The Big "O": A Romantic Comedy (10 page)

“It's Australian. It means doing the wild thing,” Edwin said delicately.

“You think you're Crocodile Dundee now?” Victor asked.

“Okay, give me your top three,” Max said to Victor.

“My top three what's?” Victor asked.

“Orgasmic ex-girlfriends,” Max said.

“I dunno, what if they get upset?” Victor asked nervously.

“No worries. We'll be delicate,” Edwin said.

“Lose the Ozzie bullshit,” Victor spat at Edwin, “Unless you're from fucking down under, it just confirms you're an asshole.” Max laughed and Edwin shrugged.

“But where are you going?” Emily asked Max, “Is this something with the guys? For Victor?” She stared at Max. He was all weird and flustered. His face was red.

“No, it’s a thing... a business thing... You’re not the only one around here making progress with stuff,” Max said with irritation.

“What stuff?” Emily asked, “I’m doing all of the social networking and marketing and such.”

“Other stuff,” Max said, “I’ll tell you when it pays off. Don’t ruin it for me. Okay?”

“Okay,” Emily said after a long pause.

“See you later, honey,” Max said and left the master bedroom.

Emily dropped onto the carpet and did leg lifts by the bed. The land line rang once, then stopped. Emily thought for about half a second and then picked up the master bedroom extension, covered the mouth piece with her sweatshirt, and quietly listened.

“Max, it's Simone. I know it's last minute but I must reschedule,” a woman said, her voice throaty and sexy, “I’m sorry.”

Max groaned. The sounds of his visceral reaction made Emily feel entirely sick.

“Can we reschedule now?” Max said and it sounded like he was practically begging.

“I’m glad that you’re so eager,” the woman said and laughed, “same time tomorrow?”

“That’s fine,” said Max, his voice filled with obvious relief. Click! Click! Both the caller and Max hung up. Emily carefully put the phone down, then went to the walk-in closet.

Inside of the master bedroom walk-in closet, Emily riffled through stuff, pausing to tilt her head and listen every couple of minutes to make certain that Max wasn’t entering the bedroom.

She looked in their safe. She checked inside of Max’s shoes and behind his clothes. She went through stuff on her side of the closet, in the back; stuff she hadn’t looked at in years.

Sweating and wiping away a tear she looked wildly around. Some golf clubs and other sports equipment were propped at the end of Max’s side of the close. He never used it anymore.

Bingo! In the back, behind the unused sports junk, she found books and DVDs on Tantric sex.

Thump. She shoved the stuff back where she found it and did her best not to scream. How dare he? After everything they had been through.

Max entered the master bedroom. Emily exited their walk-in closet wearing running gear.

“I thought we could go over the new marketing concepts.”

“I'm going for a run,” Emily said.

“Uh, okay, I guess we can do it later. My thing got canceled,” Max said.

Emily shrugged and left the bedroom.

Emily jogged down the street of their subdivision, crying, and tried to catch a breath. She ran for five miles, all the way to Victor and Juliette’s house. Sweating and disheveled, she knocked on the front door. After a long moment Juliette opened it.

Emily wiped away her tears. Juliette handed her a cup of tea and sat down next to her at the kitchen table. Juliette lifted a plate of cookies. Emily shook her head to decline the offer.

“I don't know what to do,” Emily said.

“I don't know. I just don't think Max is that kinda trouser snake. None of our guys are. But whatever you do, do
not
, and I mean it, make accusations without rock-solid evidence, honey,” said Juliette.

“But he's lying to me, a woman called the house and… I'm a fat-ass wife,” Emily sobbed.

Juliette glanced at her laptop and the stack of research beside it and sighed.

“You had a baby. So you aren't fitting in your skinny jeans, but Max loves you… I know it,” Juliette said.

Emily tried to take her friend’s words in. Could she have misinterpreted what happened?

“How's the sex?” Juliette asked.

“There's no more U.S.T. between us,” Emily acknowledged. At Juliette's blank look she added:

“…unrelieved sexual tension. You're married, and obviously Victor is crazy about you, so presumably you're periodically scratching that itch,” Emily added then started crying again.

“A lack of U.S.T. or whatever doesn’t mean that Max’s having an affair,” Juliette replied.

“She called him at home. The fucking whore's name is Simone! She reeked sex through the damned fucking phone. Her voice nearly turned me on and I'm straight,” Emily sobbed.

Juliette hugged her friend and, although she wasn't remotely religious, made a tiny prayer that Max was not the asshole that he seemed to be given the recent evidence.

A
T A LOS ANGELES Lakers game, inside of the stadium, Isis and Edwin watched the game. Isis carefully removed and ate her perfectly cut carrot and celery sticks from a little plastic box. Edwin sipped a coffee. Isis noticed a couple nearby, mainly because the big guy seemed unusually fidgety. The game was okay but the opposing team were not playing well and so the Lakers were up by many points.

Isis chewed a carrot stick and tried to remember what she had learned in her course on nutrition about food mastication. How many times was she supposed to chew her food? She also wondered what was up with the burly guy sitting nearby who seemed unusually jittery for a sports fan. Next to him was a cute, petite blonde.

The buzzer went off. It was half-time.

Isis was scanning the crowd and looked up at the scoreboard screen. She sighed with relief. As she had hoped, there was going to be a half-time proposal.

To her delight it was the burly guy and the blonde sitting nearby. Apparently their names were Ben and Heather because their images were larger-than-life onscreen, with the camera on them, and they were surrounded with a giant animation heart with their names were written there as well.

Ben, sweating now, looked at Heather, who appeared to be oblivious that they were on camera.

Isis swallowed her carrot as quickly as she could and coughed when she almost choked on it. She got Edwin's attention and pointed to the couple.

Edwin grinned. Isis flushed with warmth. This was better than a romantic comedy movie. Talk about subliminal. Here they were, in real life, about to see an adorable couple, regular folks by the look of them, commit to a happily ever after.

Edwin and Isis, and most of the stadium, watched on person or on screen as Ben held a black velvet ring box out to Heather. Heather still didn't realize that they were on camera.

How sweet, Isis thought. Maybe later a friend will give them a recording of the game and they can share it with their children and grandchildren. She got so choked up at the thought, and felt such love and joy, that she almost started crying.

The petite, blonde Heather looked surprised by the ring box but otherwise didn't respond. It wasn't that Isis could hear her, but the woman's lips didn't move.

Isis could feel Edwin's attention waning. She knew that he would get up to go for a snack soon. Hurry, she thought, to Heather. She figured Heather was either stunned or considering the immortal words with which she would respond to the proposal.

After all, Isis told herself, the story would probably be shared with generations. I wonder if she'll say, “Oh, yes, darling.&rdquot; But then again, the burly guy didn't look like a man that a woman would call darling. Maybe honey, Isis mused, or stud muffin.

The tension was almost unbearable for Isis as Edwin began to squirm in his seat beside her. Even though she had her arm on his forearm, he could slip out of her grasp at any moment and, after a cursory explanation, head for the concession stand.

To her enormous relief, Ben pointed to the scoreboard and finally Heather looked up.

The scoreboard read "Will you marry me, Heather?"

The crowd watched with bated breath. Ben flushed and, quite obviously, began to sweat harder. His eyes were wide, almost like a deer in the headlights, Isis thought to herself.

Heather looked at Ben while she looked at the ring box. She then looked at the crowd watching; many people anxious with anticipation, and then jumped to her feet.

Heather looked down at Ben and, shaking her head, she shook his grasping arms off of her. For he was holding onto her, his lips moving, obviously begging her.

She shook him off and ran out of the stadium.

Isis was so shocked, she was speechless. It was horrible. Some people groaned. Others laughed. Some guys were patting Ben on the shoulder. The guy looked like he had shrunk a foot in size.

The scoreboard image changed. Isis was glad that whoever was running had the decency not to make a joke out of the thing and moved on to half-time commercials and such. Edwin stood.

“Wow. He fouled out. That sucks,” Edwin said and then changing the subject added, “I'm going to grab a snack and hit the gents. Do you want anything?”

Isis was deflated with disappointment and felt positively ill. She got up.

“Listen, I'm not feeling well all of a sudden,” Isis said. Edwin's face, which had been almost teasing, albeit in his typical gentle sort of way, became filled with concern.

“We can go.”

“No, I'll just go home and rest,” Isis said.

Edwin looked at the court. It was obvious that he wanted to watch the second half of the game.

He was such a predictable kind of man, Isis thought. He liked to finish what he started. He didn't do things by halves. He wasn't really spontaneous. Yes, he was kind and caring... to a point. He would take her home if he thought, or could see that, she really were ill. She obviously wasn't.”

“No,” she said gently, “You stay and watch the game. I'm going to go home and take a little nap.”

“If you're sure,” he said, and she could feel his attention wandering because he was probably already calculating how much time was left in the break. He was probably wondering if he had time to go to the bathroom and get a snack.

“I'm sure,” she said and, to her surprise, she really meant it.

Inside of Isis's bedroom, "Died in Your Arms" by Cutting Crew played a little too loudly.

Spread on the bed were pictures of Edwin and Isis. Every card, candy box, stuffed animal, and dried bouquet of flowers, that she had ever received from her man. Isis sat there and surveyed it all. Her face was swollen from crying. "Died in Your Arms" concluded.

Isis, crying, sort of talked to herself in a sing-song voice although she couldn't seem to get the lyrics right.”

At some point, she stopped singing, wiped her face with a negligée wadded up among the relationship memorabilia, and heaved a huge sigh.

“I should have walked the feck away...and so I did,” she said.

Severely depressed, Isis looked hellatious. Her face was swollen and her nose was running, despite her attempts to wipe it clean with the negligée. The song ended. A new song started. Like magic, Isis was transformed by the opening bars to "I Will Survive," by Gloria Gaynor.

Isis sang along lustily, about how she was afraid, petrified, and thought she couldn't live without Edwin by her side. As she sang and cried, she grabbed all of the crap of relationship and stuffed it into the trash can, jamming it down as far as she could. She hummed to the song lyrics that didn't apply to her and stood and started randomly pulling stuff off of her bedroom walls.

In a frenzy now, Isis sang about surviving, as long as she knew how to love, knowing that she would stay alive, that she had all her life to live, and all her love to give, and that she would survive.

“Screw surviving... I will thrive,” Isis said with finality as she stripped the bed and began to push, pull and shove, and, finally, move the furniture out of her little apartment bedroom.

Inside of Max and Emily's house, in the master bedroom, late at night, Max snored in the darkness.

Emily tossed and turned, and then finally, with a quiet, yet very deep sigh, got up. Emily started to dial her phone then, realizing that it was too late, she gave up.

She went to their little home office and, instead of calling someone, she tweeted and wrote several blog posts. She then updated her FaceBook status.

She made a cup of tea and a snack. She carefully chose a beautiful red apple, which she sliced into thin slices, put onto a saucer, and sprinkled with cinnamon.

Then she went back into the office and worked on the new book manuscript for several hours. Every so often she looked over at her husband and sighed.

It was late. Isis was in her former bedroom.

The room was beautiful chaos and Isis was in her element.

The bed was gone, replaced by a dressmaker's form and a foldable student drafting table. Her bureau had been emptied and turned into a design desk.

Alongside it was empty clothing racks. Isis had put all of her own clothes into the hall closet and, having carefully folded the extras, the empty trunk in the one room living/dining area that served as her coffee table.

The room was also much cleaner. Isis had scrubbed and scrubbed, washing the baseboards and walls. It's a blank slate, Isis decided, as she looked around the room with satisfaction. This was now a room where she could design something fabulous.

Her bedroom book shelves were empty now.

Grabbing and putting on a thick sweater and pulling on a pair of fluffy sheepskin lined pink suede boots, Isis went back to the front room.

In the tiny living/dining area, just off the kitchen alcove and bathroom, Isis arranged two cardboard boxes full of romance novels and other household junk and chatchkes.

She collected all of the trash in the house, including the bedroom trash, which contained all of her Edwin and Isis relationship memorabilia, and stuffed it into a large bag.

Then, even though it was quite late, Isis took the trash down to the basement.

She wished the building still had an incinerator; they had been banned and all removed sometime in the past. She felt like burning everything that Edwin had given her.

Not that she didn't still love him, she did. She was just sick of pinning her hopes and dreams of marriage onto a guy who clearly wasn't ready. Maybe he didn't want to marry her. It didn't matter either way she decided. All of the collected stuff was junk.

She was going to focus on her hopes and dreams, the ones that did not involve a man. She would love Edwin and rethink the potential of their relationship later. Isis put the trash in the bin and went back upstairs.

Then she found a marker and wrote FREE, in all caps, on the sides of the cardboard boxes. She then grabbed a protein bar and managed to pick up both of the cardboard boxes. She took the stuff downstairs and gave the doorman the protein bar.

He grinned and said thanks. She knew he had adjusted to the schedule, he'd been there for years, but honestly she liked to give him little treats every now and then to let him know that he was appreciated. Working the night shift was a tough gig.

Isis carried the two cardboard boxes to the thrift store around the corner.

They had a little donation door, not unlike a doggie door, and she was just able to force her two boxes of perfectly good stuff into the donation opening. Then she went back around the corner, nodded to the happy doorman, who was just finishing his snack, and went upstairs. She felt cleansed, purified, by her clutter-clearing.

The first thing that Isis did was make a strong cup of spicy hot ginger tea. It instantly soothed her and made her feel much calmer.

She went from room to room in her apartment and, with a tiny pen and pad in hand, really only four tiny rooms, the bedroom, the living/dining area, and the bathroom (which was so tiny that it just held a commode facing a sink and the world's tiniest bathtub) she surveyed her domain.

Her furniture was a mishmash of old stuff.

She wrote down white paint/painting stuff.

The space looked pretty spare, now that she had removed the things which would distract her, such as cutesy meaningless decor items, but it wasn't the ideal space to create from within. She would make over her space and then make over her life and career. She would sleep on the pull out and focus on work until she succeeded.

Isis went back to her room and arranged fabric, swatches, and design books and sketches. Her cellphone rang. She ignored it. She worked until she was so exhausted that she barely had the energy to open up her little sofa bed, throw on some sheets, cover up, and turn out the light. She immediately fell into a deep sleep.