Dear Girls Above Me: Inspired by a True Story (25 page)

Okay, maybe I didn’t entirely underestimate them. Thanks for bringing me back down to earth, Claire.

Later that night, I was in the bathroom, making sure my receding hairline hadn’t subsided any further since last night’s inspection. One strand seemed to be missing. Probably from the stress of my day. When I began brushing my teeth (the second time), I heard a knock at the door. Pat poked his head in.

“Hey, thanks for getting me drunk tonight.”

“Yeah, no problem,” I said with a mouth full of toothpaste.

“Also, the parade was really … colorful.”

“Yeah. It was, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. “Okay, well, good night.”

“Good night, Pat.”

I was climbing into bed, getting ready to call it a night, when I heard a familiar song echoing through the walls of our apartment. An unspoken acknowledgment that can only come from someone who has a flair for the fabulous. Playing softly from Pat’s room, I heard … “There used to be a graying tower alone on the sea.…”

THE GIRLS ON HOLIDAYS

Dear Girls Above Me,

“Supposedly if you get wasted the night before New Year’s, your hangover isn’t as bad on New Year’s.” Words from a true alcoholic.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“I don’t understand weather talk, but it says there’s a 10% chance it’s going to rain on New Year’s. Is that high?” Are you high?

Dear Girls Above Me,

(phone) “Mom, if I come home for Thanksgiving, I want calorie signs beside each dish.” That was all the Native Americans wanted too.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“She’s dressing up as a pumpkin?
Just
a pumpkin!? So shady, I don’t trust this bitch.” Agreed, never trust something not slutty.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“We should celebrate by going to the hospital and looking at newborn babies!” Or you could celebrate
Labor Day
by getting a job.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“She was a major buzz kill talking about death and war. I wanted to be like, relax, it’s a holiday weekend!” Happy Memorial Day.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“What the hell does Easter have to do with Jesus anyway?” You don’t know? He’s the one who hires the Bunny.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“So far my biggest disappointment of 2011 was realizing that real bowling is way harder than Wii bowling.” You’ve had a rough year.

Dear Girls Above Me,

Throwing a Cinco de Mayo “partaay” over the weekend means you’re just getting drunk on a Saturday. Regardless, Happy Ocho de Mayo!

Dear Girls Above Me,

“I hate St. Paddy’s Day cause I look fat in green although getting pinched secretly turns me on.” I live under you, it’s no secret.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Whenever the girls above me say the words
I have the best idea everrrrr
, I know that something terribly bad is going to happen. I can’t recall there ever being an occasion that their “best idea everrrrr” was even a moderately good one. And not only that, it changes on a daily basis. So that means that yesterday’s “best idea everrrrr” really only lasted for twenty-four hours, instead of its promised “everrrrr,” because now all of a sudden there is a new “best idea everrrrr.” When I start to calculate what today’s “best idea everrrrr” is going to be in a few days, I get dizzy and need to lie down. I think it might have to do with an overload of R’s.

What’s even harder is overhearing ideas that Cathy and Claire believe to be exceptional but that I know from their past experiences will only bring them sorrow, disappointment, and a trip to the gynecologist. But it’s my duty to respect their integrity and protect the stable ecosystem of their apartment by not interfering with them. I’m not going to pretend it’s been easy, because it hasn’t. There have been many times that I’ve wanted to lend a neighborly hand, but I
have had to learn to let Mother Nature follow her own course and allow the girls to make their own mistakes.

I witnessed the girls so distressed that they had to wait “a whole ’nother day” for the
Bachelor
finale, even though I knew it was on live TV at that very moment. It was driving me crazy knowing that they were missing it. I came very close to yelling out “Employee!” while I listened to Claire practice for her entry-level-job interview: “So, that’s why I want to be your employer.” And for a month I had to listen to Cathy learning a Spanish “phrase a day” in preparation for her “trip to Italy!”

Knock on wood, these little mistakes and mishaps haven’t caused the girls any permanent damage. I would feel such guilt knowing that I could’ve saved them from acquiring a nasty STD (some people have good “gay-dar”; well, I have good “STD-dar”) but instead was forced to keep quiet so as not to blow my cover, although there was one specific incident where I came very close, so close that I was inches away from their door, getting into position for a Kramer entrance. But this was a life-and-death situation, and I couldn’t just sit there eavesdropping and do nothing about it. I didn’t care that I was breaking nature’s code and proving to have no future career as a National Geographic cameraman. This finally proved that my top-notch stalking skills were beneficial to their survival.

Cathy speaks extra
loud whenever she’s on the phone with her mother: “Mom, can you text me your green bean casserole recipe? Claire and I wanna make it for dinner. Best idea everrrrr!” I immediately called my friend and canceled our biweekly bingo plans. I happened to be remarkably familiar with a green bean casserole. In fact, it’s really the only thing I know how to cook. I don’t want to come across as a total arrogant asshole, but I am pretty much the red
Power Ranger when it comes to green bean casseroles. Ever since my grandma Nell taught me her secret recipe, I’ve practically been able to prepare it in my sleep (although I’m not encouraging sleep-cooking; it can be quite hazardous, to say nothing of fattening). I’ve memorized all of the ingredients, measurements, and ideal cooking and cooling times. I figured the girls could use a professional spotter just in case things got out of casserole control.

Up until this point, the only dish that the girls had made successfully was peanut butter and jelly on white bread (not toasted). Of course, I’m not able to visibly see the outcome of their sandwiches, so I can’t fairly judge how presentable they might be, but from the sounds of their orgasm-like moaning. Unfortunately for my little sous-chefs, most of their other kitchen experiences have been failures. Even the simplest of meals seemed to be too much for them, as indicated by some of their unsuccessful attempts: Toaster Strudels (burned), canned soup (tried microwaving in the can), chicken paillard (they got lost on step two), and hard-boiled eggs (they thought that by just dipping the eggs into boiling water they would be ready).

My plan was to synchronize my cooking of my grandmother’s green bean casserole with theirs in order to psychically guide them to at least one cooking success. Since my well-practiced dish was guaranteed to turn out, if I were to prompt them along the way so they would unwittingly correct their typical errors, their dish would be a success too. If I heard them veering off track, like mixing the ingredients in the wrong order or forgetting the secret component that should be a part of all green bean casseroles (Cheez-Its), then I would make a squawking sound out my window that would, I hoped, snap them back on track. In hindsight this plan made little to no sense, but it was getting me out of my apartment and forcing me to cook something that Rachael Ray calls “therapeutic.”

I contacted a couple friends to see whether I could get them to join me in this night of synchronized cooking, but none of them was fully grasping my proposition.

“So, you’re cooking the same meal as the girls above, but not actually making it
with
them? And on top of that they don’t even know you’re doing this?” my brother-in-law Jesse asked. It sounded so abnormal coming out of his mouth.

“You’re not understanding. Okay, think of me as that sweet little rat in
Ratatouille
. I’m just making sure that they don’t screw up their dish,” I said, pleading my case.

“Yeah, but in
Ratatouille
the guy is fully aware that he has a rat tugging on his hair. How is that even close to the same thing?”

“Okay, well, this is a slightly different, less realistic version.”

“I don’t know, brother. I think your version would make a really fucked-up animated movie.”

I will admit that if I hadn’t known my own wholesome intentions, this could very well have been a scene from a bad slasher film, but I honestly had zero plans to chop up Cathy and Claire into bite-sized pieces and bake them into my casserole. First of all, throwing in additional ingredients that weren’t a part of my grandma’s original recipe would really have pissed her off if she were alive (don’t worry, Grandma Nell, you can rest in peace), and also dicing someone into pieces for consumption is against the law and evil and stuff.

I had struck out with my friends, so it looked like grocery shopping was going to be a solo mission. There are two grocery stores within walking distance of my apartment building. One of them is Ralph’s; the other is Whole Foods. Even though I lie to my mother about “only eating organic foods,” because she is a true believer in
everything
organic, I much prefer Ralph’s for my basic shopping needs. Not only does Ralph’s provide me with cheaper items and
wider aisles, it also happens to be the place where on one incredible day I flirted in the checkout line with Julia Roberts. I know, I know, she’s a tad older than me and happily married or whatever, but you should have seen the way she smiled at me when I placed the plastic divider between our food items. It was almost as if she didn’t want it to be there. Like a happy way of showing me that she wanted my bleach to be closer to her papaya without any impediment. Regrettably, due to the shock of her acknowledgment of me, I stood there frozen. Julia checked out, both figuratively and literally. I watched as she drove off, out of my life forever, probably to go pick up her kids from school or something. If I could go back and do it all over again, I would have lifted that germ-ridden divider, just to see what could have happened. Who knows, maybe my life would have turned out completely different. Or at the very least I think I would have made a wonderful male nanny to her children.

As it turns out, Cathy and Claire were putting on their TOMS shoes to go to the grocery store at the same time I was lacing up my Vans.

“I think we should go to Whole Foods to get the ingredients. It won’t save us money but will save us on calories, fo sho,” Claire yelled out to Cathy.

I have never been, nor do I see myself becoming, a calorie counter. In fact, for this particular dish I believed the more the calories the better. But I didn’t like the idea of watching the girls walk one direction toward Whole Foods while I walked the other way to Ralph’s. We planned to cook the same thing; we should have been using the same-brand contents. So I made an agreement with myself that I would go the healthier route this time around (Sorry, Grandma).

Once I heard the girls head out the door, I counted to twenty before leaving my apartment. There’s nothing worse than having to
walk a few blocks directly next to people you aren’t hanging out with. They look at you out of the corner of their eye, as if you’re listening in on their conversations, which in my case I would be. But if you speed up your pace, then you increase your chances of walking funny and/or pulling a hamstring, and if you slow down, then you get agitated with the little progress you’re making. I’ve found that the best thing to do in these moments is to pretend as if you are answering your phone and say, “I haven’t heard from you in almost ten years.” This will give you the opportunity to naturally stop dead in your tracks, forcing the people to continue on without you.

Once I got to Whole Foods and spotted the girls I instantly transformed into Jason Bourne.… Okay, maybe Mr. Bean is a more accurate depiction, but in any case it was exhilarating to camouflage myself behind the organic eggplants (I was wearing a dark purple shirt) and watch them as they shopped. I was not used to seeing them in the flesh. I had become a specialist when it came to understanding their voices, but I knew very little about their mannerisms. Just from listening to Cathy and Claire, I learned how to decipher the meaning of each and every inflection of their speech, probably understanding them better than anyone else in my life or in theirs. I know that after sitting in rush-hour traffic, Cathy gets really quiet, only wanting to be left alone, but Claire is completely oblivious to this: “Will you drive me to Starbucks so I don’t have to look for parking?” I know that when they are starving, they pretend not to be: “I’m not hungry! Stop saying I’m hungry! Why do you think I’m hungry? You’re the one who’s hungry!” And I can always figure out when it’s time for Claire to start sobering up for the night: “If I’m drunk would I be able to do this—ouch! You just let me poke myself in the eye!”