“Daddy, I gotta call you back.”
“That’s it?” he asks. “That’s all I’m good for? Helicopter-safety inquiries?”
“No, I can hear that you’re sick, so I’m gonna come by, but I gotta call you back,” I say, and click over to take Nat’s call. “Hey.”
“Oh my Christ, you’re auctioning yourself off for charity and there isn’t even a charity?”
“Thanks for making me feel even worse,” I say.
“It’s what I’m here for,” she says.
“You have no idea. This jerk DJ—”
“I know who Ryan Riley is, Berry,” she cuts me off. “He’s hot.”
“He’s a jackass,” I say. “And he made that contest up to get me back for pretending cake was my cake when it wasn’t.”
“Can you say that in English?” she says. “ ‘Pretending cake was my cake when it wasn’t’? What does that even mean?”
“There was a piece of cake in the refrigerator—on our floor, mind you, not his—and he was stealing it, and I pretended that it was mine to make him feel bad, but I was kidding.”
“This is fascinating,” she says.
“So he did this to get back at me. Which is like taking it five thousand steps too far. I didn’t make a public mockery out of the fact that he can’t get a date. Mainly because I’m sure he can get a date.”
“Okay, a) he’s flirting with you,” she says. “And b) you could get a date if you wanted one. But let’s focus on a.”
“You think he’s flirting?” I say incredulously. “That’s how you flirt? You pimp the person out to the first person who can sound like Richard Harris howling his way through one of history’s most overblown pop songs? No.”
“I’m thinking they’ll go for the Donna Summer disco cover version. She hits that ‘again’ note much better. But we’ll agree to disagree on this one.”
“We’ll agree to nothing,” I say. “That’s not flirting. It’s tormenting.”
“It’s totally flirting,” Natalie says. “It’s like boys who dunk girls’ pigtails in inkwells when they’re kids.”
“Really, Nat?” I say. “Inkwells? Were there inkwells when you were a kid?”
“You’re the one who went right past Donna Summer to Richard Harris.”
“Did you walk uphill in the snow both ways carrying your inkwell to school every day? You never tripped and stabbed yourself on your quill, did you? That’s gotta smart.”
“Wow,” she says. “You are really not happy.”
“Ya think?”
“Okay, there’s no even having fun with you right now, so I’m just gonna go.”
“Yeah, not feeling super-fun right now,” I agree. “Call you later.”
I hang up, feeling like all I’m good for is “dish” about something I’d rather forget. A blind date. Involving a helicopter, which is simply terrifying, with a person who listens to Dr. Love on a regular basis—a male person, no less. It’s so incredibly ridiculous that I can’t even believe it’s happening. And being forced on me with potential job loss as a repercussion for not partaking. How do you sit in the far back of a helicopter? There is no back! It’s all front. And all of this practically in front of an audience. Have I died and gone to hell? No and yes.
Employees make the best dates. You don’t have to pick them up, and they’re always tax-deductible.
—ANDY WARHOL
Chapter Nine
Sudafed is a bastard. A tiny red pill of evil. And I tell my dad as much when I go to his apartment to bring him chicken noodle soup and find him, jacked up on pseudoephedrine, frantically writing out his will.
“Dad,” I say. “I promise you’re going to be fine. Calm down.” Other than the occasional cold or flu, my dad is in perfect health. Well, physically.
“I feel like my head is going to explode and my heart is going to jump out of my chest and start punching me in the face.”
“Sudafed is the devil,” I say. “I’ve had more bad reactions to Sudafed than to the burritos at Los Tacos, and that’s saying something.”
This gets a smile, and I feel relieved that he’s calming down. I’m pretty sure the only actual ingredients in that stuff are speed and venom and sadness.
“Thanks for the soup, baby,” he says.
“It’s what I’m here for.”
“No, I’m supposed to take care of you.”
“Nah,” I say. “Not once I’m over eighteen.”
“That’s going to be a great birthday, you know.” He winks. “You’re still a baby to me. You’ll always be my baby.”
“Eat your soup and let me clean up a bit here.”
“My girl …” he says. “Why am I so lucky? Wait—I already know the answer. Because I have you: my lucky charm.”
My dad does as he’s told and sits at the small card table that doubles as his dining room. This is no way to live out your impending golden years. It’s his choice, I guess, but it’s not the man I knew when I was little. I look around and feel tremendous sadness. There are slips from racetrack bets, tallies of owed money scribbled on random pieces of paper, empty take-out food containers.… It doesn’t exactly scream “good living.” I start by organizing his betting receipts. I don’t even know what is or isn’t okay to throw out—although I’d like to throw it all away and pretend it never happened. I make three small piles of paper and wipe the table down with Windex until I can see my reflection. Once I’ve peered into my nostrils—not a bad look for me, I tell myself, immediately resolving to feel more self-confident around short men—I move to the kitchen.
Since Dad doesn’t actually cook, the kitchen’s not really in a bad state, although there appears to be what I think may have at one time been a banana but is now a black fossilized entity. I open his refrigerator, and he has an onion that has somehow grown into a plant, a carton of expired milk, and some moldy bread. I hold my breath and grab all three items to toss. For a moment I think I want to go shopping so he has food, but then I wonder if he’d just let it wither and die in here like everything else.
“Dad,” I say. “If I went shopping and bought you some healthy food, would you eat it?”
“Don’t go shopping for me, baby. You do too much.”
“If you’ll actually eat it, I want to.” I hold up the banana. “But if this is going to happen, then …”
“I call that the ‘Banana Experiment,’ ” he says.
“Yes,” I say. “You also had an onion experiment in your refrigerator.”
“I know!” he says, coming to life like a kid. “It kept growing. The little onion that could!”
“I think it can’t, I think it can’t. I think it can’t stay here another second.”
“Judge not lest ye be judged.”
He has a point. I continue to tidy up the place while I listen to my dad slurp his soup. I’ve always known that everything comes full circle. Our parents take care of us when we’re children, and then ultimately we take care of them—but that usually happens later, when they regress back into a childlike state. Or when they physically can’t take care of themselves. This situation isn’t that. I’m reminded of my mom warning me to let him go a little. But he has a bad cold. He needed soup.
“Good evening, boys and girls. First things first—you should know that Ryan Riley is kind of an ass,” I say into my mic the moment I turn it on. “And that little contest he created out of nowhere was sort of a practical joke gone wrong. So to clarify, I will go on this date because … well, my boss is making me, but you need to all know that this was an incredibly immature act perpetrated by the same person you guys call for love advice.”
My red light flashes. Great.
I start “More Than a Feeling” by Boston and pick up the phone.
“There’s a problem,” Bill says.
“What’s the problem?”
“Your contest winner is fifteen years old.”
“Of course he is,” I say. Because in my alternate universe the winner would be tall, dar
k, and handsome, with a kick-ass sense of humor, solid morals, and a great job, and he’d fall in love with me at first sight. So, yes, it only makes sense that my date would be a fifteen-year-old boy. Assuming it is a boy. Knowing my luck, this will just get more and more complicated.
Bill tries—and, as usual, fails—to sound reassuring. “We’re figuring out what to do.”
“Gee, I don’t know, how about you cancel it?” I practically screech at him. “I mean, it was foisted on me, anyway. It was a joke. But now the joke’s on him. Can I discuss this on-air?”
I can hear Bill thinking about it. Weighing the all-in-good-fun potential rivalry in his head.
“Sure,” he says. “Have fun with it.”
“Always,” I say, and hang up the phone.
When the song ends, I put my headphones back on and get comfortable.
“So get this, friends. The winner of the KKRL contest is all of fifteen years old, and therefore is unable to attend our date. Awwww. I’m so disappointed. Let’s see if we can get Ryan on the phone.”
I look up the direct line for Ryan’s show and dial up the KKRL station.
“Ryan Riley,” he says.
“Hi, Ryan,” I say. “This is Berry Lambert, and you’re live right now on KKCR.”
“Well, hello, Berry Lambert.”
“Hello,” I say. “I was so disappointed to hear that my date turned out to be a teenager, but then it all made sense, because, well … what grown man would be taking dating advice from—no offense—you?”
“Oh,” he says, and laughs. “No offense taken.”
“Good, good,” I say.
“The truth is everyone else who was willing to date you has already been tried as an adult.”
I laugh audibly. He got me there. “Nice one, Ryan. Touché.”
“We have a caller who wants to chime in,” says Frank, Ryan’s producer. They connect him.
“Hey,” says the male caller. “Why don’t you two go on the date? You’re obviously into each other. Anyone can hear that.”
“You couldn’t be further from the truth,” I say. “We barely even know each other.”
“I’m hearing a lot of sexual tension,” says the caller.
“What’s your name, caller?” Ryan asks.
“It’s Craig,” he says.
“Well, Craaaig,” Ryan says mockingly, adding an extra syllable to the guy’s name. “That’s a neat idea, but I don’t know if I can do that. There’s a difference between sexual tension and taking pity on the sexually frustrated.”
No. He. Didn’t. My entire body breaks out in a cold sweat. Low blow, Ryan Riley. Below the belt, even. Ahem. “Excuse me?” I chime in. “Who says I’m sexually frustrated?”
“Word on the street is the pizza boy refuses to go to your door without backup.”
“Funny,” I say.
“No tip will make up for that kind of terror,” says Ryan.
“Wow,” I say. “You hear that, caller? Is that what you call ‘sexual tension’?”
“Yes,” the caller answers. “You two have it bad for each other.”
“I’m charming,” Ryan says. “I sound like that with everyone.”
“You’re not as charming as you think you are,” I say.
“Nobody is as charming as I think I am,” Ryan says.
“No argument here.”
“If we do this,” Ryan says, “and you pay for dinner, don’t think it entitles you to … anything. I’m not that kind of guy.”
I can’t tell if he’s just playing this up for my benefit or if he’s really this cocky. Oddly enough, I’m not sure it matters.
“So wait,” I say. “A contest that you concocted in your tiny, tiny brain, a contest that was supposedly courtesy of the station, is now a dinner that I am somehow paying for?”
“Keep up with that attitude and I’m ordering the lobster.”
I laugh again and find I’m genuinely smiling. “You’re delusional.”
“You mean adorably quirky?”
“You should get a dictionary,” I say. “ ‘Delusional’ means detached from reality, which is what you are if you think I am taking you to dinner.”
“You are going to wear something nice, right? This is dinner, not poetry night at the Perpetually Single Café.”
“You’re hilarious.”
“And I think you should wear a skirt. Your legs are not just for walking you to the grocery store to buy TV dinners for one.”
This time he actually cackles, and Frank begins stomping his feet in the background. I take advantage.
“Dr. Love, huh? ‘Dr. Love.’ Wow. How did you get this job, anyway? Callers, what you’ve just listened to is exactly what not to do when wooing a person—take note.”
“Wooing?” Ryan says. “Wooing? Did people use that term the last time you had a date?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say. “What I meant was when you are desperately gushing over a lovely female co-worker.”
“Technically you’re not a co-worker,” he says. “You are sort of on a rival station. The old people’s station.”
“Good point,” I say. “And speaking of that, I’m going to get back to my show and let you get back to giving extraordinarily misguided advice to poor unsuspecting souls. Remember, folks, those who can’t do …”
“Nice to hear from you, Berry!” he says. “Call back anytime!”
I slam the phone down dramatically. But I can’t stop grinning.
Bill runs into my office moments after I go off-air, and I’m sure that I’m about to get in trouble for going too far.
“KKRL is not a rival station,” he says. “Both of us are owned by ClearWaves.”
“I know,” I say. “Sorry. He just got me so riled up.”
“No kidding. But you both riled up a bunch of listeners. Great cross-promotion. Plus, we got seventy-five emails and counting from people saying they want you to go on a date.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I say.
“You were already gonna go on a date with the winner.”
“He’s not the winner!” I say.
“He is now.”
“Is there not some law against this? Something that says you can’t pimp your DJs out for ratings?”
“Berry,” he says as he pushes his greasy strand of hair out of his left eye and back over his barren scalp. “What’s the harm?”
“There’s just general harm,” I say, really making no sense at all. Then I stretch the facts a tad for effect, adding, “There’s harm in you treating me like a prostitute.”
But the truth is that under normal circumstances there would be no harm. The truth is he’s actually really cute and smart and funny, and maybe in some other circumstance I would really like to go on a date with him. Ryan, that is, not Bill. But not these circumstances. First of all, he’s going out with me only because my date turned out to be in high school, and second, if I make one mild-to-extreme faux pas, his entire listenership will hear about it, in detail and embellished, I’m sure. No, thanks. And third, this technically makes Ryan Guy Number Three. Which I don’t necessarily want him to be. This cannot mean good things.
“Berry,” he says. “I really don’t understand your reluctance. This is someone you know. A colleague, if you will.”
“See, Bill,” I say, at my wit’s end. “That’s just it. The phrase you just uttered, ‘if you will,’ hasn’t come up at all—not once in this whole situation. Nobody has actually asked me if I will go on this date. It was assumed that I would go when it was some random caller, and again it’s assumed that I’ll go if it’s with Ryan. You even semi-threatened my job rather than just saying ‘Berry, will you go out on this date?’ ”
“Berry,” he cuts me off. I know where he’s going, and technically it’s my fault; now, if he asks nicely, I pretty much have to say yes. “Will you go out on this date?”
“No.”
“Berry …” he says.
“Fine.”
“Thank you.”
Nat is practically jumping out of her skin with excitement when I meet her at the diner.
“Oh my God, you should have heard yourselves,” Nat says.
“Were we embarrassing? Was I a total idiot?”
“No, you were hilarious!”
“Really?” I ask, surprised because I don’t even remember exactly what we said, it all happened so fast.
“High-larious,” she reiterates. “Seriously. And you guys have amazing chemistry. Kind of like Joe and Mika, except you’re both single so it’s not icky. I felt like I was listening to two people fall in love. In the ‘Hate-at-First-Sight’ version.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t falling in love.”
“It was definitely falling in serious like,” Nat says.
“No,” I say. “He’s too full of himself.”
“He is not,” she says.
“Oh, you suddenly know him?”
“He was just messing with you. You started it.”
“He started it by being on my floor and eating the cake!”
“He was on the floor? Eating cake? Not gonna lie, Ber. Kinda hot. Very 9 1/2 Weeks.”
“No, not on the floor. On the floor I work on and not hot. I mean … I guess technically he is pretty good-looking, and I suppose what would qualify as ‘hot’ if you were—”
“You totally like him,” she interrupts.
“What are we, thirteen? I do not.”
“Dude, I heard it in your voice,” she insists. “I know you.”
“You heard nothing. You know nothing.”
“Yeah, okay,” she says.
“So did I tell you the worst part?”
“The worst part about this terrible situation where the good-looking, smart, and funny guy wants to take you out on a date? No, by all means, tell me. Because I’m on three online dating sites, and the only guys who’re even remotely interesting are in jail. And can’t spell.”
“You’re lying,” I say.
“I’m not!” she says. “His headline said ‘Will Be Released from Prison Soon. Need a Date.’ So I thought he had our kind of sense of humor. ‘Ha ha, how clever,’ and we wrote back and forth for a bit before I realized that he was actually an inmate and wasn’t kidding. Nor was he trying to be cute when he used ‘California Penile Code’ in his subject line. I prefer it when men talk dirty to me on purpose.”
With a Little Luck: A Novel Page 11