Postmortem Pucchiac

“They’re starting to die on us,” Miranda declared over brunch.

“No, Miranda,” I said, “I promise no more deaths.” And I meant it. I was running out of ways to resurrect certain gentlemen from New Jersey.

Unfortunately, Miranda was talking about a man who really was dead. Will O’Connor was an urban planner who Miranda met-cute at Starbucks. She thought he had stood her up, called to confront him, and learned from his mother that he had died of a heart attack at the gym.

At the wake, Miranda met Will’s college roommate—my old boyfriend, Asshole Jim. He said he and Will were very competitive, so I opined that they were the classic frenemies, and he praised my wordplay. He wrote his thesis on Robert Lowell and said he always read my column: quite literary for a civil engineer. When I dated him, Jim had hair down to his ass and sang in a band called Uncle Ted’s Ass.

I gave Miranda my blessing, however cautious and doubtful, telling her I thought Jim should be voted off the island of Manhattan. They went to dinner and a poetry reading. I happened to be present when the relationship rapidly imploded, and after hearing Jim childishly whine “the fancy lawyer lady is breaking up with me,” I got to gloat on the way home.

Miranda, who repeatedly claims trashy celebrity tabloids are “my thing, I love it, let it go,” despite only expressing interest in these magazine for like a month, was nevertheless flipping through one during our brunch. She landed on a spread about the anniversary of the movie Swingers, checking in on Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn and some of their other projects.

It got me thinking about my own stint in Hollywood, which involved taking meetings with Matthew McConaughey, watching a weird lip-dub thing happen with Sarah Michelle Gellar, and getting mistaken for a hooker and thrown out of bed by Carrie Fisher. The tall drink of water I dated out there, however, was just as cute as Vince Vaughn.

The tabloid reported Favreau had wrapped a movie with Janeane Garafolo and Sandra Bernhardt playing lesbian assassins whose silencers underscored their voiceless places in society. He got tired of people always asking about Vince Vaughn. A paparazzi photo showed Favreau standing with a production company vice president and her boyfriend: none other than Asshole Jim.

Miranda and I both decided to let sleeping assholes lie, and neither of us scrutinized why Jim would be going by Gregory or how long he had been dating the redheaded D-girl—er, I mean VP. Why perform a postmortem when everyone had gotten out alive?

“I’m staying way out of this one,” Miranda said.

“Way out,” I agreed. “New Jersey out.”

And just like that, I remembered Jim was from Jersey and had a cousin named Christopher Moltisanti. I kept hearing that name, and the man definitely had a weakness for women in Monolo Blahniks. I couldn’t help but wonder: Was he single?