“All righty.” I say nothing else for fear of making a hilarious yet career-limiting comment. I take another step and stumble back into a potted palm.
“Lissy Ryder, how are you?” She grasps my left elbow between her large, meaty palms and assists me out of the plant.
I think, Ready to pass out from lack of blood flow to my waist, Man Hands, but I say, “No problem, just a little dirt.” I brush a bit of soil off my skirt.
“Lissy Ryder, really, how are you?”
I arrange my mouth into what I hope looks like a grin but really is more a matter of baring my teeth and pulling back my lips. “Did we not cover that with the ‘fine’ business? I kind of feel like we covered that.”
Debbie—rather, Deva—moves in even closer, and I can smell the onion from the dolma. “Lissy Ryder, your words say fine, but your aura disagrees. Are you in a dark place? I’m seeing an ominous cloud all around you. And your chakras! Oh! Do not start me on your chakras! Your soul is crying out for clarity and purpose and inner peace.”
I bite my tongue in order not to retort, And your soul’s crying out for Listerine. I consider this Lissy 2.0’s first official victory.
But can I just note that this?
Right here?
Is exactly why I didn’t consort with losers in high school.
* * *
After Deva-Does-Dolmas floats off into the ether, I run into Dr. Amy Childs, plastic surgeon to the stars and hoped-for client. “Amy!” I greet her effusively. “How are you?”
Instead of returning my kind salutation, she cocks her head and looks at me like I spoke Klingon or something, like, interested, but not quite understanding. She’s stonily silent, which I interpret as excitement at finally having the attention of the head of the Belles. That’s right, Dr. Amy Childs. Dreams do come true!
“Amy? It’s me! Lissy Ryder!” I attempt to hug her and she kind of just stands there. “Long time no see, huh? Listen, I read about all your success—congratulations! I have to know how you’re managing your busy, busy life. And I have to wonder if, with all that you do, you’re really making the time to build your brand. Now, this is just a suggestion, but what I’d like to see is someone—maybe me—pitching you for a recurring spot on WGN’s morning show as a health and beauty expert, with an eye toward eventually parlaying that into a gig on Today or GMA. But not CBS This Morning, because, really, who watches that?”
Amy just stands there in what must be rapt attention, so I continue. Not surprised, of course. I really am at my best in front of an audience.
“With an eye toward the future, the way I see you maximizing your brand and, of course, your revenue, is to come out with a line of cosmeceuticals. I mean, quality stuff with antioxidants and hyaluronic acids and placentas and shit. I think manufacturers can produce eye creams without blinding bunnies and monkeys now, if that’s a concern, but that’s a few steps down the road. And then you could get a celebrity endorsement from someone like—and I’m just spitballing here—Oprah, and I’m telling you, your product would be behind the counter in fine department stores around the globe! Isn’t that exciting?”
Clearly Amy is so excited she’s speechless, so I press on.
“We could call the line Childslike, because that harkens to baby-soft skin, right? If this sounds good to you—and I suspect it does—why don’t we sit down this week and figure out how the right publicity campaign can put you on the road to fulfilling your wildest dreams. Sound good?”
Finally, Amy speaks.
“That is unbelievable.”
I reply, “I know, right? So exciting! So many possibilities!”
Amy’s face is very serious. “No. Not exciting. Unbelievable. That you have the nerve to stand here and speak to me like we’re peers, like we’re friends, after what you and your asshole minions did to me. You know, they all apologized eventually, but you? You just blithely went about your senior year, cheering at games and running student council and driving around in your fucking hot-pink convertible like you didn’t have a fucking care in the fucking world, like your casual cruelty didn’t almost destroy me. So, no, Lissy fucking Ryder, I don’t think your little plan ‘sounds good’; nor will I be ‘sitting down’ with you. Ever. Now, if you want to do me a favor, if you really care about me and how I’m ‘managing everything,’ you can get out of my way and never dare to speak to me again.”
I let her words sink in while I struggle for the appropriate response.
Lissy 2.0 must have left the building, because I suddenly hear myself shouting, “Maybe we should talk when you’re not having your period. Hey . . . hey! If you were a proper plastic surgeon, you’d have better aim!”
I stomp to the ladies’ room to blot off the club soda she threw at me. Well, no wonder I didn’t like her back then. I hope Oprah realizes exactly how volatile her stupid neighbor is.
I dry off fairly quickly—I suspect the Spanx possess water-wicking properties—and I smooth escaped bits of hair back into my chignon. Then I apply a fresh coat of MAC Lipglass in Desire to remind myself of my purpose here tonight. As I’m tossing the tube back into my (actually, Mamma’s) sparkly lemon-slice Judith Leiber bag, I recognize another face in the mirror.
“Brooks? Brooks Paddy?” I ask. Yes! Brooks is here! In her RSVP she said she might be needed on set for rewrites, since her show’s back from hiatus, but she made it. Excellent. Maybe I’ll just exchange some pleasantries and warm her up before I begin to talk about business.
“Don’t you mean ‘Books Fatty’?”
Uh-oh.
“If you’re talking to me, you must mean ‘Books Fatty,’ because that’s certainly what you called me twenty years ago.” Brooks narrows her eyes and languidly leans back onto the sink. She’s all slender angles and catlike grace now. Which I don’t love.
The public relations business is all about damage control. Clearly this person thinks I did her wrong in high school, so I’m going to learn from Dr. Premenstrual and spin this to my advantage. I place my hand on her (bony) shoulder so I come across extra sincere. “Did I? I’m so sorry. You know how girls can be. We were, like, bears or something, stalking an injured elk. You can’t blame us; it was just our nature, and elk are delicious and stuff. But come on! That was so long ago and no one remembers! Surely you’ve gotten over it. I mean, look at you! You’re all tall and thin and perfectly highlighted! You have a show on television! And is that an Herve Leger bandage dress I spy? Amazeballs!”
Brooks pulls a fresh pack of cigarettes and a fancy gold lighter out of her clutch. “Oh, sure, of course. I’m so over it, because clearly no one bears the scars from high school.”
I sigh in relief. “Whew! I’m glad you’re being cool about it. You know Amy? Dr. Amy Childs? Is she on the rag or what? She couldn’t get past some nonsense from twenty years ago and she threw a drink on me!”
“That’s practically criminal,” she coolly observes.
“I know, right?” Brooks seems plenty softened up, so I begin to pitch her. I tell her all the proactive things LissCom can do in terms of her social media presence, and she nods appreciatively the whole time I’m talking. Brooks is actually so amenable that I feel really confident that I’ve gotten through to her and I go in for a soft close.
“I would love to do business with you,” she tells me, turning my business card over in her hand. “There’s just one thing I need.”
She bought it! Woo-hoo! Town house, here I come! But I try to maintain a poker face and reply, “Of course! Just name it.” I’m already mentally moving my desk out of the garage and into some hip space down in the South Loop or River North. The next time I need a file, I’m not going to have to navigate around a pile of old cross-country skis and golf clubs to reach the drawer!
Brooks takes a long, thoughtful drag on her Virginia Slim. “I need for you to go back in time and change the past. I need you to have not relentlessly bullied me. Like the time on the class trip when you stole my suitcase and showed the guys the size of my under
wear? And you flew them out the window because you said they were as big as a flag and you made everyone salute? That needs to have never happened. I need to have not been tormented. I need to have not gone home every day and cried into a half gallon of strawberry Breyers. I need to have not been so ostracized that I didn’t spend every waking minute in the library, because I knew that was the one place you wouldn’t go. Can you do that for me? Can you change history? If so, we have a deal.”
I sputter, “Are you deaf? I just apologized!”
Brooks takes my card and uses her shiny lighter to set it on fire. When it’s halfway burned, she drops it in the sink, where it curls and disappears into a pile of smoking ash. “Twenty years too late, bitch. You’re twenty years too late.”
When I exit the bathroom, I run smack into Duke and his date, who’s a dead ringer for a younger version of Sofia Vergara. I feel like I’ve been kicked in the heart with a really pointy boot.
I need a drink.
Correction: I need many, many, many drinks.
CHAPTER FOUR
McFly Girl
I try to open my eyes but it’s virtually impossible.
Whether that’s because of the hangover or due to false lashes cementing my eyes shut is yet to be determined.
I sit up and manage to peel them open, and only then do I catch a glimpse of my surroundings. I expected to rise under the glossy visage of David Coverdale, but instead I’m somewhere entirely different.
Where the hell am I?
I peer around the space and determine I’m in someone’s apartment.
No, no, that’s not it.
The word “apartment” doesn’t adequately describe the four thousand square feet of vast windows and twenty-foot-high timbered ceilings. I’m in some kind of loft and it’s filled with odd artifacts and old books. There are multicolored tapestries and dream catchers and crystals hanging all over the place, and the whole area’s infused with the kind of earthy spices I always smell in the backseat of taxis. I spot beaded curtains and tribal art and hand-hewn furniture. Maybe I’ve landed in Jerry Garcia’s afterlife?
When I glance down, I see that I’ve been passed out on a nest of body pillows and animal skins, and I’m wearing a strange kind of . . . bathrobe? Poncho? Serape? One of those scratchy, stripy blankets every frat guy buys in Cancun and keeps in his apartment until his girlfriend finally sneaks it into the trash? I can’t really say. I’ll simply add this Technicolor Dreamcoat to the list of questions I’m not entirely sure I want answered. I try to stand, but gravity gets the best of me and I buckle and drop.
“Oh, good, you’re awake. Namaste!” Debbie pops out from a kitchen area that’s a solid half mile away from where I’m sitting and heads toward me. “Here, break your fast with this.” She hands me a pint glass filled with a neon green concoction interspersed with black dots.
I’m desperately thirsty, so I take a healthy sip and immediately gag. “Blergh! Why does this taste like lawn clippings?”
Debbie nods like I’ve paid her a huge compliment. “Probably because the wheatgrass was just picked.”
I blink hard a couple of times. “You just gave me a glass of grass?”
“Juiced grass. I grow it myself on my roof garden. Don’t worry; it’s all organic and pesticide-free. I keep a supply of lady beetles called mealy bug destroyers, and they allow me to maintain a poison-free environment.”
“Congratulations.” I roll my tongue around in my mouth and note an even worse aftertaste that’s all fishy and primal. “What is that other horrible, horrible flavor?”
“That’s the spirulina I added for protein. Spirulina was one of the ancient Aztecs’ dietary staples. They called it tecuitlatl, and they believed in its healing properties.”
“Tastes like pond scum.”
“Spirulina is a type of algae harvested from the surface of lakes.”
“So it is pond scum.”
Debbie bobs her head and looks all beatific and pleased with her bang-up entertaining skills. Somewhere a shudder just ran down Martha Stewart’s back at the notion of serving a guest a glass of moldy grass.
Debbie launches into a series of bizarre stretches before finally folding herself into a sitting position in front of me. I didn’t know people could bend that way. As I process the whole scene—the art, the outfits, the joint-defying movements—I realize I’ve fallen into some kind of new age Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole. The only way out is figuring out how I got here in the first place, so I ask the most obvious question.
“What kind of drugs are you taking and can I have some?”
Debbie laughs and says, “Lissy Ryder, you’re still such a card.” When she takes a gulp of her drink, I notice it leaves a chlorophyll mustache.
I point at my mouth. “You look like you just blew the Incredible Hulk.”
Debbie responds with more beaming and less wiping. “Lissy Ryder, I sense that you have questions, so please untrouble your heart.”
“You got that right.” I gesture at myself. “For starters, what am I wearing?”
Debbie does a shoulder roll before answering, and I can hear every vertebra in her back pop. “You’re dressed in a Central Asian Ikat robe. Interesting fact about the Ikat process—the act of dyeing each strip of fabric was an ancient art, and craftsmen kept their techniques secret, which accounts for all the color variations. In the oasis towns of Central Asia, prominent men would wear these items as a showy display of their wealth. That sort of thing seemed right in your wheelhouse.”
I have no frigging idea how to respond to this.
“Also, my pajamas were too small on you.”
“Aces.” I’m superdehydrated, so I take another tiny sip of the wheatgrass, hoping that the flavor has improved. Nope, still tastes like Jolly Green Giant ass. “Number two, where are my clothes? And three, why did I take them off in the first place?”
Debbie circles her head, nods, and rests her chin on her tented fingers. “Your dress is in the bathroom. When we got here, you cried that your underwear was ‘murdering’ you, and you stripped down.”
Ah, yes. Spanx are a harsh mistress. “Where’s here?” I gesture at the space around me and knock over a wooden figurine. I pick it up by the handle to right it and, upon closer inspection, I see that it’s twelve inches of wooden man and six inches of wooden man’s woody. Argh. As I focus on other objects, I note a decidedly naked bent to many of the artifacts. I feel like I’m touring Larry Flynt’s Museum of Mayan Porn.
Again, this is why we weren’t friends in high school.
Debbie places her great ham hands together and does an odd little bow. “You’re in my home, Lissy Ryder. Welcome. I live above my store. I bought this building so I’d never be far from my work.” So . . . the Ethereal Girl owns thousands of square feet of prime Mag Mile–adjacent real estate, yet the Material Girl can pretty much lay claim to one David Coverdale poster? How is this possible?
I shake my head to clear the cobwebs and instantly regret the sudden movement. I brace myself on the pillows in an attempt to keep down the vertigo. “We’re on Oak Street, then?” I ask, trying to MapQuest the location in my head.
“Uh-huh. We walked over from the reunion—I’m only two blocks away from the Drake. That’s the preferred hotel for many of my international clientele.” I vaguely recall fresh air last night, but everything’s still so fuzzy. “Now tell me, Lissy Ryder, did you enjoy the sleeping pit?”
“I always sleep my best when curled up with a yak’s pelt.” Debbie beams. Apparently they don’t have sarcasm on her planet. “Wait, where’s Nicole? She was supposed to drive me home.”
Debbie taps a long finger to her chin and focuses on the ceiling. “She said . . . what were her exact words? Oh, yes, she said, ‘That hateful bitch is going to puke in my Odyssey and I’m not having my kids smell her vomit for the next month.’ She dumped you on me.”
Strike three, Nicole.
I rest my face in my hands and try to remember. Suddenly the night’s ev
ents come rushing back to me and I’m all nostalgic for two minutes ago, when I didn’t know what ancient Aztecs ate for breakfast.
Oh, God, last night.
When I used to imagine what hell might be like, I pictured flames and pitchforks and a lot of screaming. I envisioned hell as the scene from the Adam Sandler movie where Hitler faced an eternity of having pineapples shoved up his ass.
Of course, I know better now.
Hell is an open bar and boxed wine.
Hell is three complicated pairs of Spanx and a tiny bladder.
Hell is a deejay with a penchant for Sir Mix-A-Lot.
Hell is being accosted by women I’m not sure I ever met telling me exactly why they despise me.
Hell is being ignored by the very people who used to worship me.
Hell is making choices two decades ago that will completely impact my ability to do business today.
Hell is four hours of watching the guy who pledged to forever honor and cherish me dirty dancing to “Rump Shaker” with someone thinner and hotter.
My head throbs as I replay my conversation with Duke.
Debbie seems to pick up on my thoughts. “I take it from last night’s display that you’re no longer with Martin.”
That? Is an understatement.
After I choked down the bile from seeing Duke with someone else, someone painfully fit and attractive, someone who hung on his every word, damn it, I decided I’d be the bigger person and break the ice. He seemed to not want the ice broken, and that made him ten times more attractive than when I had him and didn’t want him.
Seriously, no girl digs the guy who actually wants her back. Where’s the challenge? Where’s the anticipation? Where’s the thrill of the hunt?
When I tried to cozy up to him at the reunion, I moved in real close and was all, “Duke, why is everyone being so meeeeeeeeeeean to me?” and he completely lost his shit.
“First, my name isn’t Duke. It’s Martin, okay? M-A-R-T-I-N. The only person who’s called me Duke since leaving high school is you. The name Duke isn’t cute; it’s not endearing; it’s not a pet name.” His eyes were all hard and he spoke to me in a tone I never heard before.
Here I Go Again: A Novel Page 4