More Muffia (The Muffia Book 2) (2 page)

“Just kidding!” I call after his disappearing form, gesticulating with my broken shoe for effect.

Why do I sabotage the guys who might actually be good for me? This is really the big question I face as I return to L.A. and the prospect, after the Muffs prodding me into it, of signing up on
Match.com
or
E-Harmony
, or any one of an endless number of dating websites in hopes of finding an available—meaning
unmarried
—man, instead of the married one I’ve been trying to cure myself of. Freckles might even have been a contender in that boy-next-door kind of way, but if I can’t be patient with a nice guy like him, what hope is there?

I snarl at a few members of the
Hello Kitty
contingent who stare at me open-mouthed and back away. My right ankle begins to throb, and I’m just hoping that the fall has only caused a minor tweak because I desperately need some exercise to unwind when I get home—a fierce workout on a treadmill or, better yet, a dance class—in different shoes, obviously.

Slinging my over-the-shoulder bag, which had fallen in front of my shoulders, back where it belongs, I grab hold of the handle on my ballistic roll-aboard Tumi case and—
ouch
—start limping, barefoot, in the direction of the gate.

Hobbling as fast as I can, I become aware of a generalized overall body clamminess and that my hair is clinging to my neck under the collar of my white Pink’s shirt—so much for that promised crispness. I also realize that I am unable to correct these fashion faux pas without stopping. Not that stopping would really help when a girl is peri-menopausal and under stress—conditions which will likely soon manifest in another vile symptom like hives or swollen ankles. But there’s no time to stop. So I forge ahead, my shirt collar pressing against my neck from the shoulder bag as I attempt to move at a limping lope, rolling the case in a reasonably straight line behind me.

It could be that part of my current stress is due to overreacting to Madelyn’s nonplus response to my seeing Udi. But how could she be so blasé, particularly since she claimed that before Udi came along, she hadn’t felt a flicker for anyone else in years? How could she let that go so easily? Me—I’d kill to find a guy who sparked my plug the way he had hers.

At my age, fast approaching forty-two years on the planet, I realize how rare those feelings are—more accurately, how rare both those feelings and suitable single guys are. So much so that if I found one who did it for me, I wouldn’t be so quick to let him go. Hah! If that wasn’t just like a woman carrying on with a married man. Well, at least I can admit the unsustainable nature of my situation enough to say that the whole
meshuggener
mess had led to the decision to attempt online dating as soon as I returned home.

Then again, maybe my romantic notions were getting the better of me, and it was not Udi I saw— only the wishful thinking of the incurable romantic. After all, he was naked the last time I saw him, naked and dead on the day bed in Maddie’s house in Agoura Hills. It was more than likely that I hadn’t been focusing enough on his face; I do get carried away by their bodies...

“
Koon wa ba,
Losa Angelisan oni ake tashta
.
Arigato,
” a voice was blaring over the loudspeaker.

It sounded like my flight was boarding; I distinctly heard the words
Los
and
Angeles
mixed in with the Japanese.
Oh no.
I can’t miss this plane. It’s vital that I pick up the pace and I do—but eeow, that ankle hurts—as the voice continues in slaughtered English. “AH-den-shun pweese lady an’ gentoomen. Fligh numbah fi-oh-seex to Los Angeles is finohw boading a’gate foteen. Fligh numbah fi-oh-seex… ”

Final
boarding? What happened to pre-boarding and boarding of people with infants and then all those zones? At this point, the urgency of my situation necessitated actually lifting the rolling bag into my arms—
double eeow
—and turning myself into the biggest, barreling, red-headed broad I could, limping even faster through the terminal and trying to give the impression I had no ability to stop which, in fact, was the truth. People veritably leapt out of the way as I sprinted the final twenty-five yards to the gate.

An efficient Japanese woman of indeterminate age stood in front of the ticket scanner. She had a tidy bun on top of her head, and her hand was outstretched for my boarding pass, a prim look of reprimand on her face. I handed her the boarding pass, heart pounding, ankle throbbing, and bowed my head slightly in the traditional expression of Asian submission.
Hah! If she only knew.

She says something. It might have been “Welcome to Japan Airlines,” or “You look like Amanda Bynes.” I don’t know which, but I decide it’s the former, not only because it makes more sense but because if it were the latter, I’d have to sock her one.

Actually, I’m impressed when people speak more than one language, even if they’re usually unintelligible to anyone other than their own culture. It certainly doesn’t do much for America’s stature in the world when the average American travelling abroad goes around a foreign country uttering the smug, “Why should I speak—
fill in the blank
: French, Russian, Mandarin, whatever—when they—and here they point to the offending native speaker in their native land—speak English?”

Though I can’t say I’m fluent in anything other than my native tongue, thanks, in part, to my conservative Fresno upbringing, I’m very proud that I can say, “Hello/please/ thank you/where is the bathroom/ and how much is the wine?” in ten—count ‘em, ten!—different languages. I don’t know if this is what my parents envisioned for me when, at fourteen, I displayed the educational level of a freshman in college, but like I said, I’m destined for great things.

Now, as I gingerly make my way down the ramp to the waiting plane, I felt like I always do when boarding a jumbo jet, as if I were in a fun house without the fun—no mirrors, no spinning disks or revolving cylinders that give the impression of moving while standing still. No—just a boxy wind tunnel wherein I have to squint and close my mouth lest some FOD fly in, while, dripping with perspiration, I follow the path, like a cow to slaughter, toward the cabin door.

Just before I step onboard, I try to fix my hair before making my grand(ish) entrance. If the seated passengers, including my client, Viggo Mortensen, are going to glare at me for delaying their take off, I might as well look like I’m worth waiting for and prompt them to wonder who the chic woman is who’s caused the delay.

Most of the time, I put “the-disaster-known-as” my hair up to keep it from turning into the kind of frizzy, gnarly mess it had now become. But today, I’d been going for sexy—at least that’s how I hoped it looked when I’d left the hotel, prior to my physical exertions—because I’d been hoping to get upgraded to business class so I could sit next to Viggo. In that scenario, acted out in front of the hotel’s bathroom mirror, I was flinging my must-have locks around and flirting with the charming actor about art and music and living a purposeful life as we winged our way back to la-la land after his stellar performance in a series of Kubota Tractor commercials. Not that flirting on the airplane was going to get me any further than flirting during the shoot had—which was nowhere. But I’d still be angry with myself for not trying, and at last check, he was single; so for me, this would be something new.

I have this love-hate thing with actors: I’m attracted by the larger-than-life, valiant characters they play on screen, but, in reality, so many of them are vain, self-serving, and not even very good in bed unless there’s a mirror nearby that allows them to—while gazing at their reflection as they penetrate some arbitrary body—actually make love to themselves.

Clearly, I wasn’t going to sit with Viggo, but at least I’d made my flight, which is more than I could say about the time, a couple of years ago, when I spent two weeks in Switzerland for a series of BMW spots with Catherine Zeta-Jones. That time, it had totally been my fault. Nobody had made me have a fling with a remarkably handsome and amusing German microscope company executive who was attending a convention in the same hotel and who, of course, turned out to be married—detecting a pattern yet?—with a penchant for screwing anything over forty degrees that moved. He’d lied so convincingly, I believed him when he told me he was divorced and hadn’t been with anyone in a year.

That time, I missed my flight because I felt compelled to do what any self-respecting modern woman would have done under the circumstances: I crashed the Annual Bausch Microscope business breakfast, picked up the lying pig’s plate of pickled herring, and broadsided it into his gaping maw. Soon, three other women began hurling water pitchers, coffee cups, and pastries at the louse. It seemed they, too, had succumbed to his charms. They hadn’t known about me, and it was abundantly clear they hadn’t known about each other. My only regret had been not sticking around to see what happened next.

This singular event may have helped me steer clear of self-destructive relationships with married men while on work-related trips (the only kind I ever go on unless you count infrequent visits to Fresno), but it had yet to cure me of my attraction, unwittingly (and unwillingly, of course), to married men in my own city, like the one I was currently ensnarled with back in L.A.

Now, as I try to move through first class with grace and aplomb, I’m aware of the dirty looks from men in suits and the haughty-looking “women who shop”—the latter probably headed to the U.S. to ransack American stores with their inflated yen, euros, dinars, and pounds—perturbed at having their shopping trip delayed by the likes of me, slowly making my way through
their
cabin to get to the rest of the people of no consequence in coach.

I feel the glare of one of these women judging me and, “Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry!” I say, as I accidentally knock her elbow just enough to ever-so-slightly spill her free Mimosa onto her pale beige haute couture traveling costume with matching designer handbag.
Such a shame…she’ll have to go straight to the Balenciaga Boutique in Beverly Hills and buy another
. Well, at least I confirmed her worst suspicions about my character.

Continuing on through business class, I spot Viggo, sunglasses on, head tipped back, enjoying an apparent snooze. Damn, he had looked so fine on that tractor—what an earthmover. But now, he doesn’t even know I’m here, the ingrate. I flick my tangled web of hair anyway.
Some
body might be noticing.

And then I enter coach, that engorged mid-section of any commercial jetliner, which veritably swells with people, many of whom have engorged mid-sections themselves. If you squint, blurring your vision, you can sort of imagine an oversized chocolate tin from a big box store—the kind they put out at Christmas—where every compartment is filled with something mysterious you really don’t want to take a chance on.

I look up, figuring there will be no place to tuck the Tumi anywhere near my seat, so I’d better start looking. And, of course, it’s immediately apparent that all the overhead storage bins are jammed. Kabuki masks, boxes of sake, and duty-free Scotch join the luggage and pieces of clothing, crowding the bins for as far as I can see and pretty much guaranteeing there won’t be a spot for my one little carry-on with the perfectly measured three-ounce containers in their quart-sized zip-lock plastic bag. Crap, crap,
crap!

For all the trouble I went through to call her, Madelyn might have at least
pretended
to believe me. Calling had made me so late, I can’t even find a place for my bag. I
hate
that! Why is it everything about air travel is a challenge? The temperature is always either too hot or too cold, and there are always
so many people
. Where are they going, and why are they on
my
plane?

If you’re getting the sense that I’m angry, you’re right. I’m an angry white woman. Get over it, you say? Granted, things could be a lot harder than they are, and perhaps I shouldn’t complain. But things could be a lot easier, too.

Our would-be first female president, Hillary, would agree with me on this. People could be way nicer, smarter, more considerate, and the world would be a better place as a result. But everyone behaves as if they didn’t have to share the planet or the not-so-friendly skies with other human beings—not to mention animals, birds, and bugs—including women like me, Nancy Pelosi, and Lady Gaga; not that they fly coach, but you know what I mean—who want all the stuff men have.

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, imagining I’m back in Los Angeles, clasping a pole in K-Love’s intermediate dance class, circling to the sounds of J. Cole’s “Power Trip” and loving life. And I remind myself, as I always do in times of stress, I must learn to practice gratitude; I breathe deeply while repeating my mantra in my head: Inhale:
Yes, yes, yes, yes;
exhale:
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

I’m moving again, and spot a flight attendant handing out headsets a few rows away on the other side of the plane. So I limp over, smiling cheerily, hoping she can help. Her hair is cut in a bob, and she wears a nametag that says, “Kitty.” Seriously, “Hello, I’m Kitty.” She can’t be serious.

“Hello, Kitty,” I say, smiling as genuinely as Reese Witherspoon pulled over for a moving violation. “I wonder if you might help me.”

She beams back a not-altogether-genuine smile herself, but of course she’s not had the benefit of working with actors as I do, being able to mirror behavior on a daily basis. “Oh-hi-oh, wuh I can do for you?” she asks in heavily accented English.

“Kitty, could I ask you, isn’t the rule of the skies that a passenger gets
one
carry-on? Because there are people on this flight who must have more than one. Otherwise, all the overhead bins wouldn’t be so full, ya know?” I give her an “aw shucks” kind of shrug, hoping she’ll agree and do something about this gross miscarriage of justice.

Kitty’s expression doesn’t change.

“See, I only have this one carry-on,” I continue, speaking a little slower and acting it out with hand gestures in case her English comprehension isn’t up to speed.