Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [65]
I was glad I didn’t have to go anywhere. My eyes looked like two poached eggs, my nose was as big and red as if I’d been on the Johnnie Walker diet for fifteen years, and I was sneezing with enough force to power a small town. I was ready to settle in for a solitary night of reading and pajamas when the phone rang.
“Hello,” I answered. My head felt like it was filled with cement.
“Dear girl, you sound terrible. Mind if I come over and bring a hug?”
“Aren’t you going to Frank’s house?” Frank Sinatra was having a pre-event cocktail party, and a gang of them would leave together from there.
“I’d like to see you first. I’m on my way.”
I lugged myself to the bathroom mirror and splashed my face. Trying to pretty myself up was pointless. I looked like hell on a snack cracker. I rubbed some lotion on my hands and slogged back to the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of Coke, and went to pop it with an opener. But my hands were slick from the lotion, and the bottle slipped from my fingers and broke on the ceramic tile floor, splashing Coke everywhere. What a mess!
I’d just finished picking up the broken glass when the house phone rang. It was the doorman, announcing Cary. It felt as if I had taken only a couple of steps toward the kitchen to finish cleaning up when Cary knocked. Well, the spill will have to wait, I thought as I did an about-face and let him in. He was wearing a jet-black tuxedo, and he was just plain shimmering with elegance.
“Hello, dear girl. My goodness. You feel awful, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Kerchoo.
“Here.” He gave me a bottle of champagne.
“How sweet. I don’t think I should drink with a cold, but I’ll get you a glass.”
“No, no. Save it for another time.”
“Okay.” I walked to the fridge and put it in. “Do you want a Coke?”
“Sure,” he said, taking off his jacket and sitting back on the couch.
I filled two large glasses, sidestepped the spill, and was steps away from Cary when . . .
Klunk.
Cary had taken off his shoes and I stumbled over them, thus drenching that crisp, perfect, ever-so-white tuxedo shirt with a large glass of the Real Thing.
I simply turned to a pillar of salt. Cary reacted the way movie cowboys do when they’ve been shot: first startled, then touching the wetness where the bullet pierced through the heart. He was in shock and rapidly cycling through the stages of grief: anger, denial, bargaining, and then finally . . . acceptance.
“I—you—I . . . oh dear God.” Then he snapped out of his confusion and whisked off his shirt.
“I’m sorry,” I coughed, and fought off an urgent need to start bawling. “Here, I’ll take care of it.” I held out my hand. He regarded me with supreme mistrust. “No, really, I can fix it.”
What would Mom do? That is what I asked myself. First she would remain calm. And she would make everyone else remain calm. So I told Cary, “Please remain calm.” And I said it in a very official voice.
“I’m calm!” he yapped in a high pitch that sounded like a coyote.
Cold-water-cold-water-cold-water. Cold water always fixes everything. I ran the shirt under cold water. Most of the color of the cola seemed to come out. Iron. Now we iron. I heaved the ironing board out of the closet and plugged in the iron. I wrung the shirt out in the sink, then laid it out on the ironing board. So far so good. I exhaled and set the iron down on the shirt. I tried to slide it forward but it wouldn’t move. It gurgled and hissed. Oh, I’d forgotten to put water in it. I lifted the iron and the shirt stuck fast to it. I peeled the shirt off and screamed. The iron had secreted a gooey brown muck onto the shirt in the shape of the iron.
This seemed like a perfectly good time to regress into childhood. I ran into the living room and barricaded myself between the wall and the television console.
“Dyan, what on earth—”
“Your shirt is dead. I killed it.”
“Dyan!