“Let me guess,” mused Henry. “This is your way of telling me that you’re a lesbian.”
I walked over to the refrigerator door to give the picture a closer inspection. It was truly the most spectacular piece of butt I had ever seen. A woman’s body, when perfect, blew away a male physique of rock star Rolling Stone cover proportions.
“Possibly,” I said easily. “In a repressed kind of way. But the original idea was to achieve that butt, causing guilt of extreme portions every time I opened that door for an unnecessary scoop of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie. Lowfat.”
Henry opened the freezer door so it gave a lip-smacking suction, pulling out the very container of ice cream I had been trying to avoid—it was frozen yogurt, to be specific, but I had my suspicions of the labeling as semantic marketing.
“I love your butt,” he said, slapping my butt. “Now get two teaspoons and let’s polish this thing off.”
Which seemed a great idea in theory, but I was surprised that Henry had not been aware that the container was considerably light, absent in its contents aside from a teaspoonful left (a ploy one uses so you could soothe yourself by saying you were not a fully grown, oinking pig because you didn’t actually finish the entire pint), having been devoured after a night of looking at magazines, feeling inadequate with myself and resorting to the comfort of Ben & Jerry’s.
Henry peeled off the lid, his lips breaking into a supercilious smirk as he must have made a mental visual of my actions last night.
“Hmm.” I poked my head in the container. “The maid did it.”
“Maid my ass, or, truthfully, it’s your ass that’s in question here.”
I gave Henry a wounded princess look.
“And speaking of this ass,” he said, scrutinizing the picture on the fridge. “I think I know her.”
“Know her? Right. Of course. People are now recognized by their butt cheeks.”
“No. Really!” he laughed. “That’s Carmenia’s butt. You remember Carmenia, she’s that Brazilian, or is it Argentinean? That model that dated Gil Stephens.”
Gil Stephens was one of the FOX producers whom Henry and I, now strictly Henry, worked with.
“You see that raisin-shaped mole?” Henry pointed to a mole, indeed the size and shape of a raisin, just under the fold of her right cheek. My fiancé was touching a woman’s butt—the most perfect butt on the planet. The boy was basically committing adultery before my eyes.
“Henry!” I scolded, swatting his index finger away from Carmenia’s butt. “This is wrong on so many levels. First, I don’t like you ass-picking Carmenia so brazenly before me, and then why? How could you identify this glorified freckle? You must have been doing some hard-core poolside scanning to pick up that blemish.”
“Oh, Emily.”
I’ve clocked in a lot of “Oh, Emilys” today.
“Carmenia’s mole is to butt like Cindy’s mole is to upper lip,” Henry said as if reading from a legal document. “She had it surgically attached so she could ‘make her mark’ in the butt modeling business, so to speak.”
I then swiped Carmenia’s butt off the fridge and threw it into the garbage.
“She’s trash,” I said, feeling like the last unwanted squished cupcake at the end of a bake sale.
Henry opened up his arms. I had the vague impression that my body was meant to be folded into the vee he created. But I am completely uninterested in being all sweet and cuddly based on my current agitated state. His stare acted as beams, magnetizing me into his outstretched arms.
“Listen, Emily. We need to discuss our living arrangements.”
“But. But. But.”
“But what? Emily, you really must get your mind out of the trash—though Carmenia’s butt does have that effect.”
Oh, for God’s sake—enough with Carmenia’s butt, which had about as much artificial padding as my first bra (I was a late bloomer, very self-conscious back then).
“Seriously Em, now that you’re painting and with us doing the big marriage thing, it’s time we stopped living like VW Vanagon drifters. L.A. one month, my post-grad apartment a few months. We need to put down our roots. Get a warm, sunny place that we can grow with.”
“You sound like a tour guide at the Botanical Gardens.”
“I was thinking SoHo or TriBeCa—a loft perhaps. So I’ve made some appointments for us, tomorrow at four.”
“Four?”
“Four.”
I began to think of the day I had planned—buying new canvases, brushes, and supplies with no place to put them. The calls to potential wedding locations, planners, and did I want ecru invitations with a Palatino typeface or white with Caslon Open face? Should I get a personal trainer or just do an added workout from my Buns of Steel tape?
“Emily—no buts. And no butts!”
But?
3
A rising a few hours earlier than usual, I headed straight for my newly purchased box of Frosted Flakes. I was very excited about this, getting up a few times last night hoping it would be morning so I could have breakfast, only to notice that, while it was still dark outside and not because we were still in March, there were hours to go before I’d break open that new box.
I’ve been going through a sugary cereal phase, with kid-tested mother-approved choices so that my breakfast would not be completely deficient of the essential vitamins and nutrients I needed for a balanced day. Choosing cereals like Kix and Frosted Flakes over Fruit Loops and Lucky Charms. (I am also an avid reader of cereal boxes.)
As a kid, my mother had acted as Lady Capulet to my love affair with Cap’n Crunch, not allowing me to have him because she put this in the “junk” category. Now that I’ve broken through the bondage of eating based on parental consent, perhaps I’d reacquaint myself with this unrequited love. Do they still even make Cap’n Crunch? Panic. Could it be—Cap’n Crunch was no more? Completely tragic. Considering that I’d most likely be seen in the comedy section of a video store over tragedy, I quickly laid to rest any remorse over Cap’n Crunch’s untimely demise and reminded myself how lucky I was to have Tony.
Tony the Tiger had always been in such good spirits—possibly from all of those fortified vitamins and minerals. And after all these years, he hasn’t gone through the protean transformations as other noted spokespersons. He must have had the same fitness trainer as Dick Clark. Tony was the kind of cover model that I found especially welcoming in my current mood.
I poured myself a bowl, sliced up some bananas, added the milk, and began inhaling my breakfast. Twirling the box around for something to read besides another bridal magazine that would only underline how unprepared and ineffective I was in my wedding duties, I became thrilled upon finding a game of logic—promoted as an intelligence test used from the days of Mesopotamia.
The questions were written in grape over a golden pyramid with two sphinxes bordering the edges; the geometric puzzles gave it a hieroglyphic feel. Now this was why I really loved kid cereal, for the fun games that I could ace, giving me a strong dose of self-confidence before I began my day. Clever marketing from the team at Kellogg’s. I should really send them a note.
My preoccupation with the game eclipsed my former bliss of eating my cereal. The first question showed numbers that clung to the sides of differently colored triangular peaks like clouds to a mountain. I had to figure the missing number on the last one. Moving to the next problem, as these games always began with a