Chapter 1
Chapter One
T he ass stood in the middle of the road, munching on a tuft of grass poking out of the dirt. It lifted its head and stared at us, but never stopped chewing.
Ralph held up his hands in a gesture of peace. “It looks wild.”
“It’s not wild,” I hissed. “Probably.” Janet and I had already stopped. That was on purpose. If the creature charged, it would get Ralph first. I wondered if farm animals could get rabies.
“What do we do?” Ralph averted his gaze, as if making eye contact would set the beast off.
“Turn around and go home.” Janet had been mopey since we left.
“We’re not going home.” I pointed past the ass, where a big red barn loomed on the horizon. “We’re almost there.”
It was the site of our twentieth high school reunion, a ranch in Chuluota, land of cow gates, pickup trucks, and banjo players. Possibly albino ones. There was definitely going to be a lot of bullshit. And not just the kind that comes out of the animals’ butts.
“I don’t even want to go to this stupid thing.” Janet was growing more irritated by the second. Whenever Janet got annoyed, her left eye would twitch, then wink involuntarily. It was kind of hilarious in the right situation. Sometimes I liked to provoke her just so I could watch. But this was not the right situation. I needed Janet to be in a receptive mood for my plan to work.
“One of us should shoo it,” Ralph offered.
“Shoo it?”
“You know, shoo.” Ralph made a shooing motion with his hand to illustrate the technique.
“It’s too hot for this.” Janet winked.
She was right. The temperature was ninety degrees and rising. The humidity made the air feel like a sauna in hell. My freshly waxed armpits dripped sweat like a faucet.
You’re probably wondering about that plan I mentioned. The plan, simply, was to hook Janet up. I’ll leave the specifics of the hooking and the upping to your imagination.
“We’ll just go around it,” I said. I refused to be deterred.
To our left was a ditch filled with stale, murky water. Likely chock full of snakes and alligators. It’s a well-known fact that any standing water in the state of Florida contains at least one creature or thing you don’t want biting you, slithering on you, or swimming up your nose.
On the right, barbed wire lined an overgrown pasture. Cows were grazing. And mooing. Possibly laughing. The smell of fresh manure wafted in on the breeze. A hand painted sign warned, “Trespassers Will Be Shot!”
Getting shot seemed like it would be less painful than getting eaten by an alligator, so we crept along the fence to the right, giving the ass a wide berth. It still hadn’t moved, other than the chewing, and some occasional pooping.
“Is that foam on its mouth?” Ralph pointed at the ass.
“That’s not foam, it’s drool.” Truthfully, from a distance, I couldn’t tell.
Now, some might say hooking up at a high school reunion is a bad idea. In fact, Ralph said that exactly. So did my hairdresser and the cashier at Publix. I, however, thought it was a good idea. A great idea. So that’s what we were there to do.
“Mary, you don’t have to do this.” Janet planted her cowgirl boots firmly in the road, arms crossed, eye winking.
“Oh, but I do.” You see, I knew Janet better than she knew herself. We had been best friends since the first grade. Sleepovers. Summer camps. Girl scouts. We’d had each other’s backs through thick and thin. But being friends with Janet was like riding a roller coaster with backward flips and loop-d-loops. It was exhausting.
“You need a distraction,” I said. “Don’t you want to see all our friends?”
“I didn’t have many friends,” Janet replied. She looked like a toddler who dropped her ice cream cone.
“I didn’t have any friends,” said Ralph.
You see, if you stop and think about it, high school reunions are the perfect place for a hookup. With divorce rates what they are, statistically speaking, at least half the people there would be single, damaged, and emotionally vulnerable. The ones who were still married, with kids and jobs and real responsibilities and stuff, were too busy or too tired to show up. It really narrowed the field.
The ass looked back up and we all froze, backs pressed against the barbed wire. It stared at us, still chewing and drooling. Possibly foaming. Definitely pooping some more.
“How is it even scientifically possible to produce that much crap?” Ralph whispered.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Ask Justin Bieber.”
“Hey, I like Justin Bieber.” Janet winked again.
“Exactly.”
I should also explain why Janet needed a hook-up. There were many reasons. But the latest one happened the week before, when she caught her boyfriend Stan cheating on her with some girl from work. I never liked Stan. If Janet would have listened to me, she never would’ve started dating him. But Janet didn’t listen to me. With men, she never does.
So of course “Stanet” had ended in a train wreck. Just like I knew it would. And not just a little train wreck. A big train wreck. Like one of those trains carrying barrels of toxic waste flew off the tracks, flipped over a bunch of times, and then exploded in a mushroom cloud. And then the people in the little town down the river glowed neon green for the next hundred years.
The past few weeks had been especially brutal. Every time Janet got her heart broken, it was the same thing. Binge watching Bachelor show reruns. Random teary outbursts. Tubs of rum raisin ice cream, spiked with real rum. She wouldn’t snap out of it until she met someone new. Hence Operation Hook-Up-Janet.
“Hurry, it’s distracted.” The ass bent down for another bite and we scurried past it.
With the ass behind us, we continued down the road. We didn’t make it far before Janet pointed at the thunderclouds forming in the distance. “I should go back and move my car before it rains.”
Parking for the reunion was in a muddy field a few hundred yards from the ranch gates. That’s why we had to trudge down the dirt road, in the heat, across ass infested territory. And Janet drove a Toyota Prius, which I was pretty sure didn’t come standard with four-wheel drive for off roading.
I looked at the gathering storm clouds and then at my watch. It was getting late. All the best hook-up candidates were going to be taken if we didn’t hurry. “Your car’s going to be fine,” I said. Worst case, Ralph and I would get an Uber.
By that point, we had reached the big iron gates to the ranch. A sign read, Circle H. “What do you think the H stands for?” I used my cheery voice to stoke some enthusiasm.
“Hell,” Janet and Ralph said together.
This close to the festivities, we could hear music and laughter rolling down from the barn. A rabidly enthusiastic “Yeeeeeee Haaaaaa!” rang out from somewhere inside. “Come on you guys, this is going to be fun.” I did my best to sound optimistic.
Little did I know how wrong I was.
* * *
“Oh! My! God! Is that Mary? Mary Burns?” A rhinestone encrusted woman charged.
Before I could run, she scooped me up in a rib cracking hug. “It is you!” I felt my feet lift off the ground as the air squeezed out of my lungs. “My word, you haven’t aged a bit!” The woman held on to me like I was her personal flotation device in the middle of a stormy sea. Who she was, I had no clue.
When the woman finally released me, she snatched a polaroid camera and blinded me. FLASH! When my eyesight returned, my shell-shocked expression of terror materialized on film.
“For our Now and Then wall.” Behind the mystery woman, photos of other surprised reunion guests were pinned on a board next to their corresponding yearbook photos from high school. It looked like a post office wall full of mug shots, except instead of taking the pictures back at the police station, the police had jumped out from behind a wall and yelled “Surprise!” right in the middle of the crime scene.
When I pulled my eyes away from the wall of photographs, I saw the rhinestoned woman looking at me and smiling. “You remember me, don’t you?”
I had to wait for the yellow and white rings to fade. She wore more eye shadow than the lead singer of Twisted Sister.
“It’s Cristy.”
Blink.
“Cristy Carson.”
Blink.
“We sat next to each other in Culinary.”
Blink.
I still had no clue who Cristy Carson was. But I didn’t want to disappoint her, so I pretended to play along. “Oh, right, Cristy? Cristy Carson.” I even raised my voice a couple of octaves to make it sound more authentic.
This kind of thing actually happened quite a bit. Even though I did everything in my power to brainwash high school from my memory, most of the people in town looked back on those days with fond remembrance. And since 99.9% of our small town senior class still lived in the area, it wasn’t uncommon to run into each other now and then.
“Oh, and there’s Janet! I should have guessed you two were still inseparable. Two peas in a pod, you two.” Janet and Cristy got their hug on, then Cristy added Janet’s pictures to the wall right beside mine. At least Janet had time to shield her eyes.
“What about me?” Ralph asked, striking a pose.
Cristy frowned. “I’m sorry. Who are you again?”
“Ralph,” he answered.
Blink.
“Ralph Stein.”
Blink.
“The Jewish goth kid everyone pelted with dodge balls.”
“Oh yes! Ralph Stein! You look less …” Cristy searched for the right word. “Pale. And sickly.” Cristy pretended to smile, but not very well. Then she snapped his picture. “Now don’t forget your hats.” Cristy passed out large styrofoam cowboy hats from a nearby table.
“We get hats?” Janet’s mood seemed to brighten.
“Yee ha!” Ralph slipped his hat on right away.
“Oh, no.” I waved Cristy off. “I’m not wearing that.”
“Oh yes, you are.” Janet stuffed the hat on my head. Not gently. “This was all your idea. If I have to be here, you’re wearing the hat.”
“I look ridiculous.” I yanked the hat off, my head already itching.
Cristy butted in. “Don’t worry about how you look, Mary, live a little. Who knows, you might have some fun.” My memory of Cristy returned. She had been on the Activities Committee, the student club that organized all the pep rallies. Cristy was one of those people who was always smiling and happy and trying to force other people to have fun. So annoying.
“Put the fucking hat on, Mary.” Janet smiled. But it was a scary smile, so I did.
Cristy resumed hugging and blinding other guests, while we took a moment to gawk at our old yearbook pictures.
I’ll be honest with you. The first thing I did was look for a picture of Jack. As my eyes scanned over the pictures, I allowed my brain a moment to process a thought. Was I scared his picture would be up there on that wall? Was I scared that it wouldn’t? After so many years, I think a part of me wanted to see Jack again just to prove to myself and everyone else that I wasn’t the same person I was before. So young. So stupid. The kind of person people like Jack played for a fool. But then, if I’m still being honest, I think another part of me was petrified. What if he did show up and did something to prove that nothing had really changed at all?
“Hard to believe that was twenty years ago.” Ralph’s voice yanked me back to reality.
Janet said, “It seems like just yesterday, but a lifetime ago, too.”
She was right. So much had changed. With Janet and Ralph, for sure. Back in high school, Janet was a late bloomer. The shy girl. Thick glasses. A face full of freckles. Now, she had a kick ass figure and her dream job working with books all day.
Ralph was a real turnaround story, too. After an ill timed booger picking incident in the sixth grade, Ralph was now a big time divorce lawyer and went to the gym five days a week. Whenever we would go to the beach, he got more head turns than Janet and I combined. Like an ugly caterpillar with an inhaler, Ralph emerged from the cocoon as an Armani suit-wearing butterfly.
“So Janet, see anything you like?” I swept my hand toward the photographs like a game show hostess revealing fabulous gifts and prizes.
“Seriously, Mary, I already told you. I’m never dating again. I mean it. This time for good.”
She didn’t mean it. “What about that one?” I pointed to a classmate’s surprised face on the board. Based on his “now” picture, he still had all his teeth. Mostly.
“Ned Bailey?” Ralph looked unsure.
“What’s wrong with Ned?”
“He was that kid who ran the Spirit Committee,” Ralph answered.
“So?”
“He was very … spirited.”
“I’d say Janet could use a little extra spirit right now.” The look Janet gave me confirmed it.
“I don’t think Janet wants the spirit Ned offers, or to put it another way, Janet isn’t the type of person Ned would prefer to give his spirit to.” Ralph pointed across the barn where Ned was happily sharing his “spirit” with a few of our male classmates. Only male classmates.
“Fine. What about that one?” I pointed to another set of photographs that looked like the before and after pictures used on a hair loss treatment commercial. Except in reverse.
“Harold Demings?” Once again, Ralph had a tone.
“What’s wrong with Harold Demings?”
“He was that crypto investor,” said Janet.
“Fantastic. Not only is he not too horrible looking, he’s probably rich too.”
“He scammed old ladies out of their retirement funds.” I could tell by her face it was going to be a deal breaker. I spotted Harold on the other side of the barn, ladling a fresh cup of punch. If you looked closely, you could see the tracking monitor poking out under his pant leg.
“Look,” I said. “This is our twenty-year reunion. Every guy here is staring down the barrel of forty years old.” Ralph and Janet did the math in their heads, nodding.
“At our age, any man who’s single is divorced, because he was never marriage material to begin with, or he didn’t get married because no sane woman would go anywhere near him with a twenty-foot pole.” Ralph looked offended, but I plowed onward. “We’re dealing with a low bar here. Very low. Like down here.” I bent down and made an imaginary line in the air at my ankles.
“You’re going to have to adjust your expectations.” It wasn’t the most motivating thing to say, judging by the scowl on Janet’s face, but it was the truth. I mean, that’s why I didn’t waste my time with relationships at that point. Single men my age were a lost cause.
As we made our way past the registration tables, it was clear the reunion committee went all out. A Garth Brooks cover band, Rolling Thunder, played from a portable stage. Garth’s doppelg?nger was singing about Friends in Low Places, flush with whiskey and beer, where everyone was going to be okay.
“You smell that?” The scent of charred meats drifted over from the buffet tables. I heard a rumbling. It was Ralph’s stomach, or a squadron of B52’s taking off outside.
“Is that foam or drool?” I teased.
“Quite the turnout.” Janet gazed in wonder, her mood thawing.
“Probably the free beer,” I explained.
“Free beer?” Ralph’s neck moved so fast the foam hat boomeranged on his head.
* * *
We found the bar out back along a path of mondo grasses and flagstone. Whiskey barrels served as tables. Glowing lights swooped down from the trees.
“Wow.” Janet’s eyes sparkled with wonder. Flannel clad bartenders dispersed a steady stream of red solo cups. There were lots of smiles. Lots of laughs. The mood was good and getting better by the second.
“They even have a chocolate fountain.” Janet pointed at the dessert table, smothered with treats.
“And pony rides.” Ralph was warming up, too.
It was true. There were pony rides. With actual ponies being ridden. A weathered, leathered ranch hand helped riders climb into their saddles. It was hard to determine which group was more terrified, the humans or the ponies.
Once Janet saw the chocolate fountain and the ponies, her mood completely flipped. She was no longer winking, she was smiling.
“See, this isn’t so bad.” I pointed at a pony for visual reference. “When you fall off the horse, you just have to climb back up and ride again.”
Jason Rosenbocker, former captain of the lacrosse team, whose once infamous six pack had since grown into a full sized keg, hoisted up into a saddle, then tumbled over the other side. We heard the thud all the way across the yard.
“Sometimes it’s better to just stay down,” said Ralph.
“What about you, Mary?” Janet aimed a sharp glare in my direction. “You never get on the horse at all.”
“That’s because she’s waiting for Mr. Right.” Ralph made a little quote-thing gesture with his fingers.
“No,” I corrected. “I’m waiting for Mr. Perfect.” Which was true. I was waiting for Mr. Perfect, who didn’t exist. Accepting that all relationships were doomed to failure made things much easier because you didn’t have to get your hopes up.
Janet wagged her finger at me. “You can’t pick love, Mary. Love picks you.”
“If love worked, I’d be out of business.” As a divorce attorney, Ralph was always a pessimist with matters of the heart, one of the many reasons he never settled down.
“I thought we came out here to get drinks.” I had to get our mission back on track.
“Yes,” Ralph and Janet answered, once again in unison.
I figured the sooner I got Janet hammered, the sooner she would stop being so picky, and we could begin with the hooking and the upping. And then, with the night’s mission complete, I could go home and change into pajamas and binge watch Alaska survival shows while consuming my body weight in ice cream.
When we got to the bar, Janet ordered a cider. Ralph picked a pilsner, and I opted for the blood orange sour. I was a sucker for a pucker.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my god!” Janet squealed like a twelve-year-old girl at a Jonas Brothers concert having a seizure. “Look at the baby cows!” I swiveled my head to where Janet was pointing. There was a whole pen of cows just past the pony rides.
“Oh, my goodness, they are so freaking cute!”
They looked like cows to me. Only smaller. Though even from thirty yards away, I could tell that they emitted the same amount of stink as the ones that were fully grown.
“Look, you can feed them a carrot.” There were tin pails hung along the fence. People were pulling carrots from the pails to feed the not fully grown but fully odored cows, a practice I found both stupid and disgusting.
Janet, however, was all-in. “You want to feed them a carrot? Let’s go feed them a carrot. I’m going to go feed them a carrot.”
Drinks in hand, Ralph and I moseyed our way over to the cow pen, where Janet had already grabbed a fistful of carrots. “Here, try one.” Janet tried to hand me a carrot.
“No. Thank you. I’m good.” A sign on the gate read, Warning! Do Not Lean on Fence! I took a few steps backward to ensure a safe distance.
“Look how cute they are.” Janet patted one of the miniature cows on its head.
I wrinkled my nose after getting a strong whiff of hay. “You have a thing against cows?” Ralph asked.
“No. I don’t have a thing against cows. Specifically. I just don’t like animals.”
“What animals?” Having already distributed her first round of carrots, Janet stuck her hand in a pail and removed another fistful.
“All of them.”
“What about panda bears?” Ralph was holding his carrot by the very tip, a wise precaution to avoid being bit. “Everyone likes panda bears.”
“I’m allergic to bamboo.”
Janet finished feeding a cow her carrot and stepped back from the fence. It was apparently still hungry because it tried to squeeze its head through the gate to come after her. “No, no Simon. You’ll spoil your dinner.”
“Who’s Simon?” Ralph looked as confused as I did.
Janet pointed to the cow. “He is.”
“How do you know his name is Simon?” Ralph made the mistake of asking.
“Because that’s what I named him.”
“You can’t name a cow,” said Ralph. As a divorce lawyer, arguing with everyone about everything was ingrained in Ralph’s DNA.
“I just did.”
“He’s not your cow.”
“He’s not yours either.”
I said to Janet, “You know Simon is going to be somebody’s hamburger someday, right?” In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best thing to say. You know that scene in The Exorcist where the little girl spins her head around and spews green vomit? That’s how Janet looked.
Then she burst into tears.
Ralph and I exchanged a look. He made a “what the hell was that” gesture. I shook my head and shrugged.
I had to do something. People were staring. “Janet?” Gingerly, carefully, I executed a conciliatory pat on the back. “I’m sorry I said that thing about the cow. I mean … Simon.”
“I love him,” Janet wailed, the tears rolling down her cheeks.
“You love Simon?”
“No Mary, I love Stan. I don’t give a shit about the stupid fucking cow. I love Stan. He was my one true love.”
It was the same thing every time. Janet always fell head over heels for the wrong guy. “Stan was a jerk,” I countered.
There was a faraway look in Janet’s eyes. “He was great in bed.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “With other people.”
The tears started back again. “Now I’m going to be miserable and alone forever.”
“You won’t be miserable and alone forever. Miserable maybe. But you won’t be alone. You’ll never be alone.” I put an arm around Janet’s shoulders, pulling her close. “Because you’ve got me.”
“Best friends forever?”
“Forever,” I agreed. Eventually, the faucet of tears slowed to a trickle.
While Janet and I held each other in a warm embrace, and by warm, I mean hot and stifling, I took a moment to consider my options. Maybe I was pushing her too hard. Maybe my hook-up plan was wrong and insensitive. Maybe I should just give her time to heal at her own pace.
“I’m sorry about all this, Janet. I just wanted to help.” All Janet’s crying had made the top of my shirt damp. And I was pretty sure she got snot on my sleeve. “Tell you what,” I said. “Let’s all go back to my place. I’ll make a whole sheet pan of nachos. With jalapenos. And extra sour cream.”
“Sour cream gives me gas,” Ralph interrupted.
“Nachos with jalapenos, and absolutely no trace of sour cream.”
“Maybe watch a romantic comedy?” Janet said, releasing me from her hug.
I flinched. Romantic comedy movies. Ugh. “Sure. Anything for my best friend.”
“Thank you, Mary. Thank you, Ralph.” Janet paused a moment. Then she said, “But I don’t want to go home. Not yet.” She looked at her watch. “We came all this way, and it’s still early.” She knocked back the rest of her cider. “If a single man with no criminal convictions walks by, no matter who it is, I’ll at least give him a chance.”
“You will?”
She took the red solo cup out of Ralph’s hand. “Maybe you’re right, Mary. Maybe with the right distraction, I’ll forget all about Stan. And how he cheated on me, maxed out my credit card, and never filled my car up with gas. And ruined my favorite white blouse when he threw it in the washer with his stupid, ugly red Manchester United socks.”
She threw back the rest of Ralph’s drink, then drank mine. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky this time. I’ll just put my fate in the hands of the universe. Let the universe decide.”
And that was it. The point when everything everywhere went horribly, horribly wrong all at once. In hindsight, it was my plan’s fatal flaw. The Achilles heel. Putting things into the hands of the Universe. Because the Universe is a bitch. And she didn’t just have Janet’s fate clenched in her iron grip. She also had mine.
Janet handed me back my empty cup. “Of course I have one small condition.” Janet drummed her fingers together, like an evil supervillain planning world annihilation.
In the distance, I could hear the Universe laughing.