Will You Won't You Want Me?: A Novel (12 page)

Marjorie froze. “Excuse me?”

“Heard you guys mixed it up something ugly night before last at DIRT.”

“Who told you that?”

“So it’s true?”

“It’s none of your fucking business.
Who told you that?
”

“Lighten up, Ice Queen. That’s what you get for whoring. Guess I was a year too early that New Year’s Eve. You were still uppity. Bet you’d feel lucky to have me now.”

It took every ounce of Marjorie’s will not to grab the halogen lamp and beat Brian senseless with it. “‘Lucky’ isn’t the word that comes to mind. Anyway, don’t believe everything you hear. Like I’d go home with Mac.” She snorted.

“Like you would. Like you
did.
Would have thought even you knew better.”

Marjorie’s laugh bordered on maniacal. “Seriously, Brian, as a last favor, now that we’re getting out of each other’s hair for good, tell me who told you that.”

He shrugged. “I never minded you that much. You just need to learn to be more laid-back … like me. Say it and I’ll tell you.”

“Say what?”

“That you’ll try to be more like me.”

“Are you serious?” She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming.

“As a heart attack.”

She sighed. What pride did she have left? “Fine: I want to be more like you.”

“You’ll try…”

“I’ll try.”

“Great.” He stepped toward the front door.

“Wait! Who told you that rumor about me and Mac?”

“No one.”

“What?”

“Someone told Vera. No clue who. But hey! Have a nice fucking life,
Madgesty.
”

Marjorie snapped. She stormed toward him, got in his face and shouted: “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!” He froze, stunned, as she ripped the water glass from his hand. “This is my glass, you fat piece of shit. I just pray that one day Vera wises up and leaves you to die alone.”

“I’m not the one who’s alone, baby,” Brian snarled, as he slipped out the door. “Enjoy whoring!” The tumbler hit the wall and shattered, missing him by inches.

Now
this
was rock bottom.

14

Fred made good on her promise and showed up at Marjorie’s on moving day with her fellow band members: The bassist, Brandon, and drummer, Andy, wore matching slouchy shoulders, early Bieber hair, and chain belts. One of them had a tattoo of
Dennis the Menace
on his forearm, but which was anyone’s guess. The saxophonist, Elmo, was the oldest at twenty-two, and wore a patchy beard to prove it. He played leader, admonishing the others for carrying the mattress incorrectly and not bending their knees when picking up heavy boxes. (As an out-of-work musician, he’d worked plenty of manual labor gigs.)

Marjorie had requisite pizza on hand and thanked the guys every thirty seconds until Elmo asked her to stop. “It’s no problem. Fred told us you’re broke. Been there.”

Injured pride aside, Marjorie was grateful—even after one box broke open, revealing a collection of old Taylor Swift CDs, and the guys ribbed her.

After Brian left, she had stood, staring at the glass shards, and weighed her options. She could plot ways to murder and humiliate Vera’s boyfriend (perhaps not in that order) or she could get on with her life. A third option was to die of embarrassment now that the Mac indiscretion was public knowledge. That was still pending.

The band’s van was as rusted and windowless as Marjorie had expected, needing only a mattress and portable lava lamp to complete the 1970s “love shack” picture. Unspeakable fluids surely lurked below the paint-stained tarp on its floor. Some company’s former logo was poorly painted over on the exterior.

Marjorie loitered beside Fred on the sidewalk, watching the boys load up the last of her stuff.

“How did that tutoring thing go, by the way?” asked the pixie. “Thank you so much! You saved me!”

“Oh, it was no problem.”

“Were they mad? That I screwed up and can’t do that time slot, I mean?”

“No, not at all,” evaded Marjorie. “They found a solution.”

“Okay, cool. Cause I actually have too many tutees right now as it is.”

Changing the subject, Marjorie said, “So, are you gonna paint the name of your band on the side of the van?”

“Oh, we have. Many,
many
times. But we keep changing it. We’ve pledged to stop until we keep a name for at least three months.”

“What are you called now?”

“The House Hunters.”

“You play house music?”

The pixie’s mouth dropped open. “Shit!” She flopped down onto the curb, nearly squashing a European couple’s off-the-leash pug. “Ugh! Guys! We have to switch the name again! Damn.
House.
” Behind wraparound sunglasses, the dog’s owners rolled their eyes.
Stupid Americans.

Fred wore another eclectic outfit: Her black tank top was tucked into an ankle-length lace skirt with a wide leather belt and sandals so basic that Jesus might have rocked them. A red-and-black scarf encircling her neck evoked
Carmen.

Marjorie smiled. Maybe she was sleep deprived, but this quirky girl was growing on her. She sat beside Fred. “What else has the band been called?”

“Oh, a bazillion things: the Red Plastic Cups, Filthy River, Filthier River, Filthiest River,
The
Filthiest River, the Movers, the Shakers, Pippi West End—”

“‘Pippi West End?’”

“It’s my stripper name: you know, the name of your first pet plus the street you were born on.”

“You named your band after—?” Marjorie snorted, then burst into laughter. “I’m sorry. I’m slaphappy. I haven’t slept. It’s not you … ha!”

Fred began to giggle too. “Ha! How high must these guys have been to say yes?” The girls dissolved into hysterics and soon had tears streaming down their faces.

The boys stood by the van, hands on their hips. “If anyone cares, we’re done,” said Elmo.

“Women,” grunted Andy. Or maybe Brandon.

“Sorry!” Marjorie stood, wiping renegade mascara from below her eyes. “I know you said to stop saying it, but thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Elmo blushed, then ducked into the driver’s seat; his cohorts slid in on the passenger side. “Meet you there.” Pulling away, he waved without looking back.

“There goes your chariot,” said Marjorie to Fred. “You want to head back to Brooklyn on the train with me? I just need to grab my bag and leave the keys.”

The apartment was now truly empty; even the white cable cord dangling from the wall had lost its sense of purpose. She set her keys on the kitchen counter.

“This must be weird for you,” said Fred.

Marjorie pulled her hair back, let it drop; she took a steadying breath. “It—just happened really quickly.”

“One day your life is one thing—”

“And the next you’re living with Pippi West End.”

Marjorie closed the door forever on apartment 2B.

15

The text barrage from Mac began later that day:

Madgesty. It’s your friendly neighborhood hedonist.

Weird to see you in Bklyn on Mon. Good weird.

You seemed mad.

Do I get a chance to explain?

Marjorie deleted each message without replying.

They kept coming.

Over July 4th, she could practically smell the cocoa butter, grilled corn, and singed firecrackers that permeated the air at the Schulmans’ Montauk house. She, Vera, and Pickles had celebrated there annually since they were kids. She tried not to feel hurt when no invitation arrived, but the fireworks display on the East River viewed from Fred’s tar roof seemed like a sad replacement. That’s when those Taylor Swift CDs came in handy.

Mac’s texts—surely sent from the Hamptons too—did not help. As Marjorie unpacked, she endured
bing!
after
bing!
until the noise polluted her sleep, conjuring anxiety dreams about timed pop quizzes for which she was unprepared.

Finally, she turned off her ringer and missed several calls from her mother, who became hysterical. (Though Barbara Plum had advocated moving to Brooklyn, she hadn’t visited the borough in twenty years. Despite countless
New York Times
articles to the contrary, she envisioned a neighborhood akin to Rikers Island prison.) Once she reached Marjorie, she demanded the ringer stay on.

So the texts continued:

C’mon. Does 15 years mean nothing to u?

Tina Fey or Amy Poehler? Quick. Choose.

U know u love me. Deep down underneath all that anger.

Don’t u want your yellow panties back at least?

I said
panties.
Aren’t u gonna tell me that’s creepy?

Did you fall down a manhole? That happens sometimes.

U know it was fate that we ran into each other in Bklyn, right?

I have syphilis.

Fine, I don’t have syphilis. But when someone says that, u really should call. It’s your health.

I’m being pathetic for u. Have u ever known me to act this way?

Is this getting old yet? Just fucking text me back.

By Friday afternoon, Marjorie was considering throwing her phone out the window.

Fred was all for it. She knocked on Marjorie’s door, ostensibly to offer a Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray soda, even though she knew nobody drank that besides her and some geriatric men in Boca Raton. She was clearly starting to worry: Who was this stalker driving her new friend bonkers? Marjorie offered a skeletal explanation about longtime friendship, a trust-fund-fueled sense of entitlement, the bad idea, her—abridged to sound less pathetic—request for a job.

Later, she was admiring her newly set-up room (faded sheets, well-loved books, a life reassembled, the pretense of being herself again), when another text arrived:

Sitting in DIRT’S back office, thinking of u.

It was one too many. Marjorie grabbed her phone and typed furiously:

Unsubscribe.

You’re alive!

UNSUBSCRIBE.

You can’t unsubscribe. This isn’t SPAM.

Seems like junk to me.

Madgesty, c’mon.

UNSUBSCRIBE.

Madge. That isn’t going to make me stop.

This is NOT some grand gesture, Mac. it’s an invasion of my fucking privacy. I said stop it! RESPECT that!

There was a long pause. On one end of the conversation, a young man sat at the dining table he never used (not in DIRT’s office at all), crouched like
The Thinker
and pulling fretfully at his ear. On the other, a young woman, still in her pajamas and nighttime nerd glasses, held her breath and wondered if she’d gone too far. Or just far enough.

Mac sighed. He couldn’t see a way to win this one:

Fine.

And it was over. Marjorie felt relieved, but empty too like a sticky-fingered kid at a birthday party, watching the last balloon float up and away. She was officially untethered. She climbed into the bed—a Design Within Reach hand-me-down from her parents—and closed her eyes.

Moments later, sensing a presence, she opened one eye and found Fred peering in from the doorway: “Oh, good. You’re up!”

“Fred?”

“Yes?”

“Why are you watching me sleep?”

“I have a special power that makes people do things when I stare.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Are you or are you not awake because I wanted you to be?” The pixie bounded in and crossed to the window, overlooking Roberta’s garden patch. “Looks like more tomatoes are coming in. Yum.”

“Roberta shares them?”

“Nope.”

“So, what? You steal her tomatoes?”

“Who are you? The produce police? It’s our thing: I steal the tomatoes, she accuses me, I act indignant, she shakes her fist and threatens to set up cameras. It’s our shtick!” Fred shimmied, as if jazz hands were another facet of their cabaret show.

Marjorie shook her head. “You’re crazy.”

“Lucky for you, I take my antipsychotics—sporadically.”

Fred perched at the end of Marjorie’s bed, her feet dangling a foot above the floor.

“Speaking of which, I couldn’t help but notice the text-free silence.”

“There will be no more texts.” Marjorie laid a palm across her forehead.

“You don’t seem happy about that.”

Staving off tears, Marjorie inhaled a rattled breath. “I’m fine. It’s just PMS.”

A veteran gym class dodger, Fred knew a “women’s issues” lie when she heard one. “That’s it! I’ve made a decision!”

“About your band name?”

“You mean the Laundry Baskets?”

“
The Laundry Baskets
?”

“Forget that. No, about tonight. We’re having a party.”

Marjorie groaned and fell back against the headboard. “Fred, no. I mean, you should totally have a party. But count me out. I’m so tired and disgusting. I’m getting a pimple on my chin, and I’m small talk deficient. What would I tell people?”

“You’re not disgusting! At least you won’t be once you shower. Seriously. You should bathe. I can’t let you spend another night listening to Jackson Browne. While I approve of your choice of depressing music, the wallowing has to end. Anyway, my friends are all ‘between jobs.’”

“Yeah, but I don’t have some artistic passion either.”

“Let’s make one up—like you’re really into clowning.”

“Oh, my God.” Marjorie buried her face in a weathered throw pillow.

“C’mon! I want to celebrate you moving in!”

Marjorie was touched. “That’s so sweet of you, but please,” she pleaded, “I don’t feel celebratable.”

“Fine. It’ll be a laid-back get-together. We won’t celebrate you or anything else. We’ll watch C-SPAN and get bummed; we’ll watch Fox News and get
really
bummed.”

Marjorie mustered a weak smile. “Fine. What can I do to help?”

“Nothing. Elmo and I already stocked the van at some budget store in Chinatown. I hope you like lychee gummy candies and dried squid snacks!” Fred had never planned to take no for an answer. “Now go
shower
—notice the emphasis on that! Not to sound like your mom, or
my
mom, but you should go outside. Court Street is super-duper cute. Get a special trinket for your room to symbolize your fresh start! And, if it makes you feel better, get me some biscotti too. Just kidding. Sort of.”