Exes and Ohs Read online

  “Whoa.” She pushed her chair back from the table. “The defense rests.”

  “Sorry.” I rubbed my forehead. “I might be a tad oversensitive about this whole thing.”

  She slung an arm around my shoulder. “Well, onward and upward, right? When’s the big date with Officer Studly?”

  I smiled. “Next Friday.”

  “Well, if that doesn’t work out, I could always introduce you to one of Mike’s buddies. They’re quite the motley crew.”

  “Mötley Crüe?” Mike ambled back into the kitchen. “You want me to bring Decade of Decadence next time I come over? It is the definitive metal album.”

  My roommate closed her eyes, praying for patience. “No. Please no. I was just telling Gwen about all your eligible bachelor friends.”

  “Hey! Yeah!” He took a swig off the bottle. “I should hook you up with Hooch. Hooch would dig the G-dog.”

  She dropped her head into her hands. “As God is my witness, I will never, ever miss another birth control pill.”

  Due to circumstances beyond my control, I never did go out with Officer Paul, Baywatch refugee. But this was not for lack of trying.

  Here is a list of some things I did during my work week: mainlined caffeine; read roughly twenty-five journal articles on common ADHD diagnosis errors; worked with Lucy Spitz to develop her impulse control; crunched dissertation data and cursed when all my analyses refused to yield significant results; met with Dr. Cortez and tried to explain aforementioned non-significant results; went to the gym with Cesca, where we talked smack about our advisers behind their backs.

  Here is a list of things I did not do during my work week: Obsess over Alex Coughlin. Think about Alex Coughlin. Remember who Alex Coughlin even was.

  I purged all traces of Leo and Harmony from my office. I made a point of not asking Heather Vaughn how their therapy was progressing. I screened all my calls at home and at work, which turned out to be unnecessary because no one screen-worthy called.

  But there was nothing I could do about the fact that every time I looked at my desk, memories of fervid, panting sex flooded my mind. I finally had to rearrange all the office furniture and spread paper and books over the desktop. This fooled my conscious mind, but not my body, which wanted more of what it could not have. I tried to convert my frustration with Alex into excitement about Paul, but even Cesca didn’t buy into this act.

  “You could at least feign enthusiasm,” she scolded me on Friday evening as I dragged myself to the closet.

  I gestured expansively at my wardrobe. “You see? I have nothing to wear. Nothing!”

  “Just stay away from those hideous red track pants and you’ll be fine.” She threw herself down on my bed, ripped into a box of Good & Plenty, and propped her ankles up on my pillow.

  “You look comfortable.”

  “Oh, I am.” She began to pluck all the pink candies out of the box.

  “Don’t you have any plans tonight? Aren’t you back together with the walking encyclopedia of eighties hair bands?”

  “Eh.” She shrugged. “We had a screaming match in the video store last night. He wanted to rent Road House, and when they didn’t have it, he just went nuclear. So I tried to calm him down, but you know how that goes. Long story short, they revoked our membership card, and we’re not allowed in there anymore.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “You, me, and Mike.”

  “Why me?” I yelped. “I wasn’t even there!”

  “Yeah, but our card’s in your name, and apparently you attract a bad element. Anyway, it just reminded me how immature he is. You’ve been right all along; I just use him to keep myself out of a functional—read ‘scary’—relationship that might actually go somewhere. It’s got to stop. I’m meeting him tonight to break up with him. For once and for all. After the Lakers game, of course.”

  “Lie to yourself if you must, but don’t lie to me.” I turned back to the closet and ran smack-dab into the wedding dress. “Why? Why do I keep this thing here?”

  “To torture yourself. To continue to accept blame for Dennis’s faults. To subvert your own growth.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Obvious.”

  “No problem. Listen, if you don’t want it, give it to me. I think it’s gorgeous.”

  I fingered the transparent plastic encasing the dress. “You’re breaking up with Mike, remember? No weddings for you. And anyway, this thing’s oozing bad karma. I’ll donate it to Goodwill or sell it on eBay or something.”

  She peered into the Good & Plentys in search of more pinks. “Donate it to the Cesca DiSanto Grant Foundation. Make a difference in a starving student’s life.” She suddenly got serious. “Come on, Gwen. Get it out of your closet. It’s making you guilty and crazy. Let me take care of it. That dress is worth a lot of boxes of mac and cheese.”

  “I know. I just keep thinking that if I hang on to it, I can fix whatever needs to be fixed. With me. Because on the day before I was supposed to wear this thing, my whole life turned to shit.”

  She sat up and looked at me. “It wasn’t you.”

  “I’d like to believe that, but now, with everything with Alex…it just seems to be a pattern with me.”

  “Give it to me,” she repeated. “Get it out of your life.”

  When I handed Cesca the heavy pile of silk and lace, I let go of the last remnant of faith I had in fairy-tale endings.

  She trundled it off to her room, and when she returned, she looked about a thousand times happier than I.

  “All right, missy, out with the old, in with the new. What are you going to entice Officer Paul with?” She rummaged through the tailored shirts and cardigans until she spied my sequined black tank top. “Here we go! Wear it with my black stilettos and that little red skirt you bought at Anthropologie last year.”

  “I cannot wear that,” I explained, “as I am not a prostitute.”

  “But you are a blonde. Live up to your reputation! Have more fun!”

  “You’re the devil,” I told her.

  “The devil doesn’t lend you fabulous strappy sandals,” she said. “Now loosen up and live a little. Don’t worry, you’ll be dead soon enough.”

  “Ah, I feel better already.”

  We ended up compromising—I agreed to wear high heels and too much eyeliner in exchange for the right to cover up my legs with slim black pants.

  “I want to leave something to the imagination,” I explained, dabbing on shimmery pink lip gloss.

  “Yeah, yeah, you and Susan B. Anthony.”

  “Don’t you have to go get ready for your main metal man? Drive him away for good?”

  “Yeah. Lemme borrow that little red skirt.”

  I threw the mascara tube at her. She dodged, her instincts honed by years of living with a houseful of Little League pitchers, and headed for the bathroom. I heard the water running in the shower, and the phone rang as Cesca began her customary cleansing concert.

  “Tiger Woods, y’all…It’s all good, y’all…”

  I snatched up the cordless phone in the kitchen, pressed it to my right ear, and plugged the left ear against Cesca’s a capella hip-hop.

  “Hello?”

  “Gwen?” asked an all-too-familiar male voice. “It’s Alex Coughlin.”

  I pounded on the bathroom door. “Shut up, Cesca!”

  She shut up.

  He cleared his throat. “Is this a bad time?”

  I headed back to my bedroom. “Not really. I’m just getting ready to go out.”

  He laughed a little stiffly. “Hot date?”

  “Um…” I admired the blond bombshell reflected in the mirror and the closet devoid of exorbitantly priced wedding dresses. “Yeah, kind of.”

  “Oh. Then I won’t keep you. Bye.”

  “Wait.” I turned my back on the blond bombshell. “Why’d you call?”

  “I just wanted to check on your car. Make sure you got the brakes fixed.”

  “Oh, yeah. My brakes. Well
…”

  He groaned. “I knew it. Gwen, you cannot put this off. Good brake pads are critical to—”

  “I know, I know. Life and death. I’ll do it tomorrow. Have no fear.”

  There ensued a long pause, during which I thought I could discern Leo shouting in the background.

  “So…” I took a deep, cleansing breath. “Anything else, then?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  He finally broke the silence. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

  “No one you know. It’s not a big deal. I mean, I hardly even…it’s totally casual.”

  Someone picked up an extension on Alex’s side of the connection.

  “I want another cookie!” Leo screamed, directly into my ear.

  Alex sighed. “Leo. I told you to start getting ready for bed.”

  “You’re not my mom! I wanna cookie! And I’m not going to bed. You can’t make me!”

  “Whoa.” I held the receiver away from my ear.

  “I want my mooom!” Leo slammed the receiver down, giving the dramatic gesture everything he had.

  “Ouch,” I said. “Has he been like this all day?”

  Alex sounded like he’d spent the last twelve hours digging a ditch under the blazing sun. “Put it this way: remember when we first met, and I said I wanted to have five kids?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I no longer want five kids.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help myself.

  “I have to go,” he said.

  “No, hang on. It’s been like this ever since Harmony left?”

  “The kindergarten production of Apocalypse Now? Yes.”

  “I’m never, ever goin’ to bed as long as I live,” Leo howled in the background. “Buy me a bunny!”

  “Aw, the special bond between father and son.”

  “Don’t start with that,” he warned. “I didn’t know what to expect from fatherhood, I admit that. I thought I’d go fishing with my kids. Build birdhouses. Make dioramas and papier-mâché models of the planets.”

  “What? You guys haven’t built any birdhouses yet?” I asked innocently. “How’s the apple pie situation?”

  “Let me tell you something: those stupid parenting books aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. Where’s the chapter on psychotic temper tantrums?” He did not seem to be seeing the humorous side of all this. “My God. How can one tiny person have so much lung power? How does he have room for any other internal organs? He’s one big rampaging lung. Are they all like this?”

  “Children? Yeah, pretty much.”

  “Well, they should put that in the books.”

  Leo howled away in the background. “I want Mommy! When’s Mommy coming home?”

  I glanced at my alarm clock. Ten minutes until Officer Paul knocked on my door. And I still had to paint my toenails. Time to get off the phone and get back to my life. Caterwauling five-year-olds and ex-lovers not included. Alex was a dad now; let him figure out how to parent. This wasn’t even remotely my problem.

  And yet.

  “Do you need any help?” I heard myself asking.

  “No. I have everything under control.”

  Leo started wailing like an ambulance racing down Wilshire Boulevard.

  “It doesn’t sound like everything’s under control.” I decided to multitask, grabbing a bottle of polish and hunkering down on the bed with the phone wedged between my shoulder and my ear. “Have you tried giving him a time-out?”

  “What’s a time-out?”

  “Oh my God. I thought you said you were reading up on this.”

  “I am. Listen, I’ll figure it out. If I can handle the bottom dropping out of the Asian market, I can handle this.”

  “If you say so. But just bear in mind—”

  “I told you—I don’t need help.”

  “Will you knock it off? You know the Asian market, I know preschoolers.” I shifted my weight, the Revlon bottle tipped onto the mattress, and pink frost oozed everywhere. I swore under my breath, then resumed my crash course in child development. “The most important thing is to…”

  I broke off, wincing, as I heard a door slam with terrific force on the other end of the line.

  “Alex?”

  “Yeah, hang on.”

  A rattling sound, a series of hollow poundings, then Alex said, “He’s locked himself in the bathroom. I better go.”

  I heard Leo’s muffled voice yell, “I’m never, ever coming out,” and then what sounded like the bathtub faucet running.

  “Leo? Leo, open this door!”

  “Nuh-uh! You’re not the boss of me.”

  “Are you sure you’ll be okay over there?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he snapped. “Just as long as—”

  The bathroom faucet stopped and Leo called, “I’m running away again. I’m gonna fly off the roof. Like Fider-Man!”

  “Don’t you dare open that window.” Alex sounded surprisingly calm for someone facing a locked door and a small child hell-bent on air travel. “Come out of there immediately. Do you hear me?”

  No response from Leo. I know, because I held my breath and waited.

  Alex muttered something I didn’t catch.

  “What? Did you get the door open?” I demanded.

  “No. But I think I hear the window opening in there.”

  “Up, up, and awaaay!” Leo crowed.

  I tossed the phone on the bed and ran for the door.

  17

  A few illegally run red lights later, I arrived at Harmony’s house. Light blazed through all the open windows, and the marble koi in the driveway fountain sported the wilted paper crown that Leo had worn last week. A vague hint of jasmine wafted through the air. If it weren’t for the eerie silence, I would’ve thought there was a party going on.

  I rang the doorbell. After two full choruses of “Frère Jacques,” a very fed-up Alex appeared, greeting me with, “I told you, I don’t need any help. I have everything under control.”

  “Obviously.” I peered over his shoulder to the foyer, which looked like a war-torn Toys “R” Us. Robots and dump trucks and what appeared to be Uno cards were confettied across the floor and up the stairs. I could hear water sloshing, along with the steady rhythm of someone repeatedly opening a door, then slamming it shut with all possible force.

  Alex closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “That kid. Is driving. Me crazy.”

  “What happened? Did you get him out of the bathroom?”

  He started up the stairs and beckoned for me to follow. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? He didn’t…I mean, you stopped him before he jumped, right?”

  He turned around, smiling grimly. “The flight risk has been neutralized. I’ll show you.”

  The intervaled door-slamming ceased when we hit the landing. I trailed behind Alex down the hall to the bathroom door. Or, at least, to what had once been the bathroom door. The doorframe now sported several ugly gashes, empty hinges, and no door. The interior was a disaster area of wet towels, child-size clothes, slippery tile, and a bathtub overflowing with bubbles. The stench of jasmine was overpowering.

  I gave him a thumbs-up. “Hey, good for you. How’d you get the hinges off? Did you find a screwdriver?”

  “Harmony has no screwdriver. No screwdriver, no fire extinguisher, no list of emergency contacts. As far as I can tell, she doesn’t even have a flashlight.”

  “A situation that you plan to rectify in the near future,” I predicted.

  He clenched his jaw. “Along with a lecture series on the importance of home safety.”

  “Boy, am I ever sorry I’m going to miss that.” I paused. “So what’s with the door slamming?”

  He examined the fresh gouges in the wood. “That would be the work of my son. My firstborn and, if there is a God, my only son.”

  I examined the disemboweled doorframe. “So what finally happened?”

  “As you can see, the perp stripped na
ked and dumped all of Harmony’s perfume into the tub, along with an entire bottle of shampoo. He then neglected to turn off the faucet and fled onto the roof.”

  “The roof? Still naked?”

  He nodded. “Probably for the best. Bare feet gave him extra traction on the shingles.”

  “And meanwhile, you were…”

  “Trying to figure out how to pick a lock that rusted over in nineteen eighty-five and using my car key to take the hinges apart.” He reached into his pocket and showed me the gnarled, paint-stained remains of his Audi key. “I would have climbed onto the roof through the French doors in Harmony’s balcony, but of course, those were painted shut.”

  “But you did get him down.”

  “Eventually. I had to climb out there next to him. We had an illuminating little chat about the differences between Spider-Man and real life.”

  “And he saw your point and came inside?”

  “Nah. I bribed him.”

  I laughed. “What’d you have to give him?”

  “I promised him waffles before he went to bed. Apparently, he loves them, and Harmony refuses to contaminate her house with Eggos.” He shrugged. “But then I couldn’t deliver, and that’s why he’s slamming the door.”

  Right on cue, a door slam echoed down the hall.

  “Knock it off!” Alex yelled.

  “I hate you!” Leo yelled back.

  Norman Rockwell, here we come.

  “So now what?” I asked.

  “I did promise him, so I guess I better whip up some waffles.” He exhaled loudly. “There must be a recipe in one of the cookbooks downstairs. I understand some sort of hot iron is involved, but after that, I’m out.”

  We both winced as a door slam rattled the windows.

  “Tell you what,” I said. “Give me directions to the nearest grocery store, and I’ll pick up some waffles for the kid.”

  His gaze sharpened. “You said you had a date.”

  I flushed. “Yeah. That ended up not happening.”

  “Why?”

  The truth of the matter was that I had fled the apartment while Cesca was still in the shower, leaving her a Post-it explaining that a young life was on the line and asking her to make my excuses to Officer Paul. Cowardly? Yes. Incredibly stupid? Yes again. I’d stood up a perfectly chiseled hunk of manhood in favor of a little boy who couldn’t even print his own name. And I’d have to spend tomorrow morning listening to Cesca (along with Mike, most likely) rant and rave about whatever happened to common courtesy.