Roberta and the Watermelon

I wrote this little bit after I missed 16 words in the January 13, 2024, NYT Spelling Bee puzzle. All 16 words are included, in bold type, in this story. The missed words, in alphabetical order, are as follows: Aback, Babka, Baobab, Barback, Barbacoa, Barrack, Bloc, Bola, Bolo, Booboo, Cabala, Carob, Collab, Kabob, Rollback, and Rollbar.

Everyone’s got one, right? That’s what Julie was thinking as she waited for hers to arrive. A friend you’ve known forever who makes you wish you had a watermelon in your tote so you could break it over her head? If not a watermelon, then something else that might hurt, though certainly not kill, her. But a watermelon would be good, especially one with black seeds, because it would make such a big mess that she’d be so busy cleaning away all that sticky pink flesh from her face and clothes that she wouldn’t be able to say anything for at least a few minutes. The seeds would be all stuck in her hair and maybe even one or two in her ears. It would be fun just to see it. The other thing about a watermelon, as opposed to, say, a billy club, which might prove a tad too lethal, is that the watermelon would be completely unexpected. She’d be so surprised that the shock alone might keep her quiet for a minute or two. Doesn’t everyone have a friend like that? Was it just Julie? 

And then her friend appeared. “Roberta,” Julie said warmly, giving her old friend a real hug, not just the air kiss business. “You look amazing.” And it was true. Her still long dark hair was piled up on her head in one of those romantical twisty styles that Julie loved on others but could never pull off herself.  Her clothes were smart and her chunky chartreuse eyeglasses made Roberta look like she was from Milan, not San Diego. And her face; she somehow looked younger …

“This kind of amazing did not come cheap, I can tell you,” Roberta said, laughing.

“It was worth the investment, Roberta. You are just stunning.” As they walked to their table, Julie was feeling a little guilty about the watermelon seeds in her friend’s pretty hair. She was also feeling a bit tired next to Roberta. Julie kept fairly trim, it wasn’t that. Her brown-gray hair with cheeky red streaks, that was good. Clothes, not bad for an old-ish bird. Robin’s egg-blue nails, totally fun. But what about her jowls, Julie wailed in silence. Why must there be jowls?

They were seated with their menus at a table in the corner next to the window. After just a few minutes, as the server approached, Julie was still vacillating between chicken and falafel. She decided. “I’ll have the chicken kabob,” Julie told the young server, who was wearing a mustard yellow knit crop top with tattoos for sleeves. 

“You’ll be sorry if you don’t have the lamb,” Roberta warned as she turned her eyes to the waitress, “I’ll have the lamb, with some kibbeh to start. And tell my friend Julie here, the lamb is better than the chicken, am I right?”

Scrambling for diplomacy as she picked up the menus, the server started to say, “It all depends,” when Julie smiled and said, “I’ll stick with chicken.”

It had been ages since Julie and Roberta had found the time to get together. Julie now remembered exactly why. Relax. Let it go.

“So,” Julie began, hoping to steer Roberta away from the subject of her menu choices, “Tell me what exotic travel you have planned. Or where you’ve been?”

“Remember when sailors and gangsters were the only ones with tattoos? What is wrong with these hipsters? What are they going to do with all those tattoos when they get old?” Roberta carped. “I’m sorry, what did you say, Julie?”

“Travel?” Julie reminded her, thinking, my old skin’s not looking so hot now without the tattoos. What was with the ‘wait until you’re old’ business directed to tattoos? Maybe a tattoo would actually help. Like a whole-body tattoo?

“Ah, travel. My travel problem is where I’m trying not to go!” Roberta griped. “Gordon won’t shut up about Argentina of all places. Why in the world would I want to go all the way to Buenos Aires just to take classes in, oh, what’s it called, cabala, yes, cabala classes? What is that, anyway, cabala? I think his Uncle Marvin got into it for a while. It’s some kind of medieval, mystic culty-thing. ‘You were bar-mitzvahed,’ I told Gordon, ‘isn’t that enough? Can’t we just stay home and watch Unorthodox on Netflix again?’”

Julie giggled. Roberta was funny, there was that.

“I know you, Gordon, I told him. If we go to Buenos Aires, you won’t let me go on a little side junket to Iguazu Falls like normal people. You’ll be dragging me down to some ranch in Patagonia where we strap into a little dune buggy with a rollbar just to chase down some llamas and learn to hunt with those bola weapons you have hanging on your office wall.”

“Bolo weapons?” quizzed Julie.

“Not bolo, bola. It’s basically two ropes fastened together on one end, each with a ball secured to the other end. Instead of lassoing the animals the way American cowboys do, the South Americans trip them by tangling their legs together in the ropes and balls.”

“Like this?” Julie slid her phone to Roberta. “I Googled it so I could see what you were talking about.”

“Exactly,” Roberta confirmed, glancing at the phone as she handed it back.

“Oh, look!” Julie said, pointing at the screen, “In the footnotes, it says that the word bolo tie is derived from bola weapons. I wasn’t that far off, after all.”

“Anyway, Gordon received the bola thing from one of his law school buddies as a gift, after the guy was appointed ambassador to Argentina. He enclosed a note saying Gordon needed a set of balls.” Roberta shook her head. “Positively side-splitting humor.”   

“It’s always something crazy with him,” she continued. “Last year…”

Julie began to wonder whether the watermelon would permanently stain Roberta’s white blouse.

“… when we had only seven days off over spring break, he wanted to fly all the way to Madagascar and back just so we could see the baobab trees before they go extinct.  It was going to be 37 hours each way – with a six-hour layover in Newark! I said, not unless you can get Cory Booker to take us for dinner while we wait.”

The server arrived with their food and asked, “Another round on the wine? Mondays are rollback pricing on our Argentinian wines – Malbec and Chardonnay.”

They both said yes, but as soon as the server left, Roberta tilted her head sideways and scrunched her face. “I hope that wasn’t a booboo. Might be bad mojo for me to drink wine from Argentina right now, while I’m busy trashing the place.”

“Can’t you and Gordon collab on a destination? Where would you like to go? Someplace in Europe?” Surely, Julie thought, there’s a place or two on the planet Roberta would like to see. Julie would be happy to suggest a long list. 

“What does it matter,” Roberta moaned. “Gordon will only go to Europe to visit places like Albania, where even the lowliest barback at any ‘resort,’” (here, Roberta used exaggerated air quotes), “is a former hitman from an Eastern bloc country. Or where the travel brochure advertises that guests will ‘barrack’ (again, the air quotes) in concrete bunkers built to protect Communist dignitaries during the Cold War.” 

While Roberta paused for a quick breath, Julie remembered back in law school when, in a literal fit of frustration and rage, she threw a whole watermelon onto the linoleum tile. One bounce and then pink and green chunks were dancing across the kitchen, twirling in slow motion to Johann Strauss. As if flung from a disco ball, black watermelon seeds flew everywhere – the floor, the walls, the cabinets, Roberta’s pretty hairdo.

Uh oh. Roberta was starting back up. “It was so much easier during Covid. The furthest I had to go was the kitchen for another Zoom cooking class. It’s true the barbacoa class was revolting, but I knew it would be when the recipe called for a beef head. Duh! The one where we learned to make carob babka was better. Admittedly, it took all day, and I didn’t like it as well as the traditional cinnamon babka, but at least I didn’t have to shlep my hand luggage through four airports to see some funky trees I could watch on National Geographic.”

And so it went, right up until they paid the bill. That done, the women rose and walked outside. Roberta squeezed Julie’s hand and smiled, “It was great catching up.” Decades earlier, Julie would have been taken aback at the use of “catching up” to describe the monologue that had just happened, but no longer.

As they walked to their cars, Roberta called over her shoulder, ”You should have had the lamb. The chicken looked dry. I’m always right, you know.”   

“Yup, I know,” Julie agreed. Next time, she was definitely bringing the watermelon.