More Than a Kiss

Ch…Ch…Ch…Changes

Amy pulled her gray Nissan Sentra into the driveway and parked behind Jeremy’s enormous gas-guzzling Buick. She turned off the car but didn't turn off the radio. She sat for a moment, listening to NPR. She looked at the house. She looked at her car. She looked at her clothes. She looked at her fingernails with the clear nail polish. She looked in the rear view mirror at her lightly applied make-up.

She didn't recognize this woman, the one she had become. When did she turn into this person? The Amy of old used to be daring – she’d gotten a tattoo after all. Admittedly, she was a weekend rebel – one didn’t get through med school without a effort, but she went to Nirvana concerts, wore high heels, a leather bomber jacket and groovy sunglasses. When did she morph into this person who lived in the burbs, drove a sensible car, had a sensible job, wore sensible clothes and sensible make-up? She even listened to NPR! And now her exciting Friday night was coming home to a dinner cooked by her best friend and after dinner she would force herself to pretzel her body through a yoga video, then curl up in bed with a book.

And now she wasn’t even going to get to do that because her boyfriend she didn’t like was coming over to see her all gussied up. Was this how women ended up getting married? They settled or were bullied into the matrimonial state? If that was her future, Amy didn’t want anything to do with it.

Amy opened the front door and was assaulted by smells coming from the kitchen. She didn't realize how hungry she was until her mouth began to water. Then so did her eyes.

Meet Isabel Craig. Amy’s other roommate. Isabel is the product of an upper middle class family. She is a middle child and used to being ignored – not in a bad way, but in the way of middle children who don’t cause trouble. Her parents have no aspirations for her other than “being happy.”

But happiness is elusive. It is especially elusive when the person seeking it isn’t particularly good at any one thing. Isabel had, by her own count, held over seventy-three jobs in the last ten years. Right now, she was training to be an Extreme Chef.

Extreme chef-ing is a relatively new occupation. It involves creating absolutely never before seen or smelled recipes. There is a lot of trial and error and guinea pigs are necessary; not the cute furry rodent kind, but the human kind. This is the reason the independently wealthy Isabel has roommates when she could afford her own apartment.

Amy entered the kitchen. Isabel looked up from the stove and smiled. Isabel even looked like an aspiring chef. She was short, round, pleasant, and bubbly. She had dark hair cut in a no nonsense bob tucked behind her ears, glasses that were always fogged up from steam off the stove, and cheeks always red from the heat of the oven. Amy even thought of Isabel's body in terms of food: Her breasts were plump dinner rolls, her butt was pork tenderloin and her stomach was pudding.

Isabel and Amy had been best friends for three years. They had met when they showed up at the same time in answer to an ad Jeremy had placed in the paper for a roommate. They had all three hit it off immediately – in a Three's Company sort of way – and Jeremy had rented out a bedroom to them both.

Over time, they had each staked out their own personal space in the large house. Isabel was in charge of the kitchen and dining room, Jeremy was in charge of entertainment and the living room and Amy was in charge of… Well, she was in charge of staying out of their way.

Amy put the paper bag down on the counter and Isabel's eyes brightened. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Pinto Gris. Two bottles."

"Two? And I think you mean Pinot Gris."

"They had a two for one sale," Amy said.

"Start pouring, girlfriend, start pouring."

Amy pulled two wine glasses out of the cupboard.

Isabel did a double take on the second glass. "Since when do you drink wine?"

"I'm going to change," Amy said.

"I hope so," Isabel said. "It's hard to eat dinner when a doctor is sitting across the table from you in blood-splattered clothes."

"No." Amy laughed as she poured. "I'm not changing clothes. I mean, I am. But I'm going to change myself. I’ve decided that I’m boring and consistent and I need to put a stop to it before it’s too late."

"Oh yeah?" Isabel raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah."

Amy handed over a glass of wine. They toasted to nothing and sipped.

Isabel went back to stirring the pot with a long-handled wooden spoon. Amy downed her entire glass, poured another and giggled.

"What’s so funny?" Isabel asked.

"You look like one of those witches. You know in that Shakespeare play. Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble."

"That was Shakespeare?" Isabel asked. "I thought it was from a cartoon."

Amy laughed and poured herself more wine. Isabel put the lid back on the pot and turned to her. "Okay," she said, "what's all this about wanting to change? Are you having an early mid-life crisis?"

Any hoisted herself up onto the bar and swung her legs. "I'm too plain. I'm plain and planned and… pained." She was thinking of her heart. Her heart hurt. It wanted someone to love. It wanted to have a companion – not like an extra heart in her chest, but a heart lying next to her, one she could hear beating and know that it beat for her. She didn’t think these thoughts in words, of course, but in feelings.

"So, you want to spice it up?"

"Exactly," Amy said. She drank down half her glass of wine.

"What're you thinking about changing into?"

"I don't know yet," Amy said. "Anything, I guess. It's got to be more exciting than what I am now."

"Well, you came to the right place. I’m the queen of changing your life. Look at all the different people I’ve been.”

That was true. Just since Amy had known her, Isabel had been a stockbroker, a pizza delivery girl, a locksmith apprentice, a member of the Geek Squad (even though she didn’t know squat about computers), and had even gone to clown school. She had botched the balloon-animals class and dropped out.

Isabel stirred, thinking hard. “You could be a gypsy.”

"Gypsy? Where'd that come from?"

Isabel shrugged. "I just think you'd look good in flowing scarves and bangles."

"I'm not talking about dressing up for Halloween. I'm talking about my life." She drank the rest of her wine and poured another.

"You better go easy on that," Isabel said. "I don't think making important life decisions while you're drunk is a good idea."

"Au contraire, ma frère," Amy said with a giggle. "It might give me the boost I need to take action."

Isabel took the lid off the boiling pot, dipped up a spoon of the brownish pulp and held it out to Amy to taste. "Tell me what you think."

Amy blew on the spoon and tasted. It took everything she had not to spit it back out.

Isabel asked, "So? More salt? More cumin?"

"You know what it needs?"

"What?"

Amy dumped her glass of wine in the pot. "More wine."

"You ruined it!" Isabel said, madly stirring the pot like that was going to somehow help. "I can't believe you did that! My God, it's all ruined." She whined and whimpered and cursed and stirred.

"Isabel?" Amy whispered.

Isabel looked at her.

"It was really kind of bad."

"It was?"

Amy nodded.

"Real bad?" Isabel asked.

Amy nodded again. "Foul, in fact."

Isabel looked back at the pot. She turned off the burner and said mournfully, "I wanted to come up with a new recipe, something with zing and pep that would make a good gravy for those tiny Italian noodles."

"You will. It just won't be that recipe," Amy soothed.

"I'm a horrible cook," Isabel lamented. A giant tear slid down her cheek.

Amy pulled Isabel into her arms and squeezed her tight. "You are not a bad cook. You are creative and inspired. What's that adage about Babe Ruth?"

"Who's Babe Ruth? Is she on the cooking channel?"

Amy laughed. "Babe Ruth was a great baseball player. Famous for hitting home runs. But what most people don't know is that he struck out more than he hit."

"I thought he was a candy bar."

Amy held Isabel at arm's length. "Just promise me you'll keep swinging. That you'll keep trying out recipes."

Isabel nodded unconvincingly.

"You'll hit those home runs, I promise."

"Maybe," Isabel said under her breath.

"Listen to me," Amy said, giving her a little shake. "Do you know how much I admire you?"

"Me? Why?"

"Because you have a dream. You're living it. You know what you want. And you keep going for it. I wish I had your enthusiasm."

"Thanks," Isabel said. "Thanks for being my friend."

"Now drink your wine. I'll make dinner." Amy threw open the fridge door, rummaged inside and brought out a block of cheddar cheese. She went to the cabinets and took down a box of saltine crackers. She grabbed the bottles of wine and announced with full arms, "Madame, dinner is served."

Isabel grabbed her wine glass and asked, "You're sure it couldn’t be saved?"

Amy put on the sympathetic face she'd practiced in the mirror for the day she might have to inform a family member that the patient had expired, and said in a somber tone, "I’m sorry. We did all we could, but we could not resuscitate the patient."

Isabel grabbed her glass and swallowed a healthy drink of wine. "Okay," she said. "Let's go out back and watch the sunset."

An hour later the sunset was gone and so was most of the wine. Amy and Isabel were lounging on the far side of the yard in metal lawn chairs. Amy nibbled on a big block of cheese like a mouse and Isabel munched on saltines like a squirrel.

"You know what really pisses me off?" Isabel asked.

"Is this one of those rhetorical questions?"

"Yes.”

"You didn't have to answer that," Amy said, "It was rhetorical."

"Oh."

They snacked in silence for a full minute. Finally, Amy asked, "What pisses you off?"

"Oh, yeah," Isabel said, remembering what she was going to say. "Hot dogs."

"Hot dogs like in wieners?"

"Yep. They're sold in packages of ten. And buns are sold in packages of eight. That's not right. It’s this giant food conspiracy and we just lay back and take it. We let them do it to us."

"I wish you hadn't pointed that out," Amy said. "Now I'm pissed off."

"What's going on out here?" a male voice asked. Both women jerked their heads toward the house and saw Chad looking out the back door.

"Hey!" Isabel said cheerily because she was at the stage of drunkenness where everybody is your friend and everything is potential fun.

"Ugh," Amy said disgustedly because she was at the tipping-point of drunkenness where all it would take is one little thing to tip her from happy to belligerent. And that one little thing was striding across the lawn toward her.

Chad approached carefully because he had spotted the wine bottles nestled in the crotches of the women. "Have we decided to forego dinner in lieu of drinking?"

"Forego. Lieu," Amy mocked. "Listen to how smart I am. I can say forego and lieu in the same sentence."

Isabel laughed. Cracker crumbs sprayed out her mouth and into her lap.

Chad squinted at Amy. "You need to eat something."

"I am eating," Amy said, showing him the one-pound block of cheddar cheese that had nibble marks around its entire circumference.

"Yeah, we are eating," Isabel said through another mouthful of crackers.

Then, in an unspoken display of drunken simpatico, Amy tossed the block of cheese and Isabel tossed the box of saltines, each to the other. They caught the other’s toss and began to munch happily.

"You are drunk," Chad said.

"You are sober," Amy retorted. She held the box of crackers up to him. "Cracker?"

He waved away the box. "Where's Jeremy?" he asked.

Isabel said, "He came home, mumbled something about women and PMS and locked himself in his bedroom with a bucket of left-over Kentucky Fried chicken that he scavenged from the back of the fridge."

"I'd offer you a chair," Amy said, "but I don't want you to stay."

Amy and Isabel giggled.

Chad put his hands on his hips and stared down his perfectly shaped nose at her. "I want you to know, Amy," he said, "that you aren't making a good impression on me right now."

"Oooh, don't say such things, Chad. You're making me sad," Amy said. She didn't so much drip sarcasm as she spewed it. She giggled. “Chad. Sad. I rhymed!”

"I'm serious. If you're going to be my number one girlfriend you can't go around getting drunk and eating with your bare hands in the back yard like a feral animal."

"Here's a solution," Amy said. "Demote me to number three girlfriend. Or maybe number ten. Or how about you take me off the list entirely. How do you like them crackers?"

Chad crossed his arms over his muscular pecs. "Is this about the banana peel?" he asked.

"Could you possibly get any more asshole-ish?" Amy said. “Of course it’s about the damn banana peel. It’s about the basic philosophy behind the banana peel. First, by throwing the condom on the floor where it would prove a safety hazard you demonstrated what an inconsiderate fucktard you are. Second, by telling everyone the story you proved that you’re a gossip and will do anything for a cheap laugh, and third just because I made the mistake of sleeping with you once, much to my regret, does not mean I want to have anything further to do with you.”

“Brava! Tell it to him straight, sister,” Isabel said.

Chad stared at Amy. “You don’t mean that. You’re not thinking straight. I’m going to give you a pass on tonight.”

“Ugh!” Amy said, and pelted him with a cracker. It bounced off the side of his perfectly shaped head.

He glared at her. "Now you're throwing food at me?"

"You're lucky I didn't have the block of cheese in my hands," she said.

Isabel guffawed. "I saw a gorilla do that once. At the zoo. He got tired of this guy making faces at him through the bars and he picked up his feces and threw it at the guy. Splat! Right in the kisser."

Amy grinned at Chad. "Be careful. I may throw my feces at you next."

Chad stomped on the cracker and glared at her. "I've had enough. I'm going home to wait for your apology." He stalked back across the yard.

"You'll be waiting a long time," Amy called out after him.

He disappeared through the door. Amy and Isabel grinned. Then they tossed the cheese and crackers to each other and went back to nibbling.