Play Dates (36 page)

“I’ll ignore that pathetic attempt at humor. You want to make a real stab at commitment, you need to make a serious effort to present that to the world.”

“You mean act predatory?”

“Well, no. And yes. If you’re clear—in your head—that you feel it’s time to quit dating fly-by-night guys who make you feel good—not that there’s anything
wrong
with that—and become interested in spending your increasingly precious dating hours only with men who have a future that includes marriage—

and kids, if that’s what you want, too—then that will be the kind of person who will gravitate to you. If you go on acting like the good-time gal that you are, you’ll only attract good-time guys.”

“Are you saying I’m not supposed to have fun? Not be me?”

“No. And yes.”

“You’re driving me crazy with that, you know.” I dipped my fingers into my water glass and flicked a few drops in his face.

Charles flinched. You’d think he was the Wicked Witch of the West. “Afraid of water, are you?” I teased.

“It’s a matter of commitment,” he replied, totally ignoring me.

“Committing to being committed. Ever since you hit adolescence—

and I’ve been there every step of the way, remember—you’ve put out vibes that you really don’t care too much about the long run.

You’re into the here and now. You’re a creature of the moment.

Which is a really cool thing, don’t get me wrong—it’s one of the parts of you I love the best—but what it means is that men pick up on that vibe, sugar.” He pointed at the chart. “Every one of PLAY DATES

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these guys supports my theory. They’re all grasshoppers. We need to find you an ant.”

I slid his green martini toward my side of the table. “I think you’ve drunk enough of this bug juice. I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”

Charles reclaimed his cocktail. “The Aesop’s fable. You know, the grasshopper lives for the here and now, while the ant stores up for the winter.”

“I don’t think that’s a very exact analogy.”

“Okay, maybe not. But you know what I mean.” He flipped through the Excel chart. “Hey, you know who’s not on here?”

“The President and the Dalai Lama?”

“Them, too. The guy from your birthday party.”

“What guy?”

“The one who owns the bar.”

“Jake?
I
never went out with Jake!”

“No, the other guy. Mr. Capital Gains or Investment Capital . . .

you know—curly brown hair, Armani tux, good grooming.”

“Oh. Umm . . . Owen Michaels, his name was. I didn’t go out with him, either. He played Good Samaritan when my place was robbed and then I got a birthday kiss at the end of the night. In fact, he played about the same role you did that night, except he looked a bit slimmer in his tux,” I teased.

“He’s an example, on paper, anyway—which is where you should put him,” Charles said, poking at a page of the chart for emphasis. “So you have a sample—of the kind of man you should be considering from now on. Remember how he sort of took charge after you realized you’d been burglarized? If
you
didn’t find that sexy, Mia,
I
did.” He put on his sanctimonious face. “You know, Miss Control Freak, even the most take-charge people like to be taken care of sometimes.”

I did want to call Owen, actually. I’ve got his card someplace; I’m not sure where I put it. I want to talk to him about my ideas for
Mi
♥
amore Makeup
. I’ve got some money socked away—

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Leslie Carroll

maybe I
am
an
ant
, after all—and Celestia did say that these days the stars would be on my side in the business sphere. “Yeah, I guess a phone call won’t hurt,” I said to Charles. “I could, like, sound him out about my start-up, in a real low-pressure way.

We’ve got a mutual friend in Jake, so maybe I could see if Owen plans to go over to the bar on Saint Paddy’s day.” Jake always does a big thing that night. So if a conversation with Owen—

either personal or professional—went south fast, the stakes would be really low and we could still enjoy the night by hanging and talking with other people.

I’m not sure this is a very committed way to commit to committing.

Dear Diary:

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! You can tell in this diary that it’s St.

Patrick’s day anyway because I drew a four-leaf clover and a
snake. Mrs. Heinie-face did not like my snakes from last week.

She said they were disgusting. I said that I know snakes are disgusting and that everyone thinks snakes are disgusting, so it was
a good thing that St. Patrick made them go away from Ireland. I
made my project so you could put the snakes in Ireland and then
take them away, because I just drew a picture and that was Ireland. And the snakes were made out of Play-Doh and I put plastic wrap on them after Mommy and me made them so they
wouldn’t get hard. So they were still sticky on their tummies and
you could stick them to the drawing or unstick them and take
them away. Xander said he liked the snakes a lot and that made
me happy.

Mrs. Heinie-face called my mommy and Mommy said that just
because Mrs. Heinie-face said that she thinks snakes are disgusting, if she gives me a U because of that, she will make a big com-PLAY DATES

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plaint about it. Mrs. Heinie-face gave me an S after all. I think
my Ireland project was better than Satisfactory. I think I should
have gotten an E. I can’t wait until third grade and no more Mrs.

Heinie-face. June, when we have our graduation is really, really
far away.

Mommy said we could make the leprechaun cupcakes for
school but she didn’t want to make them from scratch like it said
in my magazine. But the magazine said that if you want to use a
cake mix, you could do that, too.

But we didn’t have a lot of the ingredients. Mommy was tired
from work when she said we could make the cupcakes because I
said “remember I need to bring something Irish to school tomorrow” and then she said okay, but then we had to go to the grocery
store because we needed to buy all the ice cream cones and the
cake mixes and we had to get the icing and the special candies to
decorate them and we had to buy a lot of bags of gum drops so
we would have enough of the right colors because they have to
look exactly the same as the picture in the magazine.

I stayed up extra late to help because I wanted to do the decorations and that was my favorite part but we had to wait for the
cupcakes to cool off before we could decorate them. From the directions we had to paint the cones with green food coloring because
the cones are the leprechaun hats. And we had to put vanilla
icing on the cake part because those were the heads and the faces
and then we had to put candy on it to make the eyes and the nose
and the mouth and the beard. But we couldn’t do that unless we
turned the cupcakes upside down. Which was really right side up
so they would look like leprechauns.

While we were waiting for the cupcakes to be finished baking,
Mommy helped me with my homework. We have math that I
don’t understand. We have to add numbers that are three numbers big to other numbers that are three numbers big and I keep
getting confused. I keep forgetting about carrying numbers.

Mommy said that if I’m going to be an astronaut when I grow up

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then I have to know how to do math. Maybe I won’t be an astronaut. I don’t think Rockettes have to know math. And that’s my
second choice.

When we took the cupcakes out of the oven, most of them
spilled out over the sides of the cones and they were all gloppy. I
think it was because Mommy filled them too much, but the recipe
said halfway and that’s what she did. I saw her. Mommy said
maybe it would be okay when they cooled off. But then some of
them flopped out of the cones when we turned them upside down
and then others of them, when Mommy tried to cut off the parts
that glopped over, they just got all crumbly.

Some of them were okay, but because of the messy ones and the
broken ones we won’t have enough for one for each of my class. And
then I was crying because we wouldn’t have enough and it was a
lot past my bedtime, so Mommy said I should go to sleep and we
would wake up extra early and decorate them in the morning, because even the good ones were still too hot to put the icing on.

But in the morning, the cones got all mushy during the night
and it made the leprechaun hats all smushy and you couldn’t
hold them by the hat to eat them because they were too mushy
and the cupcake part squooshed out. So we couldn’t decorate
them and I wanted Mommy to make new ones but she said we
didn’t have enough time to start all over again from scratch. I
said we weren’t doing it from scratch. We were using cake mixes
but then she said she meant that we didn’t have enough time to
start all over again at all. And she made me add up the numbers
like math class. 10 minutes to put all the ingredients together and
mix them up and 30 minutes to bake them and then to be extra
sure they would be cool so we could decorate them it would be 30

more minutes to wait and then it might take a whole hour just to
decorate all of them.

And then Mommy saw what I was wearing to school because
we didn’t have to wear our uniforms again today because it’s a
special day. She said, “Aren’t you supposed to be wearing St.

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Patrick’s Day colors?” And I said yes, we could wear green or
white or orange or we could put the colors together. I was wearing
a yellow dress that Granny Tulia made for me that has bright
pink pockets. Mommy said that she didn’t think I was following
the rules. And I said yes I WAS following the rules because Mrs.

Hennepin said you could put the colors together and yellow and
bright pink makes a kind of orange and orange is one of the St.

Patrick’s colors. Mommy thought I should wear something green
instead because she said Mrs. Hennepin likes it when people follow the rules. And that she knew Mrs. Hennepin was going to be
unhappy with both Mommy and me because I wasn’t following
the rules. But I didn’t want to change clothes.

And I was crying because I didn’t want to change and because
the cupcakes didn’t come out and because I have to bring something Irish to school and now I don’t have anything and I would
get a U for the whole St. Patrick’s Day. I asked Mommy if I could
just be sick today from school. But she said no and that I was
sick for real last week and already missed a day of school and it
wasn’t good to pretend to be sick just ’cause something bad happened.

Mommy told me to stop crying and she got a smile on her face
and she said she wasn’t going to make me any promises but she
had an idea. So she went to the telephone and she made a call
and then when the other person picked up the phone she said “Hi,
Dennis, it’s me. Is today still a day off for you?” And I heard her
listening. And she smiled even more and she said, “I want to
know if you can do Zoë and me a big BIG favor? Can you go to
school with her today?”

So Fireman Dennis came to school with me and he talked to
our whole class about being Irish and he told us stories that his
granny used to tell him when he was a little boy my age about the
Little People and the banshees and it was so fun! And Mrs. Hennepin gave me an Excellent for bringing something Irish to class.

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Leslie Carroll

She said that it was a wonderful surprise. And THAT was the
biggest surprise. That I got an E.

Oh. I forgot. Mrs. Hennepin said I didn’t follow the rules with
my yellow and pink dress because everybody else was wearing
green or orange. And she didn’t understand when I explained it.

That I WAS wearing orange. So in art class today I asked Ms.

Bland if I was right that yellow and bright pink make orange and
she said they make peach which is a shade of orange. And Mrs.

Hennepin didn’t like it that I asked Ms. Bland. So I had the best
time when Fireman Dennis came to class with me but I had the
worst time when I got in trouble for my dress. I don’t think Mrs.

Hennepin will EVER like me. She IS a Heinie-face!

Chapter 19

APRIL

“Claire, are you sitting down? I’m getting married!”

“Oh—wow—oh my God, Mia, that’s amazing! I mean—who’s the guy?”

“April Fools!!”

“You witch!”

I laughed. “I could always get you, you know? I’ve been waiting for this for weeks.” Some people look forward to Christmas.

Me, I can’t wait for April Fool’s Day to roll around. I was a real prankster at Thackeray, back in the old days. Senior year, sixth form, we dressed like commandos and “liberated” the student body. I think we were trying to reenact the invasion of Grenada or something. I had Claire, who was only in second form then, posted as a lookout. She was pissed at me because we wouldn’t let her do more. I was all for it; I knew she was as good as any of us, but the boys outvoted me. The guys, dressed in camouflage fatigues and toting pretty authentic-looking black plastic machine guns, staged a distraction with “explosives” (baking soda and water in plastic 35mm film canisters) strategically placed in trash cans throughout Thackeray’s halls and classrooms. Then