Tales of a Drama Queen (19 page)

 

Saturday morning. Haven't left the apartment in two days. I wake to knocking at my door. Roll out of bed wearing the red Daryl K pants and white T-shirt I had on yesterday. Fell asleep watching Conan O'Brien interview supermodel Giselle Bundchen. She was complaining about how hard it is to be Giselle Bundchen. She must die.

I open the door, and it's Joshua. He looks extra Ga-Ga Gorgeous, there's a nimbus of heavenly light around him. Plus, he's bearing a bag of bagels and an egg-crate tray that holds two cups of coffee.

Love is rekindled in my heart. “Joshua!” I say. “I didn't expect—the place is a mess.”

He's supposed to say that it doesn't matter. He says: “What happened to your hair?”

Aack! It's in braids. I look like Swamp Thing. I loosen the braids and twist my hair into a knot. “It's um…for conditioning. You brought me coffee!”

“And cinnamon raisin bagels.”

Always wondered who ate raisin bagels. “My favorite.”

“There's something I want from you,” he says over his coffee cup. “I think we should go into business together.”

Ga-Ga wants to go into business with me. We'll be
Time
's
couple of the year, profiled in
Fortune.
Maybe I'll even get into the gossip section of
W! Elle Medina was seen at Oprah Winfrey's sprawling Montecito estate
—

“…and with your contacts,” he's saying, “we'll be unstoppable. Remember Philip Michael Thomas?”

“Used to be on
Miami Vice
with Don Johnson?” I say absently, thinking that I most want to be seen attending gala fund-raisers.

“He got three million bucks in a settlement, for his phone psychic commercials. Big money. You have to trust me, love. DRM is the key.”

“What?” Takes me a moment to remember DRM is the company that owns Psychic Connexion. “DRM?”

“It's totally understandable, being reluctant to lift this paperwork we need, Elle,” he says. “But we have to be bold. We have to overcome all obstacles. Together, you and I, we can—”

“I got fired.”

He flicks me an exasperated look. “This isn't about Super 9. It's about DRM. Focus, honey. The 900 number racket is open season. With your inside information, and my—”

“I mean, I got fired from Psychic Connexion.”

“You
what?
”

I emit a nervous giggle. “It's sort of a funny story. I was working on my Task-Oriented Readings…”

“Your
what?
”

I tell him.

“Un-fucking-believable, Elle. Hanging up on paying customers?”

“It was all part of my plan,” I say in a small voice. “I was helping a lot of people.”

He stands and grabs the raisin bagels.

“Where are you going? Don't you want to have breakfast?”

“Not anymore,” he says, and closes the door behind him.

“I hate raisin bagels!” I scream at him and throw my cup of coffee at the closed door. Which turns out to be a bad idea because it takes me half an hour to get the stain out of the carpet. And I could have really used the coffee.

B
ack to memorizing the Help Wanted section every day. Back to composing bright, hopeful, misleading cover letters. Back to calling Sheila at Superior. Today, she recommends I try another employment agency.

The phone rings. Stupidly hoping it is good news, I pick up.

“Eleanor Medina,” he says.

“Hi, Carlos. You got my check?” I sent a hundred dollars, even though I promised four.

“Elle, I like you. But this is serious. This can screw your credit for a lifetime. No credit cards. No home loan. No car loans. No job that requires a credit check. This can—”

“I got fired again.”

“—mess up your…again? What happened?”

I tell him.

There's a long pause. “Listen, Elle. I shouldn't tell you this.
But if
you
can get fired for trying to help people, so can I. There's only one thing for you to do. Declare bankruptcy.”

“Bankruptcy?”

“Yeah. You're not gonna get out from under this. You need to start over. It's a bad option, but it's the best one you have.” He tells me how it works. I won't have to repay anything, basically, and his company is out six thousand dollars or whatever.

“And what about IKEA? They lose fifteen hundred dollars, for trusting me with a card?”

“That's exactly what happens.”

Oh, God. What kind of person am I? I tell Carlos I'll think about it, but as we hang up, I renew my determination to get a job,
today.

I sneak downstairs to steal Merrick's newspaper for the classifieds. This is nothing new; I've been doing so every morning for a week, too depressed to leave the building. I'm sure he knows it's me pilfering his paper. I don't think I care…until I meet him in the hall.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hello.” He steps into his office and shuts the door.

Oh,
God.
It's the way he says it. Indifferent and uncaring. I get halfway upstairs, my cheeks burning with mortification and his paper crumpled in my hands, before the tears start. I fall into bed weeping.

I am a failure. As an employee, as a credit risk and as a person. All I want is to be a child again, and have someone tuck me in and kiss me on the forehead and tell me it's all okay. But it's not.

 

I stay in bed for two days, sick of myself. Sick of my life. Just sick. What can I do? I mean—what
can
I do?

Then this happens:

Hunger drives me to Super Ralph's. Where poverty leads me to inspect economy-size cans of kidney beans with great care.

Someone nudges my cart. I turn, ready to battle a pushy aisle-hog, and find Todd, manager at Nordstrom and high school date.

“Hey, Elle,” he says. “How's it going? We never got a chance to catch up.”

“Oh, no. I—I've been busy.”

He looks at my cart: family-pack of recycled toilet paper; family-size frozen coconut cake; five-dollar bottle of Zinfandel; one banana; economy size Advil; backup auxiliary family-size frozen coconut cake; and, monster tub of chocolate ice cream, to go with coconut cakes.

“That's my favorite vintage,” he says about the wine.

He's sort of cute. Employed, presentable and he's not Joshua or Merrick. I'm sort of demolished. Plus, I'm unemployable and a fucking mess and I hate myself.

“Cheap Zin goes great with coconut cake and self-pity,” I say.

He humors me with a laugh, and says something bland. So I take him home and we have sex.

The good thing: we already fooled around ten years ago, so we're past some of the awkward stages. The bad thing: I no longer have the body of a seventeen-year-old, and I'm pretty sure he notices.

I wake the next morning disgusted. I don't especially
like
Todd. Hell, I don't even care enough to
dis
like him. All I want is for him to be gone. I jab him with my elbow to wake him.

He yelps like a little girl. “Eee! Oh—oh. I was having a nightmare.”

Welcome to the club. “Rise and shine,” I say, afraid he's going to start telling me his dreams. “You don't want to be late for work.”

“What time is it? Oh, no.” He scrambles out of bed and searches for his discarded clothes. One of his socks is draped over a half-eaten piece of coconut cake, which is a terrible waste of good comfort food. “I'll call you—maybe we can have dinner?”

“Sounds great,” I lie. I'm sure he's a nice guy, probably. But…
yech.
A one-night stand? What am I doing?

His other sock is among my shoes. He gives my shoe collection a professional appraisal as he pulls the sock over his somewhat-unsightly foot. “Hey, where are the most expensive shoes in the world?”

“Huh?”

“The BCBGs. Three thousand dollars for a pair of shoes—I wish I could
sell
them for that much.”

“What? Three thousand? What are you talking about?”

He looks briefly puzzled as he fastens his belt. “You know. The settlement.”

“The what?”

“Three grand. For when the heel broke and you slipped in the store—that guy you hired to represent you was pretty convincing.”

Three grand? Three fucking thousand dollars, and Joshua gave me $200, and I loved him for it?

“He's a smart guy,” I say.

Fucking Joshua. I probably knew all along. He
did
pretend to shoplift Super 9, so he could sue. And he probably never paid Citronelle. Poor Meeshell Reesharrrd.

And now I'm the kind of woman who has one-night stands with high school boyfriends? No. So I abruptly escort Todd downstairs, the better to shove him out the doors and out of my life.

At the bottom of the stairs: Merrick. Dressed casual, expression cool. He looks good. And more than that, he looks like he knows what he's about. He looks like a man, not a grown-up boy. He looks like the man you wish were single, you wish were interested (and maybe you wish would dye his hair), but never is. I am abruptly aware that I've fucked up big-time.

“Morning,” he says.

“Merrick,” I say, my throat dry.

“You must be Joshua,” he says to Todd. “I'm Lou—Merrick.”

“Joshua?” Todd blinks. “No, I'm Todd.”

“Right, Todd.” Merrick nods politely, and I am going to be sick. “Sorry, I haven't had my coffee yet.”

“I know the feeling,” Todd says. “I can hardly walk without caffeine and I need to be on the ball. We're having the semi-annual shoe sale at Nordstrom's today. Good selection of men's—you ought to stop by.”

He moves to kiss me, and I dodge.

“Have a nice sale,” I say.

“Nordstrom?” Merrick says. “The shoe department?”

“Yeah,” Todd says. “Nice meeting you.” And he's out the door.

Merrick turns to me—the words
the shoe department
echoing in the air.

“We knew each other in high school,” I say.

There's silence.

“We were in chemistry class together.”

Another pause.

I can't stand it. I can't stand always being clumsy and wrong and stupid, always being the butt of every joke. My humiliation turns to something like rage. “Okay. Alright,
goddammit.
He's the one who caught me shoplifting. Except I wasn't. And Joshua ripped me off for like three thousand dollars, and all he wanted from me was help with some scam, okay? And I got fired again. From the only job I was ever any good at. From the only job I ever liked. From the only thing I, I… Okay? Are you happy now?”

“Elle, I don't—”

“No! Shut up, Merrick!” I run upstairs and slam my door. Then I pretend I don't hear when Merrick knocks. Which, you know, is a great way to show how grown-up and good-natured I am. Then I finish the second coconut cake.

So that happened.

And tell me, what can I do? What am I supposed to do?
I'm in a downward spiral, circling the drain. I can't get out of my own head, I can't think of anything beyond what an utterly unrelenting failure I am. I can't think of anything but the rejection and humiliation and mistakes and stupidity.

I hate myself. Even the one thing I was good at was fake. Being a phone psychic, without being psychic. Without a single fucking clue. Adele was right.

Well…but Adele thought I did good work. She said I was great with callers. And I
was.
People get so caught up in their own crisis they can't see that
anything
is better than nothing. That's what the tasks were all about. Break the cycle, get them moving. Get them doing something, anything, for themselves or someone else. Get them out of their own head and into—

I sit up.

I need a task. I know exactly what to do.

 

I speed to Goleta, frantic with anxiety. What if she's gone? Let her still be there, please God let her still be there. I need her. She needs me.

I screech to a halt in the parking lot and bound inside. Nobody behind the desk. I sprint to the kennels. Past cages of healthy, glossy, barking dogs. Past cute dogs and easy dogs and pedigreed dogs.

To her kennel. Scab. My Scab.

She's gone.

An eerie sort of calm descends. I was going to adopt her. I was going to love her and heal her, and put her needs above my own. I was going to stop looking for someone to rescue me, and rescue her, instead. But she is gone.

I walk, dazed, toward the car. And she is there. My hairless jowly lizard-rat dog, being walked—if you could call it that, the way she hobbles at the end of the leash—by a volunteer.

I kneel and open my arms, the volunteer drops the leash, and Scab staggers toward me like a toddler taking her first steps. I hug her gentle and close. She smells of illness. She is
birdlike in her frailty. Her skin is warm and pebbled and she exudes a six-inch slug of ectoplasm from her jowl to my knee. I can't remember ever being so happy.

I croon to her. I tell her I don't care what she does or how she looks, I don't care if she ever grows fur, I don't care if she is ever healthy or happy or anything—she is mine and I am hers.

In the office, the volunteer who matched us tells me Scab needs to stay two more days, for another mange dip. There's only a fifty percent chance her fur will grow back. I tell the woman I want to take her home today, but she convinces me to wait. For the dog's health, she says. Plus, I can visit tomorrow. As I kiss her—the dog, not the woman—goodbye, a male volunteer asks, “Oh, you're adopting Scab?”

“No,” I say. “I'm adopting Miu Miu.”

Because she may look like Scab, she may look a mess and a failure and a pathetic huddled creature, but I know her for what she is: a gorgeous jewel of a thing.

 

When I pull into the parking lot at home, Neil is putting some sort of power tool into the back of his pickup truck.

“Hey, Neil,” I say. “I just adopted a dog! She's a boxer. She's bald, though, with mange. Her name's Miu Miu.”

“A pound dog. Way to go. You know what I can't stand?” he asks me.

“You mean besides politics, people, places, popcorn…”

He makes a face. “I can't stand people adopting foreign babies. What's up with that? Like it's fashionable to adopt a Chinese or Romanian baby—you can't adopt a local child? These people buy local produce, for fuck's sake, they can't
adopt
local? I mean, it's a
trend?
Adopting a kind of child, like it's a poodle. You have a Jack Russell? I have a Korean, and I'm considering getting a Czech or Albanian.”

“Neil,” I say. “I'm adopted. From Canada.”

“Oh, shit. I'm sorry—I just start talking and—” he eyes me, then chuckles. “Oh, bullshit! From Canada.” He gets in
his pickup and slams the door. “I hate Canadians, too.” He starts the engine. “Oh, there's some old woman looking for you. She's inside.”

“What woman?” I ask the back of his truck as he pulls away.

So I creep to the front door and peer inside. Sure enough, there's an old woman in the foyer. Wearing a canary-yellow Chanel suit. I try to think how this can possibly be good news—like maybe a rich uncle I've never heard of died or something—but fail.

So I browse at Anthropologie and Borders, and come back in two hours, and she's gone. Ha.

 

The next morning, I sell every bit of designer clothing I own, except for two outfits. Possibly three. Or four, depending on what you mean by “outfit.” But definitely almost everything.

I drag three suitcases to the consignment shop. I'm wearing jeans and a ratty Limited T-shirt. I'm sweaty and determined, and the beady-eyed woman behind the counter greets me with a smile, and tells me how well I look. She also gives me $2200. The clothes cost Louis almost ten times that, over about four years.

I loved those clothes, but it strikes me that that's an awful lot of money. And having parted with the outfits, I feel light. Light-headed, maybe…but unburdened, too. Those were clothes from a different life, and they were gorgeous; but they no longer fit.

I pack all my IKEA furniture in the original boxes. Except for the stained chair and the kitchen stuff and two accent pillows. I send it all back, with a note. I will pay for what I kept. I don't know when, but I will.

I buy a huge bag of dog food. Solid Gold, it's called. Holistic doggie health food. It has lamb and yucca and blueberries and comes in a shiny gold shrink-wrapped bag. I can get by on rice and beans; I have hair. But Miu Miu needs all the help I can give her.

I send Carlos four hundred dollars.

I go to Shika.

“Billy the,” I greet Kid. “What's shaking?”

“Martini,” he says, and he serves it to Mr. Goldman. He's sort of literal.

I slip onto the stool next to Mr. Goldman and Monty. “Lost my job again,” I tell them. “Who's buying me an iced tea?”

“As a psychic person?” Mr. Goldman asks. “Maya told me you were talking on the phone, but I never really understood….”