You Love Me(You #3)(91)
I buy Oliver his non-intuitive Casio—am I ever going to see you again?—and my doorbell rings. Yes! You! I run to the door and I open the door and no. Ivan. I wish I wasn’t in sweatpants and I wish Riffic was a fucking Rottweiler.
Ivan laughs at my cats. “Sorry to surprise you.”
“No worries. Did you want to come in?” So I can lock you in my Whisper Room?
“Actually,” he says. “Nomi mentioned that you live here…” Nomi. Not you. “And I know how helpful you were last week…” Someone had to be, you prick. “I wanted to invite you over for supper tonight. It’s the least we can do to repay you for being such a good neighbor.”
The word is boyfriend, you asshole, and he better not tell you about all the cat hair on my sweatpants. “I’m always happy to help and that sounds great, but unnecessary. I don’t want to intrude.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He tells me he’ll see me at six and I start to close the door and he snaps his fingers. “Oh, one more thing,” he says. “Feel free to bring your partner, if you have one…”
I hate the word partner and I picture Rachael Ray riding one of her knives into the center of his chest and I smile. “Thanks,” I say. “But it’s just me.”
A couple hours later you call me and you are hiding in the garage, whispering, as if you’re the guest in his house. You are so sorry for all the radio silence and you say it’s so complicated. “See, Ivan and Phil didn’t have the best relationship and I feel like you got stuck in the middle of some ancient history.”
“Mary Kay, I’m gonna say what I always say. Don’t worry about me. Really.”
You blow me a kiss but I hear him in your voice and it’s so much better in my house, no fucking Ivans clogging the pipes. I go down to my Whisper Room to get ready for supper (a.k.a. read up on Uncle Ivan) and here’s my conclusion, Mary Kay.
He isn’t a life coach. He’s an aspiring cult leader.
He claps and women stop talking and women pay him for his authoritative “coaching.” The man is the real fake deal. But let’s be honest, Mary Kay. He’s a bad guy, and this is the problem with the fucking Internet. Thanks to his publicist, women are watching his videos and every hour he has more followers and “converts” than he did the hour before. It doesn’t hurt that he’s not a bad-looking guy who enforces a one-strike rule—that’s so cult—and stares into the camera and tells women what they want to hear, what we all want to hear: You deserve better.
No, Ivan. Most people are pretty shitty and they don’t deserve better and I wish RIP Phil would come back from the dead so that I could tell him that I get it, man. If this was my brother—God help me—even half brother, I would’ve been popping pills and singing about sharks, too.
Ivan’s also an Instagram junkie—women who love guys like Ivan also love Instagram—and here’s a brand-new post, a photo of a vintage BMW in his parents’ garage at their summer home in Manzanita. The caption is sexist, directed at you: Good to be home, baby. Missed you.
You are not a car and he went to Yale and is there anything worse than a forty-nine-year-old man still identifying by the college that accepted him before he could legally buy beer? Ivan isn’t famous-famous (yet). He’s not John Fucking Stamos. Three years ago, he was flying from one self-made bubble to another, speaking to “crowds”—trick photography—of women who then swarmed him in the lobby bars of various Marriotts all over the country. And this year, even before your husband died, Ivan has hit his fucking stride and the lie is coming true.
A guy couldn’t so easily become an Ivan twenty years ago—fuck you, Internet; fuck you, images—and I put on your favorite black sweater and I can do this. Your brother-in-law didn’t invent the snake oil game and I can make nice with him.
And if not I can… well, no, I can’t.
I turn the corner on the trail and Ivan is on your deck, dumping charcoal into the grill. I hoist my bottle of Bainbridge vodka and he waves his tongs, longer than my bottle, and he stares at my vodka. “Wow,” he says. “Hard stuff on a school night. Yikes. You don’t see a lot of the hard stuff in wine country.” We’re not in wine country and you like vodka and it says BAINBRIDGE on the bottle. “I don’t drink it. It’s like they say, perfume going in, sewage going out.”
It takes a lot for me to punch someone with an actually, but I do it now. “Actually, Ivan, that’s what they say that about champagne. Not vodka.”
He doesn’t cop to being wrong even though he was wrong and he sighs. “When did you say you moved here?”
“I didn’t.” Pause for dramatic effect. “A few months ago.”
He wants to ask more but here you come in a Red Bed red sundress and I shrug, affable houseguest, changing the subject, and you keep your distance from me but Ivan watches, assessing our body language like the unlicensed pervert that he is. You pour wine and Nomi puts a cheese board in the middle of the table and Ivan starts telling some long, boring you-had-to-be-there story about the time you and him and your rat had an olive-eating contest and Ivan nods at me. “Go ahead, Joe. Have an olive.”
This isn’t your style. I’ve watched your sitcom and I know you. You’re not a foodie. You binge on Tostitos in bed and you let the frost bite your salmon and I pick up a piece of white cheese. “This is quite a charcuterie board.”