Trashley: Part Eleven
The iPad
I’d shown Ashley the type of Alaskan adventure people dream about, and she seemed to dismiss it as dull and uninteresting. As if touring a permafrost tunnel, finding gold nuggets, and unearthing wooly mammoth bones were just a regular Tuesday. I was also constantly dancing around Ashley’s temper so she wouldn’t violently erupt around my family. I had no idea what would set her off, only that her latest tantrum had started when I offered to Venmo her for an Apple Watch charger. She reacted how a toddler would react if you wouldn’t let them play with a butcher knife.
Ashley also had an elitist attitude and strong feelings about money, class, and wealth that I found disturbing. She’d told me Venmo was for poor people, which made me want to rush to a Hammam and get my entire body exfoliated to scrub her gross comment off me. Sorry, not everyone has money falling out of their Nintendo case, or drives a Tesla Model X. Maybe punch a waiter in the face while you’re at it. The more time I spent with Ashley, the more I realized she had three modes: victim, villain, or hero.
We had two days left in Alaska, and I continued to play the role of the happy girlfriend in front of my family. I was the only one who could see the dark spirit lurking inside the depths of Ashley’s soul. But, I was able to forget about it the way god intended, with weed. We’d brought enough edibles to Alaska to kill a bull moose. At night, when my sisters were back from Gold Daughters, Ashley and I would sit on the back porch and get high, and I’d do my best Barack Obama impression for everyone since I’ve been told it’s incredible. Getting high and making my sisters laugh was exactly what I needed to put Ashley’s bullshit aside.
The last part of our trip to Alaska was relatively tame in comparison. I took Ashley to a Musk Ox farm and introduced her to qiviut, the softest wool in the world. Inuit people collect it in the spring when Musk Oxen shed their winter coats, and use it to make hats and scarves to keep warm in the deadly Alaskan cold. A spool of qiviut costs as much as one human life.
Our next stop was to the city of North Pole, where the street lights are wrapped like candy canes, and you can sit on Santa’s lap every day of the year except Christmas, when he’s sneaking into sleeping children’s homes. North Pole is also the meth capital of Alaska, even though people wrongly think it’s Wasilla. Ashley loved the North Pole and Facetimed her Mom from inside Santa’s gift shop. They’re the type of people who have a tree up in October while the rest of us are still out here being witches.
There weren’t any more blowups or kidnapping accusations, and my sisters brought us to the airport and hugged us goodbye. I was mentally coming up with a plan to break up with Ashley once we were back in LA, but I still had to pick up Perci in Bakersfield. Then, something happened on our flight from Seattle to Los Angeles that changed the course of history; I passed out on the plane between a first-class passenger’s legs and the tray table. I hate water, so I was incredibly dehydrated. I woke up on the floor of the plane, surrounded by flight attendants and someone who identified as a Doctor. I really fucked up my knee and my ankle on the way down, and I could’ve sworn I heard someone in the main cabin yell, “TIMBER!!” as all five-foot-ten of me crashed to the ground.
The flight attendants walked me to my seat and hooked me up with some free oxygen while Ashley took over as my official caretaker. The attendant had to fill out an incident report, and I was surprised Ashley had all of my information memorized: my middle name, date of birth, phone number, address, favorite Spice Girl. I realized I hadn’t memorized anything about her except her birthday, and that was only because it was on the day of the insurrection. The only thing worse was having a birthday on 9/11, but at least 9/11 would’ve made her a Virgo.
Ashley took care of me the rest of the flight, she iced my knee and handed me sips of water. When we landed she got our luggage at the carousel and convinced an Uber driver to pick me up practically inside the terminal because it hurt too much to walk. When we got home, she helped me into sweatpants and laid me up in bed, making me as comfortable as possible. It was my first day back at work, and she made sure I had everything I needed before she drove to Bakersfield to pick up Perci. I never really had someone take care of me like that. It was new and comforting. I liked it. Seeing this side of Ashley made me forget all the bad things.
This must be what love feels like.
When Ashley returned with Perci I ordered us Silver Lake Ramen. We were eating dinner together in the living room when my phone dinged. I had a new Facebook message from a woman I’d worked with in 2011 when she was a camera operator on a Nat Geo show I was in. Her name was Amelia, and we had a flirtationship while filming, but once I got to know her, I realized she was a pathological liar. She would reach out to me every few months with some elaborate lie, and I’d play along as if I didn’t know she was making it all up. Her stories kept me alive during the Pandemic.
“Omg, Amelia sent me a new message.” I was so excited to open it.
“Who’s Amelia?” Ashley asked. I realized I hadn’t told her.
“She’s this woman I know who says Diane Sawyer lives with her on a boat in Maine and pretends to be a news producer. Everything she says is a lie. It’s so fascinating.”
I opened Amelia’s latest message, in which she claimed she’d been in an accident on set and broke her back, but couldn’t get surgery because she only flies private.
“See? She made all this up. She told me this exact story years ago, and now she’s recycling it. Ooh, this is good.”
“God, she sounds insane,” Ashley said, “I can’t believe she says Diane Sawyer lives with her. And you dated that thing? Gross.” Jealousy oozed out of Ashley’s mouth with every word. That thing? That thing has a name and a heart, and she wasn’t hurting anybody. Ashley was such a mean girl.
“What? I never dated her. We worked together, and she messages me weird things every now and then.”
Ashley went to sleep mad that night, but I didn’t care. Her jealousy was her problem, not mine. I sent Amelia’s latest message to Kirsten because she was as obsessed with Amelia’s messages as I was. Her messages felt like getting a little piece of candy, such a treat.
The next morning Ashley was being a cunt-a-saurus around the house, making snappy little comments and speaking in a demeaning and harsh tone. I had a remote therapy session that afternoon and couldn’t wait to have my place to myself, even just for that hour.
“Did you respond to that Amelia girl or what?” Ashley said.
“Not yet. But I sent her message to Kirsten.”
“You sent it to Kirsten? To the woman who hates me?! You know what? Your friendship with Kirsten is a red flag! A big fucking red flag!” Ashley got up, put on her dumb white leather shoes, grabbed her backpack, and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind her.
I sat there for a moment, dazed, wondering what the hell just happened. My therapy session was starting soon, and I hardly had time to squeeze in another unprovoked Ashley tantrum. I opened the Tesla app to see where Ashley had gone, but it logged me out saying she had removed me as a driver. I looked at her location on my phone, but it said she’d stopped sharing it with me there too.
I considered texting Ashley after therapy but decided against it, and resumed working. Ashley returned a few hours later and let herself in. I looked at her from my work table “What was that all about? And why did you turn your location off?” I asked.
Ashley said nothing, but she unzipped her backpack. She pulled out three different boxes and handed them to me.
“I got you the new iPad and a keyboard and a stylus. I took my location off because I didn’t want you to see I was going to Best Buy. I wanted it to be a surprise.”
“Ashley, I literally bought a new iPad last week. You should return this,” I said, as I closed the new iPad I bought.
“No! I’m not taking it back. If you don’t take it, I’ll just throw it in the trash.”
Well, it did make up for yelling at me earlier. So I took the new iPad out of its wrapping and set it up, and returned the one I’d bought the next day. It was more fun spending Ashley’s money than mine anyway. But, she had been gone for five hours, no way she was at Best Buy for that long. It was also her wedding anniversary, which I knew because it was also the anniversary of my dog’s death. I thought maybe she was upset over that. No doubt it would be a hard day for her. So I let it all go.
Plus, free iPad.
So good! I can’t wait to find out where all this endless money is coming from! That MIT sweatshirt certainly gets its use…
AHHHHHHH WHERE DOES SHE GET ALL OF THIS MONEYYYYYYY