Things I can’t Explain

by Mitchell Kriegman

  “There’s nothing to repair,” I say, standing again. “Nick, not Rick, and I are terrific. We’re madly in love. And the sex is incredible.” Don’t ask me why I say that. It’s just that I’m furious now and damn if I’m letting this artificially enhanced person get the upper hand with me.

  “Oh! Well, that’s great,” Genelle says, almost blushing. “But … really?” she says, giving me a sad clown, lower-lip-protruding look of sympathy.

  “Really,” I say defiantly.

  “Awesome. I’m so glad things are going so well for you and Dick.”

  “Nick.”

  “Right. Nick. Sorry. Well then, all the more reason for you two lovebirds to be my guests of honor at the wedding. I can’t wait to meet him. He sounds wonderful. I’m sure he’s a total hottie.”

  He most certainly is. Most fictional characters are and, as far as being my boyfriend goes, Nick is about as real as Edward Cullen.

  “That’s nice of you,” I say calmly. “I’ll check to see if he’s available, but he’s usually very busy. Runs his own music studio. In fact, I think he’s got a brunch date with Jay Z and the Queen Bey that day.”

  “I didn’t tell you what day.”

  “Oh. Right. What day is it?”

  “A week from this Saturday. I mean, if you two are able to drag yourselves away from that cozy love nest of yours. Unless you have a problem with that?”

  “No problem. None at all,” I state emphatically. Why did I say that? I meant I have no problem. As in: I don’t care, get lost. Not We—Nick and I—have no problem. But as soon as the words escape my lips I know it’s come across the wrong way. I sigh. I have to get out of here before I dig an even deeper hole and crawl into it. “Wouldn’t miss it. Gotta go.” I head for the exit I should have headed for a full half hour ago. Right after she asked me about her new boobs.

  “See you at the wedding,” she calls after me. “By the way, I’m registered at Neiman Marcus!”

  I push out the door and wonder if Neiman Marcus sells Molotov cocktails.

  Tonight is girls’ night with Jody, et al., and I need to go home and get ready. I can’t even begin to describe how badly I need to confer with my posse right now.

  Jody, Rodgers, Piper … help!

  CHAPTER 20

  Pianos, a club on the Lower East Side, is Rodgers’s venue of choice for our monthly night out.

  Over the heads of people in the packed bar, Rodgers is standing on her chair, wearing a leather top, faded jeans, and knee-high lace-ups, waving at me, her tangle of curly dark hair bouncing.

  “C! Over here.”

  Being that Rodgers is a drummer, she picks places with music. This one is seriously Lower East Side—probably the last refuge that hasn’t been gentrified. An added plus is that tonight there’s no yellow police tape, chalk outlines, or abandoned needles on the sidewalk out front.

  The place is thumping loud. It’s the people who make NYC fascinating, and the crowd in Pianos tonight is as eclectic and interesting as it gets: Everyone drinks out of jam jars (take that, Dartsy), there’s a guy at the bar who seems to have gotten his fashion sense from the last three Batman movies, and I notice lots of animal tattoos along with some finely trimmed facial hair, and quite a few people taking pictures of what they eat with their phones.

  At the opposite end of the restaurant on a slightly raised stage is a band called the Fernandos that includes an accordion, banjo, cello, and chanteuse. You don’t see that in Springfield. I think, sadly, that Nick probably knows this joint. I look around, hoping for a brief moment that he might be here.

  I shoulder my way through the crowd to the table in the corner where my most trusted advisors seem like they are each about three martinis in. I have some catching up to do.

  “Hi!” I throw my arms around Piper, who is all cleaned up for a change. She usually wears some paint-splattered boy-shirt and jeans caked with the palette of her current work, but tonight, she’s wearing a black-and-white striped top and whiskered black denim shorts. I look around to see if she’s brought her girlfriend along but apparently not. Phew. The girlfriend doesn’t totally mix well with the old gang. Rodgers jumps down from her perch and gives me a big 360 hug.

  “Love the place,” I say.

  “Yeah. There’s this lounge upstairs called ‘Upstairs,’ naturally; kind of a showcase for up-and-coming bands. The Hefties are playing there next month.”

  We bump fists.

  Rodgers is the drummer in an alt girl band called the Dead Hefties, but not because any of the band members are particularly chunky. They named themselves after the trash bag. Go figure. She and her family emigrated from Trinidad and she has a degree in economics from the Sorbonne, no less.

  Jody and I opt for an air kiss. She looks beautiful; her hair is so lush it almost takes up the whole seat next to her. She’s all Brandy Melville in a dainty floral sundress that’s mostly backless. Actually, it’s mostly fabric-less. I think how amazing it is that we pay so much money for a wisp of cloth. It’s less than one square yard. And then that whole OS thing is BS for everyone besides Jody. But I have to admit it looks great on her and there are no apparent bruises as far as I can see, which is either a good sign or just means Rupert’s still out of town.

  I order a drink and the girls fill me in on the dish. Jody’s got another big shoot next week for some haute couture designer who scraped her way out of a backwater town in Alabama and won some reality fashion show contest.

  “All her Ds look like overalls, which is adorbz but totes sideboob and cheeks, tad inappro-pro,” Jody says, leaving a few of us wondering what she’s talking about.

  Piper has been painting nonstop; she’s the artist in our group. I notice a little bit of ochre paint behind her ear, but decide not to say anything. Usually it’s in her hair, too. She makes these massive painted sculptures that after years seem to be finally catching on, and she’s preparing for her first gallery show in Chelsea.

  And Rodgers has the Upstairs gig to look forward to.

  “’Sup with you, C?” Jody asks, sipping her dirty martini. “Did you jam on that J-O-B?”

  “Natch!” I can’t help saying in Jody-speak. My Nuzegeek news is met with a chorus of war whoops and the demand for another drink and more fist bumps all around.

  I fill them in on MT and Dartmoor, the Norm-on-his-knees episode in front of MT’s office, and my subsequent profile of his business venture.

  “Totes amaze,” Jody remarks. “Norm is supz sexy, but I think he’s bi.”

  “Sexual?” Piper asks.

  “P,” Jody replies.

  “As in polar?” Rodgers asks on behalf of us all. Jody nods and looks a little embarrassed that we have so much trouble following her. I know she has other friends, or betches, as she says, who totally abbrevspeak. It must be nice for her to have those peeps or tweeps or whatever she calls them who always understand her.

  “Speaking of mental disorders,” I say, “I had coffee with someone from Springfield today. You’ll never guess who.”

  Jody launches in, obsessively. “Clifford? Paulie? Olivia? Don’t tell me!” I shake my head repeatedly as she lists absolutely everyone we know from home. “… Hillary? Elise? Elsie?” Piper and Rodgers look at us like we’re talking about a lost tribe in Papua New Guinea.

  “Genelle Waterman,” I say, finally figuring it’s gone on long enough.

  Jody almost shoots gin out of her nose.

  “G-Bomb? Why the effin’ eff would you do that?”

  I give them the Cliffs Notes version of Genelle’s superboobs, her faux apology, her wedding invite, and my misunderstood, ill-considered acceptance.

  “Somebody’s marrying that trampage?” Rodgers snorts. She’s never met Genelle but she’s heard enough about her.

  “She’s planning to invite you, too, Jody.” Jody makes a disgusted face as if she’s stepped in a sidewalk dog pile while wearing sky-high Louboutins. “I could kick myself for saying yes,” I add.

  “Why did you?
” Rodgers asks.

  “I just couldn’t let her have the upper hand. High-schooling, I know,” I answer.

  Everyone quietly absorbs that remark. We’ve all been there at one point or another—reacting to people, especially childhood friends, as if we’re still in tenth grade.

  “Well, you’re not actually going, are you?” Piper asks.

  “I kind of backed myself into a corner over the whole Nick thing,” I say.

  “Did I miss something?” Piper asks. “Who’s Nick?”

  “That’s CCG’s real name.”

  “Whoa! You know his real name?” Rodgers asks.

  “Micro-relationship violation!” Piper scolds, wagging her finger at me.

  “Tell me about it.” I sigh and drop my chin in my hands.

  “Rewind,” Rodgers demands. “When and how did you score his real name?”

  I’d forgotten how long it has been since I’ve seen my peeps. That’s the problem with being a freelance writer: You’re stuck in your head so much of the time that you forget there are other people in the world who don’t know every tiny thing that has happened to you.

  I recount the story of my faux double date with CCG and my parents. The near poisoning at the Indian restaurant and the Harley are the big hits of the story.

  “Supz hilars,” Jody declares and everyone agrees. “CCG sounds yummers.”

  Then I get to the uncomfortable part where we’re millimeters from each other’s lips and we don’t kiss. Everyone moans in disappointment. Me, too, all over again. It feels like all the air has gone out of the room.

  “I hate to admit it, but I can’t stop thinking about him. I was practically stalking him this morning. Not on purpose, but somehow I ended up in front of his music studio, this really cool place in Williamsburg called HeadSpace.”

  “Whoa!” Rodgers throws her hands in the air like she’s on the wrong end of a stickup. “Are you telling me that the CCG you’ve been obsessing over all this time is actually Nick from HeadSpace?”

  Piper frowns. “You know him?”

  “Well, yeah! I’ve played drums on some of his tracks.” She sips her drink and gives me a grin over the rim of the glass. “Guy’s got the cutest ass in indie music, I’ll tell you that much.”

  “No argument there,” I say. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Okay, let’s get this straight,” Rodgers begins. I know what’s coming next. It doesn’t matter how many tamarind martinis Rodgers might drink, she’s still the one who minored in algorithmic design at the Sorbonne, the second-oldest academic institution in the world. Her logic is impeccable. We frequently stop to ponder her delineation of an issue we’re obsessed with figuring out. I’d give anything to triangulate the Nick-Genelle-wedding dilemma, so I’m a very attentive student.

  “So you lied to your parents about Nick and ended up falling for the boy.” I nod.

  “Then G-Bomb shows up out of the blue and says she knows you’re not getting along with the boyfriend you don’t really have? There’s something I’m missing here.”

  I nod again.

  A high-pitched scream pierces the air. We all turn to look at Jody in shock at the eardrum-popping noise that only certain breeds of dogs can tolerate.

  “OMG. WTF. ICB!” Jody seems to be speaking in tongues. Or letters, anyway.

  “Jesus, Jody! What did you have to pierce my eardrums for?” Rodgers asks.

  “I just remembered what I was supposed to tell C last week!” She takes a fortifying slug of her martini and looks me in the eye.

  “My ’rents ran into your ’rents at the VS buying the CCC on the PM,” Jody says. We all look at her blankly.

  Then each other. Then back at Jody.

  “Okay, Jody, you’ll have to explain,” I ask.

  Jody takes a deep breath and excruciatingly translates to normal-speak, as if we’re from a foreign country. We can all see this is very taxing for her.

  “My pa-rents ran into your pa-rents at the C-VS buying Coricidin PM,” she says, painfully articulating every word as if English was our second language.

  “Wow, she even abbreviates her abbreviations,” Rodgers comments. “That’s impressive.”

  “But where does Genelle come in?” I ask.

  “Genelle’s mom was there, too,” Jody says. “Jan told them that she and Marsh met your BF, but later, at JFK, saw some betch snogging him at arrivals and they were like WTF.”

  “My mom said ‘WTF’?” I ask, astonished.

  “IDK. Maybz. I think.”

  “Well, the icing on the cake is that Genelle Fucking Waterman has invited my parents to the wedding, too,” I add, pouring salt on my own wounds.

  Honestly, I haven’t a clue what to think about it all when I notice Rodgers giving me a knowing nod. That means that the algorithmic formulas she’s been calculating all this time in her highly advanced frontal lobe have all fallen into place.

  “Pretty sure we’re talking about Roxie.”

  “Roxie?” The name sets off a little warning bell in my brain. “Roxie … Buggles?”

  “Yep, you’ve heard of her?” Rodgers nods gravely. “The chick makes Courtney Love look like a pet gerbil.”

  As I suspected, Nick’s girlfriend is the rocker from the website that I saw in the red plaid pants in all her glory outside HeadSpace the other day.

  “She doesn’t seem like his type,” I say in what may be the understatement of the century. “Look, is this her?” I tap the screen on my phone and pull up the photo of Roxie I was looking at earlier.

  “Okay, that’s cray-cray,” says Jody, “we’re just going to pretend it’s not at all creepy that you have this girl’s picture on your phone.” I can tell she’s alarmed—she’s talking normal.

  “Don’t worry, C, you’re way prettier than she is,” says Piper. “And I bet you have a much shorter rap sheet.”

  “Listen, Nick is always complaining about Roxie,” Rodgers says. “They have that on-again, off-again thing. I know for a fact that he’s tried to get out of it altogether but keeps getting sucked back in somehow. She has a knack for throwing scenes and for some reason, he falls for it. It’s like his fatal flaw or something.”

  “Maybe they were in an off-again when he almost kissed you,” Piper adds hopefully, “or maybe they’re in an off-again right now?”

  I feel like my face is an open book when she says that. I know they can all see what I’m feeling.

  Jody puts her hand on mine and turns solemnly to address the others.

  “I say C goes back to that coffee cart ASAP and spills the wedding sitch to CCG all cajj.” It only takes the rest of the girls a second first to translate what she’s said and then to consider.

  “Right, then if he’s still with Roxie, he’ll say no,” Piper reasons. “If they’re over, he’ll say yes.”

  “That solves everything,” Rodgers adds.

  “Ya think?” I ask, cringing as my heart perks up.

  The advisory board nods in agreement.

  CHAPTER 21

  Relieved to be alone with my thoughts, I walk back toward FiDi down Bowery, which is surprisingly well lit and still busy this time of night.

  So Dad and Mom saw Nick kissing Roxie at the airport. That amazes me not only for the obvious reasons, but also because I know how hard it is to find someone at JFK when you’re actually looking for them. By sheer coincidence, my parents just happen to stumble across my pretend boyfriend without even trying. It’s an occurrence that’s so damn unlikely, I have to make up a new word just to describe it:

  * * *

  serendumpity (n.) the inevitable discovery of what we would rather not know. Coined in the present by Clarissa Marie Darling. seren + dump + -ity the antithesis of serendipity, 1754: coined by Horace Walpole, which was based on the Persian fairy tale “The Three Princes of Serendip,” whose heroes “were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.” See related synonym zemblanity William Boyd, 1998.

&nbs
p; * * *

  My folks must be devastated knowing that the guy I was supposedly mad for is cheating on me with a rocker girl who looks like Alice in Wonderland on acid. It kind of begs the question, why the hell didn’t they call me the minute they disembarked in Ohio and warn me that my guy had gone astray? But then again, Janet and Marshall Darling have a lot on their plates right now.

  It’s still early enough for me to call home. So as I throw my keys on the table by the door, I decide to “grim up,” as Aunt Mafalda used to say, give Mom a ring and just come out with it. All of it. Everything—from the demise of the Daily Post to the lie about Nick being anything more than my former caffeine dealer. Then if there’s an actual chance for Nick and me to be together, it won’t be based on this circuitous nightmare.

  “Hello, Darling residence.” I can’t believe she still answers the phone that way. It’s so old-fashioned.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Clarissa!”

  “Listen, Mom, I want to—”

  But that’s the last word I manage to get out of my mouth. Mom starts talking a blue streak about how worried she is. Marshall’s so completely down on himself that she can’t take it anymore.

  “Do you have any idea how hard it has been to live with someone who is always depressed?” she says. It makes me depressed just thinking about it.

  Apparently they’ve been going to therapy with some new doctor, an Austrian woman named Dr. Leisl Lyman, which is helping a little.

  “He’s finally admitted he can’t get past the fact that his wife is earning three times the money he ever made,” she vents with some relief. “I love your father, and I know how proud he is, but he and I didn’t exactly sleep through the entire women’s liberation movement.”

  “But Mom, isn’t Dad—?” I begin again, but she talks right over me.

  “Don’t defend him, Clarissa. I understand you and your dad are close and that’s fine. I love him deeply. But Marshall and I marched for the Equal Rights Amendment in Washington when we were still in college. We watched the ‘Gloria Discovers Women’s Lib’ episode on All in the Family and even the Maude abortion episode together. I remember Marshall crying when he saw that. And this is the man who gave me an official U.S. Treasury mint condition Susan B. Anthony coin for Christmas!”