Misery Loves Cabernet

by Kim Gruenenfelder

  “I’d love to,” I interrupt.

  Liam seems taken aback by my enthusiasm. “Really? Well, that’s fantastic. Thank you.”

  As I look at that handsome face, and lose myself in those beautiful eyes, I can’t help but want to kiss him.

  Instead, I turn away, and pull my brand-new iPhone out of my purse.

  “Cool phone,” Liam observes.

  “Thanks. It’s new,” I say as I dial Drew’s number. “It’s waterproof and I’m told it can withstand hippo attacks.”

  Drew picks up on the first ring, “Do you think Megan Travers is gay?” he asks me.

  “I don’t think so,” I answer. “Why?”

  “She’s making out with a girl wearing a shark fin.”

  I look around the backyard. “Are you here?”

  “Where’s here?” Drew asks.

  “Robert Hazan’s party.”

  “Um . . . I’m not sure. The party I’m at has a lot of women dressed as cheerleaders, schoolgirls, a scantily clad owl of all things . . .”

  “Drew, saying you’re at a Hollywood party with a bunch of half-dressed women helps me identify the party as much as if you called asking what town you were in, and mentioned it had a Starbucks and a Gap.”

  “There’s a woman dressed as a naked hippo,” Drew continues. “Speaking of which, did you figure out what you wanted in exchange for never mentioning hippos to me again?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have. Did you get a script today from CAA called . . .” I cover the phone’s mouthpiece and whisper to Liam, “Wait, what’s it called?”

  “A Collective Happiness,” Liam whispers back.

  “A Collective Happiness,” I say into the phone. “Did you get it?”

  “I have no idea. Why?”

  “You need to read it,” I say, trying to give my voice an authoritative tone.

  “Wait, she’s not a hippo,” Drew says, his voice suddenly sounding within earshot. “She’s just a naked Komodo dragon.”

  Just then, Spider-Man walks over to us, talking into his iPhone.

  “And what are you supposed to be?” I hear Spider-Man ask me in person as I simultaneously hear Drew’s voice over the phone. “A beheaded dinosaur?”

  I look up at Spider-Man, and look into his masked eyes. “Drew?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he says matter-of-factly. “But only when I’m assuming the guise of my secret, crime-fighting alter ego.” Drew leans his masked face in close and practically whispers, “You know, it really is liberating to appear in public with your true identity concealed. Especially when you have super powers. Did you know this costume is rigged with hand jets that shoot spider webs?” He throws his wrist out at me. “Wanna see?”

  “I think I’ll pass,” I say, throwing my head back so as not to get covered with sticky fake spider webs.

  The masked crimefighter eyes me up and down. “Why aren’t you wearing your cheerleader costume?”

  I roll my eyes. “For the last time. It’s not a costume! It’s a uniform!”

  “Oh,” Drew says, sounding like it’s the first he’s heard of it. “Well, if it’s a uniform, does that mean that as your employer, I can require you to wear it to work every day?”

  Drew’s genuinely asking me that, by the way. There’s not a hint of sarcasm in his voice. So I decide to ignore the comment. “Drew, have you met Liam O’Connor?”

  “Liam,” Drew says, extending a webbed hand. “You produced Yellow Cake, right?”

  “I did.”

  “I loved that movie!” Drew says, his voice brightening. “I didn’t understand it, but I totally loved it!”

  As Drew and Liam continue their membership in the mutual admiration society, I offer to get Drew a drink, then make a hasty getaway.

  I just can’t see Liam for too long without needing to come up for air.

  As I take a glass of champagne from the silver tray of a mummy waiter, I chant quietly to myself, “I like Jordan. I like Jordan . . .”

  Even though Jordan might be boinking some Parisian slut right now.

  God, I want a cigarette.

  As I debate rifling through the bushes to find my spit-out piece of nicotine gum, I see my little brother Jamie talking with a naughty vampire. He’s wearing a big red bow, with a giant cardboard gift tag that reads:

  To: Women

  From: God

  As the blond Barbie doll of a vampire gives him a kiss on the cheek and heads off, I walk up to him.

  “God’s gift to women?” I ask, visibly horrified by the outfit.

  “So far, it’s been quite the conversation piece,” Jamie says cheerfully. He nods to the vampire who just walked away. “She just asked me what I was doing later.”

  I look over at the girl. “She’s a hooker,” I point out.

  “I know. That’s why I told her I was busy. But it’s nice to be asked.” He takes a sip from my champagne flute. “Guess what? The editor at Metro finally gave me a writing job.”

  “You got an article published?” I asked, bursting with sisterly pride.

  “Better!” Jamie says, smiling proudly. “I got my own column. You are looking at the official author of ‘A Man’s Eye View.’ I beat out over a hundred people.”

  Jamie has been working at Metro, a women’s magazine, for a couple of years as a fact checker. He has been dying to become a real writer, and has been submitting spec articles to their managing editor ever since he started.

  “Wait a minute,” I say, trying not to sound negative. “Isn’t ‘A Man’s Eye View’ that puff piece a guy writes every month saying stuff like ‘All we men really want is someone to love us’?”

  “Yeah. Load of crap, right?”

  I shrug. “Well, it’d be nice if men felt that way.”

  “But they don’t,” Jamie says cheerfully. “And that’s how I got the job. Everyone else was turning in bullshit pieces about how we really love weddings, and how it’s okay to just cuddle on a Sunday morning, and complete stereotypes about why we like sports. I went totally the other way.”

  “Okay, now I’m afraid . . .”

  “I called my piece ‘Don’t Kill the Messenger,’ ” Jamie says proudly. “I took every question you and Andy ever asked about boys, wrote ’em down, and then gave honest answers. I started with a man’s intentions: if he is straight and he is single, he wants to sleep with you.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I blurt out in a huff. “No woman is really going to want to read—”

  “If he is straight and married,” Jamie continues, “he may not want to sleep with you, but he still wants to know that you want to sleep with him.”

  “I’m not sure I ever asked that . . .”

  “How can men sleep with women they’re not in love with?” Jamie continues. “Duh! I believe the better question is, ‘Why do women always have to be in love with the men they sleep with?’ I’m making five dollars a word.”

  Kate walks up to us. “Hi, sweetie,” she says to Jamie, giving him a quick kiss hello.

  The kiss is just a quick peck on the lips—old friends who are comfortable with each other. You’d never know they had been fuck-buddies briefly last month, after Kate’s breakup.

  “Hey, baby,” Jamie says. “You are looking sexy as hell.”

  “Really?” Kate asks, looking down at her outfit. “You don’t think it’s too slutty?”

  “I’m a guy. You hear us say the words ‘too slutty’ about as often as the words, “No, thank you, Miss Theron, I already have a date for Saturday night.”

  “Hmm,” Kate says, still scrutinizing her outfit. “Okay, thanks.” Kate leans in to quietly ask me, “What do you think it means if a guy says he’s not technically divorced, but he’s leaving his wife?”

  Jamie leans in and answers just as quietly,

  When a man promises to leave his wife, what he really means is . . . he has no intention of leaving his wife.

  “Oh,” Kate says, sounding disappointed. “That’s kind of what I thought.”
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br />   “Wait. Who’s married?” I ask Kate.

  “Well, not technically divorced,” Kate corrects me.

  “Yeah, that,” I say, my voice dripping with suspicion. “Who is it? Mike?”

  Kate nods, then starts to walk away. I grab her arm. “Oh, no. You’re not going back to talk to him.”

  Kate shrugs me off with her tone of voice. “I’m not going home with him or anything. We’re just talking. . . .”

  “I’ll come with you,” I offer.

  “What am I? Fifteen?”

  “Clearly not,” I retort. “Fifteen-year-olds aren’t stupid enough to go out with married men.”

  It’s then that Mike magically appears in front of us, all smiles, as he puts his arms around Kate’s shoulders. “I absolutely love this song,” he says, referring to Britney Spears’s “Gimme More” blasting from the backyard sound system. “Come dance with me.”

  Kate avoids my gaze, and the two trot off to the dance floor.

  I turn to Jamie. “ ‘Gimme More’?!” I say incredulously.

  “I know,” Jamie says, with a defeated tone of voice. “Clearly the guy’s a full-on liar. He’s the type of guy who will compliment you on your shoes.”

  I think about that for a second. “I’m sorry . . . what about that is bad?”

  “Guys don’t notice shoes,” Jamie says definitively. “We notice the legs in the shoes. We don’t care if you’re wearing Christian Louboutins. You’re dressing for your female friends when you spend five hundred dollars on a pair of shoes, not us. If a man compliments your shoes, he’s trying to get you into bed.”

  I cross my arms and glare at him. “By your theory, aren’t all men who talk to us trying to get us into bed?”

  “Yes, but getting a woman into bed is like getting to the end of a football field: there are a variety of techniques. A guy should have the confidence to methodically march the ball down the field, and not just throw up a Hail Mary with plenty of time left on the clock.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “I think my pretending to understand even one word of that sentence would be the female equivalent of telling you, ‘Nice shoes.’ ”

  Dawn quickly walks up to us, carrying what appears to be a blood-red martini. “Okay, be subtle. Look over my shoulder.”

  Jamie and I look over her shoulder.

  Dawn continues, “Do you see the black man wearing a firefighter’s uniform?”

  I do, and I want him all for myself. Unfortunately for me, I am pretty sure the six-foot-three Adonis with the perfect chin is a good friend of Rob, my cousin Jenn’s husband. They are both English professors at UCLA.

  Damn, he looks good tonight.

  “Looks like Patrick,” I whisper to Dawn.

  Dawn winces. “That’s what I was afraid of,” she whispers. “See, he—”

  “Patrick!” Jamie yells across the lawn.

  Dawn’s shoulders drop as Patrick turns and sees us. His face lights up. “Hey,” Patrick says, walking up to us. “I haven’t seen you guys in forever.”

  He puts out his hand and he and Jamie do the new handshake with the slightly apart hug and back pat. Then he turns to me. “Charlie. Gorgeous as ever,” he says, giving me a kiss hello on the lips.

  In our little Hollywood microcosm where everyone kisses each other on the lips, Patrick then kisses Dawn ever so gently on the cheek. “Dawn, how are you?” he says, in a sentence loaded with deep desire.

  Huh. And the plot thickens.

  Dawn, normally the belle of the ball (or at least the alpha female of the litter), forces a smile. “It’s good to see you,” she says, her voice catching after the word “good.” “How did your English 90 class go?”

  “Very well. I’m sorry you weren’t able to come,” he says awkwardly.

  “Well, I . . . uh . . . I had to work,” she returns just as awkwardly.

  Patrick looks down at the ground as Dawn looks around the backyard self-consciously.

  Wait a minute . . . Dawn acting awkward? Dawn acts awkward about as often as George Clooney goes on eHarmony.com—which is to say if it ever has happened, I’m not so sure I want to know about it. Did these two recently have sex without my knowledge? What’s going on here?

  “What’s English 90?” Jamie asks Patrick, trying to break the obvious tension between them.

  “Oh, it’s my Shakespeare class,” Patrick answers pleasantly. “I asked Dawn if she could read Juliet for one of my lectures, but she had a prior commitment.”

  Dawn looks away from us, uncomfortably. Patrick just stares at her, clearly trying to think of something witty to say.

  Which, unfortunately, he doesn’t. The four of us stand around in silence for . . . I don’t know, a month? I see Jamie’s eyes flit back and forth from Dawn to Patrick, trying to figure them out.

  Jamie takes my champagne flute, downs the rest of my champagne in one gulp, then declares, “We need drinks.” He turns to Patrick. “I understand there’s a Hobbit in the kitchen with Krug, if we know the password.”

  Patrick looks relieved for the reprieve. “Okay,” he says to Jamie. Then he gently puts his hand on Dawn’s arm. “Don’t go away.”

  And the two walk off. I watch Dawn knowingly as she watches them leave.

  I’ve seen that look before.

  “You-ou liiiike himmmm . . . ,” I say, dragging out the words teasingly.

  Dawn blinks once, then turns to me as though she’s just realized I’m there. “What?” she says incredulously. Then she crosses her arms. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  As Patrick and Jamie walk away, I watch several women clearly check Patrick out. “So, to paraphrase you, how come we haven’t seen that gorgeous stud in your stable yet?”

  Dawn turns to me, looking alarmed. “Are you kidding?! Serious type. Wants babies.”

  “Pervert,” I state emphatically. “Imagine wanting a wife, a family . . .” I look around as if to catch eavesdroppers, then whisper, “Commitment.”

  Dawn shrugs her shoulders. “Look, there’s no challenge to a guy like that. One time you remember to call him back and he’s yours. He’s like target practice.”

  “Mm-hmm. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

  “Oh, please. He’s an English professor. Do you see me with an English professor?” Dawn asks.

  Before I can answer that yes, I can see her with an English professor, she gives me her next rationalization. “Besides, nerdy guys don’t dig me.”

  “Sweetie,” I say, putting my arm around her shoulder and trying not to sound too patronizing, “All guys dig you.”

  Dawn shrugs. Takes a sip of her red drink. She glances around the party, then notices Kate and Mike on the dance floor. “Wait a minute, isn’t that—”

  “Mm-hmm,” I answer disapprovingly. “And get this, he’s married.”

  Dawn’s jaw drops slightly as she turns to me. “Oh, hell no.”

  Never date a married man.

  Dawn determinedly marches over to the dance floor. I quickly follow her. “Be subtle,” I remind Dawn. “We don’t want to do anything to embarrass her.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Dawn says. I stop by the side of the dance floor to watch as Dawn walks right between the dancing couple. “Wrong!” she says to Kate emphatically, then grabs her by the hand and drags her away.

  “What are you doing?” Kate seethes under her breath as she is yanked from the dance floor by Dawn. I quickly fall into step with them as we head back to our former spot.

  “Saving you from six months of heartache,” Dawn says sternly. “What the fuck were you thinking, flirting with a married man?”

  “He’s separated!” Kate says in a defensive tone. She tries to pull away her hand from Dawn’s kung-fu grip, but to no avail.

  “Charlie, translate ‘separated’ in L.A. singleton terms,” Dawn says angrily.

  “His wife doesn’t know they’re separated,” I explain. “But when she finds out what he’s doing behind her back, then they might really be separated.”


  Kate begins trying to peel Dawn’s fingers off her left hand. “He’s not wearing a wedding ring. I checked.”

  Dawn counters with, “I’m not wearing my ten-year-old sweatpants with the hole in the butt. But that don’t mean I don’t put ’em on the minute I get home from the party.”

  “Come on, seriously, you’re embarrassing me. Let go.”

  We return to our former patch of grass, and Dawn finally lets go of Kate’s hand. “What are you thinking?” Dawn grills Kate. “Do you honestly think this guy is going to leave his wife for you? And, if so, are you ready to go through a divorce that’s not even your own?”

  Kate responds with just as much irritation. “Look, maybe if you look like you, you can have your pick of the litter. But it’s tough out there. Jack and I broke up almost two months ago, and the only date I’ve had has been with Mike. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

  “Maybe that should be the new tagline for Match.com,” I joke.

  Kate turns to me, and her facial expression subtly changes from one of irritation to one of slight desperation. “You know, when I was with Jack all that time, I always envied you guys. You got to go out anywhere you wanted without having to run it by someone else. You got to spend four hundred dollars on a dress without anyone you love rolling their eyes and lecturing you. I used to be so jealous when you talked about your first kiss with this guy or your first date with that guy. I thought if I broke up with Jack, I’d be happy. I’d be glamorous. Instead, I’m just lonely.”

  I rub Kate’s arm. “Sweetie, it’s only been a few months. It takes time to get over a long relationship. You’ll get there.”

  Kate shakes her head. “No, I won’t. This whole breakup has made me see myself through my eyes, not Jack’s, and I don’t like what I see. I feel fat, I feel old, and I have no clue what I even want from my life anymore. Who the hell is going to want me?”

  As if on cue, from behind us, we hear a very sexy, baritone voice ask, “Kate?”

  We all turn around to see an Abercrombie and Fitch model dressed as a cowboy. Or, at least he could be a model. With perfect olive skin, piercing hazel eyes, and wavy jet-black hair, he could be anything he wants to be.