Queen of Babble Bundle with Bonus Material Read online

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882),

  U.S. essayist, poet, and philosopher

  It takes five rings before Shari answers. For a minute I’m worried she won’t pick up at all. What if she’s asleep? I know it’s only nine o’clock after all, Europe time, but what if she hasn’t adjusted to the time difference as well as I have? Even though she’s been over here longer. She was supposed to have gotten to Paris two days ago, stayed one night in a hotel there, then traveled down to the château the next day.

  But then again, she’s Shari—great at school stuff, not so good at everyday life stuff. She’s dropped her cell phone in the toilet more times than I can count. Who knows if I’ll even get through to her?

  Then, to my relief, she finally picks up. And it’s clear I haven’t wakened her—because there is music blaring in the background. A song in which the refrain, Vamos a la playa, plays over and over, to a Latin beat.

  “Liz-ZIE!” Shari yells into the phone. “Is that YOOOOOU?”

  Oh yes. She’s drunk.

  “How are yooooouuuuu?” she wants to know. “How’s London? How’s hot, hot, hot Andrew? How’s his aaaaaaaasssssssssss?”

  “Shari,” I say in a low voice. I don’t want the Marshalls to hear me, so I’m running the water in the bathtub. I’m not wasting it. I really do plan to take a bath. In a minute. “Things are weird here. Really weird. I need to talk to someone normal for a minute.”

  “Wait, let me see if I can find Chaz,” Shari says. Then she cackles. “Just kidding! Oh my God, Lizzie, you should see this place. You’d die. It’s like Under the Tuscan Sun and Valmont combined. Luke’s house is HUGE. HUGE. It has a name—Mirac. It has its own VINEYARD. Lizzie, they make their own champagne. THEY MAKE IT THEMSELVES.”

  “That’s great,” I say. “Shari, I think Andrew told his brothers I was fat.”

  Shari is silent for a moment. I am urged once again to Vamos a la playa. Then Shari explodes.

  “He fucking said that? He fucking said you were fat? Stay where you are. Stay right where you fucking are. I’m getting on the Chunnel train thingie and I’m coming over there and I’m going to cut his balls off—”

  “Shari,” I say. She is yelling so loudly I’m worried the Marshalls might hear her. Through the closed door. Over the TV and the running water. “Shari, wait, that isn’t what I meant. I mean, I don’t know what he said. Things are just really weird. I got here, and the very first thing, Andrew took off for work. Which was okay. I mean it was fine. Because the truth is”—I can feel the tears coming. Oh, great—“Andrew isn’t working with children. He’s a waiter. He works from eleven in the morning until eleven at night. I didn’t even know that was legal. Plus, he doesn’t even have his own place. We’re staying with his parents. And his little brothers. Who he told I was fat. Also, he told his mom that I like tomatoes.”

  “I take it back,” Shari says, “I’m not going there. You’re coming here. Buy a train ticket and get over here. Be sure to ask for a youth pass. You’ll have to change trains in Paris. Buy a ticket there for Souillac. And then just call me. We’ll pick you up at the station.”

  “Shari,” I say, “I can’t do that. I can’t just leave.”

  “Like fuck you can’t,” Shari says. I hear another voice in the background. Then Shari is saying to someone else, “It’s Lizzie. That fucker Andrew works all day and all night and is fucking making her stay at his parents’ and eat tomatoes. And he said she was fat.”

  “Shari,” I say, feeling a twinge of guilt, “I don’t know that he said that. And he’s not—who are you telling this to, anyway?”

  “Chaz says get your far-from-fat ass on a train in the morning. He will personally pick you up at the train station tomorrow night.”

  “I can’t go to France,” I say, horrified. “My return ticket home is from Heathrow. It’s nonreturnable and nontransferable and non—everything.”

  “So? You can go back to England at the end of the month and fly home from there. Come on, Lizzie. We’ll have SO MUCH fun.”

  “Shari, I can’t go to France,” I say miserably. “I don’t want to go to France. I love Andrew. You don’t understand. That night outside McCracken Hall…it was magical, Shar. He saw into my soul, and I saw into his.”

  “How could you?” Shari demands. “It was dark.”

  “No it wasn’t. We had the glow of the flames from that girl’s room to see by.”

  “Well, then maybe you just saw what you wanted to see. Or maybe you just felt what you wanted to feel.”

  She’s talking, I know, about Andrew’s stiffy. I stare blindly down at the water splashing into the tub.

  The thing is, I am generally a very happy person. I even laughed after Alistair said that thing at the table, about me being a fatty. Because what else are you supposed to do when you find out your boyfriend’s been going around telling people you’re fat?

  Especially since the last time Andrew saw me, I had been fat. Or at least thirty pounds heavier than I am now.

  I had to laugh, because I didn’t want the Marshalls to think I’m some kind of oversensitive freak.

  I think I succeeded, too, because all Mrs. Marshall did was shoot her son an outraged look…Then, since I guess I didn’t appear to be offended, she seemed to forget about it. So did everyone else.

  And Alistair turned out to be quite nice, offering to let me use his computer in order to start my thesis, which I then worked on for the rest of the day, until breaking for a “curry supper” from the “takeaway” shop on the corner with the two elder Marshalls, the boys having gone out. We ate while watching a British mystery show, during which I only understood approximately one word out of every seven, due to the actors’ accents.

  The thing is, I was determined not to let the fat thing get me down. Because despite what my sisters might think—and they were always more than happy to let their feelings on the matter be known to me, growing up—weight doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. I mean, it does if you’re a model or whatever.

  But in general being a few pounds overweight hasn’t ever kept me from doing what I wanted to. Sure, there were all those times I was the last one picked for volleyball in gym class.

  And the occasional mortification of having to appear in front of a guy I had a crush on in a bathing suit at the lake or whatever.

  And then there were the dumb frat guys who wouldn’t look twice at me because I was heavier than the kind of girls they preferred.

  But who wants to hang around frat guys? I want to be with guys who have more on their minds than where the next keg party is. I want to be with guys who care about making this world a better place—the way Andrew does. I want to be with guys who know that what’s important isn’t the size of a girl’s waistband but the size of her heart—like Andrew. I want to be with guys who are able to see past a girl’s outward appearance, and into her soul—like Andrew.

  It’s just that…well, based on Alistair’s remark, it seems like maybe Andrew didn’t see into my soul that night outside McCracken Hall.

  The tomato thing, too. I TOLD Andrew—or wrote to him, actually—that I hate tomatoes. I told him it’s the one single food I totally can’t stand. I even went on, at great length, about how horrible it was, growing up in a household that was half Italian, hating tomatoes. Mom was always brewing up huge batches of tomato sauce to use in her pastas and lasagnas. She had a huge tomato garden in the backyard that I was in charge of weeding, since I wouldn’t touch the ugly red things and so was no help in the picking or cleaning department.

  I told Andrew all this, not just in my reply to his question about what foods I liked, but that night we spent together as well, three months ago, me in my towel and him in his Aerosmith T-shirt—it must have been laundry day—and R.A. badge, under the stars and smoke.

  And he didn’t listen. He hadn’t paid a bit of attention to a word I’d said.

  But he had managed to let his family know I was a—what was it again? Oh yes—“fatty.”
>
  Is it possible I’ve made a mistake? Is it possible—as Shari once suggested—that the reason I love Andrew is not because of who he actually is, but because I’ve projected onto him the personality I want him to have?

  Could she be right that I’ve stubbornly refused all along to see him for what he really is, because making out with him had been so much fun (and I’d been so flattered by his full stiffy) I don’t want to admit my attraction to him is merely physical?

  I hadn’t spoken to Shari for nearly two hours after she said this, it had made me so mad, and she’d finally apologized.

  But what if she’s right? Because the Andrew I knew—or felt like I knew—wouldn’t have told his brother I’m fat. The Andrew I know wouldn’t even have noticed I was fat.

  “Lizzie?” Shari’s voice crackles over the phone I’m pressing to my cheek. “Did you die?”

  “No, I’m here,” I say. I can still hear rock music booming in the background. Shari, it’s clear, isn’t a bit jet-lagged. Shari’s boyfriend isn’t at work. Or, rather, he is. But they’re working together. “I just…Look, I gotta go. I’ll call you later.”

  “Wait,” Shari says. “Does this mean you’ll be coming to New York with me in the fall after all?”

  I hang up. It’s not that I’m mad at her, exactly. I’m just…

  So tired.

  I don’t even remember bathing or changing into my pajamas and dragging myself into bed. All I know is, it seems like it’s about a million o’clock when Andrew gently shakes me awake. But it’s really only midnight—at least according to the watchface he shows me when I groggily ask what time it is.

  I never realized he wears a glow-in-the-dark digital watch. That’s kind of…not sexy.

  But maybe he needs it. For telling time when he’s slaving away in that dark, candlelit restaurant…

  “Sorry to wake you,” he says. He is standing beside my loft bed, which is just high enough off the ground that he doesn’t even have to stoop to whisper to me. “But I wanted to make sure you were all right. You don’t need anything?”

  I squint at him in the semidarkness. The only light is the moonlight that streams through the laundry room’s single narrow window. Andrew, I can see, is wearing black jeans and a white shirt—a waiter’s uniform.

  I don’t know what makes me do it. Maybe because I’ve been so lonely and depressed all evening. Maybe because I’m still half asleep.

  Or maybe because I truly do love him. But the next thing I know, I’m sitting up and, my fingers entwined in his shirtfront, I’m whispering, “Oh, Andrew, everything’s so awful! Your brother Alistair—he said something today about your having said I was a fatty. That’s not true, is it?”

  “What?” Andrew is laughing into my hair as he nuzzles my neck. He is quite a neck nuzzler, I’m finding out. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your brother, Alistair. He acted all shocked when he met me, because he said you’d told him I was fat.”

  Andrew stops nuzzling my neck and peers down at me in the moonlight.

  “Wait,” he says. “He said that? Are you taking the mickey?”

  “I don’t know anything about Mickey,” I say. “But, yes, he really did say he’d been expecting me to be fat. ‘A fatty’ were his exact words.”

  I realize, a little belatedly, that Andrew might possibly become a little ticked off with his brother for having said this—especially if it’s not true. Which it can’t be. Right? Andrew would never say something like that…

  “Oh, Andrew, I’m sorry,” I say, wrapping my arms around his neck and kissing him tenderly. “I can’t believe I even brought it up. Forget I said anything. Alistair was obviously pulling my leg. And I fell for it. Let’s just forget the whole thing, all right?”

  But Andrew doesn’t seem willing to forget it. His arms tighten around me, and he uses some very choice adjectives to describe his brother, which he whispers against my lips. Then he says, “I think you look fucking fantastic. I always have. Sure, when we first met, you were a bit plumper than you are now. When I first saw you coming out of Customs at the airport in that little Chinese dress, I didn’t even recognize you. I couldn’t stop staring. I kept wondering who the lucky bloke was who was meeting such a hot little number.”

  I can only blink at him. Somehow his words are not as encouraging as I think he means them to be.

  Maybe it’s because of his seeming inability to pronounce his th’s as anything but f’s, so his thinks come out as finks.

  “Then, when I got the page, and I came over and saw you were—well, you—I realized I was the lucky bloke,” Andrew goes on. “I’m sorry everything has been such a cock-up so far—my mate’s flat falling through, and your not having a proper bed, and my arse-hole of a brother, and my fucking work schedule. But you have to know”—here he snakes an arm around my waist—“I’m over the moon that you’re finally here.” This is where he leans down and kisses my neck some more.

  I nod. Much as I am enjoying the neck kissing, there is still something weighing on my mind. So I say, “Andrew. Just one more thing.”

  “Yeah, what’s that, Liz?” he wants to know as his lips approach my ear.

  “The thing is, Andrew,” I say slowly, “I really…I…”

  “What is it, Liz?” Andrew asks again.

  I take a deep breath. I have to do this. I have to say it. Otherwise it will be hanging over our heads for my entire stay.

  “I really hate tomatoes,” I say all in a rush, to get it over with.

  Andrew raises his head to look at me blankly. Then he throws back his head and laughs.

  “Oh God!” he whispers. “That’s right! You wrote me that! Mum asked me what you particularly liked, so she could be sure to have it for your arrival breakfast. But I couldn’t remember. I knew you’d said something about tomatoes—”

  I try not to take it personally that he remembered I’d said something about tomatoes, but not WHAT I’d said about them. Like that I hated them more than anything in the world.

  Andrew is guffawing now. I’m glad he finds the situation so uproarious. “Oh, you poor girl. Don’t worry, I’ll drop a hint. Come here, let me kiss you again—” He does so. “You really are a keeper, aren’t you?”

  I hadn’t been aware there’d been any doubt on that score.

  But I know what he means.

  Or I think I do, anyway. It’s hard to tell what I think while he’s kissing me, except Hooray! He’s kissing me!

  And then there’s no whispering at all for a while, as we kiss.

  And I can tell that Andrew’s brother is wrong—he doesn’t think I’m a fatty…unless he means fatty in a good way. He likes me. REALLY likes me. I can feel that like pressing against me through his waiter pants.

  Which I feel duty-bound to help him remove. Because they seem so binding.

  When he’s laughingly scrambled up into my loft bed with me—thank God it holds. Or, I should say, thank you, Mrs. Marshall—and the two of us are in each other’s arms again, I see why. The pants were so binding, I mean.

  “Andrew,” I whisper, “have you got any condoms?”

  “Condoms?” Andrew whispers the word back like it’s foreign. “Aren’t you on the pill? I thought all American girls were on the pill.”

  “Well,” I say uncomfortably, “I am. But—you know, the pill doesn’t protect you against diseases.”

  “Are you suggesting I have a disease?” Andrew demands—not in a joking way, either.

  Oh dear. Why can’t I ever learn to keep my mouth shut?

  “Um,” I say, thinking fast. Which is hard to do when I’m so tired. And horny. “No. But, um, I might have one. You never know.”

  “Oh,” Andrew says with a chuckle. “Right. You? Never. You’re too sweet.” And he goes back to nuzzling my neck.

  Which is very nice. But he still hasn’t answered my question.

  “Well?” I ask. “Have you got one?”

  “For God’s sake, Liz,” Andrew says, sitting u
p. He fumbles around and finally produces a Trojan from the pocket of his waiter pants, which are wadded up at the end of the bed. “Happy now?”

  “Yes,” I say. Because I am. Happy, I mean. Even though my boyfriend apparently goes to work with a condom in his pocket, which might make one ask oneself, if one were of a suspicious nature (which I am not), just what he intended to do with said condom. I mean, considering that his girlfriend is at home, and not at his place of work.

  But that is not the point. The point is that he has a condom, and now we can get down to business.

  Which we proceed to do without further delay.

  Except.

  Well, things are going the way I suppose they should, given that my experience in these matters is pretty much limited to some awkward fumblings in an extralong dorm bed with Jeff, my only long-term boyfriend (three months), whom I dated sophomore year and who later that semester tearfully confessed that he was in love with his roommate, Jim.

  Still, I have read enough issues of Cosmo to know every girl is responsible for her own orgasm—just like every guest is responsible for her own good time at a party…no hostess can control EVERYTHING! I mean, you really can’t leave this kind of thing up to a guy. He’s just going to mess it up or, worse, not even bother to give it a try (unless, of course, he’s like Jeff, who was very interested in my orgasms…just as he was very interested in my circa 1950 Herbert Levine pumps with the rhinestone buckle, as I discovered when I caught him admiring himself in them).

  But while I might have taken care of my own good time, Andrew is apparently having some trouble with his own. He’s abruptly stopped what he was doing and has flopped back onto the bed.

  “Um, Andrew,” I say, filled with concern, “is everything all right?”

  “I can’t fucking come,” is his romantic reply. “It’s this fucking bed. There’s not enough room.”

  I am, to put it mildly, astonished. I have never heard of a man who can’t come. While I know that to some people—Shari, for instance—a man who is perpetually hard would be a godsend, for me it is merely inconvenient. I have already taken care of my own good time, as Cosmo advised. The truth is, I’m not sure how much longer I can hold out down there. I’m starting to chafe.