Are You There Vodka? It's Me Chelsea Read online

  “Chelsea, I just think maybe you’re taking this relationship a little too seriously.”

  “How many times do you think you can use the word ‘serious’?” I asked him, trying to restrain myself from standing up and strangling him. “I think you’re being a little dramatic.”

  “Well, I had a feeling you would be upset and take this badly.”

  “Okay, you know what, Red? I am not upset about you breaking up with me. Well, it is kind of shocking, but the fact that you are being so dramatic about it is quite alarming. This is hardly a serious relationship.”

  “Fine,” Austin said. “Intense might be a better word. Things have gotten a little intense.” This is when I blew a gasket.

  “Intense? Intense?” I yelled. “You want to talk about intense? Try dating three guys at the same time. I’m trying to remember names and keep secrets and shit!”

  I don’t know why I said “three,” when actually I had only been dating two people. I quickly invented a third person in my head to back up my story. I decided his name would be Luther and he would work with animals. Who did Big Red think he was? And who did he think I was? I felt like I had been doing him a favor.

  He stared at me, apparently shocked by my outburst. “And by the way,” I added, “you really think highly of yourself.” I wanted to add something about his hair, but decided to leave that to the next girl he dumped. “Please go. I have a date with a very dynamic zookeeper that I do not want to be late for.”

  Red got up and walked out of my bedroom toward the front door. Before he made it out I added one last thing: “And you might want to think about trimming your bush!” Then I ran back into my room before he could say anything about my beaver and slammed my bedroom door. I knelt down on the floor and lifted the comforter up as Darryl rolled out from under my bed.

  “Ha ha!” Darryl sang as he crawled out. “You got dumped! I don’t know which I liked better, the rash or the zookeeper. That guy was a moron. Could you imagine anyone being that clueless?”

  I tried to keep a straight face while wondering if Big Red could ever be convinced that his pet had tripled in size over a two-week period and had brightened its skin color by taking fish supplements. Darryl and I started laughing so hard, we were crying. The fact that we were laughing at two different things was a perfect summation of our relationship.

  “You want to hear something really funny?” I asked him in between snorts. “Maude died.”

  “What?”

  “Maude, your fish.” I took another deep breath in order to get the sentence out without guffawing. “She’s dead and I got that new fish from my aunt Gerdy’s house.” Then I went into another fit of hysterics, except this time I was laughing alone.

  “How could you do that and not tell me?” he asked, instantly sobering up.

  “What?”

  “Chelsea, I’ve had Maude for six years.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. It’s not like it was intentional. I tried to revive her, but she was out like a light.”

  “It’s not funny, Chelsea. This is not funny at all.” Darryl was on his feet and getting dressed.

  “Oh, Jesus,” I said, now feeling like a complete asshole. There’s nothing worse than ruining a perfectly good moment by thinking someone else will find humor in something they absolutely do not. “I can’t believe you’re really upset about a fish.”

  “It’s the principle. I trusted you to look after Maude.”

  “Yeah, and obviously you made the wrong decision. You know I don’t particularly like animals, especially ones you can’t tickle.”

  Darryl stormed out of the apartment while I sat on my bedroom floor, dumbfounded by the day’s events. I picked the phone up off the floor and called Ivory.

  “Big Red broke up with me.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because he thought I was getting too serious.”

  “Well, that’s absurd; you couldn’t even have sex with him during the day.”

  “I know, and then Darryl stormed out because his fish died on my clock.”

  “Huh?”

  “I was babysitting for Darryl’s goldfish and the little hooker went belly up on me.”

  “Why does Darryl have a fish?” she asked.

  “Exactly my point!”

  “Why didn’t you just get him a new fish?”

  “I did, but it was a few shades darker and a little longer and after Big Red left, we were laughing so hard, I thought he’d think it was funny too.”

  “Why was Darryl there when Big Red dumped you?”

  “He was over when Red showed up unannounced.”

  “So Big Red broke up with you in front of Darryl?”

  “No, asshole. Darryl was under the bed.”

  The next sound I heard was a dial tone.

  This had been a day full of rejection, and frankly I was pretty sick of it. I wanted to experience unconditional love without the hassle of getting a dog or giving birth. It was clear that this was a turning point in my life. I logged on to AOL.com and Googled “hunger.” It was time to adopt a baby. Two, maybe, depending on how expensive they were.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Dining in the Dark

  I had finally received the paperwork confirming my adoption of two children from overseas. One was a nine-year-old girl from Guatemala and the other was a thirteen-year-old boy from Zimbabwe. The even better news was that they didn’t come to live with me right away. I would just be paying for their food, clothing, and books for school. Once they turned eighteen they would be allowed to visit if we both agreed on meeting. I was, of course, invited to visit them at anytime, but Guatemala and Zimbabwe weren’t exactly on my top ten countries to see list. I was looking at both of their solemn faces in the pictures they had sent, pleased that I had done exactly as I set out to do when buying my kids online—picking the two who looked the most upset.

  I decided right then and there to call them both Earl.

  The phone rang and it was my U.K. publisher calling to ask me if I would be interested in crossing the pond to do a little press for my book’s British release date. They told me my services would be needed for a period of ten days in February, which luckily happened to be one of the eleven months I had absolutely nothing planned workwise. “Bloody hell,” I told them in my best Madonna impersonation. “I’d love to.”

  I called my friend Sarah, who had just been broken up with by her Cuban fiancé, and was the one person who needed to get out of the country faster than my cleaning lady. Sarah and her fiancé had dated for seven years, and two weeks before the wedding he decided to tell her he wasn’t in love with her. Coincidentally, he had realized this after sleeping with a waitress who worked down the street at the International House of Pancakes.

  Watching your friend get news like that and seeing her go through the emotions of canceling a wedding—and the life she thought was going to come along with it—is heart-wrenching. All you want is to be able to fix it, but you and all your friends are completely helpless. It was the night of her breakup that I vowed never to have children, for fear one of them might be a girl and get broken up with. That’s why I turned to adoption.

  “Wanna go on an all-expense paid vacation to London?” I asked when she picked up the phone.

  “Yes, let me just quit my job.”

  It upset me that I was going to have to desert my children so soon after acquiring them, but truth be told, I was exhausted. Motherhood was no joke and neither was lying awake every night wondering where in the hell they were and if they had been able to score some rice that day. The bottom line was that Mommy needed a break. My next step was to get an all-clear from my OB-GYN to travel abroad.

  Once we got to London, I realized that going on vacation with Sarah was slightly more enjoyable than getting a glass eyeball installed. She had more energy than the Energizer bunny and was in nonstop planning mode, toting printed-out itineraries, maps, charts, color graphs, and recommendations for what we would do each day. There was s