Why Girls Are Weird (19 page)

Tess showed up at my apartment the following afternoon.

“Hear me out, okay?”

She was wearing a green coat and brown corduroys. She wore a ski cap. Her right foot was twisting inward at an awkward, nervous angle. She was holding two cups of coffee. A bag was crammed under her arm.

“Are those for me? Because if they are, you're starting off on the right foot.”

“Is Ian here?”

“No.” I was sick of the sound of his name. Sick of all things Ian. I needed Anna K to break up with him soon so I didn't have to talk about him anymore.

“Please, can I come in?”

It felt like years had passed since Tess posted that entry. It was the same feeling as when Meredith and I fight when I come home for holidays. The next time we saw each other, there'd be a faint ache from where we used to be smarting, but it was too dull to remind us what the fight was all about.

I let Tess in and took a coffee from her. She dumped out the bag. Cookies and packs of cigarettes scattered onto my coffee table.

“Merry Christmas,” I exhaled.

“I have a proposition.”

She started talking very quickly, moving her hands whenever she stopped for a breath so I wouldn't have a chance to interrupt. I sipped my coffee and listened.

Tess had written a paper on Internet diaries. It was part of her thesis, and she had submitted it to a web conference. They liked her paper and what she had to say and had invited her to come and speak at the conference that weekend. They wanted her to bring someone who wrote a web journal to answer questions and discuss what the next wave of journalism might be if these sites gained a greater audience.

“How many people visit your website a day?” she asked me.

“I don't know, Tess. It's been more expensive lately, though. The hosting company has been charging me out the ass. Something about the bandwidth.”

“You don't know? You don't check your stats?”

I stared at her until she walked over to my laptop and pulled up my website. She asked me a few questions, typed a few things, and pulled up a page. She made a hissing noise through her teeth and turned the laptop toward me. “Did you know over five thousand people read your site every day?”

“Is that a lot?”

“It's not huge if you're a company. But if you want to compare it, about fifty people read my site, and I'm dancing over it. That means I don't suck.”

“So, what does this make me?” I asked.

“A writer.”

I tried to imagine what five thousand people looked like. I wondered how many of them were just like Kurt. Was that possible? Could there be more than one of him out there? Maybe I could find someone else, someone who lived closer to me. My head started aching. Five thousand people. What did they all want from me?

In all those five thousand people, how had Kurt stood out? How did he break past that faceless pack? What made him take an extra step forward, allowing him to be whole and human in my mind? Maybe I had added qualities to him that he didn't really have. I might have just elaborated and exaggerated until I imagined a real relationship between the two of us. I could be the only one feeling this, reading into his words and deciding we had more than was even possible.

“So, will you come to the conference with me and speak?” Tess lit a cigarette. “You're qualified, and the fact that you know nothing about the community you're in is incredibly fascinating.”

“I have to answer questions?” My mouth went dry. “I don't really like talking about this thing, Tess.” Maybe I could send Shannon in my place, since she spent so much time reading journals. She was much more of an expert.

“I know it's not glamorous, but it's a free trip, a free hotel room, a free rental car, and a chance to get away. You can do your Christmas shopping in a different part of the country. It will be fun.”

“I don't know, Tess. Does the hotel have a pool?” I joked.

“I'm pretty sure Pittsburgh is the last place where you'd want to swim these days. I can see about moving the conference to Green Bay if you want to totally freeze your ass off.”

“Pittsburgh?”

She booked my ticket that instant, from my computer. The conference was just days away. Days. I was going to see him in days. I had to see what he looked like. I couldn't ignore the pull inside of me any longer. I had to find out if it was real.

While making the final descent into the Pittsburgh International Airport early Friday evening, I went over my Post-It list again. I was smarter this time and had written out two lists: one for Tess and one for Kurt. I wasn't going to make any mistakes. I was going to try to weave all of my lies into at least semitruths by the time I said good-bye to both of them.

I was pretty comfortable with the Tess list. I wasn't so emotionally involved with her that I might slip up, and I wasn't too worried about what she'd think if she caught me. I'd explain to her that there were some lies I told early on to protect myself, back when I felt more vulnerable to strangers interested in my life. Was that a good enough excuse that Kurt would buy it as well?

I waited to tell Kurt I was coming until yesterday. Originally I wanted to surprise him, sending an e-mail from some local café telling him to meet me there. That entire ordeal was way too
You've Got Mail
for me, though, and I figured he deserved some preparation time.

Besides, I needed him to have his schedule completely free so I didn't end up sitting between him and some girl he'd known for years. I was asking him to cancel all plans immediately and drop everything to wait for me to bust in on his city. I was fine with how selfish that was. I felt I'd earned it in thousands of half-flirting words over the past four months.

I was happy to be flying alone, as the conference had already booked Tess's flight when she invited me along. We were meeting in Baggage Claim. I wasn't even in charge of getting the rental car. I leaned back and tried to imagine that this was just a vacation and not potentially an enormous disappointment.

I shifted in my seat away from the sleeping woman leaning heavier and heavier on my side, and my mind wandered to the other night, when Becca almost kicked me out of her wedding.

She had met me for drinks, saying she had a “delicate matter” to discuss. After the uncomfortable small talk she finally said that Ian told Mark about us sleeping together in Connecticut. Now Ian wanted to skip out on the wedding so it wouldn't turn into “a scene.” Becca and Mark didn't want a situation on their wedding day, but Ian was one of Mark's best friends, so they didn't want him to leave. Basically they were asking if I'd be nice enough to bow out of the wedding and let someone else be a bridesmaid. I was mortified to find out that Becca and Mark actually had to sit and talk about Ian and me having sex, how Ian had run out on me afterward, and which one of us was more important at the ceremony. Everyone at that wedding would soon know that Ian wasn't talking to me because he flew to Connecticut for pity sex.

“I understand, Becca,” I said quietly. “I won't come to the wedding.”

“I hate that they're making me do this,” she told me as she dropped her head down to the bar. “I'm so sorry, Anna.”

“Don't, Bec. That's dirty. Your hair's in beer.”

“I don't care. Shit, I paid thirty dollars for a shampoo with beer in it. This is just as good, I'm sure.”

She wiped her forehead back and forth on the bar. She was wearing her hair down because her stylist had told her that she was ruining her hairline by wearing it up so often. Becca didn't want to be a bald bride. She moaned from under her hair as the ends lapped in puddles of beer.

“She can't do that here,” the bartender said to me.

“Thanks, dude.” I nodded at him. “Good to know.”

“I can do what I want, Mr. Bartender Man. Don't you know the bride always gets her way?”

It wasn't that she was drunk; I think Becca was just at her breaking point. So many things to deal with and now she had to fire a bridesmaid? I couldn't imagine.

I grabbed her purse and held her on the shoulder as I paid the tab. “She's had a rough day,” I explained to the bartender.

“Do you want me to call a cab?” he asked. He was cute. Blue eyes, big hands, and a tattoo at the base of his neck on the right side. A word I couldn't read. I briefly imagined us naked on the bar counter, shattering beer glasses all around us as he drove my hips into the counter and pulled on the back of my hair.

What was wrong with me?

“We're fine,” I told my brief boozy lover as I pulled Becca into my arms. “Let's go,” I said to her.

“I'm sorry about Ian,” she whispered into my ear.

Once outside the bar, Becca whipped around so quickly that her purse smacked me in the thigh. She grabbed both of my arms and looked into my eyes.

“You're going to be my bridesmaid,” she said with an intensity I'd never seen before.

“Becca, you don't have to do this.”

“I'm not letting Ian tell me what I can and can't do at my wedding. That's bullshit. He'll have to suck it up and be a man. You're our friend too, Anna, and he's got no right to threaten to pull out of the wedding just because he's too much of a baby to deal with the decisions he's made in his life. You're
my
bridesmaid and fuck him if he can't be mature enough to deal with it.”

Why couldn't I say things like that? How did Becca know how to sum up my feelings in one speech of fury? I wanted to be the one saying all the right things for once. To validate my own feelings for a change.

Ignoring our plans to meet in Baggage Claim, Tess was waiting at my gate when I walked off the plane. She pulled me in for a hug. She smelled like sugar and flowers. She had gotten a haircut in the few days since I'd seen her. Glittery clips pulled her blond bob back on the sides, bringing out her giant green eyes even more.

“Yay! Yay! You're here! It's freezing outside.”

Tess chattered on about her flight and the hotel and the itinerary as I stood in Baggage Claim waiting for the moment when I could smoke again. The conference was tomorrow afternoon and we'd be treated to lunch before Tess spoke. I was going to sit next to her at a table until the question-and-answer period. Then Tess would explain who I was, show pictures of my website, and then let people ask me questions.

There was a problem with the rental car. Tess was too young to rent it, so I handed over my credit card and did it myself. Tess was apologetic, but it wasn't a big deal to me. I was anxious to see Pittsburgh for the first time. Kurt's Pittsburgh.

It was nothing like I'd imagined. I thought I'd be walking into a city that had a sky black with soot that smelled like hard work and sorrow. I'm sure the Christmas season helped. It was sparkly and pretty with tinsel. There was a warm holiday sheen about the town. The houses and bridges had a history not found in Texas cities. There were layers and hills and old buildings that had been there forever. Large buildings jutted toward the sky and water surrounded everything. It smelled good. I love the smell of cold. It feels like it's cleaning out your insides.

Our hotel rooms were nice. Thankfully I didn't have to room with Tess. I told her that I was feeling a bit tired and made plans to have dinner with her in a couple of hours. I checked my e-mail.

-----

I was too anxious to nap, so I forced myself to watch the Weather Channel until I fell asleep. Tess called to wake me up a few minutes before ten. “Are you almost ready?” she giggled. I was sure she was about to knock on my door. I asked for a few more minutes and threw on my clothes.

I looked myself over in the mirror. My eyes looked tired, but that was from the plane combined with the very short nap. Betty was unhappy, so I splashed water on my comb and ran it through, pulling my hair into a ponytail. I dabbed on lip gloss. I looked closer at my skin, checking for wrinkles. I looked closer at my face, checking for lies.

It was time to start fixing things.