He tossed the magazine onto the ottoman before looking back and examining me, exhausted.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” He ran a handful of fingers through his hair, and then back down over his face.
“Honey, so I got a little sloppy at brunch and snapped—”
“I don’t care about that. I know you by now.” He shook his head at nothing in particular. “I was trying to set a date for our wedding…and you ignored it completely, Monica. Tell me, how am I supposed to feel about that?”
“I…” I floundered. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I just didn’t think it was tactful to do it in the middle of Sheila’s marital problems.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t try to distract me like that. I deserve better.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“There’s something else going on here.” Raj started wringing his hands. “I thought we were on good terms, you and I. I thought we were back on track, but you’re not behaving normally these past few days. Please tell me that something else is wrong, because otherwise I’ll have to assume you weren’t excited to set a date because you aren’t really interested in
us
anymore—”
“I’m sorry. You’re right,” I cut him off, but to reach out, to try to bring him back to me. “It’s something else. It’s not about us.”
“Is it your mother?”
I couldn’t lie. Not entirely, at least.
“It’s not just her. Mainly, I think it’s Stefanie.”
Judging from the look on his face, he had no idea what I was talking about.
“My coworker,” I elaborated, leaning back and pulling my feet onto the couch so that I was facing him.
“The one that quit?”
“The one that I got fired.”
Another blank stare.
“Raj, I need to help get her job back.”
“But she quit, you said.” He visibly relaxed, pulling my feet onto his lap and leaning against the opposite arm of the couch.
“She quit because she had to.” I got more animated,
“Because I messed up and accidentally revealed that she was having an affair with our boss.”
“But why do you care?” He smiled, as if I’d told a joke.
“What do you mean,
why do I care?
” I took my feet back.
“If she’s gone, then doesn’t this mean that you have a better shot at senior associate?” He stuck his neck out, as if I was missing the obvious.
“So you think I should gain from the fact that I got her fired? Do you really think I’m that much of a jerk?”
“No, baby.” He gave me a wide smile and began massaging my knee. “You’re a shark. And that’s part of what I love about you.”
For a shark, I should have had a better response than to just sit there dumbfounded.
“I just mean that you get what you want by any means necessary,” he added, as if this clarification might have helped the way I felt about his opinion of me.
“What does that mean?” I took my knee back.
“Nothing, Monica,” he said, rolling his eyes. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“You think I’m cold.”
“Not cold, no. I think you do what needs to be done.”
“Like get someone fired even though they’re good at their job?” I stopped and then made a realization that forced me to stand up. “Oh my god, do you think I got her fired
on purpose?
”
“That is not what I said.” He stood up to face me. “It’s that I don’t see why you should care what happens to this woman. You said she was terrible to you for a long time. Maybe she got what she deserved.”
“But this isn’t about her. It’s about us.” Suddenly I felt as if I was all alone in my corner again, boxing gloves and all. “After knowing me for so long, how could you possibly imagine that I would do something like this on purpose? Or that I would be able to live with it even if it was an accident?”
“Monica.” He reached out.
But this time I wasn’t drunk enough to think that I could cut him off—I was sober and angry enough to know that I
had to.
“Raj, I don’t think I can be around you right now.”
“What?” He pulled back. “Monica…”
I stood up and crossed my arms.
“You’re
serious?
This is unbelievable. You actually think we’re gonna
break up
over this?”
Actually, that wasn’t what I was going to say. What I wanted was to be alone. To work things out on my own. But now that I could sense he was leaning more toward walking away than toward making it work, something changed. I wasn’t proud of it, but I knew that I couldn’t give an inch. So rather than replying, I stood firm.
“Monica if you want to end this engagement,” he paused, “then at the very least you should be woman enough not to hide behind some stupid excuse.”
And then he walked unceremoniously out my door.
I
NDIAN MYTHOLOGY IS CHOCK-FULL OF STORIES ABOUT
women who didn’t need boxing gloves—bejeweled or otherwise—to do their damage. In fact, in the case of the Vishkanyas (loosely translated as poisonous women) the only weapon they needed was themselves. The story goes that hundreds of years ago, the kings of various Indian princely states recognized the power of seduction as the ultimate weapon, especially when it came to outwitting their warrior adversaries. In order to make use of this knowledge, kings made a habit of kidnapping the daughters of beautiful peasants and rearing them in their harems. From the earliest age, these girls were fed nonlethal but increasing doses of poison on a daily basis. And by the time they had grown into beguiling young women, they were virtually immune to the powers of the arsenic that was coursing through their veins. When an enemy captain was known to have set up camp nearby in preparation for an impending attack, the king simply dispatched a Vishkanya disguised as a local prostitute to infiltrate the camp, seduce the captain and lure him toward her kiss of death.
Poetic, no?
Growing up, I always took this as a straightforward, chauvinistic, cautionary tale, warning men to be weary of the hypnotic powers of a beautiful woman. But was that really the moral of the story? Is it that women cannot be trusted? Is it that men cannot be without weakness? Or is something more complicated than that? Because if you take it just one step beyond the poor warrior who dies for a kiss, you are left with the image of a beautiful young woman who will surely be killed for her treason by his guards mere moments later.
So maybe the point isn’t that men should be wary of women with inviting lips. Maybe Raj should have known better than to let me blind him with a brand-new bra and reign him in for the emotional kill. Maybe the flare of his nostrils wasn’t directed entirely at me because he was really just angry that he let himself be lured back into my web. Or maybe, the point is that any man who thinks himself beyond reproach should fear what temptation might reveal to him about himself. And that an otherwise good woman, who decides she is looking for trouble, is ultimately likely to wreak far more havoc on herself than on anyone else.
They say that the older you get the better you know yourself. But if that were true, then unlike a jilted teenager, I would have been smart enough to have myself chained to the radiator, instead of letting loose and playing with fire that night. Experience had taught me by now that I always end up getting burned.
Always.
When I realized that Raj was gone, it was a little bit too much for me to take. Should I wait for him to come back, or should I go after him? If and when I caught up to him, should I explain myself or wait for an apology? Did I really even want him to come back, or did I just
want to want him
to come back?
I figured that Sheila might have the answer to that question. But I knew she had problems of her own. And even if she wanted to give me a glimpse into the reality of my own psyche, I really didn’t want to hear it. Not that night.
So I called Cassie instead.
Or more accurately…after twenty minutes of pacing my apartment and talking to myself while biting my fingernails…followed by a long shower during which I nearly scrubbed all of the hair off of my own head…followed by the realization that staying in the apartment that evening would necessitate engaging my mother in conversation at some point…I called Cassie.
“What are you doing?” I asked, chewing on the edge of my lip.
“Hello to you, too,” she answered lazily.
“Dude, I’m…I need to do something tonight.” I knew I sounded like I was about to have a panic attack. “I need to get out of my apartment. What are you doing?”
“I was having a cup of tea, actually,” she said. “It’s white pomegranate. I just love it.”
“What? Yeah, that’s great, Cassie…”
“It’s really very calming,” she continued. “And you sound like you could use some.”
“Fascinating. Listen, I meant what are you doing
tonight?
”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I don’t want to talk about it. I just need to go out. Now.”
I blame George Michael. I don’t know if it’s the silky voice, the permanent tan, or the lingering hint of a carefree-1980s feather in his hair, but George Michael songs always make me feel invincible. And everybody knows that the notion of one’s own invincibility is best left in high school. Along with dry-humping and wine-in-a-box. But they were playing “Fastlove” on the speakers in the bathroom of The Skybar that night, so on some level, they were setting me up.
Who are
they?
I don’t know. Try to keep up.
So what if I was wearing a backless, sequined top that also introduced anyone who was interested to my navel? My fiancé had stormed out of my apartment mere hours earlier without mustering up so much as an elevated tone. What was I supposed to do: take up needlepoint?
Yes, I said sequined. Deal with it. Unlike today’s college girls, at least I had the decency not to try to resurrect legwarmers.
“You look hot tonight!” Cassie told me before swiveling around to check out the reflection of her nonexistent butt in the mirror. “Whatever it is that’s pissed you off, I’m glad.”
“It’s Raj,” I said, unscrewing my lipgloss and yanking out the wand. “I think it’s over.”
“What?” She stopped.
“I don’t want to talk about it now.” I puckered.
“But Monica…”
“If you make me talk about him, then I’ll make you talk about Jonathan,” I threatened, waving my wand at her. “So do you want to fight me, or do you want to have fun?”
“Masala magic?” She smirked, referring to her belief that two Indian women on the prowl possess special powers which no mere mortal can resist. As if we were some sort of Sexual Power Rangers.
I laughed. Two tall women emerged from the stalls, checked themselves in the mirror, and then walked out without washing their hands.
“Ieeeewww.”
I shook my head. “They didn’t even run some water over their hands!”
“Maybe they were just snorting, not squatting,” she offered, powdering under her eyes.
“Well, in the scheme of things, I guess that’s better.” I slipped off my ring and dropped it into my purse before clasping it shut.
“The world is a cesspool,” she observed as nonchalantly as someone pulling out their dentures.
“So then,” I said, pleased at the idea of mocking Raj at a moment like that, “fancy a dip?”
“Sorry I’m late.” Some guy that reminded me of the lead singer of Midnight Oil slipped an arm around my shoulder and gazed out over the same view of West Hollywood that I had been admiring.
He wore a suit jacket over a tank top and a pair of jeans, and his sunglasses, which were rimmed entirely in silver, sat atop the shiniest bald head I had ever seen. He was oddly intriguing, much like a naughty version of Mr. Clean. Yet his lack of body fat had rendered him so lean that I probably could have snapped him in half and used him for kindling. Just in case you were wondering. Despite all of this, since it was The Skybar, and since Cassie was already engrossed in conversation with a wall of a man a few feet away, I decided to play along.
“Took you look enough!” I said, exasperatedly. “And where the hell is my vodka and cranberry?”
“I forgot!” He smiled and played up the part of the put-upon boyfriend. “I’m sorry! Damn, woman!”
“Well, go get it then!” I folded my arms across my chest and pulled a pouty expression.
“Fine!” he said, grinning while he pulled away and turned in the direction of the bar. “We’ve only been together for a year and already with the nag-nag-nagging!”
“You’ve always said I was worth the trouble,” I insisted.
“That’s true, gorgeous.” He paused and kissed the back of my hand before bouncing dutifully off in search of my libation. “I’ll be right back.”
Men are so easy.
Cassie wrinkled her brow as if to ask
what’s going on with you and the pirate, over there?
I shrugged, winked and then pivoted to scan the bar. I thought I sensed someone staring at me, but before I could find any reason to be gone when my pirate returned, he found his way back, vodka and cranberry in hand. Or, more accurately, beer in one hand and vodka and cranberry in the other. Weaving through the growing crowd had jostled him enough to spill some of my drink onto his hand. After handing me my drink, he then took the opportunity to lick it off.
…With a tongue roughly the length of my arm. And he looked me in the eye for the duration of the lick.
Sure, it was kind of sleazy. Still, it took me a second to shake the feeling that someone was singing “The Look of Love” directly into my ear.
In the fifteen minutes that followed I found out that not only did he have that tongue, but he also had a place with a hot tub on the beach in Malibu that I
was welcome to use any time.
He also had a thing for Latina women (which he assumed I was, being a typically lazy and culturally oblivious native Los Angeleno), and that he’d recently wrapped up a low-budget film that was being vetted for the Sundance Film Festival.
“It’s called
Release,
and it’s about inmates finding redemption internally,” he said pridefully. “I play the leader of the Aryan Nation gang in prison who has the biggest change of heart.”
“Of course you do,” I said, stirring my swizel stick around the ice remaining in my glass.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Just that a girl never runs the risk of meeting the normal guy who plays a social worker on
Lifetime
at a club in L.A. She only meets the guy who plays the incarcerated Head of the Aryan Nation.”
“So you’ve decided that I’m not normal.” He raised an eyebrow without moving any of the rest of his face. Maybe it was the ability to do that which allowed men to age so much better than women.
I made a mental note to learn how to do that, before returning my attention to the pirate.
“Who says that normal is necessarily better?” I answered.
“I knew I married you for a reason,” he said, slipping an arm around my waist in that intimate way that men do to force you to believe that your comfort zone includes them.
“So now we’re married?” I laughed.
“We are for tonight.”
“Then I’ll have to admit that I’ve been cheating on you,” I said.
“It’s understandable. I was locked up for years. A woman has needs.”
After a pause, we both cracked up. We were midgiggle when his phone beeped. He paused to check the text. I considered mixing drinks to speed along my ascent. George Michael gave way to Gwen Stefani, who was singing about bananas, I think.
“Damn it. I gotta take care of this. My buddy’s in line outside and I need to get him in. I’ll be back, okay? Don’t run off on me or anything.”
“Geez! I run off with one mailman for one weekend in Cabo and I’m paying for it for the rest of my
life!
”
“Oh, I’m gonna have fun with you,” he said, before walking off in the direction of the entrance, and taking his eyebrow with him.
And I thought I was going to let him have fun with me. At least a little bit. But then I saw who was lying on one of the platform beds spaced throughout the club just beyond where my pirate had been standing.
“So are you gonna kick me in the balls if I ask you to join me in bed?” Luke asked sheepishly.
“Not tonight, Luke.” I plopped down beside him and leaned onto a mountain of pillows. “Tonight I’m not kicking anyone. I’m a bit
knackered,
as the British say.”
“And was that scary-looking guy British?”
“Who, him? No. He’s a pirate.”
“A what?”
“At least in my mind he is. Don’t ruin my fantasy,” I slurred.
“Are you drunk?” he accused.
“Are you pushing forty in a leather jacket and a ponytail?” I shot back.
“Hey, I’m only 33,” he defended then let out a sigh. “But I know I have to start thinking about letting go of the eighties. I’m just not ready yet.”
“That’s okay. I’m not drunk yet, either. But maybe we can help each other with the transition.” I slurped at my drink before dropping it onto the tray of a perky waitress who had climbed into bed with us to take our order. “Can I get…umm…a glass of champagne?”
“Are we celebrating you learning to accept me and my ponytail?”
“Nope.”
“Are we celebrating you finally forgiving me?”
“Nope.” I was as resolute as a woman can be while she’s lying on a bed in a bar and yanking at her skirt in hopes of getting it back to the vicinity of a PG-rating.
“Seriously though.” He laughed. “Who was that guy?”
“He was my boyfriend. But we just broke up. You saw those silver sunglasses. It never would have worked.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. And what does your…fiancé…think about it?”