Time Flies (33 page)

“Thanks,” I said. “I needed that right about now. And I bet you only started that rumor because you knew the fake tattoo you drew couldn’t even pass for a purple pumpkin. Your only hope was a serious bruise.”

“Hey, watch it. That’s my artistic self-esteem you’re shattering.”

“I just don’t want you to get all conceited.”

“Ha. Too late for that.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Why are we standing out here in the parking lot?”

“Oh, shit. Come on. I finally tracked down the music subcommittee and told them the eighties called and wants its bad music back. I think we might still have time to get one good song in.”

B.J. unlocked Mustang Sally and reached in for her iPod. I put my drink on the hood, opened the other door, and found my flip-flops.

“
What
do you think you’re doing?” B.J. said. “Oh, never mind. My feet are freakin’ killing me.”

After we’d both taken off our strappy sandals as fast as we could
and slid into our flip-flops, B.J. locked up again and took a quick sip of my drink. “Wow, I haven’t had Sex on the Beach in forever. So get this, Derrick Donohue has a new wife who looks about twelve and has breast implants. So much for eating his heart out.”

I looked up at the stars sparkling over the water and wiggled my toes in the cool night air. “Finn Miller didn’t even wait for me.” I took a slug of my Long Slow Comfortable Screw Up Against the Wall. “Bummer.”

“Okay, here’s my plan,” B.J. said as we headed for the front door of the Marine Center. “I think we should go get the rest of the Tab and set up a little stand to catch people on their way out. We’ll say it’s vintage Tab and charge twenty bucks a pop for it. Your money issues will be over in no time.”

“Let’s not and say we did,” I said.

“Aww, I totally forgot about that expression.”

“Maybe we should rent out cots and sleeping bags instead. I’m worried about some of these people driving home. Actually most of them. They definitely shouldn’t be on the road, that’s for sure.”

“Don’t worry, we have a designated driver subcommittee. They’ve been going around collecting car keys. Mostly everyone is staying at the same hotel anyway, so they’ll just herd them over there like cattle. And five years from now their hangovers will be a distant memory and they can do it all over again.”

“Wow, even though this night still sucks, I have to say, that reunion committee of yours is amazingly thorough.”

“The thing about committees is that you can’t live without them, but they’re so anal you can’t stand being around them. Never again, Thelma, never again. And if I forget, don’t forget to remind me in five years, okay?”

A really bad and extremely loud version of the Macarena greeted us at the door.

B.J. shook her head. “Oh, no, it’s come to this. We’d better get my iPod in there fast. This simply cannot be the last song of the night.”

My breath caught. In front of the fireplace, three members of the boxer shorts brigade were doing the Macarena with the box spring ladies balanced on top of their heads. It was like a clash of cultures—boxer shorts below, hoop skirts and parasols above. Too late, I wanted to cover the eyes of my beautiful box spring ladies so their sensibilities wouldn’t be offended.

“And we thought someone we graduated with might have money
and
class,” B.J. said. “Apparently it was too much to expect.”

I put up my hand like a crossing guard. “Stop,” I yelled. “Right this minute.”

The boxer shorts brigade kept dancing.

I turned to B.J. “Hurry. Stop the music. You know drunks can never resist the Macarena.”

I tried to assess the damage. So far all three ladies looked okay, at least physically. Not for the first time I was glad I worked in metal and not glass.

My hand was still out in front of me. “Stop,” I said again in my best mom-voice.

They kept dancing.

“Freeze,” I yelled.

They all froze. The three guys in their boxer shorts wobbled a bit. They looked like midlife Weebles, those egg-shaped toys from our childhood.
Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down
popped into my head randomly.

Their audience froze, too, and I noticed the classmate wearing her underwear now had a man’s T-shirt over it. Her blue and white streamers had come untied and stuck to her legs like strands of seaweed. When she froze she held one leg out to the side with her toe pointed.

She put her hand up. “Mother, may I—”

“No, you may not,” I said.

CHAPTER 36

When we got back inside the reunion after locking the box spring ladies safely in Mustang Sally’s backseat, Marvin Gaye was crooning a low and sexy “Let’s Get It On.”

“My work here is done,” B.J. said. She took a moment to close her eyes and sway to the music.

The lights came on and everybody started groaning and covering their faces. Several committee members began walking around the room with trays of hot coffee. Another circulated a towering plate of what looked like Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies, and still another a big heaping tray of brownies. “Let’s just hope somebody had the good sense to add aspirin and flaxseed to those brownies,” B.J. said. “Hey, look. Do you see Jan and her mother-in-law over there in the corner?”

I followed her gaze to a group of classmates sitting at a big
round table playing Monopoly. Jan’s mother-in-law threw the dice and everybody cheered. We waved and Jan waved back.

When we reached the bar, my purse was open and Kurt was talking on my cell phone.

I blinked my eyes and squinted to be sure it was mine. My first thought was that it might be Trevor or Troy, and maybe I should be glad one of them was talking to his father. But my second thought was that Kurt wouldn’t have known that until he reached into my purse and looked at my phone.

“How dare you,” I said.

Perhaps a little too loudly. It might have been my imagination, but it felt like the whole room stopped talking and turned to us, like that old
When E. F. Hutton talks, people listen!
commercial. The refreshments subcommittee member carrying the Famous Amos cookies stopped in her tracks next to us. The people on the bar stools on either side of Kurt turned around and reached for a cookie as if they were grabbing a handful of popcorn to go with their movie.

Kurt held up one finger, telling me to wait a minute. I could tell by the red, white, and blue of his patriotic eyes that a double scotch had been consumed since B.J. and I had left him in charge of our purses.

“Nah, really,” he said. “Hang on, she’s back now. What? Sorry I’m talking so loud—Mel and I are at our high school reunion and, well, things are a little bit wild around here. And cell service near the beach, what can I say, it sucks big-time. Didja know we were high school sweethearts, Mel and me?”

Even in his inebriated state, Kurt must have seen my jaw drop. “Well, briefly,” he added. “Long story short—”

I lunged for my phone.

Kurt twisted his bar stool away. “—but at least I smartened up in college. You know how it goes, young and foolish and all that razzmatazz. What did you say your name was again, pal?”

I lunged for my phone again.

Kurt twisted his bar stool the other way. “Hey, wait just a minute, hon. I’m talking to my pal Tom Brady here. What? Sorry, Brody. Tim Brody.”

“Give me that phone right this instant,” I yelled with every bit of rage that had accumulated over the long tenure of our marriage. I grabbed Kurt by the shirt I’d bought him last summer and turned him around to face me.

Kurt looked at me with boozy shock, as if I’d just morphed into someone else right before his blurry eyes.

I managed to get one hand around my phone. Then I pulled as hard as I could.

Kurt let go at the same time.

I slid backward across the wood floor, practically moonwalking for the first time in my life. Somebody screamed.

Somebody else must have put out his hands to stop me. When I felt large palms connect with my healing tattoo, I screamed.

“Oww,” I yelled. “Oww, oww, oww.”

“Melanieeee,” Kitty Kahlúa Breath yelled. “Are you all riiiiight?”

Finn Miller appeared out of nowhere and put his hands on my shoulders.

“Ouch,” I said again. It takes a fresh tattoo to find out the world is full of shoulder-touchers.

“I’ll. Kill. Him,” my former math crush said. He turned and swaggered in Kurt’s direction like a gunslinger in an old Western.

Kurt tilted his head as Finn approached. “Hey, buddy. How’s it goin’? History class, right? Junior year? Third period? Or was it four—”

Finn grabbed two handfuls of Kurt’s shirt. “Don’t you evah,” he said, “touch my Melanie again.”

Kurt slid off the bar stool and managed to plant both feet on the floor. He pushed Finn’s hands away. The two of them wobbled a bit, then came back to center.

“Don’t you evah,” Kurt said, “call her your Melanie again.”

B.J. sidled up to me. “So, is this the most fun you’ve had in decades or what?”

I ignored her and put my phone to my ear. “Hello,” I said. “This is Melanie.”

“Listen,” Ted Brody said. “I don’t know what’s going on between you and your husband, but I completely misunderstood the situation.”

Finn swung at Kurt, a big right hook that went wide.

The drunken crowd let out a cheer.

“There is no situation,” I yelled.

“I just had a minute to breathe before we closed up for the night . . .”

Kurt swung at Finn. Finn stepped back and Kurt’s fist sailed right past him.

The crowd roared.

“Cheater,” Kurt said. “Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater.”

“Look who’s talking, you cheese weasel,” Finn said. He closed
one eye and tried to line up his next punch. “Cheater, cheater, wife beater.”

Ted Brody was still talking in my ear. “. . . high school reunions can be. So I just thought I’d leave you a message to call me if you felt like it. But again, clearly I mis . . .”

Kurt decided not to wait his turn. He pulled his fist back, too.

My former current crush and my almost former husband let their punches go at once.

Their fists cruised past each other but their arms somehow managed to link at the elbows. Finn’s must have had more heft behind it, because they circled around in his direction.

“Hi-ho, the derrrrryyyy-oooohhhh,” Kitty Kahlúa Breath sang.

Jan’s mother-in-law stood up at her table and raised her cane. “Who’s thieving bastard children are you?” she yelled.

Kurt and Finn were laughing now, do-si-do-ing in one direction and then the other, an aging flashback to our square dance unit in senior gym class.

Now that my sons no longer seemed to be in danger of becoming fatherless, I turned away to find a quieter place to talk.

“Let me explain,” I said as I took a step toward the door.

But Ted Brody was gone.

Somebody I didn’t remember pointed at me and whispered something to her friend.

“Take a picture, it lasts longer,” B.J. yelled.

“Ooh, I almost forgot about Facebook,” somebody else said. Cell phone cameras began to flash at an alarming rate.

B.J. grabbed my arm and pulled. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Once the lights come on it never gets any prettier.”

“Don’t forget you’re on the cleanup subcommittee, Barb,”
ALICE ADAMS WARRICK!
said as we passed her.

“Clean this,” B.J. said.

“Giving her the finger when you said that was completely unnecessary,” I said as we pushed the double doors open. “A simple wave would have been sufficient.”

The first heartbreaking strains of “Nights in White Satin” followed us out of the building.

CHAPTER 37