Ariel
Oh. No. He. Did. Not.
In a single pulse, Melissa read the entire e-mail again, managing to get even more pissed off the second time. She sat up
stick-straight in her champagne velvet upholstered office chair, cracked her knuckles, and furiously started typing.
Oh hey, Ariel,
That is such a cool-ass name, yo. Are you, like, the Little Mermaid, or something? Are you totally in a bad mood ‘cause your
stinky-ass va-jay-jay’s stuck inside a flipper? Well, you can chillax, baby girl! Prince Eric saves you in the end and then
you get to go on land and trade in your seashell bra (which I’m sure you fill in nicely by the way) for one of your hideously
moronic t-shirts.
Say hi to your crab(s) for me!!
Love,
Miss Divalish to You
Melissa hit send. Then she read her e-mail over, cackling aloud at every jab. Well, that was that. She closed her Mac and
took her biology book out of her pink Juicy tote to do some real work. But when she tried to read a page of bio,
she failed miserably. She stared at a diagram of the stages of mitosis, but fluorescent Satan’s crooked smile was all she
could see. Melissa couldn’t handle it. She had to know if he’d responded. Melissa popped open the computer once again, and
sure enough, he had already replied.
Dear John Mayer lover,
Uh, yeah. You need therapy.
Ariel
Melissa clicked the reply button.
I need therapy? This from a dude who considers making fun of mentally ill homeless ladies the epitome of a good time?
Send. Melissa drummed her tan hands on the gold-trimmed princess desk, jaw clenched. Then she hit refresh. Nothing. Then she
hit refresh again. Nothing. Then the response came:
You’re right. You’re obviously too cracked-out crazy for therapy. Maybe you’d like to be featured on our next t-shirt?
“Eew, sick!” called a voice from the doorway. “I think
this milk has gone bad.” Melissa turned to see Marco holding a quart of buttermilk in one massive mitt and a bag of Pirate’s
Booty in the other.
“Marco, that’s buttermilk!” Melissa scolded, slamming her computer shut again. “You are not supposed to drink that. It’s for
Emilio Poochie! I give it to him as a treat when he’s good.”
Marco ambled toward the princess desk, slow and sultry, trying his best to smolder, and knelt down in front of Melissa so
they were face-to-face. “And what treat do I get when I’m good?”
“Marco Duvall,” Melissa chided, “I do not walk onto the basketball court while you are in the middle of a game and try to
get sexy with you, do I?”
“No,” Marco replied with a sly smile, “but I wish you would.”
“This!” Melissa continued, motioning to the space around her executive desk with her tan, smooth hands, “is
my
basketball court. I’ll let you know when it’s halftime.” As Melissa huffed and puffed, her perky double D’s jiggled and bounced
inches from Marco’s still-smiling face. Well, that was something at least….
She had told him long ago that she was “waiting for marriage,” and Marco respected her for that. He could wait. But weren’t
there, ya know, other things they could do to pass the time till then? They’d been dating for four months, after
all. Marco was one of the best athletes at Winston Prep, but when it came to Melissa, he had yet to round second base.
Marco sighed. “Kiss?”
Melissa leaned forward so he could see straight down her V-neck to her black lace La Perla push-up bra and planted a quick
peck on his lips. Marco rose, placated for the moment, and headed back to his nest on the overstuffed bed with his Pirate’s
Booty and buttermilk. He unpaused the Tivo.
“Li-ssa!” sang an approaching voice from the white marble staircase. “I got good ne-ews!” Seedy Moon appeared in the doorway
beaming.
“Yo, Mr. Moon, how goes it?” asked Marco.
Seedy’s smile dissolved at the sight of Marco and his buttermilk mustache reclining against his daughter’s ornate cream and
gold Louis XVI headboard. “Whattup, Cafeteria,” he muttered, before turning back to Melissa. “I said I have good news, baby.”
“What is it, Dad?” sighed Melissa. “I am really busy right now.”
“Well, you’re gonna want to hear this, trust me. I paid a little visit to Lena today, and with some excellent acting if I
do say so myself, I managed to convince her to become your piano teacher. She’s agreed to move in!” Seedy chuckled proudly.
“So you better start appreciating classical music, girl!”
“That’s good, Dad. That’s really great!” Melissa chirped, happy but preoccupied.
“‘That’s
good,
Dad. That’s really
great
?’” Seedy laughed. “I thought you’d be losin’ it you’d be so excited.”
“No, I am, Daddy,” Melissa nodded, spastically tapping her pink-Uggs-clad foot.
“At first,” Seedy recounted with theatrical flair, “she was all, ‘No! I cannot! My visa’s up soon and I must return to Russia!’
So I said—right on the spot! I thought of this right there!—I said, ‘But Melissa said she will only take piano lessons if
they are with
you
!’” Somehow, Seedy managed to pull off both a very bad impression of Miss Paletsky’s Russian accent and a bad impression of
his
own
accent. His Seedy Moon voice was actually worse than his Miss Paletsky voice.
“So then, she said, ‘I will do it, Mr. Moon,’ and I said, ‘Melissa is going to be so happy.’”
“And I
am
,” grinned Melissa. “Don’t you believe me, yet?”
“Okay, I believe you,” nodded Seedy. “Catch you later.” He saluted and left.
“Catch you later, Mr. Moon!” Marco bellowed after him. Silence.
Damn. The Moon family sure did love to shoot him down.
Melissa popped her abused laptop open again and started brainstorming a response to Ariel’s last jab. But it didn’t
take long for guilt to set in. Melissa never acted bratty with her dad like that. And normally, she would have been so pumped
about Miss P agreeing to move in. What was her deal? All Melissa could think about was that damn mermaid and his stupid mullet.
Seriously, it was like an addiction.
Maybe she really did need therapy….
The Getup: Porcelain ruffled Kate Spade blouse, black pencil skirt and maroon velvet blazer by Theory, grandmother’s cameo
brooch, Christian Louboutin lace and button booties
At that same moment, in a therapist’s waiting room across town, Charlotte was eagerly awaiting her first couple’s counseling
session with Jake. Dr. Hortense Bonnaire’s office was right behind Le Pain Quotidien on Melrose, which, though not the most
authentic French restaurant in the city, still appeased Charlotte.
Jake bought a chocolate croissant there to eat in the waiting room.
“This was a good idea,” Charlotte trilled, laying her tiny smooth hand on Jake’s corduroy-clad knee. Charlotte looked like
a true miniature lady for the occasion, with her glossy black curls gathered into a low chignon, a frilly off-white blouse,
and a maroon velvet blazer with the cameo brooch affixed to the lapel. As she perched on the delightfully beautiful and remarkably
uncomfortable couch, tearing little shreds off of Jake’s croissant (and kind of wishing she’d gotten her own), Charlotte was
as happy as she could be. Because for once, she was as French as she could be without actually leaving the boring old U.S.
of A.
Jake smiled. “If we don’t like it, we don’t have to come back,” he said, more to himself than to Charlotte. The whole French
existential therapy thing had seemed so suave at first, but now he was having second thoughts. What if the doctor didn’t
get
the whole Nikki Pellegrini thing? What if she turned Charlotte completely against him?
What if this was the stupidest idea he’d ever had?
The blond wood and stainless steel door opened, and standing there in a black turtleneck and gray pleated slacks was Dr. Bonnaire.
She was six feet tall at least, her black hair sliced into an angular bob streaked with gray.
“Come in,” she announced.
Charlotte and Jake followed Dr. Bonnaire into her stark, charcoal-colored office and sat down on a couch as stiff and beautiful
as the one in the hall. Their brand-new therapist lit a cigarette and settled into a chair that looked like a wooden crate.
Charlotte instantly recognized the piece from French minimalist darling Philippe Starck’s infamous Crisis collection.
“So?” asked Dr. Bonnaire, her accent so thick that even the word
so
dripped in French-ish-ness; Charlotte was ecstatic.
“So, hi,” Charlotte began, “I’m Charlotte Beverwil and this is my ex-boyfriend, Jake Farrish.”
“Why do you come to tara-pee with an ex-boyfriend?” asked Dr. Bonnaire, eyeing the couple unsmilingly while
her cigarette smoke slowly filled the sealed room.
“Well, we are hoping to become less ‘ex’ and more ‘boyfriend,’” Jake explained, before adding, “also girlfriend.”
“And so you think zis
sing
—zis
romance
—will fill zee hole you feel inside?” Dr. Bonnaire inquired to nobody in particular.
“Yup, that’s what I’m hoping,” Jake replied.
Charlotte shot him a glare, and he mouthed
what
, sitting up straighter.
“Do you love zis person?” Dr. Bonnaire asked Jake.
“What?” he sputtered. Right after he went blind and deaf.
“Do. You. Love. Zis. Person?”
“Well, um, we haven’t, like, said ‘I luh, I luh…’ But, you know. It certainly isn’t out of the question. I think.”
“Zen zis is good,” replied the doctor, gracefully exhaling another lungful of smoke. “You will make Uncle Zam very ’appy.”
“Uncle Zam?” Jake bristled. “Excuse me?”
Dr. Bonnaire yawned aloud, as though Jake’s very existence bored her to the point of exhaustion. “I will tell you two zomething
that will sound very harsh to your ears, but that you must know. If you want to know zee truth, that is. Do you want to know
the truth? Or do you prefer to be like zee—what is it”—she searched for the word—“or do you prefer to be like zee lemmings?”
“No, we want to know the truth,” Charlotte assured her, fiddling with her brooch and feeling unsure.
“Okay, then,” Dr. Bonnaire began, crushing the first of many Gauloises into a matte ivory white box and leaning back in her
wooden crate. “Romantic love does not exist.
Comme le pipe, n’est pas?
Romantic love eez your Zanta Claus. It eez your fairy for zee teeth. It eez zee capitalist construction used to keep zee
American lemmings busy while zare president takes zee country to war.
Zare eez no romantic love
. Zare is only sex. And war. And finally, mercifully, death.”
Charlotte tipped her china cup chin perplexedly.
“Um, Dr. Boner, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to disagree with you on that one,” Jake began. “Unless… is this, like, some
sort of hazing process you do before you actually help us, or something?”
“What is zis?” Bonnaire frowned. “’Ow you zay, ’ayzeeng?”
“What Jake means,” clarified Charlotte, “is it’s difficult to believe all the stuff you just said… about how love is the tooth
fairy and all—you know?”
“Oh, ’av I upset you?” She laughed, croaking like a toad in a bog. “’Av I caused you
distress
? As difficult as it eez to ’ear zeze sings, once you ’ave come to terms with the nothingness of life, of your zo-called love,
of your very existence, uh? Only zen will you finally live zuh
truth
. But… ,” she sang. “Maybe you are not ready for truth?”
“No, we’re ready for truth!” Charlotte insisted. “Jake,” she nudged him. “Tell her how we’re ready for truth.”
Wow. Kissing Nikki Pellegrini had now officially been bumped down to the
second
worst idea Jake had ever had; because coming here today was definitely, unequivocally, the worst.
“People cannot cope with their irrelevance, their littleness,” mused Dr. Bonnaire, “and so they try to find meaning where
none exists, by manufacturing myths like religion. And the only myth more pathetic than religion is love. But you are not
here to learn these things, are you? That is not why you have come today. So let us talk about your relationship. About your
‘love.’ What went wrong?”
“Well, Jake cheated on me with this eighth-grade whore, Nikki Pellegrini,” Charlotte explained, “and now I can’t decide whether
or not to get back together with him because maybe he will just do it again and also because it was so humiliating.”
For the first time, the deep vertical lines above Dr. Bonnaire’s mouth stretched taut and her teeth showed between her painted
lips. She was smiling. The expression looked garish and strange on her usually somber face, like a crazy clown.
“Jake broke zee rules!” Dr. Bonnaire exclaimed.
“Yeah, exactly!” agreed Charlotte. “Jake broke the rules.”
“And whose rules are zoze?” pressed Dr. Bonnaire.
“Well, the boyfriend-girlfriend rules,” Charlotte replied, confused. “
Everybody’s
rules, I guess.”
“Zay are not my rules,” said Dr. Bonnaire. “Zay are not Nietzsche’s rules. Zay are not Camus’s rules. Zay are
your
rules.”
“I don’t follow,” admitted Charlotte.
“Your sense of right and wrong is your own creation. Morality is merely a fool’s attempt to ascribe meaning to the choices
we all make each day. But how can a choice have any meaning when all of existence is meaningless?”
“So, Charlotte should just get over the whole Nikki Pellegrini thing,” Jake summed up.
“Yes,” agreed Dr. Bonnaire. “Charlotte should ‘get over’ it. And you should ‘get over’ Charlotte. And you should also ‘get
over’ using ‘love’ to escape the truth, which is—”
“Lemme guess,” Jake interrupted, “that nothing means anything anyway.”
Dr. Bonnaire shrugged assent.
“So, riddle me this, Boner,” Jake began, perking up in his seat. “Why do penguins mate for life? Are they just trying to find
meaning where there really is none? ‘Cause I don’t think penguins are complex enough to do all that. How do you explain their
instinct toward what can only be described as love?”