I Just Want My Pants Back Read Online Free PDF Page A

reading, this makeshift theater in someone’s loft. I watched Melinda; she was so focused, furiously scribbling notes as people read their lines. Her lines, which she was showing to the world outside her workshop for the first time. She was oblivious to us, though, lost in her own creation. It was amazing to see her in her element, away from our little office world. God, what a joke compared to this. We were just tap-dancing at work, who cared, what difference did our efforts make? We were killing time for money. This was something else.
    About twenty minutes later, Melinda looked up. “Curtain.” Everyone began to applaud wildly and she smiled as she was hugged by the people who had read with her. I stood and whistled as loud as I could. I wanted to go over and congratulate her but it didn’t seem like my turn yet. Then, boom, the lights dimmed and someone hit the stereo. The Strokes blared; for some reason their music always made me feel like I was in Urban Outfitters about to try on an overpriced T-shirt.
    I took a deep breath and waded into the outer ring of the crowd around Melinda. I saw George first, a white guy with dreads who I knew through her. It was tough to pull off, the white-guy-with-dreads look; very few could do it. Only thing worse in that genre were the white girls on spring break in the Bahamas who got their hair beaded and then tragically forgot to put sunscreen where the hair was pulled apart.
    “Hey, man, that was great, huh?” I asked George, shaking his hand.
    “That, I think, is going to get bought.” He held up a Pyrex pipe and changed the subject. “Can I interest you in getting high?”
    And soon I was as stoned as a teen at the prom in 1978. I burned my throat a bit, so I left George and went to grab a beer out of the kitchen. It was crowded with folks smoking cigarettes and grabbing at some pita bread and cheese that was laid out on the stove. I reached into the fridge.
    “Hey, can you hand me a Stella?”
    I turned to see a girl with green eyes, a Joan-Jett-circa-“I Love Rock and Roll” haircut, and a polka-dot sweater. All curvy and shit. Like someone hand-packed her into her jeans. I passed her a beer. “Here you go.”
    “Thanks.” She smiled at me. “So, what’s your story? You friends with Jon?” She pulled a bottle opener/magnet off the fridge door, opened her beer, and then gave the opener to me. I fumbled with it a bit. I was higher than I wanted to be.
    “No, I’m friends with the playwright, Melinda. Well, not friends exactly, we work together, I can’t lie. Well, of course, I could lie—I’m actually quite an accomplished liar.” I picked at the label on my beer as I rolled on. “But I made a list of New Year’s resolutions, and right after ‘Get buns and abs of steel’ is ‘Be more truthful.’ My name is Jason.” I stuck out my hand.
    She shook it. “Carol.” Surprisingly firm grip. A little manly. “Nice opening monologue.”
    “Thanks, I, uh, took drama in college.” I tried a sip of the beer. Lukewarm. “I don’t really know who Jon is, actually.” I gestured to the apartment. “His place is awesome, though.”
    “He was the guy in the orange T-shirt who didn’t have too many lines. I used to work with him at this ad agency. But now I’m a VP web producer at match.com.” She smiled.
    “Wow, congratulations.”
    “Yeah. It’s a great place for me.” She blinked, and touched my arm. “So what do you do with Melinda?”
    I brought my beer to my lips, buying a second, contemplating my answer. It would be easy for me to latch onto Melinda’s life, say we’d worked together on a play in the Fringe Festival or something. I’d certainly strayed farther from the truth before. Last night, in fact. But for some reason I really didn’t feel like playing that game, the one wherein we made ourselves sound better than we actually were. And since I had just gotten laid as an orthodontist, I felt a certain desire to abstain from it. “Melinda