Perfect Fifths Page 4

  “Where is my ph—?”

  The phone. Bridget and Percy had told her about the wedding over the phone. They had grabbed the phone out of each other’s hands to relay the story of how he had convinced her to make good on their engagement and get married already.

  “I want a wedding,” Percy said.

  “He’s the bride in this scenario,” Bridget added.

  “I want a public ceremony, a celebration of how much I love her …”

  “I was, like, why do we need a piece of paper?”

  “I told her that we didn’t need it. I just wanted it…”

  “I needed Percy to point out to me that my fears weren’t really about us but about my parents …”

  “Their divorce really messed her up …”

  “It did, it really did …”

  “She was afraid that getting married would somehow complicate things, make things worse …”

  “I was afraid of history repeating itself. I mean, my parents must have liked each other at some point, though it never seemed to be while they were actually married to each other …”

  “We are not our parents …”

  “We’re just us …”

  Jessica was happily mum during their back-and-forth banter, speaking up (“What?!”) only when they asked her to be the ministress of ceremonies.

  “Um, I’m a nonbeliever,” Jessica reminded them.

  “We know!” they chorused.

  “You can get ordained over the Internet,” Bridget explained.

  “By the Universal Ministry of Secular Humanity,” Percy added.

  Jessica found it interesting that Bridget and Percy had assumed she was referring to her lack of faith in God, when she just as easily could have been referring to her lack of faith in the institution of marriage. Of the two, Jessica actually considered the latter a greater obstacle to overcome for the purposes of performing a marriage ceremony. She kept this opinion to herself, however, knowing that if any couple’s union was worth forsaking her anti-matrimonial stance, it was Bridget and Percy’s.

  “Is the Universal Ministry of Secular Humanity anything like Pastafarianism?” Jessica asked.

  Bridget and Percy had anticipated Jessica’s every argument and verbally climbed all over each other in presenting their counterarguments.

  “We actually looked into getting you ordained by the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster …”

  “But it seems that you can only be ordained by a real church, not a heretical parody of a church …”

  “The Universal Ministry of Secular Humanity, however, is the best alternative because it makes a big deal out of being nondenominational and supportive of all religious practice—including the right not to practice …”

  “Its emphasis is on this life and simply doing what’s right…”

  “And once you get ordained, you can perform weddings throughout the United States, including the Virgin Islands, which is where we want to get it done …”

  “Why go through all this trouble?” Jessica asked, flattered by how much effort they had already put in.

  “We want you!”

  “After all,” Percy added, “you were the first to know.”

  “How old were we?” Bridget asked.

  “You were a junior. I was a sophomore. Sixteen? Seventeen?” Percy said.

  “Omigod! How can it be possible that we’ve been together that long? That’s crazy!”

  “Crazy …”

  Where was Jessica during this conversation? Cross-legged on a quilted, garishly floral-patterned bedspread sprinkled with crumbs that had escaped the exorbitantly priced bag of chips from the hospitality bar. She had tuned out of the conversation briefly to calculate the cost of those crumbs, then soon realized that an accurate estimate would require math skills she hasn’t used since filling in the last bubble on the SAT with her number two pencil. The bag of chips, the bedspread, the beige walls, the framed reproductions of unmemorable landscapes. A hotel room, obviously. But where?

  She reviews all the cities she traveled to in the last two years: Los Angeles. Minneapolis. Phoenix. Seattle. Atlanta. She rarely has time to spend in the cities themselves, just enough to land at the airport, get the rental car, and drive to the suburban residence hotel closest to the next high school on her itinerary, to the next group of girls—some boys but mostly girls—who signed up for the ten-week Do Better High School Storytellers project. That’s what they call themselves: girls. Not girlz, or grrls, which are misguided marketing terms, and certainly not young adults, young women, or young ladies, as they are usually called by parents, teachers, coaches, counselors, and others of their clueless ilk. Jessica is paid to encourage the Girls—who have attained capital-G status in her mind—to speak up, speak out.

  Jessica has heard dozens of stories, and they come to her now—still on line at the Clear Sky customer service center—in bits and pieces. A story about a designated driver, the only sober one at the party, who slipped, fell flat on her face, and cracked her front tooth trying to steal her wasted boyfriend’s keys. A story about a fourth-grader shaving off her eyebrows after the class bully compared them to squirrel tails. A story about watching a father throw a favorite porcelain doll on the floor just to prove that it wouldn’t break, but it broke. A story about eating frog legs at an elegant five-star restaurant in Paris and insulting the chef with a request for ketchup. A story about discovering Ayn Rand and railing against the “second-handers.” A story about passing a joint to a secret crush and getting higher from being one degree of separation from his lips than from the marijuana itself. A story about former best friends who looked the other way in the hallway. A story about a spitball landing in a laughing mouth. A story about how a star mathematician’s skills were wasted on anorexic word problems like “How many hours on the treadmill does it take to subtract an apple, a slice of cheese, and four almonds?” A story about going on a roller coaster for the first time, vomiting, and going for a second round. A story about a boy who loved a girl, fucked her, and never texted again. A story about running into a tetherball pole.

  The stories teach them valuable life lessons. That good things happen to bad people. That it’s possible to make a bad situation even worse if you don’t think it through. That parents are clueless except when they’re not. That it’s good to try new things even when a new thing is kind of disgusting, because new experiences make you a well-rounded person. That art can be transcendent. That lust is all-powerful, that drugs are fun, and that not everyone who does them is a loser. That losing people is part of life. That where comedy goes, tragedy isn’t far behind. That everyone has issues with their bodies, but some take it too far, almost to death. That fear can be exhilarating. That boys are assholes. That it’s important to look forward and never look back …

  Dozens of stories, dozens of lessons learned. One unfortunate consequence of hearing so many stories is that Jessica often remembers vivid details from the story itself but not the Girl who told it. When Jessica tries to visualize the Girls, she sees slideshow images from opposing ends of the aesthetic spectrum. On one side, the Ugly Girls with precocious dowager’s humps and threadbare hair, orthodontic protuberances and archipelagic acne. On the other, the Beautiful Girls with endless legs and well-filled bras, bedroom eyes and sensuous pouts. It’s unfair to think of the Girls in these extremes when the vast majority—including Jessica herself in high school—fall somewhere in between.

  The Girls always remember her, however, which has lead to several semi-awkward ambushes at the supermarket, the mall, the four-hundred-meter outdoor track, when the grateful, gushing teenager rushes to thank Jessica for encouraging her to find her unique voice and use it to tell a story as no one else can, and Jessica, the beloved mentor, must cheerlead her way through catchy but vague platitudes of self-confidence, creativity, and encouragement because she has no clue which Girl she is talking to.

  Most days Jessica loves her work because it doesn’t feel like work. But she has come
to hate being away from home. For the first few assignments, air travel was still a novelty to her. She found joy in the unexpected—and in the beginning, it was all unexpected. Catching herself laughing at the corny but inoffensive family comedy on the free movie menu in Santa Clarita, California. Awakening to the verbena-scented hotel shower gel in Bloomington, Minnesota. Humming, then mumbling, then full-out belting along with the cheerfully bullying theme song (Get up, get up! The day is waiting! Wake up, wake up! No hes-i-tat-ing! Out of bed, you sleepyhead! Get up! Get up! Get uuuuuuuuuuuup!) for the local morning show in Chandler, Arizona. Blushing every time the flirtatious attendant at the Chevron station in Mukilteo, Washington, joked about New Jersey drivers unable to pump their own gas. Cheering at the sight of Baby Ruths and Coca-Cola in the hospitality bar in Roswell, Georgia, and feeling a sense of kinship and solidarity with the person in charge of stocking the mini-fridge for selecting these items over inferior Snickers and Pepsi. Silly thrills were enough to help her overlook the unpleasant realities of never staying in these cities for longer than three months. Until the silly thrills weren’t enough anymore.

  Because after two years of constant travel, she’s tired. She’s tired of three-ounce containers, for example, and selfish passengers who choose to overlook the rule and inconvenience everyone else trying to get through security. She’s tired of having to fly to and from New York on the weekends to see family and friends. She’s tired of hotels trying to pass off their miniature French-milled bath bars and mini-miniature French-milled facial care bars as two different products for her skin’s varying needs, when under minimal scrutiny, it’s clear that they are the same exact soap in two different sizes. She’s tired of forgetting to pack dental floss, socks, a lint brush. Or condoms, which is proving to be more important for the Girls than it is for her because over the past two years, Jessica has provided more prophylactic devices for her teenage mentees (ten) than she has used for herself (one). She’s tired of single-cup coffeemakers and scary nondairy creamers that flake like dandruff into the bitter blackness and contain ingredients like sodium aluminosilicate that she suspects might be the root of the short-term neurological impairment that restricts her airport reading to the exclamations (BAD BRIT! LOCO LILO!) accompanying tabloid paparazzi shots. She’s tired of using her suitcase as a makeshift dining table, tired of using plastic knives to pop open individual packets of cream cheese to smear on the doughy, flavorless bread products that other states try to pass off as bagels, tired of dropping half of her breakfast on her knee, tired of unsuccessful attempts to paper-towel-and-spit-clean the gluey smudge off her jeans, and tired of having no choice but to wear those jeans all day, all throughout boarding, taking off, accelerating, cruising, decelerating, landing, deplaning, claiming baggage, renting a car, driving, checking in, and unpacking, at which point she’s so damn tired that she gives up on getting re-dressed, strips down to her underwear, yanks open the overtucked sheets, climbs in, and calls it a night. Tired of feeling like a close but imperfect counterfeit self.

  Jessica feels another shoulder poke. It’s Garanimals again. “It only works if you actually press the numbers,” the woman jokes.

  “Right.” Jessica looks down at the phone resting in her hand. “Thanks.” She flips open the cell and is about to start dialing when it lights up. She had unintentionally taken it off vibrate after fumbling for the video from the Virgin Islands. Now the phone plays its customized ring tone, a song that hit number one on the adult contemporary charts in 1978 and has been vilified or deified ever since.

  You know I can’t smile without you …

  Twenty heads turning. Twenty voices overlapping. Twenty middle-aged women wearing “Music and Passion” T-shirts, “COPA” baseball caps, and ticket frame necklaces commemorating the most memorable of all the many thousands of standing ovations for the Showman of Our Time. Twenty members of the Tristate Chapter of the Barry Manilow International Fan Club.

  “A fellow Fanilow!”

  “Look how young she is! A mini Maniloony!”

  “Headed to Vegas?”

  “The Final Farewell tour …”

  “Stop saying that. I can’t handle it!”

  “I really, really can’t believe it’s his final Final Farewell show and we’re gonna miss it…”

  “Shaddap! I’m having a mental breakdown over here!”

  “He’ll be back. He always comes back …”

  Jessica thinks of the Girl who genius-rigged her phone to play Barry Manilow for every incoming call or message, the sixteen-year-old sophomore (now eighteen-year-old senior) she visited in Pineville last night, and for whom she rearranged her travel plans. Jessica works hard to remember this Girl as she always knew her—in graphic-print thermals and baggy jeans, dark hair hidden under an assortment of scarves, headbands, and caps until she finally, finally got through the awkward and never-ending growing-out phase—and not as she left her last night. Jessica fought against this most recent memory to see the Girl who claimed that she was so fiercely against cosmetic enhancements that she refused to get any piercings, not even in her ears, but later confessed to Jessica that the real reason she rejected body mods was because the sight of needles made her pass out. The Girl who described herself as possessing a “postmodern sensibility trapped in a prepubescent body,” whose first story for the Do Better High School Storytellers project was about (in the sixteen-year-old’s own words):

  … the out-of-the-womb chasm separating her from her parents. When Mr. and Mrs. Dae chose to name their colicky then melancholicky daughter Sunny after the opening words to the Sesame Street theme song, they guaranteed there would be no crossing the gulf between parent and progeny. The cheerful opening notes of that song were permanently embedded like DNA, an earworm that burrowed so deep that no matter how many hours she spent with her head phones on, nothing—not even the Sex Pistols—could blast it out… Later, Pineville Elementary School’s earliest adopters to irony would rechristen her Sunny Delight, after the refreshing fruit-flavored, heavily fortified beverage that smells like orange juice made with one part frozen con centrate, two parts ammonia—an olfactory revelation that actually made Sunny appreciate the moniker for the first time as being unintentionally suited to her disposition …

  Sunny Dae would find Jessica’s situation downright uproarious. Jessica could see Sunny tucking in her arms, legs, and head, shrinking herself into a seed pod as she always did when life’s hilarity was too much to handle, before—BAM!—bursting wide-open like a trigger-sprung blossom when she couldn’t contain her laughter any longer.

  “Who else?” Jessica imagined Sunny asking. “Who else but Jessica Darling would find herself on a line full of middle-aged Barry Manilow fans?”

  Jessica grimace-grins at the twenty members of the BMIFC whose spirits have been lifted by the revelation that there is another one of their own in their midst. She presses TALK on her phone.

  “Hey, Hope,” she says, having no idea what she will say next to her best friend.

  eleven

  Marcus needs a plan. He can spy on Jessica Darling from behind this bank of pay phones for only so long. Eventually, she will make her way to the front of the line, then off the line, then out of the Clear Sky customer service center altogether. And he must have a strategy for what he’ll do when that occurs.

  He already has part of the plan in order. That’s the part where he follows her wherever she goes next and tries to engage her in a second conversation. It’s the rest that needs work. The way he sees it, he has two options: (1) lie or (2) tell the truth.

  He could stage another accident. Wow! Here we are again! You were craving a Nathan’s Famous pretzel dog, too? Wow. Uncanny. Your next flight leaves in six hours? Wow. Mine leaves right after that … Uncanny …

  Marcus lowers his head in shame, burying his face in the fake potted ferns atop the phone bank. Dust flies off the silk leaves, tickles his nose, and triggers a convulsive series of sneezes. “AW-CHOO-WAH!”

  Marcus has ba
rely recovered when he’s overtaken by a second spasm. “AW-CHOO-WAH!”

  And another. “AW-CHOO-WAH!”

  He’s being blessed by strangers on all sides as he stands with his head tipped back, eyes shut, mouth agape, hand waving in a come on, come on gesture as he waits to be overtaken by the next nasal paroxysm.

  “AW-CHOO-WAH! AW-CHOO-WAH!”

  He hesitates before opening his eyes, now teary with histamines. But his nose is still tingling, There’s still one more in there, he’s thinking, when it comes.

  “AW-CHOO-WAH!”

  The blessings continue, but he is cursed. He surrendered all worries to this unrestrained reflex, and now that the sneezing fit is over, his worries have returned. While he rebukes the urban legend equating sneezes and orgasms, they did serve as a momentary mind eraser, making Marcus consider whether he should escape reality by snorting dust mites the way drug addicts Hoover opiates.

  His senses fully restored, Marcus reconsiders his options. An orchestrated run-in? Never! How could he have considered such a preposterous lie even for a moment? And not only because he has a longstanding policy against mendacity. Jessica would instantly see through the loserish ruse and abandon what remaining respect she may or may not have for him. And as he catches another glimpse of Jessica through the layers of frayed silk leaves—she’s talking on her cell phone now—he can’t help but take her side. However, the truth wouldn’t fare much better, now, would it? Hey, Jessica. I have no reason to still be in this airport, and I’ve been stalking you for the last hour … Too much, too soon, too creepy.