You look at me like you were hoping I would kiss you. As if I can fucking do that. “Is it okay if I say I’m sorry for imploding?”
I stand up. You’re still sitting. At this height, you could unzip me and put me in your mouth and that’s what you want but you’ve convinced yourself that it’s all you want when it comes to me. I leave you on the love seat and go back into the stacks and wait three minutes and text you from Melanda’s phone.
So?
So what?
So did you see Joe yet? Sorry lol I’m in love mode!
You’re spending the rest of your lunch break hiding from me in your office and you sigh.
Well I just offered to sleep with him in the parking lot. He probably thinks I’m insane. THIS is insane.
You’re talking yourself out of it and I’m sick of the way you women call out everything natural and reasonable as insane. But I’m not me. I’m Melanda.
Well maybe you should lol kiddiiiiiiing
You pick up a candy cane on your desk and bite into it. Crunch. Like the rock hitting Melanda’s head in the woods. And maybe there is a little holiday fucking magic just for us. Maybe something good will come out of this mess after all.
What if I’m just really horny or what if HE’S just really horny? What if I’m just building him up in my head. I mean look at Seamus. Nice pig, but a pig. We know men. Joe is probably too good to be true. You’re the one who said it. No friends. No ties. He spent Thanksgiving alone and you know what they say. People show you who they are.
I want to storm into your office and dive into your Murakami because sexual frustration is poisonous.
Sweetie Carl’s here so I have to go but honestly… I was moody that day at the diner. You like him. He likes you. Deal with it. xoxo love youuuuu
Melanda’s right, Mary Kay. You like me. You do need to fucking deal with it and I know how to force you to deal with it. There’s a seminar in one of the glass-walled conference rooms. It’s a setup for disaster—Mothballs teaching Mothballs how to operate their iPhones—and you forced Nomi to help out but she’s the only one in there under sixty. She’s not even doing her fucking job, Mary Kay. She’s holding her phone, forcing one of our patrons to look at her pictures. “See,” Nomi says. “This is the shed at Fort Ward. The moss on the roof is like the floor of a forest for Barbies. When I was little I wanted my dad to steal it.”
I know Phil’s her dad but ugh and the Mothball glares at me and Nomi clocks me and grunts. “So my mom roped you into this too? Nice. Real nice.”
“Not at all,” I say, rolling up my sleeves and wiping belVita fiber cookie crumbs into a napkin. “I’m here because I want to be here.”
Nomi makes room for me at the table and Mrs. Elwell remarks on your Meerkat’s demeanor and I am a pro, defending your daughter without excusing her behavior—I love to play both sides!—and before you know it, we’re in a groove. We help Mrs. Elwell “connect” with her family on Facebook—remember when slide shows were universally acknowledged to be torture?—and Nomi is softening her approach, learning to be more patient, more like me. She’s not the fastest learner and she snorts when a Mothball in a sweater set can’t access her Budussy books. But I catch her eye—Be nice, Nomi—and what can I say, Mary Kay?
I’m good with kids. I’m selfless. I know my way around a cell phone and I’m paternal but not patriarchal and you have a front-row seat. You see me and I see the wheels turning in your head as you remember that I’m not just a good kisser. I’m a good person. And I don’t rest on my laurels because I had one hit song twenty years ago—get over yourself, Phil—and when it’s over your Meerkat sighs. “Well,” she says. “We survived.”
“Oh come on,” I say. “You had some fun. I know I did.”
Nomi won’t admit it—that’s kids—but when I’m packing up to go home, she cracks a Budussy joke. You see that we bonded—another score!—and I wave. Friendly Joe! Well-adjusted Joe! “You guys have a great holiday! Gotta go meet some friends in the city!”
Sure enough, you send a text to Melanda while I’m walking home.
Okay he’s good. It’s like I almost forgot how smart he is because it was so surreal to be so open with him about the other side of things and… okay. Okay wow. Aahahhahah.
Melanda’s busy with Carl, and she is jealous at heart, so she just likes your text. And you don’t text again and that’s just as well because I may not have friends and I may not be unhealthily attached to my family that I secretly hate—I’m talking to you, my fecal-eyed neighbors—but I do have Melanda in my basement—and you know what, Mary Kay? I’m actually happy she’s there.
This has never been a good night for me. When I was a kid, I wrote letters to Santa telling him I’d be a good boy and wait for next Christmas, when things would be better—ha!—but now the lie of my childhood is true. I have a future with you and this really is the last shitty Christmas of my life, the darkest hour before our permanent dawn. I won’t make it worse by giving myself a body to deal with when everyone else on this rock is opening their fucking presents so I warm up some fried chicken I had in the freezer and I grab a gallon of ice cream and head downstairs. She sees me. She smells the chicken. And before I even ask, she handcuffs herself to the bed and tosses the key at the door. Such a good dog suddenly, and I enter the Whisper Room and she does a little upper body ladies’ night kind of dance on her futon.
“Oh honey, I love fried chicken!”
I hand her the tray and she tears skin off the chicken and pops it into her mouth. “Scrumptious,” she coos, as she licks her fucking fingers. I know what she’s doing, Mary Kay. She’s playing me. As if she thinks this is the first time I’ve been cornered into quarantining a dangerous, unstable person in my fucking personal space. I play right back. “Well, you seem happy.”
“You know what? I actually am happy. And omigod, I really did forget how much I loooove The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.”
“Oh yeah?”
She eats more skin. She licks her fingers. “It does make me kind of sad though…”
“Oh yeah?”
She tears the lid off the ice cream and digs her fork into the gallon. This is part of her game. “Yeah,” she says. “I feel like you think Mary Kay is the Bridget Fonda, the Annabella Sciorra. You buy her barn jacket demeanor and the whole holier-than-thou good woman thing…” You are a good woman and Melanda smacks her gums. “Sweetie, you should know that Mary Kay is just… Well, she’s not what you think.”
Poor Melanda. If only she knew that you and I had a banner day. I tell her to hold that thought and I go upstairs and make us two mugs of hot cocoa and by this time next year, I’ll be doing the same thing, making cocoa for you.
Melanda claps when I return to the Whisper Room. “Ooh, yes. I miss carbs so much.”
You’re allowed to have this one last nuclear holiday with your unchosen family, same way Melanda is allowed to have a sugar high. The steam turns her skin red and she purrs like one of my cats. “Mmmm,” she says. “Yummy.”