A Total Waste of Makeup (40 page)

“It has to be tonight because he’s expecting sex, and I don’t want him in that way. I tried, but I ain’t feelin’ it. And you have to be here because he’s going to get all depressed afterwards, and you’re his friend and you should be here for him.”

And I hate it when she’s being logical. Logical and reasonable. Goddamn her. We spend the next few minutes arguing, but I already know I’ve lost.

And when the wedding is over, I say my good-byes to everyone, tell Drew and Dawn I’ll be back in the room at one o’clock, and head for the bar, knowing Drew will be calling me any minute.

Thirty-Five

It’s the friends you can call up at 4 am that matter.—Marlene Dietrich

Thirty minutes later, my cell phone rings. I check the caller ID. “Hi, Drew.”

“Where are you?” he asks.

“The hotel bar.”

“Any photographers there? How’s the lighting? Is it a place to be seen?”

“No, the lighting’s fine, and no.”

“Are there any women there?” he asks.

I look around. I’m the only woman here under forty. “A few,” I say.

“Good. Pick one for me, and bring her to my room.”

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

“Why?”

“Because tomorrow morning, on top of dealing with a hangover and a breakup, you don’t need to be dealing with a starfucker.”

The older couple at the table next to me turns around to glare. I smile back at them.

“I suppose that’s a good point,” Drew concedes. “Okay, call my driver. I know a pretty good strip club we can go to….”

“How about if I just come back to the room, and we’ll talk?” I suggest.

“Talk? Why?”

“Because you’re upset,” I point out.

“I’m fine,” Drew insists, shrugging me off with his tone of voice. “You know what they say—best way to get over someone is to get under someone. Now, who do we know that’s cute and available this time of night?”

“Me,” I say, sighing. “So I’ll be right over.”

“Really?” Drew says, audibly perking up.

“I’m kidding. I’ll see you in a minute.”

I hang up, pay the check, and make my way back to amazing Room 150, and knock on the door. Drew opens it. “You think Paris Hilton is available?” he asks.

“I don’t know. Check your Pay-Per-View schedule.”

He steps aside so that I can walk into the most romantic and decadent hotel room on the planet, designed to make even Queen Elizabeth want to do the horizontal mambo. So, naturally, a woman dumped him here.

As I walk in, Drew points to the coffee table, where I see a big box beautifully wrapped in glittery silver paper. “I got a wedding present for you,” he says offhandedly.

“You mean to give to Andy?” I ask, confused.

“No. I mean for you.” He walks to the table, picks up the box, and hands it to me. “I got it for you earlier tonight.”

I carefully unwrap the present to see a bright red Baccarat box. Inside the box are two baccarat champagne flutes and a card. As I open the card, a check for fifty dollars falls out—signed by Drew. And he signed the card with my favorite new mantra, and one that will soon go into my journal of advice:

You needn’t be married to drink champagne.
Love, Drew

“I love it,” I say.

“Good. At least I made one woman happy tonight.”

There’s a bottle of Dom Pérignon, unopened, in a silver cooler next to the couch. He gives the cork a quick pop, and pours champagne into my new glasses.

We sit on the green sofa and clink our glasses in a toast.

Drew toasts, “Here’s to finding someone who doesn’t make us completely nuts.”

We exchange sympathetic smiles. I rub his shoulder and ask, “What happened?”

He shrugs. “We were making out, and then she didn’t want to go any further. And she looked so sad. She wants to like me in that way. But I’m not the one.”

He shrugs. “We have a good time together. She wants me to be the one. But, you know, whatever…”

His voice trails off and he takes a sip of champagne.

I rub his shoulder. “You’re gonna find someone,” I say.

“Oh, sweetie, please let’s not do the ‘you’re gonna find someone’ speech,” Drew says, turning on the TV.

“Okay,” I say. “What speech do you want?”

Drew flips through the channels, settling on an old golf game. “How about the ‘I won’t say one more word about dating tonight. Let’s watch ESPN in our pajamas instead’ speech?”

When men say they don’t want to talk about it, what they really mean is—they don’t want to talk about it.

“I’ll go get my pajamas,” I say quietly, heading to the smaller bedroom.

I walk to the doorway, then turn around. I look at the back of Drew’s head as he watches the old golf game. You know, for all his nuttiness, and all the times I want to wring his neck, I sure have a soft spot for him. He’s one of the most good-hearted people I’ve ever met, and he deserves a soul mate just as much as the rest of us.

“I really like my champagne flutes,” I squeak out quietly, trying to get him into a conversation.

“Good,” Drew says, not turning his head from the game. “Next time we go to London, we should get you some china to go with them.”

I’m silent for a while as I try to think of something else to say. Something that would make him feel better. Something like he deserves better than this, or that some day his princess will come, or that he doesn’t need Jaclyn Smith’s hat.

Instead, I go with an old standby. “I hear Jennifer Lopez might be available again.”

Drew turns his head around slowly, grinning. “Really?”

Thirty-Six

At almost any moment, you have the power to change your destiny.

Sunday morning, after having brunch with Drew and my family, and saying good-bye to all of them, I came home, changed into my comfy Eeyore pajamas and slippers, threw my hair into a ponytail, and opened
War and Peace
to page one.

I lie down on my purple couch, grab a cigarette from my pack on the coffee table, and pull out a lighter.

I stare at the cigarette. After about ten seconds’ more thought, I break my Marlboro in half and toss the two unlit halves of the unlit cigarette into an ashtray.

What the hell? So I’ll put on a few pounds. It’s not like there’s anyone to lose them for, anyway. Besides, I’ve decided I like my life. I want to live to be a hundred.

An hour later, I’ve cranked my way through twenty pages of
War and Peace.
It doesn’t sound like much, but already Tolstoy has mentioned a mother who falsely thinks her fourteen-year-old daughter is her best friend—as so many mothers have done before her. This guy Leo was onto something. I write in my journal:

Read classics like
War and Peace
once you’re out of school. They’re much better when there’s not a quiz. Don’t ever read
Ethan Frome, The Sound and the Fury,
or anything by Kafka. You’re wasting your time.

I forgot to include
Lord Jim.
God, it’s amazing what English Lit. teachers do to make us hate reading for so much of our adult lives.

My doorbell rings. I walk over to the door and look through the peephole. Shit! It’s Jordan.

Suddenly, I remember my stupid middle-of-the-night phone call.

There should be a phone service that turns off your phone between midnight and six
A.M
. every night. And if you want to make a call, you have to pick up the phone and talk to an operator:
Put me through to AAA. My car battery’s dead.

Yes, ma’am.

Put me through to Pink Dot. I need vanilla Häagen-Dazs
toute de suite!

Yes, ma’am.

Put me through to my ex-boyfriend….

I’m sorry, ma’am,
the operator would say.
That would be a bad idea. Now you go to bed before you do anything stupid.

And my call had been stupid, and now God was punishing me by making me see the man I have a crush on while wearing Eeyore pajamas and no makeup.

I open the door. “Hi…,” I begin, ready to shout a monologue to him about why I shouldn’t have called, because he’s scum, and I have no intentions of becoming a mistress, so he can just turn around right now, mister, because…

“I thought you might want to see this,” Jordan says, holding up an engagement ring.

I stare at him, dumbfounded.

“I’m sorry I missed your call,” he tells me as he puts the ring in his pocket. “I was in San Francisco getting it back.”

“How was it?” My voice quakes when I ask.

Jordan smiles warmly. “Brutal. I don’t want to talk about it. How was the wedding?”

I smile back. “Brutal. I don’t want to talk about it.”

I pull the ponytail holder out of my hair and fluff my hair up. “I did, however, get a fabulous wedding gift. Would you like to come in and have some champagne?”

“I’d love to.”

I let him in, and we talk all night. You know the kind of talk you have that’s half kissing and half talking? And you suddenly realize this person’s going to be in your life for a while?

It was a good night.

And the following day, I finished my journal of advice:

I was never Jennifer Aniston. I never cooked as well as Julia Child, wrote as well as Tolstoy, was as funny as Lucille Ball, or as rich as Oprah Winfrey. I was never as beautiful as Beyoncé, as famous as Princess Diana, as good of an actress as Meryl Streep, as driven to a cause as Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I’m pretty sure I never learned physics, or how to speak Chinese. And I can almost guarantee you I never figured out the new math.

But I got to go through this life, and this century, as me. And that’s a hell of a lot more than I ever dreamed.

Well, great-granddaughter, I hope reading my book has inspired you to write a book of your own, for your own great-granddaughter. I only wish I could ask you this question—because I’m dying to know: What will you write?

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Kim Whalen, my brilliant literary agent, and Rebecca Oliver for introducing us.

Thanks to Jennifer Good, my awesome film agent, who encouraged me to take a break from writing screenplays for a few years to try my hand at a novel.

Thanks to Jennifer Weis, my wonderful editor, who won me at auction (something I never thought I’d be able to say), and her assistant, Stefanie Lindskog.

Thanks to my family: Carol (Mom), Ed (Dad), Janis, Jenn, Rob, Jake, Jean, and all of my wonderful aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Thanks to the friends who got me through turning thirty: Rachel, Lauren, Cookie, Ashley, Patrick, Dave, Doug, Laurie, Jeff, Karen, and Stephanie. And, of course, Anjani. Another thanks to sister Jenn and friend Laurie, who both made me maid of honor at their weddings. When I was twenty-nine and single. Which sucked. (I’m kidding.)

And to “the wine tasters”—my female pack: Jen, Dawn, Gaylyn, Christie, Marisa, Missy, and Dorothy.

A TOTAL WASTE OF MAKEUP
. Copyright © 2006 by Kim Gruenenfelder. All rights reserved. For information, address
St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

ISBN: 978-1-4299-0489-6