Lisa Scottoline - Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog - The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman

Please.

The salesgirl came in, parted the curtain, and said, “Lots of women like button flies.”

“They would be in AP Bio, right?”

She didn’t reply and went away, so I tried on two more pairs with no luck, then slid into the third pair and struck gold. They fit great, closed easily, didn’t gap at the back, and felt as good as my beloved Mom Jeans. The salesgirl came back, and I told her, “I love this pair!”

“Cool. They’re so hot now. They’re Boyfriend Jeans.”

“What?”

“Boyfriend Jeans. You know, like if you stayed overnight at your boyfriend’s and the next morning you put on his jeans?”

There were so many things wrong with what she was saying, I didn’t know where to start. I reached out and closed the curtain in her face, then took off the jeans and left the mall, reeling.

So the only pants that fit me were men’s.

And I didn’t have a boyfriend.

And if I did, after I’d spent the night at his place, I would never dream of putting on his pants the next morning. That’s why they call it cross-dressing.

Bottom line, I’m caught between Boyfriend Jeans and Mom Jeans.

I bet Hemingway didn’t have this problem.

I’m not sure when my car became my house, but I think it happened somewhere near Pittsburgh. And I bet I’m not the only woman who has a car house.

I’ve been driving around for book tour, so I’ve been on the road for about four weeks. And you know what? I love it.

I don’t know if I’ll ever move back home. My house is too big. And once you’re inside it, you have to walk around. In other words, exercise.

In my car, everything I need is at my fingertips. I sit on my butt for miles and miles, yet I feel no shame. On the contrary, my car empowers me. The driver’s seat is my cockpit, and I’ve become the Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger of my own life.

I can land my mothership anywhere. My parallel-parking skills have improved, and now I reverse with impunity.

Bottom line, I used to think of myself as a homebody, but I’ve become a carbody.

I do everything in my car, like the classiest homeless person ever. I sing at the top of my lungs. I dance in the seat. I take naps, sleeping like a drunk with my mouth open. I know this because when I wake up, my lips are dry and droplets of drool encrust my chin.

I didn’t say it was pretty.

I eat whenever I want, from drive-throughs. Or as we car-bodies say, Drive Thrus. One banner day, I got my breakfast from a drive-thru Dunkin’ Donuts (decaf with sesame bagel), lunch from a drive-thru McDonald’s (Asian chicken salad without the chicken), and dinner from drive-thru Starbucks (turkey sandwich with iced green-tea latte). The day they build a drive-thru Sbarros, you’ll never see me again.

I eat while I drive, even the salads. Here’s my secret-don’t dress it, forgo the fork, and use your hands.

Told you it wasn’t pretty.

On the road I pass lots of other carbodies, all of us doing the same thing. Moms in packed minivans, sales reps with full closets in the back seat, lawyers writing on pads on the dashboard. They talk on phones or text like crazy. Once I saw someone smoking a cigarette, opening a pack of Trident, and driving at 70 mph. It was like watching someone juggle an axe, a gun, and a bazooka.

I always put makeup on in the car, since it has a great magnifying mirror, and I keep the mascara and blush in the glove box so it won’t melt. Then I started moisturizing my legs in the car, and I pack the car moisturizer with two pairs of sunglasses, one prescription and one not, plus reading glasses, a spare pair of contact lens and big bottle of ReNu solution, so that my console is now my Eye & Beauty Centre.

I added my puppy, Little Tony, to the traveling circus, and he wowed the crowds at my signings and sold books like hot-cakes. I pimped him out mercilessly. It’s the least he can do, after I bought him a foreskin.

Those babies ain’t cheap.

Little Tony has his own seat next to mine, and his own side of the car with his dog toys (plastic keys and Nylabones), bottle of water (Dasani) with paper cup (generic), snuggly blanket (adorable), and spare kibble (overpriced bullshiz). Still, it’s nice to have a man around the house.

Last week, daughter Francesca and her puppy Pip came along for the ride, and soon my car house was bursting with mascara, kibble, and Snuggie blankets. Francesca rode around with two puppies on her lap, plus a chicken salad and drive-thru lemon cake. But in Arlington, Virginia, the air-conditioning broke down and the navigation system went on the fritz. The carhouse was melting down, and our road trip had come to an end.

On the way home, the car was quiet as we drove past the Washington Monument, all lit up, at twilight. It was a perfect white spire reaching heavenward, before a sky deepening to the hue of fresh blueberries and an orange moon proud as a newly minted penny.

“Check it,” I said to Francesca.

But she was already looking.

Only the dogs missed it.

They were sleeping with their mouths open.

I give up. I admit it. I flunk multi-tasking.

Here’s when I figured it out, finally:

I was in a hotel room watching MSNBC, as political pundits massaged an endless loop of the same election news. And at the bottom of the screen there were white banners with short phrases, evidently intended to explain the obvious, like OBAMA SPEAKING TO CROWD and MCCAIN LEAVING PLANE. Under the white banners was “the crawl,” a moving line of script that reported the events of the day, from whoever hit the last homerun in Cincinnati to the stock market in Tokyo to new evidence that pomegranates aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. I tried to focus on the pundits but the crawl kept distracting me, and then five minutes later I was distracted even from the crawl by a bright red banner that came on and said BREAKING NEWS.

But BREAKING NEWS doesn’t fool me anymore.

I used to stop dead when BREAKING NEWS came on the screen, dropping my dishcloth in alarm. Now, I know better. Everybody who watches TV eventually figures out that BREAKING NEWS is neither breaking nor news. BREAKING NEWS is easily the most oversold phrase in the universe, after SUPPLY LIMITED and my personal favorite, LOSE FIVE POUNDS WITHOUT DIET OR EXERCISE!

To get back to my point, what happened was that I was trying to watch the pundits but I had to ignore the BREAKING NEWS banner, and the crawl was telling me something about a tornado in the Midwest, and I starting thinking about nice Midwestern people losing their homes and how they really deserved the BREAKING NEWS banner and not the crawl, which seemed like a demotion, and then I wondered if their insurance had been paid, which lead me to wondering if my insurance had been paid, and then what if there was a tornado that leveled my house and by the way, do I really want yellow shutters? I mean, who has yellow shutters?