Wicked Jealous: A Love Story

by Palmer, Robin

  On Monday, at the first official meeting of what Noob officially dubbed Castillo de chicos y una chica—Spanish for the “Castle of guys and one girl” (“That Google translator thing rocks!” he cried, before then going on to spend the next half hour translating stuff like “Dude, the Wi-Fi connection in this country blows!” into Latvian), when Doc first unveiled the combination graph/pie chart he had put together detailing everyone’s chores there were a bunch of groans and moans. Once I gave them the sales pitch Doc and I had rehearsed about how much happier they would be living with order and organization rather than swimming in chaos, they began to relax. By Wednesday, although I was still triple-checking the lock on the bathroom door before I took a shower, I had gotten to the point where I was starting to relax and not feel so nervous around the guys. And also I wasn’t getting random bruises on my body from tripping over stuff that wasn’t put away.

  Very quickly, I got into a nice routine. Thanks to a mention in the new hot blog “Pink Is the New Lavender, Which Is Now the New Black” (which had just been optioned as the basis for a TV show by ABC Family a few months earlier), One Person’s Garbage had gotten really busy, which meant that Brad needed help at the store. Which meant part-time jobs for Nicola and me. (I knew Hillary had been pushing Dad’s agent to try to get him the gig executive producing the show because she thought it would be good for his career to be more involved with the Millennials, but because he had been pegged as “the talking-animal guy,” the network passed.) So ever since school ended, for a few hours a day I pasted on a smile and told customers that oh yeah, of course that dress made them look like Sandra Bullock’s best friend in that movie she did toward the beginning of her career. And I was able to monitor my robin’s-egg blue dress and make sure no one bought it.

  My 30 percent employee discount was going a long way in helping me assemble a wardrobe that, according to Brad, if I were walking around the Marais in Paris (apparently, the hippest neighborhood) would get me approving nods from French women instead of pained looks. Still, I didn’t forget my roots. Hence, the addition of a few vintage tees, but in mediums instead of extra larges. It took some getting used to wearing shirts that actually advertised my boobage (not to mention the stares from guys—some cute, some just plain gross—that went along with it), but I did my best.

  But then on Thursday afternoon, as I waited for a woman named Marge from Pasadena to try on a Halston-esque one-armed silver lamé evening dress that had been owned and “gently worn” (actually, from the faint stains that even the dry cleaner couldn’t get out, not so gently worn) by her favorite soap actress, I realized that my why-do-today-what-you-can-keep-putting-off-for-tomorrow? attitude had to change. Because as I half listened to Marge yammer on proudly about how she had every single episode of the soap Nights of Our Existences either DVR’d, on DVD, or—going back to the eighties—on VHS, I discovered that my dress—the dress that I kind-of-sort-of-maybe thought I was ready to try on—was gone. It wasn’t on the Smashing Sixties rack, or the Sizzling Seventies one. And not on the Egregious Eighties one, either. (“Bradley, it’s really great that you know a lot of fifty-cent SAT words,” Nicola kept saying, “but you might want to try using words that your customers don’t have to look up on dictionary.com in order to see how witty you are.”) When I couldn’t find it on the Nostalgic Nineties, either, I freaked.

  “My dress! It’s not here!” I cried.

  Nicola looked up from lacing on a pair of thigh-high red suede boots that had just come in. According to Brad, they had belonged to some old-school disco diva who had been forced to sell them in order to pay for her most recent rehab stay. “How is it your dress if you refuse to even try it on?” she asked. “I think the proper way of saying that is, ‘The dress! It’s not here.’” She looked over at Brad, who was skimming the photos of guys on some new dating Web site called Every Pot Has A Lid. “Don’t you think, Bradley?”

  “I do believe you’re right, Nicola.”

  “Thank you, Mr. and Ms. Grammatically Correct,” I said. “But that’s not the point! The point is the blue dress is gone! Brad, when did you sell it?”

  “Let’s see . . . I think it was . . .” He squinted at the computer screen. “Someone could benefit from an appointment with a bottle of Nair.” He sighed. “I love the tall, dark, and handsome look, but does ‘hairy’ always have to be part of it?”

  “Brad. Focus,” I said. “The dress. Who bought it?”

  He put his fingers to his temples like one of those cheesy psychics. “Let me see if I can remember.”

  Even with the blog mention, it wasn’t like this was H&M or Urban Outfitters, with tons of customers. (Although thanks to Brad’s ability to get hold of size 24 Tall evening dresses, Lady GaGantuan from the hair salon came by on a pretty regular basis.)

  “Oh right. It was Tuesday,” Brad said. “Or maybe it was Monday.” He cocked his head. “No, I distinctly remember it was Tuesday, because it was the same day I got the e-mail from the guy on eHarmony who used to be a priest before becoming a trapeze artist. Did I tell you about him?”

  “Off point, Brad,” I said.

  “Sorry. It was Tuesday, and it was bought by . . . some girl.”

  I waited for him to go on.

  He shrugged. “That’s all I remember—that it was a girl.”

  I sighed. That part wasn’t surprising. Brad didn’t have any male customers other than Lady GaGantuan. “Well, I guess it’s my own fault, right?” I asked. I glanced over at Nicola. “That was a rhetorical question, by the way.” I don’t know why I was so upset. It was so . . . girly of me. It was only a dress. That probably would’ve looked stupid on me anyway.

  But I was.

  I tried to let the dress thing go. I really did. But I just couldn’t shake it. Which, when you’re living with people who don’t spend all their time typing on their iPhones or gazing at themselves in mirrors, is a problem, because apparently, moping makes people uncomfortable. Especially if those people happen to be guys.

  I very quickly learned that guys like to fix things. Even guys like Noob, who, in the process of fixing things, ends up breaking other things. (I didn’t know a lot about tools, but breaking a wrench seemed like a very difficult thing to do.)

  “Simone? Is everything okay?” Wheezer asked nervously as I stood at the kitchen counter stir-frying veggies and tofu for our Friday night family dinner (the “family” thing was Max’s idea).

  I sighed. “Yeah. Why?”

  “Because you’re staring into space and about to burn the vegetables,” he said, pointing at the wok.

  I looked down to see that he was right. “Thanks,” I sighed as I shook the veggies around a bit before going back to staring into space.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Not really,” I shrugged. “But it’s okay. I’m sure it’ll pass. Eventually. Hopefully.”

  From the look on Wheezer’s face, guys also didn’t like such open-ended statements. In fact, it made Wheezer so uncomfortable, he sneezed.

  “God bless you,” I said.

  “Thanks,” he said, honking into a tissue. He held out a clean one. “Would a tissue make you feel better?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, can you at least try to tell me what’s wrong?”

  “I’m not really sure,” I admitted. “It’s just . . . I don’t know how to explain it.”

  “But how can we try and fix it if you can’t explain it?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe it’s just one of those things that have to clear up by themselves. You know, like how antibiotics don’t kill viruses, and you just have to wait for it to go away by itself.”

  He looked even more alarmed. “They don’t? That’s horrible.” He sneezed and honked again. “Maybe Doc can devote his medical career to trying to come up with one that works. I mean, the idea of not
being able to fix something is just . . . wrong.”

  It was? I guess when you become so used to living with something—like, say, the lack of a social life, or being ignored by a parent, or being invisible—you just get used to it after a while.

  “Well, listen, if you figure out what it is that’s bothering you and you want to talk about it, I’d be more than happy to listen.”

  I smiled. “Wow. Thanks, Wheezer. That’s really sweet of you.”

  He turned red. “Just so you know, my last girlfriend—okay, my only girlfriend—accused me of being a really bad communicator, so I’m not sure how much help I’d actually be, but I’m a really good listener.”

  “I’ll definitely keep that in mind. Thanks.” I followed his eyeline toward the den, where I could see him gazing at Bikini Bloodbath, the group’s second favorite horror movie after the Sorority Girl Slasher series. “Wheezer,” I said, waving my hand in front of his face.

  “Huh? Sorry. What were you saying?”

  I laughed. “I said thanks.”

  He dug some crumpled tissues out of his back pocket and handed them to me. “I know you said they won’t help, but why don’t you take them anyway? They’re a little linty, but they’re clean. I promise. Some people are multiple blowers, but I’m not. It’s unsanitary.”

  I smiled as I took them, touched. That may have been one of the nicest things a guy had ever done for me.

  People usually think it’s girls who are all gossipy, but it’s not, as I found out the next day. When Doc sent out an e-mail to the Google user group Castillo de chicos y una chica, calling an official house meeting (Noob complained that the name was too long until Narc reminded him it had been his idea), I knew I was in trouble.

  “Okay, having the Queen of Mean living in your house has rubbed off on you because someone has become a little self-centered and is making this all about her,” Nicola sniffed as we walked the aisles of Barbarella’s Beauty Supplies for a Bodacious You. Now that I had kind-of-sort-of gotten the wardrobe thing down, Nicola had insisted we tackle hair and makeup, which, from the pile of stuff in my basket, seemed to include things like bobby pins with little rhinestone palm trees on the ends (“For the days and nights you’re feeling tropical,” it said on the package) and a giant roll-on tube of glittery bronze highlighter. (“Yes, on most paler-than-pale people like you, it might look kind of dumb, but that’s because they don’t have the attitude to pull it off like you do!” Nicola exclaimed.)

  I plucked a package of false eyelashes out of her hands and put them back on the shelf before turning to her. “Nicola, the subject line said, ‘To figure out how to get Simone to stop moping and make her happy again.’”

  “Oh. Huh. Then I guess it is about you,” she agreed. “But look at how nice that is! They’re such sensitive guys.” She sighed. “Your brother has such great taste in friends. I can’t wait until he and I are dating. I bet he’ll be a total prince when I’m PMS-ing.”

  Not like he’d be able to get a word in. Every time Nicola was near him, it was as if all the words she had stored up not talking to him were released. It would have been one thing if what came out were her typically witty observations on life (also available in the “Witty Observations on Life” part of her blog), but it wasn’t. It was just chatter. Like the kind that gives girls a bad name.

  “Yeah, it is nice,” I agreed. “But still. It’s embarrassing.”

  “How come?”

  “Because I feel stupid.”

  She shrugged. “Well, that’s the thing about friends. Sometimes you just have to feel stupid in front of them. So you can see that they’re not going to ditch you for being less than perfect. And after a while you get used to it, and it’s not so hard anymore.”

  I sighed. Sure, I could do that with Nicola, but a group of guys was a whole other story.

  Later on, after Noob had gathered everyone into the living room by blowing the bugle he had gotten earlier at the Salvation Army Thrift Store (“I asked them if they had one of those shofar things—you know, the ram’s horn thing they blow on Rosh Hashanah? But they said they were all out.”), he stood in front of the group—which, per a group vote via e-mail, also included Nicola and Herbert, even though they didn’t technically live in the house.

  “Here ye, here ye!” he bellowed. “And now begins the official house meeting!” He gave a loud, long toot on the bugle.

  “Will you stop with that thing already?” Narc cried, covering his ears.

  “I’m just trying to make it official,” Noob said defensively. “And now, I’m going to . . .” He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. “Hold on—I need to check my notes.” After what seemed like an awful long time to unfold a piece of paper that was only folded into quarters, he squinted. “Man, I hate when I can’t read my own writing. Oh right—and now, I’m going to turn the meeting over to Thor! So please help me give him a very warm welcome.”

  As Thor strode up to the front of the room, he looked at us. “You heard the man. A warm welcome!”

  At that, a smattering of applause could be heard. While I had quickly learned that Thor’s bark was a lot worse than his bite, and that he, too, got misty-eyed at ASPCA commercials, you also didn’t want to risk making him mad. (“I’m an artist—if we can’t express our dissatisfaction about things, who can?”)

  “I really like the way you clap,” I heard Nicola whisper to my brother. “It’s very rhythmic.” Most people, if they had received the kind of strange look my brother shot her, would’ve shut right up. But not Nicola. “Some people, when they clap, it’s all out of sync,” she babbled. “But yours isn’t. Plus, it’s got a very happy feel to it.”

  “Uh, thanks,” he whispered back. “But I think we should pay attention.”

  “Okay, so here’s the deal,” Thor said. “We have a friend in need, people. And what do we do when we have a friend in need?”

  “We make a donation via PayPal and receive a packet every month with an update on their progress?” Noob suggested before Narc flicked him in the head. “What? That’s the way they do it on that infomercial about the kids in Tanzania.”

  “No! We don’t make a donation—we help them!”

  “A donation is help,” Noob retorted.

  Wheezer shoved some tissues toward him. “Noob, why don’t you stick these in your mouth and shut up for a while?”

  Noob stood up. “You know what? I’m sick of being kicked around by you guys. I’m leaving. But you can forget about me telling you where I’m going.” He began to stomp off. “I’ll be in the kitchen if anyone needs me.”

  Because I went to such a competitive high school, the teachers there had a way of making you feel that if you didn’t have a 3.99 average, you weren’t going to get into a decent college. But if Noob could get accepted to a school, I was pretty certain that there was a place for anyone.

  “You have to give the guy credit for expressing his feelings and taking a stand,” Thor said. The sound of some pans crashing to the floor could be heard. “Even if it’s done in an uncoordinated fashion.” He turned to me. “So getting back to the subject at hand. Simone, we’ve been talking, and we’ve noticed that you haven’t been your usual sunny self the last few days—”

  I looked at Nicola. “I have a sunny self?”

  “Anyone has a sunny self compared to Thor,” Doc said.

  He had a point.

  “You know, if I wanted to, I could probably take that as some kind of insult,” Thor said, “but because I’m really working on not getting bent out of shape when someone slights me because they’re not able to see that my somewhat rough exterior is merely an armor to keep my sensitive interior from becoming wounded, I’m gonna let that one go.” He stomped over and stood by Doc. “But I wouldn’t try it again.”

  “Okay,” Doc mumbled as he shran
k back in his chair.

  “Good.” Thor turned to me again. “So Simone, what’s going on?”

  Even if it’s with what looks like genuine concern, having eight guys and Nicola stare at you as they wait for an answer (although he wouldn’t come back into the room, I could see Noob peeking through the crack of the kitchen door) is pretty painful.

  “Oh man, I am so glad I’m not you right now,” I heard Nicola murmur.

  “I . . . you know . . . I really . . .” I stammered.

  “Guys, I think we should table this,” Blush said softly from his perch over on the window seat. Because he was so tall, he kind of had to scrunch his limbs up to fit in there, but he made it look like it wasn’t too uncomfortable. Maybe it came from handling the marionettes. “If she wants to talk about it, she knows that we’re more than happy to listen. Right?”

  I nodded.

  “But I thought girls loved to talk about their problems,” Wheezer said, confused.

  “Yeah, like, to death,” Narc grumbled.

  “Even I know that,” Herbert added. “And I’m only in junior high.”

  Max turned to me. “You sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

  “If you don’t want to talk about it in this big group, maybe just the three of us could talk about it,” Nicola blurted out. “You know—me, you, and Max. Or maybe Max and I could just talk about it alone.”

  Maybe Doc could devote his medical career to coming up with a cure for DIBD—Disclosure of Inappropriate Blurting Disease. “Thanks. But, yes, I’m sure.”

  Max nodded. “Okay.” He turned to the group. “She doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Can we just stop talking about the fact that I don’t want to talk about it?” I pleaded.

  “Next order of business, then,” Thor announced. “Wait—scratch that. We don’t have any other orders of business. Meeting adjorned.”

  As everyone got up to leave, Noob’s muffled voice could be heard from the crack of the kitchen door. “Wait—I have another order of business. Ow. You just hit me in the face!” he cried as Narc pushed the door open.