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Chapter One

Do not read and reread a man's text message, or e-mail, or listen to his voice message, over and over again. Do not try to delve into his words for hidden meaning, or call your friends to get their opinions on "what he really means." It's a message, not the Constitution—you're not supposed to study it.

I'm sitting on my living room couch, an empty bag of Doritos to my right and an unopened pack of Marlboro Lights to my left, writing a book of advice for my future great-granddaughter.

Why am I writing a book that won't be read for almost a hundred years? A few months ago, I started thinking about all of the things I wish I had known when I was sixteen and wish I could remember now that I'm thirty.

I began my book a few months ago by telling her things like:

You should never have a job that you hate so much you think, "Thank God it's Friday" every week of your life.

Not to mention:

You won't meet your future husband at a bar.

And, my favorite:

Some days are a total waste of makeup.

In the past week, I've come up with a few other pieces of advice I like, such as:

If you are going to show up at someone's house unannounced, call at least five minutes in advance. This gives your hostess four minutes to race around the house collecting dirty dishes to throw in the sink, and another minute to plan your death.

All women think they can utter the following phrase: "If I had a dime for every sane member of my family, I'd have a dime."

Never drink wine from a box.

And just now . . .

Do not read and reread a man's text message, or e-mail, or listen to his voice message, over and over again. Do not try to delve into his words for hidden meaning, or call your friends to get their opinions on "what he really means." It's a message, not the Constitution—you're not supposed to study it.

Which is stupendous advice, if I do say so myself. So stupendous that I must immediately ignore it, walk over to my computer, and stare at the e-mail on my screen:

Charlie, you're overthinking this. Have fun at the Halloween party. Talk to whomever you want. As you said before, we'll figure this out when I get home. No worries.

Crap. What did Jordan mean when he wrote that? That we're a couple who trust each other, and therefore I can have fun talking to whomever I want while he's away in Paris?

That he likes me, even though I've insisted that we should be on a break while he is in Paris?

That he's already on the set sleeping with the Second A.D.?

The past six weeks have been alternately perfect and hideous, and the hideous parts may be my own damn fault. I recently wrote to my great-granddaughter:

You know what the right thing to do is, even though it's usually easier (and temporarily more fun) to do the wrong thing.

The problem is, I don't even know if I have done the right thing. Let me back up. Six weeks ago, after a particularly brutal weekend acting as maid of honor at my little sister's wedding, I thought I had finally found my perfect guy, my reward for all of my torturous years of dating. Jordan Dumaurier. After several frustrating starts and stops in our relationship, both of us were totally free of our entanglements, and we were now dating each other.

Those next six weeks should have been bliss. I wasn't working much, since my boss was out of the country. One of the perks of being a personal assistant to a successful boss is that they sometimes take off for Belize on a moment's notice, and you get some unexpected free time. So while international movie star Drew Stanton dined on plantains and readjusted his chakras in a Yucatán villa, I got to hang out with my new man and still collect a fat check every week, made out to Charlize Edwards.

Yes, Drew Stanton. As in the Drew Stanton: Golden Globe winner, Academy Award nominee, "Sexiest Man Alive" . . . complete lunatic.

But I say that with love. Drew is one of those forces of nature that seem to irreparably change all who enter his sphere of influence. In chaos theory, they refer to this as the butterfly effect. But if Drew is a butterfly, I'm frankly never sure whether to stare at him in admiration or pin him to a corkboard.

But enough about him, let's talk about me. And Jordan.

Jordan's gig as set still photographer on Drew's last .lm ended when the shoot wrapped, so he had time off, too. We spent four delicious weeks holed up in my little house, eating lots of takeout, talking for all hours, and having sex, sex, and more sex.

Then, the unthinkable happened. He—gasp!—got a job offer. Oh, the horror.

Yes, I know, I'm being a big baby. People have to work. It's reality. And I even advised my great-granddaughter:

Don't be jealous of spoiled rich kids. If you don't work, you don't have honor.

But here's the problem: he didn't actually get one offer, he got two. One was to shoot stills for a .lm shooting in Los Angeles for the next three months. Taking that job would have allowed us to be in the same city during the holidays. The other job was for a movie shooting in Paris until the end of February. And he had to leave the next day.

He chose Paris. And I couldn't help but feel that he had chosen Paris over me.

I spent the next sixteen hours hanging out with him as he packed, and temporarily breaking up with him.

I didn't actually break up with him. What I did was tell him that long-distance relationships don't work, and that we'd be deluding ourselves if we thought we could weather a four-month split after a four-week courtship. I then quoted the "if it was meant to be" line, and said that when he got home, if we both wanted, we could start up exactly where we left off.

It all sounded perfectly logical at the time. I've worked in the entertainment business for years, and (with the exception of the marrieds) I've yet to see a four-month break ever lead to anything but a breakup.

Ever.

So, at the time, I felt like I had no choice.

That said, the moment he left, I backtracked like crazy. My first day alone I worked myself into a tizzy, convinced that the moment he walked off the plane, he would go to the .lm set and run right into a gorgeous, thin woman with a sexy French accent and her sights set on my hunky American man.

Oh, she's out there, and I hate her already. Cheeky little . . .

Anyway, I have spent the last two weeks continuing to work myself up into a psychological frenzy, and this past hour has been no different. I cannot leave my computer screen for more than two minutes. Gazing at his latest e-mail is like watching a bad car wreck, or the latest Tom Cruise Scientology video—you want to turn away, but you can't.

I walk back to my living room, grab my notepad and my unopened cigarettes, head back to my office, look at the screen again, and stew.

Charlie, you're overthinking this. Have fun at the Halloween party. Talk to whomever you want. As you said before, we'll figure this out when I get home. No worries.

He wrote xoxo, J. Not Love, Jordan. Not even Love, J. Nope—xoxo.

Okay, yes, it's better than Cheers! Jordan, or (God forbid) Best, Jordan. Or his initials—JAD—that would be obnoxious.

But, I don't know, I use xoxo for the friends I adore, not the man I'm sleeping with.

Was sleeping with.

Then dumped for no good reason.

Scratch that. A very good reason.

Besides, we've never said the L word to each other, and I'd rather hear it in person (preferably when he's sober and standing up) rather than in an impersonal e-mail.

My God, if I spent half as much time exercising as I do obsessing about men, I'd weigh what it says on my driver's license by now.

I glance over at the pack of cigs and sigh. I also quit smoking six weeks ago. I didn't do it f or Jordan, I did it f or me. Well, the first six hours I did for me. After that, my only motivation was the promise of sex whenever I wanted. Which does help with those oral cravings, I must admit.

But then the sex went to Paris, and now I'm just abstaining because I really enjoy getting road rage, eating enough in a day to sustain a small horse, and constantly wanting to slam my head through a wall.

My home phone rings. I pick up on the second ring. "Hello?"

If you ever become a rock star, whether you have one hit or twenty, you are still never entitled to have a CD entitled The Essential Collection.

"Huh?" I ask.

"That's my advice for your book," my best friend Dawn says. "I mean, you know, the Beatles could get away with it. But Hall and Oates? Tom Jones? Please."

"Not bad," I say, writing down her advice.

"Or The Ultimate Collection," I hear my other best friend, Kate, say in the background on Dawn's end of the line.

"Who has that?" I hear Dawn ask Kate.

"Shalamar and Ace of Base," Kate says.

I hear Dawn mutter "Ugh," as I ask her, "Where are you guys?"

"The Grove. Kate dragged me here so we could do a little Christmas shopping."

Ah, yes, the last week in October. The week most stores start putting up Christmas decorations—and Kate becomes a raving Christmas lunatic. You would think one of the city's top political radio show hosts would view the holiday season with a certain sense of perspective and decorum.

You'd be wrong.

Last year, Kate's apartment included one dancing Santa, two Christmas trees, and a life-size flying reindeer.

"Tell her about the New Year's resolutions," I hear Kate say cheerfully.

"The what?" I ask.

"Don't ask," Dawn says under her breath. "Poor girl's got issues, and should not be encouraged. Now listen, I got the e-mail you forwarded from Jordan."

"Good. What do you think it means?"

"It means you are one crazy heifer," Dawn says emphatically. "You've become the girl who forwards a man's e-mail to all of her friends. You made the right decision: get rid of him for now. Men are like trains: one doesn't just come every twelve minutes, it usually doubles back eight hours later, during the afternoon rush hour."

My phone beeps. "Hang on, that's my call waiting," I click over. "Hello?"

"Don't listen to her!" Kate counters from her cell phone. She's probably all of two feet away from Dawn. "Breaking up with Jordan just because you've had previous problems with long-distance relationships is making him pay for the mistakes of his competitors. It's important that you greet every relationship with your mind completely open and emptied for the joy that is to come."

"Did you just tell Charlie to be an airhead every time she dates a new guy?" I hear Dawn ask incredulously in the background of Kate's line.

"You're paraphrasing my words in a foolish manner to defeat my position of love and openness. This is a reflection of your pain, not a condemnation of my hope. According to this book I'm reading—"

"Don't make me come over there with a shoe!" Dawn counters.

"Well, I'm not going to let you sabotage Charlie's love life just because you can't make yourself emotionally available to a man," Kate says firmly to Dawn.

"Can you hold on a sec?" I ask Kate.

"Sure."

I click back over to Dawn. "What the hell is she talking about?"

"I begged her to stay out of the self-help section," Dawn tells me, and I can almost hear her shaking her head, "but not only did she sneak in, she bought books, took notes, and is trying to drag us into her sick little world. . . ."

Kate's voice suddenly comes in loud and clear, meaning she has taken the phone away from Dawn. "Sometime next week, you're both coming to my house so we can do our New Year's resolutions."

"New Year's isn't for more than two months," I remind her. "And I haven't finished ignoring the ten pounds I planned to lose last year."

"No, no. I just read this amazing book: Dream It, Do It, Deal with It. It's all about figuring out what you really want in life, then forcing yourself toward your goals every day. One of the tricks is to make New Year's resolutions every month, instead of once a year."

"Tell Charlie what the Deal with It part means," I hear Dawn say dryly.

I hear Kate sigh. "That's the negativity talking," she insists to Dawn.

"Ya think?" Dawn asks sarcastically.

"What does the Deal with It mean?" I am curious to know.

"Oh, that's for when you get your dreams, but you're still not happy," Kate says quickly, trying to skirt over that part. "But I'm telling you, the rest is genius."

"Boo, can I have my phone back?" Dawn asks, "I want to text Charlie."

"Sure," Kate says. "Charlie, click back over to my phone."

I click back to Kate's phone, and hear Dawn hang up. "You really think Jordan still likes me?" I ask Kate.

"Of course he does," Kate assures me.

My iPhone gives me a little explosion to let me know I have a new text. Hoping to God it's Jordan, and not following my earlier advice to my great-granddaughter:

Don't wait by the phone.

I immediately click on my text inbox to see Dawn's number, followed by the message:

Blow him out of the water, and leave him for dead.

What are you wearing to the Halloween party? Be sexy, but not desperate.

Love,

Dawn

P.S. (Note how I did not dare write xoxoD)

That's easy for her to say. Dawn is stunningly beautiful. The product of three interracial marriages (her grandparents are Hispanic, Jewish, Japanese, and African American), she seems to have swum through the world's largest gene pool, and come out perfect. Well, not perfect. She flunked Physics back when we were in college together. But I've yet to hear a man ask her about that.

Don't obsess about your looks, but don't ignore them, either. potential suitors can't see your brain from across the room.

"Do you think I need eyelid surgery?" Kate asks.

The girl has rendered me speechless for a moment. "As opposed to what?" I finally ask.

"Well, a boob job, I suppose. Or maybe the collagen lips thing. "

"Trout pout's over," I hear Dawn warn in the background.

"Fair enough," Kate concedes. "But I have to do something. I haven't been out in the dating world for nine years. I need something to spruce up my image."

"Hey! Size four!" I hear Dawn yell, "For the love of all that is holy . . . put the diet book down!"

I hear Dawn take the phone from Kate. "We gotta go. I have to get the girl to a hot fudge sundae before she completely loses it. Are you gonna be okay?"

I stare absentmindedly at Jordan's e-mail. "Yeah, I'll be fine."

"Good. We're meeting at your place at eight. Call me if you need to talk. Bye."

"Bye," I say, and hang up the phone.

I let my bottom lip puff out in self-pity as I read again:

Charlie, you're overthinking this. Have fun at the Halloween party. Talk to whomever you want. As you said before, we'll figure this out when I get home. No worries.

I stare at my computer, and click on my inbox. An e-mail telling me I've just won twenty-five million pounds in the British lottery, and another one trying to sell me Viagra. (I am curious as to how I got on that spam list.)

I force myself to walk away from the computer, only to see a different pack of unopened cigarettes beckoning me from the dining room table.

I purse my lips together as I stare at them.

Cigarettes. I really should quit buying them. Although I've decided to quit, I like keeping packs of them around. It's like a little black book of old boyfriends' phone numbers: just knowing they're there in an emergency makes me feel better.

My iPhone rings. I check the caller ID. My boss, Drew Stanton.

The butterfly has emerged from his cocoon.

I pick up. "Hi, Drew."

"What does a manic depressive act like?" Drew asks me, sounding like he's in a state of utter distress.

"Well," I begin, trying to come up with a succinct definition. "They act sort of like you, only they get depressed sometimes."

"Okay, then that's not it," Drew says quickly. "Then I think I'm having a panic attack."

"Did you accidentally climb into that crocodile exhibit again?" I ask sternly.

"No."

"Are you hanging three thousand feet in the air without a net?"

"No!" Drew blurts out. "And I thought we agreed you would never speak of that incident again."

"My bad," I apologize. "Are there any sharks, snakes, or hitmen within ten feet of you?"

"No."

"Then you're probably not having a panic attack," I conclude. "You only tend to have those when there's a genuine need for panic."

"Okay," Drew concedes. "So then, what does a heart attack feel like?"

"You know, this would go a lot faster if you'd just tell me what happened."

"I've been .red," Drew says, sounding like he's hyperventilating.

"The head of Pinnacle called my agent to say that they don't think they should be spending two hundred million dollars to make Men in Motion 2. I'm out of a job!"

Oh, crap. If Drew is out of a job, that means he's going to spend the entire holiday season filling his days by trying to find the perfect religion, the perfect woman, or the perfect Pre-Colombian pottery. And he'll be dragging me along with him on that quest.

Before I can respond, Drew's voice changes completely, going from a tone of sheer terror to one of contemplation and calm. "You know, he's telling the Hollywood Reporter it's 'creative differences,' but, really, I think he's mad about the hippo."

The hippo. I think to myself.

Drew is silent on the other end, waiting for my response. Finally, I oblige him. "And by hippo you would mean . . . ?"

"Ida."

"Ida," I repeat, trying to figure out what clever wordplay he's used for his latest animal acquisition. Last month it was an elephant named Cindy (short for Cinderelephant—isn't he clever?).

So Ida must be . . . "Is it short for, 'Ida thought I wouldn't do something so insane as to adopt a hippo'?" I ask.

"Nah," Drew says, and I can hear by his tone of voice that he's waving me off with his hand. "I named her after my aunt Ida. They're both short and fat, and have huge legs. I rescued her from an estate in Costa Rica."

I'm dead silent. It's like joining an in-progress conversation that includes the phrase "Dirty Sanchez." You won't be able to catch up, and you won't have anything interesting to add, so just stay quiet.

"I was going to name her Hippocrates," Drew continues. "But then I thought, that's a little on the nose. Besides, she's a girl. What would people think if I gave her a boy's name? Then of course, I thought of naming her after my uncle: but it turns out the word hypocrite has a 'Y' in it."

I still stay quiet.

"Are you still there?" Drew asks.

"Barely," I say, sighing.

The next words out of my mouth are words I never thought I'd have to utter in my lifetime. "Didn't I specifically tell you that you couldn't get a hippo?"

"Yes, you did," Drew says breezily, "but then I remembered that you work for me, I don't work for you. Which means you're not the boss of me."

Well, he sure told me.

"In my defense . . . ," Drew continues.

"Can you hold on a second?" I ask Drew.

"Sure," he says.

I jot down in my notebook:

No good has ever come from a conversation that began with the words, "In my defense . . ."

"Okay, you were saying . . . ?"

"In my defense, there were a bunch of hippos that were about to be destroyed if no one took them. It was on the news. A bunch of zoos took the other hippos, and the only hippo left was Ida. So, I found this wildlife refuge that agreed to take Ida if I could get her to them, and pay for the ninety pounds of food she eats every day. And all that was supposed to happen was that I was supposed to pay to have Ida transported to the refuge. Only, the company in charge of the move I guess got confused, because they sent her to my house."

What the fuck? Who sends a two-ton hippo to the middle of Brentwood?

"Only, they didn't actually send her to my house," Drew continues. "Because I specifically told them I live at 3592 Greenlawn. But they sent her to 3952 Greenlawn. Which, the good news on that is, the owners of 3952 have a pool, and they've graciously allowed her to stay for the next hour or two while we get someone to bring her to the refuge."

I shake my head and sigh. "And the bad news?"

"The bad news is the owner of 3952 Greenlawn is also the head of Pinnacle Studios. And I've been .red due to 'creative differences.' "

"And by creative differences you mean . . ."

"He thought sending a hippopotamus to the head of a studio was not particularly creative."

"Ah."

Figures. This is just so typical of Drew. Working for a movie star is like working for an unhousebroken puppy with a Black American Express card: You spend part of your life cleaning up after him, part of your life wanting to yell, "Sit. Stay," and part of your life wondering how someone so stupid can be so successful that they have a Black American Express Card.

Drew continues, "I need you to come here with one hundred pounds of grass, and by that I don't mean pot, I mean actual grass. Plus a pastrami on rye for me, light mayo, extra tomatoes."

I roll my eyes as I jot down his demands on a notepad. I went to college so I could ask my next question, "You want fries with that?"

"Yes, the curly kind. Oh, and call whomever it is one would call to wrangle an amorous hippo."

"Wait," I say, closing my eyes to wince as I unconsciously lift up the palm of my hand in a "Stop" motion. "What do you mean 'amorous'?"

"Um. . . amorous. It means lovesick, in heat, horny as a teenage boy on Jell-O shots. . . ."

"I know what it means," I interrupt. "I meant, why is she amorous?"

I hear what sounds like a tuba playing on Drew's end of the line.

"I don't know," Drew answers, "but if I wanted to be sexually involved with a hippo, I would date my old high-school girlfriend."

I spend the next thirty minutes making arrangements to have Ida picked up and moved to a wildlife refuge, and calling a stable and a deli so that when I get to 3952 Greenlawn, I will be armed with one hundred pounds of grass, and a pastrami on rye with curly fries.

Well, on the plus side, I haven't thought about Jordan's e-mail for two of those thirty minutes.

Man, why can't I stop thinking about Jordan? Why am I letting this relationship color every other aspect of my life? It's becoming like OCD: I'm obsessed with figuring out what I have to do to get him to want me all the time. I have entire conversations between the two of us—completely in my head. All I can think about lately is kissing him.

I once read that an alcoholic's brain is set up to always think about finding a way to get more alcohol delivered to the body. No matter how satisfying the job the alcoholic holds, she thinks about happy hour at the end of the day. No matter how fulfilling a family life the alcoholic has, or what hobbies she enjoys, all her brain does is compartmentalize those things while mentally in search of the next drink.

For me: I'm not appreciating anything great that's going on in my life because in my mind all I'm doing is killing time until the next time I get to see Jordan.

I'm a Jordanoholic.

Sigh. Maybe admitting it is the first step to recovery.

I look over at the cigarettes centerpiecing my dining-room table with a longing that should only be reserved for high-school crushes and Johnny Depp sightings.

I pick up the cigarettes from the table, and examine the little cellophane tab on the pack.

One pull and they could all be mine. . . .

Maybe some nicotine gum would make me saner.

Maybe a new relationship would make me saner.

Goddamn it. I am so tired of being a silver medalist.

Every two years, I find myself feeling sorry for the person who wins the silver medal at the Olympics. They spend their entire lives focused on one goal: to win the gold medal in an event, in anything from men's skiing to women's synchronized swimming. Years and years of training: waking up at five in the morning when your friends are sleeping in; enduring bruises, sprains, and broken bones while your friends are off at the mall. Forgoing school dances, or the prom, so that you can travel to amateur athletic events in states you never had any interest in seeing. So much sacrifice, just in the desperate hope that you will one day attain your goal, the elusive gold medal.

And that's what dating is like. You spend years and years training: You work out, (okay, I don't, but I know I should), you diet, you learn how to wear the right clothes, apply the right makeup—anything to make you look good to the opposite sex. You study; you listen to all of your friends' theories on how to find the perfect man. You read books about relationships, or how to improve yourself to get a relationship. (This includes everything from diet and exercise books to self-improvement books.)

And then you train in the methods of dating: The first few years, you order the salad on the first date and barely touch your food. Then, by your early twenties, you realize that men would prefer you to actually eat, so you order the chicken, or the second cheapest thing on the menu if you don't want to look too obvious. Then you realize they're onto you about the chicken, and you look ridiculous so, fuck it, you order the steak.

In other words, you observe your skills in this arena, you adjust your behavior, you perfect your technique. The goal is always the same: Do anything you have to do to get that gold medal!

And—finally!—you find the guy. The one.

Only it's not everything you want it to be, and the relationship just makes you feel like you're almost there, but not quite.

A big honkin' silver medal.

Why do relationships always have to be so hard? Why must we constantly be tested? Shouldn't it be enough to find the guy? And what is it about our genetic makeup that even when we have the guy, we still aren't sure what to do next?

I shake my head to clear the cobwebs. Hippo, I think as I throw down the cigarettes, grab my purse, and head out the door.

Maybe Ida can keep my mind off Jordan for a few more minutes.

Excerpted from Misery Loves Cabernet by KIM GRUENENFELDER
Copyright © 2009 by Kim Gruenenfelder
Published in April 2009 by St. Martin's Press

All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.