Tales Of A Drama Queen

Oprah: Recently moved to S.B.

Me: Recently moved to S.B.

Even Steven.

Oprah: Between forty-five and fifty.

Me: Twenty-six.

I’m ahead!

Oprah: Famous and beloved.

Me: Not so famous. And even my lovers don’t belove me.

Back to even?

Oprah: Offers wisdom, advice and companionship on nationally syndicated hugely successful talk show.

Me: Interviewed once on the street. Local news-woman asked what Christmas gift I’d give the world. I said, “Miatas.”

Oprah slightly ahead.

Oprah: Owns her own magazine: O. Graces cover each month in cheerful, feel-good outfit.

Me: Own many outfits.

Gap widening.

Oprah: Never lost fiancé to Iowan Floozy.

Me: Lost fiancé to Iowan Floozy.

Oprah shoots forward.

Oprah: Billionaire. Driven, smart, self-made.

Me: Credit risk. Coasting, smart, self-conscious.

Can taste Oprah’s dust in my mouth.

Oprah: On the chubbier side.

Me: The less chubby side.

Cold comfort.

Maya enters, bearing fresh coffee. “Did you see Oprah’s moving to town?”

“Is she?” I take a life-giving sip. “Where’s Brad?”

“Working.”

At SoftNoodle, a post-dot-com dot-com. They wanted a name that evoked both software and brains. Instead, they got impotence. “He works Sundays?”

“All the geeks do.”

“He’s not geeky. He’s perfect.”

“He’s not perfect!”

“He looks, talks, tastes and is Perfect Brad.”

“Tastes?”

“You know what I mean. Name one way he’s not perfect.”

“He’s not Jewish.”

“Oh,” I say. “That.”

Maya and I have been friends since we were twelve. She always celebrated the major Jewish holidays, unless she had other plans, but that was the extent of it. Maya’s mother, on the other hand, was really observant. She died of breast cancer last year—her funeral was the one time I’d been back since college. Since then, Maya has taken religion more seriously. Not that she’s started attending synagogue or anything, but she knows her mother wanted her to marry someone Jewish.

“So no wedding bells?” I say.

Her face clouds. “The wedding bells were supposed to be for you and Louis.” She sits next to me. “Did he really hurt you, Elle?”

I’d been thinking about that, between bouts of obsessive eating. “Other than my pride? No. C’mon. Of course not.” I take another sip of coffee, wishing it were a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby. The name of the ice cream makes my heart hurt. “Yeah. I guess he did. I miss him. I liked him. I really—he was solid. We really knew each other—little things, you know? The stuff that doesn’t matter, but that’s all that matters. And he was…well, he was there. That’s important in a fiancé.”

“He was there.” Her tone says, you don’t sound like a woman in love.

“Do you remember in high school, when we wanted to be mistresses?”

“No.”

“Maybe that was just me.” I’d seen a special on 20/20 about Kept Women. It had made an impression. Your own house, designer clothes and an allowance. All you had to do was have sex whenever he wanted. I liked sex—it didn’t seem like a hardship. “That’s pretty much what I had going.”

“You were his mistress?”

“Well, we didn’t have sex whenever he wanted. But I lived in an apartment he paid for, I didn’t work, he bought me clothes.” I look at her. “I should’ve asked for an allowance.”

“Do you love him?”

“Sure. That’s what kept it from being tawdry.” I finish my coffee. “I know you must’ve thought I led this exciting, sophisticated, romantic life…”

“Not really.”

“But to tell the truth it was kind of—” I look at her. “What do you mean, not really?”