Florida Oyster
Lil and I are paired together because of something we both lack. When it was announced that those of us going to the company conference would have to share rooms, somehow it just made sense that we, the two divorced women, would be placed together.
On the ride there I convince myself that we are like widows that form friendship out of a common sadness, except divorcees do not get the same pity or respect from other people as widows, and Lil wouldn’t consider us friends. This is only how I like to think of us, as a couple of unlucky-in-love pals. But I think that Lil doesn’t even seem to harbor that same brand of sadness that I do, and this occurs to me as I am watching her slurp down oysters at a bar near the shore.
“Your ex is in Clearwater?” She says. We talk about ex-husbands because that is all we have in common.
“Yeah.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s in realty.”
She doesn’t respond because she is eating. The way she eats oysters is unlike anything I have ever seen. She pours them into her mouth in a way I want to describe as sensual, but I would never use a word like that. They are clear and mucus-like. They slide down her throat between the sentences she speaks to me.
“I haven’t seen mine in two years,” she says. “Any kids?”
I shake my head. She can’t tell if I am sad about this or not and changes the subject.
“You know what? I’m glad we were running late.” That morning, I was all packed at my apartment at 7 a.m. I walked in circles around the living room, pulling back the curtain to check for her out the window every five minutes until she pulled up a little after 9. Because we arrived late, we missed the catered company dinner at the hotel, and Lil wanted seafood. I didn’t tell her I don’t like seafood. It seemed like something that would make me immediately boring to her. So I am sitting across from her and eating oily pasta and thinking about my ex-husband.
I bring the subject back, like a loose piece of skin I can’t help but pick at. “No, we didn’t have kids, but he has my dog.”
She does this dramatic gesture where she makes her eyes big and drops an oyster shell onto the table. “No!” She says.
“Yeah.”
“If I were you, I’d march on back there and take him!”
We go on laughing for a while. In Lil’s language ex-husbands are all the same person: he is some buffoon probably wearing a polo shirt with some nondescript office job, and he is a no-good-cheating-liar. This doesn’t describe mine, but when I’m talking to her I pretend that it does.
I drive back to the hotel because she had ordered a second and a third tropical drink, the kind with an umbrella in it. I think about if we teamed up like in some kind of buddy movie and went to rescue Rosco (my dog) from Tim (ex-husband). I imagine her busting through his front door and me yelling about how Rosco is my dog and I’m takin’ him back and there’s nothing you can do. And in between parts of my speech Lil would nod and say “Yeah!” or “Hell yeah!”, or “That’s right, you son-of-a-bitch!” And we would drive away in the convertible (we would, of course, rent a convertible) with Rosco in my lap and we’d be laughing so hard that we’d be sliding all over the highway, but we’d be safe, we’d all be safe and laughing.
Back at the hotel Lil takes a shower and I fiddle around with the TV. The hotel room is beach-themed. The bedspread has a print of pastel sea shells on it and there are framed photographs of fish on the walls. For some reason when I heard we would be sharing rooms I imagined the two of us sharing a bed, but obviously when I entered the room there were two queens, separated by a nightstand with two alarm clocks.
I am on the bed when a loud thump and a moan comes from the shower. Realizing she has been in the shower for a strange amount of time, I knock on the door and ask if she’s alright.
She mumbles that she feels sick and I ask if I can get her anything. She tells me to come in and I am suddenly terrified that I am going to see her naked.
“Ok. Ok, I’m coming in,” I say. I open the door and she is loosely wrapped in a white hotel robe, crouched on the tile between the tub and the toilet.
The room is steamed up from the shower and her face is red and beaded and she is hunched in a way that makes her look like she is melting.
“The oysters,” she says.
“Oh my god,” is all I can say. I get a little closer and pat her damp shoulder but I can’t tell if that’s the right thing to do or not. I get a dixie cup from the sink counter, fill it with water, and place it next to her. “Can I get you anything?”
“Oh my god I want to die.”
“I know,” I say instantly, then realize that is not the thing to say.
After a while of standing in the humid bathroom, which now smells like fruity shampoo and vomit, I help her move her shaking body to the bed. She asks me to grab her toiletry bag. I retrieve it from her suitcase on the floor. She is doing this thing where she is breathing so heavily that her robe is coming undone from her chest. I think that we will be closer friends after tonight, that there is something in seeing her like this that will make her forever loyal to me. She pulls a bottle of pills out of her bag and takes one, possibly several.
“What’s that?”
“I just want to sleep.” She is groaning on the bed, the one on the left. “Can you turn the light off?”
I do what she says even though it is only 10 and I am nowhere near tired. I lie in the bed to the right with all of my clothes on. I think about taking a shower, but I’m afraid the smell of the room will make me ill. I think about turning on the TV, but I don’t want to disturb her.
Instead I stay there very still there and think about disasters. I think how the sleeping pill combined with the food poisoning and the two umbrella drinks is going to cause her to vomit in her sleep. I am convinced she is going to choke and die and I will wake up to find her. What will her ex-husband think? What will my ex-husband think? Surely he will find out about it somehow. He’ll shake his head, he knows I always do the wrong thing.
After a while, I can tell she is asleep from the way she is breathing and I crawl in next to her under the papery hotel sheets. I am still and very quiet. I touch her shoulder, which feels like it’s burning. She is lying on her back. I nudge her to see if she wakes up. When she doesn’t, I try to shift her to her side. Eventually she groans and turns on her own, away from me. Time passes in the way that it can only pass when you should be sleeping but for some awful reason you aren’t.