Bright Lights, Big Ass: A Self-Indulgent, Surly, Ex-Sorority Girl's Guide to Why It Often Sucks in the City, or Who Are These Idiots and Why Do They All Live Next Door to Me? (25 page)

The next day Jose calls in a panic and says our FICO score isn’t great. Um, no kidding. That’s why we told him twenty-four hours earlier, “Our FICO score isn’t great. We’re looking to rent for another year or two so we can improve it and then buy our own place. However, we can provide excellent landlord references and W-2s and is that okay?” to which he replied, “No problem!”

Arrgh.

We manage to pass the credit hurdle only to find out the landlord wants the lease to start immediately, and not September 1, like we’d requested. In addition, he wants a
$7,000
deposit because of the dogs. Apparently he’s concerned they might remove a load-bearing wall or perhaps install an illegal hot tub, as naughty dogs are wont to do. Whatever happened to the good old days of college when if you showed up, the place was yours? Jesus, it’s probably easier to get a job with the FBI than it is to secure an apartment in this city.

We tell Jose to pound sand and start over.

Fletch is in our living room, holding the cordless phone to his ear. “Hold on, let me check with my wife—Jen, how about a noon appointment with the apartment brokers on Sunday?”

We haven’t found anything yet, the rain’s coming down harder in the kitchen, Tracy has yet to be carted off to proper rehab, and I’m starting to feel desperate. “Sounds good.”

Fletch tells the caller, “Okay, noon it is. See you Sunday.”

Five minutes pass as we both quietly work on our laptops. The icon blinks telling me I have mail, so I log on. “Hey, Fletch, I got an e-mail from you.”

“Uh-huh, I know.”

I open the e-mail and scan its contents. “Whoa, is this a
meeting request
to look at apartments on Sunday?”

“Yes.”

“Are you trying to be funny?”

“No. I used the Yahoo Scheduler. Now you can add this to your Yahoo Calendar so you can manage your personal affairs.”

“But I don’t
have
a Yahoo Calendar and I was sitting ten feet away from you when you made the call. And as eager as I am to move out of Melrose freakin’ Place, chances are good I won’t forget this appointment.”

“Au contraire. You
do
have a Yahoo Calendar. I set it up for you.”

I’m getting agitated. “You’re missing the point—I don’t
need
a Yahoo Calendar to manage my personal affairs, nor do I want to receive meeting requests from you. Here’s a quick rule of thumb: no meeting requests to anyone you’ve seen naked, okay?”

He is resolute. “It’s very handy.”

“That may be, but when you e-mail your wife to schedule an appointment, you set an ugly precedent. What’s next, sending me a request to clean the bathroom on the third floor?”

“Now that you mention it…”

“Sweetie, I love you, but I promise that I will smother you in your sleep if you ever assign me a chore via e-mail.”

Five more minutes go by while we both quietly work on our computers, and then Fletch asks me, “So, are you going to respond to that request?”

“Fletch? This? Right here? Is exactly why you used to get beat up in junior high school.”

The broker on Sunday manages to show us something good. It’s a gorgeous house with lots of bedrooms and skylights and a gourmet kitchen with a full basement. We fall in love on the spot. Naturally the broker neglects to tell us the place is a thousand dollars over the strict budget parameters we’d established with him.

Dude, you’re
so
fired.

A few zillion calls and appointments later, we finally find the perfect place—spacious, lots of outside area, tons of amenities, dog-friendly, plenty of privacy, and with its polished concrete floors we can have a pony without any fear of damage! We’ve got to find something, like,
today
because we’ve given our landlord notice and he’s already found another sucker who wants our place. In addition, Holly’s not yet back from her trip and this morning Tracy offered Fletch a hummer and the gay boys and fat girls are starting to collect pitchforks and torches.

We’ve got to go
now
.

As we stand outside the building while the broker fiddles with the lock, we look at each other and agree as long as there are no dead bodies on the floor, we’ll take it. All we have to do is see it to be sure.

Do I even need to mention the lock is broken and we can’t get in?

Uncle.

We give up.

I hope the dogs like living in a van.

from the desk of Miss Jennifer A. Lancaster

An open letter to the dogs,

Although I don’t blame you for your behavior with the squirrel, I am holding you accountable for your actions Saturday night.

Let’s be clear about one thing—your daddy and I don’t have a lot of people who like us. So when we’re able to convince a few of our handful of friends to come over for a barbecue, we expect you to be on your best behavior.

“Best Behavior” does
not
include the following:

• Head-butting Angie so hard that you split her lip.
  
• Using your collective hundred and sixty pounds to pin Carol down on the couch while you lick her stupid (especially offensive considering your penchant for “salad tossing”).
  
• Plowing into the screen with such force that you sent
  the entire door
  crashing into Jen, which then almost knocked her over the side of the porch.
  

Again, we don’t have that many friends and we’ll have even fewer should you accidentally kill them in your zeal to shower them with affection.

Best,

Mumma

P.S. I shall be sending your daddy a note under a separate cover detailing my issue with him delaying dinner by almost three hours when he set his shorts on fire.

P.P.S. Perhaps he’ll listen to me the next time I say he’s using too much lighter fluid. And regardless of your behavior, at least you two didn’t set your
pants
on fire, which is more than I can say for your daddy.

To:
angie_at_home, carol_at_home, wendy_at_home, jen_at_work

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
i got all my sisters with me

Good morning,

Oh, yes, they’re at it again.

Setting: My kitchen, Saturday morning, on the phone.

Dad:
Hello?

Me:
Hey, Dad, what’s happening?

Dad:
Not much. I’m getting ready to take your brother Bruno for a walk.
(FYI, Bruno is their
dog.
This has led to many protracted family tree discussions with my parents that if Bruno is my brother, is the dog then an uncle to my brother’s children and my dogs, because I am their mother, or are all the dogs cousins somehow?) (I wish I could claim that alcohol was a factor in these conversations.)

Me:
I hoped to see you guys this weekend, but I don’t want you coming up until I get paid. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could actually take
you
to dinner? That way you and Mom wouldn’t have to arm wrestle over whose turn it was.
(After forty-two years of marriage, my parents still attempt to trick each other into picking up the tab. My dad is notorious for ducking out of store lines right before it’s time to pay, thus sticking my mother with the obligation, while my mom is famous for forgetting to grab her credit card when she changes purses.)

Dad:
Good. If she’s not paying, let’s go somewhere she doesn’t like. How about Gene & Georgetti? I’ll never forget the time we were there and Dan Rostenkowski joined us at our table. But we can’t go next weekend. It’s the NFL draft and I need to be here for it.

Me:
If they’re looking for seventy-year-old men with bad knees, I’m sure you’ll go in the first round. Hey, where’s Mom? I want to say hi. Is she there?

Dad:
Nope. She already left for your brother’s house. By the way, she’s not speaking to me again.

Me:
Now what?
(The key to my parents’ successful forty-two-year marriage is that they’ve spent twenty of these years giving each other the silent treatment over major offenses like Dad using real butter on the vegetables or Mom letting Todd have all of Dad’s $15 socks.)

Dad:
We got into a fight over who’d be more important historically—Pope John Paul or Winston Churchill. She said the Pope was a great humanitarian and I said without Churchill we’d all be speaking German.

Me:
If we put video cameras in your house, people would pay to watch you guys.

Dad:
Okay, then. Next time your mother speaks to me, I’ll tell her you called. Have a good weekend.

Me:
Bye, Dad.

After I hung up the phone I couldn’t stop snickering about how silly my parents are. How could I have been spawned from such patently ridiculous people? Of course, three hours later I stopped talking to Fletch (and had to sit on my clenched fists) when he
wrongly
claimed the Sex Pistols were the Monkees of punk rock.

On the bright side, at least I can safely say there’s no chance that I’m adopted.

TTFN,

Jen