The U-Haul Diary

by K. B. Draper

  “Let me grab something to eat and I’ll be right over,” I replied. Okay, so that was devious.

  “I’ve got stuff here. I’ll make you something if you can just come over now,” she replied.

  Devious but effective.

  I grabbed my car keys and headed toward Little Jo’s. Though my stomach was thoroughly excited, I started to feel a bit guilty for my subliminal message of “feed me” when Little Jo was obviously upset. Thinking I should maybe grab something to eat on the way over, I contemplated my fast food options along my route: McDonalds, Mr. Wang’s, and Captain D’s. On the other hand, she did sound like she needed me as quickly as possible and cooking dinner might take her mind off of whatever is going on, so I really shouldn’t deny her a few moments of peace. I arrived at her door five minutes later, hungry and with a clear conscience.

  Little Jo answered puffy-eyed, red-nosed, and with what I thought was either really dark-colored snot smears or BBQ sauce on her sleeve. I was hoping it was BBQ sauce, for Little Jo’s sake, of course.

  “I got here as fast as I could. What’s going on?” I asked, sniffing the air for a hint of beef or chicken aroma.

  “Sheila is leaving me,” she cried.

  Beef! Yes! Then Little Jo’s words pierced through my hunger and I replayed what I thought I’d heard.

  “Sheila is leaving you?”

  “Yeah, for someone she met two days ago,” she turned and walked toward the kitchen.

  “Wait. I don’t get it. She hasn’t told me anything about this. What the hell is going on?”

  While Little Jo stirred, seasoned, and basted, she told me the whole story or the story as she knew it. While walking through a parking garage at work, Sheila apparently met a woman who was at the time enjoying a cigarette during her break. For whatever reason, they began talking and now Sheila was in love. Who knew that the backdrop of cement, painted parking space lines, and the aroma of cigarette smoke and exhaust fumes could be such a romantic setting?

  “She’s gone insane. Or maybe she was standing too close to a tailpipe and she’s just suffering from exhaust inhalation?” I said to Little Jo after she finished her tale and set a plate of BBQ beef ribs, asparagus, and scalloped potatoes in front of me. I took a bite of the ribs and my stomach orgasmed. It was official that Sheila had gone insane.

  “I don’t know what happened and I just don’t understand it. I thought everything was good,” she said.

  For the next two hours, I watched and listened to Little Jo cry, question, and suffer. I added the occasional “I don’t know,” “It’ll be okay,” “I’m sorry,” and “She’s an idiot.”

  Eventually the tears subsided and Little Jo said she was tired and was going to try to get some sleep. She walked me to the door. I hugged her and turned to leave.

  “Maybe you’re right. Women suck. I think I’m with you on the anti-relationship thing.”

  My heart fell. I crawled into my car and called Sheila on her cell phone.

  “Hello?”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t give me that shit. You know what. Where are you?”

  “I’m just out with a friend.”

  “Great! Well, since all your friends happen to be my friends, where are you? I’ll come meet you … and OUR friend.”

  “No,” she said, a little too quickly.

  “Why not?” I asked, faking innocence.

  “You don’t know her.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Scarlett,” Sheila replied quietly.

  Oh God. She has gone insane. She’s left Little Jo for a garage cruising, cigarette smoking stripper.

  “What the hell are you thinking?” I asked.

  “Can we talk about this later? She’s coming back from the restroom.”

  “No. We’re going to talk about it now. I just spent the last two hours watching Little Jo bawl her eyes out, and if it hadn’t been for the BBQ ribs, it would’ve been completely miserable.”

  “I got to go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  And she hung up.

  Ohhh ... She’s dead!

  The next week I spent a significant amount of time talking to and consoling Little Jo, informing Sheila that she was an idiot, and re-contemplating my re-contemplation of my anti-relationship policy. After seeing the pain Little Jo was going through and the lobotomy-type effects women can have on an otherwise normal person like Sheila, I decided to reinstate my anti-relationship policy.

  I opened the refrigerator and looked for something to eat—sour cream and ketchup. Crap. You know, I really should call Little Jo and see how she’s holding up. I closed the refrigerator, picked up the phone, and dialed Little Jo.

  “Hey,” she answered without the as-of-late sobby tone and sniffle.

  “Hey, yourself. I didn’t hear from you last night and was just calling to check on you. How are you doing?”

  “I’m good.”

  What the hell was going on? Less than forty-eight hours ago she was a sad and crying mess.

  “That’s good. What are you doing?”

  “I was just cooking some meatloaf and mashed potatoes,” she replied with a cheery voice.

  “Well, I was going to whip up some Hungarian pork chops but I don’t have any Worcestershire sauce or pork or any of the other nine ingredients, so instead why don’t I come help you with your meatloaf and you can tell me about your sudden change in attitude?” I suggested.

  “Hungarian Pork Chops? Yeah, right. What you’re really saying is you don’t have anything in your refrigerator and you’re hungry.”

  “Well, yes. But I am curious about this recent emotional transformation.”

  “Meatloaf will be ready in twenty. See you then.”

  Nine minutes later, I knocked on Little Jo’s door. She opened it with a big smile on her face.

  “Come on in, Chef Boyardee,” she said laughing and walking back toward the kitchen.

  “Was that a smile and humor?” I asked, excited to see a happy Little Jo. “And to what do we owe this new sunny disposition?”

  She picked up a large knife from the edge of the sink and began to rinse it off. “Oh, nothing,” she said with a suspicious smirk.

  Oh God, she killed Sheila. I eyed the pan of meatloaf suspiciously. Surely not.

  Admittedly, I had, on a flight to Florida with my friends, decided if our plane crashed on a mountain top, Sheila would be the first one I’d eat, but that was only after extreme hunger set in. I was only in significant hunger stage at the moment.

  I sat there silently watching the oven timer while mourning the loss of one of my oldest and dearest friends. Ten minutes were left, and the enticing aroma of Sheiloaf was tickling my senses as well as a nagging memory. I faintly remembered that during one of Little Jo’s rather long crying spells, she had looked at me with sad questioning eyes and asked me, “What am I going to do?”

  As I had long ago exhausted my repertoire of comforting words and suggestions, I might have, maybe, out of pure desperation, resorted to bad humor and joking distraction tactics. I could have possibly suggested something vaguely like “we could tie Sheila to a chair, force her to watch Bar Girls over and over until she loses the little remaining sanity she has left. Then we could have her committed to a mental hospital where she’d have to eat puréed prunes and poop her pants, ensuring the only action she’d ever get is from weekly sponge baths from a cranky nurse named Maud. Then you and your future superhot girlfriend could bring her the Word Jumbles out of the Sunday paper until she dies a slow and painful death of sexual and cartoon puzzle frustration?”

  Oh God, what if she decided to skip the chair, the bad lesbo movie, the insane asylum, the pureed fruit, the frustrating word puzzles, and went straight to the die part. I eyed the oven again. Great, I’m an accomplice. Maybe I should call the cops, turn her in, and cut a deal. I pondered. Maybe I should eat the meatloaf and mashed potatoes … or maybe just the mashed potatoes, before
I throw Little Jo under the bus for my own self sentence-reducing gain. The doorbell rang. Crap, it’s too late. The cops had already found the fileted remains. Just perfect. Now I was going to go to the slammer and become someone’s bitch on an empty stomach.

  Little Jo turned to go answer the door, leaving the newly washed knife on the counter. Oh nice, OJ, leave the evidence out in the wide open. I panicked, snatched the knife, spun around, decided on the ice bin of the freezer, and quickly sat down at the table and tried to think of a cool defense catchphrase that my lawyer could use to get me off. I’d only come up with “It was just a little jokey, I don’t deserve the pokey.” Not as poetic as the “doesn’t fit, must acquit” thing but I have a limited vocabulary and Little Jo and the homicide cop re-entered the room before I could come up with a word that rhymed with exonerate.

  I immediately sized up my soon to be captor. She was approximately five-foot-six, 125 pounds, dark red spiky hair, wearing very non-homicide detective clothes.

  “This is Alisa …” Little Jo began the introductions, with a very obvious gleam in her eye. Just my luck. We get a lesbo cop and Little Jo is already on a first name basis with her. I’m screwed. Little Jo will be knitting socks for underprivileged kids next to a pool at some day spa jail, while I’ll be making license plates and becoming the sex toy of some beastly tattooed woman named Reggie with abnormally fat fingers.

  “Alisa is Scarlett’s ex,” Little Jo continued.

  “You’re not a cop?” I asked.

  Confusion crossed Alisa’s face. “Uhhh, no. I work for an insurance company.”

  I was immediately relieved that I wouldn’t have to make Stacy smuggle me and Reggie a vat of KY. That and the fact, I assumed, that this meant Sheila was still alive.

  Over dinner, Little Jo explained how the night before Alisa had called her for some mutual consoling over drinks. During this act of shared comfort, they had apparently started a fiery affair of their own.

  Since Little Jo and Sheila were both being entertained by new relationships, I hadn’t talked to either of them for a week. Figuring I wouldn’t get invited over to dinner anytime soon, I went to the grocery store and ordered in Chinese.

  Two weeks later, I finally got a call from Little Jo asking me over for dinner. I contemplated momentarily, but quickly relented, knowing that I was back to sour cream, ketchup, a two-week-old head of lettuce, and a two-week-old carton of milk.

  “Sure. I’ll be over in a bit,” I replied.

  “Good, but I’m not at my old house. I’m over at Alisa and Scarlett’s old house.” She gave the address and some brief directions.

  Twenty-five minutes later, Little Jo answered the door of a townhouse on the opposite end of town from where I had last dined. I walked in and looked around. The couch that three weeks ago was located in the living room of Sheila and Little Jo’s was now sitting in the middle of Alisa’s living room. Following Little Jo into the kitchen, I saw the table where just three weeks ago I’d eaten meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

  “So, what exactly is going on here?” I asked.

  “Well, we all decided that it only made sense that I move in here with Alisa and that Scarlett move into Sheila’s and my old house with Sheila,” she said as if she’d just explained a perfectly normal and ordinary solution to their little love-square scenario.

  “Convenient.” I refrained from asking exactly what song was on when they decided to play their musical girlfriends game. I figured it hadn’t been “My One and Only Love.”

  A few minutes later, Alisa came downstairs and gave Little Jo a kiss that would’ve been better suited for the privacy of their newly exchanged bedroom before sitting down at the table next to me.

  “So, did you tell her what you did yet?” Alisa asked Little Jo.

  “No. I will over dinner,” she replied.

  After fitting in a breakup, a hookup, and MOVING, I couldn’t fathom what else she could’ve possibly accomplished in the short three-week period. I’d barely gotten my laundry done in that time frame.

  Little Jo set a pork loin, a corn casserole, and homemade rolls on the table. I filled my plate. “What haven’t you told me? It’s been two weeks. What else could you possibly have done?” I looked around at Stacy’s transplanted life. “Built a clean water tank in a third world country?”

  “Well …” she began, “Alisa and I were lying in bed the other night and I started telling her about your past relationships.”

  What this had to do with her water system I had no idea, unless we were progressing to sewer systems … “And?” I asked.

  “And Alisa gave me an idea.” She paused. “Sooo, I might have done something,” she confessed with a sinister smile.

  “What?” I asked slowly, suspicious and praying it wasn’t that she had opted to add nuts to the apple crunch dessert that I’d eyed on the counter. I mean nuts have their place, like in a dish on grandma’s coffee table at Christmas, but there was no place for them in entrees, chocolate chip cookies, and especially not my apple crunch dessert.

  “Well, you haven’t dated anyone in a while and I thought you needed to,” she proclaimed.

  How come when your friends are giggly-stupid, happy and newly in love they suddenly think everyone else should be too? “Oh really? Well, I don’t. I was thinking my plan of swearing off women and becoming a nun was a better idea.”

  “Yeah, so you can live in a big house full of sexually deprived women? I don’t think that’s a great plan.”

  In my head, I played out a quick scene of me in a convent with a bunch of hot, sexually deprived nuns. Whoa, yeah I’m going to Hell.

  “Okay you’re right. Maybe not such a great plan.”

  “So, Alisa thinks you should go on the internet.” Little Jo confessed.

  “Oh, no. I’m not going on the internet. No way, nope, nope, nope, not going to do it.”

  “Oh, come on. Get into the twenty-first century; everyone is doing it,” Little Jo argued.

  “Really, we’re resorting to “everyone is doing it” peer pressure? It’s not going to work. I’m not going to put myself out there for everyone to scrutinize and judge. If I were, I’d rent a billboard on Main Street and advertise ‘Hey, I’m single AGAIN.’ Please love me.”

  Little Jo stood and strategically moved herself out of arms reach. “Well, I kind of already put a profile up for you.”

  “YOU … DID … WHAT?”

  “Before you kill me, just look at it.” She moved two more feet away. “You already have mail. Three girls want to talk to you.”

  If the scent of apple crunch hadn’t been wafting in the air, me and my pride would’ve gotten straight up and walked out the door. But in the ultimate act of betrayal, my pride still wanted warm baked apples in cinnamon flavored ecstasy, crowned with a sensuous, soft, sweet oatmeal topping. So I stayed for two helpings but did leave without helping with the dishes, because I did have my pride and a point to make.

  I lay there awake. This wasn’t a new habit. I hadn’t slept well since Carly left, and the sleep deprivation hadn’t improved since Loren’s middle-of-the-night phone calls and late-night disappearances. So as I had many nights prior, I lay in bed thinking of all that was wrong with the world, overly involved friends now topping my list over war, hunger, and QVC.

  I couldn’t believe that Little Jo had exposed me like that, letting everyone in the free world, or at least everyone with an internet connection, examine and judge me. Whatever. What did I care what a bunch of strangers thought? I didn’t. I rolled over, closed my eyes, and attempted to will my brain to sleep. Nothing. I couldn’t stop thinking about being out there for everyone to SEE! In that instant, I realized I hadn’t comprehended the totality of the situation. OH MY GOD! A new panic shot through me. WHAT PICTURE DID SHE USE?

  I sat up and ran to the trashcan where I had disposed of the note on which Little Jo had written my log-in and password. I then darted to my computer. Little Jo had used “Nicegirl69” for my login name and 6969 for
the password. Seriously? I typed it in. My profile came up, and it was a picture of me sitting casually in Stacy’s backyard during a New Year’s Eve party. Okay, not bad, could have been worse. It could have been the picture taken four hours later as I was throwing up in Stacy’s flowerbed after some genius, okay me, had decided we should see if we were getting too old to do keg stands. We’d quickly discovered we weren’t too old to do keg stands, but we were too old to drink like we used to when we actually thought keg stands were cool.

  I read over the narrative that I had supposedly written about myself. Apparently, I am adventurous, love the outdoors and animals, am kindhearted, professional, have a great group of friends, which was now questionable, enjoy traveling, mountain biking, sports, and trying new restaurants, love all kinds of music except Celine Dion and yodeling, and am a nonsmoker. Well I guess that just about covered it, except she forgot that I love pina coladas and getting caught in the rain. Whatever. I was looking for the “DELETE THIS PROFILE” button, when I saw the “Inbox (3)” link. I hesitated, mildly curious. I clicked the link, figuring it wouldn’t hurt to see what they said. As the page loaded, I had a quick thought that maybe I should be more open-minded. There could be a nice, sane, attractive woman out there who also had a psycho friend meddle in her life.

  The first message was from Lacie69. Maybe she and Little Jo had things in common? I hit the link to open the message.

  I liked your profile and wanted to say hello. You look hot in your picture. My boyfriend and I—

  DELETE.

  The second message was from Sporty69. What is it with all the lesbians obsessed with the 69 thing? Okay, obvious answer. But what’s the big deal? I mean it’s all fun and games until someone ebbs when they should have flowed and their nose is the winner in the bunghole ring toss.

  Hello, I read your profile and think we might have a lot in common. I like to play sports. I have two dogs named Jodie and Foster. HaHa. I obviously like Jodie Foster and have all of her movies. Physically, I’m average and would describe myself as butch—