My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [70]
In my mind, culture is one of the building blocks of class. And I admit my logic could be specious at best, but that’s what’s guiding me.
“This couldn’t have worked out better. I’m so happy for you.”
“The thing is, there’s one problem. I want to look my best at the event, which means I have to keep this stupid hair on all summer.”
“Hey, sorry I missed your call last week. I was out having an adventure.” I’m in the kitchen, on the phone by the counter.
“Adventure? What kind? You weren’t out chasing down the homeless again, were you?” Angie sounds awfully concerned on the other end of the line.
I let out an exasperated sigh. “Why do you people always assume the worst of me?”
“Because it’s usually true?” Angie teases.
“Well, then maybe that guy shouldn’t have flipped me off when I told him if he’s allowed to throw my garbage around the alley, then I’m allowed to hit him with my car.138 And it only happened once,” I concede.
“If you ever move to the burbs, you realize the homeowners’ association will frown on your attempts to run over children with your riding mower.”
“Then they should stay off my lawn. Anyway, I had an adventure!”
“Are you going to tell me about your adventure, or shall I just turn on the news?” Angie asks.
“No, no, it was nothing like that.” Seriously, you threaten one vagrant with vehicular manslaughter, and suddenly everyone thinks YOU’RE the jerk. “Last week Gina and I went up to Little India on Devon.”
“Cool! You plan to ditch the Lacostes for saris?” Actually, saris come in the most gorgeous fabrics, and if I could figure out how to style a preppy outfit out of one, I would.
“Not exactly. Whenever it gets warm out, Gina goes up there to get a henna tattoo. And then she gets Indian food afterward. She invited me to join her because she thought it sounded cultural. But I told her, ‘I’d love to join you but I hate Indian food.’ And then I thought about the whole ‘diving in’ business and said, ‘Although I’m not a hundred percent sure I’ve ever even had Indian food.’ ”
“Wait a minute. I remember when Fletch went through an Indian-food phase last year. You kept bitching about how your downstairs smelled like grad-school housing.”
“Heh, I completely forgot! You’re right. Hey, you’re a really good listener.” Last year Fletch bought a bunch of Indian simmer sauces at Trader Joe’s because he got on this whole “I’m going to bring my lunch to work” thing. He kept taking these sauces and trying to create dishes around them. Except he’s not familiar enough with the cuisine to improvise anything, and nothing he produced was edible. I tried to tell him it was terrible but he insisted, “No, it’s fine,” and a few days later I caught him sneaking the leftovers into the garbage disposal. We had a little come-to-Jesus meetin’ about it, and I made him promise never to cook Indian again or else I’d make him eat the results.
“Anyway, before we even got to the restaurant, we stopped in this salon so Gina could get hennaed, which was fascinating. The girl did this whole elaborate design on Gina’s shoulder with lots of dots and paisleys. She did it completely freehand, and it was beautiful. I wanted one, but I couldn’t figure out a place on me to have it done. Not so much my style. But I figured, hey, I’m here, I should do something, so I decided on threading.”
“Remind me what that is. Central Michigan’s not exactly the threading capital of the world.”
“Most people say it’s an ancient technique using two twisted pieces of string to remove hair in lieu of tweezing or waxing. And yet I maintain it’s an Indian torture device. Remember those horrible Epilady things from about fifteen years ago that ripped each individual hair out from the root?”
“I’m shuddering just thinking about it. The Epilady was as bad as childbirth.” She corrects herself. “No, worse; I had drugs during my C-sections.”
“With threading, instead of tearing out a tiny strip of hair