Perfect Fifths

by Megan Mccafferty

  “You’re not one of those fan-clubbers, are you?”

  “Noooooo,” Jessica insists.

  When Sylvia looks heavenward and mouths THANK GOD, she is revealing more personality than is recommended in the Clear Sky Customer Service Center Handbook. To Jessica, this Sylvia is nothing like the brusque robot at Gate C-88, so she chuckles at the gesture to keep up the unexpected camaraderie.

  “Such a fuss over Barry Manilow’s Final Farewell tour. Ridiculous!” Sylvia’s tone is light, but five decades’ worth of frowns undermine any effort at turning them upside down.

  “I totally agree with you,” Jessica says, running her tongue over her teeth. She can feel the erosion of tooth enamel already. Why did she eat that donut?

  “I’ve never been much of a fan of his, to be perfectly honest,” Sylvia says.

  Jessica is tempted to force a segue. Me, either! Though that “Copacabana” song is kind of fun to dance to at weddings, don’tcha think? And speaking of weddings, I’m hoping you’ll be able to get me to my best friend’s wedding …

  But Sylvia doesn’t let Jessica get a word in edgewise. “Final Farewell? Ha! That’s what they all say. Didn’t Cher’s farewell tour go on for five years? And what about that Céline Dion? Hasn’t she gone into retirement three times already? It’s just a ticket-selling scam.”

  “You’re right!” Jessica says, again too eagerly, having chosen forced politeness over her other options.

  “Say what you want, but that Céline Dion sure can sing. She’s sure got some pipes. But Barry Manilow? Meh!”

  “Meh!” Jessica mimics.

  Sylvia nods, simpatico, and wiggles her fingers over the keyboard. Jessica is now confident that Sylvia will do whatever is in her power to get her on the next flight to St. Thomas.

  Of course that’s when, as if on cue, Jessica’s phone starts singing.

  You know I can’t smile …

  Sylvia frowns, and her hands freeze. “I thought you said you weren’t a fan.” She obviously feels betrayed by Jessica in a meaningless, minuscule way that is not unlike how Jessica still feels after being abandoned by Garanimals.

  “I’m not!” Jessica glances at the caller ID and sees that it’s a text message: NO WORRIES!!!! XO, B&P

  The number of exclamation points undermines the message. Jessica is more desperate than ever to get on the next flight.

  “I got this phone for work a few years ago, and I still don’t know how to use it. I’m not really techy, and this thing has more buttons, bells, and whistles than I know what to do with.”

  Sylvia’s face is unchanging.

  “Anyway, a girl I know programmed this ring tone as a joke because an old boyfriend once tried to win me back with a Barry Manilow toilet seat cover.”

  Jessica stops midsentence, not only because she sounds like a lunatic but because she’s caught herself in the kind of public overshare that she finds so distasteful. She hates being on the inadvertent receiving end of these types of conversations. In Manhattan one can take unwilling part in conversations about infidelity, abortions, genital infestations, all out loud, in public, without shame, on a daily basis. It’s commonplace, she knows, and she feels like an anachronistic curmudgeon for wanting to adhere to some outmoded sense of propriety and discretion. Whenever she overhears one of these shameless conversations, she can’t help but look at the oversharing narcissist and think, I don’t want to know this about you. Jessica doesn’t want Sylvia—or anyone on line behind her, for that matter—knowing about Sunny.

  “Let me start over,” Jessica says.

  She explains her problem: She missed her flight to St. Thomas. And her goal: To get on the next available flight. As well as the complications therewith: The flight she missed was itself a change to the original reservation, which means that the airline is under no obligation to make yet another change, with or without the hundred-dollar surcharge. Sylvia takes this all in and—with newfound professional resolve—starts clicking away at her computer. “Ms. Daring?”

  “Darling,” Jessica corrects. “With an L.”

  “Oh, right!” Sylvia says, squinting at the screen. “I need a new prescription.” She types, then stops. “Darling with an L. That’s quite a name to live up to.” Sylvia, bless her, clearly does not know about the porn star and how she’s chosen to live up to the Darling name. “It’s like the family in Peter Pan!” Sylvia yelps, her fingers still hovering over the keys. “What was the girl’s name again? Not Tinker Bell. You know, the girl in the family.”

  “Wendy,” Jessica answers, as she has many times before. “Wendy Darling.”

  “Right! Wendy Darling! Thank you!” Sylvia says, finally touching her fingertips back down on the keyboard. “That would have bothered me all day. I wouldn’t have been able to get anything done.”

  “You could have Googled it,” Jessica says.

  Sylvia waves at the computer dismissively “Not here. No Internet connection. Clear Sky wants us cut off from the outside world so we can concentrate on serving customers … like you!”

  Jessica laughs politely, sticking to that game plan for getting this done. She congratulates herself on her sense of restraint and maturity, thinking about how a younger, less patient Jessica Darling might have resorted to huffing and puffing and blowing the whole thing out of proportion. But the mere fact that she is so proud of her progress points to just how tenuous her grip on maturity really is. Did Garanimals pat herself on the back for not throwing a hissy fit? No. She just whipped out her cell phone and went into problem-solving mode without causing a ruckus or putting up a fuss. Full-fledged grown-ups shouldn’t celebrate themselves for resisting behavior unbecoming of a toddler. Jessica’s getting there, but she hasn’t arrived yet.

  “I don’t like Google,” Sylvia says. “Call me old-fashioned, but I like getting all my answers the hard way, by racking my brain! I swear, my son can’t think thirty seconds into the future. Everything is now now now, with all that texting and instant-messaging nonsense. I don’t think his generation knows how to think for themselves in any way that makes sense.”

  “They can think for themselves, and they do,” says Jessica. “They just choose not to share those thoughts with you.”

  Sylvia fixes Jessica with a skeptical look. “Are you a teacher or something?”

  “More of an ‘or something’ than a teacher,” Jessica says. “But I hope to change that.” She realizes she could end the conversation here, but she’s compelled to push it further, to defend all the Girls who aren’t here to defend themselves. “Texting makes sense to your son. He doesn’t want it to make sense to you. That’s the whole point. Didn’t you pass coded notes in class when you were his age?”

  “I did,” Sylvia concedes, before regaining momentum, “because we wanted to keep things private. But that’s not how it is nowadays, with everything on the Internet. None of these kids want privacy. They’re all addicted to attention. Nick dropped out of college and thinks he deserves to be famous for doing nothing. He didn’t have a job until I forced him to get one. Argh!” Sylvia slaps a hand to her forehead.

  Jessica’s eyes spin around in their sockets. Sylvia’s comments are indicative of precisely the kind of collective character assassination that gets the Girls all riled up. And no one fought back against the youth bashing more fiercely than Sunny.

  Dearest Mom and Dad,

  I’m writing this letter to apologize on behalf of the Look at Me! generation. We think we deserve the world’s undivided attention. We demand it! While I have yours, I will use it to make a confession: You are right.

  The world is passing through troubled times, and yet we think of nothing but ourselves. Today’s teens love luxury. We want it all and we want it now and heaven help you if you don’t give it to us. We are the biggest culprits in this culture of excess, the most fickle consumers, the biggest contributors to the global garbage pileup resulting from our disposable society.

  We have bad manners, contempt for authority, and show
disrespect to our elders. We contradict our parents, chatter before company, and are tyrants over our teachers. We have no reverence for parents or old age. We talk as if we know everything, and the wisdom of our elders is passed off as foolishness. I can only speak for myself when I promise: No more!

  I understand why you see no hope for a future dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for we are reckless beyond words. When you were young, you were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but teens today are exceedingly wiseassed and incapable of showing restraint. As a girl, I offer an extra apology for being forward, immodest, and unladylike in speech, behavior, and dress.

  By the way, this letter is a plagiarized mash-up of quotes attributed to Plato, Peter the Hermit, Hesiod, and vintage Dear Abby that I found on the Internet. So, um, I guess my generation isn’t any more spoiled, entitled, or narcissistic than teens who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago … or those who grew up in the 1960s and ′70s, for that matter, LIKE YOU.

  Your daughter,

  Sunny

  P.S. This cut-and-paste approach is intentionally ironic. Thank you.

  Jessica’s eye roll, as fantastically executed as it was, barely registers with Sylvia. As an overworked mother of a bitter son not much younger than Jessica, she has developed a high tolerance for parental disdain as a means of survival.

  “We can put you on a flight that leaves tomorrow morning at nine A.M., connects in Miami, and gets you into Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, at one P.M.”

  Jessica is already shaking her head in protest. “The wedding is tomorrow morning,” she pleads. “Is there any flight that can get me there tonight? I don’t care how late.”

  “Ooooh!” exclaims Sylvia. “A destination wedding! How fun! Who’s getting married? I love weddings! I wish my son would get married.”

  Jessica sighs before responding, wondering if she passed up her best opportunity by eschewing the “Copacabana” segue. “Two of my oldest and dearest friends.”

  The description is inadequate. Bridget and Percy aren’t merely her friends, they are the two people who make her “believe in love. Not just love but love in all its mutinous mutations over time.” Over the course of their nine years together, Bridget and Percy have taunted lovesick cynics like Jessica by “serving as flesh-and-blood proof of the impossible: Two young people can fall in love, stay in love, and continue to choose loving each other over everything and everyone else … and still be deliriously happy with that choice.” (Again, all quoted passages come from Jessica’s sermon.) It’s the last part that seems to trip up other long-term couples, like her parents, who fight monotony by traveling all over the world, or her sister’s husband, who fought monogamy by philandering all over the city until her sister finally came to her senses and dumped his trans-fatty ass for good.

  “Well, the last flight out today leaves in three hours,” Sylvia explains. “It connects in Miami and will get you to St. Thomas by ten P.M. tonight.”

  Jessica flexes and poses like a victorious prizefighter. “Yesssss!”

  “It’s overbooked,” Sylvia buzzkills. “I’ll confirm you for tomorrow’s flight, but you could try standby for the one that leaves today.”

  “What are my odds of getting a seat that way?”

  Sylvia gives her a thumbs-down and a full-face frown.

  “So what you’re saying is, I can only hope there’s someone like me who is stupid enough to miss her flight.”

  “Yep,” Sylvia says with a shrug. “Someone like you.”

  Someone like you. Jessica’s wayward attention drifts yet again. She thinks about someone like herself, as she was during hospital visiting hours last night. She remembers the shaved head (Jessica prays for the opportunity to joke about a whole new awkward hair-growing-out phase) halved by one-sided train-track stitches; the unresponsive face, unrecognizable and grotesque from bruising and swelling (another joke: about how she’s lucky she looks good in purple); the thin, small body (more childlike than ever) attached to too many tubes—breathing, feeding, excreting—connected to too many machines keeping her alive for too many hours already: thirty-six.

  Jessica glances at her new watch, a gift from her mother, who, in one of the more harmless intergenerational differences of opinion, still believes that it’s unprofessional to check one’s cell phone for the time. It’s almost two P.M. It will be near dark here in Newark when the next plane to St. Thomas takes off. Two days ago, in another time zone, Jessica’s watch would have been three hours behind, requiring three twists of the tiny dial to catch up. And if she were in yet another time zone, it would be evening right now. Or tomorrow. Time is fluid and flexible, a made-up construct. Isn’t that the kind of logic that has alcoholics lining up their glasses at all hours of the day? Hey, it’s five o’clock somewhere.

  “So, Sylvia,” Jessica says, leaning in to the counter. “Can you point the way to the closest bar?”

  fifteen

  Marcus inhales. Clasps his hands together, swings them over his head and pushes them palms-up toward the ceiling. He exhales.

  A high school senior in her first-choice college hoodie, sweatpants, and Sherpa boots giggles all over herself as she snaps pictures of Marcus on her camera-phone.

  Marcus drops his entwined hands behind his neck and squeezes the sides of his head with his jutting elbows. He inhales again.

  The girl texts a friend: hott

  His hands break free. He exhales again.

  The friend replies: iwhi

  He shakes his hands out in front of him chest-high, his fingers all blurry from the flapping. Inhales once more.

  The girl texts back: omfg ita

  If Natty were here, he would tell Marcus to stop swinging his dick around like a lasso.

  “I’m just stretching,” Marcus would say.

  “The jailbait would say otherwise,” Natty would argue. “This is classic lasso-dicking.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Yes, it is.” And then Natty would smile wickedly and say, “Didn’t your anthropology professor teach you anything?”

  In fact, she did. She lectured Marcus about all sorts of flamboyant courtship displays throughout the animal kingdom. The Argentine lake duck swings its long, thin penis to lasso females cowboy-style. Frigate birds inflate their throat sacks into bright red heart-shaped balloons. Hippos take huge, pungent dumps, then twirl their tails helicopter-style to spread the scent. Moose soak their beards in urine. Bower birds build elaborate maypole towers out of twigs and twine. Painted turtles grow out their toenail claws, then swim laps to show off the wake. Hedgehogs run in frenetic circles. Prairie dogs square-dance. Frogs sing. Elks bugle. Many primates—with whom humans share 98 percent of their DNA—flash engorged rainbow-colored genitals.

  Marcus Flutie stretches.

  “Lasso dick.”

  Whenever Natty said it, Marcus would punch him in the chest much harder than necessary if it were just a meaningless joke. The truth is, despite his denials, Marcus knows his poses attract more attention than standing still. Whether he assumes these yogic positions in public in spite of or because of this knowledge is something not even Marcus can answer. But he senses that he’s being watched right now. The teenage girl has shuffled away, having been summoned by her parents. But perhaps Jonelle is keeping her eye on him, readying herself to return under the pretense of admonishing him for his rudeness—how could you just ignore me like that?—when in reality, her rehearsed hostility is just an excuse to talk to him again.

  “Pardon me,” says a commanding male voice.

  Marcus turns to face two Port Authority policemen who had been watching him. With his salt-and-pepper mustache and sandbagged eyes, the first officer appears older than he really is. Marcus would be surprised to hear that he’s still a few decades from retirement and is only a few years older than his brother, Hugo, who just turned thirty. The second officer is shorter and thick with overcompensatory muscles, especially around the neck. He’s new to the beat, still passion
ate about his job, and will pounce if provoked. He reminds Marcus of a pit bull trained to kill.

  “Is there a problem, Officers?” Marcus looks them both briefly in the eye before settling his gaze on the more coolheaded-looking officer.

  “We were going to ask you the same question,” the pit bull says with a menacing smile that warns, I will Tase you if I have to. He narrows his eyes, trying to size Marcus up.

  Have I been acting suspiciously? Marcus wonders. Or did Jonelle report me to the police as revenge for rebuffing her advances?

  “No,” Marcus says. “There’s no problem here.” He has conditioned himself to keep responses brief in these types of situations.

  The officers exchange looks. The pit bull’s fingers twitch at his sides, just itching to pull his gun out of his holster. The first one asks in a measured tone, “Can we please see your identification and flight information?”

  Marcus can’t help but think that even the first officer, so polite with his “please” and “pardon me,” wouldn’t hesitate to handcuff and haul him off to a holding cell. Fortunately (or not), he has had a lot of practice with negotiating his way out of situations like this. Just as Marcus is unfazed by attracting the attention of strange females, he is equally accustomed to being subjected to impromptu interrogations by police officers, security guards, and other keepers of the peace.

  “No problem,” Marcus says, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet. He flips it open to his driver’s license photo. The policemen examine the man in the photo (thinner, somehow older at twenty-two than he is at twenty-six, with an unfortunate Al-Qaedan beard) and compare it to the man standing in front of them.

  “And your flight information?” the first cop asks.