Time Flies (28 page)

It took me a minute to realize that B.J. was standing behind me.

I turned around. “Did you find a good place for them?”

She gave me a funny look. “Who?”

“My box spring ladies. Tell me you didn’t just put them down anywhere.”

“Of course I didn’t. I found this big niche next to the fireplace. There was all this marine stuff in it so I just stuck that in the kitchen. Anyway, your box spring ladies will be the stars of the reunion.”

“Are you okay?” I asked. “You don’t look right.”

B.J. slid her sunglasses down from the top of her head and over her eyes. “Of course I am. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

CHAPTER 29

We were taking a quick walk on the beach before we started getting ready for the reunion.

“Even without that high school reunion diet, we’ll look ten years younger than the rest of those tramps in our class,” B.J. said. “It’s all about the endorphins, Thelma.”

I decided there wasn’t really a point in mentioning that we possibly should have started walking before today. I just kept swinging my arms and tried to keep up with her. We navigated our way around a couple coming in our direction, and then dodged a gang of preschoolers and their sand-castles-in-progress.

“This is ridiculous,” B.J. said. “They have bike lanes on the streets—why can’t they have right-of-way lanes on the beach?”

“Wouldn’t the tide just wash them away?” I asked.

B.J. hurdled over a small cooler. “So what. The first person who walks the next day just draws the lines back in the sand again.”

After we finished walking, we stretched and bought french fries. We took turns reaching into the take-out bag as we strolled our way back to the hotel.

“Wouldn’t it be amazing,” B.J. said, “if we could walk and eat fries together every day for the rest of our lives?”

Half an hour or so later we were both freshly showered and sitting out on the balcony of our hotel room in matching white terry-cloth bathrobes.

I slid my white plastic chair back as far as it would go so I could put my bare feet up on the black wrought-iron balcony railing. B.J. did the same thing.

“Well,” I said. “I think the robes almost make up for the size of the balcony.”

“No way. It’s not like they let you keep them.” B.J. blew out a puff of air. “Do you believe they told me this room had an ocean view?”

I leaned way over to the left. “It sort of does, if you look between those two buildings. And at least you can smell the salt air.”

“What I smell is mildew. And that water pressure is ridiculous—I probably still have soap in my ears.”

“What? I can’t hear you. I have soap in my ears.”

“Funny.” B.J. uncrossed her ankles and crossed them again so that the other foot was on top. “So funny I forgot to laugh.”

I recrossed my ankles, too. “At least we’ve got music. You have to admit that iPod dock on the bedside alarm was a nice touch.”

“I can’t even hear the music over the sound of these stupid seagulls.”

I swung my feet off the railing. “Fine, I’ll turn it up.”

“Grab that bottle of wine I bought while you’re in there, okay?”

I found the right button and cranked up the volume on the iPod dock as far as it would go without getting us arrested. Then I grabbed the wine and two plastic-wrapped cups from the bathroom.

Barry White serenaded me back out to the balcony with “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe.” I stopped for a moment and pretended I was dancing with Finn Miller.

I sighed. “Hey, Beej, you didn’t happen to bring a corkscrew, did you?”

A gull swooped low, maybe to see if we had any french fries left, and then glided away with a disappointed squawk. B.J. swung her feet off the railing. “Here, give it to me. I’ll open it with my teeth.”

I shrugged. “It’s your dental work.”

The bottle top made a little click-click-click sound as B.J. twisted it off.

“Classy,” I said. I held out the plastic cups.

B.J. poured. “They make good wines like this now.” She screwed the top back on and put the bottle down on the cement floor of the balcony.

She held up her cup. “To the three of us. You, me, and Barry White.”

I touched my cup to hers. “Good-bye Yellow Brick Road” came on and we sang along with Elton.

“It’s a great song,” I said. “I’m not sure I really understood what it meant back then.”

B.J. put her feet back up on the railing. “You mean that it’s about returning to who you really are?”

I put my feet up, too, and took a long sip of Chardonnay. It was dry and oaky and I didn’t miss the cork at all.

I sighed. “Yeah. I guess I keep expecting to feel that way about being back here, you know, like I’m home again.”

“And you don’t?”

“Maybe a little. But mostly it feels like I’m still missing it the way I always do, even though I’m actually here.”

B.J. pulled her lip gloss out of the pocket of her bathrobe. “I think I know what you mean. I feel like that sometimes, and I only live a couple of hours away. It’s not like I can’t drive here anytime I want to.”

I could feel my tattoo starting to ooze a little from the shower, so I adjusted my bathrobe to keep it from getting stuck to it. “Yeah, I think maybe it’s more about the fantasy of place than the actual place. And I think it’s also that the memory evokes another time, too, when everything seemed simpler.”

“Heavy.” B.J. leaned back in her white plastic chair. “Write that down so we can Tweet it to Elton. I think we might have another hit for him.”

We sipped our wine and watched two people kissing in a window across the courtyard from us.

“Get a room,” B.J. yelled.

“Ha,” I said. “I think they already did.”

The song changed and Bonnie Raitt broke into “Longing in Their Hearts.”

“Wow,” I said. I rolled back the sleeve of my bathrobe and looked at my forearm. “That just gave me goose bumps. Do you believe this song came on at this exact moment?”

“That’s our Bonnie,” B.J. said. “She’s been there. She gets it.”

B. J. ran into the hotel room to play it again. “I don’t know why they don’t just make all the electronics the same,” she said when she came out. “And could they possibly make those digital displays any smaller?”

I leaned back and closed my eyes. “It’s not that there aren’t newer songs that I like, but they just don’t get to me in such a punched-in-the-gut, visceral way as the old ones, you know?”

B.J. finished belting out the chorus before she answered. “Yeah, it’s like there’s still this sixteen-year-old girl trapped inside of me, and this is the music that lets her come out.”

I ran my finger around the lip of my plastic bathroom cup. “I know. It’s like is he ever going to look at me, and will he ask me to dance, and who will I become and how will I survive until I get there all rolled into one.”

“Sometimes I feel that longing-in-my-heart thing about my marriage,” B.J. said. “I mean, Tom and I love each other and he’s a perfectly good husband and everything.” She recrossed her ankles on the railing. “I know this, because as you might remember my first husband was a perfectly bad husband.”

“I remember.” I recrossed my ankles, too.

B.J. sighed. “But what I wouldn’t give to be back in that happy horseshit stage with someone, just one more time. You
know, before you start to aggravate each other every time you turn around. Which is when, eighteen months in—if you’re lucky?”

“I don’t remember,” I said. “I don’t remember dating. I don’t remember how you’re supposed to act. I don’t remember what you’re supposed to say.”

“Anyway, there’s a part of me that’s a little bit jealous that you have all that ahead of you. Not Marion-jealous, but more like I wish I could take a sabbatical from my marriage—just a month or two. So we could double-date.”

“I don’t think I remember who I am,” I said.

B.J. shook her head. “Are you even listening to me?”

Then she let out a scream, long and loud.

“Can you believe that seagull shit all over me?” B.J. said. “Is it
shit
or
shat
?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “It might even be
shitted
.”

“No way.” B.J. dropped her head forward and dabbed her hair with a towel. “I didn’t need Honors English to tell you it’s not
shitted
. I just hope that wasn’t a bad omen for the reunion. Geez Louise, my hair is never going to survive this second washing.”

“Your hair will be fine,” I said. I held up my Skin Skribe permanent sterile marker. “Come on, you’ll feel much better once I get your fake tattoo drawn on.”

“Purple?” B.J. said. “I think that might be a little bit much with my turquoise blouse. I don’t want to look gaudy.”

I uncapped the marker. “I don’t think we have a choice. Unless you want me to use lipstick.”

“Nah, that’ll never hold up. I can’t even keep it on my lips for more than five minutes. Okay, fine, purple broken heart it is.”

She dropped her bathrobe down over one shoulder. I took a deep breath and tried to get into the zone. I knew the trick was not to try to be too perfect, but to loosen up and remember that whatever you started with could be tweaked until you got it just the way you wanted it.

“Whoa,” B.J. said when she saw it in the bathroom mirror. “I think that might be even better than Ariel’s heart.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Maybe if the box spring ladies don’t sell, I could look into becoming a faux tattoo artist on the side.”

“And it doesn’t even look like a fake tattoo. I have to tell you, we could have saved ourselves a lot of aggravation if we’d just gone Sharpie shopping.”

I handed B.J. the marker. “Come on, we should probably pick up the pace. I’d like to get to the reunion as early as possible.”

I dropped my robe down over my shoulder.

“I’m not sure I can do this,” B.J. said. “Especially on half a glass of wine. Maybe we should go get some more french fries first.”

“Of course you can. Just stay relaxed and copy this.” I held up the heart I’d drawn for practice on the back of a receipt. “You can always adjust it afterward if you need to.”

“Gotcha. Okay, here goes nothing.”

“Ouch,” I said. “Not so hard. It’s supposed to be a tattoo, not a piercing.”

“Don’t,” B.J. said.

“What?” I said. “I didn’t say nee—”

“Watch it. Come on, I’m trying to focus here.”

I felt the pressure of the marker on the back of my shoulder. Then I didn’t. Then I did. Then I didn’t. It might have been my imagination, but it sure felt like my fake tattoo was taking a lot longer than B.J.’s had.

“Okey-dokey,” B.J. said. “I think it’s done now.”

I twisted around to look over my shoulder at the mirror.

I gasped. “Ohmigod, I can’t believe you did that to me. It looks like a purple pumpkin.”

“It most certainly does
not
look like a purple pumpkin,” B.J. said. “It’s just a slightly different style of heart from the ones you and Ariel made. I would think you, of all people, would want to encourage my freedom to express myself artistically.”

“I’m all about your artistic freedom. Just not on the back of my shoulder.”

“That’s an awfully narrow way of looking at things, Romy.”

My phone rang. I ignored it. “Oh, please. You totally screwed up my fake tattoo and you know it. You’re going to sashay into the reunion with a sexy broken heart. I’m the one who has to walk in there wearing a purple pumpkin.”