Here I am down in the family room at the computer, checking e-mail for the third time today. Why didn’t anybody warn me that it was so addictive? Every day, I wake up wondering who I’m going to hear from next.
Since I became [email protected], I’ve been in touch with my old friend Gaile, my favorite middle-school teacher and my campus alumni association. I’ve also heard from my in-laws on a daily basis, have deleted countless offers to enlarge my penis, and have been temporarily convinced that if I forward an e-mail to everyone on my list, Bill Gates will send me a dollar.
Since then, I’ve become more savvy about Internet hoaxes and spam, not to mention my mother-in-law. For example, I’ve learned not to respond to her e-mails during hours when she might actually be sitting at the computer, because then she’ll know I’m home and she might decide to call me and I’ll have to answer the phone and I’ll have to talk to her for an hour. More, if she puts my father-in-law on.
Now I know that the best time to respond to her e-mails is at four o’clock, when she and my father-in-law are likely to be at an early-bird special, or after nine o’clock, when they’re sound asleep.
Today, I sign on for the third time, and once again, I’ve got mail. Woohoo!
Okay, maybe not woohoo. I skim past two e-mails from MIL, several spams and a couple of lame jokes from my cousin in Ohio, who forwards everything that crosses her electronic path.
Then it happens.
A legitimate woohoo moment.
There, amid the junk mail, is a screen name that suddenly has my heart beating faster.
Okay, it’s probably spam, I tell myself as I grip the mouse and maneuver the arrow toward [email protected].
I mean, it has to be a coincidence. More than likely, a pornographic one. I’ll probably click on the screen name and be treated to a nude twelve-year-old girl reclining on leopard-skin sheets.
I stare at the screen.
HappyNappy64.
It can’t be him. It can’t be, yet I hear his voice echoing in my head from fifteen years and a lifetime ago.
You know what I feel like, Beau?
No, what do you feel like, Mike?
A happy nappy.
Then he’d pull me to the bedroom and we’d make love in broad daylight, then fall asleep in each other’s arms.
Happy Nappy.
That was what he called it, and it always made me laugh.
Somehow, despite all the details that have drifted back to me—especially lately—about the time we had together, I forgot all about Happy Nappy.
Now it comes back to me in a rush, all of it—not just the sound of his voice in my head, but the smell of his skin when I cradled my head on his naked chest, and the sunlight filtering through the crack in the blinds, and the way his mouth tasted when he kissed me after eating chocolate ice cream; his lips and his tongue sweet and cold and luscious.
Happy Nappy.
I forgot all about that, but not all about him.
I could never forget him if I tried.
And I had. Tried, that is. For a long time, I tried to forget him. I thought it would be better. Easier.
Then I realized nothing would ever be easy, and I stopped trying.
Lately, what I’ve been trying to do—maybe subconsciously, I realize now—is remember him. Remember Mike. Remember what we had.
Remember why the hell I was so willing to leave it behind, to leave him.
But for all the things I remember, I can’t remember that and I didn’t remember Happy Nappy.
Now, my heart beating in my throat as I stare at the screen name, I highlight HappyNappy64 and click on it.
Please, I beg silently as the battery-operated swing clicks back and forth behind my desk and animated televised Dora chatters in Spanish from the next room and Mikey and Chelsea argue upstairs over how many Legos are necessary for a properly tall Empire State Building…
Please don’t be porn.
Please don’t be porn.
Please be him.
Be Mike.
The Other Mike.
The Mike I didn’t marry.
The Mike I can’t forget.
Please, HappyNappy64, please turn out to be him.
And it does.
six
The past
“Can I get you another one?” the bartender asked, gesturing at my glass that now contained only melting ice cubes and a sliver of lime.
I contemplated the question. The first drink had gone down pretty easily, and I still had more than an hour to kill in the airport bar before Mike’s plane was due to land. But I didn’t want to be wasted when he got here, and the drinks weren’t exactly a bargain.
“Go for it,” a voice urged, and I glanced up to see that it had come from the guy on the next bar stool.
I immediately noticed that he was good-looking. I mean, how could I not? I was a red-blooded female, even if I was just biding my time until the love of my life stepped through the jetway.
Yes, this guy was good-looking. He had a brooding, Johnny Depp thing going on around the eyes. Plus he had style, no doubt about that. His dark hair was cut fashionably long on top, short on the sides, and brushed his collar in back. In other words, he had a mullet.
Don’t laugh.
Back in the summer of 1989, mullets were not reserved for rednecks and butch lesbians alone. No, mullets were the happening hairstyle of the moment, and this guy had one.
He also had on a pair of baggy jeans, a white T-shirt and a short black-and-white patterned jacket with shoulder pads.
Hair and clothes: A plus for effort.
But he was a babe even beyond those variables that were within his control. His dark eyes were fringed by thick, sooty lashes. There was a deep cleft in his chin and deeper dimples on either side of his mouth when he grinned.
He was grinning at me, and God help me, I found myself grinning right back at him.
He told me to go for it.
Yeah, and he was talking about the drink, I reminded myself.
Aloud, I said, “Go for it? That’s easy for you to say.”
“Well, why not? Oh, I get it. You’re a plainclothes pilot, right? You’re about to take off for Paris or something, and it would be irresponsible to take the controls after a couple of drinks.”
It wasn’t that hilarious, but I laughed as though it were the funniest thing I’d ever heard. “No, I’m not a plainclothes pilot. I’m just…”
“Broke?” he guessed, a little too close to truth for comfort.
“Not exactly.”
“Well, this one’s on me anyway. Another round,” he told the bartender, who nodded and headed for the top shelf and two fresh glasses before I could protest.
“Mine wasn’t Tangueray the first time,” I pointed out to the good-looking and fashionable guy, who shrugged.
“Mine was. And I’m treating.”
“Thanks.