I Like You Just the Way I Am (21 page)

Amanda decided to drive out with Ruthie and Roxy, which sounded like a fucking nightmare to Simone and me. We booked flights on Southwest and told the caravan to call us when they hit the Strip. Garabaldo was already in Vegas for a family graduation, and Veronica was flying in from Jersey that afternoon.

When we got to the hotel, the front desk clerk informed me that we had only one room reserved. Reluctantly, I called Sheri.

“Fuck. Everyone said just get one suite. Weren’t you on that group e-mail? I think you might have me accidentally blocked,” she said.

I pretended I couldn’t hear her inside the casino and hung up.

Simone and I contemplated springing for our own room but then decided against it—because we were cheap and because we didn’t want anyone else to benefit from our generosity.

The “suite” was a half-remodeled two-bedroom with kitchenette. In its previous incarnation, it was part of the Aladdin hotel—in diametric opposition to the Freddy Krueger claw and
Basic Instinct
poster now mounted above the “flying carpet” sofa. The hotel’s remodel started in 2003 and was being done piecemeal. And though the lobby and public spaces were completely renovated, most of the guest rooms still made you feel like you’d been abducted by an autograph collector from Marrakech.

Before we could settle in, there was a knock at the door.

It was the rest of our group. Amanda, Roxy, and Ruthie marched in and started scoping out the beds. Behind them trailed Garabaldo, dragging three coffin-sized Louis Vuitton–esque trunks.

“How did you miss Garabaldo, Jenny?” Amanda said. “She was sitting in the lobby, waiting for you guys.”

The truth was, it was hard to recognize Garabaldo. She’d lost nearly forty pounds since the last time I saw her.

“I guess I do look a little different.” She laughed, lunging toward me and smearing neon orange lipstick across my cheek. Giant tugboats dangled from her earlobes, slapping her shoulders whenever she turned too fast. Even with the weight loss, Garabaldo still managed to look like a rich widow from Boca Raton on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

“Um, there are only three beds in this suite!” Ruthie shouted from the other room.

Quickly, as if they were playing a game of musical chairs, Amanda, Ruthie, and Roxy threw their bags on top of a bed. Lucky for me, Simone was already topless and reading an
Us Weekly
in one of them.

“Sorry, already occupied. Jenny? You’re my plus-one,” she said, not looking up but patting the spot beside her like she was summoning a lapdog.

Ruthie grimaced and walked into the other room to share a bed with her sister.

Before Garabaldo could saddle up next to Amanda, she was banished to the pullout in the living room.

“I kick and thrash around all night. It’s best I don’t have anyone next to me,” Amanda said, taking Garabaldo’s things off the nightstand and handing them back to her.

Once Garabaldo was ousted, the girls closed their bedroom door to smoke weed. The party hadn’t even started, and lines in the sand were already being drawn. We were like three separate tribes on
Survivor
: Amanda and the sisters versus me and Simone versus Garabaldo and whatever dead bodies she was hiding in her luggage.

“I’m already bored and Garabaldo weirds me the fuck out,” Simone whispered as she popped a Percocet and a Tic Tac.

“Look, once Veronica arrives, the whole dynamic is going to shift. She loves everybody and everybody loves her.” I texted Veronica and told her to meet us at the Mandalay Bay pool.

The little research I’d done indicated that the cabanas at Mandalay were the best in town. Upon arriving, we quickly learned why.

*   *   *

“WHAT. THE. FUCK. Everybody
is fucking naked!” Ruthie covered her face appalled as we approached the pool at the Mandalay. A lubed-up Latino escorted us to our cabana and took our drink order.

“Two White Russians, and do you guys serve fries?” Roxy asked through bloodshot eyes.

“What’s a White Russian?” Garabaldo said.

“The best drink ever! Bring three. And onion rings,” Ruthie said.

The thought of someone devouring a basket of onion rings and washing it down with a cream-based beverage paralyzed me with fear for a good five seconds. I ordered a water with lemon. Under normal circumstances, I love watching people around me get fat. But at a topless pool, it just seemed inhumane.

Simone strutted off to the bathroom in six-inch heels and a bikini that screamed “cum on my face.” When she returned, her tits were out and flapping in the wind.

“Am I the only one who’s gonna follow the rules here?”

Ruthie and Roxy stared out from under their beach towel blankets in disgust.

“These are great!” Garabaldo hollered, slamming back her first White Russian.

Three hours and twelve White Russians later, Ruthie and Roxy were passed out; Simone was in the hot tub with three Australian dudes playing a game of “guess where my implant incisions are”; and Amanda was wandering around, asking if anyone had seen Garabaldo.

“Hey, bitches!” a voice called out from behind. It was Veronica.

“I just walked past a wasted chick floating in the deep end with only one eye open. Do you think I should tell someone?” she asked.

Just then, the lubed Latino returned.

“I’ll take a rum and Coke.” Veronica lit a menthol and took her shoes off.

“I’m sorry, but we are going to have to ask your friend to leave,” he said to us.

“I don’t think you can smoke—,” I started.

“Not that friend, the one sleeping in the pool. She’s a liability.”

On the other side of the pool, Amanda hung off the diving board, trying to prod Garabaldo awake with a net. Garabaldo giggled, half-conscious, bobbing up and down like a buoy. Her face was underwater now, save for one open eye blinking up at us like a crocodile.

“That fucking mess is with us?” Veronica asked, ashing her menthol on a tray of finished drinks being carted by.

Once we fished Garabaldo out of the pool, we hailed a cab and headed back to our hotel. “I think she needs her stomach pumped,” Ruthie said, trying to hold Garabaldo steady as we walked through the lobby. Her wet body slipped through our hands and slid across the marble floor as we made our way back to our suite. It was as though we were carrying an adult seal wearing eyeshadow.

Amanda was annoyed and already bitching about how none of this would be happening if Sheri had planned her bachelorette.

“My friends aren’t comfortable being nude in public, Jenny! No wonder Garabaldo got wasted. She probably didn’t know how else to deal with the pressures of being a whore.”

“Look, we’re gonna go out to a nice dinner, maybe a club, do some gambling.” I tried to calm her down.

“Having a bachelorette party is all about being a whore!” Veronica barked through a cloud of menthol smoke. “In Jersey, you’d all be covered in dick by now.”

“Umm, I don’t think cigarettes are allowed in the elevator,” Amanda coughed, furiously pressing the button for our floor.

“
What the—! Jesus! Fuck!
Are you kidding me?” Veronica shouted, reading a text off her phone.

Simone shot me a look and mimed blowing her brains out.

“What is it?” Amanda asked.

“My fucking landlord is trying to get me evicted because of my cat! He’s a Persian so he’s extremely vocal.”

“Your landlord?” Roxy asked.

“My cat. My cat is Persian. My landlord is just some chink asshole.” She stomped her feet, causing the elevator cables to bounce.

The doors opened, and two Asian businessmen stepped in. There were now nine people in the elevator. Three of whom were wet and two of whom I hoped didn’t hear the word “chink.” I debated jumping out, but we had over fifteen flights to go.

As soon as the elevator started moving, the men realized they made a mistake—their intention was to go downstairs, not up. They exchanged a few unintelligible words under their breath and waited patiently as we continued to ascend.

With barely enough room to flex her arm, Veronica scrolled through her phone and called her landlord.

“Hi! What the fuck are you even talking about? Speak English! No, he’s not there alone! He has a sitter, and why the fuck are you peering through my windows anyway? Call the police! I dare you! Do it! I hope they arrest your illegal ass you stupid fucking asshole motherfucking chink!”

The Asian men turned around in horror.

“It’s a Jersey thing. They’ll all be friends again in twenty to thirty minutes,” I said, mortified.

Then, Garabaldo opened her mouth and heaved up a thick layer of onion rings, White Russians, and diet pills all over Amanda.

“Jenny!” Amanda screamed.

“What am I doing?”

Before Amanda could blame me for Garabaldo’s intoxication, her digestive tract, and her lifelong battle with her weight, the doors opened on our floor.

Desperate for air, we trampled over the Asian businessmen and ran to our suite.

Roxy and Ruthie rolled a joint while Amanda jumped in the shower with entitlement, leaving Garabaldo and her vomit-encrusted body to rot on the sofa. Veronica stayed in the hallway, smoking and waiting for her catsitter to call her back.

“Where would you rank this on worst vacations of your life…?” Simone said, trailing off as she noticed Garabaldo dog-crawl from the couch to the kitchenette in search of a snack.

Everyone was miserable. The weekend was unraveling around us, and there was only one thing that could save it: male strippers. I Googled “stripper police officers” because, let’s be honest, firemen all have mustaches. Simone picked out the ones she’d consider getting fingered by and placed an order.

Once Amanda was out of the shower, she asked Ruthie and Roxy to throw Garabaldo in and hose her down. The girls obliged. I peered into the hallway to check on Veronica, who seemed to be cooling off. She spoke to her sitter and all was well. She also pointed out that in the heat of her rage, she punched the fire extinguisher by the elevator and that if anything was broken, I’d need to pay for it. The crew assembled in the living room, and I laid out the plan.

“We are going to dinner, doing a few craps tables, then coming back to the room for other surprises which will be divulged when the time is right,” I said. I was beaming with pride.

“It better not be strippers,” Amanda smiled, clearly hoping it was strippers.

*   *   *

Dinner was uneventful—aside from
the fact that we all donned penis necklaces—and it only helped to underscore the fact that our group shared zero common interests. Garabaldo was conscious again and already nursing her second post-throw-up White Russian.

“These are totally my drink now!” She laughed as one of her false eyelashes crept down her face, giving her a stroke victim’s gaze.

“So, who wants to know details about my future husband’s pee-pee?” Amanda said, dead sober.

None of us did. Amanda waited for a response, then launched into a detailed account of her sex life past and present. She giggled, entertained by her own story as if somebody else were telling it to her. She sipped on a glass of champagne and would whisper conspiratorially whenever she used the word “fuck.” The group smiled sympathetically, which only encouraged greater detail.

The meal ended how all group meals end, in a passive-aggressive standoff. Everybody insisted they’d paid, but we were still one hundred dollars short on the bill. Ruthie nudged Garabaldo, who was again properly wasted.

“Baldo, you sure you paid? I didn’t see you open your—”

Baldo cut her off by breaking into drunken hysterics. By now, the moving eyelash was resting just above her lip like a fake mustache.

“Why does everybody hate me!?” she screamed, and ran off to the bathroom carrying the few last sips of her White Russian with her.

Everybody chipped in a few more bucks and waited patiently for her return. After twenty minutes, Amanda stood up, demanding we leave.

“Well, why don’t you drag your friend and whatever’s left of her makeup out of the bathroom?” Veronica said. She was still pissed that she had paid over fifty dollars for a personal pizza and two martinis.

Offended, Amanda marched off to the bathroom. Simone started stress-eating her penis necklace, and Roxy looked like she was about to fall asleep. Five minutes passed before Amanda returned alone.

“Where’s Garabaldo?” I asked.

“She’s not in there.”

“What do you mean? Where is she?”

“I don’t know, Jenny! God!” She had reverted back into the fifteen-year-old version of herself.

“Then what took you so long?” Veronica pushed.

Amanda looked around, beet red. “I was pooping. Okay?”

With the mention of pooping, the waiter walked back over and promptly asked us to leave. “We’re gonna need this table for another party, sooo…” He was using his fake-nice voice.

“Um, actually, we’re missing someone. The girl who was sitting on the end,” I said.

He shook his head, clearly not recalling.

“She wanted Equal packets for her White Russian?” Ruthie offered.

Still nothing.

“I’m covering ten tables per hour, I really don’t have time to remember faces.” The waiter spoke about his job with the kind of gravitas usually reserved for doctors working the ER.

The group got up and we all headed back to the bathroom to do a final check. Ruthie dialed Baldo’s cell, but it went straight to voice mail.

“She’s not here. And that was definitely the stall you shit in,” Veronica said, walking out of a stall and lighting an incense match from inside her purse.

We decided to go up to the room to see if maybe Garabaldo was hiding under a blanket or dead in the bathtub, covered in pills. When we arrived, the cops were already knocking on our door.

“Excuse me? Can we help you?” Amanda asked, concerned.

“Yes, we had a complaint. Are you Amanda Mollen?” the first cop asked.

“Oh Jesus! She’s dead, isn’t she?” Veronica lit another menthol and slid down a wall, shocked.

I tried to remain calm and position myself to look like the sane one of the group. “What exactly happened, officers?”