We shop for sundresses in stores other than Frederick’s of Hollywood, and Cici lets me choose these on my own. We stop for lunch at a Ruby Tuesday and have the best afternoon we’ve had together. She has a gig tonight, so she isn’t drinking yet. She and Amber have worked up quite a business between time spent in Las Vegas and here. If it is after dusk, Cici is working.
We get back to the condo, and I head to our room to look at my new clothes and shoes. I’ve kept the receipt and will pay her back when I get paid for the Delphi shoot. I’ve put away the clothes when Cici comes into our room, her phone to her ear. “Can’t you take some Nauzene?” She listens. She gags and I sit, watching her, half afraid she is going to throw up on the floor. “Oh, that’s so gross. Just go to bed. Feel better.” She pulls the phone away from her head and convulses, sticking her tongue out, shaking her hands.
“What’s wrong?”
“Amber’s sick.” She shakes her hands again.
“Can you reschedule?”
She shakes her head, dialing. I listen through three phone calls, all with the same script. “Can you dance with me tonight? . . . Bachelor party . . . That sucks. Okay, bye.”
After the third call, she trains an eye on me. “Can you come?”
“No.”
“Please? You owe me.” I’m irritated that she would say that; it was her idea to go shopping.
“I’m gonna pay you back.” She would have been better off not to say that I owed her.
“Come with me, and you won’t have to. Please?” she asks with a thin, wheedling tone.
“No.” I laugh because it’s such a no-brainer. I can’t believe she even asked.
“It’s just a bachelor party. No big deal.” She comes to sit on the edge of my bed.
“I am not dancing at a bachelor party with you.” I say it slow and clear, so there is no way she can misunderstand me.
“You don’t have to dance. Please.” I glance up at her without raising my head, and I see her desperation. “I just need somebody to go with me, you know, so things don’t get out of control.”
“Ask somebody else.”
She is exasperated and drops the phone on her bed. “I just tried everybody else,” she pouts and leans in toward me. “I’ll pay you.” She says the last three words in a low sing-song purr.
“Ugh,” I groan. She knows my weakness. I can always use money. I was hoping to become a member of the Screen Actor’s Guild, because a lot of union jobs won’t even hire extras who aren’t members. I was saving for the initiation fee, and after the Delphi shoot, I would have had enough. I would have been willing to use Emily Ann’s money for that, because it would have meant something. Now, I’ll barely have rent for January. “How much?”
“Two hundred?”
I know it’s more than she wants to give up, but she is afraid I won’t help her.
“Please?” she begs, putting her head on my shoulder.
“Fine,” I say, pushing her off, short-tempered.
She dances to the dresser and starts sorting through her pretty, sequined bra tops and barely-there panties. I watch her as she gathers her ensemble and leaves for the bathroom. Who is she?
I change my t-shirt for a white button-down. I am waiting for her when she comes back, my hair braided over my shoulder so nobody will be tempted to touch it. I don’t want to be mistaken for part of the show.
“No,” she insists as she picks up her sequined bra. “You can’t wear that. They’ll think you’re a fucking cop.” She leans forward, dropping her breasts into the cups of her costume, fastening it, her shoulder blades like wings erupting from her back.
“Don’t talk like that,” I say, looking away, feeling strange, not because she is changing in front of me—she has never been modest—but because the vision of the wings erupting from her back feels a little like a portent, an omen, a shade of something coming toward us.
“Old woman,” she says with laughter in her tone. She has won, and she knows it. She has my number better than I do. I hear the small click of a razor on glass and glance back as she snorts a line before stepping into the sequined g-string. I listen to her sniffing, drawing the remnants of her line up before she licks her finger and slides it over the glass of the mirror, rubbing the residue along her gums.
I let out a long sigh, a breath, a whisper, a prayer. “What do you want me to wear?”
She opens her closet and draws out a pink, sequined dress with a tie-string neckline. I shake my head. She nods, tossing the dress in my direction. I catch it, but drop it onto the bed.
“I can’t wear a bra with this,” I say. “Pick something else.”
She rolls her eyes but turns back into her closet, shifting hangers.
“How about this, Mildred?” She holds up a short, black number that zips, but has a full collar.
“Can I wear tights?” I ask. “My butt will hang out in that.”
“No, Mildred, you can’t wear tights. I hope you shaved.”
“Ha ha,” I say, snatching the dress out of her hands and shifting my shirt over my head, drawing the dress over my shoulders, zipping it up before taking my jeans down. Cici laughs, watching me. “Shut up,” I say, feeling the blush rising up my cheeks. I know I am too old. I know I am the wet noodle at the party. I know I am the wall flower, awkward and strange. I know. I know. I know.
“I’ll do your makeup,” she says, and I recognize it for what it is. It’s her way of telling me she’s sorry for making me go with her. It’s her apology for being mean. She has pulled the pink, sequined number over her costume, and it gives a little peekaboo of the bling straps, a hint of what is to come.
“Just dancing, right?”
She doesn’t answer, and I open my eyes to see her looking at me, her pupils so large that her irises are just thin rings of color.
“We’ll see,” she says, and there is a small smile, like she is sad to have to tell me. I close my lips tight and look away from her. “It doesn’t mean the same thing to me that it means to you,” she says and ruffles her hand through my hair. “You know that, don’t you?”
“But it should.”
“I hear ya, old woman.”
She lifts her purse up, digging into the cavernous bag, pulling something out and handing it to me. I reach to take it before I even realize what it is. My hand feels the cold metal before it registers.
“What is this?” I hiss.
“It’s a gun, duh.” She turns toward the mirror to apply her makeup.
“Yeah, I know it’s a gun. The question is: why do you have a gun?”
She looks at me through the reflection of the mirror and raises an eyebrow.
“We didn’t take a gun the last time I went with you,” I insist.
“Put it in your purse. Just in case.” She refocuses on her reflection.
“I am not carrying a gun.” I drop it on her bed, and she turns to look at me with one eye done and the other not, making her look like some sort of cyborg.
She spreads her arms with a small flourish, indicating the skimpy dress she has put on over the costume. “I can’t carry it.”
“Why do you have it?”
“You’re right. I don’t need a gun. Silly me, people are just so nice, always.” Her sarcasm drips. “Grow up.”
“I am not carrying a gun,” I say again, crossing my arms against my chest, staring back at her through the mirror.
“Fine. If I get killed tonight, it will be all your fault.” She rolls her eyes and gets back to work.
“I am not doing this.” I hate being manipulated, and she is a master. I turn to leave. “Find somebody else.”
“Fine, don’t carry the gun,” she says. “It’s not even loaded, you big baby.”
I stop at the door and shrug my shoulders to release the tension building. “I don’t like guns, okay?” It is not really a question, and each word is enunciated and punched.
“Fine.” She blots her lipstick and turns to face me, putting her most innocent look across her face. “How do I look?” She peers at me from beneath lowered lids, tilting her chin, channeling some version of Marilyn Monroe.
“You look great,” I say. Of course, she looks great. Her hair brushes her shoulders with layers that soften her.
“How do I look?” I ask, a joke because I don’t care how I look.
“You look like my girlfriend,” she says in a breathless whisper and smiles her most charming smile. “Sure you don’t want to dance with me? We could make extra. Guys like that.”
“No. I’m not dancing with you.”
“How about a kiss?” she asks, not really serious, but asking all the same. “That’d be worth fifty bucks.”
“No, Cici.” It’s very sad that she has a price tag for everything that looks like love, but I don’t say anything. Her price tag is paying my rent next month.
