The Problem is All Inside Your Head

 

The first time I heard “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” by Paul Simon, I was over by the mall, and Molly and I were cruising down the street to the local greasy burger. The flimsy plastic roof of the Jeep smacked and cracked in the wind, and I was shivering in my seat, partly from a lack of insulation, mostly from nerves. Molly wasn’t the best driver to begin with, and her newfound pride in her Jeep seemed to come at the expense of the rest of her driving abilities. At least it came with a nice window decal that said, “Silly boys . . . Jeeps are for girls.” I hated that Jeep, and that decal even more. Molly answered her phone, and I tried not to listen as she giggled and flirted in the most embarrassing way. Molly closed her phone, then leaned over and yelled in my ear. “Did you hear my ring tone? That is Jeremy’s favorite song.”  

            I clung to the oh s**t handle as she made a sharp turn into the parking lot. “Oh?”

            “Yea. I’m so happy you get to meet him today. I hope you like him.”

            She parked the car and I leapt quickly out of the Jeep. “Well, you like him, and he makes you happy; I’m sure I’ll like him.”

            “He does make me happy.” Molly hugged me, pinning my arms to my sides.

            We walked into the restaurant, one of those places that swells with enthusiasm fabricated in a corporate office. The men from the office set foot in the restaurant the day before it opened, straightened a picture, gave the thumbs up, and now relax in front of their desks in their office, monitoring the sales like brain waves, suggesting that the servers sell more alcohol, suggest more appetizers, smile more, bring more enthusiasm into the store.

There was enthusiasm plastered on the walls in the form of altered paintings, portraits, and paintings already altered altered again; enthusiasm clinging to the ceiling as french fry-shaped fan blades; even enthusiasm embedded in the floor as a TV with thick plastic over it so you could walk over newscaster’s faces when they predicted 8-12” of snow and laughed maniacally about Ohio weather. When Molly put our name in for a table, the hostess took down the number of people in the party and handed Molly a little card with Matt Damon’s face on it and, through a fake, stretched out smile, said, “We’ll call for Matt Damon when your table is ready.” 

            Matt Damon was called, and Jeremy still hadn’t shown up for lunch, so we followed the cheery hostess to our table, urged on by the hostess’s frequent glances back at us as though she was suspicious that we might suddenly turn around and bolt out the door. She seated us at a table, and I found the upper arm strength to flip over the table top-sized menu while Molly called Jeremy. “Hey, Jeremy. Where are you? Oh, okay, you aren’t too far away. Oh, no, I’d avoid that road, it’s crazy right now – y’know, crazy people at the mall, hee hee. Oh, I saved you a spot next to my Jeep, see how thoughtful I am? Tee hee, tee hee. Oh, when you come in, we’re sitting towards the back, do you know where the blimp is? It’s hanging from the ceiling. Well, have you ever used the bathroom here? Hee hee, well, walk towards the bathroom and we’ll be back here. What? Oh, hee hee. Do you want me to meet you up front? I’ll meet you up front. Alright, call me when you get into the parking lot. Muah. Bye, baby. Muah.”

            I shuddered to myself. In all my years of knowing Molly, she had never blown kisses to anyone over the phone, let alone referred to them as “baby.” Before she met Jeremy, she would’ve slapped anyone who tried to call her by any pet name of that sort. I wasn’t quite sure what he looked like yet, but I had a fuzzy image in my head of an exceedingly tan guy with huge biceps, a gold chain around his neck, and chest hair sticking out of his shirt. I was trembling in my seat with anticipation - absolutely trembling.  

            The time we spent waiting for Jeremy to arrive was awkward; one chock full of guilt and dust particles of small talk. We finally had unearthed a dust bunny of a conversation when Molly’s phone started ringing, and she stopped me short to answer her phone. “Hey, baby. You’re here? Okay. Hee hee, I’ll meet you up front. Well, no, I’m gonna hang up, you’ll be here in a minute, tee hee. I’ll see you in a minute. Muah. Muah.”

            Molly got up from the table, and I sat up straight, craning my neck to get a glimpse of her “baby.” She returned shortly, pulling along a guy of a fairly strong build, wearing a striped shirt buttoned up all the way to his . . . chest, with hair creeping up like moss on an abandoned building. As we introduced ourselves, awkwardly shaking hands, I felt like Maverick when he ran into the Spaniard after selling his mule. I didn’t know why, but I had a feeling my encounter with this Jeremy of Molly’s wouldn’t be pleasant. When he sat down, I caught a glimpse of a large tattoo on the left side of his chest, and I quickly decided I didn’t want to know what it was of. He had one of those smiles, one that leaked thoughts of babes in bikinis and fart jokes, and I already knew that any debates on whether S. Morgenstern was a pen name or a real person had just stumbled out the door in a fit of drunken disappointment. The waitress crept up to the table now, tray under her arm. “Hi. What can I get you to drink?”

            Jeremy’s eyes followed thoughts as they weaved about his brain, and flashed quickly. “Uhh . . . Mountain Dew?”

            “Okay, great. Were you ready to order?”

            “Umm . . . no.”

            The waitress resigned herself to giving him time to look over the menu while she got his drink, and Jeremy started looking over the menu. He had an attention span the size of the eye of a needle, and every time he sat thinking hard about something, it gave him the appearance as though he was trying to thread that needle; within a minute or two he had abandoned trying to read big words like “burger” and “chicken” to giggle with Molly. After the waitress stopped by two more times to attempt to take our order, losing more and more corporate-made enthusiasm with each stop, Jeremy finally ordered a steak, looking up at the waitress in delight, slightly disappointed that she didn’t share his jubilation at his ability to pick something, though a woman sitting in a booth next to ours did stare at Jeremy in what I fathomed to be a look of disbelief that so . . . special a person was out and about.

I think the most demonstrative aspect of his inherent genius was his delight at telling a joke. Every time he said something that a group of ten year-olds might have found amusing at three in the morning, he would give Molly’s side a jab with his elbow; this was accompanied by a small noise like, “Uh? Uh?” At first I thought that maybe he was just being affectionate, but then it started to seem as though he was asking for approval, a pat on the head, or maybe a scratch behind the ears. But after about the eighth time he elbowed her in the ribs, it became quite clear that it was neither. In fact, my new theory was that about a minute after he made his joke, the three-toed sloth in his head would finish a revolution on the hamster wheel, a gear would click, Jeremy would realize that he had made a joke, and would be so overjoyed at his newfound discovery, he would find it absolutely necessary to include Molly in his discovery. Now the “Uh? Uh?” sound was no longer like the impatient barking of a needy dog, but like the beeping of a metal detector as it paused over paper clips, rusty forks, and loose screws on the beach.

            Our meal came, we ate in silence – undoubtedly the only enjoyable part of the meal, and we paid our bill. I walked a pace behind Molly and Jeremy on the way out to the parking lot, and when we got to Molly’s Jeep, she unlocked my door and walked with Jeremy to her side of the car, stopping and leaning against the Jeep as they giggled. Aw s**t, I thought, they’re gonna make out. Through the thin plastic cover the Jeep manufacturers called a roof, I could hear everything. It sounded as though they had merged together, morphing into Hexxus from Ferngully and slurping away at each other as Hexxus had slurped down sludge and filth while singing “Toxic Love.” I covered my ears, humming softly to myself and shivering in the cold seat, hating the Jeep more and more every minute. I desperately wanted to reclaim my wisdom teeth from the oral surgeon and shove them back into my gums. Not because I thought I would have regained the wisdom needed to know better than to land myself in a position where I was not only a third wheel, but a bent, flat tire of a third wheel, but because if I had my wisdom teeth back, I could’ve been getting them pulled out again rather than sitting in a freezing cold Jeep, rocking back and forth humming “They’re Coming to Take Me Away.”

            Hexxus finally divided, and Molly oozed back into the Jeep. After ten more minutes of sitting in their cars waving and blowing kisses to each other, mouthing “I’ll miss you,” Jeremy finally found the gas pedal, and we left the parking lot. Molly shoved a CD into the player, and “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” seeped from the speakers. Molly leaned over and yelled out, “What did you think of Jeremy?”

            I swallowed down a dozen or so colorful adjectives and slid away from the door as we careened down the road. “Oh, well, err. I can tell he really makes you happy.”

           

Reviews

[Trée]

Love the imagery you sprinkle within this chapter. "Dust particles of small talk" and "swallowed down a dozen or so colorful adjectives" stand out among many that give your writing personality and life--enjoyable to read. I don't much like jeeps either. :-)