Perfect Fifths (5 page)

"I'm holding," Garanimals explains, gesturing with her cell phone.

"I had no idea," Jessica deadpans before facing forward again.

Garanimals pokes her in the shoulder blade. "You got a better shot of solving your problem on the phone."

"Really?"

"The phone number's on your boarding pass." Garanimals holds up a finger, listens for a moment. "Ooh!

I think I've got somebody," she says before frowning. "Nope.

Still holding." A sigh. "I have a friend who works for the airline. She says the phone is the faster, better way to go. Though she's not such a good friend that she can get me the hell out of coach. The only Coach that makes me happy is a five-hundred-dollar purse, ya know what I'm saying?"

Jessica smiles weakly. 'Then why do you bother with the line?"

Garanimals tips her head back and cackles, revealing silver fillings in her back molars. "I'm not taking any chances. 'Cause the one time I missed my connection and I didn't get on this line, I was told that I could only solve my customer service problem if I got on this line.

Catch-22, ya know what I'm saying?"

"Oh," Jessica replies, unzipping the bag that holds her phone.

The fan club president and VP (designated as such by their personalized baseball caps) are arguing with the Clear Sky customer service representatives at the desk.

"This is not our problem! This is your problem! And it's gonna be an ever-bigger problem for you if you can't get all twenty of us there before the curtain goes up tonight!"

Meanwhile, the eighteen members without titles have cell phones pressed to their ears, hoping to talk to someone, anyone, who can get them on the next flight to

Vegas. Few speak; most commiserate with huffs and upthrown hands as they endure the interminable hold that has been put on them by the Clear Sky automated

customer service system. They are stuck in both virtual and real-life standstills.

Jessica fumbles around inside her bag, thinking, as she always does when she's looking for something inside this bag—usually her cell phone, a stick of gum, or a pen—that there are too many pockets within pockets. Multiple options has always been a problem for Jessica, in luggage and in life. She imagines that this

pockets-within-pockets design is meant to make things more convenient for the traveler, as it's possible to designate a specific pocket for each and every item one could possibly need on the go. But Jessica has never had the inclination to devise such an organizational system, though it would hardly take that much time to assign
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the slanty side pocket on the left FOR GUM ONLY, or those skinny tubular pockets FOR PENS

ONLY, especially in the case of the latter, when it's obvious that those pockets are indeed meant FOR PENS ONLY because nothing else would fit inside them. But no, she's never bothered to put anything in a specific place, choosing instead to stuff items in the bag at random, which always results in moments like this, when she is pulling out an unusable tampon half emancipated from its protective paper wrapper, a bottle of generic medicinal-smelling hand sanitizer, a fossilized trick-or-treat-size Baby Ruth bar ... everything but the cell phone she's looking for. She usually curses the pockets, but today she's grateful for them, if only because contemplating the pockets helped waste brain time that might have been devoted to other subjects.

"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.

"Urn, 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.

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"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
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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,
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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