Accidental It Girl

by Libby Street

  The last thing I need right now is any of her drama. Come to think of it, there’s never really a good time for Paige’s drama. “I’m not going to open it,” I say finally.

  Brooke and Luke each look at me with a curious mix of frustration and understanding.

  Brooke says, “Of course. Sure. Absolutely.”

  Luke chimes in, “Good plan,” and then nods his head to emphasize his simulated certainty.

  This is followed by several awkward moments of silence, during which I glare at the gigantic box in front of the TV and my two best friends shrug their shoulders at each other and mime a conversation about what to do next.

  It’s just a box.

  For some reason I feel the need to keep telling myself that.

  It’s just a box.

  But, it’s just a box from Paige.

  I’d really like to chuck it out the window and erase it from my memory. With my luck I’d probably flatten somebody on the street and become the lead story on the evening news. The bomb squad would then blow it up—as a precaution. Hmmmm. Maybe I should just call the bomb squad directly and cut out the middleman. Somewhere in my bedroom I have the card of that very nice man in the silver space suit.

  “Uh…Brooke,” pipes Luke tremulously, “a friend of mine is thinking about buying an apartment. He’s looking on the Upper East Side.” Luke sounds like he’s reading from a script.

  “Oh, that’s nice. Is he in need of a broker?” Brooke not only sounds like she’s reading from a script, she sounds like she’s doing it badly.

  “I believe he is. I recommended you.”

  “Thank you, Luke.”

  “You’re welcome,” Luke replies in an overly cheery falsetto.

  The apartment once again falls into an eerie quiet—save for the garbled, box-filtered opening notes of the Jeopardy! theme song.

  “So, Sadie,” Brooke begins, “hot date tonight, huh?”

  “Holy shit! I totally forgot!” Damn Paige. I jump up from my seat. “Help!” I plead. “I have precisely zero minutes to get ready for this date. Brooke, could you just throw an outfit together for me while I’m in the shower?”

  Brooke lets out a squeal of delight that I will assume is a yes. The fervor of the squeal worries me a little, but I don’t really have a backup plan.

  “You’re a saint, thank you,” I blubber while peeling my clothes off. “Nothing crazy, okay? I have some things from the dry cleaner somewhere—”

  “Come on!” exclaims Luke, out of nowhere. He slaps his hands to his eyes. “When will you people realize that I don’t have a vagina?”

  Oh, I’m down to my bra.

  Luke struggles with the fact that his two best friends are women who, for all intents and purposes, consider him one of the girls. While he, a completely heterosexual man, does his best to consider his two best female friends just a couple of the guys. He’s fallen headlong into one of the great paradoxes of modern life.

  I cover myself for Luke’s benefit.

  “Oh, Sadie?” Brooke says, stopping my rush to the bathroom.

  “Yeah?”

  “You might want to comb your hair first.” She points at my head. “You’ve either had a moment of hygienic challenge or discovered a new way of saving leftovers.”

  I reach up and poke at my hair. The right side of my head is a thick mass of knots and…hmmm, lovely—a bit of nacho cheese. See, these are the kinds of things Brooke notices. Of course, had it been her nacho hair debacle she’d have noticed before coming face-to-face with Jude Law. If she were to find herself in this situation—ridiculously late for a date and running around in a frenzy…actually no, impossible. Brooke doesn’t do frenzy.

  Before heading into my room I turn briefly back to Luke. “Hey, Luke…” I drop my arms and flash him my bra.

  “Aw!” he groans, before turning a glorious shade of pink. I do so love to torture him.

  After hastily shampooing the cheese out of my hair, and not waiting the recommended three minutes for the conditioner to do its thing, I sprint out of the bathroom, towels draped haphazardly over my head and body.

  Finding no outfit neatly laid on my bed, I race through the apartment and blast through Brooke’s bedroom door. “What have you got for me, O beloved stylist?”

  Walking into Brooke’s room is like stepping into a layout in the Williams-Sonoma Home catalog. She has an organizational system for absolutely every need and occasion, beautiful linen covered boxes for every wayward bit of clutter. Even her chaos is organized. Behind a reproduction Georgian folding screen is a receptacle for dirty laundry, another for garbage, and a third for things that she hasn’t decided how to classify yet. Brooke’s mother sent all of her old high school yearbooks a few months back; they’ve been in the “unclassified” receptacle ever since. Brooke can’t decide whether they should be placed with books or with photographs. This is a decided contrast to my half of the apartment. My half appears organized, but is actually a cleverly concealed nightmare. I am routinely attacked by things that rebel and explode out of drawers, closets, and the apartment’s many crannies.

  “I came up with something fabulous,” Brooke says, turning from her wardrobe. She holds up a dress, a very small dress, dripping in bright colors—tangerine, lemon, celery.

  “Brooke, that isn’t a dress. It’s a salad. Come on, seriously. Where’s the stuff I brought back from the dry cleaner the other day?” I press.

  “You mean that boring old black number with the confusing fabric corsage thingy on the lapel?”

  “Yes,” I reply.

  “I hid it.”

  “Brooke!” I plead.

  “Sadie,” she mocks. “Step out of your comfort zone.”

  “I have one of those?”

  “Yes, it’s called ‘the black death.’ ”

  I really should have seen this coming. Brooke, like male birds, beguiles the opposite sex with vivid blazes of color—and feathers. I, on the other hand, prefer to let my personality do the enticing. That is why I wear a lot of black.

  Oh, all right…I wear a lot of black because it’s allegedly slimming and has unrivaled stain-hiding properties. But really, is that such a crime?

  I glance at the clock and watch it tick from 7:09 to 7:10.

  Ugh!

  I give Brooke a very stern glare and reluctantly reach my hand out to receive the dress.

  “You won’t regret it,” Brooke says, glowing with pride.

  Yeah, right.

  Chapter 3

  I said I haven’t missed an appointment in nine months, I didn’t say I haven’t been late.

  Blatantly disregarding the cautionary placards on the escalator, I race up two steps at a time without holding the rubber handrail. I need one of my hands to keep the dress from riding up, and the other to apply lip gloss and finger-comb the wet, stringy blonde mass on top of my head into something that approximates a hairstyle.

  Ten more minutes. If I’d had ten more minutes I wouldn’t look like a drowned rat right now. Man, Paige has a real gift for complicating my life.

  At my high school graduation, she spilled, “I don’t know that I ever really loved your father,” as casually as a normal person might say, “I’ve never been fond of mayonnaise.” Just the thing I needed to help me through the already building turmoil over leaving my father all alone when I went off to college.

  At my father’s funeral, Paige let it slip that I was the result of that onerous 1 percent gap in the birth control pill’s 99 percent effectiveness rating. She went on to describe in detail how unprepared for motherhood she was and how relieved she’d been when I turned out all right. I assumed that all right was her term for responsible enough to take on the mountain of outstanding debt racked up by building the restaurant my dad didn’t even live to see open.

  When we read my father’s will, it turned out that he had left Paige his most prized possession, a fully restored 1979 Camaro. It was the only thing of value he owned. Ever. My mother’s response to this surprising an
d deeply heartfelt gesture was to say, “I never liked that car. Too noisy and small. It should be yours, Sadie.” This came, of course, just as I was preparing to move to a city where a spot in a parking garage costs about four hundred bucks a month.

  And now, there’s this gigantic brown…thing in my living room. Whatever it is, it’s sure to disrupt the relatively smooth, nearly complication-free existence I’ve been basking in for a while now.

  Gasping for breath, I reach the lobby bar and spot Todd.

  “I’m sorry,” I wheeze. “I got caught up with Jude Law and—”

  “If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard that excuse…” quips Todd with the twinkle of at least two glasses of wine in his eyes. “Don’t worry, I lied to you. The reservation is for eight.”

  “You lied to me?” I mutter, completely caught off guard.

  He nods yes as a frisky, superior sort of grin spreads across his face.

  I don’t know what bothers me more, that he tricked me or that he knows me well enough to know—without a shadow of a doubt—that I would be an hour late.

  Todd chooses to ignore the look of scorn and bafflement currently contorting my facial muscles, and hails a swarthy maître d’, who swoops in like a vulture and guides us to our table.

  “Have anything you like,” says Todd, grinning over his glass of merlot. “It’s my treat.”

  Todd peruses the menu like it’s War and Peace, squinting his eyes thoughtfully. This makes the two well-manicured black caterpillars clinging to his brow bone (he calls them eyebrows) curl a bit to form a sort of fuzzy smile.

  I’m pondering the oddity of this display when he speaks to me again. “Sadie?”

  “Uh…what did you say?” I ask dumbly, pretending I’ve just looked up from the menu.

  “Have anything you like.”

  “Oh, sure. Okay. Thanks,” I stammer.

  Todd has the meaty physical presence of an old-school enforcer for an illegal OTB. He’s thirty-five, stocky, dark, and attractive in the way that mobsters are. His face is pleasing enough, but most women are drawn to him as a protector. Todd, physically and otherwise, heavily favors his father’s side of the family tree.

  The elder Adler used the family’s kosher deli as a front for his numbers-running and bookmaking operation in Queens. Todd, like his father, has a distinct tendency toward the unscrupulous. Unlike his father, Todd lacks the fearlessness required for flagrantly breaking the law. In other words, Todd’s fear of poverty is superseded only by his fear of incarceration. Which is, I think, the only reason he became a photographer and not a stockbroker.

  Todd and I have been at this—the dating—for about three months, and I’ve known him for nearly five years. Yet, with all that, this is the first time I’ve ever seen him in a tie. It’s a bit odd, really. He almost doesn’t look like himself. He’s almost…dashing.

  Maybe it’s this place.

  The music, a slow and sultry Lena Horne album from a by-gone and much more elegant era, is creating the kind of auditory ambience that makes all the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Lavish gold and amber tree limbs rise from the many circular banquettes around the room, creating a graceful, glittering woodland canopy. It’s like we’re nestled in a magic forest. A magic forest where light doesn’t slam into your skin and highlight every imperfection, but bounces off the gilded foliage and skims over you like a breeze, erasing every flaw. It’s really a spectacular setting. And, to be honest, it’s making me a little nervous. There’s something ugly in the air, something heavy and sinister, and I don’t just mean the near toxic levels of Chanel No. 5 that are wafting off the lady sitting behind me.

  “Starters?” Todd asks.

  “I hear the polenta here is really good,” I say, trying not to stare at either his tie or his caterpillars.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard the same thing,” he replies. “We should try it.”

  “Okay, polenta it is.” Why does this feel so strange? I’m in a great restaurant. I’m going to eat. I love eating. And…Todd is in a tie. Maybe that’s what’s giving me the willies.

  I stare at the menu. I try to focus, but the double-digit prices for things like peas and spinach are making my eyes water a bit. Twelve dollars for a bowl of corn?

  Oh, wait, it’s all coming together. This place is modeled on the magic forest where they raise the eighty-five-dollar-a-plate Kobe beef they’re serving.

  Come on, eighty-five dollars for a steak? Forget Japan, if I’m going to pay that much for a piece of meat, that cow better be shipped direct from freaking Middle Earth. She better be doing her free-range grazing side by side with unicorns and lapping her water from the hands of enchanted wood nymphs. Otherwise, it really wouldn’t seem worth it.

  “I’m going to have the Kobe beef, and we’ll be sharing the polenta,” Todd chirps to the waiter who just appeared out of nowhere.

  He’s getting the eighty-five-dollar steak? What on earth could he be—

  Oh, no. Expensive meal, candlelight, the whole romantic magic-foresty thing we’ve got going on here…

  Oh, come on!

  “Sadie?” Todd prompts, caressing my hand. “What are you having?”

  “Chicken,” I reply bluntly, while surveying the room for emergency exits.

  The waiter strides off toward the kitchen, and I’m left alone with Todd…and his caterpillars…staring at me—all three of them grinning.

  “Sadie,” Todd starts, “I’ve been thinking….”

  Oh, crap. I hate it when they do that.

  He continues, “You’ve been spending a lot of time at my place lately. So, I thought, well…”

  He reaches in the pocket of his sport coat and whips out a toothbrush—with a bow on it.

  The sight of it makes me jump. My knees bang against the tabletop, sending cutlery and crystal careening into fine bone china. The clatter it makes can be heard from space; I’m pretty sure I’ve just disrupted satellite communications.

  Every head in the restaurant turns toward our table. What feels like a thousand beady little LASIK-ed eyeballs peer at me over the golden foliage and velvet booths.

  I can’t stand being the center of attention. Even when it’s something positive, like a birthday, I’d much rather be just to the left of attention’s center. Or possibly in another room. With the door shut. Hiding under a blanket.

  I give an overly dramatic chuckle and throw my head back for the sake of the onlookers. I sigh, “Oops!” Clumsy me. Nothing to see here, everybody.

  I look back to Todd, who’s still holding the toothbrush up, waving it slightly from side to side. The big white bow flops this way and that, like a flag of surrender.

  What is going on here? Todd is not this kind of guy.

  Ah, but he does love a good prank. He once had me completely convinced that Jerry Garcia was his uncle. He had supporting documentation, childhood photographs, a mean impersonation. This has got to be a joke.

  “I, uh…” I smile nervously. “Do I have something in my teeth?”

  “No,” he laughs. “It’s yours. To keep at my place. You know”—don’t say it, Todd, don’t say it—“taking it to the next level.” He said it. With a heap of sincerity. Oh, God, it’s not a joke.

  Okay, right. Let’s apply some logic here. A toothbrush is the next level? If this were the 1700s and I were a dentist, then yes, that would be the next level. In a relationship, I don’t think so. A toothbrush is a quarter of a level at best. Oh, and by the way, I don’t want the next level. I detest the next level. The next level is unbelievably messy and complicated—or so I’m told. It’s filled with emotional outbursts, and compromises, and, oh…I don’t know…antiquing.

  Damn it, I thought commitment phobia was supposed to be this pandemic crisis in New York City. Every other day I hear a horror story about the selfish urban male, how he’s just too happy with bachelorhood to settle down. Men all over Manhattan are apparently running for their lives, cowering in fear as women share their apartment keys and point
out lovely engagement rings. Guys are fleeing this way and that like rats from a sinking ship. And yet, somehow, I remain ratless. I must not be going to the right bars, or something.

  “Uh…” I begin, without any clear way to finish.

  Todd’s eyes squint again, this time the strange behavior of his eyebrows clearly stems from confusion.

  “Uh…” I stall.

  I desperately want to tell Todd that I only got involved with him because I thought he was the kind of guy who didn’t like to be tied down. I thought he didn’t like making commitments of any kind, even those involving dental hygiene.

  I also would like to explain to him that I’m just a regular, plain old, garden-variety girl, and that men aren’t supposed to want to get all emotionally entangled with me. They’re supposed to string me along, spend too much time with “the boys,” and dump me unceremoniously. Men are not, under any circumstances, supposed to introduce me to siblings, invite me on extended vacations, or—God forbid—“take things to the next level.”

  But I don’t know precisely how to phrase all of this without hurting his feelings, or explaining in detail why my slightly too-chunky thighs, persistently bloodshot eyes, and rapidly forming crow’s-feet should be a turnoff.

  Why won’t this man just play by the rules?

  Todd looks at me, concerned. “Sadie?”

  “Um, Todd…” All right, think of something, Sadie. “I…you know…”

  “No, I don’t,” he says defensively.

  My heart is throbbing against my chest. My palms are going moist and my upper lip is beginning to quiver. I have to get out of this. I can feel the weight, the pounding pressure of panic, setting in.

  “Maybe this isn’t the best time to say this,” I continue, “…but I don’t think we should see each other anymore.” Completely unbidden, a sigh of relief escapes my lips.