Up & Out - Ariella Papa [51]
“Rebecca, what the hell is going on? Are you okay?”
I can’t stop crying. Then the bell rings and I know it’s my food. I get up to buzz the guy in, but Tommy stops me.
“It’s okay, I got it.” I try to get my wallet, but Tommy runs to the door. I hear him talking to the delivery guy in the hall and he comes back into the living room. I am trying to pull myself together.
“Um, Rebecca, can you float me five dollars?” I start laughing, the hysterical kind of laughter you have when you’ve been crying too much. I finally get my wallet and toss it to him.
“Just take the money out of there,” I say. “Don’t pay for my pizza.”
He comes back in and gives me change. I wipe my eyes and open up my soup. I am a little bit out of breath. Tommy stares at me.
“Aren’t you going to watch the rest of the movie?”
“Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“It’s nothing,” I say. I want to forget it ever happened.
“Nothing. One minute you’re sitting here normal, as normal as you can be, and the next you’re crying. What happened? It’s like fucking science fiction.”
I remember the alien girl he said he would run off with, but I don’t mention it. I just shrug.
“I don’t know, maybe I’m PMS-ing.” Normally any mention of the monthly condition I have would quiet him, but Tom Hanks must have given him some bizarre courage. It was terrifying in a way, as if someone had replaced my ignorant gym teacher with a bizarre female teacher who knew that having my period wasn’t an excuse not to play volleyball.
“If I ever tried to suggest something like that you would tear me a new one.” I hate that expression and he knows it. “What’s going on?”
“Esme lost her glasses.” He swallows and looks confused.
“Is this the plot or something? You want me to help you figure out how she finds them?” In days of yore, when the ratings were high, before we had to jump the shark in our relationship, Tommy used to help me come up with ideas for the sixty-second Esme shorts I created. He was really tied to her, too. Even though we had already broken up when I found out we were turning her into a show, I knew he was really proud. Sometimes I felt like she was our kid. I got custody, but now I had been a bad parent and social services had come to take her away. Except it was an evil force named Delores who was now going to raise her. I start bawling again.
“Jesus, Rebecca. I’ll give you a hand.”
“It’s not a plot. She lost her glasses.”
“I don’t get it.”
“No more glasses. Maybe she’ll get contacts. I don’t know.”
“What?” He is about to give up.
“The fucking peanut that I work for doesn’t want Esme to wear glasses anymore. It’s not sexy enough.”
“She’s what? All of twelve?”
“Yeah. Glasses are not going to sell ad time.”
“Jeez.” He runs a hand through his hair. There was the reason I could never get pissed and not have Tommy in my life. Whatever went on between us, somehow he always understood the things that were important to me.
I turn the movie back on, eat a couple of slices of my pizza and give him the other two.
Kathy calls me at work the next day. As soon as I hear her voice, I get anxious about finding a way to get off the phone. That feeling is immediately followed by guilt and then defiance. I am making a lot more than $300 a week, but it’s not worth all the stress. If one of my best friends calls, I am damn well going to talk to her.
Kathy is hot by most standards, but the thing that makes her the most striking is the funky-colored glasses she always wears. It’s her trademark and it became Esmes’s. I am envious that she had an object so tied to her identity. She brought me to Selima for the first time, and it was with her that I finally found a pair of glasses that I liked.
If anyone else was going to feel my pain it was Kathy. I tell her the whole sordid tale. When I finish she waits for a long time before speaking.
“That just sends the worst kind of message. If I was a little girl and feeling dorky enough I would love to see