How to Meet Cute Boys (29 page)

Finlay stood up in frustration and then, not sure what to do next, crossed his living room to get his Nicorette. “You know,”
he said, struggling with the packet, “last night this didn’t seem to be a problem.”

“No, I know. That was nice.”

“Nice?”
Finlay put a piece in his mouth, started chewing frantically.

“No, I mean nice as in
nice,
not nice as in, shit,” I said. “The genuine nice.”

“Be-e-en,”
he said.

“What?”

He did it again,
“Be-e-en.”
It was a cross between a noisome whine and a cajoling niggle, three syllables long, and delivered in a sotto moan.

“What?”

“Don’t be like this.” He sat back down on the couch, and put his head on my shoulder like a puppy dog.

“Like what? I’m fine.”

His chin was digging into my neck. I tried to shift my shoulders into a more comfortable position.

“
Be-e-en
. Come on, now, talk to me.” He took my hand.

“About what?” I took it away to scratch my ear.

“Whatever’s on your mind. I’d like us to be friends. More than friends, but friends first and foremost.”

“There’s nothing on my mind.” I tried to shift my weight so I could look at him (or, maybe, so he would stop
touching
me) and I decided I hated his couch. It was enormous and I felt like I was being eaten alive by cushions.

“Just tell me what I’ve done wrong.”

“Finlay, you haven’t done anything wrong.” I got up and switched to an armchair. It was overstuffed, too, and my ass sank
to the floor while my knees rose to my chest.

“Tell me what’s bothering you.”

I got up again and tried another chair. Nope, puffy as can be. Your grandmother’s kind of chair. Reminded me of the crap Jack
was always buying—he’d sit in them and say,
Now this is more like it!
I got up and made for the ottoman.

“Ben!”
Finlay yelled.

“WHAT?”
I jumped. “Jesus Christ, you just scared the shit out of me.”

“Stop bouncing around like the three bloody bears and talk to me.”

“About what?”

“Ben,”
he said. “
Be-e-en. Be-e-e-e-en
. Come over here and give me a kiss.”

Finlay was looking up at me expectantly, waiting for his kiss. I didn’t see an alternative—I didn’t want to start fighting
with him already. And just yesterday, everything had seemed so promising. I didn’t want to lose that feeling. So I crossed
the room and gave him a kiss.

“Another,” he said.

I gave him another.

“One more …”

Suddenly—scaring myself, Finlay, and probably half the neighborhood—I opened my mouth and I
screamed
.

I left in a hurry—didn’t even bother to put my bra back on, just left it dangling. I’m sure my hasty departure offended Finlay,
but when I walked through my front door all I felt was relief.

My heart leapt when I heard I had three messages. It was irrational, but I couldn’t help thinking,
Maybe
…

First was Ashton. “Yo Ben, where you at? Listen, I know I’ve been kind of an asshole, made you miss that Christmas party,
then I went out of town. But things should settle down soon, and I have news. I’ll call you.”

Second message.

“Hi, it’s Audrey.”

Oh.

“I’ve been thinking …”

Good for you.

“That what you need …”

Is a lobotomy and an engagement ring from De Beers.

“Is a sister weekend!”

Come again?

“Jamie has to go to L.A. for business so I’m driving down with him on Saturday, and you and I are going to hang out
all day Saturday
and
all day Sunday
and just do ‘you’ stuff. No wedding planning, no bridal boutiques, no bridesmaids dresses, none of the endless stuff I have
to do before my big day. A sister weekend devoted to my favorite sister!”

Oh
fuck
.

And finally … Finlay. Naturally. “Well
that
’s never happened to me before,” he said in a tone of mock offense. “Don’t worry about it, gorgeous. Am I moving things too
fast? Okay, well, message received. We’ll take it nice and slow from here. Listen, I’m just calling to make sure you made
it home okay … Okay? Call me when you get in. I hope we’re still on for that couples dinner with Kiki and Curtis tomorrow
night. I’m quite excited! So call me. Doesn’t matter what time. Just call. Call me.”

The Mother phoned as I was drinking my first diet Coke of the day to remind me that since Aud was coming down—uninvited, might
I add—I should probably clean my apartment.

“Hey thanks,”
I said.
“Terrific.”

Depression and cleanliness don’t go together—my place looked like a refugee camp. So I spent my morning gathering up empty
diet Coke cans with cigarette butts stuffed inside, throwing away the pizza boxes, emptying ashtrays and wiping them out with
a T-shirt Max had given me that I’d mistakenly kept. I had to stuff several pounds’ worth of dirty clothes, including the
T-shirt, which I realized I couldn’t bear to part with, into the hamper. It was overflowing and the lid wouldn’t stay on,
but I cleverly stacked magazines on top and it held. I even had to crawl around on all fours collecting dust bunnies with
a paper towel because the vacuum cleaner was broken. I put a fresh roll of TP on top of the toilet and sprayed Lysol around.
Done.

In the afternoon Nina phoned to tell me her latest theory—that I was addicted to “phantom lovers.” I played Solitaire on my
computer while she talked, so I can’t say exactly what her hypothesis was, but it was something about how Max was a phantom
who was so absent in my life that I could create a compelling fantasy in the space where a real relationship would have been.
All of which was more satisfying for me than a real relationship, which I would most likely find intolerable. In other words,
it was actually all my fault. I figured it could be true, but the fact that Nina then confided that she’d started carrying
a trial-size bottle of Listerine in her backpack because she kept giving impromptu blow jobs to the assistant professor in
her Pavlovian Response class made it a little hard to swallow.

That night, when Finlay picked me up in his brand-new four-by-four gargantuan mobile, I’d already decided to make the most
of the evening and stop acting like such a freak. I was not going to obsess about Max anymore, and I was not going to push
away the first really nice guy I’d met in the last year. Finlay, thank God, didn’t mention what happened. He was too delighted
with his new car, and eager to regale me with statistics on how big the sunroof was, how much horsepower he had, and how many
pounds the SUV could pull if I were ever stuck on some snowy road and needed a tow. I pointed out that we don’t get snowstorms
in southern California, but Finlay just laughed and said that the ridiculous impracticality of the car was the whole point.
“If you’re going to go L.A.,” he said, “you should bloody well go L.A.” On the ride over, I felt like I was in a monster-truck
rally, as emceed by Prince Charles. Finlay kept crying out in joy: “Look at this thing! It’s a bloody
elephant!
It’s the bloody
Titanic!
It’s the largest car in Los Angeles!” He pronounced it
Los Anjelleeees
.

Kiki was already at the restaurant when we walked in. I saw her beaming approvingly from a spot by the bar, clearly excited
to see me on a date with such a suitable match. Curtis was holding her hand. Le Petit Bistro was living up to its name—it
was so crowded it took us a few tries just to make it over to them. Then Kiki, Curtis, Finlay, and I were led by a huffy hostess
to a teensy booth where we were overpowered by screaming Frenchmen one table over. They were eating steak au poivre. “I’m
getting that,” Kiki said, hooking her thumb in their direction. “Oooh, and French onion soup to start!”

Curtis smiled and said, “I keep telling her she’s too skinny.”

“How cute is that?” Kiki said, beaming and slathering some butter on a large piece of bread.

After we ordered, I watched Kiki direct her attention to everything Curtis said. He told a story about the last time he’d
been in Paris, something about calling a Frenchman a duck when he thought he was calling him a son of a bitch. (The punch
line: “So I screamed,
‘Canard!’
”) I laughed out of politeness, but Curtis’s wittiness sent Kiki right over the moon.

It was nice to see Finlay relax, though. He didn’t fidget, or get all buggy and start Be-e-en-ing me. He dished us all the
dirt on Carson Daly, and he was being attentive but not clingy. He got me a new fork when I dropped mine on the floor, and
cracked up when I dropped the second fork, too, and the French waiter looked at me like I’d just squirted lemon in his eye.
(When the waiter went to get me another, I yelled
“Canard!”
at him, and Finlay laughed so hard he had to spit his wine into his water glass.)

Midway through dinner Kiki and I excused ourselves to go to the bathroom so we could talk about the boys. On the way she whispered
in my ear, “You like Finlay, don’t you?”

I said, “I really want to.” And for a brief second I thought,
Maybe I do
.

But then,
“Ashton?”

Sitting, stage right, at an intimate table for two with another girl. “Heeyyyy, what are you two doin’ here?” He stood up
and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

“Oh,” Kiki turned around, saw Ashton, plus the date sitting at his table, and immediately took note—as I did—that she was
a walking Jane Austen novel with long curly blond hair, a classic jaw, and clear blue eyes. “Hello, there,” Kiki said. “You.”

I hadn’t found my larynx yet.

“This is Mina,” Ashton said. “Mina, this is Ben and Kiki.”

“Hi,” I said.

“Nice to meet you,” she said.

Awkward pause here.

“So. How do you guys know one another?” Mina said, looking around and blinking. “I’m always telling Ash I’d like to know his
friends better.”

“How do we know one another?” I said to Ashton.

“Just from around,” he said with a smile. “The scene, you know.”

“Right,” I said.
“ ‘The scene.’ ”

“Hey, maybe we should all go out one night,” Mina said. The girl was clueless.

“Wouldn’t that be
fun?
” said Kiki. “Ashton, you should really set that up. Come on, Ben, bathroom time.”

I excused myself.

When we got in the bathroom I locked the door, bent my head over the sink, and tried to focus. Kiki sat down on the toilet
and said, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, totally fine.” I started to make myself busy, touching up makeup that didn’t need touching up. “At least now we know
why he’s been dodging my calls.”

“He should have told you.”

“No, I was the one who broke it off. It’s fine. I mean, we always said it was a casual thing.”

“Well”—she started to pee—“I think the important thing to remember here is that Ashton wasn’t the right guy for you. Maybe
he’s the right guy for pointy face out there, but not you.”

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “Except it seems like nobody is the right guy for me.”

“Oh, come on. That’s not true. This doesn’t mean anything! He’s nothing to you, honey.” She flushed and joined me at the sink.

“Do you have to go?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I missed my moment.”

I put my lipstick down and turned to look at her. “Do you think Max goes out on dates?”

“Max?” She waved her hands away, like
pshaw
. “I mean, who cares? Even if he does, they’ll never go anywhere. That guy can’t be in a relationship—you know that better
than anyone.”

“Yeah. I guess … I can’t believe Ashton just said he knew me from ‘the scene.’ ”

“That was completely crazy. And just for the record, she’s not that cute.”

“Kiki, I’m upset but you don’t have to lie. She was totally cute.”

“I thought she was gross. Her looks were totally predictable and her face was like this”—Kiki bugged her eyes out and sucked
her cheeks in. “She was Milquetoast. I’m sorry. But she looks like a diet shake commercial.”

“I’m going to die alone, aren’t I?”

“Oh, cheer up. We all die alone,” Kiki said, holding the door open for me. “It’s the living alone that’s hard.”

The sign outside The Standard Hotel on Sunset hangs upside down. Audrey wanted to know why. I told her I
thought
it was supposed to cutely suggest that they were setting a new standard. She looked at me like,
huh?

All night over dinner Audrey complained (bragged) about her wedding. How she’d gotten so skinny and couldn’t imagine why—she’d
only been working out like four times a week. How she was in a tizzy over whether the bridesmaids should carry tulips or Gerber
daisies. How she and Jamie had gotten more yeses than nos so they had to totally rearrange the seating chart. Oh, and she
still needed to know if I was bringing a date to the wedding—it would be tacky for the seating card next to my place at the
bridal table to say
GUEST
.

In self-defense I turned my personality up a notch. I wore a deconstructed skirt by Imitation of Christ, hoping the raw seams
and hanging loose threads would put Audrey off. On the way to the hotel I gushed about Finlay, telling her how he had invited
me to go with him to a live concert in Scotland that he was producing for MTV. “I’ll probably get to meet Thom Yorke,” I said.

“Who?”

“The guy from Radiohead.”

Her eyes were devoid of recognition.

Of course, I left out the fact that I didn’t know yet if I really wanted to go.

As we entered the lobby, Audrey’s eyes widened. “Oh my gosh, are they real?” She stopped to gape at two models reclining in
an oversize fish tank above the check-in desk. A guy with lips the size of basketballs was sitting Indian-style and reading
Wallpaper,
while a girl with boobs the size of thimbles slept in his lap.

“You bet your patootie they’re real,” I said.

“You can’t put people in a fish tank.”