Here I Go Again: A Novel (6 page)

“Oh, good, you’re awake. Namaste!” Debbie pops out from a kitchen area that’s a solid half mile away from where I’m sitting and heads toward me. “Here, break your fast with this.” She hands me a pint glass filled with a neon green concoction interspersed with black dots.

I’m desperately thirsty, so I take a healthy sip and immediately gag. “
Blergh!
Why does this taste like lawn clippings?”

Debbie nods like I’ve paid her a huge compliment. “Probably because the wheatgrass was just picked.”

I blink hard a couple of times. “You just gave me a glass of
grass
?”

“Juiced grass. I grow it myself on my roof garden. Don’t worry; it’s all organic and pesticide-free. I keep a supply of lady beetles called mealy bug destroyers, and they allow me to maintain a poison-free environment.”

“Congratulations.” I roll my tongue around in my mouth and note an even worse aftertaste that’s all fishy and primal. “What is that other horrible, horrible flavor?”

“That’s the spirulina I added for protein. Spirulina was one of the ancient Aztecs’ dietary staples. They called it
tecuitlatl
, and they believed in its healing properties.”

“Tastes like pond scum.”

“Spirulina is a type of algae harvested from the surface of lakes.”

“So it is pond scum.”

Debbie bobs her head and looks all beatific and pleased with her bang-up entertaining skills. Somewhere a shudder just ran down Martha Stewart’s back at the notion of serving a guest a glass of moldy grass.

Debbie launches into a series of bizarre stretches before finally folding herself into a sitting position in front of me. I didn’t know people could bend that way. As I process the whole scene—the art, the outfits, the joint-defying movements—I realize I’ve fallen into some kind of new age
Alice in Wonderland
rabbit hole. The only way out is figuring out how I got here in the first place, so I ask the most obvious question.

“What kind of drugs are you taking and can I have some?”

Debbie laughs and says, “Lissy Ryder, you’re still such a card.” When she takes a gulp of her drink, I notice it leaves a chlorophyll mustache.

I point at my mouth. “You look like you just blew the Incredible Hulk.”

Debbie responds with more beaming and less wiping. “Lissy Ryder, I sense that you have questions, so please untrouble your heart.”

“You got that right.” I gesture at myself. “For starters, what am I wearing?”

Debbie does a shoulder roll before answering, and I can hear every vertebra in her back pop. “You’re dressed in a Central Asian Ikat robe. Interesting fact about the Ikat process—the act of dyeing each strip of fabric was an ancient art, and craftsmen kept their techniques secret, which accounts for all the color variations. In the oasis towns of Central Asia, prominent men would wear these items as a showy display of their wealth. That sort of thing seemed right in your wheelhouse.”

I have no frigging idea how to respond to this.

“Also, my pajamas were too small on you.”

“Aces.” I’m superdehydrated, so I take another tiny sip of the wheatgrass, hoping that the flavor has improved. Nope, still tastes like Jolly Green Giant ass. “Number two, where are my clothes? And three, why did I take them off in the first place?”

Debbie circles her head, nods, and rests her chin on her tented fingers. “Your dress is in the bathroom. When we got here, you cried that your underwear was ‘murdering’ you, and you stripped down.”

Ah, yes. Spanx are a harsh mistress. “Where’s
here
?” I gesture at the space around me and knock over a wooden figurine. I pick it up by the handle to right it and, upon closer inspection, I see that it’s twelve inches of wooden man and six inches of wooden man’s woody. Argh. As I focus on other objects, I note a decidedly naked bent to many of the artifacts. I feel like I’m touring Larry Flynt’s Museum of Mayan Porn.

Again, this is why we weren’t friends in high school.

Debbie places her great ham hands together and does an odd little bow. “You’re in my home, Lissy Ryder. Welcome. I live above my store. I bought this building so I’d never be far from my work.” So . . . the Ethereal Girl owns thousands of square feet of prime Mag Mile–adjacent real estate, yet the Material Girl can pretty much lay claim to one David Coverdale poster? How is this possible?

I shake my head to clear the cobwebs and instantly regret the sudden movement. I brace myself on the pillows in an attempt to keep down the vertigo. “We’re on Oak Street, then?” I ask, trying to MapQuest the location in my head.

“Uh-huh. We walked over from the reunion—I’m only two blocks away from the Drake. That’s the preferred hotel for many of my international clientele.” I vaguely recall fresh air last night, but everything’s still so fuzzy. “Now tell me, Lissy Ryder, did you enjoy the sleeping pit?”

“I always sleep my best when curled up with a yak’s pelt.” Debbie beams. Apparently they don’t have sarcasm on her planet. “Wait, where’s Nicole? She was supposed to drive me home.”

Debbie taps a long finger to her chin and focuses on the ceiling. “She said . . . what were her exact words? Oh, yes, she said, ‘That hateful bitch is going to puke in my Odyssey and I’m not having my kids smell her vomit for the next month.’
She dumped you on me.”

Strike three, Nicole.

I rest my face in my hands and try to remember. Suddenly the night’s events come rushing back to me and I’m all nostalgic for two minutes ago, when I didn’t know what ancient Aztecs ate for breakfast.

Oh, God, last night.

When I used to imagine what hell might be like, I pictured flames and pitchforks and a lot of screaming. I envisioned hell as the scene from the Adam Sandler movie where Hitler faced an eternity of having pineapples shoved up his ass.

Of course, I know better now.

Hell is an open bar and boxed wine.

Hell is three complicated pairs of Spanx and a tiny bladder.

Hell is a deejay with a penchant for Sir Mix-A-Lot.

Hell is being accosted by women I’m not sure I ever met telling me exactly why they despise me.

Hell is being ignored by the very people who used to worship me.

Hell is making choices two decades ago that will completely impact my ability to do business today.

Hell is four hours of watching the guy who pledged to forever honor and cherish me dirty dancing to “Rump Shaker” with someone thinner and hotter.

My head throbs as I replay my conversation with Duke.

Debbie seems to pick up on my thoughts. “I take it from last night’s display that you’re no longer with Martin.”

That? Is an understatement.

After I choked down the bile from seeing Duke with someone else, someone painfully fit and attractive, someone who hung on his every word,
damn it
, I decided I’d be the bigger person and break the ice. He seemed to not want the ice broken, and that made him ten times more attractive than when I had him and didn’t want him.

Seriously, no girl digs the guy who actually wants her back. Where’s the challenge? Where’s the anticipation? Where’s the thrill of the hunt?

When I tried to cozy up to him at the reunion, I moved in real close and was all, “Duke, why is everyone being so meeeeeeeeeeean to me?” and he completely lost his shit.

“First, my name isn’t Duke. It’s Martin, okay? M-A-R-T-I-N. The only person who’s called me Duke since leaving high school is you. The name Duke isn’t cute; it’s not endearing; it’s not a pet name.” His eyes were all hard and he spoke to me in a tone I never heard before.

I was completely gobsmacked (and a little turned on). “What are you talking about?”

“
Duke
is my badge of shame from one unfortunate night when I drank too much
because you kept daring me to
, and you’ve never let me live it down. Remember that? The ‘only-pussies-can’t-do-Jägermeister-shots’ night? Then, after I overindulged?
You
thought it would be funny to do doughnuts in your new car and the centrifugal force got the best of me. I threw up and I’m sorry. I’ve been sorry for more than twenty years. But were you sorry? Were you empathetic? Did you take any ownership of the situation whatsoever?”

Where was this coming from? I interjected, “Oh, please, I totally—”

He pressed on and the little veins in his forehead got all bulgy. “No. No, you weren’t. Instead, you made out with my best friend to punish me for having ‘puke breath’ and then spent two weeks after that macking on your nerdy neighbor. For the rest of my life, you’ve delighted in sharing the origin of my nickname with everyone—college roommates, coworkers, neighbors, bosses, bankers. You even told our dry cleaners, and each time I see them, they greet me with ‘Herro, Duke!’
Well, that stops now.”

I placed a hand on his jacket lapel. “Come on, Duke, you have to admit it’s kind of a funny story. Who mixes Jolt, Jack, and Jäger?”

Holy cats, I thought, we are going to have the best makeup sex!

Yet Duke wasn’t reading from our usual playbook. Instead, he practically levitated to get away from my touch. “You know what, Lissy? Duke is dead, gone, no more. As for everyone being mean to you? They hate you. All of them. If you can’t figure out why, Lissy—I mean,
Melissa
—then there’s no hope for you.” With that, he returned to his date and the two of them bent their heads together at the table, deep in conversation.

So, no makeup sex, then?

I recount his words to Debbie and ask her, “I wasn’t really that bad back then, was I?” expecting her to reassure me that clearly Duke’s the dickweed here.

Debbie doesn’t even hesitate. “Absolutely.”

“Absolutely?”

“Yes. You were the kind of girl Tina Fey writes movies about.”

This is news to me. “Huh.”

She leans in, all sympathetic. “Is that difficult for you to hear?”

I nod. “A little. I mean, I’d always pictured Charlize Theron or Cameron Diaz in the role of Lissy Ryder, but I guess I could imagine Rachel McAdams starring instead. She was excellent in
The Notebook
.”

Debbie drains her glass, then, mercifully, wipes her lips with a woven-bracelet-covered wrist. “I’m so intrigued by what
you
consider a compliment. Now let me ask you something, Lissy Ryder—are you finally acknowledging the person you were in high school? Because that’s the first step to making a change.”

It’s my turn not to hesitate. “No, I’m not acknowledging shit. I couldn’t have been so bad, if for no reason other than basic time management. Between cheering and tennis and student council and my rigorous social schedule, I never had time to crack a book.”

I don’t add,
Which is why I barely got into college
, even though it’s true.

I press on. “Plus I’m here with you, right? If we weren’t cool, you’d have left me at the Drake.”

Debbie practically erupts, and her voice echoes through the cavernous space in her loft. “Ha! You’re the worst person I ever met.”

Ha?

Really?

I merit a “ha”?

How is this possible? I never even thought about her unless she was in front of me doing something bizarre. I didn’t, like, seek people out to criticize them intentionally, but if they were right there with, say, hairy pits and a tank top, it was kind of my duty to mention it. You know, as a friend.

“What’d I do to you?”

I’m not being oppositional; I really don’t remember. Sure, with her herbs and her Stevie Nicks dresses, I thought she was queer as a soup sandwich, but for the life of me I can’t recollect any direct negative interaction.

“Debbie Does Deep Throat.”

“Beg pardon?”

Debbie’s expression darkens. “
Debbie Does Deep Throat.
The day the cafeteria served corn dogs? You don’t remember shrieking in front of the entire senior class, ‘Oh, my God, she’s fellating her lunch’? Like it was so goddamned easy to eat food on a stick in a back brace and I had another choice. Then to be stuck with that nickname on top of it?
That’s
what you did to me.”

Debbie pauses, places her hands on her thighs, and takes a couple of deep breaths. She exhales for a solid thirty seconds. “I apologize for that outburst, Lissy Ryder. I’m centered again. Anyway, the reason we are ‘cool,’ as you say, is because I’m
not
Debbie anymore.
Debbie
wants to punch you in the motherfucking face.”

She pauses to breathe again and clears her throat. “
Ahem.
I’m Deva now. I’ve devoted my adult life to transcending negative emotions like anger and resentment. I channel all that’s bad into positivity and light. Trust me when I share that your actions eventually produced a
shitload
of positivity and light.”

I fall back into the sleeping pit’s pillows. “This is all too much for me to process. I had no clue.”

“I’m very sorry if my painful teenage memory troubles you.”

Seriously, this is kind of news to me.

“What you’re telling me is that I did all kinds of damage to you in high school.” I tend to repeat what people say to me when it sounds important. It’s a great PR trick I picked up years ago. Makes people believe they’re really being heard. Only . . . half the time I used to parrot stuff back in meetings, I’d be reminding myself that I needed to schedule a mani and a wax.

“Again,
ha
! Not just to me! You left a string of wounded in your path.”

“Really?” I thought I was just being funny. Everyone used to tell me how hilarious I was. Well, the cool people, anyway. “But I can’t consciously recall trying to hurt people’s feelings. I was just being me.”

“Who you were wasn’t nice. Understatement. Who you were was Satan.”

Ouch.

“Okay, if that’s the case and I was all Regina George, then why didn’t people accept my apologies last night?”

Deva coolly appraises me before answering. “I imagine they doubted your sincerity. Were your words coming from your heart or were they motivated by something else, like greed?”

Damn.

“Lissy Ryder, if you reflect on your evening, what message is most clear to you?”