Time Flies (15 page)

“Genius. Hey, are you sure this is the right place?”

“Of course I am.” B.J. walked up to one of the salt-sprayed windows to get a better look inside.

There was no sign of life at Jan’s beach house. No cars in the driveway, no answer to our repeated knocking. Both the front and the back door, which B.J. insisted on trying, turned out to be locked.

“I used to have dreams about living in a beach house like this when we first moved to Atlanta,” I said. “Did you tell Jan what time we’d be here?”

“Of course I did. At least I think I did. Let me try her cell.”

I sat on the porch swing while B.J. dug through her purse and found her phone.

“She’s not answering.” B.J. tucked the phone in the crook of her neck and bent down and picked up a corner of the weathered sisal welcome mat. “You’d think she would have at least left us a key under here.”

“Like we would have just walked right in,” I said.

“We could try the windows,” B.J. said, “but you’ll have to be the one who climbs in. These jeans are brand new.”

“Sorry,” I said. “But I don’t do breaking and entering. Let’s just leave the car here and take a walk on the beach.”

We crossed over to the water side of the street and walked until we found a beach entrance.

I leaned forward to smell the beach roses in front of a dilapidated wooden fence that flanked the path. “I spent years trying to find a perfume that smelled like the beach—you know, a little bit of beach rose, a splash of salt air, a dash of suntan lotion. Bobbi Brown’s ‘Beach’ is pretty close, but I don’t think you can ever completely duplicate the real thing.”

“So, move back,” B.J. said. “I mean, think of how much money you’ll save on perfume.”

“Ha,” I said. “You make it sound so simple.”

B.J. dropped her head and looked over the top of her sunglasses. “Your kids are grown, you’re self-employed, and your husband left you. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.”

“Leave me alone,” I said. “I’m not ready to think about it.” I loved B.J., but boundaries were not her strong suit.

“I can’t leave you alone,” B.J. said. “I’m your best friend and I think it might be time to start pushing yourself a little bit.”

I shook my head. “Why should I, when I have you for that?”

B.J. grinned. “Love you, too.”

I kicked off the flip-flops I’d been wearing since Atlanta and bent down to pick them up. “You know, flip-flops are truly the world’s best invention, much better than Post-its. I think you should change your profile to say that you invented flip-flops and have been living off the proceeds at an undisclosed location on a private island in the Caribbean.”

B.J. held on to my shoulder as she stepped out of her jute espadrilles. “Ooh, good one. Do me a favor and remember that so I can write it down when we get back to the car.”

“Whoa,” I said, finally noticing. “What happened to the beach?”

The ocean came right up to the seawall. A few huge rocks broke through the surface. The sandy beach I remembered had completely disappeared.

“Erosion,” B.J. said. “I guess you have to wait for low tide to walk the beach now.”

“Oh, that’s so sad.”

We climbed a ladder and walked along the top of the seawall for a while, then turned around and walked back the other way. A young couple in bathing suits was out walking the seawall, too. They stepped way off to one side and teetered on the edge to let us pass.

“Did you see that?” B.J. hissed. “It was like they thought they were helping two little old ladies cross the street.”

“Shh,” I said. “They’ll hear you. And they were just being polite.”

“My point exactly,” B.J. said. “If they thought we were still in
our prime, they would have staked their claim and made us walk around them.”

My cell phone rang as we were climbing back down the ladder. I fished it out of my shoulder bag as soon as I hit the ground. Kurt’s name smirked up at me.

“Nooooo,” I said.

B.J. looked over. “What’s wrong?”

I pushed the
IGNORE
button. “Unbelievable. I thought I’d blocked Kurt’s number, but apparently not.”

B.J. shrugged. “Roaches are like that, too. You think they’re gone and then one day you open a cupboard—”

“Wait,” I said. “I need to concentrate.” I opened up the block app
again
. B.J. shrugged and reached for her own cell.

I triple-checked when I tapped Kurt’s number in this time, then pushed the
SAVE
button.

“Damn, she’s still not answering.” B.J. looked up from her phone. “What was that all about anyway? Can’t you just answer, tell Kurt to go screw himself, and then hang up?”

“Like I haven’t done that before,” I said.

“Give it time. Maybe you were married so long he’s temporarily forgotten
how
to screw himself.”

CHAPTER 15

B.J.’s stylist’s former boyfriend, Sam, lifted two handfuls of my hair up over my head and then let them fall. I assumed this was part of his process—maybe he was trying to get a glimpse of the hairstyle within the way I could sometimes see a fully formed sculpture in a hunk of rusty metal.

We looked at each other in the mirror. His eyebrows were perfectly arched and his black hair was short and spiky with a long burgundy piece on one side that reminded me of a raccoon-tail hat on sideways.

He shrugged. “So, what were you thinking?”

“Actually,” I said as I checked out my boring brown hair, “I wasn’t. To tell you the truth, I don’t really spend a lot of time on my hair. I usually just pull it back into a ponytail, so as long as you leave me enough for—”

“Don’t listen to her.” B.J. popped up from her pedicure chair. “Short and perky. Get rid of those wiry gray stragglers and add some highlights. We’re going for
youthful
.”

“Youthful?” I said. When I looked in the mirror, my expression reminded me a little bit of Linda Blair in
The Exorcist
, right before her head started to spin around. Or maybe Macaulay Culkin after he slapped on the aftershave in
Home Alone
.

B.J. got the rest of her pedicure, followed by a manicure. After her nails finished drying, she came over and coached Sam while my color cooked. Then she paced around outside in front of the plate-glass window and talked on her cell phone.

Two and a half hours later, I was pronounced youthful.

“Really?” I said. “You don’t think it looks too much like the pixie I had in third grade?”

“Bingo,” B.J. said. “That’s the whole point. It’s very Ellen Burstyn in
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
.”

I squinted at the mirror.

Sam tilted his head. “I’m getting a flash of Linda Ronstadt on the
Heart Like a Wheel
album cover. With a better haircut, of course.”

“There’s some Twiggy in that side part, too,” B.J. said, “plus or minus a few pounds. We’ll go with lots of black eyeliner for the reunion, and some false eyelashes.”

“Speak for yourself,” I said. “I don’t do false eyelashes.”

“Of course you do,” B.J. said. “You’re youthful now.”

She insisted on paying and tipping Sam for me.

“Are you sure?” I asked as she handed over her credit card.

She gave what was left of my hair a little fluff with one hand. “Absolutely. You can pick up the tab for our tattoos.”

“Ha,” I said. “Very funny.”

Back at the car, B.J. actually let me choose the song this time. I scrolled through her iPod until I found Grand Funk Railroad’s “Some Kind of Wonderful.”

Before Grand Funk even got to the first chorus, I reached over and turned it down fast. “Ugh. I just remembered Kurt used to sing this to me. I think we even danced to it at our wedding.”

“You were always too good for him,” B.J. said.

“Thank you. Spoken like a best friend.”

“It’s true.” B. J. reached over and hit the
SHUFFLE
button and Maria Muldaur’s “Midnight at the Oasis” filled the car.

“Ooh,” I said. “I loved this song.”

“I’m pretty sure I got pregnant to it,” B.J. said.

“Thank you so much for that image.”

“You’re welcome.”

“So, what else is new?” I said, mostly to keep B.J. from over-sharing her conception details.

“Well, when I was flipping through a magazine in the salon I found out someone is developing these new contact lenses that measure the blood sugar of diabetics so they don’t have to draw blood. Apparently tiny particles in the lenses react with the glucose molecules in tears and change the color of your eyes based on how high your sugar levels are.”

“Fascinating,” I said.

B.J. nodded. “My first thought was that I wanted to get a pair, but it’s probably a lot easier and definitely more figure-friendly to just buy tinted contacts than to try to eat enough sugar to get them to react. But then I started thinking maybe we could say we
invented a new twist on the mood ring. You know, contact lenses that change the color of your eyes based on your mood.”

Despite myself, I flashed on an image of Kurt’s ever-changing eyes.

I shook my head to clear it away. “You’re certifiable,” I said. “But I have to admit I do miss my mood ring.”

“How about Kurt—do you miss him, too?” B.J. took one hand off the wheel and stretched it up over her head.

“Whoa,” I said. “Where did that come from?”

“Hey, you’re the one who brought him up.”

“No, I didn’t. Grand Funk Railroad brought him up.”

B.J. switched hands and stretched the other arm up over her head. I hoped she wasn’t about to launch into a full series of yoga poses while she was driving.

“I don’t know,” I finally said. “I think I mostly miss the idea of Kurt, if that makes sense.”

“I get that. A husband is a pretty good safety net, even when the marriage has a few holes in it.”

“Oh, he had a few holes, all right. Actually, I guess we both did. You know, it was kind of like I could see us drifting away from each other, but I just couldn’t muster the energy to do anything about it. I suppose I thought we’d both keep drifting, but we’d be, I don’t know, polite about it.”

“Like he’d just politely screw around on you?”

“Thanks. I guess I really didn’t think about that part. Do you know Kurt made this huge point about claiming that nothing had really happened between
Crissy
and him before he moved out? As if it was some kind of badge of honor.”

“Oh, puh-lease, they always say that. Like he would have
moved in with her if he hadn’t slept with her first. I mean, what if she was truly pathetic in bed?”

“I cut up our bed with a chain saw,” I said.

B.J. reached over and patted my knee. “That’s my girl. I hope he was in it.”

“Ha,” I said. “I didn’t think of that.”

“Next husband, call me first.” B. J. turned down the music. “You know, it’s really starting to bother me that Veronica isn’t answering my calls or calling me back.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Jan isn’t, either. We might have a theme here.”

“They didn’t let me into Honors English, so I don’t acknowledge themes.”

“If a theme falls in the forest and no one acknowledges it, is it still a . . .”

B.J. reached for her lip gloss. “Not being able to get through to our friends is a colossal drag. Have our lives gotten that out of control? Once your kids are grown and you get to our place in life, you’re not supposed to be too busy to pick up your phone. You’re supposed to be able to relax and enjoy and do exactly what you want to do, when you want to do it. Where is our chance to be selfish again? Where is our second childhood?”

I’d managed to sneak in an unproductive email check during B.J.’s soliloquy. “You’re not going to rant all week, are you?” I asked as I tucked my phone back into my purse.

“I never rant. Okay, let’s get serious here. Next up: tattoos.”

“Very funny.”

“It’s not a joke. It’s on the itinerary, which means it’s essentially etched in stone. Remember that time we almost got them when we were seniors in high school? And, I might add, it was
even your idea. We took that endless bus ride all the way to upstate New York to stay in your sister Marion’s dorm because she said she’d take us. I can’t remember if you only had to be eighteen to get them legally there at the time, or if it was a sketchy place that did underage tattoos. Either way, it puts tattoos squarely in the category of lifelong-dream-about-to-come-true.”