Losing Charity

Losing Charity - 24

Molly has seen this movie before. She hugs me and lets me cry. I get in a good round of sobs before pausing for breath. I manage not to spill my wine or dribble pineapple salsa on the floor. I'm no amateur sobber.

Molly breaks the clench.

"Eat your taco, Charity, before it gets cold."

I dutifully finish it in two bites, washed down with wine.

Molly hands me another taco, already unwrapped. See what I mean? She's the best. I eat that one too, sniffling all the while.

By the third taco, I'm ready to talk. Molly dabs away a bit of pineapple clinging to the corner of my mouth, lifts my face between her hands and says, "What's wrong, Charity? What happened?"

Nothing I remember.

"Nothing," I say. "It's just..." I take a breath. "It's everything."

"Everything."

"I'm a mess," I say. And this much is true.

"You're not a mess." She hands me a tissue.

I throw up my hands in a gesture of futility, vaguely taking in my dump of an apartment, my scary neighborhood, my life in general.

"I am," I say. "Nothing works for me. Nothing. I can't find a job. I can't find a guy. Every time something is going my way, it falls apart and I feel even worse."

"You had a bad date," said Molly. "It happens." She cocks her head. "That is all that happened?"

I nod, maybe a little too fast. Last night is still a blank. I'm not sure what went wrong with Peter Sutaf the hedge fund guy. Investment bank guy. Whatever he is.

But something did.

I have a nagging sense that it was, indeed, a bad date.

A very bad date.

A date from hell?

I know I was excited to go on the date. I was giddy. Elated. These are unusual words for me. Thinking back, it seems unreal now, how I felt the last few days. Like I was a little girl again, waiting for Christmas. Impatient. Eager for the day, the big night, to arrive.

But here, now, today, after?

It seems like the memory of an having seen a movie long ago, so long ago that you don't even remember the name of it. Like that, and not the memory of something that actually happened.

Elated, eager, giddy Charity – that's a stranger, not me. Who was she? What was she doing living my life the last week, since the catering gig? Since Peter Sutaf.

Unreal.

Because this is me. A mess. A nervous wreck. An underachieving blob. How was I giddy Charity? How was she me? It's like I had a personality transplant.

It's a mystery. But not one I want to discuss, because I'm not sure I can explain the problem, even to Molly. I'm definitely feeling like myself again – a complete disaster. This feels right. This feeling fits me like a well broken in pair of pumps.

Of course, by the time you get a pair of shoes broken in, they're out of fashion. Such is life.

Molly watches all this play across my face, but without the transcript.

"Charity?"

I force a smile.

"Did anything happen to you last night? Anything you want to tell me?"

My smile becomes more forced. It's stuck. Twitching a little. The truth is I would tell her the truth if I knew it. But I don't. So I lower my eyes and shake my head.

"No."

"Not convinced. Look me in the eye." I recognize that tone of concern, and more. No Nonsense Molly is about to come out. There will be no evading her once that switch flips. No Nonsense Molly is relentless. She'll make me tell her everything, down to the second. Except I can't. And I can't deal with that right now.

I take a breath. I look her in the eye. "Nothing bad happened," I say.

That might be true. It might be a lie.

But she buys it.

Molly refills my glass.

"Action," she says. "Action is the antidote."

I sigh. It's one of her sayings. She's right, of course. When I get this way – flustered and flummoxed and flailing and down on myself in every way – the best thing to do is one thing. One step toward fixing one problem. If you take it on all at once, all your problems, all your issues, it's overwhelming. Paralysis ensues. Overwhelm. Overload. The next thing you know you're staring at the bottom of a tub of Ben and Jerry's, tripping over empty wine bottles, and trying to remember the last time you showered.

Or whatever. Mileage may vary.

Molly snags my laptop from atop the chest of drawers. "Log in," she says, handing me the computer.

"We still have tacos to eat."

"We're multitasking," says Molly.

"What's the task?" I dutifully wake the computer and enter my password.

"Give." Molly takes the laptop and opens the browser.

I fish another taco from the bag. "I'm not reactivating my Match profile, if that's what you're thinking. You know it only attracts plate-licking weirdos."

"That's not true," says Molly. "But forget boys for now. That's not what we're doing."

"What are we doing?"

"We're getting you a job. A real job. A good job. For real."

"On Saturday night?"

"What's your LinkedIn password?"

"Oh, no no no no no."

"Give."

"Actually, that's it."

"Oh-no-no-no-no-no?"

"Yeah."

Molly rolls her eyes. "Such positivity."

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Losing Charity © Dan McGirt 2019. All rights reserved.

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