionally persimmon….”

The two little girls knit their eyebrows.

“What’s your favorite movie?” says Daisy, seemingly proud of her particular question.

“Um, let me see,” I say. “Oh, I know! ‘
Slumdog Millionaire
!’” I light up at the memory of pretty Latika on that train platform draped in yellow.

“Spell it,” says Daisy matching my enthusiasm, “I want to write it down in my diary.”

“Okay,” I begin slowly. Very slowly. “S. L. U. M. D. O….”

“Do you know how long it takes to spell the words slumdog millionaire?” snaps Kitty. “Who the
fuck
finds a millionaire in a slum anyway? The writer was delusional!”

“Kitty! Your language,” I say. “And he did win an Oscar.”

“Sorry kid,” she says to Daisy. “I get testy when it’s past happy hour. Forget that movie. Just put this movie down instead… ‘Milk.’ M.I.L.K. Easy. Simple. Four letters.”

“But I hated “Milk,” I say. “It was so overrated.”

“I hate milk, too,” says Daisy.

“That’s why we need martinis!” Kitty indicates her watch. It’s going on 7:45 p.m.

“Okay, last question before we start our reading segment. Now it’s
our
turn to ask
you
…” I look at my little Daisy, who straightens up in her seat, happy to participate. Freida leans over, fascinated to watch Kitty text message on her Blackberry.

“Okay, sweetheart,” I say to her, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“Um…” Daisy thinks about it. “I really love animals. So when I grow up, I want to be a veterinarian, which means I have to be a
vegetarian
because I can’t eat the things that I take care of.”

“Wow, great answer, Daisy!” I say. ‘And do you have pets?”

“I have three chinchillas.”

“Really?” says Kitty, suddenly interested, “Two more and we could make a coat to wear in Paris!”

An airport security man sticks his latex-covered hand into Kitty’s Gucci bag. He pulls out a bottle of Advil, a hairbrush, eyeliner, a tampon and a blusher compact. But that’s not good enough. Now he reaches deeper inside the satin pocket lining and removes a two-inch vial. He holds it up to the light.

“Breast milk?” asks the security guard, peering at the creamy white liquid.

“No, it’s not
breast
milk,” says Kitty. “Are you crazy? That would require kids. I don’t have kids. I barely have
breasts!
Although give me a couple of months. Implants are in January.”

The security guard hands the vial to another man for further inspection. The look on his face tells us he thinks it could be something perverted.

“Oh, for godsake,” says Kitty, her voice escalating to a level that might easily carry from JFK all the way to Charles de Gaulle airport “It’s for my client’s art installation. He’s planning to splatter the liquid on a canvas.”

Another guard arrives and snaps the vial from the first guard. He twists off the top, smells it, and steps back with a knowing look on his face.

“It is bull sperm,” he says with a heavy Spanish accent. We all stare at him in disbelief.

‘Where the hell would Helmut get bull sperm?” asks Kitty.

“I know bull sperm when I see it, when I smell it, when I taste it,” insists the guard with the heavy Spanish accent, dipping his pinky finger in the vial and bringing it delicately to his tongue. “My father was a matador.”

“Oh, my God,” says Kitty. “Helmut kept
insisting
that I drive him to that farm in Amish Pennsylvania to look at Black Angus balls!”

“It’s bull sperm,” he says again.

“Give it back or I’ll be
bullshit
!”

“I pretend not to know her, inching my way backwards a few feet behind the other people in line. “Ellis fucking Island would have been easier than clearing security these days,” says Kitty.

For my own selfish reasons, all I can think of is whether I’ll be able to board the plane before she gets arrested. Finally Kitty snatches the vial back. “Libby, Helmut is such a genius,” she says. “Bull sperm on canvas.” And with that she drops it in her purse and moves forward through the terminal.

*

Now it’s my turn to make it through the Sing Sing gates as Kitty watches from the “cleared” side. Wallets out, cell phones out, keys tossed, shoes off, belts off. “Christ!”
says Kitty snapping her boarding pass in her palm. “This makes a Baghdad checkpoint seem like a Broadway musical,” I continue to pretend I’m not with her.

I stage-whisper to the man behind me, “This certainly puts a damper touch on my thrill of going to Paris.”

“Pretty soon they’ll make us walk through naked,” he says. “What’s left to remove?”

Some security woman with a bored, bitchy look on her face is rummaging through my purse. She pulls out my Evian Spray. She holds it up, snapping the gum in her mouth.

“But it’s a Brumisateur water bottle, I explain. “See, right there. Read it.”

She points to a sign that clearly indicates I’ve exceeded the ounce limit and whips my Evian spray into a trash barrel full of plastic drinking bottles. Then she snatches my Three Musketeers bar. It’s just over the four-ounce limit. “Please don’t,” I beg. “I’m PMSing.” She doesn’t toss it. But she doesn’t give it back either. Instead, she keeps her eyes locked on mine as she slides it carefully over to another conveyor belt. I know what she’ll be eating on
her
lunch break. Bitch!

I suppose it could be worse. The elderly woman next to me just set off the detectors with her artificial hip. But I’ve spoken too soon. Now I’m beeping. Or was that the guy in front of me again. Either way, while sweeping a black wand across my breasts I’m told to step aside to the side for further poking prodding, frisking, patting down and spreading eagle, which would be fine if some hot young stud were performing this task.

“Before you know it they’ll be offering free pap smears,” says Kitty. The guard gives her the evil eye that says, “Don’t push it, sista!” I give Kitty a look, too. One that says, ‘Why don’t you have a cup of shut the fuck up!”

“I’m going to Paris,” I say, attempting to lighten the mood, with my big toothy smile.

But the woman patting me down ignores me and says, “Shoes off. Over there.” My enthusiasm doesn’t interest her.

“I’m so excited,” I say, removing my left shoe. “I have to keep pinching myself.”

“Other shoe.”

“This time tomorrow I’ll be sitting in some café eating a baguette.”

“Boarding pass,” she says, still deadpan. I hand it to her.

“Do you think it will rain?”

She examines the boarding pass, matching it to my I.D., and then finally cracks a smile. “Bon Voyage.”

“Merci, beaucoup!” I say and grabbing Kitty’s arm. Soon we’re skipping to the gate as if we’re on the yellow brick road to Oz.

*

Punching in the numbers on my American cell, I record my new voicemail… “You’ve reached the voice mail of Libby Beal Crockett. I’m in Paris. Happy holidays! Call back after the New Year.” I click it off just in time because the cabin crew insists
that all devices be turned off and stored. I turn to Kitty in the next seat. She’s fussing with her shawl, her blanket, her face serum, her hand moisturizer and the green gel-mask stickers which she applies to her eyes. She pops a sleeping pill. For somebody about to be thirty-five thousand feet above the earth Kitty is impeccably dressed – black Armani wool pants, Jean-Paul Gaultier blouse, and slip-on Tod’s driving shoes which she’s just slipped off, revealing her perfectly polished French pedicure toes and replaced. She pulls on her booties socks. Me, I’m in black running pants and a long sleeve tee shirt that reads “Oxford.” On my feet are white gym socks – the left toe has the beginnings of a small hole. Anybody in First Class would say I look as if I’d been stowed away in the cargo area for five years and just retrieved tonight. Nevertheless, I’m happy. I rub at Kitty’s arm.

“I’m so glad to fly with my best friend to Paris. I love you, Kitty.”

“It’s Kat now, remember.”

“Okay, then,
Kat
,” I say, feeling sentimental. “And I’m glad you’ll soon be making money off of your client Helmut Fuck.”

“It’s Fachhhhh.”

“Do you have to be such a killjoy? I’m telling you I’m happy you’re here on the plane to Paris.”

She remains buried under her eye mask, only patting my wrist to appease me before she murmurs, “Vive la France!”

Of course I know in my heart that this is just me being overly emotional. It’s to do with Ben. It’s all to do with Ben, or the lack of him. How could he let me go alone to Paris without him? How could he just let me pack, leave and just go? An odd feeling
takes over my stomach. It’s partly that I feel let down, but there’s also a pang of New-England-sensibilities guilt like when you know you shouldn’t have had that heavy second helping at Thanksgiving dinner. All that bread pudding with plum sauce.

That reminds me…its just two days before Thanksgiving. I’ve never celebrated this traditional American day outside of Plymouth County before - let alone the United States. Do the French people even
know
what cranberry jelly and pumpkin pie means to an American?

Well, what’s in a holiday if your family is all dead anyway? I have my daughters, but we hardly fill a dining room table. I guess there’s an upside to having nobody left for your Thanksgiving. Unlike the rest of tax-paying America, I never have to deal with the drunken, right-wing fanatic grandfather, or the religious hard-of-hearing Aunt who’s just found God, or the secretly gay cousin who only trusts
me
to know his proclivity, “but I can’t tell the
rest
of the family.”

I was an only child, so I never had to worry about a brother bringing home some bimbo he picked up the night before and treating her to all the white meat from the turkey even though he’ll most certainly dump her before Christmas. And I’ll never have to deal with the older sister who announces her diet, yet again. Who diets on the biggest carb-devouring holiday of the year? Or her vegan yogi best friend who sits twisted into a pretzel on my dining room floor just as I place the platter of turkey down whereupon she announces, “I don’t eat anything with a face or a mother.” And, last but not least, I never have to deal with the hand-to-mouth peanut-shoveling football freak as he announces the score of every college game every five minutes. Of course, he always arrives with a bachelor best friend in tow. You know, the one who’s an alcoholic and feels the need to
remind all the guests how many days, hours and minutes he’s been sober and then gazes longing at my glass of cold Sauvignon Blanc? Well, too fucking bad! I’m
still
drinking…

But, is it okay not to slave over an oven for two days before this all-American holiday? Is it okay not to roll out all those pie crusts, or peel and roast the chestnuts for the stuffing? Is it okay considering my guests would down the entire meal in twenty minutes anyway?

Madeline didn’t seem to think it was okay a few days ago as she stood there with a duffle bag of dirty clothes. I told her I was finally taking my dream trip and her jaw dropped. “But who’s going to do my laundry?” she asked.

“Try your father,” I said, “Visit him for a holiday. Just remember to pack your sneakers, a warm coat, your cell charger…”

“My birth control pills and find a job. I know,” she replied.