Everything Is Perfect When You're a Liar (29 page)

“NOT THAT ONE!” I shout, adrenaline pumping as I raise my right hand. “THIS ONE!! I have SHIT on my hand and I got a ticket and I didn't get to go to the zoo!”

Officer Morton looks around, then says, “Give me the ticket.” Using my left hand, I pick it up and pass it to him. He tears the ticket up and leans toward me with a serious look on his face.

“No one gets a ticket on my watch when they have shit on their hand.”

I pull into the driveway and turn around to look at Henry and Sal in the backseat.

“Mom! Can we have chicken and fries still?” Sal asks.

“Sure. I just have to clean up first. And Henry's probably uncomfortable.” I look over at Henry, who's smiling and biting his apple juice straw. He's totally oblivious to the fact that he's got shit all over his back, or that I'm about to carry him to the backyard and hose him off, like an elephant.

“Can we still go to the zoo today?” she says, unbuckling herself.

“Nope, not today.” I get out of the car, cross to Henry's side, and open the door. Sal stands in the backseat, beside Henry.

“Please can we go today?” Sal whines.

“We can go tomorrow,” I tell her. “First thing in the morning. I can't wait to go.”

“Me too,” she says. “Animals act crazy. I want to see what kind of crazy things the animals do.”

VEGAS

AT MY FUNERAL

1.   Stuff my bra for me.

2.   Play the “Game Over” theme from Super Mario Bros.

3.   Have George Clooney and Ryan Gosling dance me into the room, like Bernie in
Weekend at Bernie's
.

4.   Put pins in a map and yell, “Now you can go anywhere you want, baby,” like Cher in
Mask
.

5.   Play the videos of North Koreans crying for Kim Jong Il and pretend it's for me.

6.   Hire Richard Marx to sing “Should've Known Better.”

7.   Put an unlit cigarette in my mouth.

8.   Have Channing Tatum lap dance my casket.

This list is kept on my computer, in a folder marked
IF I AM DEAD OPEN THIS
along with my passwords and a bunch of notes reading, “Don't be sad, I'm in Heaven now. Ha ha ha!” So far, Clooney and Gosling have not yet confirmed, but Marx is standing by.

I don't think I'm going to die soon, but I finally feel like I'm growing old. Like, I know there's a Lil Wayne
and
a T-Pain, but somehow I thought they were the same person. You can be sure you're getting older when your finger isn't on the pulse of pop culture but you're sure it is. Getting old is when your complaints are so genuine that a friend can't console you.

I'm getting old and I hate it. I want to take charge.

“Angela,” I grumble into my iPhone as I toss some magazines aside to search for my iPhone. “I need to start working out. I know I said I'd never work out, but I need to. Where is my iPhone?!”

“Are you talking on your iPhone?” I can hear her smiling.

“Yes. Yes, I am talking on the phone I am looking for.”

“Kelly, you don't need to work out. You've never weighed a lot except when you've been pregnant. And even then you were the cutest pregnant ever.”

“I don't want to lose weight, but my body is at least 78 percent fat. I sit all day. And the pregnancies ruined my stomach skin. It's all smooth when I'm vertical, but when I bend over”—I stand up and lift my shirt, bending forward to let my skin go slack—“my stomach looks like Mickey Rooney's face.”

“Can you get that fixed?”

“If I can, I will. Trust.”

“Well.” She sighs into the phone and starts nervously stuttering some sounds the way moms try to spit out one kid's name but start with the names of all their other kids. “Wh— M—Uh—I-I started working out last week.” My mouth falls open. One friend does not seek out a better body without notifying the other friend. This is friendship treason.

“And you didn't
tell me
??”

“Kelly, you said you'd never work out!”

“You said YOU'D never work out!”

There's a beat. Both of us breathing into our iPhones. We've never had a fight. We've never done anything terrible to each other in the eighteen years we've known one another—just like we've never exercised in the eighteen years we've known each other. I wait for her to apologize.

“I'm doing Tracy Anderson's Method mat workout,” she whines slowly, confessionally. “It's on YouTube, but I'm going to order the DVDs. Gwyneth Paltrow does it, Jennifer Lopez, Kelly Ripa . . .”

“BYE!!” I hang up on Angela and start pawing through my closet to find my workout clothes. Thirty minutes later, I come up with a pair of black athletic shorts and a tank top. If it takes me thirty minutes to find my workout clothing, I figure, I'm not working out enough. (Note: I'm
never
working out.)

I open my computer, find Tracy Anderson's videos on YouTube, and start the program in my bedroom with my laptop open on my chair. I'm finally using that fifteen-year-old yoga mat for something besides building forts with the kids. Tracy is on my screen doing repetitive arm lifts and twists, and for the first minute I'm thinking,
Gwyneth's arms look that good from
this
easy shit?
But by the fiftieth arm lift and twist, I can't feel my arms and my shirt is so drenched in sweat I look like a landscaper from the Valley.

I smash the space bar with my useless arm to stop the video, then use the side of my hand to change it to a dance cardio video. There is Tracy, a smiling Bratz doll, telling me I don't need to know how to dance to follow her moves, but by the time I've figured out how she is doing what she's doing, she's on to the next move and I know she's a bald-assed liar. I'm out of breath, stomping across my floor, fully aware of how much I look like Shrek (not even Fiona), and praying no one comes home early to see this and mock me for the rest of my short and winded life.

A couple of minutes later, I'm two full moves behind her, and I realize I can't do cardio. I bend over and look at my computer screen as my legs push their way through some palsied Boyz II Men cross steps. By 3:24
P.M.
my ears hurt and I've gone deaf. I'm not sure about the possible medical causes—maybe it's the 78 percent body fat—but I sincerely go deaf when I do cardio, so I've always avoided it because hearing is rad. Then I look down at my shrunken apple stomach and summon some last refuge of energy.

Tracy is now erotically swaying her hips, giving me a pep talk: “Remember, this is a performance.”

“Quit fucking me with your eyes!” I yell back.

“When you don't think you can do it, remember, you can,” she says.

Fuck you, Tracy, I can,
I think. I dig deep, I can barely hear as I jump from one foot to the next, my arms in the air punching around like I'm in a club. I can't feel my body at all, but suddenly I'm able to do it without wanting to quit. This must be the “zone” people talk about when they work out. I bet this is how dogs feel all the time.

I get through the last minute of the video by imagining Drake in the corner behind me, holding a golden chalice of cognac, saying things like, “You thirty-three? No way, girl! DAYUM DAT ASS!!” and totally asking me out on a date and then showing up as his character from
Degrassi
, Wheelchair Jimmy. If Drake asks you out on a date and shows up as Wheelchair Jimmy, you're the one. But I know I'm probably way too old for Drake. I'm
old
.

The next day, I give Angela the update. “I worked out yesterday, and I ordered the video program,” I say like I've just become a professional bodybuilder. I'm all about taking charge of my life, and this counts now that I've remembered my body is actually a part of that too. I take this kind of thing very seriously.

“So did I.” So does she.

“This is so great. We're going to be so fit in ninety days.”

“One of my coworkers doesn't like Gwyneth Paltrow's body.”

“I'm so glad I work from home so I don't have to hear crap like that,” I say, staring at the wall in my bedroom, totally alone and bored. “I love Goop's body. Hold on, I just got an e-mail.” I check every e-mail instantly, as though something incredible could happen at any moment.

I pull my phone away from my ear and click on the e-mail. It's from a friend:

Did you know that David Copperfield is a fan of yours? He just tweeted that your tweets are his favorite. That's so weird.

Incredible.

I get back on the phone with Angela.

“Angela? David Copperfield is a fan of mine. I should come up with a funeral request for him. Maybe he can make my body disappear and save my family the cremation fees. Tell me how many times you do her arm video tonight. I think I'm going to double up—my shoulders look great.”

I check my Twitter account, go into my @ replies, and see this:

@kellyoxford, @alecbaldwin, @pattonoswalt, @rainnwilson RT @molsen23:
@d_copperfield Whose tweets do you look forward to the most?

I follow Copperfield, then direct-message him.

“Thank you! You have any magic going on?” I hit send and then realize that he can't read my totally sarcastic mental intonation of “You have any magic going on?” I'm a fucking idiot.

He responds immediately, and earnestly, with a series of DMs. He's performing at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, he tells me, and if James and I are ever in the area he'd love to give us a private tour of his museum.

I immediately fire back, no hesitation, because I'm already imagining David and me in a helicopter, laughing together as monuments disappear below us. “Is the first weekend of May enough notice? Can we bring our friends? They are a couple. Where do you recommend we stay? At the MGM?” I hit send without rereading. I'm an insane person.

He replies: the first weekend of May works, and he'll set us up with rooms at the MGM Signature Suites.

I call Angela. “You and Matt are coming with James and me to Vegas to see David Copperfield and go to his secret museum.”

“WHAT?” She laughs, knowing I'm for real because I'm always for real.

“Angela, I need
adventure
. I don't want to die without magic in my life. I'm aging. First weekend in May. It gives us a few more weeks of Tracy Anderson before we have to go sit beside a pool.”

“It's not enough time. I wasn't prepared to get into my bathing suit so soon.”

“Have you looked at your arms lately, Ang? Mine are insane. This program has FAST RESULTS. You should double up too. We're all going to Vegas.”

At six
A.M.
, three weeks and nineteen sessions of swearing and dancing with Tracy Anderson later, my mom stands in our doorway in her flannel pajamas. She's agreed to stay with the kids, even though she thinks David Copperfield is “kind of dark.”

“You do realize it's the Black Lilith Moon this weekend,” she says, widening her eyes for dramatic effect. “It's the supermoon,
and
it's the Black Lilith Moon,” she says with premonitory fervor. “It means all of your fears will rise within you. LOVE YOU!” She shuts the door.

James and I land in Vegas a few hours before Matt and Angela. There are dozens of islands of conveyor belts in the baggage claim, carousel after carousel. I've never seen so many black bags in one place. It's like some weird Christmas movie where the elves only make suitcases.

The place is wall-to-wall people. Babies crying, one-hundred-year-olds breathing from oxygen tanks, addicts gambling their change at ringing slot machines. People from India, Australia, Ecuador, Wichita, and all of their internationally corresponding smells.
Man,
I think,
Vegas is crowded,
but then I notice that most of the walls and ceilings are mirrored, and I realize it's probably an eighth of the crowd I think it is. The crowds are already driving me crazy, but I try not to complain, because whining is the mark of an old person. When I was younger, this kind of mayhem would have fired me up. Now I just want someone to pick me up and carry me the fuck out of there.

We grab our bags and tread over the dirty carpet, weaseling our way through the slot machines, old people, and Chinese tourists to the exit doors beside the taxi stand. I'm immediately assaulted by two forces: the heat of the Nevada sun and the three hundred people ahead of us in line for a taxi.

James looks at me; our eyes lock. “For real?” I mouth to him as a sweaty fat woman brushes past my bare arms, leaving her body liquid all over me.

“Let's go to the limo stand,” he suggests, like some sort of wealthy genius. We get in line for a sedan. There are only two people in line ahead of us, and for an extra fifty bucks I'll get to avoid another person close-standing near me and sharing their personal humidity.

Our driver is Pasqual. “Can I smoke in here?” I ask. I recently started smoking more than casually again—you know, just so I can feel young and stupid and unable to develop cancer. Plus, I'm working out now, so I'm even.

“You can pretty much smoke anywhere in Vegas,” Pasqual says as he drives the car farther away from the airport and closer to the Strip, which is basically three blocks away. “Did you see the line up at the taxi stand?” Pasqual states more than asks. “Fight weekend. Crazy weekend. This is going to be one crazy weekend,” he repeats, like my mom just called him about the Black Lilith Moon, trying to scare us back to Calgary.

“Are you meeting friends in town?” Pasqual asks. I feel like he's asked this question too soon, but I guess that's what people do in Vegas.

“Our friends are flying in from Vancouver in an hour to meet us,” James says.

Matt and Angela have been friends of mine for almost twenty years, and friends of ours as a couple for the thirteen years James and I have been together. I met Angela at Mrs. Louie's Korean day care when I was two years old, but neither of us remembers that. We figured it out when we were eighteen and Angela worked at the Alternative Video Spot by my childhood home. This was way pre-Blockbuster. We bonded over
Kicking and Screaming
and
Party Girl
and
Dead Man
. Our love for broody '90s comedies and Jarmusch cemented our friendship. She started dating Matt, her best friend, soon after.