“Who’s that?” Barbey asked trying to sound tough with attitude in a stilted southern accent.
“Duh! That’s Suzie Albers. Whose party do you think we’re at?” she asked sarcastically. “Why are you talking in such an idiotic voice?”
“That’s Suzie Albers!” Barbey had a slight curious fascination with her, as most women do with the women their boyfriends had dated in the past.
Kimberly looked at Barbey and rolled her eyes in irritation.
“Well, I’ve never actually met her before,” Barbey said feeling stupid. Self-conscious, she decided to stop acting in character around Kimberly.
“I can introduce you to her.”
“Oh, no.” Barbey felt embarrassed and uncomfortable at the thought of introduction. “Why would I want to meet her?”
“She used to date Rave for one thing,” Kimberly retorted in sarcasm.
“Yeah, but what’s that got to do with me? I mean, like, should I introduce Rave to all my old stupid boyfriends? I don’t think so.”
“That would be funny.”
“What’s past is past.” Barbey felt a tap on her shoulder from behind. When she turned around she was surprised to see that her ex-boyfriend, Paul Thompson, was standing there. It had only been a couple of months since they had broken up.
“Barbey.” He smiled and brushed his bleach blond bangs from his eyes. Paul was tall and thin with broad shoulders and a sensitive face. “I’m surprised to see you here. I didn’t know you were a party girl now.” He smiled flirtatiously.
Paul had been Barbey’s first love. They had loved each other with a genuine sincerity, but Barbey had ended the romance after months of continuous bickering over nonsensical matters. She felt incapable of mending the relationship after numerous attempts. Though their love had been serious, she had been conditioned by society to believe that women needed to experience several relationships before marrying. As a result, when they started having problems, she believed it was best to move on. She had felt emotionally exhausted in the struggle and one morning she simply woke up with no feelings whatsoever for Paul. It was as if some magic fairy from one of her childhood storybooks had tapped her with a wand and when she awoke, all her loving feelings toward Paul had vanished. In fact, she felt strangely repulsed by him.
“Paul,” she raised her eyebrows subtly like Ariel. “How are you?” Keeping her tough demeanor, she feigned a cocky enthusiasm, jutting her hip out to one side, and then laughing sarcastically as she looked him up and down.
Paul sensed the falseness in her voice. “You don’t need to act so strange. It’s not like I don’t know you, Barbey. I can see your nose growing.” He still loved her.
“I’m dating someone,” she said coldly, squinting her eyes in anger. Her southern accent was slight.
“Do you still have the ring I gave you?”
She thought about the ring and in her mind it seemed unimportant and juvenile. “Yes. It’s in my jewelry box.”
“Do you ever wear it?”
His probing annoyed her. “It’s not like we’re going out anymore, Paul,” she ran her fingers through her hair and stood in her jeans with her long legs spread apart, scuffing the ground with her cowboy boot. “Besides, you gave it to me after we were already broken up. I can’t talk right now.” She looked over her shoulder to make sure Rave couldn’t hear what she was saying to Paul.
“We should meet for lunch sometime,” he said. “You want to?”
“Yeah, sure, fine. Actually, I don’t think it’s a good idea. Like I said, I’m going out with someone now.”
“I just meant we could go out as friends.”
Barbey laughed. “Ok,” her voice was sarcastic.
He leaned in close to her as she was looking away and kissed her cheek gently as he ran his fingers down her neck.
She jerked her head around startled. “What did you do that for?” she snapped bitterly at him. “You can’t just kiss me without my permission.”
“I’m sorry.” Tears were welling in his eyes. “I love you, Barbey.”
“What’s wrong with you? You’re not normal.”
“That was stupid of me.” He started looking around uncomfortably to see if anyone was watching. “I’m really sorry. I just…”
“Weren’t you listening to me? I told you I’m in love. Didn’t you hear me?”
“No.”
“I told you I’m seeing someone.”
“I thought…”
“Don’t I look different?” A glazed expression glossed over her violet eyes. “Do I look like the same person?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what? I’m different. Can’t you see? I’m a different person now.”
“You look skinnier.”
“You say the stupidest things.”
“You look plastic and fake like one of the dolls on your mother’s shelves.”
“Just leave me alone,” she whispered. “You got it? Just leave me alone.” She was trying to speak quietly so that no one else could hear.
Paul took her hand and to her surprise, she didn’t resist. “I know you, Barbey. You’re the same person.” He pulled her close to him and put his arms gently around her. “You’re gonna be ok, Barbey.” He caressed her back lovingly like a father.
Barbey suddenly felt helpless and empty like a rag doll as she rested limply in Paul’s arms. She couldn’t figure out if she was in or out of character. What is reality? Jumbled, indiscernible thoughts and feelings rushed through her mind. She began to cry. She started seeing images of fairy tales: Cinderella scrubbing the floor, Snow White biting a poisonous apple, Ruppunzel pricking her finger…
“I’m going to save you,” Paul said assuredly. “I know you. You’re gonna be ok.”
She felt like Thumbelina—lost, floating on a lily pad in a huge lake of frogs and toads. Paul could always read her thoughts. “Prince Charming is going to rescue you.” They both laughed. “Remember when we stopped the car on the side of the freeway, turned up the song, “Mad About You,” super loud on the radio and danced right there on the freeway?”
Barbey stepped back from Paul and stood there for a minute looking at him. “I gotta go, Paul. Don’t stop me.” She walked up the stairs to the balcony and sat down next to Suzie Albers who was sitting at a little card table with Connie Livingston, a tough looking blonde friend of hers. Suzie wasn’t actually that pretty up close but she was cute in a cherub-like way with a thin childish figure and a sort of glowing unexpected charisma. She was holding a margarita with a tiny American flag on a toothpick twirling in her glass.
“Hi,” Barbey said to Suzie Albers. “I’m Barbey.”
“I know who you are.” She took the toothpick with the flag out of her glass and stuck it straight up in the table. Suzie’s friend, Connie, smirked and then turned away looking at a guy who walked by.
“I met a man at the cosmetology school that I go to who fell in love with a peach tree named Suzie.”
Suzie Albers laughed, throwing her head back slightly and smiling with dimples. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but it’s funny.” She looked at her friend and said, “Don’t you think that’s funny, Connie?”
“Yeah, real f---ing funny!” she released a short coarse laugh and tucked her muscle shirt deeper into her jeans. “I wasn’t even listening.”
“I thought so too.” Barbey got up and walked back down the stairs over to Rave, tapped him on the shoulder and said in her cold confident Ariel voice, “Do you still like Suzie Albers?”
“No way.” He appeared startled by the question. “You seem different.”
“Why not?” Barbey demanded, her hands on her hips.
“She’s stupid—a real clueless airhead. Not like you; you’re…you’re intelligent.”
She snapped the straps on her tank top, the fringe on her western jacket blowing in the wind. “Can we go home now?”
“I like how…how you say that. Like we…we live together. Do you like Paul Thompson?”<
br />
“How do you know his name?”
“I know that he loved you madly.”
He loved you madly. He loved you madly. He loved you madly. The phrase echoed in Barbey’s mind and she cringed, “If I was Sage, I would have married him. Her life isn’t like a movie at all—boring.” She laughed. “Of course I don’t like him.” She was thinking about who she could get to drive alongside them on the drive home, so that while the vehicles were moving parallel to each other, she could crawl out of her car through the window into the other car, balancing herself on the window ledges of each vehicle simultaneously with her arms spread out above her head in the air, like Ariel did in Footloose. What a freeing feeling! Then she wondered what guy would be waiting for her in the other car? That scared her.
“Ok,” Rave said. “Let’s go.”
21
A week after Suzie Alber’s party, Paul Thompson’s mother called Barbey and asked her to be in a fashion show that the modeling company she worked for, Dreamtime Models, was producing for up and coming fashion designers in the San Diego area. Although Barbey didn’t want to be connected to Paul in any way, she couldn’t resist the opportunity to model in a live fashion show. The thought of working as a model, though without pay, was exhilarating to her. She felt full and proud of herself, as light as hairspray.
She knew that Rave didn’t like the modeling profession, though she couldn’t understand why, so, she decided not to tell him about the fashion show that night when he came over. For the past weeks, since her parents had been out of town, they spent every evening together sitting and talking at opposite ends on her parents’ L shaped sofa in the den.
“This couch is strange,” Rave said as he traced with his finger the lines of the bright, gaudy multi-colored Hawaiian flower print on the sofa.
“Yeah, I kinda hate it. It’s from the seventies and they never bought a new one for some reason. It’s actually really weird for them because they’re so into appearances in every other sense. I think Mama just likes it. Why, I have no idea.” Barbey was fascinated by the intensity in which Rave traced the big blossoming petals. Everything about him, even the most mundane of gestures or actions, intrigued her. He hunched over and looked intently at the flowers and then looked with a still calmness into her eyes. As he stared at her, his eyes did not waver in embarrassment or with cockiness like other boys. His stare seemed gentle and slightly pleading like a lost boy searching for his mother.
Every evening they spent together, he asked her numerous questions about herself, her thoughts, and life experiences. Like many young women, she loved to talk about herself, and was happy to comply. Occasionally, though not often, she would inquire about him, but he seemed generally uncomfortable talking about himself and eager to switch the conversation back to her. He frequently gushed over her beauty, intelligence, and overall superiority over other girls. This filled her with the greatest joy and loving feelings toward him. Her feelings grew and grew, devouring all reality, the way in which out of control weeds in a field burrow out, up, and down, stretching forth in all directions until nothing else but weeds exist. She was consumed with love.
Barbey was puzzled though because Rave had never attempted to kiss her. Aside from the first night when they met in Tijuana when he shook her hand, he had never even touched her. This confused Barbey because she knew he clearly was attracted to her and had even said he was falling in love with her on two occasions, yet they had been seeing each other almost every day for a month with no actual physical contact. Intuitively she felt that he had placed her on a pedestal like a glass slipper too fine to touch. He continually praised her saying, “I can’t believe you like me,” accenting the “me”. Then he would shake his head side to side just slightly and get a cloudy look in his eyes like he was dreaming.
“Barbey, I need to ask you something.” He hunched over his legs animal-like and tilted his head to the side to look at her across from him on the other end of the couch.
“Yes,” she whispered, aroused by anticipation and the seriousness in his voice.
“I need you to promise me you will never lie to me.” He looked up at the ceiling as if he were looking at something that confused him.
Barbey looked up. She didn’t see anything, but the white spackled ceiling.
“Can you promise me that?” He looked back at her intensely.
She was surprised at the seeming simplicity of the request which seemed to hold so much value to him. “Of course, Rave. I promise—I’ll never lie to you.”
“Thank you.” He smiled at her sweetly like a young innocent boy.
“I almost didn’t tell you. I’m going to be in a fashion show next weekend. Paul Thompson’s mother asked me to be in it and I didn’t want to let her down. And, you might think this is stupid, but I like modeling.” She was embarrassed to admit this to him, but she didn’t want to lie by omission. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
To her surprise, he laughed. “My Barbey doll—a model.” He smiled. “Outstaaaaaaaanding,” he drew out the word the way he and Parker had the night they were in Tijuana. “Generally I think models are…are airheads, but you are the exception. Nothing about you is stupid. You’ll…you’ll be the first model to have a brain.”
Barbey welled with joy and relief.
22
“Well! It’s about time to step up the style and get summer sassy. Just a touch of the blush brush dipped in bronzy sandstone with a whisk across the cheeks. Gloss the lips with Remember-Me-Star like swimming out in the ocean and catching the lip back to shore. Waxing the surfboard legs while swinging an Anne Tilly lace purse in sting ray swish. Glide into polka dot bikini, but first sprits with Abigail’s Chase. She’s sassy and cool—a Valley Girl fool. Like oh my god, I worship my face.”
“Summer Treats to Try with Your Guy!” Barbey read the title on page forty-eight of Fashion Twist magazine. She was excited to read on. “The fantasy of escape/the joy of union/the outdoorsies in your blood. How to flee to the perfect path and keep your man interested in your ruffled undies at the same time. Pick an activity that he would really adore, but never thought of before. He’ll think you’re inventive and a bit of a dominatrix, which will flip his switch and send him into your arms forever. Forever’s a long time, so be sure he’s the guy for you before putting him under your love spell for fricken’ eternity. Flip the page for some stimulating, slithering summer sensations that will rip him into space.”
That’s what we need, Barbey thought. Rave and I have been sitting every night on that gaudy Hawaiian print couch doing nothing but talking. We should go on a date!
“Don’t let your man eat couch potatoes and ham. No male chauvinistic piglets allowed in this woman’s world—boot him off the furniture and scrape the horizon with your spiked heels (Let him wear whatever shoes he wants—no need to control the outer sole; it’s the inner soul that’s yours for the molding.). Fly away birdie to another world of space.”
This magazine is ingenious, she thought. It is the answer to all relationship dilemmas. It’s funny how I can feel sort of like muddled at times and all I have to do is open my magazine and the answers are right there in plain sight. It’s so weird how lucky my life is.
Barbey skimmed down the page of her bible and read, 1. If your boy toy likes sports, get him to take you to a secluded outdoorsy place like the woods or desert and play strip darts. Fasten a dart board up against a tree or large cactus and take turns aiming and firing. After each turn, whoever gets the dart closest to the bull’s eye wins and the loser has to take off a piece of clothing. This will ignite a spark in any relationship. 2. So your man’s not a big sports fan, but he loves all that scientific stuff… Dress up like a lab tech in a short little Direct Style lab coat with fish net stockings, pumps, and Debbie Crane glasses. (Wear a trendy Doreen Kay trench coat over the top, so nobody can see what’s underneath.) Then take him to a space museum and facetiously flash him in between exhibits when nobody else is looking. When he’s just oh so arouse
d, lead him outside into the park under the stars and serve him wine in beakers and little slices of cheese cut in the shape of crescent moons. He’s sure to beg for more. 3. Every dude loves beer! Take your babe and a half to a brewery and during the tour, you two can bond while sampling all that foamy ale. He’ll be jolly eager to go again and he’ll think you’re the most awesome girl yet!
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