Stupid and Contagious

by Caprice Crane

“They are not,” she says, indignant. “I’m not letting Monica Lewinsky spoil it for me. Plus, you said you liked her. Didn’t you wait on her once?”

  “She didn’t spoil anything. There was never anything remotely okay about wearing one. They’re awful. And yes, I liked her a lot. Very nice girl. And were she my friend back in the day, I wouldn’t have let her wear one either.”

  She slurps her coffee, then stops mid-slurp. “What about Prince?”

  “What about him?”

  “‘Raspberry Beret’? You may recall a certain mega-hit about a certain fruit-colored chapeau?”

  “You may recall the lyric? ‘A raspberry beret? The kind you find in a secondhand store’? That’s because they’ve been out of style so long that you can’t find them in a normal store. And because they are hideous.”

  “So I’m supposed to believe that the entire country of France is wrong?” she says.

  “Oh, don’t get me started on the French.”

  “You’re just jealous I can pull it off,” she says, turning her face away.

  “Sweetie, if anyone could pull it off, I promise it’s you. But a beret is not okay. And that even rhymes so you can remember it easier.”

  “I like it, and I’m wearing it.”

  “Okay then. All you,” I say. She pouts for a minute and then takes the stupid thing off.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re not welcome.”

  “It’s only because I love you. I wouldn’t let you walk around with poppy seeds in your teeth. I wouldn’t let you walk around in jeans that made you look fat. And I will not let you walk around in a beret. That is my credo. And so it is written.”

  “And so it shall be done. And so you shall be buying our second round this morning due to all this unnecessary stress I’ve suffered.”

  “Fine,” I say and go to the counter to order.

  When I sit back down with our coffees, Sweet’n Low, and stirrers, I start in on my jerk neighbor and tell her what happened. What the hell kind of name is Brady, anyway? Sydney, of course, asks if he’s hot. And no, he is not hot. She asks if he’s passable. Again I tell her no. She’s asking because if he is, then one of us needs to date him. Even if he was, it certainly wouldn’t be me, and I wouldn’t let him have her either. We deserve perfect princes. And him? The wish-wrecking neighbor from hell? He should end up with a troll.

  “Oh! I didn’t tell you the latest,” she says. “I got set up on a blind date with this guy named Ed, and he kept making this face on our whole first date.”

  “What kind of face?”

  “He kept doing this,” she says, making this fish face. She’s sticking her lips out like she’s either puckering up or making fish lips. “After the first date I thought no way, but then I decided not to be shallow and that I’d give him another chance.”

  “And?”

  “So I did. We went on three dates, and he was a perfect gentleman. He even picked me up at my apartment before our date!”

  “Syd?” I say. “That’s what guys are supposed to do.”

  “Well, they never do it for me. And he didn’t even try to kiss me on the first date. And then he was also a perfect gentleman on our second date. He wouldn’t come upstairs. And I offered.”

  “I have no doubt.”

  “So on our third date—” she begins.

  “Wait—was he still making the fish face all the time?”

  “Yes! And it got worse,” she says. “He’d be telling me a story and then make these dramatic pauses, and the face would hold for the entire pause. It was awful! But I looked past it, and on our third date we finally had sex. Three times.”

  “To make up for the first two dates.”

  “Something like that,” she says. “But get this . . . here I am, sucking it up, not being shallow . . . giving old fish-face a chance—and he blew me off! Never called me again! What’s up with that?”

  “That’s weird,” I say.

  “I know! And you wanna know what’s really weird? I don’t think he came when we had sex. All three times.”

  “Well . . . usually you know. I mean, you know.”

  “I’m telling you!” she practically shouts. “He acted like he came. Full on! But after . . . when I went to throw something away, I looked at the condoms in my trash can . . . and there was nothing in them.”

  “Okay—why are you digging condoms up out of your trash?”

  “I wasn’t,” she says defensively. “They were just there, and I noticed they looked empty.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “He pretended like he came. All three times. Why would a guy pretend to come? Do guys fake orgasms, too? Can you imagine if we were both faking?”

  “Were you?” I ask.

  “No, I came. But the real point here is that he never called me again! I threw him a bone and he blew me off. Maybe he was gay,” she says, sipping her coffee.

  Brady

  I have two main friends I’ve had for as long as I can remember. One is Phil, with whom I share an office, a company, and far too many hours. The other is Zach, whom I spend considerably less time with but have many more quality conversations with. However, this is not necessarily one of those times. Zach is a substitute teacher/karaoke host. Put the man in front of a mic and he’ll bring a smile to your face, a tap to your foot, and your girlfriend to his bedroom.

  Zach is too smart for his own—or anyone else’s—good. Then again, Zach thinks I’m too smart for my own—or anyone else’s—good. Like me, he puts himself into every movie character he likes. Except, where I’d be the flawed but lovable fuck-up who triumphs, though barely, at the last hour—the Hugh Grants and John Cusacks of the world—Zach would be the good-looking hipster loose-cannon type. The Jack Nicholsons and Rock Hudsons. Well, the young Jacks. And the straight Rocks.

  Zach spends most of his free time trying to plan the perfect crime, which he has every intention of pulling off one day.

  I’m sitting with him at this Mexican restaurant called Lucy’s. It’s equidistant from our offices, and we meet here for lunch at least once a week. It’s murder on my digestive system but better than fighting over who traveled farther last time. Zach’s drinking a Mojito and keeps referring to it with a bad thick Spanish accent, making it sound an awful lot like Cornholio.

  “What’s not to love? Sugar, mint, lime juice, rum, ice, soda . . . it’s like a glass of happiness,” he says, adding “Mojito” once again in the Spanish tongue.

  “Can you not turn into Phil, please? This is my lunch break. My reprieve.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m going for the patent.”

  “Cinnamilk, or the Catch-It Cone?” he asks.

  “Cinnamilk,” I say. The Catch-It Cone is another of my little brilliances, but I can tackle only one invention at a time. More on the Catch-It Cone later.

  “Good stuff. I’m sure it’ll be a smash. Though you can always cross over to the dark side. Be the Sundance to my Butch.”

  “Why does that sound dirty?”

  “It might if we were lesbians,” he says. “I could see the correlation there. However, today we are not. Therefore, it is not dirty.”

  “I stand corrected,” I say. Zach and I think alike. We take turns being the straight man. (There has to be a better way to say that.) It’s only fair. That was a layup. “How’s the quest for the perfect crime today?”

  “Not so loud,” he says. “It’s not a quest. I’m not searching for the Holy Grail. Well . . . I guess metaphorically I am, but it’s not like that. I’m not out there searching in the hope of one day finding the perfect crime tucked away in the attic of some old lady who forgot she hid it there when the Alzheimer’s kicked in.” He takes a sip of his Mojito. “This is years of thought. Planning. Precision. And I’m almost there, my friend. Almost there.”

  “That would have had the desired effect,” I say, “had you not stopped to delicately take a sip of your fruity little drink.”

  “Fuck you,” he sa
ys. Then he leans close. “Okay, try this one: You kill a farmer’s wife. Then just before harvest time . . . set her out in a wheat field on one of those huge corporate farms, covered in straw . . . and have one of those enormous combines take care of her. Chopped up in a million pieces, and served up on tables across this great land of ours. Not a chance of IDing the body.”

  I look at him quizzically, then down at the bread basket. “That’s just a means—very unsettling, I might add—to dispose of a body,” I say. “Why would you kill the farmer’s wife? What’s the motive?”

  “Okay, okay,” Zach says. “You get a gig as a butler to a wealthy couple. After ten or fifteen years they totally trust you. You’ve got access to everything. So you pull off an inside job. Snare all the jewels . . . all the art . . . all the collectibles—”

  “But wouldn’t you be an obvious suspect?” I ask.

  “That’s the perfect part,” he says. “You stay on the gig for another ten or fifteen years to avoid suspicion.”

  “So when do you get to enjoy the fruits of the heist?” I ask.

  “I said I worked out the perfect crime. Not the perfect getaway.” And he slumps back down in his chair.

  “How are the ladies?” I say, broaching another great crime—i.e., his charmed love life.

  “Beatin’ ’em off with a stick. And you? Heard from Psycho Sarah?”

  “Yes, actually. She was kind enough to send me my toothbrush and a note requesting I die nineteen times. And then actually wrote ‘call me’ after she signed her name.”

  “In blood?”

  “No,” I say. “Not this time.”

  “Damn.”

  “Oh, and get this. My nutty new neighbor from hell delivered the letter to me . . . opened . . . and commented on it.”

  “She hot?” he asks, with a raised eyebrow and a grin that veers dangerously close to the outskirts of juvenile city.

  “No. Kinda.”

  “Knew it.” He laughs, which annoys me.

  “How?”

  “Because she is your ‘nutty’ new neighbor from hell as opposed to your ‘psycho’ new neighbor,” he informs. “Nutty implies wacky, quirky, Kate Hudson meets Drew Barrymore meets Christina Applegate meets—”

  “No, no, no. She’s psycho. She is. I was just being polite.”

  “I gotta meet her,” he says, and as he says “gotta,” his head jerks forward like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. “Gotta.”

  “Really, you don’t.”

  “One of us needs to.”

  “I already have, and it was as unpleasant as could possibly be. I have to live next to this girl. So forget it.”

  “Fine.”

  “Good,” I say. But something tells me that everything is not good. I can still hear the wheels turning in his head. If I start counting backwards I doubt I’ll get to seven before he pipes up again. Ten . . . nine . . .

  “She got a nice rack?”

  “Zach!”

  “Rhymes with rack,” he says, looking off and pondering this as though he’s just chanced upon Newton’s First Law of Motion. (For those who need a refresher, Newton’s First Law is: Objects in motion stay in motion. And objects at rest, like Zach, stay at rest. Come to think of it, Zack would never ponder Newton’s Laws. So to that end, Zach looks as if he’s contemplating building a chair out of Cap’n Crunch, and whether he’d actually be able to sit in it.) “Never thought about that. Coincidence?”

  “Yes, unless you’re planning on growing some man-breasts.”

  “Please. With breasts I’d be unstoppable. It almost wouldn’t be fair.”

  Heaven

  I’m not crazy. I’ve been to a therapist, a psychiatrist, and a shaman healer, and all three have confirmed I’m not. The shaman was at the suggestion of my friend Zoë. She told me this woman would cleanse my aura and cut the imaginary strings that were attaching me to my negativity. I lay faceup on this massage table and watched her actually miming a pair of scissors as she cut the imaginary strings. I wished I paid her in imaginary money.

  I visited the shrinks on occasion; at times I thought that I might have, in fact, been crazy. But each time I went they told me I’m not. The thing is . . . I have this book called DSM-III-R. It’s a quick reference guide to diagnostic criteria from the American Psychiatric Association. I got it at a flea market from a guy who looked like he’d stepped directly from its pages. I think they’re up to DSM-IV by now. So mine’s outdated, though I doubt it’s changed all that much. In it are diagnoses for every possible mental illness out there. The problem is, sometimes the descriptions are so vague you can convince yourself you have every mania known to mankind.

  For example:

  307.52 Pica

  A. Repeated eating of a non-nutritive substance for at least one month.

  B. Does not meet the criteria for either autistic disorder, schizophrenia, or Kleine-Levin syndrome.

  When I read that it sent me into a tizzy. I have definitely been known to repeatedly eat non-nutritive substances. It’s what I do. I find something I like and eat it. A lot. It becomes my phase. For a while, I was in my pretzel phase. Then it was muffins. Then peanut-butter frozen yogurt. There was a pickles and coleslaw phase. No, I wasn’t pregnant, and it had to be that kind of slaw with caraway seeds. I’d search high and low for it. Only the best delicatessens have it, but when it’s good . . . it is good. Right now I’m in an oatmeal phase. Odd, considering I’m a carb-conscious eater. But I eat oatmeal every morning without fail.

  My phases usually last a month. Sometimes six months or even years. But when I stop, I stop. And rarely do I go back to it. So you can imagine my fear after reading the diagnostic criteria for pica.

  That time I read the diagnosis for pica I made an appointment with a psychiatrist. After an hour of telling her my fears of pica and possibly worse, she informed me that while pretzels and coleslaw aren’t the most nutritious foods, people who suffer from pica eat non-food items altogether. When they say non-nutritive substance they mean:

  Chalk

  Kleenex

  Xerox paper

  Etc.

  Anyway, you can imagine my relief. But then she hands me this bill for a hundred fifty bucks! I almost told her to eat it. But then if she actually did, she’d be the one with pica, and her diagnosis of my sanity would count for nothing.

  The other times I happened upon mental illnesses with descriptions I might fit, the psychiatrists assured me that I was sane as well. Apparently, my handy quick reference guide to mental health omitted the details that prove it. So I am not crazy. And the only common problem that each of them found was that I had no business reading a psychiatric diagnostic book.

  However, certain things do make me crazy:

  1. People who are mean to animals

  2. People who are selfish and self-centered

  3. People who abuse their car horns, which is a major problem in New York City

  These are things that are allowed to make me crazy. They are legitimate gripes.

  Here’s an example of something that might make you crazy, but is not legitimate: You’re on an elevator, zooming up to your desired floor, when suddenly it stops and someone gets on. Then they get off on a different floor. All during your ride, which you got on first. Some people might get mad at this. As if their own personal elevator had just been invaded by someone with the audacity to need also to be somewhere that required the use of the elevator. Granted, this has pissed me off on occasion too, but I know that it’s wrong, and that is key.

  Brady

  I don’t lie much, but when I have to, I’m alarmingly good at it. Sometimes it’s best to go big or go home. I need time to write out the business plan for Cinnamilk. So when I tell Phil my grandfather in Florida has broken his hip and needs assistance, and I’ll be taking the week off to visit him, he believes me and understands.

  Phil’s understanding is not of the situation as I presented it, however, but it’s as Phil sees it in Phil’s world.

  “Goin
’ to Florida, eh?” he says.

  “Yup,” I say.

  “Will maintenance?”

  “Huh?”

  “Making sure you’re there in the end so you get good placement in the will?”

  “He’s not dying. He’s just got a fractured hip.”

  “We’re all dying, dude. And he’s in Florida. He’s halfway there.” This is true. I’ve always called Florida “God’s Waiting Room,” but what he’s saying is just plain wrong. I wouldn’t go visit my grandfather just to angle for his will. Plus, he died three years ago.

  “How was your date last night?” I ask him.

  “I think I blew it.”

  “Why?”

  “When the bill came, I didn’t have enough money,” he says.

  “What about a credit card? Don’t you have a credit card?”

  “Maxed out. Shit, I maxed that puppy out the first month I got it.”

  “So what did you do?”

  He doesn’t answer at first. Then he tries to throw a balled-up piece of paper at the wastebasket, arcing it high, like he’s LeBron, and missing badly. “I had to ask her for money.”

  But this miss is so far off the mark. The clock has run out. The game is over. There will be no postseason for this relationship. “Oh, Phil.”

  “Did I blow it?”

  “I don’t know the girl.”

  “She was pretty pissed,” he offers.

  “Then yes.”

  “I knew it,” he says, pressing his palms to his forehead like it’s just hit him. “Fuck. But she had no right ordering the duck anyway. It was like forty dollars. That’s just mean!” he adds, like a wounded child.

  “I don’t think she meant it as a personal affront.”

  “I think I love her.”

  “It was a first date.”

  “And?”

  “Never mind,” I say. I can’t be bothered to get into it with him. There are days I can, and days I can’t. This is one I can’t. I can’t because today I’m troubled.