bar, I don’t know what happened. He just started talking to some chick. Like I didn’t exist. She had gigantic fake boobs. He pointed at me and they started laughing.”
“That’s horrible,” I said, shifting so I could hug her. “But are you sure you’re not reading something into this? How much did you drink?”
“Shut up! I had two glasses of wine,” she said. Her breath told me otherwise. “Anyway, I had to get him back. So I grabbed this guy. Super hot. I started kissing him, total stranger. Next thing you know, we’re making out. It was crazy.”
“Jeez. Then what?” I asked, thinking only Toni could arrive with one guy and leave with another. Most of us would have tossed a drink on Mike, or simply left, thinking him not worth the breath, but not my little Toni. She needed serious revenge, such as another boy-trophy, immediately, no matter how humiliating her actions.
“He asked me to come to his place.”
“And?”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“He got really aggressive,” Toni said.
“Does he know where we live?”
“He just left. It was horrible.”
“What did he do?”
“He jumped me!”
“I’ll kick his ass!”
“I said no. At first I didn’t. . . I didn’t want to embarrass him, but he kept pushing. So I kicked him. He called me a slut—white trash. ‘Not worth the gas to get you here!’ He looked psycho.” Tears rolled down Toni’s cheeks as she gasped rhythmically.
Part of me felt bad, and part of me wanted to shake her. It didn’t take a genius to see she’d made her bed. And normally she was quite comfortable sleeping in it. Little Miss Tough Girl, miles-ahead-of-her-years, handled her shame as if it was an Olympic medal: “Yup, did him summer of ‘06. Oops, don’t remember his name or his face.” Or “back of a truck with my shoes on—s’all good.” Anything for a laugh, even at the expense of her self-respect.
I didn’t know what to say, except, “I’m so sorry.”
“And Amanda, my friend from the show, was there at the bar,” Toni continued.
“Uh-huh.” I cuddled her.
“She totally bailed on me! Like she’s better than me.” Toni’s sobs became louder. “I have no one. I’m alone. The guys here—they’re all assholes. I just want to meet a nice guy. A nice guy!” she yelled, tilting her chin to the ceiling. “Like Grant.” She turned her head toward me and sobbed. “You’re so lucky, Jane. You don’t even know. Your life’s practically perfect. . . I want to go home. Now.”
“Perfect?” I shook my head. “Anyway, don’t say that. You don’t want to go back to Chicago—it’s cold there.”
“It’s cold here!” she spat. “I’m all alone.”
“Toni, no one said it would be easy. They say this city makes you soft, but I never believed it. It’s hard. It’s tough. It’s an island—it’s like Lost, the TV show, only bigger and crazier! And the men here? Aliens. All of them.”
I wanted to make it all better for her, the way a mom promises her child. But I couldn’t guarantee her she would meet a good man, especially in LA. And it wasn’t about finding a good man, anyway. It was about finding the right man, as I’d learned today.
“Come here.” I pulled her hair from her wet cheek. “Why don’t you sleep here tonight, with me? It’ll be okay. You’ll find the right guy. He’s right around the corner.”
Toni fell asleep beside me, clothes still on, on top of the covers. She didn’t move a hair when I staggered out of bed three hours later for work.
Brenda Wambetti was a single mother. She was also a mess.
She worked long days, often six days a week, as a secretary for an investment firm in the midst of lay-offs. She had a 9-year-old son, Oliver, and a 14-year-old daughter, Susan, each with different fathers, both long since gone. She and the kids shared a small apartment in a rent-controlled neighborhood. Brenda and Susan slept in the big bedroom, Oliver in the second one.
Recently, Barbara, Brenda’s sister, had come to live with them. She was broke, with nowhere else to go, so she set up shop in their 8’ x 6’ dining room, a twin bed shoved into the corner, a night table with a faux Tiffany lamp overlooking the living room, and a chest of drawers full of clothes and all her worldly possessions facing out to the kitchen.
They fought, all of them, like cats and dogs. They loved to yell and they loved to hit, especially Brenda, a smack on the