Been There, Done That (16 page)

The vast bowl—the small wasn’t so small—sat on the table between us, fruit floating inside. With long straws, we sipped the deadly concoction, which tasted remarkably like that ancient Shanghai drink, Kool-Aid. I’d expected the taste to make me nauseous, as Scorpion Bowls always did after that fateful night, but it didn’t. That seemed significant. It didn’t even occur to me that this restaurant might just use a different flavor of Kool-Aid.

I recalled my recent hangover. “Less than a week ago, I swore I’d never drink again, and now look at me.”

Tim took the straw out of his mouth and twirled it between his fingers. “This is for professional purposes only. We’ve got to loosen you up for your rehearsal.” After dinner, Tim was going to help me practice my audition song. My nerves were more fraught from the thought of performing for Tim than they were for the actual auditions.

“In that case, we might need another bowl after this one.” I sucked on my straw. I was starting to glow.

Tim fished a maraschino out of the bowl. He stuck the cherry between his teeth and pulled it off the stem. “It’s hard to rehearse when you’re getting your stomach pumped.”

“But think of all of those nice medical personnel who would be on hand to give me feedback. Doctors tend to be very musically inclined.”

We ate egg rolls and dumplings and moo shu pork. We drank the entire scorpion bowl and sucked on alcohol-soaked orange slices. We were the only people in the place, which relied on the business lunch crowd. Our fortune cookies came with the bill. We broke them in half. As I tried to read my fortune—not easy, considering the bad lighting and my drunken vision, which made me see triple—I put half the cookie in my mouth. It was too chewy and vaguely lemony. I held my fortune near the stubby candle, encased in a knobby red glass globe. “Love comes to those who wait,” it said, unbelievably.

I handed it to Tim. He peered at the slip of paper and smiled. “Mine’s better.” He handed me his slip: “A man who wears a clean shirt is respected by his neighbors.”

We stumbled two blocks before hailing a cab to take us back to my apartment. The driver, who, his cab permit told us, was named Fazel, listened to my address and nodded without a word. The cab stank of stale cigarette smoke. NPR hummed in the background. I nuzzled Tim’s shoulder. His denim shirt smelled like Chinese food. He put his arm around me, and I leaned against his chest, bouncing as the cab jostled through potholes.

It took me awhile to open the front door to my building. That was probably because I was trying to open it with my mailbox key. Once inside, I clutched Tim’s arm as we climbed the two flights to my apartment. The stairs seemed to alternately lurch up and fall away. I stumbled but maintained my balance by clutching the thick wooden bannister. Tim was marginally more steady.

Once inside, Tim slipped off his shoes and set them by the door. For once, the apartment was immaculate; I’d known Tim was coming back to hear me sing, after all. After all those years of living together, it seemed unlikely that he’d believe I’d changed my evil ways and become tidy, but you never know. It didn’t much matter. He wasn’t looking around for dust and year-old magazines. He was too busy pulling me toward him and kissing me.

My lips—indeed, my entire face—felt numb from the alcohol, but I recognized his taste, his touch. How had I forgotten how he’d rub the small of my back when we embraced? And even in that blurry state, I was conscious enough to decide that I wanted a small wedding in a country inn and not the blow-out affair that I’d envisioned in my twenties.

Tim nibbled my earlobe in a gerbil-like way that I’d once found vaguely annoying but now seemed so sensual. “Can I have some water?”

“Sure.” I stepped back, alarmed, and checked his face for signs of regret or repulsion. I saw neither, merely thirst.

I poured two glasses from a filtration pitcher. To keep my balance, I focused on a sticker on the pitcher’s side. The filter was due to be changed last February. I dumped out the water and refilled from the tap, clutching the cold faucet. I knew I should put ice in the glasses, but I worried that the extra minute would give Tim just enough time to realize that the woman he had just been kissing was not some exciting stranger but just me.

When I returned to the living room, he was sitting on the couch, a small smile on his lips. I handed him the glass. He took a long drink and put the glass on the coffee table, carefully positioning it in the middle of a coaster. I sat next to him, somewhat nervously, and placed my glass on the floor. He put his hands on my shoulders and looked at me. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too.” For a moment, the room stopped spinning. He brushed my hair behind my ears with his fingers, put his hand on the back of my head, and kissed me gently. Then he leaned against me, and we sank back into the couch. He kissed my cheeks and eyelids. He parted my lips with his tongue. It was just like I’d always dreamed it would be.

Until I threw up.

nineteen

Life circles back on itself. Here I was, once again, mooning over Tim. Was he thinking about me right now? Did he like me as much as I liked him? Where was this going to lead? At least my virginity was no longer an issue—not that either of us had removed a single article of clothing before I upchucked.

He’d had an early flight back to Washington. When I woke up, he was gone. I didn’t get to see his reaction to me in the sober light of day. I didn’t know whether he felt sorry or relieved to be leaving my apartment. He left a note, at least: “Never did get to hear you sing. We’ll have to reschedule. Take two aspirin and drink lots of water. If that doesn’t work, try a Bloody Mary.” He signed it, “L., T.” What, exactly, did the “L” stand for, I wondered. Love? Like? Left you again?

I missed my morning classes but made it back to Mercer in time for lunch. The cafeteria offered a choice of boiled hot dogs or rectangular pizza so greasy that it would take a fistful of napkins to blot the excess oil. Since both options made my stomach churn, I made my way over to the all-day breakfast bar, where I retrieved yogurt, an English muffin and coffee.

Once again, I was breaking the “never eat alone” rule. And, once again, Jeremy stepped in to relieve me of my solitary state.

He looked solemn. “You had us worried.”

I squinted at him. “Why? Who?”

“Tiffany and me. She said you were going into the city to have dinner with your brother but that you’d be back around eleven.”

“It got late. I stayed over. What are you, my mother?” I tried to sound amused, but it came out snippy. All I really wanted was to be left to suffer in silence.

“You told me your brother lives in Denver.”

I stared at him. He stared back. I shifted my gaze down to the table. It was dark brown and bore a thick wax coating from decades of use. “I wasn’t with my brother. It was—an old friend. We got talking and it got late and I just, you know, crashed at his place.”

“Talking.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s all you were doing.”

He didn’t sound like my mother, after all. My mother had never been this invasive. “You know, Jeremy, I like you and you’re a great R.A., but I don’t think this is any of your business.” I was in no mood to listen to a speech about the importance of condoms in the age of communicable diseases.

He closed his eyes for a moment and rubbed his fingers over his eyelids. When he looked at me again, he said, “I don’t mean to butt in. But it’s part of my job. R.A.’s are trained to recognize substance abuse problems.”

I gawked at him. “You think I’m doing drugs?” It seemed funny all of a sudden, and I cackled. Had I not been so nauseous, I would have let out a belly laugh.

“Alcohol is a drug,” he said. He wasn’t laughing.

“Oh, that,” I sighed. “Okay, I’m hung over. Jeremy, let’s get real. It’s the first week of classes. Half the campus is hungover.”

“It’s your second hangover of the week. And your drinking is already causing you to miss classes.”

“I know,” I said. “It was stupid. And I didn’t mean to—last night, things just got out of hand. I don’t have a drinking problem, I swear. Aside from these two times, it’s been years since I’ve had a hangover.”

When I realized what I’d said, my first thought was of Tim and how disappointed he’d be that I’d slipped up so easily. My second thought was that I needed to cover my ass—quickly. “Well, a year, at least,” I said. “My friends and I, we had this schnapps phase junior year, but last year I stuck pretty much to Coke.” Jeremy looked horrified. “What?” I asked.

“You were doing coke in high school?”

I dropped my face in my hands and took a deep breath. Finally, I leaned toward him. “Not coke—Coke! Big C! You know, as in, ‘I’d like to give the world a Coke,’ ‘It’s the real thing,’ ‘Give yourself a break today.’”

“That last one would be McDonald’s.”

“You watch too much television,” I snapped.

He placed his tray carefully on the table and sat down. His chair shrieked as he scooted closer to the table.

“Ow,” I yelped at the sound. We locked eyes. “I am not an alcoholic.”

He shrugged and took a long drink of milk. He looked at the ceiling. “If you say so.”

I looked at his plate: three hot dogs on doughy buns. “A little alcohol is good for the heart,” I said. “Nitrates can kill you.”

He tore open a package of mustard, and it squirted his T-shirt. I smirked through my pain. He swiped at his chest with a napkin. “And what should I have instead?” he asked. “An English muffin and coffee? What kind of a lunch is that—the anorexic special?”

“Now I’m an anorexic?” I laughed, all hostility gone. Come to think of it, my pants were getting a little loose. Next time I went back to my apartment, I’d pull out that box of clothes that I never really believed I’d fit into again but couldn’t bear to give away.

He rolled his eyes. “No, I don’t think you’re an anorexic.” He needn’t have sounded like it was such a preposterous idea. “Listen,” he said, his voice softening. “A group of us were thinking about going out for burgers tonight. You want to come?”

“Thanks, but I’ve got a, um, study thing tonight. Maybe some other time.” In truth, I had my singing audition. I knew what Jeremy thought of that crowd; I didn’t want him to launch into a speech about why I should steer clear.

 
Eager to avoid another lecture on the evils of alcohol, I had my story prepared for Tiffany. “What a night,” I said as I walked into our room. “My brother and I ate dinner at this Chinese place. I think I’ve got food poisoning.” It was fairly safe to assume that Tiffany and Jeremy wouldn’t compare notes on my alibi. I dropped my backpack on the floor and placed the laptop beside it. I collapsed onto the pink and turquoise bedspread, which still carried the stench of artificial materials. “My brother had an old laptop he wasn’t using.”

Tiffany barely looked up from her textbook. “Jeremy was worried about you.”

“Yeah. I saw him in the dining hall.”

“He thought something might have happened.”

“Nothing happened. I stayed at my brother’s. I’m sorry.” I tried to sound genuinely contrite but sounded about as annoyed as I was. “I should have called,” I continued. “It never occurred to me that you might be so worried that you’d report my absence.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t report anything. Jeremy came looking for you, then he got all—weird.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”

She closed the textbook, ran her finger along the cover. “If I disappeared, no one would worry. No one.”

I rubbed my temples. “Of course they would,” I said with the patience usually reserved for an exasperating but well-meaning child. “Jeremy would worry about you just like he did about me.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “No way.”

My head hurt more by the moment. “Of course he would. Jeremy’s a really nice person. And so are you,” I added quickly and unconvincingly.

She leaned forward, tantalized by the possibility of bonding through gossip. “He is
so
fat.”

I squinted at her. “I don’t follow.”

“You know. FAT!”

“I, um, I don’t know. Jeremy’s a lot of things, but fat is not one of them.”

She slumped back on her pink bedspread, deflated. “Fat with a P.”

“Pat?”

“No! P-H-A-T.
Phat
.”

“Oh, right! Like, cool or something.
Phat
. Yes. Jeremy is phat.” I squinted at my Matisse poster. It really was very pretty.

“I am such a geek,” Tiffany whined. “If anyone else said
phat
, you’d know right away they meant
phat
and not
fat
.”

“I wouldn’t,” I said slowly. “It’s not you. It’s me. Let’s just say I’m not as tuned in to popular culture as the average eighteen-year-old.”