The day I got to the Bahamas.
“Jesus, Amber, put some fucking lotion on your feet,” Chelsea said.
“Take it easy. I just got here.”
Before I knew it, she was out of the pool, grabbing her Bath and Body Works lotion, and attacking my feet, rubbing lotion all over my toes, in my nail bed, up my leg. Lots of it. Two coats. I’m not going to lie: it felt good. Would you come all lubed up if you knew you were going to get a rubdown every time Chelsea saw you? I’m no dummy.
“It’s just dry skin,” I said. “I’ve been traveling for hours.”
“It’s disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourself.” Then she grabbed my hands and lathered them up as well.
My dry skin is the one thing about me that drives Chelsea crazy. Well, that and the fact that I’m always late to everything and she’s always early and waiting on me.
Our first night in the Bahamas we had sushi for dinner, because why should we do anything different from what we do every night in Los Angeles? Everyone was pretty tired from traveling. Everyone but Chelsea, who tried to keep the party going. Zoughi and I wanted to go to bed. We hadn’t unpacked, which is what I like to do first when I arrive someplace new, and we had been awake for over twenty-four hours. Knowing Chelsea wouldn’t take well to the “I’m tired” excuse, I decided to try her tactic: the Irish good-bye. I would feign interest just until I had enough, then I would abruptly leave without telling anyone and without explaining myself to anyone. Seemed simple enough. It worked like a charm for Chelsea.
Once we finished dinner, we walked out to the casino, where Chelsea and the gang wanted to play blackjack. Zoughi and I proceeded to the tables with everyone, and when we realized there was no room to sit at the blackjack table that Chelsea had chosen, we headed straight for the elevators. No one saw us. No one cared. It was a perfectly executed plan.
Chelsea and me at Nobu that night.
Right when I put that keycard in the door to our room, however, I got a text from Chelsea.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“In my room.” I decided to try the honest approach first.
“Why?”
“My feet hurt. Changing shoes.” And that’s where my lie started.
“Hurry back down,” she replied. “A seat opened up next to me.”
“Okay.”
I didn’t make a move. Then, twenty minutes later, I got another text.
“Are you down here?” Chelsea asked.
I’m not sure what possessed me to pull a Chelsea, but my lie continued to escalate. “Yeah, I’m playing blackjack.”
“Where?”
“On the other side of the casino.”
“Come to us.”
“I couldn’t find you. And I found a lucky table.”
“Okay. We’ll come to you.”
Shit, now what? “Can’t text. Pit boss just yelled at me.”
No response.
I’m sure she knew I was full of shit when I decided to make the pit boss a part of my lie. What was I thinking? I don’t pay attention if a flight attendant, a cop, or Oprah says, “No cell phones,” so I would never listen to a pit boss in the Bahamas. Chelsea knew this. Her silent treatment meant she knew I was still up in my room.
“Crap. Chelsea knows I’m lying,” I said to Zoughi.
“She doesn’t care,” Zoughi assured me. “Everyone else is there with her.”
So, instead of going out, I did the one thing I’d wanted to do since I got to the Bahamas: unpack. Once my OCD was satiated and everything was neatly folded in drawers, I crawled under the fluffy comforter to go to bed. This was probably the only night I was going to go to bed sober, so I planned to take full advantage.
The next morning, I woke to my phone ringing. I figured Chelsea was calling to give me shit for ducking out early last night. Or she wanted to work out. Neither sounded appealing.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Nothing. I just woke up.”
“The hotel is being evacuated. You have to pack up your stuff.”
“Oh, shit. Really? Why?”
“There’s a flood.”
“Where’s it coming from?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a plumber. Don’t you see water seeping through?”
I looked around our room and up at the ceiling. “No.”
“Well, you’re lucky. It’s all over my bathroom. And Roy’s bedroom is flooded. The water ruined his phone.”
I looked out the window. People were carrying about their business, and no one seemed in a hurry. “People outside are going to the pool, though.”
“Amber, stop fucking around! The concierge says we have twenty-six minutes until we’re swimming out of here! Get to the boat. I’ve got to finish packing.” She yelled out, “Rico, you can take that one bag by the door.”
Click. Dial tone. And away she went.
Shit. “Zoughi, we need to pack everything back up. We’re being evacuated.”
“Huh?” He looked out the window. “Why?”
“There’s a flood in the hotel.”
I took my suitcase and feverishly began to stuff it with all my clothes and crap. This was so annoying, since just eight hours prior, I had unpacked everything so nice and neatly.
Zoughi couldn’t have cared less about packing anything but his iPad.
We gathered our stuff and booked it out of the room. Because of my fear of taking an elevator in an emergency, we proceeded to the stairs. Thanks to Chelsea, we’d gotten a penthouse, and now thanks to Chelsea, we had to walk down sixteen flights of stairs with our oversize luggage in tow.
My bags clanked down each step, but there was no way I was going to lift seventy pounds. By the time we got to the bottom, we were soaked in sweat and out of breath. Unfortunately for us, we still had to get to the marina, on the other side of the property. Outside, everything still looked calm, though the hotel did seem more desolate than yesterday. I wondered where the water was coming from.
When we got on the boat, everyone was talking about the flood. Most had actually seen water seeping through the ceiling of their rooms. I looked around as everyone was talking and I noticed that Zoughi and I were the only ones with luggage.
“Where’s all your stuff?” I asked Chelsea.
“It’s being shipped.”
“What about yours?” I asked Ivory.
“Front desk has it.”
“So what happens when the lobby floods?”
“They’ll ship it!” Chelsea snapped.
I noticed that Chelsea had her arm in a sling. “What happened to you?” I asked, pointing at her arm.
“I slipped.”
“On water? It was that bad?”
“Don’t you ever listen? It was really bad in my room. I slipped and landed on my arm. The hotel nurse said it’s sprained.”
Chelsea walked off to the front of the boat, holding onto her arm. I felt bad for her. What a crappy way to spend the rest of your beach vacation.
“Where are we gonna stay?” I asked Ivory. “Do we have another hotel?”
“Chelsea’s checking into it now.”
Just as I said that, Chelsea came back over with the captain in tow.
“Hey, the captain says we’ve exceeded the weight limit on the boat. You have to get rid of some things in your bags.”
“You’re joking, right?”
Chelsea looked up toward the captain for support.
“No, ma’am.”
I couldn’t believe this. Were our clothes really going to make a difference with all the weight on the boat? Sounded like we needed to eliminate a person or two. But I didn’t want to make a scene, so I quietly kneeled down and unzipped my first bag. Chelsea took my other suitcase and started to pull stuff out by the handful. My heart raced a little faster as I saw all my hard folding work go down the tubes.
“These have got to go!” she said as she picked up a pair of flip-flops.
“What? They weigh nothing!”
<
br /> “Well, something’s gotta go.”
I was becoming increasingly agitated as I took more stuff out of my bag: shoes, makeup, bathing suits, every charger known to man. There was a heaping pile growing higher and higher next to my suitcase. “What the hell do I do with all this?”
When I turned around to look at Chelsea, she was laughing uncontrollably. She was bright red and could barely breathe. “Throw it overboard” she said, holding her coslopus for dear life.
“I’m glad you think this is funny!”
I was so annoyed. I looked over at Ivory, who was also laughing. Was this all a big joke? “No way. Are you guys fucking serious?”
Laughter started to erupt around the boat. Everyone was laughing at me, including the captain.
“You guys suck!” I looked toward Hannah. “You too?”
She nodded her head, laughing with the rest of them.
I couldn’t believe it. Were Zoughi and I the only ones told this lie? The entire boat knew? Even the captain? And the Persian with the hairier back than Zoughi’s? That was just so embarrassing.
How had I let it get so far? It wasn’t like I couldn’t take a joke. I could. But I felt stupid and I hated feeling stupid. I silently refolded my clothes, pissed.
So there I sat for the entire boat trip with two oversize pieces of luggage by my side. Anytime someone walked by, they smirked. Needless to say, Chelsea’s arm was no longer in a sling. She snapped a picture of me flanked by the two large suitcases. Instantly it was up on Twitter. I figured there was no getting out of that one.
Just then, I couldn’t help myself. I started to laugh as well. This really was a ridiculous situation. Plus, it’s hard for me to stay mad at Chelsea. I’m the idiot who’d believed her.
There was no time to be angry. The boat had anchored at a sandbar near Norman’s Cay, and everyone was jumping off the boat and swimming in the crystal blue waters, having fun. I wanted in on that action. Good thing I had my suitcase and ample bathing suit options.
When we got back to the hotel, which was not submerged underwater, we all went to the casino. I was not going to risk leaving early this time and be the asshole again.
Going to a casino with Chelsea is a unique experience. The vodka is flowing and so are the chips. Luckily, I was playing with Chelsea’s chips and not my own. We planted ourselves at one blackjack table, right next to a loud-mouthed Israeli and his four equally annoying sons, who were betting five-hundred-dollar hands. The father was flirting with Chelsea hard core and had no idea who she was. But his four kids knew, and they were mortified by their dad. A situation like this really highlights one of the many differences between Chelsea and the rest of us. Most of us, when confronted with a drunk Israeli at a blackjack table, will either ignore him or ask to be left alone, but not Chelsea. Chelsea engages. An hour at that table and she knew everything there was to know about this guy, and he knew nothing truthful about her.
As the night wore on, she grew tired of her games with the Israeli and was ready to be done gambling. This meant going “all in,” because to her, exchanging chips back to cash is a hassle. She looked up at the dealer, pushed all her chips toward him, and said, “Take this. I want to go to my room.” He politely got blackjack and took them all away.
At 4:00 AM, we continued the party up in Chelsea’s room. The other Persian whipped out a box of cigarettes, which looked appealing to everyone in our shitfaced condition. But no one had a lighter. Chelsea promptly called room service to solve the problem.
“Hi, this is Chel-say-ya,” she enunciated slowly. For whatever reason, Chelsea has a tendency to disguise her voice when she calls room service. “Can you please bring up some matches?” she asked.
We were in a nonsmoking hotel, so the person on the other line was clearly suspicious.
“I don’t want to smoke,” Chelsea assured the person, with the phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “I’d like to take a bath and light some candles.”
The person on the other end wasn’t falling for it.
“Okay, fine. I need to get some matches for my book club that’s about to start,” she said.
The whole room was laughing.
“Yes, we’re about to start From Pieces to Weight, a 50 Cent thriller, and I need to get in the right mood.”
I could hear the response on the other end of the phone: “I’m sorry, Miss Handler.”
“Fine. I’ll take chicken fingers.”
Room service came shortly thereafter. There were no matches.
By almost 5:30 AM, the party had started to unwind and Chelsea had retreated to her bedroom after a chicken finger, so I thought it was safe to leave. After all, Chelsea was harmless when she was sleeping. Plus we had a car picking us up in a couple hours to take us to the airport.
The trip back was another long day of traveling. I kept thinking about the poor fools back at the hotel who would fall prey to Chelsea’s voodoo. All in all, Zoughi and I made it through the trip relatively unscathed.
When we walked in the door to our apartment, there were about a dozen flower arrangements scattered throughout the living room. I had no idea what they were for.
I started to read the cards: “Congrats you guys!” “So happy for you.” “You deserve it.”
Most of them were from family members and close friends, so I figured they were for our engagement—until I came across a card that read, “Can’t wait to be an auntie!”
“Auntie? Maybe these are for the wrong apartment.”
The doorbell rang. Another delivery.
“Hi, this is for a Zoo-wa—”
“Zoughi,” I interjected.
“Yeah, can you sign here?”
This one read, “Zoughi, hope you feel better. Let me know if you need anything.”
I didn’t get it. Sympathy and congratulations?
I turned on my BlackBerry, and text messages started pouring in. Clearly I had to Sherlock Holmes this situation. There was a series of texts from Zoughi’s brother, Farshad. I called him.
“Oh, my God,” he said upon hearing my voice. “Are you okay? How are you feeling? How’s my brother doing?”
“Good, we just got home.”
“Cool. Have you told anyone in the family yet?”
“No, we literally just got in. Feel free to spread the word.”
“Does my brother know?”
“Know what?”
“About the e-mail you sent earlier.”
Farshad then forwarded me an e-mail that I had supposedly written to my soon-to-be brother-in-law. It read:
I JUST TOOK A PREGNANCY TEST. I’M PREGNANT AND I’M NOT KIDDING. I’M ON MY WAY HOME.
Just then, it all made sense. Chelsea was continuing to fuck with me. From three thousand miles away. Impressive.
“Oh, my god, Zoughi, where is my iPad?”
“I don’t know. You packed it.”
I texted Chelsea. “Hey, did I leave my iPad there?”
No response for a few minutes. Then: “You’re a hot mess.”
And there was my answer. I had left my iPad in Chelsea’s room in the Bahamas and she had randomly e-mailed a bunch of people from my address book. Since Chelsea is electronically challenged, I was surprised she’d figured out how to use the iPad to begin with.
She’d created a real shit storm in my conservative, Catholic family, who now thought the reason I was getting married was because I was pregnant. For weeks everyone was talking about my shotgun wedding and how I needed to buy a new wedding dress that would flatter a pregnant belly. This, of course, was hilarious to Chelsea.
It wasn’t until everyone came back from the Bahamas that the sympathy cards for Zoughi started to make sense as well.
When I was at dinner with Ivory one night, she asked, “So how’s Zoughi doing?”
“He’s good. Back to work.”
“Well, that’s good. Does he need surgery?”
“For what?”
“His knee!”
Ivory c
ould see by the look on my face that I had no idea what she was talking about. “Chelsea told us what happened,” she said, giggling.
“Well, why don’t you tell me what happened, since apparently I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Chelsea said that when he fell, he busted his knee.”
“He didn’t fall!”
“She said that night you left early, you and Zoughi had taken peyote and you guys were rolling—”
“Peyote?”
“Yeah. I thought it was weird, but she said there had been a resurgence in Middle Easterners using peyote.”
“Uh-huh.” I couldn’t wait to hear what line of bullshit was coming next.
“And that you guys had crazy sex and Zoughi fell off the bed and broke his knee.”
“From the peyote?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Ivory, peyote is for Native American Indians. Zoughi is fucking Persian. How do you think we would even get peyote in the Bahamas?”
“She said that Zoughi always travels with it. Like a ritual. Oh, my God, I can’t believe I am so stupid. What is wrong with all of us? Chelsea begged me not to tell you that I knew about the peyote.”
“And what else?” I asked her.
“And the reason you left early was because Zoughi had to be airlifted back to the mainland and then taken immediately to an American hospital because of his insurance or something. I guess he’s with an HMO?”
I just sat there staring at Ivory.
“None of this is true, is it?” she asked.
“No! We came back early to make it in time for Tanya’s New Year’s Eve party!”
“So Zoughi’s knee is fine?”
“Yes, his knee is fine. It’s like we’re dealing with a seven-year-old with Chelsea.”
“A seven-year-old with really big tits and a lot of money,” Ivory reminded me.
“This is true.”
Unbelievable. Chelsea had used my e-mail to screw me and my fiancé in our circle of friends and family. Now I had to put out a lot of fires: convince my family that I wasn’t pregnant and that my marriage to Zoughi was not a shotgun wedding. And to top it off, I had to convince my friends that I didn’t have a drug problem or kinky sex issues and that Zoughi’s knee was just fine. Zoughi, however, thought the knee thing was funny and started limping when we were out with friends. Of course, Chelsea turned the limp into a prosthetic leg in her book Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang.