I Just Want My Pants Back (19 page)

Even though she could have no idea that her ceremony remained unwritten, Stacey was treating me differently. It had been simmering for a while, but now it seemed the soup was ready. The length of time I had been unemployed, and her notion that I was doing absolutely nothing to change that status, were unfathomable to her. Exhibit A: Langford. Plus, I hadn’t been shaving a whole lot, only when I had the rare interview, and I looked a bit of a mess. Frankly, that’s how I felt, so why hide it? The night of our most recent dinner together, she fed me snide remarks about my level of dishevel and I just kept claiming, “Hey, I’m growing peyes for you two.” She kept eyeing me with a genuine expression of worry, like a shopkeeper eyes a group of rowdy teens, and it was pissing me off. I just knew that, when I excused myself to the bathroom, Stacey and Eric were discussing me, like, “I know, you’re right. He’ll ruin our wedding. But if we take this away from him, what will he have left?” She sent me text messages all the time with fortune-cookie-like aphorisms in them, such as “You make your own luck.”

That night I was supposed to see Stacey again—Thai on Second Avenue—under the auspices of going over the wedding stuff again. It was only a few weeks away now. There was nothing really left to go over. I needed to stop being a pussy and write the damn thing, was all. She was using the get-together to practice being a Jewish mom, with me playing the role of guilt-absorbing child. I hoped we’d have fun. I didn’t like being unhappy with my friends. I was trying to stay positive, but I was feeling such negative vibes. It was as if no one had anything else to gossip about.

Like sands through the hourglass, so were the days of my life. I was doing a lot of sitting around the house alone, thinking. I had started writing again in the computerized journal, my current entry entitled “Unemployed, Broke, and Horny.” It was cathartic to bitch in long, unedited bursts. My apartment should have been spotless given that I wasn’t doing anything, but since there were no girls in sight, and with visits with Patty always happening at Patty’s, the ennui and inertia were winning. I was perfectly content to let the plastic cups and paper plates pile up near the dirty laundry and assorted detritus.

I finally motivated out of bed and moved over to the couch, where I disregarded the wedding notebook on the coffee table, open to a page that screamed
DO THIS, ASSHOLE
! in large black ballpoint scrawl, and leafed through a copy of
The Stranger
I’d had since college. I always loved the opening paragraph. “Maman died today. Or maybe it was yesterday.” That fucking Mersault had learned to float through the pleasure and the pain with none of it touching him. I could see that in a positive light from my current position. I got distracted, reached over to the coffee table, and checked my cell out of habit. I had a new text from Stacey, trying to confirm tonight. I responded in the affirmative. Just after I sent the text, the phone rang. Weirdly, I saw on the caller ID that it was the main number from JB’s.

“Hello,” I answered.

“Hello, is Jason in?”

“This is Jason,” I said.

“Jason. Hi, it’s John.” Pause. “From JB Casting.”

It took me a second to realize that John was JB. “Oh, hi,” I said, sitting up.

“Jason, how have you been? Are you working?” JB, Mr. Tact.

“I’ve been doing a few things, mostly trying to finish my novella.”

“Oh, that’s nice. Well, if you are free today, we had a last-minute casting call that needs dozens of roles filled. You’d be perfect, and it pays five hundred for the day. I thought maybe you might be interested.”

Was I! “Sure. Five hundred for the day, huh? What is the, uh, role?” I imagined he must need people to fill an audience for a scene with a band or something; I wasn’t sure what else I was good for. Background person at the library?

JB explained that Discover Card was doing a massive NYC promotion, and they needed lots of “young, friendly NYC folks” to help them pull it off. He gave the address of a place on Park and Thirty-third that I had to be at by eleven, and hung up. Five hundred bucks! I could kiss JB on the penis.

 * * * * * 

T
hree hours later I stood on the back of a crowded bus, dressed as a giant, three-dimensional slice of chocolate layer cake with vanilla icing. I was a diabetic’s nightmare. All the other “young, friendly NYC folks” wore similar huge, puffy foam outfits. We were all standing; you couldn’t sit in bus seats in these ridiculous costumes. Every type of food was represented: a lobster, a big hot dog, a ham sandwich, a cookie, and in the largest costume of all, a thin black guy dressed as an entire roast chicken. Had it been fried, I think he could’ve sued for racism.

The Discover Card Company was sponsoring a special restaurant week in NYC. The bus was dropping us off on different corners in Midtown to hand out information on the special discounts available if you paid with the glorious Discover Card. They must have been grouping people as full meals, because the main-course chicken, a piece of broccoli played by a slightly plump Goth girl, and I, the dessert, were dropped off together on the northwest corner of Bryant Park and told to spread out a bit. I looked at Broccoli. You had to be seriously committed to be Goth in summer. Today it was supposed to hit the high eighties. Her thick black eye-makeup would soon be running down her stalk, that was for sure.

The sun was really intense. I found a spot in a bit of shade and held out my stupid flyers. My cake costume went from neck to knee, with white stockings for my legs. Thigh-highs. And, this was the worst, on my head I wore a chocolate beanie with a foot-tall pink-and-white plastic candle sticking out of it. The whole getup was not made of any sort of natural fiber or anything that remotely breathed, and even in the shade, I was cooking on the inside. If I were a wrestling coach, I would recommend this cake suit to my team so they could make weight.

There I stood. A moron. I was trying to be Zen, trying to picture the five hundred beans in my mind, but it wasn’t working. Not with every business-casual asshole in Midtown walking past and mocking me. They were all just so funny in this part of town. Maybe after they finished making spreadsheets they hit the comedy clubs, because I was hearing all sorts of brilliant cracks like “Hey, got milk?!” and a tsk-tsking “I told you to get your MBA.” And then there were the secretaries in shiny white Reeboks, giggling at me and saying in grating Queens accents, “Oooh, now that makes me want to diet!” Oh, ha-ha. I had angry little daydreams of the many different ways I might torture them; the most vile involved wrapping a sweet potato in barbed wire and shoving it right up their asses. I was one surly slice of cake. I wiped the sweat from my brow on my hand, and I wiped my hand on my gauzy vanilla frosting. My face was so slick with oily perspiration that my glasses kept sliding down the bridge of my nose. I waited for more abuse and adjusted my candle cap; the elastic on it was tight and really kept in the heat.

I was getting delirious. I needed to talk to someone simpatico, so I crossed the street to see the roast chicken, who was standing on the far corner. As I waddled through the intersection, a car honked at me, and a sanitation worker hanging off the back of a garbage truck gave a wolf whistle as if I were a sexy girl. Maybe the stockings flattered my calves.

Roast Chicken was grinning, trying to engage passersby. He looked like he was having fun. That did not seem scientifically possible. “Hey, man,” I said, touching his wing, “how’s it going? You sweating to death?”

He smiled. “Nah, I’m cool. Couple more hours and it’s payday.”

I noticed he was also wearing stockings, golden-brown ones. “Can I ask you a question? How is it that you aren’t miserable right now? I’m dying.” I wiped some more perspiration on my frosting.

“I’m just rolling with it, is all,” he said. He looked around, then down at me. “And also, I’m really stoned,” he said, grinning again. “Smoked chicken, heh. Beth got me high.”

“Beth?”

He flapped toward Broccoli. “Yeah, Beth. We got high before we changed into these costumes. She has a little one-hitter.”

Broccoli Beth, you crafty little vegetable. Hell, I didn’t even know Goths liked pot. I thought they were only into…shit, I had no idea what kind of drugs they did. But they were the polar opposite of life-affirming hippies who had sort of claimed pot, so I would never have guessed she would’ve been packing. But I was glad I wasn’t high. I needed something to dull the sense of reality, not enhance it. Now, a Vicodin, or an old-fashioned Valium, that might have helped. I cakewalked back to my spot, thinking I was really glad I had a diploma from an Ivy League institution. What a laugh.

The next two hours passed like a kidney stone. A mustached Hispanic man in a tank top walked right up to me and whispered that he would very much like to eat me. A little kid poked my frosting, made a farting sound, and laughed. A fat man’s dog barked and nipped at me. A very cute girl in a wife-beater stopped, lowered her sunglasses, and looked me over. She was stunning, a tight little body and blond funky hair, kind of rock-’n’-roll but not so much that it seemed like you could only meet her if you were in a band. She looked familiar.

Then I realized who it was. “Annie?” I said. I took a step toward her. She looked fucking fantastic. “Hey, it’s Jason.”

“Jason?” she said, as if trying to place me. She pointed at my costume. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, you know, same old.”

She squinted, then smiled awkwardly. We stood there in the heat like any young couple flirting on a summer day, she the stylish girl, me the slice of cake.

“So, uh, how’ve you been?” I asked.

“Why are you wearing that costume?” she said, her smile fading. She touched it with her finger.

“What costume? This is Gaultier.” I shrugged as if to say, “Hey, it’s funny.” She gave me back a look that was…it was pity. Pure pity. Like she was looking at a homeless child in a gutter in Peru.

“Is this your job?” she asked, furrowing her brow.

“No, it’s, well…it’s obviously a long story,” I said, exasperated. “Hey, let’s make a plan and I’ll tell you all about it. We should have exchanged numbers the last time we saw each other, that was dumb of us. Do you have, uh, a card?”

“Do you have a pocket?”

I looked down at my cake suit. “Good point.”

She slid the sunglasses back up her nose. “You look ridiculous.”

“Yeah, I know it. It’s just a temp job.”

“Normally, you’re a hamburger, right?” She grinned. “Just kidding, just kidding.” She patted my cake shoulder. “Listen, I actually have to run to this meeting. I’ll see you around, Jason. Try not to melt out here.”

Then she was gone. I was the shit she had wisely stepped over. I bet she’d be on IM in ten minutes with someone from school: “You are not going to believe who I just saw
.” I turned to watch her go and adjusted my itchy candle cap. A stream of perspiration escaped the elastic and drooled down my forehead, stinging my eyes.

By the love of all that is holy, the bus returned on time. I pulled off the nasty hat and leaned on one of the seats as we went to pick up other assorted dinner items scattered about Midtown. This piece of cake needed an Indian Ocean–sized drink of anything but milk.

 * * * * * 

A
fter changing back into my civvies at the loft, I was now in some dark bar called Fiddlesticks, buying a round of drinks for Goth Beth, Derek (formerly known as Roast Chicken), and a nameless girl who had been a pickle. The Midtown Irish pub was conveniently located near a check-cashing place that turned my day of shame into $303.36, after taxes and check-cashing fees. Following the capitalist food chain, the bartender was turning that money into the universal problem-solver, my friend and yours, alcohol.

I was already drunk. I was rehydrating by dehydrating. We had been there since about six, and it was nine-thirty. Derek had been trying to kiss Pickle for well over an hour, and slowly but surely his persistence was wearing away at her resolve. As I predicted to Beth that Pickle would be smooched before midnight, my pocket vibrated. I pulled out the cell; I had a few new messages. It was too loud in the bar to hear, so I checked my missed calls. Five from Stacey. Oh, fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck! Dinner with Stacey. That was supposed to be at eight. Damn it. She was going to be perturbed, to put it mildly. I contemplated how to handle it. I did have a job today, okay, that was a positive. And now you could say I was networking. But I decided that calling her drunk and saying any of that would not be the best way for me to acquire forgiveness. I’d deal with it tomorrow, sober, with a protective shield of lies. Yes, that was the smart play. I congratulated myself on the choice by taking a giant slurp of Beth’s cranberry and vodka by mistake. “Eww,” I spat. “Healthy juice mixed in with my alcohol!” Beth smiled. Hmmm, without all the Goth makeup and with booze coursing through my arteries, she looked downright acceptable.

As I picked up my own drink, a vodka soda, my phone buzzed again. It was Stacey, again. I took two quick long swallows, walked out to the street, sighed, and answered. She let me have it right from the get-go.