Chapter 7
Despite Charlie’s urging me to abandon personal hygiene, I still shower and change for dinner, and I come downstairs with fresh makeup, an outfit picked out three weeks ago with Cara, and the tallest heels I’m capable of walking in. It’s not unlike wearing armor.
Standing in my hotel room with the TV playing a rerun of The Bachelor , I shoot her a text.
It’s dinner time. Rob is here. The new girlfriend is just as hot as I thought she was. I’m going to die.
My phone rings as soon as the text goes through.
“I can’t talk about this over text.” Cara doesn’t even bother with a greeting.
I sit on the end of the bed, on top of the feather duvet that a housekeeper must have labored over to get as smooth and crisp as it is.
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
I take a quick inventory. “My heart is pounding, and I think I’m going to throw up.”
“Okay.” I can practically hear Cara pacing a circle, the way she always does when she’s ready to set a game plan. It doesn’t matter if we are discussing which bar to go to before dinner, or if we’re talking out how to launch a new policy proposal at work, she’s a pacer. “Do you have a minibar?”
“At this hotel?”
“Good point. Okay, you go to the minibar, and you down one of those tiny airplane-sized bottles of vodka. And then you go into the bathroom, and you say out loud, ‘I am a hot bitch.’”
I laugh, the knot in my stomach loosening just from the sound of her voice.
I wish I had her innate self-confidence. I think it’s born of her life in a large and loving family, with siblings that heckle one another but are ultimately deeply supportive and steadfast.
Cara has no problem with the fact that she’s wonderful—she accepts and believes in her own worth with gracious comfort, and she’s hell-bent on getting me to do the same. She’s always attempting to convince me that I am, in fact, wonderful too. Oftentimes, her efforts are effective. When it’s something tangible. A lack of action on my part, something in which she can intervene and rectify. At work, I once found out someone was taking my ideas and presenting them to Donna as their own, and I didn’t say anything until Cara heard about it, and she was the one who prodded me to put my foot down.
“I mean it, Daisy. I want to hear that bottle open, and then I want to hear your self-affirmation.”
I stand up, as if she can see me. “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously!”
I hear what sounds like a voice over a loudspeaker in the background.
“Where are you right now, Cara?” I ask suspiciously.
“I’m in the hall outside of Nana’s hospital room.”
“You’re calling me and telling me to swig alcohol from your grandmother’s hospital room?”
“The hall,” she corrects. “And yes, I am. Now go on. I’m waiting. Nana doesn’t have all night.”
I sigh, shaking my head and laughing, and walk over to the mini bar where I take out a $15 miniature bottle of Svedka and sling it back.
“Aaahhh,” I grunt out. “Oh, that burns.”
“Good job, Daisy Cakes!” Cara cheers me on. “Now go to the bathroom.”
“I can’t believe you’re making me do this,” I grumble. Even though I can. This is so completely Cara, I shouldn’t be surprised in the slightest. I walk into the bathroom, all beige marble, with a giant soaking tub and an all-glass walk-in shower, and position myself in front of the vanity mirror.
“Alright, I’m here. I’m a hot bitch,” I say in a voice that even I must admit is pretty lame.
“Nope. No way you made anyone believe that, least of all yourself.” I see her shaking her head in my mind’s eye, her dark curls bobbing around her face. “Again.”
“I am a hot bitch,” I repeat with more conviction this time.
“Louder!” she demands.
I sigh, shaking my head at myself in the mirror, and then take a great big inhalation.
“I! AM! A! HOT! BITCH!” I yell at the top of my lungs, my voice echoing against the polished stone.
“Yes, you are! Yes, girl! You are a hot bitch!” Cara is yelling now too, and I can’t forget the fact that she is in a hospital corridor.
“Cara, keep it down!” I cry with dismay.
She laughs. “You’re not even here to feel embarrassed!”
“Still. Your nana can’t take you shouting in her condition.”
“Nana is doing great. She’s going to outlive us all,” she answers. “Now, go to that dinner. Tell Rob to go fuck himself, tell his new girlfriend that he has episodic erectile dysfunction, and tell your mom that you’re skipping the wedding.”
“I’m not skipping the wedding.” I wish I could skip the wedding.
“I know, and I forgive you for that, and I love you forever.”
“I love you forever,” I answer in our routine goodbye, and I hang up the phone.
By now, the vodka has hit my bloodstream, and I have actually relaxed a little bit, and the clock says that I’m already five minutes late, so I grab my key card, and I walk out into the hallway where a grey-haired woman wearing a strand of gumball-sized pearls looks like she’s ready to clutch them. I wonder how long she’s been standing out here.