by Randy Ross
“Sorry, mate. I’ll get fired. You wouldn’t want to see me without a job, would you?”
“But I’m supposed to meet these two birds. I could introduce you to one of them.”
“I’m not sure my wife would like that.”
The universe has spoken.
Back at the hotel, I check e-mail for my return-flight confirmation, which is in two days. There’s a note from Ricki.
Hey Burns,
Just letting you know that I survived the surgery. Looks like you’ve survived your trip. Cambodia? Really? Didn’t think you had it in you. Actually want to hear all about it. Call me when you’re back in town this week. I’ll be waiting.
—RRRRRR
The Chronic Single’s Handbook
Chapter Six
What to Expect from Friends in Middle Age
Under Forty-Five Years Old:
•Purpose of friends: Wingmen, counsel, placeholders for a girlfriend.
•Contact frequency: Daily.
•Amount of time you can tolerate them: Unlimited.
•Would you loan them money? “If I had any.”
•Would you help them move? “No brainer.”
•Shared interests: pussy, bench presses, tits, squats, chicken wings, funny beer commercials, getting hard at the wrong time, midgets, PMS, Rogaine, Chuck Palahniuk, sleeping late.
Over Forty-Five Years Old:
•Purpose of friends: Counsel, wingmen, business connections.
•Contact frequency: Monthly.
•Amount of time you can tolerate them: Three hours.
•Would you loan them money? “Depends on their credit score.”
•Would you help this person move? “With my back, are you kidding me?”
•Shared interests: Menopause, rotator cuffs, kvetching, Achilles tendons, low-carb diets, whining, interest rates, getting soft at the wrong time, reading glasses, griping, ponderous biographies, sleeping pills.
CHAPTER NINE: BOSTON REDUX
As the fool returns to his vomit, so the dog returns to his folly.
—R. BURNS
Thirty hours after leaving Australia, I land in Boston, USA. Home. My pillow-top mattress. Ricki.
Ever since that last night in Keezerbeezer, I’ve been thinking about her nonstop. Grooved abs, wingy shoulder blades, intense, a little insane, maybe a lot insane, speaks English without an accent. It took twelve grand to figure out that my perfect woman, my outlier, was in Boston the whole time. No need to settle or die alone.
It’s Friday at midnight and Logan looks like any of the fifteen airports I’ve seen in the last four months with a few exceptions: the falling snow, the Timberland boots, the winter coats the size of iron lungs. The terminal building seems smaller than I remember.
I shuffle into the arrival area, scan the sniffling masses, and imagine Ricki here, holding a cardboard sign with my name. Instead, a middle-aged guy on the periphery is waving at me. There’s something familiar about him. The gray goatee, the groomed eyebrows, and the mink earmuffs. Uncle Heshie.
I wave back cautiously. The last time I saw Uncle Heshie was three years ago at a family function. I brought Ricki. He brought a woman named Natalie. Ricki wore a blue jean jacket, a peasant dress, and ears shot full of studs, loops, and feathers—the Cambridge-poet look. Natalie wore a red leather jacket, a miniskirt, and hooped earrings the size of a diaphragm—the Upper West Side bimbo look. They took an instant dislike to each other, and Heshie and I spent the party keeping our dates in separate corners.
“Hey, Buster Brown!” Uncle Heshie is shouting from five feet away. People turn to look. He clamps his arm around me and shakes my shoulder several times as if checking my range of motion. I can smell his leathery aftershave.
“You look great,” he says. “Like you’re finally filling out. How was the flight?”
“Painless. Watched some movies, drank some beer.” Before I can ask what he means by “filling out,” he reaches for my bag and I notice the bling on his wrist: the world’s biggest watch. I think of Manrico, the middle-aged guys in Cambodia, and that putz with the two women in Australia. For the first time in my life, I feel embarrassed by my little, black Timex.
“I followed your blog,” he says. “Looks like you had a crazy time.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Loved your pad.” Heshie combs his goatee with manicured nails. “I can’t believe how close you are to decent skiing. I was just at Killington with a friend. The trees were out of control.”
My mind catches on the phrases “a friend” and “out of control.” I try not to imagine what might have gone on in my apartment: Shower curtains covered in vegetable oil, gerbils covered in vegetable oil, and my recently painted ceiling covered in vegetable oil.
In the airport garage, Heshie opens the hatch to his black Land Rover. “This backpack smells like rat piss. How did you get it through customs?”
Thirty hours of in-flight movies weighs on me. I can’t come up with a response.
Twenty minutes later we pull up in front of my building. Uncle Heshie drags my bag out of the back and hands it over. “Randall, my boy, for your own good, I made a few upgrades to your digs. As your uncle, it’s my duty to see that you get laid as much as possible, which means you got to get out of Boston. The women in this town are beat; they dress like they just came from an audition for The Beverly Hillbillies. Come visit me in New York. I’ll hook you up.”
I don’t bother explaining that he doesn’t need to worry about me, that I’m done with the singles’ scene, and that I already have a woman. Or at least, I will soon. He steps closer and lays a fat, wet one on my cheek. “Good to have you back. I won’t come up. Gotta run. Here’s the key.”
It’s not until the next morning, as I sink into my six-inch pillow-top, that I begin to take inventory. Stacked on the nightstand, my Physicians’ Desk Reference and Field Guide to Intestinal Fauna sit where I left them last fall. The wall opposite my bed is oddly blank: The Crane Beach painting is gone.
In the bathroom, there are a few additions:
• A textured Marimekko shower drape instead of my mildewed, Three Stooges shower curtain.
• A fuzzy, turquoise toilet-seat cover and matching bathmat.
• A roll of plush toilet paper, the expensive stuff I never buy.
This will get me laid?
In my double-wide medicine cabinet, there’s a bottle of almond-scented massage oil and, next to my Vicodin, an unfamiliar vial with a bow and a note: “Kiddo: Vicodin is for pussies. Real men take Percocet.” The label indicates that the prescription is refillable and came from a Heshie Moscowitz, MD. These might get me laid.
In the kitchen, more additions: My E. J. Korvette toaster oven has been replaced by a Viking convection microwave. On the refrigerator, my cork bulletin board has unfamiliar business cards for: home liquor delivery, Chinese takeout, a mobile dry cleaner, a Brazilian food truck, and Monique’s Fitness—“We put the purr in personal training.”
In the pantry: a wine rack with unopened bottles of pinot grigio, Green Chartreuse, and black sambuca. My collection of rubber bands, old grocery bags, and empty Poland Spring bottles, which I refill with tap water, is gone. The Crane Beach seascape is stuffed in my recycle bin. Ricki will approve.
In the refrigerator, a jar of pickled herring sports another bow and a note: “Welcome back to civilization. Use care when opening the freezer. Enjoy with a special lady.” I slowly open it and frost drifts to the floor. Wedged between two frozen porterhouse steaks I didn’t buy is a bottle of Grey Goose vodka the size of an Alaskan salmon. Ricki will definitely approve.
On my fortieth birthday, my mother pulled me aside: “If you don’t stop being so picky, you’ll end up like your Uncle Heshie,” she said.
“You mean European vacations, European clothes, and European girlfriends half my age?”
“Randall, he has no family, no responsibilities, no one to take care of.”
I look aroun
d my apartment now: thoughtful gifts, party supplies, and plush towels. This doesn’t look like a place recently inhabited by an unhappy guy.
But I don’t plan to end up like Heshie. Time to set up a date with Ricki. How about tonight? Or better yet, now, for brunch?
I call her home phone. Voice mail. I don’t leave a message. Call her cell. More voice mail. I don’t leave a message. Can’t leave a message. What if she doesn’t get it? What if she hasn’t paid her phone bill? What if she had to pawn her phone? Fucking Verizon, fucking AT&T, fucking Apple. I call both her numbers again. Nothing.
She reads my blog and knows I got home last night. Where is she?
I’ll go to her place, leave flowers, chocolates, or tequila, her favorite.
Maybe not. Flowers are kind of effeminate and expensive and presumptuous. She never ate chocolate. “Not good for the girlish figure,” she always said. Tequila implies shots, too frat-like.
Maybe she’s working. But on a Saturday? Knowing Ricki, she’s sneaking in some freelance work and using the company’s color printer. Always working the angles. That’s my girl.
Or maybe she’s at the gym. That’s it. Her phone must be in her locker.
Or maybe she’s in the hospital, complications from the recent surgery she wouldn’t discuss over e-mail. What if she has a huge infected, disfiguring scar?
My computer dings; an e-mail from her.
Saw that you called. Getting my hair done. You free Thursday night? I owe you an apology.
—RRRRRR
Of course. She wants to look her best for me. Oxytocin flushes through my system.
We’ll have drinks Thursday night. Then I’ll invite her over for a Saturday night of Grey Goose and porterhouse steak. Maybe every Saturday after that will be our martini and steak night. And Sundays will be brunch and Patriots at the Minuteman. No, not the Minuteman. She hates the Minuteman. And Abe. And Lenny. That’s OK. Ricki and I will find another club, our own club.
I pick up my phone, then put it down. I need to calm down, can’t appear desperate. I haven’t seen her in two years. I take several deep, slow breaths, and decide to wait an hour before e-mailing her back.
I e-mail Abe who shoots back, “You home already?” He agrees to arrange dinner and Monday-night football with the gang at the Minuteman.
Things are looking up until I take a close look at my face in the bathroom mirror. Heshie is right, I am filling out. I get on the scale: 164 pounds, nine pounds more than I weighed before the trip. Ricki likes skinny guys. I put myself to bed with no dinner.
I awake at three A.M., stomach and thoughts churning. I’m hungry. I’m fat. A month ago, I had sex with two Cambodian hookers. What if Ricki finds out?
I fetch a pad of paper left over from the Royal Paradise hotel and address the weight issue:
Goal: Lose three pounds a week for three weeks.
Key to success:
• Remember: Eating is not entertainment.
Action Items:
• Breakfast: ½ cup of bran cereal, splash of soy milk.
• Lunch: raw garlic, raw onions, kale, canned sardines; sprinkle with parmesan, douse with Tabasco sauce, finish with more raw garlic. Ricki loves garlic.
• Snack: repeat breakfast.
• Dinner: repeat lunch.
• Go to bed hungry and nauseous.
Back in bed, I imagine sipping whisky-whisky with Ricki on the back of a Greek ferry, where she brushes against me and brushes against me again. I picture her emerging from my bathroom wearing only a white cotton towel.
What about the hookers?
Maybe it would turn her on. Or maybe it wouldn’t. Eventually I find myself in my bathroom, in front of the double-wide.
Monday, twenty-four hours into the diet, I pull into the Minuteman parking lot feeling jet-lagged, queasy, and foggy from Percocet. Thursday can’t come soon enough.
The bar looks dingier than I remember. And so does the crowd: down vests over chamois shirts, ski hats with pompoms, running shoes with little toes, ears with buds, a floor covered with grimy backpacks.
For the first time in four months, I’m dressed like an adult: brown wide-wale corduroys, black wool pullover, cordovan shoes. No matter what I wear or what country I’m in, I’m out of sync. I’m not sure I care anymore.
The TVs are tuned to Monday Night Football and the still-undefeated Patriots are playing the hapless Jets. Some things are not meant to change. The club has the same oak bar, high stools, and pendant lights, but it seems smaller than I remember. This could be any yuppie pub in South Africa, Asia, or Australia.
Abe and Lenny are seated at the bar, watching the game. Abe is the first to notice me. “Look, it’s the Jewish Marco Polo, the world’s most interesting Heeb.” He’s wearing a fleece pullover in a soft hue of purple that only a wife would buy. He looks jowlier than ever.
Lenny glances down from the TV and points my way. “My hero, the world traveler. Just don’t sit next to me. I don’t want to catch anything.” He’s overdressed for a change: houndstooth sport coat, cuffed pants, and tasseled loafers without socks, even though it’s thirty degrees outside. His eyes flit from me to an anorexic waitress.
I give Abe and Lenny a European kiss on each cheek.
“Where’s Rachel? What’s the score?” I ask.
“In the can. Zip-zip.” Abe looks me up and down. “You look like you’re still in one piece.” He sounds disappointed. “Cop a squat and tell us about your adventures.” He turns back to the overhead TV as Brady completes a ten-yard pass.
I take an open stool that’s been reserved for me with Rachel’s suit jacket. I motion for the bartender, and then look up at the TV. “Well, the high point of the trip was probably the bungee jumping in South Africa, pun intended.” I expect a groan from Abe. No response.
“Welcome home!” Rachel says, as she sits down next to me. “We were all betting you’d come home with a wife. Where is she?” Rachel pats me on the back.
I grin but don’t mention Ricki.
“You know how life can be,” I say. “Sometimes the dog and his vomit go their separate ways. And then, sometimes they don’t.”
The bartender comes over, pad in hand. Abe, Lenny, and Rachel each order steak and fries, and a Guinness. I order a soda water with a chicken Caesar salad, dressing on the side.
“Burns, are you dieting again?” Abe looks down from the TV and pokes my stomach.
“Need to keep my boyish figure,” I say.
“If you didn’t bring anyone home, did you at least break a few hearts?” Lenny asks.
“Do you know the story about the fool and his folly? Anyway, I saw the temples of Angkor Wat. You know the ones that were covered by jungle for . . .”
I am drowned out by cheers as Brady completes a touchdown pass on the first drive. “It’s going to be a short game,” Abe shouts.
“So in Australia I was surfing this 200-foot wave when I was attacked by a hammer-headed platypus, and had to get a liver transplant.”
“Poor bubbe,” Abe says, glancing at his cell phone.
I offer a smile that could mean many things: “OK, so what’s going on with you guys?”
They respond remaining glued to the TV.
Abe: “I’m going to be a life-support system for a baby and wife, and I’ll probably never get laid again.”
Lenny: “The whole dating scene is drying up and the prostitution ring was a bust, no pun intended. I’m going back on Match, going to start lying about my age. My mother’s in the hospital for a change. I’m going to die alone.”
Rachel: “Arturo and I . . .”
I immediately stop listening and look up at the TV.
“What are you going to do now that you’re back?” Rachel asks.
“Not sure,” I say. “I once read that life’s journey is not about finding any one thing; it’s about finding your place on a beach with kind eyes.”
“Interesting philosophy,” Rachel says.
“Did you get that fro
m a bathroom wall in Angkor Wat?” asks Abe.
“It was inscribed on the toenail of the giant Reclining Buddha,” I say, watching Lenny as he watches the anorexic waitress bend to pick up a fork.
“Anyone hear from Josh?” I ask.
“He’s still with Ruby Rubenesque,” Lenny says.
Abe cuts in. “You and Burns aren’t happy unless a woman is wasting away on an IV drip.”
Just like old times, I think, feeling a warm trickle of oxytocin.
“Karen wasn’t that thin,” I say.
“And neither was Calista Flockhart,” Abe says.
Rachel asks: “By the way, did Ricki end up writing you?”
“As a matter of fact she wrote all the time.” I pause for effect. “Unlike you schmucks.”
Abe is the first to comment: “Didn’t I write a couple of times? I read your blog almost every day. You’re the writer, I’m not.”
“I heard it offered lots of useful travel information,” Rachel says.
“My home computer only gets TeenTwat.com,” Lenny says.
Before I can analyze their responses for traces of malice or remorse, Lenny says: “You go all the way around the world, don’t meet anyone, but your long-lost girlfriend comes back to haunt you?”
Abe says, “‘Lost’ is the operative word. I’d also add ‘broken.’”
Rachel says, “I think it’s kind of romantic. The hero’s journey.”
I decide not to mention that I am seeing Ricki in three days.
After the Patriots crush the Jets, Lenny stands up, dons his camel-hair topcoat, and turns to me. “Calista Flockhart is a porker,” he says.
“A fat whale,” I say.
He pats my shoulder. “Good to have you back, my brother.”
Rachel kisses me on the cheek. “Welcome home, Randy. We missed you. Sorry I got to leave early. Have to get back to Arturo.”
Once we’re alone, Abe and I order dirty martinis.
“Cone of silence?” I ask.
“Cone activated. What’s up?”
“I’m bullshit. Really, how come you didn’t write? This was a huge event for me; this would be like me ignoring your wedding or your funeral.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry and I got no excuses. But you wouldn’t believe the fucked-up thing that happened while you were gone.”