Olivia’s wedding was well on the way to being ruined. She’d be picking me up at 9 a.m. to go to the final breakfast summit of the bridesmaids, where I could finally try to talk some sense to her.
Olivia would freak out, and I somehow felt responsible. What could I do to bring her back to the semi-real world? I found myself paralyzed with fear of even starting a conversation. I stretched my hand down to the wooden deck and tried to sway myself a little in the beautiful hammock, seeking some kind of inspiration to help me delve into the mystery of Nico’s snorkeling misadventure.
Left Behind. Ryan had also read my book, and that put a smile on my face. He had been one of three people to bring up the book to me in the last 24 hours, so it seemed that I’d have to suck it up and tell my story once again.
Five years ago, on my thirtieth birthday, thinking that life had passed me by, I cried at Olivia’s apartment as she served a failed red velvet birthday cake. I sobbed into my hands, admitting my thoughts that I would be alone forever.
Now, at the advanced age of thirty-five, I could see it was ridiculous to feel that way at the age of thirty. I had spent almost five years living with someone I didn’t care about, both of us wasting our time, though, hopefully, there was learning and growth. But now I found myself back in the same place. Would I feel the same about thirty-five, looking back from forty?
My desperation was what lead up to the beginning of the Left Behind Club, which was a very popular Friday night pity party. The gathering was based on a drunken metaphor I had conceived of - meeting at a joint called Loki on the Lower East Side.
Loki was named after the shape-shifting, wily, trickster Norse god. His attributes included complete lack of concern for the well-being of his fellow gods. He was solitary among the gods, which was the only thing in keeping with the Left Behind Club’s philosophy.
My concept of the Left Behind Club had started after someone had left the born-again sci-fi book of the same name at my apartment. I devoured it in about six hours, alone on a temperate night in May.
The storyline involved something about a 747 flying somewhere over Kansas City when all of a sudden all of the good, pure, churchgoing people disappeared in the blink of an eye. Including the pilot. Two and two were put together and it seems that those who disappeared had ascended to heaven in the Rapture, and all the folks of questionable worth and morals were left on earth to wander the lonely deserted streets.
Thanks to a benevolent god, you’ll be relieved to know that two of the remaining passengers managed to land the plane, with help from the now skeleton crew at air traffic control. According to this book, the leftover Earth dwellers were given another seven years to get it right. Good people gone, dregs of society remaining.
At thirty, it dawned on me that I had closed my eyes for a second too long, just a fraction of a moment. All my contemporaries, now wedded, partnered and loved, had ascended to their secret little love coves, and the rest of us were in a tainted dirty pool of singles Left Behind. Lesser Beings. Alone and lonely, and still on the shelf, we were looked upon as suspicious spoiled goods. Defective.
No one is honest with friends about what is wrong with them, even in the simplicity of pretending not to see those giant pimples smack dab in the middle of your forehead. I started poking Olivia with truths about her and then had the biggest knock down argument of our friendship. We’d been cut to the bone by each other, but ultimately we emerged enlightened. In turn, I understood that I had to get to the gym, wear a little make-up, and generally not be so maudlin. I was askew, annoying, but maybe, just maybe, I was fixable.
Olivia and I decided this service could be of help to other people, so we called a dozen other singles who we knew to meet up for drinks a week later. With an all-night tone of no apology, we dissected the first volunteer, dear old Marianna. She was ripped apart aesthetically, philosophically, practically, down to her soul. Eventually, I couldn’t decipher who said what, but it slowly worked into a tempered frenzy.
Olivia jumped ship after this first meeting. “I’m not like these losers,” she said to me, referring to myself and her close circle of friends. “I don’t need this to fix my life.”
Determined as ever to prove she was right, she went off, abandoned writing, and opened her incredibly successful pseudo-gym. Two years later she was engaged to the perfect guy.
Not me. The meetings became a weekly thing, and I became the ringleader.
Around that time, Salty came on to the scene. He was a friend of a friend of one of the early members. His comments to the group were often too caustic and biting. When it came time for us to rip him to shreds, I was ready.
“Why don’t I start?” I said, halfway into the ceremonial toast of the first shot of Jamieson’s whiskey. “Firstly, your name is off-putting. It’s stupid and seemingly not short for anything. And those glasses that you think make you look so smart? They don’t. Unless it’s Opposite Day.
“And this novel you are writing that no one has seen… I mean, what, where is it? This brilliant novel. You very well might be a brilliant copywriter. I mean, what you did with the Skittles campaign should get you a Pulitzer, but we are sick of hearing about the great American novel, which no one believes you have written. It doesn’t exist and it bores everyone to death to have to hear about your literary genius. Do you want to be a writer or do you want to write? Show it to someone or shut up about it.”
We finished up with ritual applause, hugs, and pats on the back, and went into our normal cocktail hour. When I lowered my face to the bar for the first challenging sip of my martini, Salty attacked, pushing me through the small, weak crowd that surrounded me. He challenged, “You bitter, solipsistic wench.”
Who says solipsistic in a fight? I pushed him back. He stumbled, regaining his stance, nostrils flaring like a bull.
We were separated by an excited group who had probably not participated in a fight since high school, if ever, and pulled us to our corners.
“You really don’t think I’ve written anything? Come on.” He grabbed my hand, leading me out the door. We cabbed it in silence to his apartment, a surprisingly nice doorman building on lower 5th Avenue. He took me into his office and said, “Sit.” He sat me at his desk, opening a file on the computer. He grabbed my head and focused me on the screen, saying, “Read.”
RESET BUTTON by Ezekial McManus.
With a name like that, I understood why he went by Salty.
He walked out of the room, so I read. It was funny, polished and complex. It was very good. He came back into his office as I was about thirty pages in. Somehow, I was embarrassed to look at him, knowing him far better than I did an hour ago.
Maybe though, no matter how you dress it up, your book is you.
He aggressively kissed my neck just long enough to know that I wasn’t objecting, then pulled me off the chair and kissed me passionately in his arms. His kisses were too deep and too hard, teeth covered by lips grinding into my gums. I suppose you’d say we’d been together ever since, while we bided time until something better, hopefully, came along.
Soon after that Salty stopped going to meetings. He wanted me to stop as well, as we were no longer “Left Behind.” He said that he thought that he probably loved me and that I had “characteristics which had become endearing.”
I couldn’t leave Left Behind. I had a responsibility. The club just kept getting bigger, proof enough that it worked. I had always been too scared to be ambitious, but an associate editor named Lanie approached me after a session and she convinced me to pitch the book concept with her. A book advance had followed, large enough to get me a year free of 9-5 office work, coupled with a two-book deal. Set for life, I thought.
Though Olivia had distanced herself from the concept that she was ever alone, she worked through draft after draft with me. The one caveat being that I wouldn’t even mention her in the acknowledgments.
Left Behind had a decent response and a moment of success. The next book fizzled before it was ev
en lit. My publisher dropped me, but I had a third chance with a fledgling imprint that took a last chance on me. To their major regret, the book ended up selling nothing, quickly in the 99-cent pile on the sidewalk in front of Borders, no one really caring if it was stolen or not. It wasn’t worth the room it would take up in the warehouse. I was a one-hit wonder, as the latter two were so invisible that no one even knew they had failed, let alone existed.
Maybe if I could just waste away, swaying in the faint mist of the Panamanian rainfall, things would be okay.
“Lexie,” Becky enthusiastically greeted me from her terrace, two cabins down. She was dressed and ready to go; bathing suit, cover-up, big white sunglasses, abs you only read about in books. “Join me for coffee?” she loudly said, not caring too much about who else she might wake. Three and a half hours until the next event and it looked like I was trapped until then.
“Sure.” It was in the job description, after all. I walked back inside, and really just wanted to grab my cut off shorts and favorite t-shirt proclaiming Whatever Happens in Transylvania, Stays in Transylvania. It was red, which pleased Olivia, but she had ended with the caveat, “Please can you not wear it where anyone can see you?”
I quickly reread the notes about Becky from the slam book: 27, San Diego born and bred, studied business, and travels to Hong Kong once a year. “Don’t get stuck next to her” was written in all caps. “And it is not super important to be nice to her either.”
The walk to the restaurant was always a comforting view. The structure was built of deep stained local wood, completely open to the elements. No windows, no hammock to protect you from those sun showers; just ten tables always topped with some amazing local treat.
When I entered the restaurant, Becky waved, patting the seat of the chair next to her, as if there was a question of where I’d sit. She launched into a monologue about the flight, which quickly segued into a story about a pilot named Wrong Way Corrigan, who in the 1930’s thought he was on route to California and ended up in Ireland.
“Anyway,” she said, downing her coffee in one giant sip. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you since I found out that you were going to be here. Your book changed my life. Completely. Own it, own it, own it - you wrote that three times, and I did. My friends hung, drew and quartered me. Sheesh! And I fixed it ALL. Except I did not get my ears pinned, but I’ve found a way to fix my hair to avoid that.”
She held her hair above her head, showing off her elfin Prince Charles ears. “Wow! You are thinking, Wow! I know. So anyway, me and my friends got together and super trashed each other, but I think they were holding back, so I thought maybe you could call me out on what is wrong, wrong, wrong with me. I love how you write words three times in a row. Dissect me, please?”
A few years ago, at around the same time I decided I was too old for mini-skirts, I had retired my habit of repeating words three times in a row.
“I can’t do that for you, Becky. It’s just a very bad idea.”
Over the years I learned that the theory of Left Behind didn’t work. It made things worse. Illusion was good for people. So were flaws.
“Please, please, please. It’s all I’ve been thinking about since I knew you were going to be here.”
“I don’t even know you. How can I tell you what’s wrong with you?”
“Perfect. First impressions. That’s what it’s about. All, all, all.”
There were only so many times, coming up with a dozen different reasons, that I could insist that a stranger ripping into her was a bad idea. Not willing to take no for an answer, she dug into herself once again. She said she knew, but could not stop, her crazy way of talking.
After blushing, she begged me to tear her apart physically. I still refused, and to be honest, there wasn’t much to tear apart, so she took over again. She showed me how one eye was bigger than the other and her knock knees. She didn’t need my to help rip her apart. She did well enough on her own. What a shame that such an eccentric gal couldn’t see that her faults were what made her.
“Speaking of Nico?” she seriously asked. “Have you seen him?”
Thankfully, Walter’s brother Dave and his girlfriend Georgie walked in for breakfast, and I excused myself and intruded on the couple’s coffee and orange juice. After a few minutes of intelligent laughter, Georgie kindly asked, “Do you think that I could have my phone for a few minutes? Just a few?”
Dave smiled in a way to make clear he was seconding that suggestion.
“You know I would,” I assuaged, “but I don’t even know where they are. Olivia took them...”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course she did.”
And the day had begun.
Chapter 9: What Fresh Hell is This? (Dorothy Parker)
Don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back.
Or something like that.
Escaping from Becky and the quest for the phones, I wandered, looking down at my feet as I carefully strolled over the walkway. Though it was beautiful, and the other guests were happy to dive off their balconies into the calm clear sea, I was constantly concerned that someone was going to make that late night drunken stumble down the boardwalk. Two steps in the wrong direction and you’d be sleeping with the fishes.
Can’t you just relax for once?
Looking forward to and desperately needing a still early morning nap, the once familiar, now noxious smell of cigarette smoke met me at the door of my bungalow.
The killer knows I know. And my days are numbered.
I hadn’t seen anybody out since I was sitting with Becky. I carefully opened the door to find Olivia in a chair in the corner, smoking a butt, looking like the little girl with the little curl when she was horrid.
How did she get in here? I didn’t hear her speedboat. I didn’t see her sneaking down the dock.
“Jesus, Olivia!” I exclaimed. “You scared me half to death. Why are you still smoking?” I asked.
“I’m not smoking,” she said while exhaling a toxic cloud of smoke.
The light through the wicker shades gave Olivia a kind of film noir look that unfortunately Migs was not around to capture. She was dressed to the nines, 1950’s style. She was beautiful. Even by her normal extra harsh standards, she was easily a 9 out of 10.
“I couldn’t reach you. This phone service is going to put me in an early grave. Do you think I need this? There’s only so much I can take,” Olivia spouted.
“Can you please be a little more specific?” I rubbed my eyes. What couldn’t go wrong this trip?
“I know everything. I know absolutely everything. About them.”
For the sake of her make-up, she held back her tears. To cry was a verb she had stricken from her vocabulary, but she was close to relapse, at the tipping point between sobbing and chopping someone’s head off with an axe.
Not me, I could cry for everyone. I wondered if there was a crying saint, and if there was not, could I be she? St. Lexie cries so you don’t have to?
“And how could she do this to me?” She threw her hands up in the air. “Forget about Emma, how could he do this to me? I feel more betrayed by Ryan. Am I in a nightmare? Pinch me quick.”
So I pinched her. With her, it wasn’t just a saying.
Her voice had become uncharacteristically quiet and high, like a whispering mouse. It reminded me of her one awkward year - glasses, braces, and a visor she wore over her terrible haircut. She took a year off from being popular, becoming the shyest thing you could imagine, before getting contacts and rising to the top of the social structure once again.
Groggy and guilty, I slowly composed my response. “He didn’t know it was your wedding. I really believe he didn’t know. And they’re off the island as soon as the airport is open.”
“The airport is closed?!”
I forgot to mention that one.
What could I do when she only gave me two minutes yesterday?
“Well, I took care of them.” She said.
I’d seen a million different expressions on Olivia’s face over the years, but this one was new and downright diabolical.
She killed them. Please don’t tell me that in not what she means.
She started to chain smoke and got comfortable, telling me the tale of her run-in with the couple the night before.
After the party, she took the Walter for a quick martini at a place called the Wine Bar that served everything but wine. The bar featured rickety, old, busted chairs perched atop a potentially unsafe floating deck.
Eventually. Walter decided to go back to his villa and enjoy his late-night impromptu bachelor party. While he waited for his water taxi, who walks in but her beautiful sister and the never forgotten Ryan?
She nodded casually, as if it were her mother and I who had walked in, and not the ingredients of our broken hearts. So she sat at the bar, watching the uncomfortable non-couple.
“And I thought, what would Cleopatra do?” she asked, like it was a normal question.
“Cleopatra? No idea.”
“Ok, here’s how it went down. I believe it was a success. I walked over to them and sat down. I tried to order the most expensive thing they had, but that only came to like $12, so there you have it. Ryan apologized. Really apologized. But Emma? My sister, my flesh and blood, my genetically predisposed likeness? She said nothing.
“I said that maybe it was time to bury the hatchet, since they had once been the closest people to me, and offered for them to come on my boat for expensive champagne and a tour of the island. As a surfer, Ryan couldn’t resist.”
“After midnight? In your boat? I know Ryan likes to surf, but…is this the truth?” The thought of them circling the island in the dark gave me the shivers.
“I’m a good driver. And the boat has lights. I’ll admit it would have been easier earlier in the day, but I didn’t really give them too much of a choice.”
What did that mean?
Drowning Lessons Page 6
