Big Love (23 page)

Though, as Jordan so eloquently pointed out, “Why the hell would a lesbian in Paris want to hole up in a hotel room to have weird long-distance sex through a camera when there's all those sexy French girls who are notoriously bisexual?”

Edison believed in her idea, though. She thought it was a breakthrough in the adult toys market and one that would put her on the map right next to Steve Jobs. That is, if Steve Jobs didn't work with computers and instead worked with women's personal massagers shaped like the male organ.

While Jordan was upstairs with a tea-sodden lap, Edison was frantically working the remote control and seeing things on the sunglasses monitor upside down. She didn't know if the car was upside down or if something had happened to the camera in the car and it was upside down. Then again it could be another glitch in the glasses. She pushed the little joystick on the remote control to the forward position. Nothing happened. Maybe the car's wheels were stuck.

Edison jumped when she saw the face of Mr. Pip in a gigantic close-up in her glasses. She yelped. His face appeared gargantuan this close-up. It was like sitting in the front row of a 3-D movie. Mr. Pip bared his teeth and hissed, spraying feline spittle all over the camera. A giant cat paw swiped at her. Edison screamed, toppled over backwards in her chair and the remote control skidded across the wooden floor and under the bed. The force of the throw wedged it between the bed post and the wall with the joystick stuck in the 'Go' position.

Meanwhile, upstairs in the studio attic, Jordan was mopping up the tea spill with a crusty paint rag when she heard a loud crash from downstairs that rattled the paint cans and shook the already crumbling plaster.

“I'm okay!” Edison yelled.

The little car was turned upside down on the carpet, its wheels spinning crazily. Mr. Pip crouched in his attack position, eyeing the car from the safety of beneath the drawing table.

Jordan was angry enough to kick Edison in the butt. But since she couldn't kick her friend, she did the next best thing. She threw down the rag, marched across the room and kicked the little car. It flew across the room, smashed into the wall, bounced, rolled over twice and landed on all four wheels. The wheels spun for a second, then dug into the carpet and the car popped a wheelie and took off.

That wouldn't have been so bad except the car was aimed right at Mr. Pip. Mr. Pip's eyes widened in horror and he turned tail and ran.

The car gained on him.

Mr. Pip ran in a circle and jumped over the table.

The car went under the table.

Mr. Pip jumped over the sofa.

The car went under the sofa.

Jordan ran across the room to head the car off.

The car caught up to Mr. Pip and ran over his tail. Mr. Pip howled.

“Run, Mr. Pip, run!” Jordan yelled.

Mr. Pip screeched, dug his claws into the carpet and sprung forward.

The car followed.

Jordan jumped in front of the car. It crashed into her leg. She yelped in pain, grabbed her shin and hopped on one leg in a circle.

Mr. Pip jumped up on the drawing table safely out of reach of the car. The car rammed into the table's legs. Mr. Pip squalled and jumped, shredding Jordan's art work with his claws. Confetti flew in every direction.

“Edison! I'm going to kill you!” Jordan screamed.

A streak of gray fur that was Mr. Pip ran by Jordan with the car in hot pursuit.

“My joystick is stuck!” Edison yelled back. “I'm not responsible!”

Jordan chased the car in circles around the room, cussing with each breath. Every time she almost caught the car, it would either change direction or disappear under the sofa.

Like in an old Tom and Jerry cartoon, Jordan chased the car; the car chased Mr. Pip; the car chased Jordan; Jordan chased Mr. Pip; and Mr. Pip got confused and chased his tail.

Edison ran in circles in her bedroom. She was seeing what the car camera saw: Cat butt; Jordan butt, shredded paper flying, more cat butt, under the sofa, over the rug, Jordan's foot; cat face. She worked frantically to unstick the joystick as she spun herself in circles chasing the car in her monitor. Then she got dizzy and toppled face-first onto her bed.

Back in the attic studio, the melee continued until Jordan officially put an end to it. She hadn't played soccer on her high school team for three years for nothing. She brought her leg back and as the car raced by, let loose with a kick that Mia Hamm would have admired.

The car sailed out the open window.

Goal! Jordan celebrated with fists pumping the air and a dance that involved several exaggerated pelvic thrusts.

She stopped dancing when she heard a whirring noise behind her. She turned around and the car bashed into her toes.

How could that be? She had kicked the car out the window. Hadn’t she? If it wasn't the car she kicked, then what was it?

“Mr. Pip!” she screamed. She ran to the open window and leaned out. “Mr. Pip!”

“Meow!”

Jordan looked up. Mr. Pip was dangling from a tree branch right outside the window. He looked like that inspirational poster from the 1970s. The one with the kitten hanging from a tree limb with the caption “Hang in there, baby.”

Jordan cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “Hang in there, baby! I mean, hang in there Mr. Pip! I'll be right there!”

Edison ran into the studio to find Jordan leaning out the window and talking to Mr. Pip. Jordan reached out the window, stretched her arm as far as she could, but her fingertips were about a foot too shy.

Edison took off her sunglasses. She blinked her eyes and shook her head and the dizziness subsided. “What're you doing?” she asked.

Jordan leaned further out the window. “Mr. Pip is dangling from the tree branch. He's going to fall if I don't grab him first.”

“How’d he get out there? Why is he out there?” Edison said.

“I kicked him. It was an accident,” Jordan said defensively. “This is all your fault.”

“It’s my fault you kicked the cat out the window?”

Jordan threw a leg up on the window sill and reached out again. She still needed another four inches. She held on to the window sill with one hand and leaned out further.

Edison dashed across the room and grabbed Jordan by waistband of her shorts. “What're you doing?”

“I'm going to rescue him. What does it look like?” Jordan said.

“You're three stories up! It's too dangerous!”

Jordan looked over her shoulder at Edison. “You want to do it?”

“No.”

“Okay then, shut up and let me go.”

“Meow!”

“Okay, okay, but be careful.” Edison turned loose of Jordan's shorts. She stood back, watching fearfully, and making whimpering noises.

Jordan turned until she was sitting on the windowsill with her legs outside. Very carefully, she pushed herself to her feet, balanced on the sill, grabbed the lattice on the outside of the house with one hand and reached toward the tree branch with the other.

“Meow!”

“I'm almost there, Mr. Pip,” Jordan said.

Edison bit her fingernails as Jordan leaned further and further. She breathed out a sigh of relief as Jordan's hand grabbed Mr. Pip by his scruff.

“Thank God,” Edison muttered.

Crack!

“Oh no,” Edison amended.

Jordan was slowly moving further and further away from the window – the lattice was peeling off the house.

Edison ran for the window. But she was too late. Jordan and Mr. Pip plunged three stories. Edison covered her eyes and screamed.

“For God’s sake, stop screaming,” Jordan yelled from below.

Edison un-peeked her eyes and looked out the window. “You’re alive!” she said.

Jordan lay spread-eagle on her back in the dumpster they had rented for the construction project they called home. Luckily, she’d landed on carpet padding that they’d removed from the den.  Mr. Pip sat regally on Jordan’s chest. Without so much as a thank you, Mr. Pip leapt out of the dumpster, leaving Jordan covered in dust.

“You’re welcome,” Jordan said. Then she noticed her bloody hand. As is the way with injured body parts, she didn’t notice the pain until she saw the blood. Then she screamed. She surveyed the area and saw the piece of glass from the broken shower door. After she finished screaming she called up to Edison. “Will you please bring me a towel?”

“Why? Did you pee your pants?”

“No, I’m bleeding,” Jordan yelled back up at her.

Edison turned and ran out of the room, panting, “ohmygodohmygodohmygod!”

Amy Meets Jordan

“What do we have here?” Amy asked.

Jordan looked down at her bloody shirt and answered, “A ruined shirt and a really bad home first-aid job.”

Meet Dr. Amy Stewart
. Amy was too-short, too-brown, too-fat and too-smart. That's what she thought anyway. She still pictured herself the way she looked as a sophomore in high school. Since that time, Amy had shed twenty pounds, gotten contacts, highlighted her hair and made good use of her brains. But when she looked in a mirror, she still saw her old self. It was like reverse alchemy. Her mirror turned gold into lead.

The first time Amy laid eyes on Jordan was in the emergency room at University Hospital. Amy sat on the rolling stool in a curtained off cubicle and surveyed her patient. To say that Jordan was good-looking was an understatement. Amy thought Jordan was perfection personified – speaking purely from an anatomical viewpoint. Not that Amy was much of a judge of anything other than medicine, but to her this woman with the sculpted body and long dishwater blond hair looked like one of those Olympic volleyball players everyone went gaga over. In short, she was the type of woman Amy despised. Well, maybe despised was too strong a word. Loathe? No, she didn't loathe Jordan just because she was the type of woman that stared out at her from magazine covers, made a sports bra look sexy and made her feel inadequate and homely and invisible. Hate? No, she didn't hate Jordan either, not exactly. She hated the
idea
of Jordan. Amy hated that there were women out there who looked like Jordan and made women like her feel like something you had to scrape off the bottom of your shoe.

Jordan asked, “You look like you're going to be sick. You're not going to throw up over a little cut and some blood, are you?”

“Of course not,” Amy said, lifting her chin defiantly. “I'm a doctor.”

“Yeah, but that was an 'I’m going to puke' face if I ever saw one.”

Amy took a deep breath and assumed her professional look. Her professional look consisted of knitted eyebrows, a squinted right eye and pursed lips. If she wanted to be super professional she tapped her fingertip on her chin. She had perfected this look in front of her mirror in the bathroom at home. She thought it made her look smart, knowledgeable, caring and in control all at the same time.

“You're not pooping, are you?” Jordan asked.

Amy laughed.

“Because that face you’re making looks like you might have IBS or something.”

Amy decided she was going to have to cultivate another professional look, perhaps one without the eye squint. “Who's the doctor here, you or me?” Amy joked.

“You are,” Jordan answered. “Unless…” she said with widening eyes, “you stole a lab coat and scrubs and are impersonating a doctor.”

“A doctor with I.B.S.,” Amy corrected. She pointed to Jordan's overly-bandaged hand, saying, “So, that's some first-aid job. If I didn't know better I'd say that's an oven mitt under all that gauze. An oven mitt covered in gauze and attached securely by duct tape.”

“It
is
an oven mitt attached securely by duct tape. This is what happens when you let a handyman-slash-inventor-slash-horror movie fanatic-slash best friend play nurse.”

Amy gently turned Jordan's hand over. “Well, it looks like the oven mitt did its job. Though I think it was due more to the tourniquet quality of the duct tape.”

“Don't tell Edison that. That's my friend who did this first-aid job. She's already a huge fan of the stuff. Edison always says if you ever have to make a run for it, be sure to pack a hundred dollars in quarters, duct tape and Vaseline.”

Amy agreed on the first two counts, but wasn’t sure if she wanted to know about the Vaseline. “So, tell me what happened.” She held Jordan's hand in an upright position and gently prodded at the rest of her arm, checking for contusions or broken bones.

“I fell out of a window. I was rescuing Mr. Pip. He was hanging from a tree branch.”

“Who is Mr. Pip?”

“He’s the old man who lives next door.”

Amy's eyes widened. Jordan laughed. “I’m kidding. He's my cat.”

Amy almost laughed out loud. If she wasn't careful this woman was going to make her stoic doctor personae crumble. “Okay, you fell, but how did the cut happen?”

“There was a broken piece of shower door in the dumpster.”

“You fell into a dumpster?”

Jordan nodded. “Dumpster diving. Literally.”

“So, what happened to Mr. Pip?”