Twenty One

I am somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean when I decide that I will not tell Randy all of the gory, pathetic details. I will not dwell and wallow once the plane lands on British soil. It will be the first step in getting over Seth, and moving on. But I will give myself the duration of the flight to think about him and my situation. How I put myself on the line and lost. How it's not worth it to take risks. How it's better to be a glass-half-empty person. How I would have been so much better off if I had never gone down this road and setting myself up for rejection and disappointment and giving A.J. the chance to beat me again.

I rest my forehead against the window as a little girl behind me kicks my seat once, twice, and three times. I hear her mother say in a sugary voice, "Now Carmella, don't kick the nice lady's seat." Carmella keeps kicking. "Carmella! That is against the rules. No kicking on the plane," the mother repeats with exaggerated calm as if to demonstrate to everyone around her what a competent parent she is. I close my eyes as we fly into the night, don't open them until the flight attendant comes by to offer us headphones.

"No, thanks," I say.

No movie for me. I will be too busy cramming all of the misery I can into the next few hours.

I told Randy not to come to Heathrow-that I would take a taxi to his flat. But I am hoping that he comes anyway. Even though I live in Manhattan, I am intimidated by other big cities, particularly foreign ones. Except for the time I went to Rome with my parents for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, I have never left the country. Other than Niagara Falls on the Canadian side, this hardly counts. So I am relieved to see Randy waiting for me just outside of customs, grinning and boyish and happy as ever. He is wearing new horn-rimmed glasses, like Buddy Holly's, only brown. He rushes toward me and hugs me hard around the neck. We both laugh.

"It's so good to see you! Here, give me your bag," he says.

"You too." I grin back at him. "I like your glasses."

"Do they make me look smarter?" He pushes the frames on his nose and strikes a scholarly pose, stroking a nonexistent beard.

"Much." I giggle.

"I'm so glad you're here!"

"I'm so glad to be here."

A summer full of bad decisions, but at last I made a good one. Just seeing Randy soothes me.

"It's about time you visited," he says, maneuvering my roller bag through the crowd. We make our way outside, into the cab line.

"I can't believe that I'm in England. This is so exciting." I take my first breath of British air. The weather is exactly what I imagine-gray, drizzling, and slightly chill. "You weren't kidding about the weather here. This feels like November, not August."

"I told you…We actually had a few hot days this month. But it's back to normal now. It's relentless. But you get used to it. You just have to dress for it."

Within minutes we are in the back of a black cab and my bags at our feet. The taxi is dignified and spacious compared to New York's yellow cabs.

Randy asks me how I feel and for a second I think he is asking about Seth, but then I realize it's the standard post-flight questioning.

"Oh, fine," I say. "I'm really psyched to be here."

"Jet-lagged?"

"A little."

"A pint will fix that," he says. "No napping. We have a lot to do in a week."

I laugh. "Like what?"

"Sightseeing. Boozing. Reminiscing. Time-consuming, intense stuff…God; it's nice to see you."

We arrive at Randy's basement flat in Kensington, and he gives me the brief tour of his bedroom, living room and kitchen. His furniture is sleek and modern, and his walls are covered with abstract paintings and posters of jazz musicians. It is a bachelor pad, but without the I'm-trying-at-every-turn-to-get-laid feel.

"You probably want to shower?"

I tell him yes, that I feel pretty grimy. He hands me a towel in the hallway outside of his bathroom and tells me to be quick, that he wants to talk.

As soon as I am showered and changed, Randy asks, "So how's the Seth situation? I take it they're still engaged?"

It's not as if I have stopped thinking about him for an instant. Everything vaguely reminds me of him. A sign for Newcastle. Drinking Newcastle's with him on my birthday. Driving on the left side of the street. Seth is left-handed. The rain. Alanis Morissette singing, "It's like rain on your wedding day."

But Randy's question about Seth still causes a sharp pain in my chest. My throat tightens as I struggle not to cry.

"Oh god, I knew it," Randy says. He reaches up and grabs my hand, pulling me down on his black leather couch.

"Knew what?" I say, still fighting back tears.

"That your stiff-upper lip, 'I don't care' thing was just a lot of bluster." He puts his arm around me. "What happened?"

I finally cry as I tell him everything, with no editing. I even told him about the dice. So much for my vow over the Atlantic; my pain feels raw and naked.

When I am finished, Randy says, "I'm glad I RSVP'd no. I don't think I can stomach it."

I blow my nose and wipe my face. "Those are the exact words that Natalya used. She's not going either."

"You shouldn't go, Megan. Just boycott the damn thing. It will be too hard on you, so just spare yourself."

"I have to go."

"Why?"

"What would I tell her?"

"Tell her that you have to have surgery-you have to have an extraneous organ removed…"

"Like what kind of organ?"

"I don't know, maybe your spleen. People can get by without their spleen, right?"

"What's the reason for removing your spleen?"

"I don't know; a spleen stone? A problem…an accident or a disease. Who cares? Just make something up. I'll do the research for you and we will come up with something plausible; just don't go."

"I have to be there, Randy," I say. I am back to rule-following.

We sit in silence for a minute, and the Randy gets up, switches off two lamps and grabs his wallet from a small table in the hall. "C'mon."

"Where are we going?"

"We're going to my local pub. Getting you nice and loaded. Trust me, it will help."

"It's eleven in the morning!" I laugh at his exuberance.

"So? Do you have a better idea?" He crosses his arms across his narrow chest. "You want to sightsee? Thing Big Ben's going to do you any good right now?"

"No," I say. Big Ben would only remind me of the minutes ticking down to what will be the most horrible day of my life.

"So c'mon then," he says.

I follow Randy over to a pub called the Britannia. It is exactly how I expect an English pub to be-musty and full of old men smoking and reading the paper. The walls and carpet are dark red, and bad oil paintings of foxes and deer and Victorian women cover the walls. It could be 1955. One man wearing a little cap and smoking a pipe even resembles Winston Churchill.

"What's your pleasure?" Randy asks me.

Seth, I think, but tell him a beer would be great. I am beginning to think that the boozing idea is a pretty good one.

"What kind? Guinness? Kronenbourg? Carling?"

"Whatever," I say. "Anything but Newcastle."

Randy orders two beers, his several shades darker than mine. We sit down at a corner table. I trace the grain of the wood of the table and ask him how long it took for him to get over his ex.

"Not long," he says. "Once I knew what she did, I realized that she wasn't what I thought. There was nothing to miss. That's what you have to think that he wasn't right for you and let A.J. have him…"

"Why does she always win?" I sound like a five year old, but it helps to hear my misery more simplified: A.J. beat me, again.

Randy laughs, which flashes his dimple. "Win what?"

"Well, Seth for one," Self-pity envelops me as I picture him with A.J. It is morning in New York and they are likely still in bed together.

"Okay, what else?"

"Everything!" I gulp my beer as quickly as I can and I feel it hit my empty stomach.

"Care to explain a little bit further?"

How do I explain to a guy what I mean? It sounds so shallow; she's prettier, her clothes are better and she's thinner. But that is the least of it. She is happier too. She gets what she wants, whatever that happens to be. I try to articulate this with real examples. "Well, she has that great job making tons of money, when all she has to do is plan parties and looks pretty."

"That schmoozing job of hers? Please."

"It's better than mine."

"It's better than being a lawyer? I don't think so."

"Well, it's more fun."

"You'd hate it."

"That's not the point. She loves her job." I know I am not doing a good job of showing how A.J. is always victorious.

"Then find a new one that you love. Although that's another issue altogether. One that we will address later…but okay, what else does she win?"

"Well…she got into Purdue," I say, knowing that I sound ridiculous.

"Oh, she did not!"

"Yes, she did."

"No, she just said that she got into Purdue. Who picks Notre Dame over Purdue?"

"Plenty of people. Why do you always dump on Notre Dame?"

"Okay, look, I hate Purdue more. I'm just saying if you apply to those two schools and you get into both of them, presumably you want to go to both. So you'd pick Purdue. It's a better school, right?"

I nod. "I guess."

"But she didn't' get in there. Nor did she get a, what did she say, thirteen hundred five and a half or something on her SATs? Remember that shit?"

"Yeah, she lied about her score."

"And she lied about Purdue too. Trust me…did you ever see the acceptance letter?"

"No, but…well, maybe she didn't."

"God, you're so naïve," he says, mispronouncing it "nave" on purpose. "I assumed we were on the same page there."

"It was a sensitive topic, remember?"

"Oh yeah, I remember. You were so sad about it," he says. "You should have been celebrating your escape from the Midwest. Of course, then you pick the second most obnoxious school in the country and go to Duke…You know my theory about Duke and Purdue, right?"

I smile and tell Randy that I have trouble keeping all of his theories straight. "What is it again?"

"Well, aside from you, and a few other exceptions, those two schools are filled to the brim with obnoxious people. Perhaps only obnoxious people apply there or perhaps the schools attract obnoxious people. Probably a combination, a mutually reinforcing issue. You're not offended are you?"

"Of course not, so go on." I say. In part, I agree with him. A lot of people at Duke-including my own boyfriend-were hard to take.

"Okay, so why do they have a higher ratio of assholes per capita? What do those two schools have in common, you ask?"

"I give,"

"Simple, it's the dominance in a Division One, revenue generating sport. Football at Purdue and basketball at Duke. Coupled with the stellar academic reputation and the result is an intolerably smug student body. Can you name another school that has that combination of characteristics?"

"Michigan," I say, thinking of Adrian Neville from our high school that was insufferable in his chatter about Michigan football, and he still talks about Rumeal Robinson's clutch free throws in the NCAA finals.

"Aha! Michigan! Good one, nice try. But it's not an expensive private school. The public aspect saves Michigan, and makes Michigan alums slightly less obnoxious."

"Wait a minute! What about your own school? Stanford; you had Tiger Woods. Great swimmers. Debbie Thomas, that skater, didn't she win a silver medal? Tennis players galore. Plus, great academics-and it's private and expensive. So why aren't you Stanford graduates as irritating?"

"It's simple really. We're not dominant in football or basketball. Yeah, we are good some years, but not like Duke in basketball or football at Purdue. You can't get as jazzed over nonrevenue sports. It saves us."

I smile and nod. His theory is interesting, but I am more intrigued with the realization that A.J. got rejected by Purdue.

"Mind if I smoke?" Randy asks as he removes a carton from his back pocket. He shakes a cigarette free, and rolled it between his fingers.

"I thought that you quit?"

"For a minute," he says.

"You should quit."

"I know."

"Okay, so back to A.J."

"Right."

"So maybe she didn't get into Purdue, but she did get Seth."

He strikes a match and raises it to his lips. "Who care? Let her keep him. He is spineless and sincerely, you're better off."

"He's not spineless," I say, hoping that Randy will convince me otherwise. I want to latch onto a fatal flaw, believe that Seth is not the person I thought he was. Which would be a lot less painful than believing that I am not the woman he wanted?

"Okay, maybe 'spineless' is too strong of a word, but, Meg, I'm positive he would rather be with you. He just doesn't know how to dump her."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I actually think he just decided that he'd rather be with A.J. He picked her over me. Everybody picks her over me." I gulp my beer even more quickly.

"Everybody? Who besides spineless Seth?"

"Okay," I smile. "You picked her."

He gives me a puzzled look. "I did not."

I snort, "Ha!"

"Is that what she told you?"

After all these years, I have never aired my feelings about their two-week elementary school romance. "She didn't need to tell me because everybody knew it."

"What are you talking about?"

"What are you talking about?"

"The reunion?" he asks.

"Our ten-year?" I ask, knowing of no other reunion. I remember the disappointment I felt when Vince insisted that I had to work. Those were the days before I knew to lie. He had scoffed at me when I said that I couldn't work, and that I had to go to my ten year reunion.

"Yeah, she didn't tell you what happened?" He takes a long drab, then turns his head, exhaling away from me.

"No she didn't, what happened?" I say, thinking that I am going to fall apart and die if Randy says that he slept with her. "Please tell me you didn't hook up with her."

"Hell, no," he says. "But she tried."

As I finish the rest of my pint and steal a few sips of Randy's, I listen to him tell the story of our reunion. How A.J. came one to him at Tyler Breeze's backyard afterparty. Said she thought they should have one night together and what would it hurt?

"You're kidding me?!"

"No," he says. "And I was like, A.J., hell no. You have a boyfriend. What the fuck?"

"Was that why?"

"Why I didn't hook up with her?"

I nod.

"No, that's not why."

"Why then?" For a second, I wonder if he's going to come out of the closet. Maybe A.J. was right after all.

"Why do you think? It's A.J. I don't see her that way."

"You don't think she's…beautiful?"

"Frankly, no. I do not think she's beautiful."

"Why not?"

"I need to have reasons?"

"Yes."

"Okay," He exhales, and looks up at the ceiling. "Because she wears too much makeup and because she's too, I don't know, severe."

"Sharp featured?" I offer.

"Yeah, sharp and overplucked."

I picture A.J.'s skinny, high arched eyebrows. "OVerplucked; that is funny."

"Yeah, and those hipbones jutting out at you. She's way too skinny, and I don't like it. But that's not the point. The point is-is that it is A.J." he shudders and then takes his beer back from me. "Hold on, and let me go get another round." He crushes out his cigarette and strolls over to the bar, returning with two more beers. "There you are."

"Thanks," I say, and then set about chugging mine.

He laughs. "Man! I can't let you outdrink me."

I wipe the foam from my lips with the back of my hand and ask why he didn't tell me about A.J. and the reunion before now.

"Oh, I don't know, because it was no big deal. She was wasted." He shrugs. "Probably didn't even know what she was doing."

"Yeah right; she always knows what she's doing."

"I guess so. Maybe, but it really wasn't significant."

That explains why she thought Randy was gay. Turning her down-it must be the only explanation. "Guess her fifth-grade charms wore thin on you."

He laughs. "Yeah, we did go out once upon a time." He makes little quotes in the air as he says 'go out.'

"See, you picked her over me too."

He flashes his dimple. "What the hell are you talking about now?"

"On the note, the check-the-box note."

"What?"

I sigh. "The note that she gave to you. The 'Do you want to go out with me or Megan?' note."

"That's not what the note said. It didn't say anything about you. Why would it say anything about you?"

"Because I liked you!" Somehow I am embarrassed admitting it, even after all these years. "You knew that."

He shakes his head firmly. "Nope, I didn't know about it."

"You must have just forgotten."

"I don't forget shit like that. I have a bomb-ass memory. Your name was not in the note. See, I would have known because I liked you back then." He peers at me from behind his glasses and then lights another cigarette.

"Oh, bullshit." I feel myself blush. It's only Randy, I tell myself. We are adults now.

"Okay," he shrugs and inverts the cover of his matchbook. Now he looks embarrassed too. "Don't believe me."

"You did?"

"Oh, big time. I remember always helping you out in four square so that you'd get to be king. I'd always pound the king when you were in the queen position. Tell me that you didn't notice that."

"I didn't notice that," I say.

"As it turns out, you're markedly less perceptive than I once thought…Yes, I liked you. I liked you all through junior high and high school, and then you dated Beamer which broke my heart."

This is big news, but I still can't get past the fact that my name wasn't in that note. "I swear I thought Beth saw it."

"Beth is a sweet girl but such a lemming. A.J. probably told her to say that your name was in the note, or somehow tricked her into thinking it. How is Beth, anyway? Did she have her kid yet?"

"No, but she should any minute now."

"Is she going to the wedding?"

"If she's not in labor," I say. "Everybody is but you."

"And you, such a terrible thing about your spleen."

"Yeah, it's so tragic." I smile. "So you're sure my name really wasn't in that note?"

I am focusing on evidence from twenty years ago. It is absurd, but I ascribe all kinds of meaning to it.

"I'm positive," he says. "Pos-i-tive."

"Damn," I say. "What a bitch!"

He laughs. "I had no clue that I was the man. I thought it was all about Dolph Ziggler."

"You were not the man. It was all about Dolph Ziggler," I say. "That's the point-I was the only one who liked you and then she copied me." Again, I notice how juvenile I sound whenever I describe my feelings about A.J.

"Well, you didn't miss much. Going out with me consisted of sharing a few Hostess cupcakes. Wasn't very exciting, and I still hooked you up in four square."

"So maybe Seth will hook me up the next time we all play four-square," I say. "That would be really…" I can't think of the right word. I can feel myself getting drunk.

"Nifty? Brilliant? Smashing?" Randy offers.

I nod. "All of those, yes."

"Are you feeling any better?" he asks.

He is trying so hard, between his efforts and the beer, I fell somewhat healed, at least temporarily. I consider that I am thousands of miles away from Seth. Seth-who did have my name as an option when he chose, instead, to check the box next to A.J.'s name. "Yes, a little bit better. Yes."

"Well, let's recap then, shall we? We determined that I never picked A.J. over you, and that she didn't get into Purdue."

"But she did get Seth."

"Just forget about him. He's not worth it," Randy says, and then glances up at the menu scrawled on a blackboard behind us. "Now, let's get you some fish and chips."

We eat lunch-fish, French fries, and mushy peas that remind me of baby food; comfort food, and we have a couple more pints. Then I suggest that we go for a walk, see something England-y. So he takes me into Kensington Gardens and shows me Kensington Palace, where Princess Diana lived.

"See this gate? That's where they piled all the flowers and letters when she died. Do you remember all of those photos?"

"Oh yea, that was here?"

I was with Seth and A.J. when I found out that Princess Diana had died. We were at the Talkhouse and some guy walked up to us at the bar and said, "Did you hear that Diana died in a car crash?" And even though he could only have been talking about one Diana, A.J. and I both asked, Diana who? The guy said Princess Diana. Then he told us that she died in a high-speed crash while the paparazzi chased her through a tunnel in Paris. A.J. started bawling right on the spot, but for once it wasn't the give-me-attention tears. They were genuine. She was truly devastated. We both were. Several days later we watched her funeral together, waking up at four a.m. to see all of the coverage, just as we had done with her wedding to Prince Charles sixteen years earlier.

Randy and I meander through Kensington Gardens in a drizzle, without an umbrella. I don't mind getting wet. Don't care that my hair will frizz. We pass the palace and circle a small, round pond. "What's this pond called?"

"Round pond," Randy says. "Descriptive, huh?"

We walk past a bandstand and then over to the Albert Memorial, a huge bronze statue of Prince Albert perched on a throne. "You like?"

"It's pretty," I say.

"A grieving Queen Victoria had this thing built when Albert died from typhoid fever."

"When?"

"Eighteen sixty- or seventy-something…nice, huh?"

"Yeah," I say.

"Apparently she and Al were pretty tight."

Queen Victoria must have been sadder than I am now, I suppose. I then have a fleeting thought that I'd prefer losing Seth to illness than to A.J. So maybe it's not true love if I'd rather see him die…okay, I wouldn't rather see him die.

The rain starts to come down harder. Other than a few Japanese tourists who are snapping pictures on

the steps of the memorial, we are alone.

"Are you ready to head back?" Randy points in the opposite direction. "We can explore Hyde Park and Serpentine another day."

"Sure, we can go back now," I say.

"Is your spleen acting up in this weather?"

"Randy! I have to go to the wedding."

"Just blow it off."

"I'm the maid of honor."

"Oh, right! I keep forgetting that," he says, wiping his glasses on his sleeve.

As we walk back to his flat, Randy chuckles to himself.

"What?"

"A.J.," he says, shaking his head.

"What about her?"

"I was just thinking about the time she wrote to Larry Bird and asked him to our prom."

I laugh. "She actually thought he was going to come! Remember how she was worried about how she would break the news to Justin Gabriel?"

"And then Larry Bird wrote back to her, or his people did, anyway. That's the part that I found unreal. I never thought she'd get a response."

He laughs. No matter what he says, I know he has a soft spot for her, in spite of himself. Just as I do.

"Yeah, well she did. She still has the letter."

"You've seen it?"

"Yeah, don't you remember how she taped it up in our locker?"

"And yet," he says, "you never saw the letter from Purdue."

"Okay. Okay. You might be right. But where were you twelve years ago with that insight?"

"As I said, I thought we were on the same page there. The whole thing was pretty

transparent…you know, for a smart woman you can be pretty dim."

"Why, thank you."

He tips an imaginary hat. "Don't mention it."

We return to Randy's flat, where I succumb to my jet lag. When I wake up, Randy offers me a cup of Earl Grey tea and a crumpet. Lunch at a pub, a walk past Diana's old pad, an afternoon nap where I don't dream once about Seth, and tea and crumpets with my good friend. The trip is off to a good start. If anything can really be good with a broken heart.