Myrna and the Man Bun

Myrna is 84 years old, five feet tall, silver hair, bad knees, never married.

I was surprised when she asked me to be her maid of honor.

We’re not related. I’m her rabbit-walker.

Her pet rabbit, Monty, is extremely obese. Myrna overfeeds him. Every day around noon I come to her house in West Hollywood, clip a pink collar around the silky white fluff on his neck, and coax him around the block. Poor bun is so heavy he can’t even hop, I have to nudge him forward with my foot. It takes about an hour. That’s my career right now. Poking and prodding chubby little animals down sweaty Los Angeles sidewalks.

Myrna told me about her impending wedding a few months ago, showing off the ring on her finger as she handed me my check.

“Who’s the lucky guy?” I asked.

“His name is Tom,” she said, “I met him at the senior center.”

She asked me about the maid of honor gig casually, slipped it into conversation while she bounced Monty on her lap and poked a carrot between his wriggling lips.

“What about your friends?” I asked.

“Dead,” she said, waving a hand.

“Oh. Sorry. All of them?”

“Yep.”

“And your family? Any nieces or cousins or...”

“Dead.”

“Oh...I’m sorry.”

“Nah, just kidding, they’re alive. I just hate them.”

I stood quietly, rubbing my thumb over my check, thinking it all over, trying to refuse without seeming impolite. Last time I was in a wedding party, the bride peed on my hand a little as I was holding her dress so she could use the toilet. And there was no soap in the dispensers in the hotel bathroom.

“C’mon,” she said, snapping me out of my memory. “You look like you know how to party.”

I looked down at my grimy sneakers. I pictured the tattoo on top of my left foot-- the most painful location to get a tattoo, which teenage me thought was real hardcore. A big red heart and the name Sheldon.

Finally, I looked up and smiled at Myrna. “Okay.” And that was that.

I took Myrna wedding dress shopping a week later at the David’s Bridal on Pico Boulevard. She wanted something really unwieldy and eye-catching, which meant I spent hours hooking and zipping and pinching and shimmying scratchy, puffy white material over the constellation of moles on her back. Myrna wasn’t modest -- she stripped down in the middle of the store, seeming to enjoy the attention of the other scandalized brides-to-be.

Myrna paid $7000 for her wedding dress and my hot pink bridesmaid dress without batting an eyelash. Just rifled through her overstuffed wallet and handed the smiling cashier a sleek black credit card.

Afterwards, we went for fro-yo and ate it in the car on the way back to her house.

“So, $7000 dollars,” I said. “That’s a lot.”

“Is it?” she asked, mid-lick. “I’m an old woman. Never married. No kids. Healthy pension. The fuck do I care?”

I shrugged.

“You ever been married?” she asked me.

“God, no.”

“Ever come close?”

“No. God, no.”

“You a lesbian?”

“No.”

“Because just to let you know, if you were a lesbian, you could marry a lady. It was on the news the other night.”

“Yeah I know. I’m not, but thanks.”

“Hey, I get it, men are scum,” she said, practically spitting out the word. “That’s why I never bother getting married until now.”

“I’m sure I’ll find someone,” I said.

“Eh,” she said, licking her spoon clean.

That night I went home to my apartment. Actually, it’s the apartment that belongs to my friend Angela and her husband Tony. Angela’s pregnant -- sorry, Angela AND Tony are pregnant -- which means my room will soon become the baby’s bedroom. They’ve already painted it pastel green and set up the crib, and now Angela’s hovering at my doorway with an encouraging smile, holding up her laptop to show off a Craigslist listing for a 2-bedroom apartment in Culver City that’s shared by three college-aged men, all named Rick.

“It’s so cute,” Angela says. “They describe themselves as short Rick, tall Rick, and fat Rick. And they’re all in film school.”

“Adorable,” I said.

“You would share a room with short Rick. He’s the cutest. Look.”

I groaned and rolled over so I faced the window.

“Honey,” Angela said.

“I’m looking at places. God, just give me some space.” I buried my face in my pillow.

I heard Angela snickering and rolled back over to face her.

“Love you, baby,” Angela said, turning to leave, switching off the light. A million little glow-in-the-dark stars they stuck to the walls and ceilings peppered my vision.

“Love you too.”

I kicked off my shoes.

A few weeks later, I helped Myrna send out wedding invites -- she wanted someone with a “young, fresh tongue” to lick the envelopes.

I scratched between Monty’s ears, plopped down at the kitchen table and pulled a stack of the invitations toward me.

“Who’s that?” I asked, looking down at the glossy picture of Myrna hugging a ruggedly gorgeous 20-something with a little poof of a man bun hugging the top of his head.

“Tom,” Myrna said, pointing to his name in purple cursive hovering over his head and tapping it with her fingernail. “Duh.”

“Wait… Your Tom?”

“Yeah! He designed these himself. Little basic if you ask me, but he was proud.”

“I thought you met Tom at the senior center.”

“I did. He’s the water aerobics instructor.”

Ugh. I pictured Tom, fuzzy-chested, clad in a speedo, cradling a spandex-clad Myrna in his arms and spinning her around in the shallow section of a pool.

I shut my eyes, tried to find something to say to her that wasn’t insulting.

“That’s great,” I said.

“Isn’t he a looker?”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

I Facebook-stalked Tom that night. His page was mostly private, save for a few shirtless pictures and mountain landscapes, but there was no trace of Myrna or their relationship. He had a German Shepherd named Spaetzle that he liked to take on him with hikes. He brewed his own beer. He’s been to Coachella at least once. He had 743 friends.

I felt like I was indirectly assisting in some sort of criminal plot. Obviously this dude was taking advantage of Myrna. Myrna, the little old lady who dropped $7000 on a wedding dress, has lived in the same house since 1967 and takes her pet rabbit to the groomer every Wednesday.

But it wasn’t really my business. She wasn’t my grandma. He seemed to make her happy. What was the point of pointing out a scam this late in the game?

Besides, what the hell did I know about love? About marriage? Maybe they were actually happy together.

I planned Myrna’s bachelorette party for the weekend before her wedding. She didn’t want to invite anyone else -- just the two of us. She wanted something fun and wild-- a night to remember.

I decided to take her to a dueling piano bar; I went on a pretty adequate date there a few years back. She came out of her house wearing a sequined miniskirt and a tank top. Her lips painted bubblegum pink. “We’re going to the club, right?” she asked, striking a pose. I smiled.

Later, Myrna downed a peach martini at the piano bar in one long sip.

“When do they put up the poles?” she asked, burping.

“It’s not that kind of place.”

Myrna looked shocked.

“You took me to a regular old fuddy duddy bar for my bachelorette party?”

“It’s not regular, they’ve got live piano music. And you can request songs.”

Up on stage, a pianist was banging out an impassioned cover of Don’t Stop Believing.

Myrna rolled her eyes.

“God, and I thought I was the old woman.” Myrna set her glass down.

“I’m done. C’mon, let’s go find a real club.”

She slid off her chair and marched toward the door. I left a few twenties on the table and followed, grumbling.

We teetered down Sunset Boulevard, my low heels clacking next to Myrna’s bejeweled flats. She turned right into the skeeziest club I’d ever seen, dim and dank and cloudy with smoke. She brushed past the bouncer like she owned the place.

Myrna started dancing as soon as she crossed the threshold, shaking her hips, jiggling her arms, swinging her Vera Bradley purse around, grinding up on men and women, plucking drinks right out of their hands and tossing them back.

“Never take the girl’s drinks, they could be drugged. Saw it on Dateline NBC,” she yelled into my ear.

I felt nauseous. The staccato of EDM and drunken shouts and cheers as blood pumped through my head was driving me mad. I had a few drinks in me, and I hadn’t been in a club like this since I was 18. “Myrna, I think we should go. I’m not...really...comfortable.” But Myrna was burrowing herself into a throng of hip millennials.

Myrna shimmied backwards and bumped into a young, passionate couple-- their hands all over each other, their heads pressed together, their eyes closed.

The impact broke their trance and they looked at us.

“Tom!” Myrna shouted. And the music seemed to stop.

I’d recognize that man bun anywhere.

Tom gently pushed his dancing partner away, guilty. She glommed onto another man in one fluid motion and kept dancing, swinging her long, dark hair around.

“Myrna.”

Tom was wearing a sweaty gray v-neck. His hair looked greasy. His face was flushed. His nostrils flared.

He was holding a sweating glass of beer in his hand. Not knowing what else to do, he buried his face in it.

Myrna turned to me, beaming.

“Liza, this is my fiance, Tom. Tom, Liza. She walks Monty.”

“How do you um, how do you do?” Tom sputtered, wiping away the condensation on his lip and holding his hand out for me to shake.

I stared down at the hand, then up at his stupid, gorgeous, chiseled face.

I felt something bubbling, starting in my toenails and shooting up to my teeth. I bared them at Tom.

Then I took his outstretched hand and grabbed his elbow with my other hand and yanked him down hard so he torpedoed face-first to the floor. He hit hard and tumbled like a rag doll, pin-balling off of dancing people’s shins.

He clutched his crushed nose, blood seeping through his fingers.

“Flllurrck!” he gargled, barely audible over the bass drop. “You brrgghhlitch!”

Myrna looked up at me, shocked, her drawn-on eyebrows hugging her hairline.

“Run,” Myrna demanded, pushing me back towards the door.

We scrambled a few blocks away from the bar into a tiny, dirty alleyway, hid behind a dumpster, caught our breath, and then I got us a Lyft home. Rhonda, the Lyft driver, eyed us in her rear-view mirror, suspicious. We were an odd couple if there ever was one.

Myrna looked over at me and grinned. She patted my leg and leaned toward me.

“Well, guess the wedding’s off.”

I sighed. “Men are scum,” I said, flexing my hand. “I can’t believe he cheated on you like that.”

“Oh, I don’t care about that,” she said. “But I think you ruined his lovely face.”

She squeezed her nose and grinned.

“I can’t marry a man with a busted up honker.”

I tilted my head, confused. Not sure whether to laugh or cry.

“So you’re not upset. At all?”

She shook her head.

“Nah. I was only ever in it for the arm candy. Easy enough to find in this town.”

I blinked at her in disbelief. She smiled and leaned toward me again.

“But someone who would do that for me, what you just did, that’s rare.”

She squealed and patted my cheek. “Thank you, my girl. For all of it.”

I was too confused to reply. I kept searching her face for a hint, a sign of weakness, of sadness, of anger, of vulnerability, and I only saw love.

"Ugh, I'm drunk," she announced, leaning back in her seat.

"Me too," I said, "And my feet are killing me." I kicked off my shoes.

Then Myrna looked down at my foot and squinted at my heart tattoo.

“Sheldon. Who’s Sheldon?” she asked. “An ex?”

“My old pet rabbit.”

And we busted up laughing the rest of the way home.