Almost Royalty: A Romantic Comedy...of Sorts (19 page)

It was so easy. A SN-IVY alum would always start a conversation with an insult.

And Richard knew that I was born in Southern California.

I often pondered the genesis of this nastiness.

I occasionally encountered it from Harvard or Yale graduates, but after they dropped the word “Yale” for the 25th time in a three-minute conversation, you knew that going to Yale was the most prestigious thing that had ever happened to them, that it had been a miserable mistake—given that they could have been in Palo Alto instead of New Haven—and that their Yale grades fell squarely at or below a 3.0 GPA.

But with the SN-IVY alumni, it was different.

I’m sure it killed them that in Los Angeles, SN-IVY meant about as much as any of the less competitive University of California schools.

But I think it was more that they never quite got over going to a school which was clearly not their first choice, a school which balanced on the very perimeter of the Ivy League, and that they were determined to spend the rest of their lives making up for it.

Number 2.

“And you grew up on the East Coast,” I said, while waiting for the Chardonnay he spilled to dry from my clothes.

“I would never have taken you for such an observant person,” said Richard, while trying to signal our waiter.

I might have been mistaken, but I thought I recognized our waiter as the lead from Genie’s drama school production of a cross-dressing
Hamlet
, a play for which Genie was rumored to have been shortlisted for a MacArthur “Genius” Award.

Our waiter, true to his training, was pretending not to notice Richard while standing five feet from us and staring directly at him.

“How did you know that?” said Richard.

That was even easier.

Whereas someone who had lived in San Francisco would take a swipe at the physical characteristics of Los Angeles with a pathetic statement like, “L.A.’s so ugly,” someone from the East Coast never dared do that.

I mean, what are they going to say? I hate living in a city that has consistently beautiful weather? But some of them did try out the idiotic “I miss the seasons” line. No, the disgruntled East Coast transplant usually came across with the hackneyed “This is definitely not New York.”

But I had news for them.

We know that.

That’s why we call it “Los Angeles.”

Occasionally, you’d run across the very tired “There is/‌are no good… in L.A.” a sentence which could be filled with nearly anything, but most often with: bagels, pizza, night-life, bookstores, bad weather, public transportation, or theater.

I never understood it.

You never found a person from L.A. going to Manhattan and complaining that there were no good beaches, the surfing was lousy, and there were no decent Mexican restaurants. I found Richard’s “There are no smart people in Los Angeles” statement so ridiculously stale.

And then I knew one more thing.

I truly didn’t like him.

So it came as no surprise when he took it upon himself to correct my table manners.

“The way you hold your knife and fork, it’s just… well… so common.”

I looked around the room.

“I’m holding it like everyone else in the room.”

“My point exactly. I prefer to hold my knife and fork as they do on the continent,” he said.

“That’s very interesting, Richard, but what continent would you be speaking of?”

“Why, Europe, of course.”

“Really,” I said looking at him, “that’s very educational. Because I was unaware that in Europe, the main course was eaten with the salad fork.”

Richard slumped in his chair like a balloon that had been popped by a machete. “Well,” he said, “at least I wasn’t born in Los Angeles.”

“Really, Richard, really?” I said. “Because if you’ve been in L.A. longer than 24 hours, you’d know that almost no one is actually born in Los Angeles. That you’ve actually found a native, a true native, whose family has been in California over five generations, is highly unusual.”

Richard looked away.

“And might I add,” I said, “it’s not… no, let me change that, it’s
never
the natives who act like idiots, who drown in “The Grotto” at Hef’s, who overdose on their toilets, who have seven wives and then get addicted to… whatever… in L.A. It’s the people who come here.”

Somewhere after Richard’s lecture on the superiority of a private college (SN-IVY again) rather than a public university—which I attended for law school—our bill arrived: $572.36, pre-tip.

I guess that’s what four bottles of wine, five bottles of water, two appetizers, two main courses, two desserts, two coffees, and the sales tax costs. I quickly did the math. Ouch. With a 20 percent tip and sales tax, this was going to cost over $700. It was a good thing that he was a limited partner in this joint, or someone was going to see a small dent in their credit line.

“I’ll take care of this,” said Richard.

He picked up the check, and raced up to the front of the restaurant.

After what appeared to be another extremely animated discussion with the manager and the maitre d’, Richard came back and sat down.

“It’s all taken care of. I just had to remind them who I was.”

Not two minutes later, our waiter appeared.

“I’m afraid your credit card has been denied, sir,” said our waiter. “Would you care to try another card?”

Two credit card denials later, I found out Richard wasn’t a limited partner in this place. His second cousin was. Although his cousin had let him eat for free a few times, Richard had been cut off.

Apparently, the third time he brought a party of ten at eight o’clock on a Saturday night and pulled the “limited partner routine” he had been shut down.

“I mean, she’s my cousin and it’s her restaurant, so what’s the problem?” he said. “I don’t get it.”

I got it.

As it turned out, Mr. Ivy & Elite was maxed-out on all six cards, $40,000 on each, so that he’s $160,000 in debt. He was waiting for his year-end bonus to pay it all off and it’s only mid-August. He still had four and a half debt-filled months before bonus time and no credit left on his existing cards, which meant that the other person at the table who had decent credit was going to have to pay for dinner.

That would be me.

While they were processing my credit card, Richard table-hopped and decided to run out front to smoke a cigar with a guy from his health club.

I looked over at the bar and saw Josh, whom I hadn’t seen since the Emmys. He was sitting alone. I walked over and sat down next to him.

“Hey. How’s it going?”

“Well, well,” said Josh. “If it isn’t the little litigator. Come over here to start a fight?”

After my remarks on our first date, I guess that this was to be expected.

“Noooooo, I came over to say hello and see how you were,” I said. “But I think I know the answer to that.”

“Did the word drunk come to mind?”

“No. But the words extremely drunk did.”

I motion to the bartender to cut him off, and he gets it.

“So what’s going on?” I ask.

What’s going on is that he’s a mess. It turns out that Cody, the D-girl from the Emmys, has dumped him. After four months of dating, she told him that he wasn’t powerful enough.

Then Richard reappears.

“What’s this?” he said.

“This is my friend Josh,” I say.

They look at each other.

“Hey,” said Richard.

“Hey,” said Josh.

I take Richard aside. “Look, my friend Josh just got dumped and is feeling pretty terrible. So I think I’m going to stay and make sure he gets home alive. OK?”

“But I thought you were with me tonight,” said Richard.

“Look, my friend Josh is a mess. He needs some help.”

“OK,” said Richard. “But I’d like to do this again. I had a really good time tonight.”

I just say “good night” and don’t even go for the obligatory kiss.

I walk back over to Josh, order two coffees, tell the waiter to keep them coming and then wonder if I’m making a mistake. In this restaurant I could deplete my IRA trying to cover the cost of endless coffees. We stay until the restaurant closes. Then I take him to Cantor’s so he can talk himself out and I can stop paying for $6 cups of Maxwell House Blend.

Josh talks for four hours. Before I leave, I give him my cell phone number.

“Call me if you feel bad. Don’t worry about the time. I’m a light sleeper,” I tell Josh. This is a lie, but he looks awful.

When I get home, it’s about 3 a.m.

My cell phone rings. I pick it up.

“Josh?” I say.

It’s not. But there’s breathing on the line.

“Whoever this is, this breather thing is so tired. Give it a rest.”

“You’re not the best-looking woman that I’ve ever slept with. I know you think you are. But you’re not.”

“Oh hi, Ted,” I said. “Are you the Breather?”

“If you want, I’ll come over,” said Dr. Ted.

“Let it go, Ted. It’s 3 a.m.”

“You should feel lucky that I want you,” said Dr. Ted.

“And why is that?”

“Because I’m a doctor.”

“Really? Does the word HMO or… try this one ‘Managed Health Care’ mean anything to you? Good night, Ted. I’m going to lose you in a second.”

“Bitch,” barks Dr. Ted, just before my cell dies.

Did You Vest?

I’m not one of those people who like to stay in contact with a boyfriend after we break up. I think the act of breaking up demonstrates that on some level you hate each other. To stay in contact with each other on the basis of some ridiculous lie, like a pretense of friendship (“let’s be friends”), only prolongs the inevitable. There isn’t going to be any friendship. You’re not going to get any closure. You repulse each other. So cut it off. When it comes to a former fiancé I take this theory to a higher level. Whereas with a boyfriend I’ll acknowledge that I did date him, with a former fiancé I generally refuse to publicly acknowledge that he ever existed. This keeps me from inane thoughts about how our wedding would have been, what our children might have looked like, or what in God’s name I’m going to do with the $6,500 raw silk wedding dress sitting in my closet. I find that this is the most effective method for enduring the naked humiliation of it all.

So when Frank disappeared from my life and never spoke to me again, I was actually quite relieved. It wasn’t messy. It was just over, and he was gracious enough to remove his ancient gray spanky pants from my apartment before I actually gave him the boot.

What Frank did leave was an unreasonably permanent six-by-eight-inch carrot juice stain from all those sloppy mornings of running his juicer on my own primordial gray shag carpet. This confused my poor cat, Abyss, who wondered who had marked her domain. In an act of territorial rage, she began to pee on the carrot juice stain in a pattern which seemed to follow one spray every two weeks. To my horror, the fog of urine which sailed through my apartment on the 15th and 30th of every month became a never-ending reminder of Frank, the most recent disaster in my life.

So when I actually did hear from Frank again, I wasn’t pleased. It wasn’t much. It was a five-by-seven-inch cream-colored card, eleven lines long, written in black cursive handwriting.

It said the following:

Mr. and Mrs. Chad Bingham
request the honor of your presence
at the marriage of their daughter
Tracey Anne
to
Mr. Franklin Thomas Jamieson
Saturday, the Twentieth of October
at two o’clock in the afternoon
La Boca Inn
Palos Verdes, California

Well at least it wasn’t going to be at the Bel Air.

I had played one too many weddings gigs at La Boca. It had a spectacular view, being located on one of those roads to nowhere on the bluffs of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. But the ballroom had a seedy, chipped paint, unglued wallpaper, dusty chandelier look to it, like it was tired. I wondered if they were going to serve those little Swedish meatballs in that two-foot-deep serving vat.

Frank had attached a little handwritten note to the invitation. “I guess you’re probably pretty surprised to receive this,” he wrote. “Sorry we haven’t spoken for a while, but I hope you’re doing well. It would mean a lot to me if you would come. Call me if you get a chance.”

No, I wasn’t going to call him. This was my hard and fast rule, especially because in my world he no longer existed. But that rule was “never again publicly acknowledge,” so technically, I could still call him and investigate who the intended was in this plane-crash of a marriage.

“Tracy Anne Bingham?”

“Uh-huh,” said Frank.

“
You
are getting married?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What happened to ‘I just have so much work to do?’”

“Well, I have less with her.”

“Because?”

“Because she’s not as complex as you are.”

I thought about it.

“But, Frank, we’ve only been apart for six months. You met her and decided to marry her in six months?”

“I knew her from before.”

“You did?”

“Uh-huh. And so did you.”

“From where?”

“From Starbucks. Don’t you remember, she was the one who always gave us extra foam on our lattes.”

No.

“Tell me you don’t mean that thirteen-year-old surfer-girl who always got our orders wrong.”

“I take offense at that. First of all, she’s nineteen, not thirteen.”

“And you’re 35.”

“And she’s not a surfer-girl. She’s quite ambitious.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Do tell.”

“She doesn’t work at Starbucks anymore.”

“Moved on to McDonalds?”

“She’s a receptionist.”

“Oh, Frank…”

“A receptionist at a new internet company, E-Weddings. And they gave her stock options.”

“Pre or post IPO?”

“Pre.”

“An interesting choice for your soul mate. Will many of your Andover classmates be at the wedding?”

We were silent for about 15 seconds.

“OK. Just one more thing,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Where
are
you two registered? Toys R Us?”

I hung up just as the word “ass…” came out of his mouth.

That conversation did not make me feel better. I moped around the two rooms of my apartment and wondered what to do. I needed something that would instantly take away the pain, but I struggled not to give in to temptation.