The Scenic Route (2 page)

M
andy measured the chimpanzee's swollen vulva.

The freeze-frame of the streaming video from the wildlife preserve flickered on her computer monitor as she aligned a ruler across the screen and recorded the measurement in the lab's database. Then she toggled between program windows and tweeted, “Looks like Anastasia's going to get a lot more action tonight than I will.”

Her dissertation adviser frowned on giving the primates names because it could diminish objectivity. But Mandy's adviser frowned on many things. In fact, she frowned in general. Something Mandy was beginning to think was a by-product of getting tenure.

When Mandy was a freshman at the University of Michigan, she'd declared that she never wanted to leave. And she pretty much hadn't. Something her brother reminded her of on occasion (the occasion being whenever he wanted to annoy her). But now she was doubting that she was cut out for a life in academia, which was unfortunate, given there was very little else she could do with a PhD in primatology.

“You don't look like an anthropologist,” Tad Emerson told her on their first date. Well, their only “date,” if she didn't include sexting and booty calls.

“What does an anthropologist look like?” she remembered asking Tad with a seductive lilt that still made her blush. She had promised herself she wasn't going to think about Tad. But, of course, she was thinking about him. Because she was almost thirty and spending her Saturday night watching chimps have sex.

Tad had called it “monkey porn,” which wasn't altogether inaccurate. Bundled up in multiple layers in the frigid basement lab, Mandy felt a bit like a Peeping Tom watching Anastasia parade her engorged derriere before three potential suitors. It wasn't particularly subtle behavior on Anastasia's part, but it was effective. All three males started sniffing and fondling her. Dimitri was the most enthusiastic of the three, but he didn't seem to be her preferred mate. She rebuffed his advances and ran off. Mandy sighed. “Don't be showing your goodies to guys you're not interested in,” Mandy wanted to advise Anastasia. “It never ends well.”

Tad had said he was going to call on Thursday. The problem wasn't that it was two days later and he had yet to do so. The problem was that if he had called even an hour before, Mandy would have eagerly agreed to meet up with him when she got off work. It was humiliating for her to acknowledge. And it was infuriating. It was one thing to be blown off by a visiting professor of astrophysics, but a trumpet player with ironic facial hair? And what kind of a name was Tad? It was like Chad but without the political significance.

She logged on to her blog and typed in a headline for a new blog post: “Mandy's Manstrosity #37.”

Then she hesitated. Was Tad really a “manstrosity”? There was no doubt about #36 (the astrophysicist with the fidelity of a neutron), but Tad was more clueless than cavalier. She had known from the start that she had no business dating a musician. Especially one who was younger than she. He was only twenty-five, which in musician years was like thirteen.

She'd been surprised when Tad contacted her on OkCupid. She hadn't responded to his first two e-mail messages, despite the allure of the pale-skinned boy with overgrown sideburns. (He appealed to the Team Edward girl inside her, not that she'd ever admit to having seen a
Twilight
movie.) He told her he was attracted to older women, which had made her feel like a cougar, and she was too young to be a cougar. At least she hoped she was. She had canceled on him the first two times they were supposed to meet. Yet he had persevered, sending her virtual flowers to celebrate Latvia's Independence Day. He was goofy, and he was sweet. Disarmingly so.

Now she was mooning over him like some hormonal undergrad. Even though he had been the one pursuing her. It was so unfair. Maybe she had played too hard to get. Or maybe he only wanted her when she wasn't interested. Or maybe she shouldn't have had sex with him on the first date.

Anastasia sashayed back over to the male posse, and Dimitri moved in on her again. She hissed and screamed, which must have confused him, given that she had chosen to come back and proffer her ripe parts in his face. Mandy wondered, How was a male chimp supposed to know when “no” really meant no? She was typing the query into her notes file when her cell phone rang. It was Tad. It was insulting that he had waited until after ten. And it was stupid, because there was no way she was answering. Well, not until the fourth ring.

“What's up?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

“Not much,” he said, doing nonchalant much better than she could ever aspire to. “I was going to call you earlier,” he said, “but I fell asleep while studying.”

She tried not to be offended. She tried to focus on the positive: he was studying. Tad was pursuing a master's in trumpet performance, which seemed a rather impractical degree. But people in monkey houses shouldn't throw stones.

“How's work?” he asked.

“Just watching monkey porn,” she quipped. She wanted to shoot herself.

“Me too,” he snickered. Now she wanted to shoot him. No, she wanted to kiss him. She wanted to do several things to him that required opposable thumbs.

Who was she kidding? It didn't matter what time he called. She couldn't get his lopsided smile out of her mind. Or his unfairly long eyelashes. She was pining for him. Pining in places she rarely pined. She watched Anastasia and Dimitri bump and grind, noting that Anastasia wasn't asking Dimitri to make a long-term commitment. She didn't even seem to like him.

Mandy decided that there was no point in holding out for more than Tad was willing to offer. If her choice was between a booty call and going home alone to watch an
SNL
rerun, she was going with the booty call. At least for tonight. And if she felt differently tomorrow, well, that's what therapy was for.

“Are you making progress on your dissertation?” Tad asked.

No, they weren't going to chitchat. And they definitely weren't going to chitchat about a subject that was stressing her out. They were going to pick a time and location, and she was going to type it into her phone calendar, same as a gynecologist appointment. Mandy could handle having sex without a relationship, but she couldn't handle pretending it was something more if it wasn't.

“Can't really talk right now, Tad,” she said. “I've got a chimp in heat.”

“Oh,” Tad said, sounding like he was hurt. He couldn't have it both ways. Mandy vowed to never again date a musician. Or a twenty-five-year-old.

“I don't mean to be rude,” she apologized, twisting a strand of her long auburn hair, as she often did, and lamenting what she considered its dull color, as she equally often did.

“It's okay,” he said. “I gotta get going anyway.”

Going where?
she wondered. To the kitchen of his studio apartment? And he hadn't said what time he wanted to meet up. God help her if she had to be the one to bring up the subject. There had to be some small amount of chivalrous behavior that applied even to the most debased of relationships. But he wasn't saying anything, and she had been the one who wanted to cut the conversation short. “So, what time do you want to get together?” she asked, trying to sound breezy and sophisticated, like Scarlett Johansson, if Scarlett Johansson had to ask a guy for sex.

“Oh,” he said again. “I kind of have plans tonight.”

“You have plans?” She hated that her voice rose an octave.

“Yeah. But I wanted to say hi and see how you were doing.” He said this with complete sincerity. She wanted to smack him.

“You called me at ten thirty on a Saturday night to see how I was doing?”

“Well, I was going to call earlier, but—”

“I'm doing fine, Tad,” she said, and she would be, just as soon as she hung up.

“You don't sound fine. You sound unhappy.”

Why were men always telling her she sounded unhappy? And why was it always the same men who made her unhappy? She didn't know when Tad had become one of them. More precisely, she didn't remember when she'd let him have that kind of power over her emotions. Maybe it was when he kissed her earlobe and said she tasted like home. He shouldn't have said something like that unless he meant it. She could feel her eyes welling up. She needed to get off the phone before she gave herself away.

“I'm happy, Tad. And I have to get back to work. Really. That's what happy people do.” The truth was that she had no idea what happy people did, but she had no intention of telling him that. She
wasn't going to explain that her father had died when she was seven. She wasn't going to share that she still had nightmares of drowning in the ocean. “One apocalypse at a time,” her brother always said.

“Are you upset with me?” Tad asked.

Don't answer that,
she told herself. She wanted to exit gracefully. And swiftly. “Why would I be upset with you?” she heard herself say. “You said you'd call Thursday, and you called Saturday. You said we'd get together this weekend, and we're not. But you checked in to see how I'm doing, so everything's hunky-dory.”

“Do you have PMS?”

Mandy would have slammed down her phone if she had an extended warranty on it. Instead, she clicked off and started hammering away at her computer keyboard: “The first thing you need to know about Mandy's Manstrosity #37 is that he's a trumpeter, which means he blows a lot of hot air.”

She shivered as she remembered the feel of his warm breath on her neck. Then she zipped up the blue hoodie she was wearing and continued typing.

S
tanding under the Frisbee-sized rain showerhead, Austin wanted nothing more than to spend the next hour, or lifetime, letting the Kohler-branded jets of hot water pummel his head and tired muscles.

The truth was he didn't want to go to the wedding. It was something he should have admitted before spending the night on the floor of the Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Or even better, before he purchased the airline ticket.

He had been trying to spin the event as a social opportunity, and in theory, a wedding was a great place to meet someone. But only in theory. In reality, after turning thirty, attending a wedding without a spouse had become a form of public flogging.

Gone were the days of receptions teeming with unattached young professionals boisterously engaged in high-octane flirting. Instead, the solitary “singles” table was often populated by teenage relatives of the bridal couple and stray socially challenged misfits.

Desirable and age-appropriate single women were scarce, and Austin had grown accustomed to married women treating him with a mixture of curiosity and pity. They would interrogate him about his
dating history. Then they would offer to fix him up with an obese cousin with a lazy eye. Or worse, they wouldn't.

Austin slapped some of the complimentary Crystal Cove Resort mango-lime shower gel over his torso and under his arms. He poured some more onto his cotton shirt, which he had carried with him into the travertine shower stall, churning the fabric through the flowing water the way he imagined people had done for millennia—in rain showers that weren't trademarked.

He let the water continue to cascade over his shoulders for a precious additional minute as he wrung out the garment. Then he reluctantly turned off the tap and wrapped himself in an oversized, plush white towel before exiting the shower.

As he grabbed hold of the hotel's wall-mounted hair dryer, he felt like he was forgetting something. It was a feeling he'd been having a lot recently. Maybe “forgetting” was the wrong word. It was more like he'd misplaced something. Something other than his luggage. Something was missing. Or there was something he had missed. He thought it might have to do with work and worried he had missed signs of diabetic retinopathy when he'd diagnosed Myrna Resnick with glaucoma. Or maybe her husband's floaters were a symptom of a missed ocular melanoma.

But maybe it had nothing to do with work. Maybe it was something more intangible. Something he had missed out on. He was too young to feel that way. But then again he had felt like a middle-aged man since he was ten years old. “The little man of the house,” his mother used to call him, and “my little soldier.” She used to compliment him on how well he took care of her and his sister. As if it were something he chose to do. As if he wouldn't have preferred playing Super Mario to packing his sister's lunch box or organizing his mother's meds.

Austin was gripping the dryer like a gunslinger as he alternated between aiming it at his head and at his shirt. With ten minutes until
the ceremony started, the shirt was still drenched. He double-checked to make sure the dryer was on its highest setting, swinging it back and forth over the stubbornly damp material. So much for his attempted ingenuity. If he hadn't already been dreading the evening, the prospect of spending it in wet clothing would have definitely done the trick.

He was starting to resent everything about this forced vacation. Okay, “forced” also wasn't the right word, but the transcontinental trip definitely felt less than voluntary. It wasn't that he didn't want to see Stu get married. He just wished there was a way to do so without being physically present at a wedding. But there wasn't, which was why he had never seriously considered any other option. Going to the wedding was the right thing to do, and Austin always did the right thing. Even if it often turned out wrong.

“Excuse me, sir,” the bartender said, “this is a private event.”

Austin was loitering in the back corner of the open-air ballroom. No, not loitering. Unobtrusively observing. But it was hard to be unobtrusive in a red plaid shirt. Let alone a soggy one.

“Sir?” the bartender repeated.

The other advantage to Austin's location was that it was next to the bar, and he had just downed his third flute of champagne.

“I'm an invited guest,” Austin said. The bartender looked skeptical.

Austin was fairly certain that coming to a wedding in casual clothing did not rank as a major crime against humanity. However, based on the looks he was getting, he might have been mistaken.

He had purposely sat in the back row during the mercifully short outdoor ceremony. Steffi had decided against a bridal party after wearing one too many bridesmaid dresses, so there was no lengthy processional. And since the officiant was a judge, there were no time-consuming religious rituals. It was all very efficient, which was
appropriate for a budding software wizard like Stu, and convenient for Austin, who slipped into his white wooden seat moments before the bride walked down the grassy aisle.

But ever since the couple had been pronounced husband and wife, Austin had found himself the object of quizzical and increasingly hostile scrutiny. He didn't consider himself a shy person, but he didn't particularly like being the center of attention, unless he was performing a keratoplasty. And he wasn't doing any corneal implants at the moment, so he wished people would stop staring at him.

He took another glass of champagne, and the bartender whispered something to a passing waiter. What were they going to do? Contact Homeland Security?

Austin had been taking abuse about attending this wedding from the moment he requested the days off of work, which his eagle-eyed senior partner was quick to notice when it was posted on the office schedule.

“Did we institute summer Fridays and no one told me?” asked Len, with more than a hint of sarcasm, since the office staff barely dared to pass gas without telling him.

Austin knew the only reason Len was busting his balls was that Len had wanted to go away for the July Fourth holiday weekend, and one of them needed to be on call. But Len had gone away for Memorial Day weekend. And Martin Luther King Day weekend. And virtually every other holiday for the past four years since Austin had joined the practice. There came a point when Austin needed to stand up for himself.

“I've got three weeks of vacation time I haven't taken, and I put in the request sixty days in advance.” Austin hated the way his voice rose in pitch when he was indignant about something. Bad family trait. “It's the wedding of my oldest friend, and I'm going to be there.”

“So go,” Len said. “Who's stopping you?”

At times Len was Austin's partner. Other times he was his boss.
And sometimes he was a substitute father figure. He managed to be equally irritating in all three roles.

Austin took a swallow of his fizzy drink as he scoped out the crowd, keeping an eye peeled for any unescorted females. To his amazement there seemed to be one approaching him. Someone also dressed informally. Or at least less formally than the other guests, in a skirt and heels. She wasn't clad in wet cotton, but perhaps she felt simpatico. As she got closer, she smiled. She had a warm smile, a toned body—and a ring on the fourth finger of her left hand.

“I'm the manager of Crystal Cove,” she said, extending her other hand. “May I help you?”

“I'm the Unabomber,” Austin thought of saying but didn't. Instead he flashed his electronic room key with the Crystal Cove logo. If he could afford to pay the four hundred dollars a night, he couldn't be a total derelict. Or at least shouldn't be treated like one.

“I don't know if you realize, but this is a wedding,” the manager said as if she were speaking to a mentally unstable person—well, a mentally unstable person with a good credit rating. “Perhaps you'd be more comfortable by the pool.”

“I'm not lost or confused.” But he was uncomfortably clammy beneath his damp shirt. “In case you didn't notice, I'm more in need of a solarium than a pool.” What he really needed was a Star Trek teleporter. But he'd settle for another drink.

“You couldn't find a red plaid suit?” a voice boomed in his ear. Austin pivoted apprehensively toward his next interrogator, but it was Stu, who enveloped Austin in a bear hug as the manager slinked away. “So glad you made it, bro. Was worried you weren't going to.”

“There was no way I was going to miss you taking the plunge,” Austin said, feeling guilty for having entertained any other thoughts.

“Looks like you're the one who took a plunge. What did you do? Swim here?”

“It might have been quicker,” Austin said. Something looked different about Stu. His hair was shorter than Austin remembered. And he was tan. But that wasn't it. He was happy. He was beaming. It wasn't like Stu had ever been a particularly melancholy guy. But he looked euphoric. Or very wasted, which with Stu was always a possibility.

“Did you get Stuffi's message?” Stu asked.

Stuffi was Steffi's nickname, and Austin pulled out his BlackBerry, wondering if he had missed an e-mail.

“No,” Stu said. “In your room. She left you a note.” Austin hadn't noticed any notes, but he had zipped through the room to the shower and back out again. “She has a surprise for you.”

“What kind of surprise?” Austin was leery of surprises, and with good reason.

“Turns out Stuffi has a friend at the wedding who had a crush on you back at Huntington Seacliff.
Big
crush. Still single. And may I add very enthused about seeing you.”

Austin felt a flicker of excitement. It was silly that such a small piece of hearsay would make a difference. But there it was: it did.

“Can you point her out?” he asked.

Stu swiveled his head from side to side. “I don't see her. But she's sitting at your table. So you can't miss her.”

Stu was already moving on as Austin scanned the room for a familiar face. But it was a futile exercise. Stu was the only person from California Austin had kept in touch with over the years. He tried imagining what each female guest would have looked like as a child, as if he were running some reverse aging software in his brain. But that was even more futile. And his inquisitive looks were inviting more gawking.

He hustled through the French doors to the sunlit garden where the ceremony had taken place, getting unexpectedly dizzy in the process. The champagne and the heat were a potent combination. He leaned against a cypress tree. Or maybe it was a pine tree. His
knowledge of trees was pretty much limited to them being tall and green. And he had thought this particular one provided a good place to escape the sting of social censure—and check his e-mail.

Once his eyes came into focus, he could see he had three e-mail from work, none of them urgent, and one new message from his sister with a characteristic subject line: “Mandy's Manstrosity #37.” He smiled. Then he dialed.

“I'm working,” Mandy answered.

“No, you're not. You're sending out defamatory e-mail.” And he was pretty sure he heard music in the background.

“That's a link to my blog that you never read,” she accused him with only partial inaccuracy. “And it's not defamatory. It's satirical. And educational. It's
Sex and the City
for women who can't afford to live in a major city and have never paid more than two hundred dollars for shoes.”

“You pay two hundred dollars for shoes?” He knew he was busting her chops, but old habits die hard. And he was feeling a little buzzed.

“Is there a reason why you're calling?” She sounded irritated. He sometimes had that effect on women.

“Do you remember a friend of Steffi who liked me?”

“I barely remember Steffi.”

“Well, can you try?”

“To remember Steffi?”

“Her friend, who supposedly had a
really
big
crush on me,” he said, emphasizing “really big” like he was
really
sloshed, though he was sure he wasn't.

“How could I possibly keep track of all of the prepubescent girls who found you a geek god?”

Austin tried again, hoping for a morsel of inside information. “She would have been in your grade at Huntington Seacliff, and Stu said she had a ‘thing' for me.”

“Austin, she was seven or eight at the time. I'm sure she's gotten over you.”

They hung up, and Austin regretted calling. He wouldn't go so far as to say Mandy had burst his bubble, but she'd certainly let a lot of the air out of it. And there was still a roomful of judgmental wedding guests to face, most of whom had taken their seats by the time he returned inside. He took a deep breath as he scooted across the dance floor, or rather lurched across, a little unsteady on his feet. He could palpably feel disapproving looks, but he tried not to care. What did Mandy used to say? “Let your freak flag fly.” He hated when she said that.