The Rock Star in Seat 3A: A Novel

by Jill Kargman

  But there was Finn, walking in stage left. Out of nowhere, I fantasized we were in the warehouse again, but this time, I’d push him against the wall and kiss him, pulling off his jacket and running my hands down his back. I’d make love to him like in his song, lovingly and violently, his words and notes throbbing in my ears, my entire body awakened in a desire for him that was so intense it clouded my every thought. The plane’s takeoff? Didn’t notice. Some turbulence? Who cares. I used to wish to hasten each painful step of travel, the grody food placed in front of us, the clearing of said food, the dumbass Mighty Ducks 4 crap that played on the screens. I would flip through SkyMall or do a stupid in-flight magazine crossword, anything anything to make this time go faster. But not this time. I stared at the hideous airplane fabric upholstery on the seat in front of me as I zoned into a reverie of Finn. What I would do to him. What I’d give up this time. If he’d have me. We had connected, even just in unspeakable chemistry . . . or was it in my head? It felt real when he held my hand momentarily. I could perhaps pull it off. How far we’d get I had no idea, but my crush on him was so intense I hoped I could at the very least scratch the itch once. To know what it was like to taste him, run my hands down his ribs, through his black hair. I knew from how his body racked with fierce breaths in something so tame as a song that in sex he would positively destroy the mattress, feathers afloat from his animalistic quest for pleasure. I ran my hand down my neck, dreaming it was his palm on my veins, his fingers walking their way to my head. I got chills from my hallucination. I felt the chill turn to a hot flash, which surged through my whole body, knowing I was fired up more by the illusion of Finn on top of me than I ever had been in real life. Maybe I couldn’t handle a guy like him. Maybe I’d melt into a puddle to be spatula’d off the cement floor. Whatever the reality may bring, I clung to my closed-eyed reveries. So much so that I could barely handle deplaning, baggage claim, and navigating arrivals terminal hell, not because of the hordes or the racket but because it all required my eyes to be open. Thank god for the time change, which catapulted me into night as I hit New York and the lights of JFK. When the wheels hit the tarmac I officially realized I was a mess. In Los Angeles, my moral elasticity was like when you overspend in Monopoly—it was a game, so who cares? But now I was home. In “real life.” In my territory. In the streets I’d walked with my boyfriend and love. And yet . . . I couldn’t wait to get in bed just so I could lie down and not have to face the glaring light of day and the realities it held. The only place I wanted to go was fetal position in my bed. Under the covers, secure and cozy with my reveries. Seventh row center in the movie theater within my head. Watching the film that starred Finn and me.

  I got home to find some supper waiting for me in the fridge with a cute note from Wy, who was cooking for a client that night. I felt a twinge of guilt as I looked at his adorable handwriting, the hand that felt familiar from years of Post-its on nights of missed intersections when he’d leave to cater a dinner before I came home. Dear heart.

  Before flopping on my bed, I went to take a shower, and when I emerged, I quickly glanced at my phone. My pulse pounded with three little words: New. Text. Message: “Wanted to make sure you got home safe, little witch.” Bingo. Somehow my moral compass quivered, as if clutched by a magnetic schizo seizure, like War of the Worlds. All the warm feelings engendered by Wy’s Tupperware’d meal and precious note were somehow eclipsed by Finn’s soul-searing check-in. My quiet inner-cinematographer gulped. Action.

  Chapter 17

  A restaurant is a fantasy—a kind of living fantasy in which diners are the most important members of the cast.

  —Warner LeRoy

  The next day I woke up and got dressed for work, tiptoeing to let Wylie sleep, but then wanted to have some form of communication that didn’t involve a pen.

  “Babe?” I whispered gently in his slumbering ear. “Babe, I’m leaving for work. I loved my scallion pancakes and smoked salmon, honeykins, thank you.”

  I could tell by his comatose state that he must’ve come in really late. I was just about to back away slowly when I heard him mutter two virtually unintelligible whispered words: “human blanket.”

  I was almost at the door and frankly a bit warm in my jacket, but I obliged, per our tradition. I lay down on top of him and smashed him into the Tempur-Pedic. We always did it when we were not overlapping in waking hours and if one had to sneak off, we’d always at least stop for a human blanket.

  “Ahhhhhhh, my FAVORITE,” he said, this time clearer.

  “Hi, Wyliekins.”

  “Hi,” he said, eyes still closed. “Wait, lemme look at you, Velcro.”

  He rolled over and opened his big brown peepers. He really was James Franco–esque. “Beautiful girl,” he said, drunk on fatigue. “Welcome home.”

  We sometimes called each other Velcro ’cause when we had started dating we literally would stay adhered to each other in bed Sunday mornings until our tummies were growling so much we had to get up to eat.

  I smiled and patted his head on the down pillow.

  “Missed you.”

  “You didn’t check in enough,” he said, not accusatorily but kind of needily.

  I exhaled. “Babe, I was crazed. You know you were never not with me.” Lies.

  “Haze, you’re my family,” he said.

  Fuck. Pang of guilt scissored my guts, but at the same time a tsunami of claustrophobia crashed over me.

  “Shoot, honey, I have to go, I’m late.” I leaned over and kissed his forehead. “I love you.”

  “Love you so.”

  I walked out and when I got in the street, after fishing my MetroCard out of my messenger bag, my first order of business was a phone check.

  Nuthin.

  Fuck!

  Before crashing, I had texted back “How chivalrous . . . here safe and sound xoH,” which ever-so-slightly upped the flirtation ante with the casual insertion of kiss/hug, but it was benign and common in my e-mails to everyone; it was so routine I literally wrote it to my Poland Spring delivery service guy. For some reason I started to panic when there was no sign of life. Wait . . . was I totally delusional?! I was A NOBODY AND HE WAS A GRAMMY-WINNING quote unquote “RECORDING ARTIST.” Was I just some insane dysmorphic freak who was so swept up in fantasy she couldn’t get a grip? Oh my god . . . was I like those fat people who line up for model-search auditions? Shit.

  I walked to the station and hopped on the L train to Brooklyn, got my morning iced coffee at Blue Bottle in Williamsburg, which Noah also frequented, though he rather grossly announced he doesn’t take his first sip until he sees the front door of the office because if he so much as sniffs it he can feel the intestines a-chuggin’. Nice. Basically it’s the equivalent of Roto-Rooter for humans. Also known as the SNL fauxmercial sketch ColonBlow. I walked to the office and arrived early enough that most of my colleagues hadn’t yet cruised in on their skateboards, motorcycles, Segways, or some other mildly alternative mode of transport.

  I sat down at my desk, and while I was catching up on all the e-mails I’d blown off in California my phone buzzed.

  “Guess what my 1st thought of the day was?” read the text. Finn!

  “What?” I wrote back.

  “Menu item #1 for Topless Tapas. QuesaDDillas.”

  I howled at my desk as people started to meander in.

  “GENIUS.”

  Fuck, I loved him. I was texting with a fucking ROCK STAR. Okay . . . I rubbed my hands together mentally, gotta add to the game here. Lightbulb.

  “Chips platter: I’m Nacho Bitch.”

  I waited for his response.

  Shwing!

  “LOL!!!!!!!” he replied.

  “Haze, whatcha got?” Noah asked, entering in his normal Tasmanian devil flurry. “Brad, Mike, Severin, Paco, conference room.” He walked by all of us, and we obediently rose from our various areas, foll
owing him to the all-glass-and-steel room overlooking the river.

  “Boss in—gotta bolt, more in a bit,” I texted Finn.

  We went into the room, each plopping on a sleekly designed-yet-ergonomically correct three-thousand-dollar-but-doesn’t-look-it swivel chair Noah had had flown in from Copenhagen.

  “How was California?” Noah asked as everyone took their seats.

  “Insane,” I pronounced. “I’m glad you’re all sitting down. ’Cause you’re gonna faint.”

  I’ve always had a flair for the dramatic, what can I say?

  “Out with it!” Sev demanded.

  I began with a description of my harrowing yet heavenly flight. The barf, the comfort, the convo, and the denouement at LAX.

  My office mates were literally on the edge of the $3,000 ergonomic seats Noah had proffered after his yogi touted their praises.

  “He’s literally obsessed with our stuff. He plays it all the time at home and on the road with his band and he freaked when I said we were doing our launch in L.A. this time. And when I said I was touring raw spaces downtown he offered me his building.”

  “Just like that?” Paco asked, incredulous.

  “Just like that,” I gloated. “And at no charge.”

  “Finn Schiller has a building?” Mike asked. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Real estate investment, maybe potential empire headquarters for The Void empire? The point is, it’s ours. And it rocks.”

  “No way he wants no dough,” Noah probed, leaning back in his chair.

  “Goose egg. Gratis,” I said, hand raised, as if in a witness booth. “All he wants is to bring a few friends.”

  “Wait a second . . . are you saying he’d come?!” Sev asked, mouth agape.

  “Holy shit!” Noah beamed. “Good going, Haze! I’m so psyched you puked your little brains out! That’s for taking one for the team.”

  He leaned across the conference table and high-fived me.

  We went over other logistics and the meeting wrapped with a huge pat on the back for yours truly.

  After a flurry of editor phone calls and fine-tuning a press release, my phone buzzed with a text.

  “Chicken Flautata’s.”

  I giggled in my chair. My creative juices were flowing. My turn.

  “Enchilaaaahhhhdas.”

  I went back to my computer until he TM’d me again a half hour later “for our COCKtail menu: Tres Equis beer XXX.”

  I was pulled into a meeting with the design department, but as they showed me options, my wheels were turning.

  “Shimmychangas” I surreptitiously sent him under the table.

  I went to lunch with Brad, who actually was a sick guitar player in his own right, and snuck a couple peeks at my phone.

  The first was another addition to our cocktails (“SINgria”) and then the next made my heart skip a beat. “What date are you coming back, bewitching girl?”

  “What’s wrong?” Brad asked as he saw my eyes widen into saucers.

  “Oh, uh, nothing. Let’s go back to the office.”

  I called my sister, asking if I could come up and see my nieces and have a much-needed drink, I had deets to download and craved her advice.

  “Anytime,” she said, almost begging. “You know the corkscrew hits the pinot noir the second the door closes behind my nanny.”

  I texted back Finn with the dates for my next trip, plus one more for good measure (Sopa de Whoretilla—not my best, I know), and within minutes he wrote back that we would have dinner that night. Then another buzz.

  “And I’d love to scoop you up from LAX if you don’t have a ride.”

  I was breathless. I thought I was going to explode. Because of his text flurry, including what he was up to and the weather there, my day flew by. Work was actually a blast, and because he was so into what we were doing at Badass, suddenly, so was I. It was like he renewed my vigor for what I do every day, just when it was getting monotonous.

  Chapter 18

  You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.

  —Dr. Seuss

  I blew out of there at five on the dot, feeling like I was going to explode. I couldn’t go home. I just started walking. And walking. My legs led me to the Brooklyn Bridge, a place I love to stroll, often with thoughts as heavy as the steel girders supporting it. I felt like someone had shot a cannon through my midsection, but just like the liquid metal Terminator 2 guy, it kept closing so no one could see it. But the scar, the pain is still there, even though the oozing silver fills it to the naked eye. The memory of the hollowness haunted me as I put a hand to my tummy, as if to prove to myself I’m still actually me because I feel so utterly changed.

  I’ve had butterflies. Everyone has. First days of school, a new job, a budding romance. But this wasn’t a giddy Aurora in the woods singing with bluebirds abuzz on love shitting on her fucking shoulder. This was different . . . better . . . worse. Because the drama factor was spiked so high, thanks to the Squeeze song forbidden fruit aspect. Each step I took felt like the last before a high jump in the Olympics, or a plummet with a bungee cord. Or an aerial like those psycho X Games people. Ever since I’d returned home, each forced bite of food felt like a Last Supper before the electric chair and then the next was like filet mignon after wandering the desert drinking cactus juice. I was officially a mess. A beautiful mess.

  The astonishing thing about hitting a milestone birthday is that on some level, you feel like you’ve crossed a finish line, arrived. But I think the pit of despair and mystery of life widens when it dawns on you, with a vertebrae-tingling chill, that you never “arrive.” It’s always the run before the high jump. After any medal ceremony there can always be another and another. You can always get better or, gasp . . . grow. I thought I was done growing up, or at least had chosen to not grow up. But I had my perfect life and now I actively felt myself changing, morphing from all that I was even a month ago. And it hurt. Like the cannon. And now I realize why they call it growing pains. Kirk Cameron (who I heard is now a Bible thumper) and the gang were onto something.

  Just then Wylie called.

  “Hi, babe!” I said, at once happy to hear his cute chirp but also feeling oddly like my wings-of-fantasy flight had been clipped by reality.

  “Hi, sweet pea,” he said. “I miss you . . .”

  “Me, too.”

  “I feel like I’ve barely seen you and you’re leaving again. I want to cook for us, but my boss is entertaining like crazy.”

  “That’s because they know they’re losing you soon! They want to impress all their friends before you bolt,” I suspected aloud.

  “Nah, they’ve been so great, and last night they brought me out and told the guests they would be backing me and they all oohed and ahhed and stuff.”

  “Any ideas for the name yet?” I probed.

  “A couple . . . ,” he teased. “Oh shit, that’s them—I’ll call you later, honey.”

  “Bye, Wy,” I said. “I love you.”

  So now what? My control freak self was in unchartered territory. Do I flush thoughts of Finn out of my brain? I tried . . . but then I’d reach for my phone to see if he’d texted. But it made me feel good to rewind and play the film stills of our cinematic movie flight together. It felt like a small little black-and-white photography flip book in my mind’s hand that I could buzz through with super 8–style haziness, then flip it again to reveal a new moment, and another: his hand on my back, his saying there was no one like me, his jacket creaking as he moved. I felt the pit in my stomach return, that unfillable hole. As much as I tried to brush it off and walk through the motions of my evening without dwelling on its growing presence, deep down I suspected that it would haunt me until I threw down ropes, rappelled to its core, and explored it further.

  I arrived on 212 so
il and called Kira.

  “Hi, I’m two blocks away,” I said, panting. “I need to see you.”

  “Come on over.”

  The subway I’d taken might as well have been a rocket ship crafted by Houston NASA dorks. When I detrained on Seventy-seventh Street, I was in another universe: the Upper East Side. My sister lived on a tree-lined block on Fifth Avenue facing Central Park. The leafy vista was so calming and serene and my nieces, Iris and Maeve, were still in their adorable hunter green Chapin pinafores with Peter Pan collars when I arrived.

  “HAZEL!!!!!!” Iris shrieked, flying into my arms with a leap worthy of Usain Bolt.

  “Hi, gals!” I said, kissing each on the head.

  Kira came out, already sipping her vino, which she did crack precisely at 4:59 with her Rabbit bottle opener, right as the nanny headed home to Queens. Sometimes Vern’s coat isn’t even on when Kira’s unwrapped the foil over the cork.

  “Hi, Ki,” I said, kissing her. “I’ll take one of those. Or four.”

  The girls went off to play a bit before dinner, and my sister and I plopped on her delicious sofa, legs curled up, facing each other, wineglasses in hand.

  “Talk to me,” she said.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Wylie is proposing,” I said, the air almost trapped in my lungs as I sputtered it out.

  Kira didn’t react. “You don’t seem too off-the-wall excited about that . . . ,” she observed.

  I described my ceiling revelation.

  “Oh shit,” she said, taking a swig.

  “Kira, I love him. I do. I really do—he is the sweetest, most devoted, most loving guy. I mean, they don’t make them like this. He tells me he loves me with all his heart and all his soul. I almost feel like if I didn’t say yes, it would destroy him.”