How I Came to Sparkle Again by Kaya McLaren Read Free Book Online

trade-off was that I had to listen to her stories about all these guys who had a better shot at her than me. I was having trouble keeping all of Lisa’s suitors straight, so she dug her childhood games out of a closet to accommodate my inclination toward being more of a visual learner.”
    “Shall we catch up, Tom Cat? Here is Ranger Mark.” She pointed to a picture of Ranger Mark’s face that she had cut out of a photograph, peeled it off the board, moved him to the final destination of Candy Land, and stuck him back on the board with gummy tack. “Mark got a whole lot of shugga in Candy Land this summer. Mmm! And Medium Dan called yesterday. Move one.” She pinched another face off the starting point on the board and moved him to the first spot.
    “Medium Dan?” Tom asked.
    “Yeah. Remember how I dated Big Dan and Little Danny? So this one is just Medium Dan. Don’t ever let him know I call him that.” Then she moved a face back to the starting line and off to the side. “This is Good Randy. He blabbed to all his friends about sleeping with me last spring. He’s out. And Bad Randy massaged my shoulders in the hot pool last week. He has very nice hands. Move ahead one. And here’s you. You haven’t even got off the starting line.” She left Cody at the starting line, thinking it best to just keep that a secret.
    She knew how to play the part. She knew how to make light of it all, how to make it sound as if her love life was full of fabulous possibilities. But it wasn’t. Every single man on her Candy Land board was limited in some very basic ways.
    Tom walked over to the closet door next. Tom never took photographs of any of the women in his life. It led women to believe they were way more important or more permanent than they really were, he said. So rather than cutouts of actual people (with the exception of Lisa), his Chutes and Ladders game was covered with faces cut out of magazines that represented real women in his life. Usually, the real woman and the celebrity had the same first name, but occasionally he picked a celebrity that resembled the real woman. He had also cut out a bed from a Sleep Country advertisement and affixed it to his finish line. Twenty-five or thirty faces were stuck on or below the bed. Several waited at the starting line. His board spoke volumes about the quantity of women in his life and his complete lack of ability to have any kind of true intimacy. Lisa hoped Jill saw it for the damning piece of evidence it was.
    As Tom unstuck a face and walked her up a ladder, he said, “Jen wants me to meet her family.” He picked up another face and walked her up a ladder, too. “Jan wants to know where we’re going with—you know— us, ” he said with exaggerated hand motions gesturing back and forth, imitating Jan. “Angie told me I was lookin’ good.” He moved a picture of Angelina Jolie forward one. “Sarah’s ape ex-boyfriend threatened to kick my ass if he saw me within a quarter-mile radius of her.” He moved another picture up a ladder. “And a girl with big boobs I met at the bar slept with me last night.” He moved one of the starting-line Pamela Andersons to his bed and stuck a cutout picture of a beer next to her. “Linda. Or Tracy. Stacy. No, Tracy. It was Tracy, I’m pretty sure.”
    “Good God, Tom Cat,” Lisa said, “you’re such a mimbo. Hey, I’m sure Jill will be able to help you identify any unusual genital rashes you may develop this year, too. Bonus.”
    Jill shook her head and rubbed her eyes. “No.”
    Lisa shut the closet door, happy not to look at her game board anymore. A part of her wanted to rip it off the door violently and throw it across the room or, better yet, out the back door, but the bigger part of her didn’t want that kind of attention, didn’t want to explain. Maybe she would just quietly take her game board down at some point.
    “All right,” Tom said. “I’m out. Jill, it was a pleasure. See you at the FAR tomorrow at