Dear Dwayne, With Love

by Eliza Gordon

  “Oh. Yeah. Sure,” I say, shoving my phone into my bag.

  “Thank you. I wasn’t sure who to ask, but I figured asking a mom would be safe,” she says, flashing her perfectly white teeth as I tie the strands in a bow. “Are you waiting for your daughter? Is she auditioning?”

  A mom? I look like a mom?

  “Oh, uh, no. I don’t have children. I’m auditioning today.”

  She turns in her chair, eyes wide, her very perky breasts now even perkier that her newly secured top is tighter around her torso. “Really? Oh, cool! That’s so funny—I saw your bag and my little brother has one just like it so I just assumed . . .”

  I look at the seat next to me, at the bag with Dwayne The Rock Johnson’s face screen-printed across the front.

  “I’m just a fan.”

  “That’s so cute! Well, thanks! You look like you’d be such a great mom. Break a leg!” she says, and bounces away, leaving me to question my reason for living.

  Based on how bloody slow everything is going, that pervy twelve-year-old rock star must be really enjoying this show. I pull out my phone, ignore the billion texts from Trevor about his blue balls, and log in to the “diary” where I write all my letters to Darling Dwayne. Hey, it’s the safest place to keep these missives. In ninth grade, I sort of came home really drunk and puked all over Jerky Jackie’s brand-new senior prom dress that was hanging in our shared bedroom, so in pursuit of vengeance, Jackie read all my diaries filled with the letters to Mr. Johnson, and then she told Mommy a bunch of secrets that were only ever supposed to be between me and my hero.

  (I told you she was a big fat jerk.)

  In the aftermath, as this was still in the days before cloud computing, I created a password-protected diary in the form of an unpublished blog where I could write my letters. Jackie is smart, but she’s no tech head—no way she could reach under my mattress and hack my private correspondence ever again. (I nicknamed it “Operation Rock Solid”—get it? Rock Solid, as in unhackable by stupid sisters?)

  This system worked. She’s not read a diary entry since. And the prom date was totally cheating on her with a junior, so that was almost as unfortunate as the dress she chose. At least the wine cooler–infused vomit gave it some color.

  March 21, 2016

  Dear Dwayne Johnson,

  This audition—what was Lady Macbeth thinking? Thomas says I should go back to LA. The evergreen question: What would Dwayne do?

  Is it considered pedophilia if the pervert lead singer of this band is underage and I’m supposed to dance for him? I should leave. This feels weird. And the waif next to me just asked if I’m here waiting for my daughter. I can tell you, I’d never let my daughter dance for some prepubescent, bonered-up musical wunderkind.

  You’re right. I should go. Thanks.

  Also, Jerky Jackie emailed with medical crap and I want to believe that she really cares about my LDL cholesterol, but mostly, I end up feeling like I want to run to Dunkin’ Donuts so my heart will explode for real and then I can come back as a ghost and haunt her office. I wonder if all her patients would think she’s so great if they knew she won the senior class president election because she sent an Ex-Lax cake to her competitor on speech day or that she actually cheated on her SAT by hiring an impostor to take the test for her. See? Even Jerky Jackie is human.

  Yours in chocolate-glazed bliss,

  Danielle Elizabeth Steele, H.D. (Human Disaster)

  P.S. The email she followed up with? A self-help article about children of parents who walk out on them, complete with a quiz: “Do You Have Daddy Issues?” Come ON, you guys—Gerald Robert Steele left, like, a million years ago, because his family is batshit crazy. Do I love the guy for doing it? No. Do I blame him? Double no. Am I serious about moving to Port-aux-Français? TOTALLY. I’m on Amazon looking at this dope faux-fur-trimmed parka as we speak.

  *SAVE*

  *CLOSE*

  Before crossing my name off the sign-in sheet, I text Lady Macbeth: A girl auditioning just asked me if I’m waiting for my daughter. Maybe something less boy band next time? ☺

  The smiley face says I hate you, but I love you. I’ve learned with Lady Macbeth that passive aggressive works best; who knows if her latest nanny has quit or if the wife of the father of her child is still cyberstalking her. Honestly, Janice has earned every inch of her widely known nickname.

  Without explanation to Brittany, who is now on her phone, I draw a line through my name and shuffle to the door, avoiding eye contact with the pretty young things tittering with nervous energy. Let them worry about ass-shaking and booby-jiggling.

  I’ll shake my ass for the other half of this maple scone.

  * * *

  * Except the beach at the Santa Monica Pier—thanks to a huge storm drain that empties untreated gunk into the ocean, this area always ranks as one of the most polluted beaches in the state of California. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

  SIX

  “Your eyeliner is a bit dark for the office, don’t you think?” Viv says, doing her best impression of the Crone. She even wags her finger at me from her spot at the edge of my cubicle.

  “It’s grease and rubber. From changing my tire.”

  “How’d that tire-changing go?”

  “I left early. Not my kind of tire,” I say, stashing my bag in the oversize drawer of my boring gray metal desk.

  “Shame on you! This could’ve been your big break!” Viv leans over and caresses a well-loved photo of The Rock. “What would he say if he knew you skipped out on an audition?”

  “I didn’t skip out. I went. But it was for a music video, and I was a granny compared to the other girls there, and he wouldn’t have stuck around, either.”

  Viv tsks me. “You’re never going to get your Oscar if you behave like this.”

  “I’m never going to get my Oscar prancing my wares in front of twelve-year-old rock stars.”

  “Eww. That does seem borderline illegal.”

  “Thank you.”

  Lydia canters by—and yes, she canters because she’s six two and all legs and has a mane of chestnut hair that would make an Appaloosa jealous, and we’ve threatened multiple times that we’re going to steal her DNA to clone her metabolism so we can all eat as much as a linebacker and not gain an ounce. “Nine minutes, ladies! Don’t be late!”

  “I think I’m going to become an actor,” Viv says, grabbing my coffee cup from the chaos that is my desk, grimacing when she realizes the cup still has last week’s coffee in it. “That way I can skip work to play dress-up.”

  If anyone else said this, it would piss me off. But Viv lacks the Mean Bone.

  “You missed the big drama this morning, though,” she says close to my head as we step into the long gray aisle that divides the seemingly endless room in half. “Lisa’s boyfriend sent her another dick pic, and somehow she managed to attach it to a company-wide email instead of a memo intended for her little circle of horny friends.”

  “Lisa’s boyfriend is always sending dick pics. And his dick isn’t that impressive. I see everything that pops up on her screen.”

  “Yeah, but management hadn’t seen her dick pics before,” she says. “Although I’m sure Elliott the IT Guy probably has. That dude creeps everyone’s computers.”

  Note to self: Change password so Elliott the IT Guy doesn’t hack into my blog.

  I push the heavy door open that separates the henhouse from the cafeteria. Someone’s burned popcorn again.

  The cavernous room buzzes, filled with the conversations of the cliquish claims processors who have been released from their cages for their respective coffee and/or lunch breaks.

  “Did they fire her?”

  Viv hands me the coffee cup, and I dump the brown gelatinous goo into the sink. “She’s in with the Crone right now.”

  Ah. That explains why the Crone hasn’t yet perched on my desk edge.

  I scrape the slimy residue off the cup’s insides. My phone buzzes in the pocket of my wo
rk- and age-appropriate black cotton slacks. It can wait.

  “Seriously, PMS has made me its bitch this month, so I hope the Bringer of the Treats has something chocolate stashed in that pink box,” Viv says, nodding at the huge pastry carton on the opposite counter.

  “So . . . no preggo, then?” I ask quietly, pausing my scrubbing for a beat. Poor Viv. She and her adorable husband, Ben, have been trying to get knocked up for the last two years. She’s been known to rush home on lunch hours because her “temperature is perfect for baby-making,” but alas, still no bun.

  It’s so weird to me that I have friends—younger friends—who are actively trying to make babies. I think I’d rather have open-heart surgery performed by John Cena. Me? With a kid? I spend hours worrying if Hobbs the Goldfish is depressed.

  Viv grabs her lunch-size insulated bag out of the fridge while I refill my mug with fresh coffee. I sniff deeply—gourmet it’s not, but at least the caffeine-laced steam is a salve to the persistent gin-infused ache behind my eyeballs.

  “My mother keeps sending me meal plans she finds online, designed specifically for people trying to conceive,” Viv says, opening the lid of her squishy lunch box. “I am really, really tired of beans and spinach. And I feel sorry for the other women sitting around me. So much farting.”

  “We’ll get you an air freshener.” I pinch her cheek playfully. “And today, after you eat your beans and spinach, you get a treat. Then go home with frosting on your face, and tell your man to put a baby in you.”

  “Such a classy broad, Steele.” She laughs.

  A box set in the corner is overflowing with soda cans and other recyclables. While Viv microwaves her lunch—likely killing any and all nutritional value in her beans and spinach—I gather the bag, tie it off, and carry it out the back door to set along the brick wall.

  As I’m installing a new bag, I feel Viv’s eyes on me. “You’re a nice person, ya know.”

  “You’ve eaten too many beans. They’re making you delirious.”

  “Howie the Pop-Can Man thinks you’re nice.”

  “I’ve paid him off,” I say, folding the plastic bag over the bin’s edges.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”

  Howie the Pop-Can Man is a local transient who washes the front windows of our building in exchange for all our recyclables. The Crone kept chasing him away, but I sat down one day and talked to him. Turns out, he has a PhD in English lit with emphasis on the English Renaissance as well as lesser degrees in linguistics. As he says it, “I also earned a PhD in alcohol,” which is why he lives the way he does. “This career track,” he says, kicking his cart full of soda cans, “is almost as competitive as academia. But I like setting my own hours.”

  He recommends books to me—and says that my mother’s fixation on romance novelists is actually charming, that “love transcends time. Look at Shakespeare’s most successful plays.” He’s right. But most of the books he recommends, I’m not smart enough to get through—until he explains them. Sometimes, weather permitting, I order takeout and doughnuts and we sit at the picnic table behind the building, or we meet at a coffee shop down the street where it’s warm, and Howie the Professor delivers a literature lecture some students would pay big bucks for. His brain is an impressive thing.

  When I explained to the Crone that we could set up a symbiotic relationship with Howie and save the company a few dollars a month for window washing, she reluctantly agreed. So now Howie gets soda cans, Imperial Health and Wellness gets clean front windows, and I get books that will allegedly make me smarter.

  When Viv has her Tupperware meals all warmed up and ready to go, I loop my arm through hers. “Let the clucking begin.”

  We move through the crowded room and head west, through two more long buildings filled with hen hutches. There has been much discussion among the Cluckers of whether referring to ourselves as chickens is misogynistic or wildly antifeminist. In our defense, if you saw these buildings—if you saw how we’re set up in here, cubicles upon cubicles, and the stacks of paper we have to get through every day in order to fulfill the managerial numbers written on whiteboards on the back wall of every corridor—you’d see why we refer to ourselves as chickens. At least those of us with enough sense to find the humor so we don’t chase a whole bottle of Tylenol PM with boxed wine to end the misery.

  Inside Conference Room B, Lydia is already setting out plates and napkins. I know it’s weird and maybe even creepy, but I love watching Lydia move—she was a dancer from kindergarten through college, and if it weren’t for her obnoxious braying laugh, we wouldn’t like her because she would be too perfect for us.

  My phone buzzes again in my pocket. I don’t want to look. Probably Jerky Jackie emailing me the number to her financial planner, or Georgette, who needs me to babysit so she can teach her dog-painting class. Who knew you could sign up for classes to teach your dog to paint?

  With just moments to spare, the MotherCluckers file in, the door swiftly closed and locked so no intruders can impede our gathering. The vertical blinds along the three windows that overlook the rest of the building are flattened, preventing outsiders from looking in. We are locked and loaded.

  The Bringer of the Treats—Charlene, this week—stands at the front of the oblong table, the pastry box settled before her. She flicks her coarse gray-but-maybe-blond hair over her shoulders; a teasing smile, a sparkle in her eye, she straightens her sweater, the one with the giant calico cat face stitched into the front, joins her hands, and stretches her fingers with the cat face–painted nails before her to crack her knuckles in preparation for the big reveal.

  We hold our collective bated breath as Charlene lifts the lid of the bubble gum–colored box and turns it slowly around for us to see . . .

  And the crowd goes wild. “Cupcakes!” Viv declares.

  But not just any cupcakes. These are premium-grade numbers, wearing frosted plumes in every shade, some adorned with chocolate buttons, others festooned with chocolate-dipped berries, and still others with sprinkles. My LDL cholesterol just punctured a hole in my heart.

  The coolest thing about the MotherCluckers, beyond the decadent sugary goodness? In this room, there is no such thing as vitamins and minerals or calories or cholesterol or gluten or high-fructose corn syrup. There is only deliciousness. We had one member for a while—Melinda something—at every meeting, she’d insist on an ingredient list for whatever treat had been offered. Then she’d take all the fun out of everything by reminding us of all the diseases our insurance policies cover, diseases caused by the ingredients included in the treats we were all trying to enjoy.

  Thankfully, Melinda got a job with the IRS, so she’s left us to go annoy unwitting taxpayers.

  And in her memory, we instituted a zero-tolerance policy for healthy bullshit.

  Lydia’s elegant arm slides a chocolate-sprinkle and vanilla-frosted cupcake in front of me. She smells like gardenias.

  “That’s, like, three inches of frosting,” Viv says, eyes wide.

  “Best three inches she’s had in a while,” Shelly says from across the table, still awaiting delivery of her own treat.

  I raise my coffee cup to her. “Amen to that.”

  My phone buzzes again in my pocket. This is three times in ten minutes. I should check.

  But I can’t. The MotherCluckers secretary, Simone, bangs her tiny gavel on the tabletop. She smooths her severe-cut black bob and sits up straight, looking very much like a mime in her black leggings and white-and-black-striped top.

  She calls the meeting to order. This week’s agenda is no different from any other week. Since management thinks we’re a book club, at least one among us will have read something worth chatting about.

  And then we catch up on movies and binge-worthy TV.

  Followed by gossip, today’s hot topic being Lisa’s Dick-Pic Fiasco.

  And then Charlene updates us on fund-raising efforts for the feral cat and kitten rescue (twice a year the Cluckers help her with
a lunch-hour bake sale out in front of the office, which the whole of our business-centric city block looks forward to because cool people like kittens and baked goods, and we always sell out) and shares a slideshow on her iPad of her latest group of foster cats, all of which are really cute, but they are also why Charlene kinda always smells like cat litter.

  Phone buzzes. And buzzes. And buzzes. Which means it’s a call and not a text.

  Someone really wants to talk to me.

  “You guys, my phone has gone off four times in twenty minutes. I gotta . . .” I hold it up in front of me. We have a no-phone policy while we’re in here, except in the event of kid or cat emergencies. I have neither kid nor cat, but now I’m worried Mommy left the stove on and burned down her kitchen again, or maybe one of my derpy sisters botched a rhinoplasty or the other lost her Bob Ross DVDs.

  I step out of the sealed room. The three text messages and missed calls are all from Lady Macbeth. Awesome. She’s probably pissed I didn’t stay for the audition.

  First text: Sorry about that cattle call. U busy? Very cool news.

  Second text: Srsly call me.

  Third text: WHERE R U DANI I have an amz’g opp for you.

  And a voicemail, her voice breathy and excited: “Danielle Elizabeth Steele, you’d better get off the toilet or wherever you are and call me immediately! You’re going to love me forever!”

  I dial. “Janice, it’s Dani. Should I be worried?”

  “Oh sweet Jesus, I thought you’d dropped off the planet. Are you sitting down?”

  “No, not really—”

  “So there’s a charity event coming up in August—for some children’s hospital—and they’re doing this thing, this Ironman-like thing with racing or swimming or whatever, and the event organizers have put word out to all the agencies in the city to let their performers know.”

  “Okayyyy . . . And this applies to me how?” The last time I stepped on a treadmill, I think Friends was still on in prime time.