Ming looked up from her chemistry journal. “Just update your LinkedIn profile and finish your coffee.”
The thought of LinkedIn floated over her world just long enough to make her shudder. “Maybe it isn’t that bad that Noel is Oz’s son?”
“Who cares? Look at your parents.”
“What about them?” said Ruby with a questioning look.
“Not to mention your parents used the Biomall as free childcare while you were growing up. Oz might be Noel’s father, but he was basically your babysitter. You’re both equally screwed up probably. More importantly, did he say anything about the baby?”
Ruby shook her head. “Not really.”
Before Ming could let loose with an anti-Noel diatribe, Ruby’s phone beeped with a text. From Noel: Is your dryer hose still plugged?
Ruby stared at the misbegotten text for a fraction of a second, baffled that he had just texted her about the dryer. Hadn’t she just twelve hours earlier announced that he was going to be a father? She averted her eyes and showed it to Ming.
Ming looked at the text as if it was a dog turd on a Persian rug. “Tell me that isn’t a euphemism. Whatever it is, you should cut him loose right now.” She picked up Ruby’s phone for her and asked, “You mind if I respond?”
“Go ahead.”
Ming texted: Shut up about the laundry. Just told you I’m pregnant.
On the other end, Ming received: RARVAB! @->->--
She showed it to Ruby with a look of incipient disgust and asked, “Does this mean anything to you?”
Ruby squinted at the message for a second. “No.”
With her disgust fully realized, Ming texted back: WTF?
“Ruby, this is beyond appalling. He just texted a frowny face.” Ming held the phone out like a bad report card for Ruby to see. “A grown man should NEVER text a frowny face.”
Ming typed in: Be a man.
…
Ruby sank into her chair wondering what Noel’s problem was. There was clearly something off. She felt too mentally exhausted to read or cook breakfast, so she tuned into NPR. She had begun to listen lately, hoping to absorb whatever it was she had missed during law school. A professor-type announced in an ominous voice: “Today, Earth’s population reached seven billion people,” darkly implying that the Earth was reeling toward a sustainability crisis, clearly steering listeners to think of tragic countries with way too many mouths to feed. The figure awed Ruby: “One of seven billion!” and in a flash of nihilism (her first), Ruby realized seven billion other people were striving to fill the void, eating Greek yogurt, trying to find the ultimate handbag, etc., and she began to cry a little.
For some reason, the population crisis and the bad texts made her think of a pivotal moment in Clueless: Alicia Silverstone walking down the street in her moment of despair wearing a ruffled shirt and platform shoes. She stops in front of the Bellagio. As the fountains erupt, her light bulb turns on she realizes that she loves Paul Rudd—the one who had always been there, not flashy and dramatic, but dependable. Who is my Paul Rudd? There had to be a Paul Rudd for her in the sea of seven billion.
She didn’t need to be special and she didn’t need to be the best lawyer around, but she wanted a Paul Rudd. Until the dryer hose text and RARVAB @->-->--, she was 99 percent sure Noel was the Paul Rudd to her Alicia Silverstone, even though he was technically way cuter than Paul Rudd, not her stepbrother, etc. etc.
Just then the phone rang and her heart fluttered. She glanced at the caller ID expecting to see Noel’s name, maybe to explain the weird texts.
It was Eric.
“Hey, I’ve been thinking about you.”
“Really?” She had a hard time believing that.
“I was wondering if you wanted to go out—”
“It’s been like two months, Eric. That’s a long time.” They hadn’t talked since their “scandal.”
“Does love have an expiration date?”
“Plus, I hear you have plenty of other girlfriends.” The article had reported that Eric used Kansas DMV and municipal databases as his little black book. Why the police department hadn’t fired him, she couldn’t imagine.
“I’m free now,” he answered, plenty of swagger in his voice.
She laughed and started to shoot out with a sarcastic response, but she stopped. Partially because she was annoyed with Noel and partially because she was lonely, she thought, Who cares? Why not go out with Eric? “Fine, let’s go. Pick me up whenever you get off and we can make an afternoon of it. I need to get out.”
Eric said, “Let’s see a movie. I checked and there’s a new Saw playing at the mall or we can see Citizen Kane at the Emerald. It’s old, but supposedly the best movie of all time.”
“That’s easy. Let’s see the best one.”
He swung by and picked her up after work. She put on a cute black dress, rhinestone earrings, and red platform pumps, actually the same pair as Taylor Swift. Or was it Faith Hill? In any case, she looked hot and completely ready to embark on romance that would fill her life with meaning and passion with whoever showed up to take her out.
After they waited around for a while, the theater canceled the showing for Citizen Kane because no one showed up except Ruby and Eric, so they had to go to Saw, along with a hoard of high-school students. Looking around, Ruby realized who was scoring all the hot deals on size twos at Forever 21. They were all at Saw and most of them had braces. She wasn’t sure if her ears were playing tricks on her, but Ruby thought she heard someone yell RARVAB.
“Do you know what RARVAB means?” Ruby asked.
“Not a clue.”
“Me, either.”
He shrugged his shoulders and they sat down for two hours of horror that felt more like five. Eric loved it, but Ruby left for the refreshment stand or bathroom eight times during the movie. It was the first time she’d embraced the way pregnancy made her have to pee every fifteen minutes. At least she didn’t have to see the movie. When it was over, it didn’t feel like the normal ending of a movie, it felt like she had just survived an event. Eric said, “Sorry, that probably wasn’t your thing. We’ll do a chick flick next time.”
“No problem. It wasn’t your fault. Who knew Saw VI was going to be such a bad movie?” she remarked without even a touch of sarcasm. She hadn’t seen any of the previous Saws. “I always thought Edward Norton was in them.”
“Well, he wasn’t in that one. How about a drink at my place?” he asked.
“That sounds really nice,” she answered. She hadn’t given up on having one of those “You complete me!” moments. Having a glass of wine by his fireplace or something would be much better than a movie. He looked like the type that would have lots of leather furniture and some hunting dogs, probably some pizza boxes. She smiled at the thought of Eric ordering pizzas by himself. Poor guy!
“Wow, you really live way out, don’t you?” she commented as they drove deeper into the country, the canopy of trees nearly blocking out the sky. As far as the country went, Ruby preferred groomed pastoral landscapes or vineyards. She might have been only one generation into credit card debt, but she already believed trees should be carved into the shapes of cones and spaced far enough apart for a game of croquet. Eric…not so much.
He finally pulled into a driveway, actually an unmarked opening in the trees. Driving into the unlit woods felt more like the opening scene for the next Saw than the second act in their date. The tree branches scraped along the sides of the car like ghostly fingers until they emerged into a cramped and musty clearing which housed a strange building with no windows and a curved roof made of corrugated metal. A solitary light provided a feeble glow in the big, dark woods. Ruby didn’t know she was looking at a Quonset hut, but she did know that buildings shouldn’t rust. She hesitated, staring agog at the dismal building. Eric came around. “Need some help? Should have told you to wear tennis shoes, I guess.” She stepped out onto the matted grass and marshy ground that made up his driveway. Her red heels sank
deeply into the muck. Ruby’s heart sank, too, knowing she would never be able to clean them up.
“It’s just down here,” he motioned. The boat was moored pretty close to the bank, but there was no dock.
“Oh…you live on a boat?” That sounded much preferable to the rusty, windowless hut. “Where’s the dock?”
“There isn’t one. This is an informal marina, if you catch my drift.”
She didn’t.
“I can’t bring myself to pay marina fees for upkeep of a tennis court, pool, and bathroom I’m not going to use.”
“How am I going to get on the boat?” She watched him jump from a rock onto the deck.
“Uh. Not sure.”
She stared for a moment. She looked around her for options other than the boat, but the mosquitoes on the mucky shoreline were buzzing relentlessly. She took off her shoes, jumped to the rock, and stepped onto the boat with surprisingly little trouble. “Wow, I guess you don’t want to come home drunk.”
“That’s for sure.”
Once inside Ruby relaxed a little. She looked around. Eric had a mini-fridge like dorm kids, a stack of pizza boxes, and a couch that appeared to have been stolen from the set of Roseanne. “So do you entertain much?” she joked.
“You’re the first person I’ve had out here in a while. Your boss came out a while back, but she refused to set foot in the place.”
“Destinee? Really?”
“Yeah, but like I said, she didn’t even get out of the car.”
Ruby laughed at the thought of Destinee with her custom nose and one of her bridal-white business suits wandering around in the woods with Eric.
“She said it wasn’t about not having a dock or a bathroom, it was about my freegan lifestyle with no responsibility or commitment. If you ask me, she’s the one with commitment issues.” He laughed a little. “I thought she was joking, but she demanded I take her home.”
“Well, I can kind of see her point. This is not exactly glamorous.” Everything on the boat was something he’d found for free. She didn’t ask about the bathroom. She didn’t want to know. “I didn’t know you and Destinee dated,” Ruby said, hoping for an explanation.
“We didn’t.” He didn’t bother explaining the non-romantic reason that he’d invited her over. “You should see this place at sunrise. It’s gorgeous. The sunlight on the water. Every day feels like a gift for me. It’s 100 percent, unqualified, high-octane freedom.” He waxed on, “What’s more glamorous than pulling up anchor and hitting the open water in the morning? Nothing to tie you down. No mortgage. No rent.”
Maybe on a yacht, not on a floating barge. Being Huck Finn held no appeal for her.
He paused a moment and walked over to his mini-fridge. Inside Ruby could see a take-out container sitting in a pool of its own juices, a package of beef jerky, and a couple of PBRs. “Want something to drink?”
“No thanks.” She was actually dying of thirst, but the pickings looked slim, both for beverages and romance. Ruby decided to ask about Estelle, “Did you officially close Estelle’s case?”
“Yep. She never even really had a case since there was no real suspicion of foul play. You quit looking into it as well, I hope?”
Mid-sentence she heard running water and she looked around to see Eric with his pants loose around his waist, presumably peeing. Into the river. He confirmed her suspicions when he leaned back and arced the stream a little higher.
As he sauntered back into the room, he noticed her look of shock—not repulsion, just pure shock. “Don’t worry, there’s an outhouse behind the Quonset over on the bank. I have a bathroom in here, but I don’t use it. Plumbing’s more trouble than it’s worth in an old boat.”
Ruby started to think she needed to go home. She was 100 percent sure that her salvation would not lie in the hands of a man who peed overboard. Eric was not her Paul Rudd. Eric must have reached the conclusion that she was not his Alicia because he was more than ready to drive her home when she mentioned she was getting tired.
In an unsurprising conclusion to the least romantic date ever, Eric asked if he could use her bathroom when they pulled into her driveway (for number two she assumed). She’d already seen him pee. It made sense given that the man didn’t have a toilet. She said yes.
…
She found Noel in the laundry room with the dryer pulled out into the center of the room. He was fidgeting with the hose attachments and appeared to be replacing something. “Noel, what are you doing here? It’s eleven o’clock.” She hadn’t seen his pickup out front. She never would have let Eric in if she had.
“Didn’t you get my text?”
“RARVAB?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, the other one about the laundry.”
“I got both of them.”
“Ruby, I’m really sorry I texted you about the laundry this morning. It was horrible timing. I was just tired and not thinking.” He looked tortured and filled with shame. Definitely pardonable.
“Hey, what’s this stuff?” Eric called from the kitchen.
Ruby’s gaze flashed to Noel at the sound of Eric’s voice. Ruby wanted to sink into the floor and let it swallow her like quicksand. Noel looked less than pleased.
A second later Eric strode into the laundry room holding a take-out box and a pair of chopsticks. He shoved a giant pot sticker into his mouth and said, “Whatever it is, it’s fucking delicious.” Halfway through that sentence, he looked up and noticed Noel.
Noel scowled.
Eric looked smug. “Hey, man. You Rube’s landlord or something?”
Noel gave Ruby a look that would blow the top off a pressure cooker. To Eric, he said, “Yep. I’m the landlord. How would you define your relationship with Rube?”
With the look of a man about to stir up trouble, he said, “I’ll let Ruby do the defining. Her body, her rules, man.” He shoved another pot sticker in his mouth.
Noel put all the force he could muster into loosening a bolt.
Eric picked up a wrench. “This one would work better.”
Noel took it without a word.
Ruby would give anything to rewind five minutes or maybe twelve hours. Noel looked so handsome in his jeans and T-shirt, like that guy who always plays blue-collar hotties in rom-coms. With a tool box at his side and his shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal some very handsome forearms, Noel looked like Mr. Right. She wished he weren’t scowling and beating on a pipe with a wrench.
He sucked in air and gave her a cold look. “You were right. There was something plugging the dryer hose.”
“I’m sorry.” She poured a lot of feeling into that apology, way more than a dryer hose plug deserved. “Thanks for fixing it.”
With a violent jerk, Noel yanked a wad of fabric from the dryer hose and tossed it on the floor between them.” A pair of pale pink, glittery underwear that said cheeky across the ass. “Nice underwear. You need to put a filter on this thing or your hose is going to get clogged all the time.”
She looked at her belly. Actually, he’s the one who needs to put a filter on his hose.
Eric laughed and said, “Like I said, man. Her body, her rules.”
When Noel and Eric finally left, after Todd joined the party and offered them a beer (as if she needed to add a third man to the evening), she couldn’t wash away the feeling of nearly missed happiness. Although she wanted to indulge in a fit of self-pity and an early bedtime, Debbie and Charmaine were wiggling and pawing at her legs. They had to pee, so she hooked them up, put on her Uggs, and walked them around the block in the crisp cool air, taking in the Christmas lights and the stillness. No one else in the neighborhood braved the unseasonably cool night, so Ruby had the whole world to herself, at least that’s how it felt. Just her and the dogs. In the stillness, she untangled her thoughts and her feelings crystallized. Noel had reached out to her and she had botched it. She needed to make it up to him with some sort of meaningful gesture. After the dogs did their business, she yelled, “Bedtime” and the
y ran into the house and straight for the bed.
Before she turned in for the night, she Googled RARVAB, which basically translated to “I’m sorry. I owe you flowers.” It was a little weird that Noel knew this. It seemed a little teeny-bopperish, but it was sweet, and she had sent back a bitchy response. She read on a little more. Apparently, the appropriate response to a RARVAB text, was a sext, a take-off on some scene from the latest Judd Apatow movie. Maybe that’s what he’d been hoping for?
Lying in bed, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she should respond and let him know she cared. With Christmas two days away, she felt particularly lonely. She wanted Noel. Maybe this is what it takes to be in a real relationship? Yes, it was juvenile and stupid, something that would happen on Keeping up with the Kardashians. But, she knew that she had to risk failure, to risk looking like a fool, so that’s what she was gonna do.
She upped the stakes and sexted him a picture of her boobs. Not her face. She’d already taken her make-up off. Or her bulging belly, which had obliterated her waist and given her the figure of a white porpoise. She managed to fill the whole frame with just her boobs. With grainy picture quality, they looked a little blurry and you had to stare for a minute to figure out what they were, but it’s the thought that counts. Right?
Chapter Nineteen
Sextmas
Christmas Eve Ruby woke to an ice storm. The trees looked like glass and the streets looked like a nightmare. Charmaine and Debbie slid around the driveway like Bugs Bunny on an ice rink. For the millionth time she glanced at her phone. Noel hadn’t responded to the sext. Apparently future lieutenant governors don’t sext, only politicians farther up the food chain, like senators.
Ruby's Misadventures With Reality Page 15