Chapter 8 An Experiment in Being Utterly Charmed, So Much So, in Fact, That You Don’t See Trouble Coming for You Until
The phone rang. I woke up as if I had been electrocuted, and I then proceeded to literally fall out of bed trying to find my phone. Mom? Dad? Someone is dead!
Turned out falling on the floor wasn’t too terrible a turn of events, as I had to crawl under the bed to chase the phone that I’d knocked off the bedside table in the dark.
“Hello?” My voice was desperate, pained. “What’s wrong!”
“Is that Mary?”
This . . . No. I blinked. Incredulous. The blink of a woman who was suddenly realizing that she was capable of murder.
“Hello? Mary? I got your number from Jackie.”
You have got to be kidding me!
I crawled back into bed, rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and groaned, right there into the phone.
“No. This isn’t Mary. This is Maya. Perhaps you’ve called the wrong number.”
“I don’t think so. This is the American girl looking for a husband, right?”
“Woman.”
“Eh?”
“Woman. I’m a woman. I haven’t been a girl for a long time now.”
“Really? How long a time are we talking, Mary?”
I sighed. I could not believe I was having this conversation. In the dark. At whatever the hell hour of the morning it was. “Listen, it’s . . . really early. I’m sorry, but—”
“Not so early. Almost seven. I’ve been up for two hours, at least.”
“It is”—I looked at my phone—“six thirty-five.”
“Like I said. Can’t just let the day pass you by!”
There was clanging in the background, and his voice was loud and cheery, which just made everything infinitely worse.
“Congratulations, sir. It sounds like you’re having a very productive morning, but I only went to sleep a few hours ago, so I think we’re probably on a different, you know . . . life schedule.”
“Shouldn’t be staying up so late at your age.”
Oh. My God.
“I’m. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Thank you. I will write that down so that I can remember it when I do actually wake up and want life advice.
I am going to go back to sleep now.” I took a settling breath and thought of Jackie.
I’d walked out on his date last night, and no matter the ungodly time, I didn’t really want to insult this guy as well.
“I’m sorry to cut this short, but please feel free to call or text another time, preferably during—”
“Naa. Doesn’t sound like a good fit to me. Good luck to ye.”
I closed my eyes for a moment and tried very hard not to catch fire. “Okay. Good luck to—” And he hung up.
I considered calling him back immediately. Why? I could dig covertly for more details, track him down, hire a mariachi band, break into his house, creep into his bedroom, horns at the ready, and shake him violently awake at three a.m., while trumpets blazed “Guantanamera.”
It wasn’t a bad plan. With enough coffee, I was pretty sure I could do it.
What I could not do, I soon found out, was go back to sleep.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but the tawny glow of a threatening sunrise began to creep over my windowsill, and a few roosters (whom I now regretted joyously tossing corn to the day before, like Oprah giving away cars) had decided that this was their moment to assassinate me.
I pouted hard and kicked my feet under the blankets like a petulant toddler. I texted Simone.
You awake?
Yeah. You?
Let me check—nope. Dead.
The phone rang, but this time the sound made me smile. “What do you want? You do know I’m extremely busy over here husband-hunting, right?”
“You mean you’re still looking? Jeez. What’s taking so long?”
“Actually, I did get married yesterday morning, now that you mention it. But the groom was a hundred and four and didn’t survive the honeymoon. Now I’ve got to do it all over again.”
“Rotten luck. Better luck next time. So tell me, how many dates have you gone on?”
“You mean in the thirty-two hours since I’ve arrived?”
“Yeah.”
“Two, smart-ass.”
“You’re kidding! Tell me now!”
I laughed. “Crap. Do I have to? I’m too sleepy to relive the trauma.”
“You do. You do have to. Right now.”
“Well, last night I was set up with a xenophobe who looked like one of Dad’s bowling buddies and said reading books was a waste of time.”
Simone laughed a deep, husky, delighted, witchy cackle, a reflection of her cold, black soul that reminded me why I did all of this.
I went on before she had a chance to stop. “Episode Thirty: ‘Cocktails with Casually Racist Cliff from Connemara.’”
She had to choke the laugh down to get some words out. “Oh my God. What did he say?”
“He said foreigners were going to steal his creepy panel van.”
She laughed so hard I held the phone away from my face. “Amazing! Holy crap! Are we allowed to talk about it?”
“Yeah, Jackie asked.”
“Incredible! What about the other date?”
In answer, I pushed out a long, drawn-out groan which I dragged up from the very depths of my tortured soul.
“Tell me!”
“Well, do you remember that hilarious stand-up set I showed you?”
“The one with the vitamin condom?”
“Yep.”
“Yeah. Why?” I stayed silent. It took a minute. Then she gasped. The woman who had spent years of her life listening to every stupid mistake I made on a date actually gasped in horror. “No. Maya. You didn’t. You wouldn’t. Nobody would do that!”
“Yeah. I would.”
“No!”
“Yep.”
“Noooooo!”
“Yeah.”
“But why? How?”
“He was just. I don’t know. He really hated me. And I hadn’t even had the chance to talk about cat colons yet. He just hated me on sight. I couldn’t figure out why, so I thought maybe it was just . . . you know, Irish banter or something.”
“Maya!”
“Well!”
“Tell me that you did not make fun of the size of his penis!”
“Kind of? I’m not entirely sure. But I did absolutely tell him that he smelled bad and tasted like asshole.”
“Tasted like asshole? You tasted him? You’ve tasted an asshole?”
“No . . . it was just a bit from when they made me do a blind-date game onstage. And don’t ask questions that you don’t want the answers to, Simone.”
“They what? Blind-date game? You have got to be kidding me! Are you serious? Holy crap! I can’t wait to record this show.”
“Yeah. This trip has pretty much paid for itself already. Episode Thirty-Two: ‘Brawling in a Brewpub with Brick House Brian.’”
She laughed. “Why brick house?”
“Because he was built like one.”
“Wait. What? Was he hot?”
I sighed down the line hard enough to blow her hair back. “Fuck, Simone. You wouldn’t believe this guy.”
“Really? Send me a pic!”
“I don’t have a pic. No more apps, remember? Just an image of his furious, scowling face burned into my memory for all time.”
“That sounds kinda hot, actually.”
“It was.”
“Forearms?”
“As thick as a leg.” “Shit.”
“Yeah. He was like . . . basically what I imagine Xaden Riorson to look like.”
“No way. You know, I honestly don’t think I’ve ever heard you gush about a guy’s looks before. Except Alan Rickman.”
“Sigh. I love you forever, Alan Rickman.” I blew a kiss to the ceiling.
“Well, how can you see him again? Can we get him on the show?”
“Shut up, Simone.”
“I’m serious!”
“You can’t be. No, we cannot get him on the show, Simone. Because he openly hates me, and I accused him of having sex with his sheep!”
“You said that?”
“I thought we were doing a thing! Just. Can we move past this, please?”
“Why do you insist on tormenting me, Maya?”
“You know why. It’s because of that one time you made me watch The Breakfast Club when I was hungover and it was the worst nine thousand hours of my whole life.”
“That was two years ago! Get over it.”
“Never!”
“You’re such a monster.”
“You love it.”
“Yeah. I do. Well, I’d better get some sleep. My dad just got back from Portugal, and I’m driving to his in the morning. When are you going to do the Jackie Kelly interview?”
“Tomorrow. Can’t wait.”
“Oo. Me neither. Try not to insult him beyond repair, will you?”
“I mean . . . I’ll try, but I think you and I both know that I can’t make any promises.”
THAT DAY, JACKIE surprised me with a delicious home-cooked lunch.
He also surprised me by inviting over three men to battle across the roast chicken for my hand in marriage.
The three men, I was alarmed to discover, were brothers.
All single. All looking for a wife. They also fought over the potatoes, and the pie, and whose turn it was to drive home, so I didn’t allow myself to be too flattered.
When Jackie asked me which one I liked best, I told him it was the chicken.
Conclusion: date unsuccessful.
Uncontrollable variable: my own inability to see the raw sexuality of watching three adult men fight over a wishbone.
But I was getting the hang of things, and that night when we returned to the festival, I danced with every man who asked me, provided they were patient enough to wait for a waltz.
I didn’t overthink it, tried not to freak out about how many random people I was touching, and didn’t even get scandalized when a completely random man I was joking with at the bar told me that I was the devil but he’d like to wake up to my face the following morning. I just had fun.
The following morning, I woke early even without the six a.m. romantic rejection.
I was buzzing with excitement. This was the day that Jackie and I had set aside the morning to record his interview.
I brushed my teeth and then went down in my pajamas. “Jackie! It’s today. I hope you’re ready for this.”
He laughed. “All right, Maya, let’s have a cup of tea and a bit of breakfast first. I’ve made some porridge with cream and some blackberries from the hedge.”
The porridge was warm and comforting, and the blackberries were ripe and delicious. I finished that and the tea in about three minutes flat while we talked about the weather and how we’d slept and planned what we might eat for lunch.
I dropped my spoon in the bowl with a clang. “Okay! You ready?”
“Should I be worried? That’s a dangerous gleam you’ve got in your eye.”
“Worried? You? You’re a story machine with more charisma than anyone I know.”
He smiled. He was obviously just playing the game. I doubted very much that Jackie Kelly had ever been nervous about anything in his life.