Cathy had tears streaming down her face. Apparently she found my recounting of Mole Man and Mrs. Alien Sumner amusing.
I picked off some stringy mozzarella and shared it with Inky. “I guess it is pretty funny, in a disturbing, sick kind of way.” I swigged a mouthful of beer and chuckled. “It did work out in my favor, though.”
“Well, sure.” Cathy giggled. “You can keep Inky without moving and I bet Mrs. Sumner will be keeping her nose inside her apartment from now on. Now, if only you could solve your financial problems and get a date with some sexy guy you’d be all set.”
I agreed. I still needed to find a way to come up with the extra cash to pay for my car repairs. “Do you think Mole Man will let me get behind in my rent now that I’ve got something on him?”
“I wouldn’t push it,” Cathy advised.
I sighed. “I don’t suppose they’re hiring any part-timers down at the box office?”
She had a primo job at Ticket Mania that sold tickets for all the best events in Seattle. It got her great tickets for personal use as well and a bunch of us were able to be front and center at last year’s Sting concert. True, we hadn’t been able to hear a thing for two weeks afterward, but it’d been worth it to be that close to the singer’s tight Levi’s.
“Sorry,” Cathy said. “Nobody ever leaves Ticket Mania unless they die. I’ll keep you posted if anyone comes down with a terminal illness.”
The phone rang and Cathy picked up. She talked for a couple of minutes then handed the phone over to me.
“It’s Jeff.”
I offered her a pained expression but took the receiver anyway. “Hello?”
“Hi. Cathy says you’re bunking with us for the next couple of nights.”
“Yeah. My place got flooded. I hope that’s not a problem.” And if it is a problem, then that’s just too bad.
“No problem, I was just going to offer you my bed.”
Yuk! I coughed and choked on a mouthful of beer. “Your bed?”
“Sure. I was just telling Cathy that I’m heading down to Portland to make a delivery and I’m going to bunk with a friend overnight. You’re welcome to make my room yours until tomorrow.”
“Um, thanks, Jeff, but that’s—” very odd, awkward, creepy… “—unnecessary.”
Just then the other line beeped.
“Can you hang on, Jeff? There’s another call coming in.” I clicked him off and answered. “Hello?”
“Hi, Tab! You’re all settled with Cathy for the night?” It was Jenny and I told her that, yes, I was all settled, then I told her all about catching Mole Man and Mrs. Sumner playing hide the salami. While she laughed hysterically I remembered I still had Jeff on hold.
“Hold on a second, Jen, I gotta let Jeff go.”
Click.
“Sorry, Jeff, I’ve got Jen on the other line. Was there anything else you wanted to say?”
“Well, actually, there was another thing and it may take a while so…”
Sigh. “Okay, just a second then.”
Click.
“Jenny, Jeff says he still wants to talk, are you okay holding?”
“Yeah, okay, if you’re too long I’ll just call back. I have to get ready for my date tonight.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll find out what he wants and get rid of him.”
Click.
“Okay, Jeff, what else do you want?”
“Lucien was wondering if he could talk to you,” Jeff said stiffly.
Yikes! “Hang on a second.”
Click.
“Hello?” Nothing. Dead air. “Hello, Jen? Jeff is on the other line and he says Lucien wants to talk to me, what should I do?”
Pause, then a deep male chuckle. “I say, you should take the call and stop being such a scaredy-cat.”
Damn! “Um, hold on a second, Lucien.”
I glanced over at Cathy who had renewed tears of laughter brimming in her eyes. I hate fucking call waiting!
Click.
“Jen?”
“Yeah?”
“I gotta go. I’ve humiliated myself on the other line because I was talking to Lucien when I thought it was you.”
“Lucien? Wow! Call me right back after you find out what he wants.”
I took a deep breath and really wanted to hang up, but then I’d have an even harder time convincing Lucien I wasn’t a chicken, so I took two deep cleansing breaths and clicked over to Lucien.
“Hi. Sorry about that. I’m not usually a scaredy-cat.”
“That’s all right.” I could hear him smiling. “It does my ego good to know I unnerve you.”
Somehow I doubted his ego needed any boosting.
“What can I do for you?”
Pause.
“Oh, I can think of about a hundred things in various positions,” he drawled, then added, “but for now you can agree to let me take you to dinner on Saturday night.”
“Dinner? Saturday?” I glanced furtively over to Cathy for guidance. She just grinned broadly and shrugged. Big help. I quickly figured out that I had three choices. I could either A) turn him down flat, B) accept his offer now and then cancel later by feigning injury, illness and/or death or C) accept his dinner invitation and deal with the possibility that it may lead to mind-blowing, multiorgasmic sex for the first time in my life.
“Okay. Sure. Dinner sounds—” I groped for a word and only could come up with “—interesting.”
When I hung up the phone Cathy raised her eyebrows at me. “I can’t believe you accepted dinner with Lucien Roskell. Jeff is going to be positively green with envy.”
“Lucien may be a lot of things but gay is not one of them,” I stated matter-of-factly.
“Are you sure you’re attracted to the guy? Seems to me you’re just scared of him.”
“I’m not scared.”
She leveled a disbelieving gaze in my direction and I caved.
“Okay, I am a tiny bit scared of him, but that’s probably because I’m so attracted to him. Jeez, you’d have to be dead not to drool just looking at the guy.” I thought back to the bone-liquefying kiss he’d planted on my lips then popped the tab on my next beer and drank deeply. “Maybe that’s it. The guy just oozes sexuality. Just being next to him is orgasmic. I’m scared I won’t be able to handle him.”
Cathy smirked. “Jeff says the same thing.”
Gross.
“Well,” Cathy said, “you’ve got two days to build your confidence so you don’t spend the entire night trembling with fear.”
We called Jenny back and I told her about my upcoming date. She was even more excited than I was but she needed to leave for her date so we made plans to discuss it further over lunch the next day.
Cathy and I tidied up our pizza and beer mess and watched an X-Files rerun. Afterward we painted our toenails.
“I need to check to see what our booze theme of the week will be at Jimbo’s tomorrow,” she said.
“Check? Check where?”
“I have a Web site that I check every Thursday. That’s how I come up with all those neat drink ideas for Friday nights.”
The fact that she actually researched our weekly booze up surprised me.
“Web site?” I glanced around. “I didn’t know you even had a computer.” I stuck the tip of my tongue out of the corner of my mouth and tried valiantly to apply a dollop of salmon-pink color to my puny baby toenail.
“I don’t.” She got to her feet. “Jeff does. He’s got a million rules about allowing me to use his computer but he doesn’t mind me checking out the booze site.”
I got up and followed. The two of us waddled on our heels so as not to smudge our toenail polish. We entered Jeff’s room, Cathy flicked on the light switch and we duck-walked over to his computer desk.
Jeff’s room was white. Really white. White walls with white curtains. White furniture and white bed covers. Inky had followed us in and jumped on the bed. I shooed him off fearing the black hairs left behind would offset Jeff’s strange color scheme. I couldn’t believe Jeff had offered to let me sleep in his room. I couldn’t believe anyone could sleep in this room.
Cathy slid behind Jeff’s white desk and tapped away at the computer while I stood staring around the room.
“Jeff is weird,” I stated.
Cathy nodded. “Yep. The weirdest.”
“How do you stand it?”
“Remember all my other roommates? The hippy broad who burned all that incense, the fatty who tried to squeeze into my best outfits and the neurotic one who squealed like a pig in her sleep?”
“Yeah, I guess I see your point.”
“Jeff is weird like the others but it’s a contained weird. He has a thing about never taking his shirt off around me but I don’t have a problem with that ’cause he doesn’t have a bod I want to see. He’s also obsessively neat. I like that ’cause he’ll clean up after me. He’s quiet, keeps to himself and pays over half the rent. You can’t beat that. Plus, he also gets gay porn delivered regularly and although that kind of graphic coupling is not my thing, I’ve never been opposed to seeing a centerfold of a nude buff male. That even makes up for his strange friends.”
“Weird friends?” The idea of Jeff having any friends, strange or otherwise, was news to me.
“You know the type, long dark coats, dark clothing and white pancake makeup.” She shrugged. “That kind of nerd-goes-gothic look. He says he met them when he worked for his father. They don’t come around often anymore, I think they had a falling-out. Anyway, I think Jeff mostly met with them for Dungeons & Dragons or some other stupid game.”
Cathy clicked the keyboard and the printer hummed out a couple of pages that she snatched up and read. “Looks like Friday will be melon liqueur night.”
I was all atremble at the thought.
I woke up Friday morning with my back aching from being pretzeled on the sofa. My head was still in a hazy dream state and Inky’s butt was in my face so it took a while to orient myself to my surroundings. I pushed back a vague nightmare that was trying to crystallize and I also pushed away Inky who mewed loudly at the intrusion. The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee wafted over and I could hear Cathy humming softly to herself in the kitchen. I was seriously thinking of offering to become her next roommate.
“Here ya go,” Cathy said, handing me a mug of coffee.
I sat up and gratefully took the cup.
“Sorry. No time for chitchat this morning.” She winced down at her watch. “I’m already late.”
I managed to get to the office only a few minutes late myself. Jenny was holding the fort behind my desk looking bleary-eyed and rumpled.
“Didn’t make it home last night, huh?” I smirked.
She yawned. “Nope.” She got to her feet and stretched. “You know, I think he might be the one.”
I plopped my butt into the chair Jenny vacated. “The one, huh? Which guy are we talking about?”
She placed a hand over her heart. “Gerry. He’s just dreamy.”
“Gerry. Isn’t he the one who pumps gas in Renton?”
“No, that’s Joe.”
“So he’s the one that does lawn maintenance at Discovery Park?”
“No, that’s Gavin Furly. Gerry’s the security guy I met at the food court in the mall.”
I shook my head. Between Gerry, Joe and Furly it was hard to keep all of Jen’s stooges straight.
“So what makes you think this guy’s the one?”
She leaned into my ear and whispered details that are better left unsaid at nine in the a.m. to someone who has not had sex in a year.
I fanned myself with my fingers. “Okay, you can go now,” I said dismissively.
She grinned and started to turn then looked back, “Oh yeah, Lina the Loser called. Twice. I told her to go to hell both times but she insisted I leave a message for you.”
Clay walked in half an hour later. He paused to offer me a sappy and sucking-up Hello and How are you this morning, Miss Emery? but the mocking look in his eye and the sarcasm in his voice told me he didn’t mean it. I wanted to return his sarcastic tone with an attitude of my own that would’ve been, acerbic, glib and downright flippant, but I had to swallow my flippin’ urge to be flippant because he was with a client.
Then, because Martha was away for the morning at some prenatal appointment, Clay asked me to hold all his calls and then kept checking in with me for messages always with the same sickening sweet tenor in his voice. By the time my lunch hour rolled around I had big-time indigestion from all the bitter words I’d been swallowing that morning.
“So did you call Lina Lumphead?” Jenny asked as we elbowed our way from the deli counter to a corner table.
I glowered at her. “No. I didn’t have time to call her and I’d appreciate it if you would not call her names,” I snapped.
Jenny paused in midchew and narrowed her eyes at me. “What crawled up your butt?”
I ripped off a corner of my tuna sandwich and chewed angrily without answering.
“It’s Clay, isn’t it?”
I washed down my sandwich with some scalding coffee. “Yeah. He comes in this morning and is all pleasant to me and stuff.”
Jenny looked askance. “Well I can see how that could mess you up, wouldn’t want him to try and be nice now would we?”
I stabbed my finger into her shoulder. “That’s exactly the kind of attitude he has, sarcastic to the hilt. He’s says ‘Thank you for the messages, Miss Emery.’” I sang the words out in an exaggeration of Clay’s sappy tone. “Geesh, all I asked was that he say a few kind words to me when he called.”
Jenny was quiet for a moment.
“You know what your problem is,” she began, “you’re never satisfied.”
My jaw dropped open. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you’ve got this sexy guy, Lucien, hot on your trail but all you can think about is Clay. Clay this and Clay that.” She snapped her fingers in my face. “Wake up, Tabitha, Clay’s got a girlfriend named Candy who looks like a model and he’s probably not gonna dump her for you.”
I sulkily pushed the rest of my sandwich away. “You’re just being nasty.”
Jenny sighed. “Love ya like a sister, Tab, and that’s the only reason why I’m telling it like it is.”
“You’re right.” I downed the rest of my coffee. “So you’re thinking I should be forgetting all about Clay and taking a closer look at Lucien?”
“Honey, I think if you don’t look closely at Lucien you’re either blind or stupid.”
Jenny’s rough pep talk worked. I returned to my desk with determination to forget looking at Clay as a sex god or a potential lover. From now on I was going to be Miss Professional. I’d be so damn professional I’d rock his world and one day when he got tired of Candy and wanted me I’d be like, I’m sorry, Mr. Sanderson but I’m marrying Lucien Roskell tomorrow. Na na na na na na.
What really hurt was that even though I was being Miss Professional, Clay did not notice and when Candy called and I put her through to him without even cutting her off once, he failed to even congratulate me. Men!
Later, I was waiting for the FedEx guy who usually arrived at four-forty-five. I was hoping to sneak out with him after I signed for the day’s deliveries but he was late, so all I could do was sit there until five o’clock. The phones were dead and everyone else in the office was leaving early because it was Friday. Friday meant there were happy hour cocktails waiting and hot wings and nachos to be consumed.
Finally, Jenny came out and said, “Guess what? I’ve decided to go shopping with you!”
“Shopping?” I shook my head. “I’ve got no money to shop, remember? I’ve got to save my pennies or I’ll be dating your no-neck cousin, Doug, to pay for my car repairs.”
“Oh, but you must shop.”
“I must?”
She nodded, “Baby shower tomorrow, remember? I bet you haven’t bought a thing for Martha yet.”
I slammed the palm of my hand to my forehead. “Damn. I forgot all about the shower!” I riffled around in my desk until I found the mint-green envelope and ripped it open. “Tomorrow, from noon to four at someone’s place in Fremont,” I moaned. “I don’t wanna go. I’d just rather—” get a bikini wax, watch the shopping network, drink dealcoholized beer… “—not.”
“You have to,” Jen said firmly. “But I’ll help you pick out the perfect gift so she’ll be so distracted by your wonderful, amazing taste in baby stuff that she won’t even notice you skipping out two hours early.”
Empowered by that thought, we hit the mall. Once you started looking for it you couldn’t help but notice that baby crap was everywhere. I couldn’t find blue jeans to fit my size-seven ass but I could buy ten in a dozen shades for a six-month-old for the same price. It was downright depressing. We had our dinner at the food fair where I convinced myself that what I really needed was to blow my money on bad Chinese and a huge slice of greasy pizza.
“I thought you said you were going to help with this shopping thing,” I accused.
“After we finish eating we’ll get serious,” Jenny said.
I glanced down at the half-dozen shopping bags surrounding Jenny’s legs and pointed out, “You’ve been serious, just not about finding a baby gift.” Spending hours watching Jenny wriggle her size-sixteen body into a rainbow of outfits in size fourteen was not the way I wanted to end my week.
Jenny pointed a finger in the direction of a woman at the next table. “Now see? That’s exactly what you need!” She jumped up from her plastic chair and marched over to the woman holding up a large gift basket filled with baby gunk.
Jenny returned and stated proudly, “See? Now I know what to get and where to get it.”
I slid my eyes over to the bulging basket at the next table. “All that stuff probably costs a fortune.”
A few minutes later at a cute baby boutique my fears were confirmed.
“It’s a hundred bucks!” I put the basket back down. “Now what, genius?”
Jenny picked the basket back up and examined it closely. “You know what? We can do this.”
“We can?”
“Sure. We buy a basket, cellophane wrap and a pile of baby stuff at Wal-Mart and throw it all together. I bet we could do the same thing for under thirty dollars.”
“I don’t know,” I said doubtfully. “I’m not very good at crafts.”
“It’s not a craft,” Jenny explained patiently. “It’s a friggin’ basket. Come on, it’ll be easy.”
She was right about it being easy. It was perfectly easy to create a disaster when you had no idea whatsoever what you were doing. Two hours later, Cathy’s living room looked as though a gift shop had exploded in the center. We had assembled a massive three-foot-high gift basket wrapped in a dozen feet of clear plastic wrap and tied together with a large yellow bow.
I shook my head. “It looks like crap.”
“It looks great,” Jenny insisted.
Cathy strolled in from her bedroom where she’d been dressing for our night at Jimbo’s and said, “It looks like crap. You used far too much wrap and all the stuff is just crammed in there.”
Jenny got to her feet and dusted her hands together. “Well, I’m not redoing it, especially not for Martha. I need a drink so I say we move our asses over to Jimbo’s for—” she looked at Cathy “—what’s our theme this week?”
“Melon liqueur.”
“For Melon Liqueur Night.” Jenny licked her lips in anticipation.
Cathy and Jenny cleaned up the extra tissue and cellophane wrap while Inky did his part and shredded whatever he could find to ribbons. During that time I prepared myself by applying an overload of mascara and lipstick. We split a cab to Jimbo’s where Cathy handed over the recipes for two melon liqueur drinks to the bartender. One of these drinks was named Alien Secretion and the other was Alligator Bait. Despite their ridiculous names and colorful umbrellas, the drinks were not as quick to induce vomiting as one might think. In fact, by the time I’d consumed my second of each I was even convincing some young Washington State boys to try a drink or three.
“Get your arse back in your chair before you humiliate yourself,” Jenny whispered in my ear and yanked me over to our table.
I plunked my butt back in my chair with reluctance.
“You gotta admit, Jen, they didn’t make ’em like that when we were in university.”
“Don’t be fooled by the outside package.” Cathy grinned. “They were exactly like that when we were in college and they didn’t look at us then either.”
Jenny tsked and shook her head. “Your date tomorrow would blow the socks off any one of them. What are you going to wear?”
I frowned into my Alien Secretion and admitted I had no idea. “I don’t know where he’s taking me so I guess it’ll have to be my little black dress.”
Both Jenny and Cathy moaned.
“What?” I asked.
My two friends shared a look then turned to me.
“It’s just that it’s…” Jenny began.
“Ugly,” Cathy finished.
“And it’s…” Jenny started.
“Out of fashion,” Cathy added. “And it’s got that…”
“Snag in the back of the skirt,” Jenny complained.
I held up a hand in surrender and then downed the rest of my drink. “Fine! What do you two suggest, huh? I’ve got no money and with the shower tomorrow I’ve also got no time to shop for new even if I had the cash.”
“You could borrow something of mine,” both girls chimed.
I looked from Jenny, size sixteen, to Cathy, size five, and laughed until melon liqueur came out of my nose.
The thick perfume of candle wax filled my senses. Even as the sane part of me resisted, I found myself struggling to illuminate the opaque images before me. A mumbled mantra, muted and rough, reverberated in the haziness. The vision faded to black only to explode in intense white light a second later. A ceremonial knife plunged into both flesh and bone repeatedly in a crazed frenzy. The sound that fractured the night was my own scream.