Milkrun (6 page)

“Afternoon,” she says. She is using some sort of contraption to scrub the tiles. “Late night?”

“Yeah. Very fun.”

“Good. I'm almost done. You can borrow my supplies if you want to clean your bathroom.”

I'm not sure, but I think that's a hint. Oh, well, I have nothing else to do today, anyway. And my bathroom is pretty gross. The last time I cleaned it was…let me think. Have I ever cleaned it? “Thanks. I'll do it right after breakfast. I mean lunch.”

I make myself a sandwich. A pretty lame sandwich because now that I have no turkey left, all I have left is lettuce. Okay, I'll clean the bathroom right after lunch and an hour of TV.

What's on? Click, click. A
Cheers
rerun! That Diane. So literary. I always kind of hoped she and Frasier would stay together. Lilith/Helen didn't deserve him. As soon as I got to Boston, my first excursion was to the Cheers bar. Quite disappointing. No one screamed “Jack!” when I walked in. Okay. Three o'clock. Time to clean. But
Blind Date
is on. I love that show. Maybe I'll just watch until the first commercial…

It's five o'clock and I haven't moved. My butt feels asleep. I really should get up. Sam left all the cleaning supplies on my bathroom floor.

Why hasn't he called yet?

Six-thirty. I'm hungry. Macaroni and cheese? I have no milk left. I hate when it's too margariney. I order a pizza. Extra pepperoni. What am I going to do tonight? Natalie mentioned The G-Spot. I should call her. At the next commercial.

Seven-fifteen. I'm still hungry. Where's my pizza? What happened to thirty minutes, fast and free? I dial Natalie's number.

“Hi, Jack,” she answers.

“What's up?”

“Not much. I'm just getting dressed.”

“Where are you going?”

“For dinner. With E-reek.”

“Who's Eric?”

“E-reek. The guy I was talking to last night.”

Wait a second. A guy she met yesterday has already called? “The guy in the Armani?”

“That's him. He called this morning. I think he might be royalty, but I'm not sure.”

I ignore her latter comment and focus on the more surprising element of her declaration. “He called this morning?”

“Yup.”

This morning? “And he asked you out and you said yes? For tonight?”

“Yeah. Should I have said no? He actually asked me last night, and I said we'll see, but he called me at eleven to confirm, so I said, Why not?”

Why not? What am I supposed to do tonight? “Didn't we have plans?”

“Oh…did we? I didn't think you'd care.”

“Well, I do.” Knowing quite well that if the situation were reversed, I'd do the same. Fashion Magazine Fun Fact # 1: let no man come between two best friends. And let no man come between two mediocre friends unless he's really hot. I mean, let's face it; why else would you go to a bar with a mediocre girlfriend on a Saturday night in the first place? To discuss politics? So, when a guy like my Jonathan calls, you expect your friend to be understanding, even if you don't like it when she does it to you. Not that someone as cool as my Jonathan Gradinger would call so soon.

“You don't want me to cancel, do you?”

Yes, I do. “No, go. Have fun.”

“You can still go to The G-Spot.”

Who goes to The G-Spot alone? I'd have to wait in line for three hours by myself. And then I'd have to talk to myself at the bar. “No. It's okay. I'm tired, anyway.” Someone knocks on my door. “The pizza's here. Gotta go.”

“Swear you're not mad?”

I'm mad. “I'm not mad.”

“Good. Love ya, hon! Have fun!”

I was only going to eat half the pizza and save the rest for Monday's lunch, but now that I don't have to wear anything tight tonight, I'm going to eat the whole thing and stuff myself with misery. I hate my life. I'm spending an entire Saturday in front of the TV. Jeremy doesn't love me. Jonathan Gradinger doesn't want me. Natalie's guy called the next day.

Sam walks into the living room. If she asks me if I've cleaned the bathroom yet, I'm going to take the pizza and rub it all over her toilet.

“What's up?” she says.

“Nothing.”

“What are you doing tonight?”

“Nothing.”

“Wanna come see the new James Bond movie with us tonight?”

“No.” Actually, I do want to go see the new James Bond movie with them tonight. “Well, maybe.”

“Come on! Why not? You haven't moved in six hours.”

“Since when is a movie aerobic? Are we going to be fighting crime along with Jimmie?”

“At least you'll have to get off the couch to walk to the car.”

This is true. Although at this particular moment it seems like more work than it's worth. “Okay, I'll come.”

Standing in the shower, I try to ignore the greenish-brown circles of dirt that sporadically appear on my tub. Tomorrow I'm
definitely
cleaning.

Marc pulls up at a quarter to nine. He rolls down the window of his brand-new two-door Civic, and Sam plants a kiss on his lips. If they're going to be smooching all night, I'm sitting by myself.

I maneuver my way into the backseat, through the seat belt that is doubling as a limbo stick, recalling an earlier conversation overheard through paper-thin walls. “We weren't arguing—we were discussing,” Sam told me later.

Sam: “Two-doors? We're not sixteen.”

Marc: “A four-door? What am I, thirty-five?”

This went on all night—two doors or four, four doors or two—the same old thing over and over, keeping me awake (I was forced to sit in a rigid position, with my ear cupped to the wall) until I went to my desk to write Honda a letter begging the company to please produce a three-door vehicle so that Sam and Marc would just shut up already.

I step on a crumpled old burger bag on the floor of the backseat. It smells like rotten vegetables. Sam lets him get away with that?

“We should take your car for a wash,” Sam says, sniffing. She picks up an old Big Mac carton with her thumb and index finger as if she's holding a soiled diaper, and folds it into a compact rectangle.

“Yes, Mom,” Marc says, and turns on the radio. There's only so much nagging even he can take, I suppose. I wonder if he's ever tempted to smear stale McDonald's fry grease on her toilet seat?

“Don't be rude,” she says.

I'm feeling a bit like their kid in the backseat. “Are we there yet?” I ask.

“Soon,” he says.

We pull into the twenty-four-theater multiplex parking lot, which is already crammed with at least a thousand cars. Apparently, we're not the only ones with a let's-go-to-the-movies-and-see-the-stars idea. Don't any of these people have a real life? We pull into a tight spot at the back of the lot.

“Couldn't you have let us off in front?” Sam asks.

“Sorry,” Marc says. “I forgot.”

A front drop-off would have been nice. Some sort of trolley would have been even nicer. Couldn't you have built us a trolley, Marc?

Not a bad business proposal, actually. A trolley that runs up and down the parking lot, picking up and dropping off passengers like at Disney World. But people would constantly want to get on and off, the train would have to stop every few seconds, and it would take longer to get a lift back to the car than to actually walk.

“Hurry up, girls, we're already late,” Marc tells us. Tells me actually, because I'm the one slowing us down. I'm a slow walker. Is it my fault that short people have short legs?

If he had dropped us off at the front door, like a gentleman, we'd have tickets by now.

The multicomplex looms in the distance like Cinderella's castle. Three-D cartoon animals impressively swirl over the entranceway. The theme-park adventure continues with giant bats, which would have terrified a younger, less mature version of me, that hang threateningly from the ceiling. We buy tickets and then join the popcorn line. Sam and Marc buy jujubes and two Diet Cokes. Puh-lease! Not buying popcorn at the theater is like going to a baseball game and not buying a hot dog. Why else do you go to a baseball game?

“We'll get seats,” Sam says, and they disappear hand in hand.

“One small popcorn with extra butter and a small Orange Crush, please,” I tell the eyebrow-pierced teenager with bleached-blond hair.

“Would you like to upgrade to a large, ma'am? Then you get free refills.”

Ma'am? Ma'am?? “No, thanks.” The smalls are already giant size.

“It's only an extra thirty-five cents,” the pierced kid says.

“Well…okay.” For an extra thirty-five cents, why not?

“Would you like to upgrade your popcorn to a large, ma'am? It's only an extra sixty-five cents.”

“No, thanks.”

“You get free refills, ma'am.”

I'm not sure when exactly I'm going to refill, considering that the movie is starting in about thirty seconds. But free is free. I can do the refill right after the movie. I can bring a snack to work.

The pierced kid hands me two huge cartons, a drink about the size of a two-gallon container of orange juice, and a popcorn the size of a water cooler.

Oooh! Sour berries! I love sour berries! “Can I have those, too?”

“Here you go, ma'am. That will be $15.50.” Fifteen-fifty? Why is my snack twice the price of the movie?

Uh-oh. I have to pee. Maybe if I go now, I won't have to go in the middle of the movie. One can always hope. Only now I feel kind of like a kid in a snowsuit. How can I carry the tub of popcorn, a pack of sour berries, a gallon of soda, and a separate straw into the cubicle without spilling everywhere?

The first life-lesson Jeremy taught me was that I should never put my straw in my drink at a movie theater until after I sit down, in case of leakage. Seems like a simple enough strategy, except you'd be amazed at how many times I'd left the theater with orange stains on my jeans before I started dating him.

The last life-lesson I learned from him was to never date a backstabbing selfish bastard.

I can hold it in.

The theater is dark, and the please-turn-off-your-cell-phone-because-it'll-really-piss-everyone-off-if-it-rings announcement flashes across the screen.

How the hell am I going to find them in here?

I walk down the aisle and peer. I feel like I'm looking for Waldo.

No.

No.

No.

I arrive at the screen amid a chorus of “Hey, sit down!” and “Get out of the way!” and “What's the matter with you?” God forbid they should miss the ads. So where are Sam and Marc? They're probably sitting in the back. I must have passed them.

They're not in the back. I turn around again, and make my way back toward the screen.

Sam waves from the front row. “Sorry, I forgot my glasses,” she whispers. “Hope you don't mind.”

I wonder if it's rude to sit by myself, in the middle of the theater like a normal person. What if a potential date is in the theater and sees me sitting by myself and concludes that I'm a complete misanthrope who has to go to the movies alone on a Saturday night to try to pick up men, or maybe not even to pick up men but just to get out of a cat-infested apartment for a few measly hours? What then?

I sit down next to her in the front row. I tilt my head eighty degrees and try to get comfortable.

This isn't going to work.

“I'm going to find a seat in the middle,” I whisper to Sam. I'm a big girl. I can sit at a movie by myself. I scout for an empty seat. I spot one next to a blond girl about ten rows back and push my way through.

“Hey, sit down!”

“Get out of the way!”

“What's the matter with you?”

I slide into a seat, trying to make room for my industrialsize purchases.

Jeremy and I always sat on the aisle. Correction: Jeremy always sat on the aisle. He liked the leg room. Of course he never asked if
I
wanted to sit in the aisle seat.
I
always sat near the weirdo who left his arm on the seat rest.
I
was always the one who had to feel the weirdo's arm hair brush against my skin. Let me ask you this: if there's only one armrest between the two of you, why does the other person always assume it's his right to take it?

Oh, well. At least the girl next to me is giving me a lot of space. She's snuggling with her date. I can't see his face, but she's all blond and shiny and I'm really trying not to hate her.

I have to pee. I really should have gone before the movie started.

Wow. Pierce Brosnan is really hot. Natalie says he's too pretty, too good-looking. What does this mean exactly, too good-looking? She says she could never go out with a guy prettier than she is. She says she hates going to a restaurant and everyone looks at the guy instead of her. Such problems I should have.