by Jackie Rose
“But she didn’t even wear it!” Mom shrieked, while I pretended to be dead, invisible and not hungover at the same time. I was also still reeling from the fact that I hadn’t lost my virginity, despite my best-laid plans. By the time I’d finally peeled it off my aching, poisoned body at six-thirty that morning, the dress I’d insisted I’d die without—a sand-colored Calvin Klein knockoff, barely more than a shiny slip, really—already made me want to forget that the whole night had ever happened.
“Are you saying my daughter’s lying?”
The salesgirl raised an overly plucked eyebrow.
Mom snatched the dress, stuffed it into the bag and stomped out of the store, pushing several other mothers and their nondrunk, nonlying, proud-to-be-a-virgin daughters out of the way.
On the way home, I threw up in the bag.
Of course, my mother refused to have the dress dry-cleaned (“Your father’s not spending one more penny on that thing!”) so it ended up snagged and ruined and four-and-a-half sizes too small after she ran it through our old Maytag. The textile embodiment of all this pain hung in the back of my closet until the day I moved into my first apartment, where, in a small ashtray during a simple ceremony, I burned the silk of my adolescent shame in effigy.
All this to say Ms. Violet Chase was not going to get the better of me. Not without a fight. Not today.
“But it’s been over two months,” I remind her, “and I believe you said I could get my money back if nothing happened.”
“Minus the sitting fee.”
“Yeah, minus that. I know.”
“Ms. Hastings, I’m going to be frank with you.”
“Please do.”
“It would be a shame to let your membership slide now, sweetie. New Year’s is coming up and it’s a very busy time for us. I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you I think you should give it another month.”
I can only assume she’s suggesting the Moneyed Mates who’d already passed me up once might be getting desperate enough to choke back their revulsion and take me for a spin around the block. In the bathroom mirror, beneath the stark fluorescent lighting, my pores seem deep and dirty as potholes. Tears I hadn’t noticed welling up begin to slide down my cheeks. A date for New Year’s would be nice, and maybe with the proper facial…
Slowly, my resolve slips away.
“Well…how much is it again? Just for another month?”
An exasperated groan escapes from Ms. Chase, whose tight white face I imagine contorting in agony at my utter stupidity. “Didn’t you read the contract you signed?”
A second ago I was her sweetie, but now that she has me on the hook again, I’m just another idiot taking up her valuable time. “Refresh my memory.”
“The special introductory offer was $995 for sixty days, including initial setup fee and including membership dues. Each month thereafter, we charge $150 to your credit card unless you cancel. That’s why I’m calling. We tried to put the charge through and it was declined.”
A knock at the door.
“Sorry—I’m in here!” I call out.
“You gonna be much longer?” It sounds like Cy.
“Yes… No… I mean, hold on.” How incredibly rude to pressure a woman to come out of the washroom. “Can’t you use the one down the hall?”
“Sorry,” he grumbles.
Is there anything more nerve-racking than someone lurking on the other side of the bathroom door, sighing audibly? Especially when there’s no good reason for it. It’s not like we’re on an airplane or in a nightclub. There are three other freaking toilets on this floor alone.
“Oh. I think it expired,” I lie to Ms. Chase, silently praising myself for having the foresight to decline that last limit increase tendered by Visa. (If you cough up those minimum monthly payments like a good girl, they “reward” you with all kinds of nice offers and upgrades and points, but ask yourself this: Whose interest is served, exactly, by all that interest you’re paying? Hint: Not yours.) But $2000 of credit card debt is my absolute cutoff. Any more than that, and it’s impossible to ignore.
“Yes, yes. The new number, please, Ms. Hastings.” I might as well have told her my dog ate my paycheck, because she clearly doesn’t believe me, nor could she care less, so long as I ante up.
Shamed into submission yet again, I read out my MasterCard number, wish her a Merry Christmas, even, and hang up. But it just doesn’t seem right.
I straighten my collar, blow my nose and step back out into the hallway, where Cy is picking his teeth with a matchbook.
“I thought you’d left. Sorry,” I mumble in the unsorriest way possible and push past him.
“What were you doing in there? Are you okay?” he calls out after me, but I pretend not to hear.
I toss and turn for hours, trying to imagine what I’m doing wrong, where I’m failing in my plan, in my life. Certainly, I’m open to the possibility of meeting someone; George and I both are. We have been diligently hanging out in grocery stores and coffee shops in the best parts of town. We’ve been doing happy hour in the financial district and brunch at the Hyatt downtown, for lack of anywhere better to go. And as for Moneyed Mates and my scandalous personal introduction, I’m not about to change it—not on your life. Even though George and I are both beyond broke from months of $10 cocktails and $20 omelettes, my reluctance has nothing to do with the $250 Ms. Chase would probably charge me to redo my tape. I am who I am, and if a guy doesn’t want to date me because I dare to speak the truth, my truth, then I would rather not be with him, anyway.
I suppose.
So I’m not going to regret the tape. And I’m not going to beat myself up over letting that meanie talk me into parting with another one hundred and fifty hard-earned dollars. Maybe she’s right—maybe the optimism (or desperation) of a New Year would lead to a date from a Moneyed Mate. I’m just going to have to be patient, give it a little longer…
But in the morning, I am still bothered. Bothered by my failure, not by my still-singleness, I realize as I pump gas into my Tercel in the freezing cold. (Dammit! 8:56—I’m going to be late. Again.) The fact that I will most likely spend New Year’s Eve with George and her mothers watching Pretty in Pink and eating kosher Chinese food doesn’t faze me. The fact that I never seem to make good on any of my resolutions does.
No matter how hard I try, things never seem to change.
When I pull into the parking lot at work, I grab some cash and my phone, and leave my coat and purse in the car to make it seem as if I haven’t just arrived—Who, me? I’ve been in since dawn. You?—and try to not look cold and rushed as I walk past Cy’s office and the desks of all my coworkers. Of course, the message light on my phone flashes tellingly when I finally slip behind my desk at 9:20ish. And of course, I spend the entire morning calling back proud suburban mommies wanting to submit head-shots of their offspring at $65 a pop for our “Babies of the Year” section before the deadline of noon today.
After a nice long lunch with Jesse, during which he tells me in excruciating detail how he plans to propose to whateverherdamnnameis at “exactly midnight” on New Year’s Eve, I decide to devote the rest of the day to consoling myself with peanut M&M’s from the machine in the lobby and figuring out why George and I are having so much trouble landing Moneyed Mates.
But first, I think I’ll read the paper.
You might assume that I always read the paper, but you’d be wrong. Although I’m technically supposed to check over the ads and obits every day, I find the legion of overeager copyediting interns remarkably adept at making sure all the i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed. (Save for that one time Mrs. Millicent Beasley’s grieving friends and family were politely requested to make donations to the American Dung Association in lieu of flowers.)
While skimming the Bugle’s front section, a little wire story picked up from the Associated Press catches my eye. The headline reads, “Buffalo Rated Least Desirable City For Dogs.”
That seems a little harsh, I think
, and proceed to read about how bad the canine set seems to have it here in the Queen City, which ranks dead last on a list compiled from such generally well-regarded indicators as mean annual temperature, square acreage of urban green space, veterinarians per dogita and the average income of pet owners.
Average income?
Hmmm…
Wait a second…
Could it be?
Frantically, I Google “Buffalo Millionaires.”
Oh my.
It hadn’t occurred to me that the problem wasn’t me. Or George. Or our boobs or brains or posture or personality or hair or hearts or any of the other innumerable things we’re taught to believe make us either attractive or abhorrent to the opposite sex. Yet there it is, plain as day, spelled out in detailed census information over the last one hundred years. The problem is Buffalo! The problem is Buffalo!
After an hour of research and two packs of M&M’s, I have discovered four crucial facts:
1. In the year 1900, Buffalo, NY, was home to the most millionaires per capita in the United States.
By the turn of that century, you apparently couldn’t throw a croquet mallet in these parts without hitting a titan of industry or future president. Buffalo’s location at the terminus of the Erie Canal and near the burgeoning hydroelectric potential of Niagara Falls attracted prospective East Coast shipping magnates and bankers and businessmen, and here they founded their empires. Pretty soon, their wealth was expanding faster than the railway tracks they laid to connect their city’s bustling port with the rest of the country.
2. There are between three-and-a-half and-five million millionaires currently living throughout the United States.
Although I can’t find any statistics related to their marital status, it’s pretty much safe to assume that several hundred thousand of them are still single and in the market for the love of their life.
3. In the year 2000, Seattle, WA, was home to the most millionaires in the United States.
By the turn of this century, however, Buffalo had become synonymous with chicken wings, while on the other side of the country, those teenage alchemists at Microsoft had spun software into gold during the ’80s and ’90s. Stock options made thousands of employees a part of the Millionaire club. Legions of nerds were rolling down their mansions’ driveways in Bentleys and bling-bling.
4. Naples, Florida, currently boasts more millionaires per capita than any other city in the United States.
Millionaire-hunting in a small town probably has its perks—it’s likely much easier to identify the men of means, because odds are almost everyone there is rich, anyway. Plus, the weather is certainly better in Naples than in Seattle.
Seattle definitely isn’t the best spot for a warm winter getaway, but it might be worth our while to head down south for a few weeks and scope out the scene in Naples, just to see what it’s like….
“George, we’re taking a trip!”
She glares at me, tapping her watch. “You’re late. The movie started five minutes ago. You know I like to see the previews.”
“Forget about the movie. This is important! Wait till you hear what I found out today!”
“It’s freezing. Can we just go in, please?”
I pull her into the doorway. Teenagers in jean jackets cheerily ignoring the ten-degree chill stream past us through the double doors of the multiplex, stomping out cigarettes with their Skechers. “You’re not going to believe this, G, but Buffalo is so totally the wrong place to meet millionaires! The odds are stacked against us here!”
“God, Holly. Can we please give all that a rest for a bit? Just for tonight? I really really wanted to see this movie. Fulvia from my book club said it was the best documentary to hit the big screen since Fahrenheit 9/11, only not as cute, obviously, and with more Zapatistas.”
“What? Hold on a sec—I thought we were going to see the one with Johnny Depp.”
George’s puppy-dog eyes grew wide as saucers. “But you said—”
“Fine, fine. Whatever. But we’re going to talk about this later.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she sniffs as she pays for her ticket. “I can barely afford popcorn, let alone a trip.”
“Well, the price of popcorn here is absolutely ridiculous. I’ll give you that. But it doesn’t mean we can’t take a vacation with our Christmas bonuses,” I tell her. “Somewhere warm.” A blast of frigid air blows in from an opened door and whips George’s hair into a tangled mess. She struggles to smooth it down, dropping one Nepalese woollen mitt and her wallet in the process. “You definitely need it, my friend. We both do.”
“Yeah, I need it,” she snaps. “No shit I need it! But I also need to finish paying my student loans and move out of my mothers’ house before I’m thirty. And let me remind you, my bonus is never quite what yours is.”
I forgot that while most of us Buglers could look forward to an entire extra paycheck come holiday season, the seven employees of the Book Cauldron had last year been graced with tickets to a free feng shui seminar, and leftover Lord of the Rings posters the Christmas before that.
“Word is, we’re getting crystals for our keychains this year,” she adds hopefully.
Of course, she’s right. Spending money she doesn’t have is probably not the best way for George to achieve the financial independence that has eluded her her entire adult life. But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and I am determined to make it happen for both of us—even if that means convincing my fiscally challenged best friend to spend a bit of money she doesn’t have now in order to cash in on potentially huge returns later.
“Okay, George, well the popcorn’s on me, tonight! Just promise me you’ll think about it.”
“Whatever.”
As soon as I wake up, I call Ms. Chase. Even though it’s Saturday morning, the receptionist informs me she is indeed in the office today, and transfers me immediately.
“Hello, Ms. Chase. This is Holly Hastings and I want to exercise my right to a refund!”
“Let’s not be rash, Ms. Hastings…”
I push down the panic in my chest and remind myself that I could be mean here if I had to. This woman isn’t about to serve me a booger-topped pizza or humiliate me in front of strangers in a dress shop. She isn’t going pee in my tea or announce my bank account balance to the lineup behind me. The only card Violet Chase has to play is my fear of being single. And I’m apparently already afraid of that….
“It is no longer up for discussion, Ms. Chase! I expect you to live up to your end of the Moneyed Mates guarantee in a courteous and timely manner.”
“If you’d just let me—”
“No, I will not! The only thing I will let you do is offer me my refund.”
Silence.
“Well?”
“Well, Ms. Hastings you may have your refund, I suppose. Minus the $250 sitting fee, of course.”
“Of course.”
I am woman, hear me roar! I never knew asserting myself could be so…so…thrilling. Maybe I could even take it a step farther…
“And I also want you to refund George her money, too.”
A snort. “Out of the question. Ms. Perlman-MacNeill is not eligible.”
“Why? She deserves it more than I do. Frankly, the way she was treated by one of your clients…”
“What? Who?”
“That Bobby Garrett creep who dumped her in a restaurant without so much as a good-night! His behavior was so abominable that you and your outfit over there should consider yourselves very fortunate to get out of this situation without any litigation on her part.”
“Stop right there, Ms. Hastings! I’ll remind you that you both signed waivers should this sort of thing happen, as it very rarely does. Now I’m very sorry, but we’ve never had any complaints about Mr. Garrett before. In fact, we’ve sent him out on over a dozen dates…”
“Great—so he’s a serial dater! Is that supposed to make George feel any better? She’s been extremely damaged by his
callous disregard for her feelings on a variety of different personal levels, and, to make matters worse, publicly humiliated—and I mean humiliated!—by his reprehensible conduct. So I’m asking you again, please, to consider at least a partial refund for her.”
“Listen here! She is not entitled to a refund. Especially since…” she pauses.
“Since what?”
“Well, it’s not my intention to betray a confidence, since I’m normally very discreet in these matters, but your friend has turned down three other requests for dates over the past two months.”
“What?”
“She didn’t even come in to view the gentlemen’s profiles. She just said no outright.”
Poor thing. She was so damaged by that hell date that she couldn’t bear the thought of a repeat occurrence.
It was one thing to be dismissed right off the bat for my looks (or was it my personality?) and be quietly rejected by all of Ms. Chase’s so-called gentlemen, as I had been, but I imagine it was probably quite another to have the raised expectations of an actual date and subsequent relationship dashed by an asshole who was too dim to see through George’s excited ramblings and too much of a prick to have the courtesy to finish the evening. And to make matters worse, I had virtually forced her into the whole thing. No wonder she didn’t tell me about the other guys. She was too afraid to go, and too afraid to tell me she was afraid.
I had to make it up to her.
“Just refund my credit card, please,” I say and hang up.
So what if we have no money? So what if we have no mates? So what if we seem no better off than before? At least I know what the next step is.
Three business days later, when the $745 shows up on my Visa statement, I immediately put it toward two last-minute plane tickets to Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers, as close as I could get us to Naples on such short notice.
part two
Naples, Florida*
