Authors: Claire Cook

Time Flies (6 page)

From:
Finn Miller

Subject:
sweet dreams of you

Do you remember that Leon Russell concert a bunch of us went to at the old Music Hall in Boston? The one where LR stood up from his piano and told the audience of screaming stoned-out kids that he wasn’t going to start playing again unless they shut the f up. Well last night I dreamed we were back there again and he made everybody else leave and then he played a set just for us. We held hands and then we started making out and then Leon Russell told us he wouldn’t keep playing unless we knocked it off. Great dream.

Sadly, I couldn’t recall ever going to a Leon Russell concert. I Googled up a song sampler of
Leon Live
and listened to “It’s Been a Long Time Baby.” It was a good song, though I had to admit I didn’t quite remember it, either.

Spin the Bottle, on the other hand, I could remember. I pushed my laptop away and slid down from my bar stool. I walked across the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Bottled water, yogurt, walnuts, mixed salad greens, baby carrots, individually wrapped one-hundred-calorie dark chocolate bars. A four-pack of individual servings of hummus almost made me cry. Somehow my refrigerator had turned single again before I’d fully accepted it myself.

I considered the ketchup bottle and a bottle of shrimp cocktail sauce briefly, but kept looking. Way in the back, I found a half-empty
bottle of dessert wine that someone at work had given Kurt last Christmas. Even though we’d both hated it, we’d never thrown it away because Kurt had been convinced it was crazy expensive.

I held my nose in case it smelled like a science experiment by now and chugged the whole thing.

I shivered and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I held the bottle up to my mouth. “Now that, ladies and gentlemen, was one bad bottle of wine,” I said into my wine bottle microphone. I blew into it a few times, unsuccessfully trying to get the melody of “Red, Red Wine.”

“And I am one cheap date,” I added as the wine rushed to my head.

I gave the bottle a quick rinse and turned it upside down on the top rack of the dishwasher to finish drying. It wobbled and started to fall.

“Uh-uh-uh,” I said as I grabbed it. “I’m not through with you yet, little bottle.”

I giggled. I definitely had a bit of a buzz on and was quite possibly having a midlife meltdown at the same time. I considered a quick WebMD search so I could compare symptoms, but decided this was no time to get sidetracked.

I knew I’d seen the recipe online, and sure enough, when I Googled it, all sorts of links popped up. I clicked on one randomly.

MAKE YOUR OWN CHALKBOARD PAINT

¹/
₂cup latex paint, any color

2 tablespoons unsanded grout

bowl

paint stirrer

paintbrush

white chalk

Stir grout into latex paint until lump-free. Paint surface of chalkboard-to-be. Let dry. Rub chalk over entire surface and wipe off before using it for the first time.

I found an old bag of unsanded grout in the garage and some black paint called “Beluga” I’d once used to freshen up an old table. I mixed the paint and grout together in one of the old coffee cans I used for collecting metal scraps.

I layered some long strips of paper towel on the kitchen island and painted the empty wine bottle carefully, stopping once to double-check that the front door was locked. I mean, how embarrassing to be caught decorating a Spin-the-Bottle bottle at my age. Although maybe I could pass it off as a menu vase I was making to write the day’s pathetic offerings.
Tuesday: single serving probiotic plus fiber yogurt, single serving hummus with stale crackers, microwaved single serving frozen Healthy Choice entrée
.

While the bottle dried, I pulled down the creaky attic stairs in the hallway and climbed up. I hadn’t saved much from high school, but I was pretty sure my yearbook was still packed away somewhere. I found boxes and boxes of Trevor and Troy’s old things, everything from Matchbox cars to Halloween costumes to
Sesame Street
stuffed animals to report cards to retired refrigerator drawings. Spiderwebs stuck to my face and arms like strands of sticky hair. I brushed them away and tried not to think about what other creepy-crawly things might be up here.

Tucked in a corner under an old grapevine wreath I found a cardboard box with
MELANIE’S STUFF
written on it in loopy letters with faded purple marker, the
I
in
MELANIE
dotted with a red heart. The first thing I found was an eight-track tape of Carly Simon’s
No Secrets
. Yellowed paperbacks followed—
Fear of Flying
,
Love Story
,
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask
,
The Great Gatsby
. A pet rock in a crate, a chocolate leatherette backgammon case, a ticket stub from
The Sting
, a picture postcard of the waves at Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, with a five-cent stamp.
Having a great time! Wish you were here!

Alone in my attic, I giggled across the decades. “Who the hell were you, Finn Miller? Wish I remembered!”

I could have sworn my high school yearbook was blue and white, our school colors, but it turned out to be bright yellow with
MARSHBURY HIGH SCHOOL
written in orange psychedelic swirls.

I backed my way down the attic stairs, holding the yearbook in one hand as if it were a Magic 8 Ball that might reveal my future:
Signs point to yes. Outlook good. You may rely on it
.

I found my bar stool and placed my yearbook carefully on the kitchen counter. It was in pretty good shape for its age, but who knew, one wrong move and it might crumble into dust. I thought about looking for my own picture, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. What if it was even more embarrassing than I imagined? The remnants of my dwindling self-esteem might just crumble into dust, too.

“Will I remember Finn Miller?” I asked my empty kitchen as I flipped to the
M
’s.

I found him in the middle of a page. The yearbook pages were
black and white, which softened the clash of his plaid suit jacket and striped tie. He had a serious side part going on, his long, wavy hair obscuring most of one eyebrow before it tucked behind his ear. But his chin was strong and his eyes were dark and borderline sexy. His smile was a bit forced, but he was probably just camera-shy. I scanned down to his quote:
School’s out. Memories past. Don’t ever doubt. The fun will last
.

I carried the yearbook into the little office we’d made in one corner of the guest room. I scanned Finn’s picture and the pictures of some other fairly cute male classmates. I enlarged them until their heads were big enough to fill a page of computer paper, then I printed them and cut them out like paper dolls.

I left them on the kitchen island while I searched the garage, finally settling on two relatively clean brooms and a long-haired mop that had never been used. I carried them into the kitchen, turned them upside down, and taped the paper faces onto their business ends.

Music. Poor Carly Simon’s eight-track tape was never going to find its match in a tape player again, so to make it up to her I downloaded
No Secrets
onto my laptop. “You’re So Vain” filled my kitchen with retro longing.

“You bet I think this song is about you,” I said to Finn Miller.

His mop hair was a good look for him, a step up from that old side-part swoop, almost like white dreadlocks. We danced around the kitchen together, his hair tickling my neck, his paper face crinkling when he leaned close. He dipped me, and I smiled up at him as Carly sang her approval.

The two broom boys leaning back against their bar stools never took their eyes off us. “Sorry, guys,” I said in my sexiest,
slightly wine-soaked voice. “I’m taken.” It came out low and scratchy, almost like a croak, the voice of a woman spending way too much time alone.

When the song ended, I wedged Finn Miller through the spindles of a stool and dragged him around the island until he was diagonally across from me.

I reached for the bottle and wrote
SPIN THE BOTTLE
on it in white chalk in my old loopy letters.

“So, who’s up for a little fun?” I was getting better at the sexy-voice thing. I looked from chair to chair, pretending my former husband and sons had never sat in them and that this was a high school party: lights out except for a single lava lamp off in one corner, “Born to Be Wild” pulsing in the background, hormones raging, hearts beating.

I gave the bottle a generous spin and leaned back to let fate have its way with me.

The bottle skittered across the shiny granite to the edge of the counter. I lunged and caught it just before it fell off.

The mouth of the bottle was pointing between two bar stools, so I spun it again.

It pointed right at Finn Miller.

It’s not easy to fake a make-out session with a long-haired mop, but I gave it everything I had. I closed my eyes and stroked the long, scraggly mop-locks and tried to remember the smell of Brut, the Pepto-Bismol taste of a hastily chewed and then spit-out piece of Clark’s Teaberry gum, the heat of an unremembered boy pressing up against me.