City Mouse

by Lender, Stacey;

  Alyson came back into the room holding a Sephora shopping bag. “Okay, guys, I brought us all a little something. Just for fun.” She dumped out a pile of makeup containers, fake eyelashes and body glitter and a palate of beachy-colored blushes and eye shadows entitled, Cabana Glama—Your Destination Makeup Kit, with instructions typed in curly script describing how to glam it up on your vacay.

  “Helloooo, hotspots!” I read aloud. “Oh my god, Alyson, this is hilarious. Take your tan sexy self and your flirty come-hither peepers out on the town. You’ll have some kinda hunky asking for a sunset stroll in no time. Where in the world did you find this?”

  “Oooh, I love this color!” Ivy exclaimed. She dipped her pinky in the gold glitter and dabbed it on her eyelids, and then took the insert from my hand, “Get ready to party and explore the hottttt local scenery. Oh, I am definitely ready now!”

  “Ivy, send me over some of that Cocoa Pizazz,” Carolann said, giggling. “And a set of fake eyelashes, please.”

  I hadn’t worn fake eyelashes in god knows how long. But what the hell. The sparkly blush didn’t look half bad. Tami paraded around the room in an exaggerated catwalk, singing, “Hands in the air like you just don’t care,” and soon we were all up dancing with the music blasting, our private party of hot moms ready to roll.

  We piled into our SUV rental for dinner at the marina just a few miles up the road. The restaurant was packed with Friday-night revelers, but luckily Alyson had called to reserve us a prime table on the upstairs deck with a view of the water. Fishing boats and speedboats and a couple of white yachts sat side by side, still for the night, and as the sun dipped behind the lowlands in the distance, I felt a welcome breeze cut through the humid air, turning the daytime into evening.

  “I had the best time today,” Ivy said.

  “You falling off that banana boat? Priceless,” Alyson said, smirking.

  “It was so huge and slippery, I could barely keep my legs around it. I feel like my thighs got some workout trying to ride that thing.”

  “That’s what she said,” Tami joked. Big Yellow, we’d named it, and kidded the whole time that the banana boat didn’t resemble a huge, inflatable yellow penis—it looked exactly like one. I had never been on a banana boat before and loved speeding through the open water, jumping over the waves as the sea sprayed in our faces, pulled by a completely insane driver who thought it would be hilarious to go even faster every time he heard us scream. And it was—it was more fun than I’d had in a long, long time, a whole hour spent laughing and flying free, singing “Day-O” at the top of our lungs. “Come, Mister Tally Man, tally me banana . . .”

  “I’ll tally your banana right here,” Tami had kept the joke going the whole afternoon, and now, “Daylight come and we don’t want to go home,” was our official weekend theme song. Ivy had already downloaded it as her new ring tone.

  The waitress brought over a round of Red’s famous frozen strawberry daiquiris and we ordered a Southern feast: crab cakes with avocado and key lime mustard and the jumbo platter of coconut shrimp. Jalapeño hush puppies and fried calamari. Two orders of three-cheese quesadillas. Every bite tasted so good; melted cheese and crunchy tortillas dipped in spicy mango salsa danced on my taste buds, salty and sweet.

  “Look at that guy over there,” Tami said to Alyson. “Doesn’t he look like Matt Graziano?”

  A few tables away a group of men about our age, maybe a little younger, sat at a long table crowded with food and buckets of Palmetto beers on ice. The one sitting at the head took a bottle to his lips and I noticed his expensive watch and thick platinum wedding band. My eyes automatically did a ring scan of the others, and from what I could see they were all married. Married and wealthy, in Italian golf shirts that fit just right, with faces tanned playing rounds of eighteen. A typical table of Kiawah golfers.

  “Which one?”

  “Wearing the Boston Red Sox hat,” Tami said, looking toward one of the best-looking guys, blue eyes noticeable from across the room.

  “You’re right, he does look like him. A slightly younger version,” Alyson said.

  “Who’s Matt Graziano?” I asked.

  “My seventh-grade boyfriend. The first guy I went to second base with, behind the stairs before Mr. Foy’s English class.”

  I quickly tried to recall the name of the first guy I went to second base with, although it had been at the end of ninth grade, not seventh. In seventh grade I had barely rounded first, let alone thought about second. It was Phil someone. Phil Ran . . . kowsi.

  “And third base too,” Tami reminded her. “We used to call Matt the ‘Italian Stallion,’ remember?”

  “Of course I remember. It’s pathetic, but if you can believe it, to this day I still know his birthday. March 30. And during the maybe three weeks we were boyfriend and girlfriend, he turned twelve and I bought him an Adidas half-shirt. ADIDAS: All-Day-I-Dream-About-Sex. Remember that?”

  “Who doesn’t?” Tami said.

  “I have not heard that in forever!” Carolann chimed in.

  I hadn’t heard of that, ever, and wondered what else I had missed in seventh grade.

  Alyson looked out toward the water and continued, “Sadly, it ended when he kissed me right after he ate a bag of Doritos. No wonder I can’t forget him. For years I couldn’t even look at a bag of Doritos without getting the heebie-jeebies.”

  We all laughed, but silently I wished I still had a friend from middle school to remember my firsts with. My adolescent experiences seemed a million lifetimes ago, tucked away in attic trunks next to old report cards and yellowing papers still marked with gold and red stars. I still had Liza to reminisce with about our college days. I knew we’d always be close, but keeping up with her was turning out to be a lot harder than I’d thought. And whenever I felt a twinge of loss about it, I tried to remember the refrain I learned at sleepaway camp around the campfire: Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other is gold. Time to focus on the silver, to connect with my friends right in front of me and build new experiences and new firsts together. So far we’d had our first banana boat ride. And our first Suck & Blow Jell-O shots. Not exactly life-long-memory material, but it was a start.

  The waitress set down our dessert menus and from downstairs I heard the electric twangs of a band starting their sound check.

  “Look at this picture Chris just texted me,” Tami said, passing around her cell. It was Jeff and Drew’s heads, passed out on what looked like Alyson’s dining room table, with a bottle of spilled red wine dripping down onto her white carpet. Don’t tell Aly, the message read.

  “Ha!” Alyson said.

  “Aren’t you mad?” I asked. I wondered if Aaron was home putting Phoebe and Madison to bed like he said or if he was at Aly and Jeff’s house with the other husbands. Shit, that reminded me—I had forgotten to call. And it was already past nine, too late to say good night to the girls. I’d have to call first thing in the morning and send Aaron a text later.

  “Oh, it is definitely a fake, Jessica,” Carolann said, sipping the last of her daiquiri. “Although the wine looks pretty real on the carpet. Last year in Miami we spent half the time thinking all the photos they sent us were real. But then we figured out they were staging them, just to mess with us.”

  “This time we know better,” Alyson said. She grabbed Tami’s hand and walked over to the golfer table. Alyson did a subtle toss of her hair as she spoke to the one in the Red Sox hat, and then he and another guy stood up and posed next to Tami—first with their arms around her shoulders and then crouching down eye level with her breasts, sticking their tongues out fraternity style. Whoa. Maybe Chris had a sense of humor that would find those pictures funny, but I knew if I sent Aaron photos of me like that, even as a joke, he would be furious.

  “Good one,” Ivy said, giving Tami a high five as they sat back down. “We’ll have to come up with some more.”

  “Yeah, good one,” I echoed, and tried to think of a picture to surprise
Aaron without going as far.

  Alyson said, “Let’s get the check and head down to the bar. My Matt Graziano look-alike says the band is supposed to be rockin’. Plus, I owe them a round of shots.”

  “What about dessert?” Ivy asked. “That key lime pie looks sooo yummy.”

  “If you want it, go for it. We can meet you there,” Alyson said.

  “I’ll share the pie with you,” I said to Ivy, and was glad I did. We dug our forks into a plateful of sugary goodness topped with real whipped cream and set in the most delectable graham cracker crust. I had forgotten how good food tasted when given the time to savor it. Even if I had to roll myself home on Sunday, every morsel was worth it.

  “You know, I came like this close to not coming this weekend,” Ivy said, looking down at the remnants of our dessert.

  “Second thoughts?” I asked, wondering if she felt the same as I did in the weeks leading up to the trip. Now I was having so much fun I couldn’t believe I had even been nervous about it.

  “No, it wasn’t that—I’ve been looking forward to this trip for weeks. But Drew pulled some BS last night about a big deal of his that’s closing and how he wasn’t going to be able to look after the kids this weekend. He literally had my ticket in his hand and said he wasn’t going to let me get on the plane.”

  Not let her? I wanted to shake Ivy and say, What the fuck are you doing with this asshole? Maybe she was in denial. Or maybe it was something deeper that kept them together. Like the safety his money provided. I really didn’t know. All I did know was Ivy was going to have to be the one to say she’d had enough of Drew before I could even get close to saying anything about his behavior, and for a minute I thought that’s where she might be going. “You must have been furious,” I finally ventured.

  “I was. Sometimes I just don’t know . . . But there was like no way in hell I was going to miss this trip. So I scrambled and got our nanny to cover most of it and I told him to call his mother for the rest.” She sounded angry, but looked more hurt, and just as I thought she was about to start to cry, her face brightened and she said, “Fuck it! I’m here now.”

  “You’re here now,” I repeated. “It wouldn’t be the same without you.”

  “You’re so sweet. Thanks.” She gave me a hug. “Now let’s go dance our asses off!”

  By the time we made it downstairs, there was a line to get in. The bouncer stopped us at the door. “IDs, please.”

  There was nothing that made me happier than still getting carded. I gladly reached into my purse and handed him my license. “You just made my entire year,” I said, instantly feeling twenty again as I stepped inside.

  We snaked through the crowded room with crab traps and nets and other nautical relics hanging from the walls. Alyson waved us over to the giant oak bar with names and messages graffitied all over it. Laurie & Bill—4-Eva. Gamecocks Rule!

  “Another round of Absolut lemon drops, please. Make it twelve,” she told the bartender who looked barely twenty-one himself. He shook the concoction and poured it across the long line of shot glasses. One of the Boston guys laid down a fifty-dollar bill but Alyson said quickly, “I’ve got it on our tab. Next round’s on you for sure.”

  “Cheers,” Tami toasted, and we downed the shots, sugar masking the vodka’s bite. It seemed like we’d been drinking practically nonstop since noon but I didn’t feel even the slightest bit buzzed. Probably too much food in my stomach absorbing it.

  “Jessica, Ivy, this is Brad, Steve, Sean, Colin, and was it Darrell? Donny? Whatever—I’m never going to remember the rest of your names or who’s who, so you’ll just have to figure it out.”

  Before I could say hi, Tami grabbed my hand. “Come on, dance with me, I love this song.”

  “Give me a minute,” I said. Even though the bar was crowded, the dance floor was still pretty empty, and to get out there in front of everyone, even strangers, I definitely needed more to drink.

  Tami took Ivy with her instead and they started dancing together seductively, well aware of everyone’s eyes on them. Tami was having a great time playing it up. She casually let her fingers graze Ivy’s arm and twirled her around, most likely whetting the girl-on-girl fantasies of every guy in the room.

  “So are you all on vacation?” a voice from my right asked. I looked up and recognized one of the guys from the table. He was tall, over six feet, with broad shoulders and reddish-blond hair.

  “Yep,” I answered. “And you? Wait—let me guess. You played the ocean course at Kiawah today.”

  “Close. Oak Point today. Ocean tomorrow.” He smiled and continued: “We come down every year with our families. Rent a couple of houses for the week, do some fishing, hit the beach. And I’ll admit, we do try to get in a little golf along the way.”

  And your wives are where, exactly . . . ?

  As if reading my mind, he said, “We switch off a few nights with our better halves for babysitting duty.”

  “I think they call it parenting when it’s your own kids,” I teased.

  Tami signaled it was my turn to come out on the dance floor but I shook my head no and mouthed, Not yet. Carolann and Alyson and some of the other guys joined them, but I still needed another drink. I turned around to get the bartender’s attention. “One Miller Lite.”

  “Two,” the nameless golfer said, and proceeded to lay down a twenty.

  I was about protest and started to reach for my money, but then said, “Thank you,” instead. It felt good to have someone buy me a drink in a bar. Besides, he was married, I was married—it was safe.

  We stood for a moment, sipping our beers and watching the dance floor. The band was pretty decent, playing a mix of classic and Southern rock.

  “What do you do?” I asked, figuring he would say investment banking or law or something to do with owning real estate.

  “I work in the theater industry.”

  “No way!” I exclaimed. “I do too. I’m at an ad agency in New York, Becker Glancy. Do you know it?”

  “Of course I know it, it’s a great shop. I produce shows for Stages in Boston.”

  Stages in Boston was among the top Broadway production companies in the country, next to the Nederlanders and Shuberts in New York and San Francisco. They used SpotCo, our biggest competitor, for their advertising, and Sybil had been trying to woo them as a client for years. “Wait—what was your name again?” I asked.

  “Steven. Steven Masterson.”

  I know exactly who you are. “Next you’ll tell me your brother is Sky,” I said with a smile, and put my hand out to shake as my brain went straight into agency sales mode. “I’m Jessica. Jessica Almasi.” What a coup it would be to come home with Stages in Boston as a new client. But we were on vacation, after all, not at a work event. “Do you know Eric Winters?” I asked. He was a highly regarded GM in the Boston area we had done a project for a couple of years before.

  “Of course, he’s a good friend. We worked together on a show last month.”

  “Great guy. Please tell him I say hello when you see him.”

  Our game of Broadway geography continued awhile longer and we found we had a number of industry connections in common. In the tight-knit theater world, business was all about relationships, and a strong bond between an ad agency and a producer could last for decades. The hardest part was getting the intro to the decision makers and there I was, hanging out having a beer with the lead producer at a hugely successful production company, and so far I could tell Steven and I were hitting it off. I wondered what the holdup had been with Sybil—maybe she was getting too old to relate to the next generation of talent. I certainly couldn’t picture her out drinking Miller Lites in a dive bar in South Carolina.

  “Is it true you’ve got a revival of Follies in the works for the fall?” I asked over our second beer. I could feel those earlier lemon drops mixing with the alcohol and I reminded myself to slow it down a little. I didn’t want to let myself slip into inebriated territory with a potential client.
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br />   Just then Tami came back, and I could tell from the look on her face that this time she was not taking no for an answer. “Whatever you guys are gabbing about cannot be as important as Lynyrd Skynyrd. I mean, it’s Lynyrd fucking Skynyrd!” she shouted, and then dragged both of us out on the dance floor packed with steamy bodies pressing toward the band. The lead singer roared into the microphone, “Gimme three steps, gimme three steps, mister,” and practically the entire bar yelled back in unison, “Gimme three steps toward the door!” The words flowed out of my mouth, forever imprinted in my brain back in college thanks to a mixture of alcohol and repetition at every frat party. Bowie and the Allman Brothers still lived in my head for the same reason, and when the band moved on to them, I belted their lyrics out too, in perfect unison with everyone else in the room. Bruce came next and then the Rolling Stones. Song after song, we all knew the words, everyone on the floor sang out loud, remembering it all together to the beat of the drums and the rhythm of the bass guitar.

  “I’m just looking for clues at the scene of the crime. Life’s been good to me so far . . .”

  Steven leaned over. “Was that the Eagles or Joe Walsh? I can never remember.” The hair on his forehead was wet with sweat and his eyes were practically glowing.

  “Joe Walsh. Solo album,” I said definitively. Joe Walsh had always been one of my favorite artists, a legend and a rebel in a perpetual drugged-out haze. Hazy like I was starting to feel, as throughout our marathon dance set refreshed drink after drink kept somehow appearing in my hand.

  And then Carolann, who looked particularly hammered, hoisted herself onto the bar. She threw her arms up and gyrated her hips and the crowd went berserk. Carolann! Up on a bar! Not a second later, Tami and Ivy jumped up with her.

  Alyson said, “Come on, Jessica.”

  Even though I was well on my way to wasted, I was not going to dance on a bar, especially not in front of Steven. “Nope, I’m good right here,” I said.

  “You’re getting your ass up there whether you like it or not,” Alyson insisted, and pushed me toward a stool to step up on, and before I knew it, Ivy had my hand and was pulling me up too.