Box Girl (34 page)

Because a twenty-three-year old never keeps the promises she makes. She's never the same person she was a year before. As I approach thirty, I feel lighter, shedding all those selves. I survived my twenties—the ecstatic highs and pathetic lows, the forty-pound weight gain while studying abroad, the over-tweezed eyebrows and the tanning-bed tans, George W. Bush (and the insisting we'd move to France if he was reelected, but, of course, the never moving). I survived the mistakes, the regrets, the firsts, the lasts, the baby tees and flare-leg jeans. I made it through the hippie phase, the preppy phase, the hipster phase, and even the asymmetrical mullet.

At dinner that night, we sat around an outdoor table drinking wine, laughing about some of the dumber things our younger selves did during the last decade. We talked about how the only time Melissa had ever gone commando in her life was also the time her wraparound skirt busted open at the top of a staircase during a party. We talked about the time Rachel nearly burned down her apartment after preheating the oven to make a midnight snack, then fell asleep and forgot she was also using her oven as a storage space for a Costco-sized barrel of pretzels. We talked about the time Heather's car was stolen while she was throwing up red wine in the bathroom at Chez Jay in Santa Monica. And then, of course about the time I lit my face on fire, along with a large section of a tablecloth, at the Nobu in Las Vegas—while attempting to take their signature flaming sambuca shot, the hairs on my upper lip charred into a John Waters mustache.

And who knows?
I thought as the night continued.
Maybe ten years from now, we'll be circled around another table littered with wine glasses, longing for our twenties. Those wild and unbridled days before daycare and diapers, mortgages and divorces
.

Our service at the restaurant that night was terrible. Our server might as well have just gone out the back door and never come back because we would have gotten more attention that way. Someone else would have come over and asked if we'd like something else, which we did—much, much more wine. But, because they thought we were in good hands, no one ever came over. We sat at the table surrounded by empty wine glasses, and because we are women who hadn't seen each other in a long time, we kept talking and talking, but—let's be honest—we would have much preferred if our glasses were full, not empty. What can I say? We're optimists.

After an hour of no one asking if we'd like more wine, more water, a dessert, anything, our server reemerged and causally
tossed off a, “Can I get you anything else?” I placed my hands on the table, flipped them palms up, and motioned toward the four empty wine glasses stained the color of old, dried blood. Then I replied, in my most scolding tone, “Well, we would have liked something else but at this point”—I raised my hands even higher to indicate
I give up
—“You should probably just bring us the check.” Our server's eyes popped out of her head like a scared little frog that was about to get stepped on, and said she'd be right back with our check. She scurried out of sight to get our bill and to no doubt talk about what a bitch that girl on table ten had been.

Oh god
, I thought,
oh god oh god oh god, did I really just act like that? Have I become one of those women who I used to hate waiting on?
I looked around the table. We were all drinking wine; two of us had also ordered cups of herbal tea. One of us was wearing a leopard print top. (Sure, animal print was sort of “in,” but still.) We had spent the majority of the night talking about men and aging. We were definitely those women.

When our server returned with our check, I thought to myself,
I know this girl. She is young, in her early twenties, just embarking on this exhausting adventure. She's not a good waitress, no, but good for her. She has other ambitions. She has a whole decade of mistakes and false starts, several lifetimes to figure it all out
.

We threw four credit cards on the table, then discussed how many dollars below twenty percent we should leave her:

“I don't think she deserves more than ten percent.”

“We could have walked up the street to Whole Foods and gotten wine faster.”

“We could have stomped and fermented our own wine faster.”

“I think I'm going to become a member of Yelp just so I can complain about her service.”

While exchanging goodbyes by the front door, I said I left
my phone on the table. Making sure no one saw me, I pulled a twenty from my wallet and left it on top of the credit card slips.

When I look at old pictures of us from our early twenties, with the ashy matte makeup and the bad, blunt haircuts, I don't think we look good. Yet when I look at the pictures from that night, I think,
We're glowing
. Maybe this is because we finally discovered good moisturizers and learned to consume more water than just the club soda in our vodka drinks. But more than that, in those old photos, we just look tired. It's the same thing when I look at old pictures of me sitting in the box. I don't think, wow, I look young. I think, wow, I look exhausted. I was living so many lives then. Standing at the threshold to thirty, I was looking forward to only living one.

Soon after that dinner, a group of men struck up a conversation with some friends and me at a restaurant bar in Palm Desert. The men were older, gray-haired, married. One worked in LA and knew the box at The Standard well. When he found out I was occasionally a Box Girl, he said, “Aren't you a little too old to be in the box?”

This would have sent me into a tailspin a few years before.
Oh god. Do I look old? Am I getting old?
The younger me would have shot back something surly about his gray hair and how he should talk. But my near-thirty self just raised my glass, laughed, and said, “Probably.”

And maybe I finally am.

The Concierge Desk

Two men are working at the front desk tonight. Their backs
are toward me. They're wearing white button-down shirts with subtle silver pinstripes, white pants, and white, rubber-soled shoes, which look geriatric. On the desk are two computers, two phones, two credit card machines, two printers, a cup holding pens, and an industrial-sized container of wet wipes. I can see everything on the concierges' computer screens. They must realize this. Maybe not? They used to spend hours looking at MySpace. Now, Facebook. I sometimes wonder what they did before MySpace. Did they talk to each other?

Right now, the one directly in front of me isn't even standing up straight. He's hunched over, his left elbow next to the keyboard, his right hand on the mouse, just scrolling down pages, clicking through Facebook pictures. Over and over again. When the phone rings he answers, “Hello, Standard!” still scrolling and trolling.

To the left of the front desk is the deejay booth. Tonight the deejay is a tiny, Tinkerbell-like girl with close-cropped pixie hair. She is adorable. She looks like she could live inside someone's pocket. She dances a dainty little dance while she
deejays, subtly shifting her shoulders from side to side while her right hand rests on the turntable. But it's not a turntable. There are no records. There are two record-like circles with a Macbook in between. On the laptop's screen, neon green lines pulse up and down like the machine at the hospital that beeps and blips and tells you whether someone's dead or alive.

It is late and no one has come into the lobby for a while. Toward the end of the night, other staff members gather around the front desk. The valet guy comes in and asks the concierge how Vegas was. The tiny deejay takes off her headphones and turns toward the front desk to chat. I am not a part of this conversation. I am behind this conversation. I am as much a part of the background as the ambient music the deejay is playing. They are ignoring me as much as I am ignoring them. Except I'm not ignoring them.

Deejay Girl excuses herself and tells the concierge to watch the turntables. He says he's going to put on Celine Dion. He seems to be a bit of a jokester. She twirls back toward him, giggles, and says, “You do that, I'll kill you,” and slips into another part of the hotel.

Jokester Concierge starts singing Celine Dion's “My Heart Will Go On” while he wraps an iPhone cord around his hand. He is a very bad singer and he finds this very funny.

Deejay Girl returns with something that looks like a bowl of soup. It might not be soup. It's hard to tell if she's using a fork or a spoon.

Jokester Concierge, who is a bit hefty, announces he wants some dessert.

Deejay Girl turns back toward him and says, “My sister was just in town, with my niece who's two. She's at that age where she says anything that you tell her.” She blows on the bowl. (It's soup.) “And she just says words really funny. Like when you tell her to say, ‘vacuum,' it sounds like, ‘fuck you.'” Jokester
Concierge erupts in laughter. I can't tell if he actually thinks it was that funny, or if he'd just like to make out with her.

I go back to reading until a boisterous group of guys stumble through the sliding glass doors and into the lobby. They seem very excited about the box. A flash bursts. Jokester Concierge shouts, “No pictures, no pictures, no pictures!” The one taking the pictures puts his phone in his back pocket. He is wearing a black button-down shirt with a dragon stitched on the shoulders. He says, “Sorry, man,” and asks where the nearest liquor store is.

The group leaves for the liquor store and the lobby is empty again. Deejay Girl leans on the front desk with her chin propped on her right hand and says, “Okay, it's time to tell each other bad jokes.” She starts. I can't hear the joke. Maybe it's dirty or racist, because she tells it very quietly. The concierge then tells some joke about a priest. The pocket-sized deejay laughs politely.