With a Little Luck: A Novel (24 page)

“Then why don’t we put a photo collage of your regretfully unnoticed lingerie up on our website? Then everyone can see it.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I don’t think so. And, hey, wonder of wonders, it’s time for a commercial break. Stay tuned, folks. We’ll be right back.” My phone rings.
Mom. Great
. I have to take this one. I can practically see the disappointment on the caller ID.

I pick up the phone and walk out of the sound booth, glancing once back at Ryan to give him a dirty look. I’ve barely flipped the thing open before Mom starts.

“You’re not exactly setting a good example here,” she says. “You’re kind of a role model now, Berry.”

“Well, Mom,” I say, “that may be. But good example versus bad example really depends on the role you want to play.”

You don’t know humiliation until your minor on-air tiff with your boyfriend is reduced to a minute-and-forty-five-second MP3 that’s been shared, embedded, podcasted, and otherwise made viral by D-list gossip sites and is spreading around the Internet like wildfire. One minute you’re Ryan and Berry, co-hosts of
Morning Mayhem
, and the next you’re “the girl who leaves her underwear all over the apartment and her ‘sexpert’ boyfriend who thinks ‘foreplay’ is a rock group from the eighties.”

Mayhem indeed, especially when your sexpert hasn’t said more than six off-air words to you in three days.

My dad calls, which immediately snaps me out of my self-loathing,
at least for the moment, when I see his name on my caller ID.

“My friend just forwarded me something on the email,” he says. He calls it “the email,” which is cute and anachronistic and incorrect. My dad may have his issues—many and varied—but at least he’s too computer illiterate (and hopefully even if he wasn’t, he would still not be compelled) to look at Asian-teen porn. I think he’s going to tell me some stupid lawyer joke for a brief three seconds before he adds, “My little girl’s all grown up … and wearing lingerie, apparently.”

Never before now have I wished that I was on a bad cell that drops calls every three seconds until you’re so frustrated you figure you’ll just see that person within the next few months, anyway. But wish as I might that I could un-hear my father telling me that my underwear is a hot topic among his friends, this is what’s become my life.

“I will say, Ber, that whether this guy appreciates it or not—and if he doesn’t, good riddance to the louse—it’s always a nice gesture to wear something sexy.”

“Dad!” I shout. “I really don’t want to talk about this with you.”

“What, we’re not friends? I’m your pal, Berry. If you can’t talk about this stuff with me, then who can you talk about it with?”

“Wow, um, pretty much anyone else?” I reply. “This is not appropriate discussion for a father and a daughter.”

“Appropriate, shmappropriate” is his comeback. “Your mother used to wear very sexy nighties.”

“La, la, la,” I interject. “I can’t hear you, and when I stop talking, I want you to never say anything like that again and immediately change the subject or just hang up if you can’t manage, because this is unbearable. One, two, three, new subject—”

“Can I stay at your place for a few days?” he says suddenly, definitely changing the subject.

“What—um, yeah, of course, but what’s wrong with your place?”

“Nothing …” he says, much like a child who’s just been caught doing something wrong but lies when you ask what’s going on.

“Dad,” I say, “let’s be real here. You are welcome to stay with me, but what is it? Are you in trouble? Is someone after you?”

“Berry, come on. Do you think if I was in any kind of danger I would bring that danger straight to you?”

“No,” I say, feeling guilty for even suggesting it. “Then what is it?”

“Can’t a guy just want to spend time with his daughter?”

“Dad …”

“My electricity’s turned off.”

“Oh, Dad,” I say, and sigh. “Give me your account number, I’ll pay the bill.”

“It’s okay, honey. I got it. I just need a few days to get back on my feet.”

“Dad, you’re welcome to stay with me, but I want to get your electricity back on. I’m sure you have food in the fridge.…” Once I think about that, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t, but regardless, he needs to have electricity.

“I don’t feel right asking you to do that.”

“You’re not asking me. I’m offering. It’s fine. I have two jobs right now. Really, it’s no problem.”

“My big girl. My big grown-up famous girl. My grown-up girl who wears lingerie—”

“Dad!” I interrupt. “We covered that already. We’re not talking about that anymore, remember? Now, what’s your account number?”

“That’s ridiculous. No. I’m not—no.”

“Dad.”

“Now, Beryl, I won’t hear of it.” And the “Beryl,” seldom heard, indicates serious business. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Dad, this is much easier. Really. What’s the account number?”

And with barely a second’s delay, he’s spouting numbers at me. “Four eight seven, seven zero zero … Wait, there are three zeroes, and I don’t know if they need this hyphen.…”

The number secure, I throw in casually, “And how much are you owing?”

“Uh, let me … Hmm. I had it, maybe on this page here.” I hear shuffling. Too much shuffling. How many pages are in the average electric bill? “Okay, here it is. Five hundred eighty-nine sixty.”

I gulp as quietly as I can manage. Sure, I could freak out, gasp in horror, repeat the number. But Dad and I are well beyond those histrionics. You can humiliate someone only so many times before it loses its charm. And at the same time, I’m guessing that this isn’t exactly an ideal teaching moment. He’s too far gone to be starting with Shame 101. Meanwhile, my doorbell rings.

I let Natalie in, wave to show her I’m on the phone and will be with her in a second, and then walk back to my desk to finish taking down my dad’s information. Nat drops her bag on the floor and starts an über-competitive game of tug-of-war with Moose and his sock monkey. In case they don’t turn his electricity on immediately, I tell Dad where he can find my spare key, but he assures me that Southern California Edison has an excellent response time. I hang up and file the conversation in my mental hard drive alongside the dozens—maybe hundreds—of others I wish I could drag into the little trash can.

“Would you like to permanently delete these umpty-million conversations?” Click “yes.” And you’re left with a pleasant emptiness—and no knowledge that you’d ever had a dad this helpless.

I turn to Nat, who has an understanding look on her face and has mercifully brought coffee.

“Dude,” she says, “I know you must be freaking right now, but it’s really not a huge deal.”

“For me it kind of is,” I say.

“I hear you,” she says. “I do … but this, too, shall pass.”

She hands me a coffee.

“Ryan asked me to have dinner with him tonight,” I tell her.

“And that’s different from … any other night how?”

“His asking felt weighty. Like maybe we’re breaking up or something.”

“No.” Natalie waves my idea away like I just blew cigarette smoke in her face. “No way. He’s nuts about you.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “He
is
Guy Number Three. Maybe this is all signs of worse to come. Maybe I should just trust my instincts.”

“Those aren’t instincts. Instincts are when a guy you’re seeing fast-whispers ‘I gotta go’ into the phone every time you walk up to him and slams his phone shut, and you think,
Abort mission
. That’s instincts working for you. What you have is buggy-eyed crazies.”

“Nat, I love you, but you can’t call me crazy.”

“I didn’t. I called the rejection of this man crazy. You don’t want to break up with him,” she says. “Preemptively or not.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know you.”

“We still haven’t said I love you,” I say, as if that means by extension that I don’t love him.

She gives me a knowing look.

“Where are you guys going?” she asks.

“Loteria.”

“I love Loteria!” she screeches. “Farmers Market?”

“Yes,” I say. Loteria is technically not a restaurant but more of a
food stand in the middle of Farmers Market in West Hollywood. That said, it’s the best Mexican food I’ve had in L.A.

“Okay,” she says. “First of all, nobody breaks up with someone at Farmers Market. It’s just not done.”

“Oh, really? Says who?”

“Come on! It’s Farmers Market. Fresh food! Happiness!”

“Well, there’s always a first for everything.…”

“Let’s go, Ms. Half-Empty,” she says, and then, the consonance of it having struck her, she sings: “Half-empty dempty sat on a wall; half-empty dempty anticipated a great fall; all the good girlfriends and all the good men couldn’t convince half-empty to quit making herself miserable all the time.”

“Catchy,” I deadpan. “Where are we going?”

“Farmers Market,” she says. “I need broccolini for service, and you need to get out of your head. It’s perfect. You’ll be there early and prepare yourself for impending doom … or tasty enchiladas. Or both.”

“Fine,” I say as I grab my bag, checking for my chewy Rolaids. You never can be too careful in the Book of Berry.

Natalie and I pretend that my relationship is not about to potentially end as we fondle fruits and vegetables. After a good amount of time discussing pineapple, when it’s ripe, how you know it’s ripe, and who the person was who did the extensive research to decide that pineapple supposedly makes semen taste better (this is a widely circulated and, at least in my own experience, totally untested rumor), we say our goodbyes. I’m left alone at the fountain in the middle of The Grove, still unfortunately contemplating the pineapple/semen thing, so I head into the Barnes & Noble to see what’s on the “new” tables.

Turns out an awful lot is new, as always seems to be the case, so I’m quickly consumed, reading back-cover synopses, flopping open thick biographies I know I’ll never finish.

I’ve just turned the first page of Cheever when I feel a pair of eyes burning into the side of my face, and I look up to catch a guy with about a three-day beard staring at me. This alone isn’t remarkable; believe it or not, Berry gets her share of the lookie-loos. It’s probably the combo studious co-ed/closet party girl thing I’ve got going on to this day. Wife-beater under a ratty Lakers T-shirt, designer jeans with carefully spaced rips on the thighs, low-slung woven Bottega purse with beater Adidas that are nonetheless clean. Not exactly Versace material, but a definite look. What’s remarkable is that he doesn’t pretend he wasn’t staring and quickly redirect his glance. Instead, he casually but persistently makes his way to the pile directly across from me.

He smiles. I smile back and focus my attention on the table.

“Wanna hear a poem?” he says, so I have to look back up at him. Oh, boy. He’s wearing sunglasses inside. The first sign of trouble. Guys, unless you’re Stevie Wonder or the Terminator, sunglasses inside are never appropriate. And what’s this about a poem? What do you say to that? Say no and you’re rude. Say yes and you’re opening the floodgates to God knows what. Some poems are pages and pages long. But he can’t have pages and pages memorized. Or can he?
Beowulf is
a poem, for God’s sake. What if he reads me
Beowulf?
That’ll take all day. I’ll never get to my breakup dinner—
oh, God, I just mentally called it a breakup dinner
—in time. Maybe it’s just a haiku.

“Uh … sure.”

“Looking back, life was pretty worth my while,” he starts. “But in the end, turned out death was more my style.”

He stops there.

“Is … that it?” I ask.

“That’s it,” he says.

“I … like it,” I say, now confused and uncomfortable.

“It’s a suicide note,” he says.

Now I’m even more confused and uncomfortable.

“Uh …” I stammer.
What do I do now? Call a suicide hotline? Guide him to the self-help section? Run?

“You like it?” he says. “You said you did, but do you really?”

“I really like it,” I say. “It’s just a poem, though, right? Not like a real suicide note?” And if not, is anyone else the recipient of this note? Or just lucky me?

“Just a poem,” he says. “For now.”

“Okay,” I say, with an awkward smile. “Well, it’s very interesting. Thank you for sharing it with me.” I look down at my watch and see that I’m supposed to be about three hundred yards away with Ryan. Thankfully. “Well, I gotta run.”

“That’s cool,” he says. “Nice chatting.”

On that note, I exit and head back to Farmers Market to meet Ryan. Every step I take I think about Suicide Note Guy and wonder if that was some kind of omen. A precursor to the death of my relationship. I did tell Nat that maybe I should end things. Was that little encounter a sign that I should commit Relationship Suicide? In the end, death was more his style. I’m confused and upset, and now a laughingstock, so maybe it’s not the worst idea to quit while I’m ahead … if this can even be classified as ahead.