From: [email protected]
Date: Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 9:54am
Subject: You’re welcome
Hey Marks—
Good to see you and know you biblically last night. Since I know you’re a person of little integrity, here are the terms of our bet. No weaseling out of it, my slippery beauty.
By the way, I still have sand in my teeth.
—Seth
I paste in the list of our wagers, hit send, and begin packing up. It’s not until later, when I’m at my parents’ house, that I get a response.
From: [email protected]
Date: Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 12:56pm
Re: Subject: You’re welcome
Wow Seth, you really could not WAIT to email me. You know emails are time-stamped, right? Anyway, I’m glad the sand is in your teeth and not, like, your urethra.
See you in five years!
xo
Molls
PART TWO
December 2018
CHAPTER 11Molly
“We’re here!” Dezzie calls as she lets herself in through the kitchen door of my mother’s huge, vulgar mansion.
“Desdemona!” my mom says, rushing to embrace her on a cloud of jasmine perfume, trailed by the silk swirls of her flamingo-printed caftan. “You look stunning as always.”
Dezzie’s wearing a severely low-cut black one-piece bathing suit under a sheer cream linen dress. Her only nod to the fact that this is a Christmas party are her shoes, a pair of towering crimson espadrilles. Rob, by contrast, is sporting reindeer swim trunks and a Santa coat, complete with a bulbous belly.
“Merry Christmas, Miss Marks,” he says, setting a box of Dezzie’s elaborate Christmas cookies and a huge bag of liquor down on the kitchen island. “I brought ingredients for my famous polar punch.”
My mom gives him a kiss on the cheek and hands him a cut-crystal pitcher. “Mix it quick. Alyssa just texted Molly that they’re almost here.”
Every year on Christmas Eve afternoon, Dezzie, Rob, Alyssa, Ryland, and their kids gather at my mother’s house for a cookout. Ryland grills steaks and veggie burgers, Dezzie brings fancy desserts, my mom buys the kids a sickening number of presents, and Rob hands them out in a tropical Santacostume. At sunset we pile into my mother’s eighteen-foot speedboat, and she captains us across the bay to the marina, so the kids can see the sailboats decked out in holiday lights.
It’s a capitalist fantasy come to life, and one of my mother’s great joys of the year. Given that I am her only child, she is bitterly divorced, and I have not provided her with grandchildren, she likes to spoil my friends with her great stores of affection and material wealth.
“Punch?” Rob asks, holding out the pitcher. I decline, knowing this concoction is mostly Captain Morgan with a dash of Sprite and maybe a thimble of cranberry juice. I’m not trying to get torn up for a kids’ party and fall off my mom’s boat.
Rob shrugs and chugs a glass of it.
“Jesus, slow down. It’s eleven a.m.,” Dezzie says, taking the glass.
