“Do you know the definition of clinical insanity?” Rick asked Jack incredulously. “What kind of guy just hands over his credit card to some chick, especially in Vegas?”
“A generous one,” I quipped. That was Jack’s Achilles’ heel. He was too damn nice.
“Monica and I had been dating for about eight months at the time and I hadn’t a clue she had a gambling problem,” Jack told America. “But let me tell you, when these guys in dark suits with earpieces come up to you and each one grabs an arm and pinches you in a way so that you know they mean business, it’s a freaky deal.”
“So why’d they come after you?” Rick asked.
“It was my credit card she’d just maxxed out. The only fortunate thing to come out of it—aside from the decision to end the relationship—was that I’d handed her a card with a preset spending limit. If I’d given her my American Express card, I’d probably be in some Dickensian debtor’s prison for the rest of my life.”
“Well, this gives added meaning to the phrase ‘a fool and his money are soon parted,’ ” Rick said, as Jack descended the cone throne’s pedestal and returned to his own chair. I wished I could have belted our Hollywood host in his perfectly white, perfectly capped teeth for taking potshots at my lover’s insanely admirable, unflagging good nature and generosity.
“Liz Pemberley, come on down!” Rick announced. “Or rather, come on up! So, what’s tonight’s tale of woe, Lizzy?”
Did I ever mention that I really hate to be called “Lizzy”?
“Oh, I thought I’d contribute my variation on this credit card theme, Ricky. Actually it’s a kissing cousin to Jack’s experience.” I discussed my less-than-idyllic Cancun vacation a few years ago when I ended up in credit card debt because my boyfriend at the time had more or less pissed away two weeks’ worth of hotel accommodations through his generous, multiple contributions to the resort’s bars and gaming tables. So I had to pay the bill or consider what life might be like in a Mexican jail.
The next name to pop out of the gumball machine was Candy’s. She took her wad of gum from her mouth and stuck it to the underside of her captain’s chair. When she sat down in the hot seat, she slid her fingers into the metal polygraph cones and took a deep breath. As she began to speak, I noticed that, uncharacteristically, she was keeping her boisterous, gravelly voice very even.
“I was going to tell youse tonight about this date I had where it was a Saturday morning and we were going to go watch a local little league game which my nephew PeeWee Fortunato was in—that kid’s a great shortstop, by the way—and my date, Vinny, asked me to take my car and drive it ’cuz he had a migraine and couldn’t see straight. He said he was seeing colors, ya know, so he thought he’d be a menace on the road. But he was real firm about not wanting to break our date. So I picked him up and we’re driving along Fifth Avenue in Bay Ridge and we’re just past Kleinfeld’s Bridal, and he tells me he needs to stop at a bank to get some cash, ’cuz he’s got none on him and what if we want to get a Coke or a coupla hot dogs or something. So I’m patting my pocketbook and telling him ‘No problem, I got money. And we’re gonna miss the first inning if we don’t step on it.’ And ya know, in little league, they don’t play the full nine, so you get there late, you miss a good chunk of the game. But Vinny insists he’s gotta stop at the bank. So I pull over to the curb and he goes inside, and whaddya know, maybe five, seven minutes later, he comes out with, like, this canvas bag, and he opens the passenger door of my Accord and says, ‘Floor it!’ and I says, ‘What? You got a rabbit turd for brains?’ And I kicked my leg out and he got a bootful right in the nuts. So he grabs his crown jewels and drops the bag of cash on the sidewalk, and then I hit the gas, with my passenger door still open and I leave Vinny there on Fifth Avenue, still clutching his balls. The good part of the story is that I got to see my nephew make a great play to end the first inning and I told my friend Laurie-Ann’s brother Joe, who’s a cop—and whose son Joey Jr. is the team’s centerfielder—about Vinny’s little trip to the bank.”
Candy licked her lips. “Anybody gotta drink of water?” she asked. No one had ever made that request during the actual show. Geneva indicated that Rick needed to cut away to a commercial. He announced that Candy would continue when we returned to the air.
“So as I was saying,” Candy went on, when we resumed broadcasting, “I was going to tell you all about my very brief date with Vinny—he wasn’t a close friend or nothing, by the way—but I changed my mind. Instead, I just want to say that all of the stuff I’ve been sharing with all you out there for these past seven weeks, eight counting tonight, has been total bull—”
She was bleeped, but those of us on the set and in the studio audience heard the entire word. There was a collective murmur; people were unsure how to react to this bombshell.
“Yeah. I’ve been making it all up.”
“Uh . . . Candy?” Rick said after what seemed like an interminable pause.
“Yeah, Rick?”
“The needle on the polygraph didn’t move when you were talking about your date with Vinny. Or any of your other dates over the past eight weeks. But it actually went haywire when you just told us you’d been fabricating these anecdotes all this time. We’ve been watching the screen above your head. We can even run back the footage and show you, can’t we, Geneva? Is Rob Dick around? Does anyone know what the rules are for something like this?”
From her position alongside camera two, Geneva shrugged. She made a hand gesture to Rick to move on.
“Well, Candy, unless you’re a good enough liar to fool our expertly calibrated equipment, courtesy of the PrevariTech Corporation, it would seem to me, and to our studio audience—” Rick gestured to them, almost in supplication. “It would seem that you’ve actually been telling the truth all along and you’re only lying now by saying that you invented all your disaster dates.”
“But if you lie, you get kicked off the show, right?” Candy said.
“Well, that’s up to tonight’s studio audience. And I can’t presume to vouch for what they’re thinking at this moment.” He raised his hand for quiet. “And, correct me if I’m wrong, but this show will be even more suspenseful if for the time being we don’t let on our opinions about Candy’s little performance this evening.” He offered his hand to Candy, who rose from the cone throne and permitted Rick to escort her back to her seat. She recovered her gum and popped it back in her mouth.
“And now for the final Bad Date contestant of the evening . . . Anella Avignon!” Rick said, as the last ball of the night was ejected from the machine.
Nell sauntered up to the cone throne and installed herself. “A lot of you think that because I grew up on Park Avenue that I’ve led a charmed life. It’s been pretty good, that’s true. But I’ve had my share of ups and downs.”
“You mean we shouldn’t hate you because you’re beautiful?” Rick quipped.
“Yeah, whatever,” Nell responded. “And it’s also true that I haven’t had as many nightmare dates as a lot of my fellow contestants up here have had. That’s mostly because I’m not as brave as they are. They just keep getting back on that dating horse, no matter how many times they get thrown, thinking that Mr. or Ms. Right is still out there waiting for them. And they’ll never find them if they stop looking.”
Nell adjusted her fingers in the metal cones. “And I’m here to confess that several days ago, I did something really nasty. And I’ve been really worried about my karma since then, so maybe if I share it with everyone tonight, then, you know, it will sort of wipe the slate clean.”
I felt a knot in my stomach.
“Okay, I haven’t had thirteen really bad dates. I mean, at least I can’t remember having had them. So I decided to find a man and get myself a date that would be a real nightmare and tell everyone about it tonight.”
Nell went on to explain how she had gone on the Internet and found a Future Farmers of America chat room. “So I started e-mailing this guy named A.J. whose fami
ly owns a dairy farm near New Paltz. And I made him think I was a real Daisy Mae type, so he would ask me out. And I don’t know whether he saw through my bull or whether my country-bumpkin act was what made him invite me on a picnic, but I went. And I thought I would be telling you this evening about how this uptown girl arranged to meet this upstate guy, this hayseed who wore overalls and chewed on a stalk of wheat or something, and we’d all have a good laugh.”
Nell leaned forward a bit in the cone throne. “So, honey, I just want to apologize for being a real twit and having, well, dishonest motives. Because I really love you. He’s here tonight, ladies and gentlemen. My fiancé, A.J. Stevens.”
Your what? I thought.
The audience strained to see who Nell was talking about. The size of the knot in my stomach doubled.
“Yeah, our first date was a fabulous, long romantic weekend upstate, and now we’re engaged. Isn’t that great?! A.J.’s family supplies most of the milk and other dairy products to Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk Counties. And he’s got a master’s degree in business administration from Cornell’s agriculture school, which we call ‘Moo-U,’ and he’s really gorgeous . . .”
Camera one zoomed in for a close-up of A.J. Good God, he really did look like a Ken doll. Tanned, handsome, and blond. He and Nell would make an ostentatiously good-looking couple.
“. . . and sweet and kind and generous and funny,” Nell continued.
I found myself beaming. It may have been the quickest courtship of the century, but for Nell’s sake, I hoped she’d have the same blissful look on her face forty years from now.
“Although, I have to say . . .” Nell paused dramatically, “that when A.J. told me that it was something that I shared about myself in one of our e-mails that really made him go for me in a big way . . . well, I don’t really remember saying the things he was talking about. I mean, I can get kind of flaky sometimes, so maybe I did. I don’t even know if you can print out an IM conversation on the Net, but I have a sneaking suspicion that A.J. got a little help from somewhere.”
The knot in my stomach felt like it was the size of a watermelon. Since Nell had invited me to help her snag A.J., would she now cleanse her karma, expose me as her ghostwriter, and suggest that I might have been responsible for the mysterious push her romance had received?
“A.J. says that I shouldn’t worry about remembering exactly what I told him about myself and my interests and all that,” Nell continued. “He just says we should be grateful that God brought us together. And I think that is so loving and so sweet. But I have a feeling the intervention was maybe slightly less than divine and a little closer to earth.”
Please don’t look at me, Nell. Please don’t look at me.
She didn’t.
Whew! Double-whew!
“Anyway, I’ll be moving upstate to live with A.J. And we’re going to open a little petting zoo on his family farm, so that kids can understand how to be kind to animals and learn to love and respect and appreciate them. And there isn’t going to be any charge for that; it’ll be free. In fact, the very first animal to live at our new zoo is Johnnie Walker. Sweetie, show them the kitten.”
The camera panned over to A.J. who held up the furry creature.
Nell told everyone how she had come to rescue the cat. One or two audience members spontaneously pledged financial support for the zoo venture. Bad Date was turning into a Paws telethon. I love the magic of live—or at least seven-second delay—television. The show’s producers and staff had totally lost control of their program. Or had they? I bet they banked on the beauty part of these reality shows being that sometimes you never know what’s going to happen next.
When it came time for the audience to vote someone off the show, I’m not sure anyone had a clue how things would turn out. Ordinarily, Nell would have been the obvious choice, but Candy had so openly and flagrantly dissed the rules of the game. Maybe they would punish her. On the other hand, if they didn’t kick Nell off the show, then what was the point of any of the rules to begin with? She hadn’t shared a bad date story.
It was a nail-biter for a minute or so as tabulated votes seemed to trickle in. People were having a hard time making up their minds. Finally, Rick Byron made the announcement that all the votes were in and Nell had emerged the winner, or should I say the loser. She shook hands with Rick Byron, then held out her arms to A.J. From God-knows-where A.J. had managed to produced a cellophane-wrapped bouquet of two dozen long-stemmed American Beauty roses, which he presented to Nell.
Bad Date’s house band played the Mendelssohn wedding recessional as the two of them, Barbie and Ken, walked off the set and out the stage door reserved for the losing contestant of the week.
Back in the Green Room, I gave Nell a huge hug, spent a few moments chatting with A.J., who it seemed couldn’t do enough for his new fiancée, and the Bad Date contestants, staff, and crew toasted their future.
Jack and I went back to his hotel where we ordered Monte Cristo sandwiches from room service, made love, and then he just held me close until I figured I ought to be heading home. When he began to gently cajole me into staying the night, since Nell had A.J. with her this evening anyway and wouldn’t be wasting time wondering where I was, I readily agreed. The last time Jack and I had awakened together had been aboard the Circe , and I’d been missing the embrace of his warm morning arms.
It was hard to fall asleep, though. My eyes remained wide open. I was thinking about Jem moving in with Carl and prenuptial Nell about to head off into the woods with A.J. My overwhelming happiness that both of my roommates had found true love was somewhat dampened by my anxiety about being able to make do with no job and a big, rambling, old-fashioned New York apartment, which had been rendered affordable by splitting the rent three ways. In Manhattan, if you’ve got a great deal on an apartment, as we ladies did, there is no moving to a smaller place if you find yourself strapped for rent money. New leases on smaller apartments are just as high, if not higher, than renewing a long-standing one on a bigger place.
It was sort of a moot point anyway. With all the recent events in my life, I was looking at not being able to afford to live anywhere. Jack enfolded me in his arms, I pressed myself up against his chest, and drifted off to sleep enjoying the next few hours of protection and solace his love and companionship would bring.
28/
Taking the Bull by the Horns
When I returned to the apartment the following morning, Nell, whose feet had heretofore only been comfortable when her stiletto heels were tapping against the asphalt, was squatting on our living room floor in a pair of faded jeans and a plain cotton T-shirt, tossing her spiky footwear into a suitcase and waxing rhapsodic about things like alfalfa.
I’ve always envied Nell because she’s so damn sweet you forgive her for being so drop-dead gorgeous. But now I had new reasons for my Venus envy. Nell had the guts to accomplish what few women would do in real life—jettison everything she’d ever called familiar for the lure of true love. I told her that the Jill Clay-burgh character in An Unmarried Woman should have taken a leaf from Nell’s new gamebook.
“What?” Nell looked at me quizzically.
“City mouse Jill Clayburgh’s got this opportunity to have an incredible life with Alan Bates, a gorgeous, sensitive, artistic guy who wants to do nothing but adore her. Except that the trade-off is that she’s got to move to the bucolic mountains. And what does our intrepid model of feminism do? She passes up her best chance at happiness in favor of bouncing around in a jog-bra and looking across the East River at Queens every morning.”
“I think she’s an idiot,” Nell sniffed dismissively. “By the way, do you think I can get married in white?”
“Apart from the standard objection, why not?” I asked her.
“Dirt, silly. I always dreamed of a white wedding dress with a long flowing train. Something Grace Kelly might have worn, you know? But it’s probably not appropriate for an outdoor wedding.”
“Probab
ly not one in the Great North Woods,” I teased. “Although all the little woodland creatures from your petting zoo could come and sit on your train like you’re Snow White or some other Disney heroine who camps out in the heart of the forest.”
“A.J. and I decided to exchange our vows on that plateau where we had our first picnic. But Mummy would have had kittens if we tried to have the reception up there, so we’ve already managed to snag the Mohonk Mountain House for that. I told you, A.J.’s family’s very well connected up there.”
I admired Nell’s surety. She can be a supreme flake, but once she makes up her mind about something, she is as decisive as Jem. We’d both accepted Nell’s offer to be her bridesmaids, just so long as we didn’t have to wear Timberlands or Birkenstocks with our backless gowns. “Nell?”
She looked up from her packing. “Yeah?”
“Remember what you said on Bad Date last night about A.J.’s divulging what clinched it for him . . . in terms of his really falling hard for you . . . that it was something you’d told him in one of your IM conversations?”
Nell nodded, held a royal blue pullover up to her chest, surveyed it, then decided to pack it.
“You’re not a flake. I mean, not that time, anyway. I played Cupid again. Or Cyrano. I put words in your mouth and sent them off to A.J.”
Nell stopped packing but didn’t look up. The room grew very quiet. “I had a funny feeling that might have been the case,” she said finally. “And I can hardly blame you for it. I mean, we started out, you and I, as partners in crime, which was a pretty low thing to do to A.J. So I don’t know what ‘we’ told him when I wasn’t looking, but it sort of doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things what you wrote to him about me, because what you wrote to him on your own was at least the truth. When you and I started out writing him those e-mails, I didn’t want him to know the real me, so I could have a bad experience on our date. I mean, how dishonest is that?”
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