Lauren Takes Leave (32 page)

“Gee, thanks.”

“What is this?” Kat screams from behind her bathroom
stall.

“Are you okay?” I ask, as Jodi shouts, “What happened?”

“I. Have. A. Fucking. Tattoo! On my inner thigh! Under
this bandage! Right here!” she yells.

“Can I see?” Jodi asks, banging on the stall. “Open up!”

“No!”

“You don’t remember?” I ask the Obvious Question, but
still, I’m kind of surprised. I thought I was way more inebriated that she was,
and I recall getting the tattoos.

“We all got them,” Jodi adds. “I copied Tim’s.”

“You did?” Now, that part I don’t remember. I can only
hope she doesn’t have Ruby’s doodles on her back. Or worse, a sketch of King
Tut’s sarcophagus. Tim has one on his arm. He showed it to me last night. Kinda
creepy.

“Yeah. I inscribed my daughters’ birthdays next to my
C-section scar.”

“In hieroglyphics, like Tim?” I wonder.

“No, idiot. In pink and purple.”

“Kat.” I knock gently on the yellow metal door. “Come
out.”

“It’s mortifying. I can’t. I’ll never come out again!” I
peer through the seam where the door meets the frame. Kat is perched on the
toilet tank with her head in her hands.

“It can’t be that bad,” I soothe. And then I whisper to
Jodi, “Do you remember what her tattoo is?”

Jodi shakes her head, clueless. “Something about
astrology, maybe? Or yoga?”

“I. Can. Hear. You!” Kat calls.

“Oh, wait! I’m having a vision!” Jodi announces proudly.
Then she saunters over to the stall where Kat is hiding and knocks lightly on
the door. “Hello, Kitty?”

“Fuck me!” Kat says, exploding out of the stall, past us,
and out into the restaurant.

Jodi can’t stop laughing. Bending over slightly, she runs
into the stall. “I think I just pissed myself!”

“Why?’’ I ask. “What’s so funny about saying ‘Hello,
Kitty’ to Kat?”

“Dumb ass. That’s her new tattoo! It’s a white-faced,
chubby cat with whiskers, a huge pink bow, black eyes and a yellow dot nose. I
sketched it out for that guy Tommy. It looks like something from Kimora Lee
Simmons’ line of jewelry! Hysterical!” she calls out from behind the stall. I
hear her flush and blow her nose. “I’m crying again, but this time, it’s from
comic relief. I really needed that!”

I manage to get her back out into the restaurant and to
our booth in one piece. Only Kat is at the table waiting for us, the guys
nowhere in sight. “Meow,” Jodi declares, holding her juice glass high for a
toast.

Kat holds out her middle finger in response.

Out in the parking lot, Tim and Lenny are speaking
animatedly. Tim leans against the trunk of an old car while Lenny paces in
front of him.

“It’s your responsibility to tell them,” Lenny argues.

“No, it isn’t. I don’t have to do a damn thing if I don’t
want to. I only mentioned it to
you
because I thought you were cool,”
Tim says.

“Mentioned it? Like it was just something in passing? An
oversight that you conveniently forgot about?” Lenny barks. “And don’t say
something completely juvenile, like, ‘I thought you were cool.’ Unless you’ve
been cast in the part of a seventh grader, perhaps?”

“Whoa,” Jodi says.

The men both turn their heads at the sound of Jodi’s
voice, and instantly clam up. Tim scratches his four-day stubble with vigor
while Lenny continues pacing.

“Anyone want to tell us what’s going on?” I ask.

“Nope,” Tim says breezily.

Lenny motions with his pointer finger at Tim. “You—” he
starts. “Arrgh!” He grunts in frustration, never completing the thought. “Where
are they, huh?” he asks Tim, his hands gesturing wildly around the parking lot.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Then he gets up in Tim’s face. “You’ve
got some nerve.”

“Oh, that’s rich.” Tim shakes his head back and forth, a
smile creasing the corner of his mouth. Cutely, I might add.

No, Lauren, I scold myself, not “cutely.” Lenny and Tim
are fighting and, no matter what, you must root for Lenny to win. Even if Tim
is larger-than-life and amazingly adorable.

“
I’ve
got some nerve?” Tim repeats, like they are
practicing cheesy dialogue in some Clint Eastwood film. “What about you?” Tim
looks around. “Actually, what about
all
of you?”

We stare back at him. No one says anything for a few
beats. Then I turn to Tim. “What about us?” I wonder.

Tim sighs. “Nothing, Lauren. Just forget I said anything.”

“Can’t do that.” He looks at me and I smile. “Listen,
Macbeth. You’re very cute and very famous and I’m just trying to keep it all
together around you, so no, I haven’t had much nerve until this point. But now
I’m going to
demand
—” my voice shakes a little bit on the force of the
word, but I push past it—“that you tell us exactly what’s going on.”

It’s perhaps my imagination, but I sense Jodi and Kat
moving in on either side of me, like bookends giving me support.

Lenny clears his throat. “Tim’s got bodyguards.”

“Well,” I say, sort of caught off guard, “naturally, he’s
got bodyguards. I don’t see what—”

“No, I mean,
here.
Now.
Watching us, making
sure we’re legit. The whole time we’ve been hanging out with him, he’s been
faking this friendship with us—”

“Now, wait a second there, Len!” Tim jumps in. “That’s
just not true.”

“So you
don’t
have secret security guys watching us
right now?” Jodi asks, moving a step closer to Tim.

Jodi and Tim bonded last night, certainly more than either
Kat or I did with him. Lenny, too, with his YouTube connection and all that
Hollywood talk. Depending on Tim’s answer, they have the most to lose.

“Jo, it’s…different for me,” Tim tries, looking contrite.
“I’m not like you, I mean, not anymore. I can’t just walk up to people on the
beach in Miami and become fast friends! I have to be cautious. About everything
I do.”

“So, you lied to me! To us,” she declares. “You probably
planned this whole thing, to
practice
being a normal person for some
upcoming blockbuster role.” She puts her hands up to show that she’s making
quotation marks around her next words. “‘Logan Price
thought
he had it
all,’” Jodi says, mimicking the voiceover guy from the movies. “‘The perfect
family, the perfect career. But one crazy night in Miami changed all that.’”
She stops, gathering her thoughts. “It’s like…like, we were your
research
.
Your rats!” She walks right up to Tim. I think she’s going to punch him, slap
his face, or spit at him. Instead, she reaches up and knocks Tim’s hat right
off his head. “That fedora makes you look fucking stupid!” she cries. And then
she storms off down the street.

Kat, Lenny, and I chase after her, leaving Tim—and his
elusive bodyguards, wherever they might be hiding—alone together in the Denny’s
parking lot.

I’ve got to hand it to Jodi, she does have a flair for
dramatic exits.

The next few hours pass by in a blur at the funeral home.
There is paperwork to watch Jodi complete. There is the body to consider. There
is transportation to the airport to arrange. There is Tim Cubix’s betrayal to
replay like a scene from a bad movie. Kat and I sit patiently while Lenny works
the phone and changes all of our flights to match the one Jodi and her grandma
are scheduled for.

“It’s all set,” Lenny sighs, throwing his phone down on a
plush, crimson velvet banquette. “We’re sitting together on the three o’clock.
I was able to do pre-boarding and everything.”

“Thank you!” I say, relieved that it’s all taken care of.

“Too bad,” Kat adds.

“You know,” I begin, turning to Kat, “I’m kind of tired of
your moping about this. Jodi’s grandma
died
. I mean, I’m bummed, too. I
could have used another day on the beach. But, you’ve got to admit, Kat, it’s
pretty selfish of you to put this trip before your friend’s needs.” I pause.
“What’s the big deal? I mean, it’s not like you have anything to go back to…”
And then I stop. Lenny is shaking his head, and Kat has turned away.

Because that is, of course, the issue exactly. Kat has
nothing to go back to. No husband, and perhaps even no job. Only divorce
proceedings and résumés on the horizon. Plus, perhaps, the leakage of a local,
minor sex scandal to clean up.

“Damn,” I whisper. I put my hand out to touch her arm but
she shoos me away.

“You’re right, Lauren. I have nothing.”

“That’s not what I meant—”

Lenny chimes in. “She was only saying that—”

Kat stands up and shakes her hair in disagreement. “Just…I
can’t…give me a moment alone, okay?”

She moves across the room and enters a chapel door on the right.
Based on the organ music and the sign on the door, there seems to be a funeral
going on inside. But I’m not about to tell Kat that.

“We’re in deep shit,” Lenny declares.

“You think?”

“Oh yeah. Didn’t you notice? She didn’t even curse at us.
Not once.”

He’s right, and I’m left with silence and more than a few
goose bumps. Kat’s marriage was wrong from the start, but even so, getting out
of it will be painful.

“Peter left her
and
spent their savings, you know,”
I tell Lenny, reminding myself of the horror of it all.

He nods. “She mentioned that. It explains a lot of the
hostility.”

“Some of that’s just Kat. She’s always been kind of
thick-skinned and quick with the insults.”

“She’s trying to be tough. But she’s so
sad
,
Lauren. Can’t you see that coming through?”

I take a deep breath and consider this. How much have I
really paid attention these past few days? I mean, to anything other than
myself? I thought this little trip might heal me—heal all of us—and make the
hurts just magically disappear. Like a twenty-four-hour cure-all. But now I
have to go home and face Doug and Laney and Ben and Becca. I have to go back to
work on Monday and face my homeroom, grade papers, read
Johnny Tremain
aloud for the eleventh time.

I’m not sure I can stomach it.

Jodi has to go home to a grieving family, and face all her
lies with Lee.

And Kat will return to…what?

Jodi emerges from a back office looking ten years older
than she did yesterday. A white-haired man in a suit and tie emerges behind
her, rolling a pine box on a gurney. Jodi closes her eyes for a moment, then
opens them, her gaze on me. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

I put Lenny in charge of retrieving Kat from the depths of
Melvin Kantor’s funeral, and hustle out behind the coffin. A large woman, clad
in tight leggings and an ill-fitting Florida Marlin’s T-shirt, waits next to a
van idling in the parking lot.

“You the granddaughter?” She squints at Jodi in the hot
sun.

“You the driver?” Jodi squints back.

The woman holds up a walkie-talkie and speaks into it. “I
got her,” she confirms to whoever is crackling on the other end of the line.

Jodi gets into the passenger seat while Lenny, Kat, and I
pile in to the back row. I try not to get freaked by the presence of Sonia
Goldberg in the back, but it’s hard to ignore her.

Our silence is broken by the driver. “It’s one o’clock
right now, and your flight is at three. You need to stop at the Loews Hotel, I
hear, before going to the airport, right?”

We confirm that, yes, we’ll just need to stop for about
fifteen minutes to pack our things and check out.

“Schedule is tight. I’ll take Collins, then,” she
concludes, sitting back and turning up the Latin salsa on the radio. I can tell
that she’s satisfied in the way that drivers are once they have mentally mapped
out their route.

We stare out our respective windows. It’s another glorious
day here, and I feel some regret over not being able to enjoy it. Kat is sort
of right about that, much as it makes me feel like a douche—Lenny’s got me
using his favorite word—to admit.

We go over a bump and the casket rattles slightly behind
us.

A strange euphoria overcomes me. I don’t know why, but
ever since I attended my first funeral when I was thirteen, I’ve always felt
very much alive in the presence of a dead body.

I know it’s morbid to think like that, but I can’t help
it. Sonia Goldberg is making the sun shine brighter for me today, putting the
world—with all of its contradictory desires—in sharper focus. It sounds odd,
but I whisper a small prayer of thanks to her, for reminding me of the joys of
living.

I want to tickle my children and hear their giggles of
delight. I want to hug Doug. I want to try again.

As much as I was looking forward to the flight down here,
I’m now equally anticipating the flight home.

And then the van slows down.

And then the van comes to a crawl.

And then, the van stops.

The swell of traffic seems to have come out of nowhere. One
minute we were cruising, and the next, we are enmeshed in a jam of epic
proportions.

“What the fuck?” Kat asks.

“And…she’s back!” Lenny says, clearly pleased to hear Kat
spew an expletive.

“Not sure,” the driver says with a shrug. “I’ll radio in
and see whassup.”

“This is bad,” Jodi mutters to herself. “Very.”

The four of us hold a collective breath as the driver asks
for details. “Yeah, I’m on Collins!” she calls into her device.

“You where?” a guy shouts back through the radio.

“Collins, man, Collins!” she yells, pounding on the
dashboard for emphasis.

My euphoria has been replaced with dread. Lenny looks
calm, but raises his eyebrows at me in question. Kat is sucking a curl.

“You going to duh parade?” the disembodied dispatcher’s
voice crackles back.

“Whah parade?”

“Oh, this is too much!” Jodi exhales in exasperation. “Are
you two for real?”

“Forreal,” Lenny smiles. “Dat’s how you say it. Forreal.”
He motions across his body with his hand splayed wide, like a homie in one of
his videos.