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Needless to say I had a terrific day pla
"Chelsea. I was on the phone with Ted trying for forty minutes to figure out who fed the dog what. He was trying to protect you and convince me you had nothing to do with it. This is so fucking stupid. I kept having to put the phone on mute. Are you really going to take the CEO of a cable company to a dog funeral?"
"Yes, it's at the pier. Would you like to come?"
"Yes, but I have my kid's soccer game tomorrow. Can't we do it Sunday? How can he believe this?"
"Joh
"Shit. I really want to see this."
"Well, unless Ted hits me, I'll probably show it on Leno Tuesday night."
"You should tell Ted that John's hiring a pet detective to put on the case."
"I don't have time for shenanigans," I told Jake, and hung up.
When I got home, I jumped on the treadmill. As soon as Ted walked in, I texted Eva to send the follow-up e-mail we had coordinated earlier:
Hi guys. John's assistant just told me confidentially that the autopsy revealed that Dudley was allergic to shellfish and that seems to be the culprit. Chelsea, if I recall correctly that is not what you gave him. I'm pretty sure it was one of those raviolis. Poor guy!
I liked Eva. I liked her a lot.
Our treadmill is on our balcony, and Ted was standing in front of it talking to me when he read the e-mail.
"Oh, dear Lord. I knew it."
He went to grab my BlackBerry off the treadmill in an attempt to shield me from the horrible discovery.
"What?" I asked, as I took it back from him.
"It was the shellfish," he said, with his arms open for me to run into.
"Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!"
This is the picture I shot with my BlackBerry of him consoling me right there and then on the balcony:
It took several minutes for me to calm down long enough to forward the picture to my team. The hysterical crying was interrupted by hysterical laughing, which I had to cover up with more fake crying, so it became a vicious circle. Luckily, it was a windy day, and Ted is ridiculous.
The rest of the night was more of the same as I was e-mailing with Tom, Jake, and Brad. Brad had to pull over several times on his way to di
"I thought you had a soccer game."
"I do, but I'll be laughing at the soccer game."
I told him to stop calling me, because I couldn't keep ru
Ted ran in after the third time Jake called and found me kneeling next to my bed. "Who are you telling to fuck off?"
"My father."
"Oh."
I finally had to take a Lunesta to get to sleep so that I wouldn't have to face him anymore. I woke up the next morning and lay in bed thinking about the difference a day can make. So much had happened in twenty-four hours. So many lives had been touched.
The funeral wasn't until five, so I had to maintain my composure but keep it somewhat real by pretending I was dreading it as well. Ted had been e-mailing everyone at the party to see who was coming to the funeral and he was concerned about who he'd be standing next to during the spreading of the ashes. "I'm worried I'm going to laugh," he kept saying. "Please make sure I'm not anywhere near Tom."
"Don't worry," I wanted to say. "No one else is coming, moron."
But I didn't.
At around four-thirty we headed to the pier. On our way down the ramp, I took a photo of the back of Ted's head and sent it off to everyone who was waiting to hear, with a caption that read "Ted on his way to Dudley's funeral."
I was texting furiously with Joh
"Get churros," he replied.
There are churro stands about every two hundred feet at the Santa Monica Pier, so it felt totally natural to yell, "Ted, that's why Dudley liked the pier. The churros. He loved churros!"
"Oh, Jesus Christ. No wonder the dog is fucking dead if he was eating fucking churros."
At this point I was starting to pee a little and kept having to grab my vagina. Luckily it was windy, so it was easy to hide my face behind the hair being blown across it. This was beyond ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as Ted taking a bite out of one of the churros as he crossed back over to where I was.
"What the hell is that?" I asked, pointing at the top of the bitten churro.
"What?" he said, trying to hide the churro under his lapel.
"Those are for Dudley, Ted!"
"But he's dead."
"They wanted to spread the churros with his ashes."
"Chelsea, you can't throw churros over the pier into the water. Dudley would want us to have them. Come on, we're going to be late."
"Just flip that one upside down and don't take another bite."
Fifty yards later we came to the end of the pier, where there were people scattered about. I immediately saw Joh
"What's that?" I asked.
This was the sign we had made:
Two days later I showed the video on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I haven't played any jokes on Ted since, but Brad did try to persuade me to fake Dudley's death again a week later to see if Ted would believe it. "Say he really died this time!" Brad howled.
Chapter Five.Wedding Chopper
My oldest friend in Los Angeles, Lydia, was getting married, and it was a miracle. I didn't ever expect her to have the wherewithal to actually follow through with a wedding that would require others to attend. She'd been engaged for over two years, and my assumption was that Lydia would approach her nuptials like most other milestones in her life: She would most likely lose interest.
When she finally did notify me about the imminent wedding, it was by an AOL instant message: "Chels, save the date. The wedding is going to be on May 28 in the Palisades!"
"Is this the invitation?" I typed back.
"No! Of course not! What's your address? I'm doing them right now!"
That is how Lydia operated. Her disorderliness had always been her strong suit, and this is coming from someone who hasn't worn a matching pair of socks since Reagan was shot. It wouldn't have been a surprise to me at all if I had received a third-grader's birthday-party invitation to her wedding with the time, date, and location all filled out in block letters on top of preprinted horizontal black lines.