The Girlfriend Curse

by Valerie Frankel

  While listening to Luke’s description of the hepatitis A outbreak brought on by imported Mexican scallions, Peg’s eyes lit on the largest blueberry she’d ever seen. As big as a golf ball, it was, in fact, two fruits sewn together by nature’s stitch of aberration. It was a beautiful mistake, like a four-leaf clover. She had to tug to release it from the plant. It fit in her palm snuggly, the shape of a heart with a deep trench down the middle.

  She said, “A mutant.” Peg handed it to Luke. He inspected it, sniffed it. She added, “We could win a ribbon at the country fair with this.”

  “It is enormous,” he agreed. “Let’s take this back and show everyone.”

  “Thinking of anyone in particular?” asked Peg suggestively before she could catch herself. “Whoops, sorry. Didn’t mean to provoke.” But the damage was done. Luke stopped talking. She could see the shutters go up behind his eyes, the tense flicker of his jaw. Shit. She was flunking at date school again. And Linus had chosen this moment to bear down on them. He was only fifty feet away, and closing in fast.

  How to salvage this? Peg wondered. She took the blueberry back from Luke. “Let’s eat it,” she said. Without waiting for his approval, she bit into it like an apple.

  Luke watched her chew. “Good?” he asked.

  Flavorless and mushy. “Here,” she said.

  He took a bite, and then chucked what was left over his shoulder. “More appealing to the eye than the palate,” he said. “Try this one.”

  He found a berry from his basket. Dark blue, small. She popped it in her mouth. It was springy, pliant, sweet as straight sugar. “You do know how to pick them,” she said.

  “You have to look under the leaves, find the berries that don’t get too much light,” he explained.

  “Hidden treasures,” said Peg.

  Linus appeared at her side. “Baskets almost full? Good. When we get back to the house, we’ll make pies. And nip at the rhubarb,” he said enticingly.

  He’d been stewing rhubarb in brandy for pie filling. Raising her eyebrows, Peg said, “Making pies? This is your plan for a rocking Tuesday night in Vermont?”

  Linus laughed. “I admit, I’m uncool,” he said. “From a long, proud line of squares.”

  “I’m a square, too,” she said. “A square Peg.”

  Linus put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. The contact was a very pleasant surprise. When he let go, she felt a gravitational pull toward him.

  “Square? Your edges seem pretty soft to me,” he said.

  “Come on, we’re losing light.”

  The three of them picked for another hour, and then took their bounty back to the Federal. Linus led them into the kitchen. The house empty, the three of them filled the room with the sounds of baking. Linus ladled out glasses of rhubarb brandy.

  He handed one to Peg. It was piping hot. “It’s ninety degrees outside. And the oven is on,” she protested.

  “Hot is counterintuitively cooling. Go ahead. The brandy won’t bite,” said Linus. “Actually, it will.”

  The brandy was sweet, tart and thick. She’d never tasted anything like it, and therefore Peg felt compelled to consume glass after glass. As did Luke, who obviously didn’t drink much. The three of them baked five pies and drank at least that many brandies each. Peg got sweaty, but didn’t care. She liked how the trickle felt on her back and neck. She openly admired how the sheen of sweat looked on Linus and Luke’s forearms and collarbones. When the pies were golden brown and bubbling, Linus took them out of the oven. The three bakers ate an entire pie with a can of organic whipped cream.

  They were just licking their fingers when Wilma appeared in the kitchen threshold.

  Peg said, “Wilma, thank God. Tell me you brought back Coffee Heath Bar Crunch.”

  Linus said, “Have some pie.” When he looked down at the empty tin, he said, “Oops,” which made Peg and Luke giggle.

  Wilma was not amused. She stood there, motionless, her eyes scanning the kitchen in horror.

  That’s when Peg first registered the flour on the floor, the sticky spills on the counter and stove, the sink piled high with used baking tools and smashed blueberries. The room was a disaster. To Peg, the mess told the happy story of laughs and sweets. To Wilma, the mess told a different story, one with a sad ending for Linus.

  Linus said, “I’ll clean it up.”

  “We’ll all clean up,” said Peg, sobering quickly. “Right Luke?”

  She nudged him with her elbow. Luke swayed and fell off his chair. When he landed on the floor, a plume of flour rose and dusted him, sticking to his sweat. Peg leaned down (instant head rush), and poked at him. He’d passed out. And started snoring. Loudly. Peg fought back a nervous laugh.

  Wilma said, “Is he unconscious?”

  Linus said, “This is all part of my master plan.”

  “Getting drunk isn’t a substitute for genuine intimacy.”

  “No, but it’s a shortcut to it,” said Linus.

  Peg said, “It can be a substitute. Believe me.”

  “I do believe you,” said Linus.

  Luke snored loudly. “He believes me, too,” she said.

  Linus and Peg giggled.

  Wilma scowled, and then walked through the kitchen, stepping over Luke, and into the bedroom. She gently closed the door.

  Linus smiled sadly at Peg. He said, “Well, it was fun while it lasted.” She wasn’t sure if he meant his relationship, or their evening.

  Linus knelt at Luke’s side and lifted him to a standing position. Peg got on his other side. They managed to haul Luke up the stairs and into his room. They peeled his shirt off, and lay him down on his bed.

  “Gloria,” muttered Luke. “Where’s Gloria? Must watch Gloria.”

  Peg and Linus looked at each other. He said, “Don’t tell Tracy.”

  She nodded and said, “He’s going to wake up, look in the mirror and scream.” Luke’s face was a white mask of flour.

  They giggled again. She said, “Okay, let’s go clean up.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Linus. “You go to bed.”

  “You’ve got to let me help. That’s what a friend does. And I do feel like we’re becoming friends. I need male friends. I don’t have any. Which somehow means I objectify men, and am obsessed with sex. Not sure about the logic at the moment.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a sexually inclined person, Peg,” said Linus. “I am, too.”

  She knew that already from eavesdropping on Linus and Wilma that first night. In her drunken state, it took all Peg’s willpower not to find out just how sexually inclined he was. “We are friends,” she reminded herself. “And as your friend, I want you to blame me entirely for the mess downstairs. And tell Wilma I got Luke drunk. She’ll believe you. She’ll be glad to.”

  Linus asked, “How’d you score on conscientiousness?”

  “Low. Very low.”

  “Do you see yourself as someone who would take the blame for another person’s mistakes?” he asked.

  “Strongly disagree—usually,” she said. “But for you, Linus, my friend—and handsome, too, especially all sticky and shiny like you are right now—I’ll go against my nature.”

  “Why don’t you go to bed instead,” he said firmly, scooting her out of Luke’s bedroom.

  Chapter 22

  Peg returned to the women’s suite. Hangover starting already, she would have loved to slip right into her bed, but Gloria and Tracy were sitting on it.

  “What happened with Luke?” Tracy asked as soon as Peg entered her room.

  “He’s in bed, covered in flour, passed out drunk,” said Peg.

  “Right,” said Tracy. “Seriously, did anything happen?”

  “I’m telling you what happened,” said Peg. “Oh, I get it. You want to know if anything happened. Relax. He barely looked at me.”

  “So you had a horrible time tonight,” said Tracy, digging for one more ounce of reassurance.

  “I had a great time,” Peg said. “With
Linus. If he hadn’t been there, Luke would have spontaneously combusted from ignoring me so hard.”

  That made Tracy smile. “Did he say anything about me?”

  No, but he was muttering “Gloria” when they’d taken off his shirt. Peg said, “He said approximately six words all night long.”

  “Were they, ‘I’m madly in love with Tracy’?” asked the brunette.

  “Sorry,” said Peg.

  Tracy said, “Ray wouldn’t shut up about you. We were shown the vats for boiling sap and Ray says, ‘If only Peg were here to see this.’ We got a sample of fancy-grade syrup, he says, ‘Peg tastes better than this.’ Stan told us that a cluster of maple trees is called a ‘sugar bush,’ and Ray said, ‘Peg has a sugar bush.’ I finally had to tell him to shut the fuck up, and he says, ‘If Peg were here, she would slap your face.’ ”

  “I would have slapped his face,” said Peg.

  “I took care of that for you,” said Tracy.

  Gloria said, “Ben, meanwhile, could talk a crack addict into a coma. I nearly fell asleep in my Cherry Garcia.”

  “That actually happened to him once,” said Peg.

  “The secretary in his office who was too young for him, but was impressed by his title,” said Gloria.

  “You got the whole story, too,” said Peg. “How was Ben & Jerry’s?”

  “Carnival-like atmosphere outside the factory, bubble blowing, cows on display, tie-dying, face-painting. Inside the factory, a PR spiel about the quality goodness of Vermont dairy products and the company’s charitable foundation, moving along to the gift shop and free samples.”

  “Worth the hour trip?” asked Peg.

  “With Ben in the driver’s seat?” Gloria shook her head gravely.

  Peg said, “Poor Ben. He could go Inward Bound until he hit marrow, and still not have a clue. Guess he’ll just have to keep paying for it.”

  “Paying for what?” asked Gloria.

  “How sheltered are you?” asked Tracy, annoyed. “Paying for sex. Hookers. Escorts.”

  “Men actually use prostitutes?” asked Gloria, wide-eyed. “I mean, normal men?”

  Peg said, “Most just beat off a lot.”

  “Welcome to my world,” said Tracy. “Maybe Ben and I are meant to be together.”

  “Can I go to bed now? I like the pajama party idea—in theory,” said Peg. “But I’m drunk and want to lie down. I might beat off myself tonight, and I prefer to do that alone.”

  “We’ll get right to the point,” said Gloria. “We have a proposal for you.”

  “A proposal?” asked Peg, excited. “Finally! I’ve been waiting for this moment for ten years.”

  Gloria said, “You know we’re going to the Sunbridge Fair on a group date tomorrow night.”

  Peg said, “I didn’t. We’re not pairing off?”

  “Wilma told me at Ben & Jerry’s that Linus wanted to change the plans,” said Gloria.

  “I wonder why,” said Peg.

  Tracy shrugged. “I’m sure he had his reasons. Maybe he wants to have some group bonding. According to Stan, sugar shack guy—he had two functional teeth, by the way, the rest having rotted from a near-constant consumption of syrup—the Sunbridge Fair is the hottest ticket in the Upper Valley. Rides. Games. Funnel cakes. Clog dancing. The showcase event is a competition to see which team of draft horses can pull the biggest pile of concrete blocks.”

  “I haven’t lived,” said Peg.

  Tracy said, “It gets better. They have a smash-up derby—for tractors. Petting zoo. You can milk a goat. Stan was salivating between his two teeth for the freak-show booths. He can’t wait to see the World’s Smallest Woman and the World’s Largest Rat. He said he’ll demand his money back unless the woman is smaller than the rat.”

  “The world’s largest rat,” said Gloria. “I didn’t know my gay ex-boyfriend was in Vermont.”

  “It’s probably just a capybara, a South American rodent that weighs a hundred pounds,” said Tracy.

  “How do you know that?” asked Peg.

  “The Boston zoo has one,” said Tracy. “It does look just like a giant rat. No tail, though.”

  “The proposal we want to make,” interjected Gloria, “since we hate the group date idea—”

  Peg asked, “Too much togetherness?”

  “Too little freedom,” said Gloria. “Not to project onto Wilma and Linus, but they hover just like my parents. I want to go out, unchaperoned, untethered. This fair is my chance.”

  Her chance to get kidnapped, thought Peg. Tracy said, “If we go as a group, I won’t be able to sneak off with Luke. We assume you’d like to have some privacy with Ray, since you haven’t had time alone since your swim across the Connecticut.”

  Peg wasn’t so sure about that. She kind of liked the idea of going to the fair as a group. Linus would probably sweep in like visiting dignitary. She pictured him leading her around the fairgrounds, smiling, as usual, pointing out the two-headed calf, the pygmy horse. The county’s fattest twins. They would laugh, eat cotton candy and caramel apples. Go down the potato sack slide together. Skip hand in hand to the roller coaster. In the haunted house, he’d squeeze her tits in the dark.

  Tracy said, “Earth to Planet Peg. Come in, Peg.”

  “You want to bust up the gang date,” said Peg. “What do you have in mind? Tell Linus you don’t like his plan?”

  “No,” said Tracy. “We don’t think a polite request would work.”

  “So what will? Locking Linus and Wilma in a closet?”

  “We’re going to crush Xanax into their cider at dinner,” said Gloria. “My idea.”

  “Is that safe?” asked Peg.

  “I’ve searched their medicine cabinets and night-table drawers for any drugs that are incompatible with Xanax, and checked through their file cabinets for medical records that would indicate an allergic reaction.” That was Gloria. In response to Peg’s stunned expression, she said, “It only took a minute. Wilma is a highly organized person.”

  “So you drug them, they fall asleep. We go to the fair anyway?” said Peg. “Why go at all?”

  “The men will expect it,” said Tracy. “And it is the hot ticket of the Upper Valley.”

  “I am curious about the smash-up tractor derby,” said Gloria.

  Peg nodded. “I do love a funnel cake.”

  “So you’ll help?” asked Tracy.

  Do I see myself as someone who colludes to drug two innocent people against their will? Peg wondered.

  “Who’s slipping the mickey?” she asked.

  “Me,” said Gloria of the high neuroticism.

  “If it all goes wrong, you’ll tell the authorities I had nothing to do with it?”

  They nodded.

  “In that case, I neither agree nor disagree,” said Peg.

  “Meaning?” asked Tracy of the high conscientiousness.

  “I’ll go along with your plan.”

  The two women left Peg’s room, and she immediately fell into a deep, silent sleep. When she woke up the next morning, she didn’t think she’d moved in her bed, the sheets still tight against her body. She checked her travel clock. Nine. She’d missed breakfast again. She quickly showered, dressed and rushed downstairs.

  She found Linus sitting alone at the table in the kitchen with a pile of bills and his checkbook. When she saw the room, immaculate now, she felt a fresh pang of guilt for not helping clean up.

  Peg stood at the table and waited for Linus to smile up at her. But he didn’t. He just kept writing checks. She puttered over to the fridge and got herself a piece of five-grain wheat bread with a spoonful of home-pulverized raspberry preserve. She put it on a plate and sat down across from Linus.

  Who continued to ignore her. Peg said, “I’m sorry I slept late.”

  He didn’t respond. She said, “Are things okay with Wilma? Is she still pissed off? Did Luke surface yet? He must have a killer hangover. I’m okay. Physically. I feel like shit about leaving you to clean up the mess by yoursel
f.”

  Linus glanced up. Not smiling. His mouth forming an unfamiliar straight line. It was the first time in their short acquaintance that Linus seemed unhappy to see her.

  He said, “Shall I give you your evaluation?”

  “My evaluation.”

  “Your performance last night.”

  “My performance? I was pretty drunk, but I thought I remembered everything we did. Maybe not.”

  He said, “I’m talking about your performance interacting with a member of the opposite sex.”

  “I know,” said Peg. “I was teasing you. Trying to lighten the mood.” He didn’t seem lightened. She added, “Yes. Please. Evaluate. I’m ready. Don’t hold back. I’m paying good money for brutal honesty.”

  Linus cleared the space in front of him on the table. He said, “You were magnificent last night. You were natural, easy to talk to. You controlled your tendency to pry, and restrained yourself from being intentionally provocative. You successfully kept your sexual confidence to yourself instead of waving it around like a flag in space, a habit which has won you the attention of a long line of men who were only too happy to let you take the lead in every aspect of your relationship, surrendering to you the responsibility of maintaining it and pushing it forward, without giving you a moment to consider whether you wanted it in the first place. In fact, by not flirting overtly—one might say theatrically—you transmitted a sexual allure that came from who you are, not what you can do with your hair and eyes and lips. You glowed last night in the kitchen. You were irresistible.”

  A fantastic review. But Linus delivered it with such severity, Peg wasn’t convinced. She said, “I guess my glow has worn off.”

  He said, “You also got high marks on companionability. Simply put, you were fun to hang out with. If Luke wasn’t utterly smitten with you, it’s because he has serious social phobias.” Abruptly, Linus returned to his pile of bills.

  Peg said, “So I did good.”

  “You didn’t do anything,” he responded. “And therefore, you did well.”

  “So Luke’s not smitten with me,” she said.