Chapter Eight

F*ck-Ups One-Fifty-Eight through Two-Thirteen

Operation Righteous Vagina Dentata Part Two

Now with More Bite!

 

 

 

It took me five minutes of promising sex to Taylor to get him peeled off the ground. Apparently true heartbreak can overcome the promise of sex. I’d had to dangle anal before he’d even look at me. So to speak. I assured him that we’d take care of the car tomorrow, and we hopped a cab to his apartment. We had to get to his place, for that was the entire point of the exercise.

158. The pretend sugar in the gas tank was just a bonus evil prank, as well as a way to get out of having him drive in his inebriated state

I texted Mel.

 

Me: I’m on the way to your place with the chicken noodle soup.

Mel: I’ll be here waiting for you.

 

Taylor grew fifteen hands in the cab, and by the time we arrived, I was about to clock the guy to get him off me.

I paid from his wallet, wrestled him out of the car, and got us into the elevator. Mel, the hoodie pulled up to hide her shining face, had shuffled into the elevator behind us. I pushed Taylor’s non-shining face to the wall and pinned him there so he wouldn’t see her.

“Do you like it rough, baby?” he asked with copious slurs.

At this point, my internal bile would not allow me to baby talk with him any longer. The hatred swirled through my stomach and brain like a swimming parasite. I rolled my eyes and searched his pants pockets for keys.

What I found first was a tiny, liquid-filled vial, nearly identical to mine. I held it up so Mel could see.

“Fucking piece of shit,” she muttered.

“What?” Taylor asked.

I smushed his head to the wall. “Nothing, cutie!”

159. Is murder really so bad?

Mel passed me my pair of black leather gloves. I slid them over my hands before we got to the door.

The elevator dinged. “Let’s go,” I told the scumbag.

We wove to his apartment and I used the keys I’d found in his front pants pocket to let us inside

160. Shudder, not enough bleach for my hands in the world

I left the door slightly ajar, and Mel would wait in the hall until I gave the all-clear.

Taylor swerved toward the kitchen. I headed him off and asked, “Where’s the bedroom?”

He tittered—tittered—and pointed, so I pushed him that direction. Once we arrived, I gave him a solid shove and he fell across the bed face first. Whew.

161. Unfortunately, I now had a view of his flat, frat-boy butt

My skin crawled even to be in here, knowing that likely, if this had been a real situation and not an amazing ‘operation,’ he would have roofied me by now. I growled my frustration, and ick, and impotent rage.

“Don’t be like that,” Taylor muttered. “Take off your clothes, don’t be a bitch.”

162. But being a bitch was my new oeuvre!

That was it. That was fucking it. I took off my stupid shoes and threw them into the living room. “You taking off your clothesh, babbeeeeee?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah.” I stomped into his closet. Neck ties. I yanked five off his automatic tie rotator—really?—and sauntered to him once again. The first one I wound around his eyes. He started to lift it, but I jumped on his back and put a knee between his shoulder blades. “I like it rough. Remember?”

“Sh-shouldn’t I blindfold you?”

“Sure, of course. I’ll go next.” I knotted the tie behind his head.

163. No way the silk would recover from this sort of knotting

164. Heh heh

Next, I jumped off him and grabbed a wrist. Thank goodness he had a metal bed with lovely posts at the head and foot.

By this point, my blood pounded in my ears, and a feeling of unholy power coursed through me. I’d never, ever in my life perpetrated anything of this kind. I’d spent my entire existence taking everyone’s shit—with a smile. Lest the teacher, boss, parent, friend, bus driver etc, got mad at me. To hell with that. A cackle pealed from my mouth—loud, mean, angry—while my hands clawed like a supervillain’s, and suddenly I understood why people went rogue.

165. Misbehaving was fun

“What?” Taylor asked, softly. He was almost out cold at this point. I yanked his arm and tied up his wrist anyway.

I didn’t bother to respond to him anymore, but left the bedroom to let Mel into the apartment. As soon as she got inside, I gave her the highest of fives and a hip-bump. “Did you see him flip his shit?” I asked.

She jumped and clapped. “Yes! I can’t believe popping that gas tank door…thingie…”

“I don’t know what it is, either.”

“And throwing a little sugar around would be so satisfying! Is he out?”

“Oh, yeah. Let’s go tie him up the rest of the way.”

Like two little girls skipping toward Disneyland, we joked our way through incapacitating our very own douchebag. We left one of his hands free, but tied both legs. We also placed his phone near his free hand, so that if he couldn’t untie himself, he could at least call for help. Although we’d traipsed into supervillain territory, we yet had mercy.

166. We totally took a picture, though

He didn’t even stir, but began snoring.

We regrouped in the living room, chests heaving with breathless excitement. As one, we settled, stared at each other, and said, “What now?”

“Jinx!” I blurted. “You owe me a Coke.”

She grinned at her deserved punishment and looked around the room. I did the same, now that I didn’t have a horrible man-child to deal with. Ugh. The walls were dark gray dotted with naked woman art. Everywhere. And the place was a gross mess. He was rich, and Mel said she knew he brought in a maid. How did anyone get his place this nasty in the space of…a week? Dirty takeout in piles on the expensive-looking coffee table. Filthy socks piled under it. Ew—was that a pair of underwear hanging off a chair? And gross workout clothes on the kitchen counter, which we could see from the living room.

“Let’s get tetanus shots after this,” said Mel.

“Perhaps a spa day at the antibiotics factory,” I agreed.

Mel said, “I think we should go through his computer. Read emails, find his Reddit username, stuff like that. Dig for transgressions.”

We beelined for his desk. “It’s hard to type with leather gloves,” Mel said.

“That’s why I brought latex ones.” I fished into my purse and drew them out, two pairs. “I also brought cayenne pepper to put in his aftershave.”

Mel slapped me with a look. “Whoa, bad girl.”

“I just want to be thorough.”

“You’ve really had it with assholes, haven’t you?”

“You have no idea.” I snapped on my latex with the evil grin that came more and more naturally to me, and we began exploring the wide, wide world of Taylor online. His emails yielded paydirt almost immediately. He’d stolen several of Mel’s authors, just as we suspected. We took screenshots and saved them to a flash drive we’d brought.

Then we began digging a little more into his sent items.

“Bless his heart,” Mel whispered.

“To his own uncle!” I followed.

The little shit had been leaking internal meeting notes to a competing editor at another big publisher! Plans for book rollouts, trend data, all sorts of stuff. Seems he was working his way into an elevated role at the new pub—a couple of rungs above where he was at Mel’s company. “Screenshot it,” Mel said.

“Done and done.”

Next, we perpetrated the most wicked of modern breaches of trust—we explored his browser history.

167. We all look at porn. Don’t lie

But this… Lucky my stomach was empty, because barf vomit city. The ye old standard sexy sex was there, but then we found all this fetishistic crap with horrific racist names and gross faux-Japanese costumes and the like.

“I may never date again,” Mel said, “knowing this is what lurks among us.”

More screenshots of this stuff. Mel said, “I think our big boss, Diana, might be interested in this. Me so horny? Him so out of a job.”

His Reddit username yielded even more wonderful bounty, including his commentary about how much he hated women (click and save!), minorities (click and save!), non-Americans (click and save!), anyone who wasn’t a millionaire, and on and on.

Then… We spotted it. Right on the desktop—a folder simply named Sluts. With a look to Mel and a deep breath, I clicked it open. Trophy pictures of women. In his bed. Very graphic activities. During which the women were sleeping.

Grind grind grind. I might file my teeth clean off tonight. “I’m copying all of these. If we recognize anyone, maybe we can tell her.”

“Or not!” Mel hung her head. “Maybe they’re happier not knowing. He’s not dating anyone now—hopefully they’re never coming back.”

“What if he’s posted them online?” A nasty, sick heat crawled over every inch of my body. To know that I would have ended up in his Slut file of horrors if I hadn’t been actively watching for it… Those poor women.

A giant snort-snore from the other room made us jump and scream, but he was still, blessedly, knocked out cold.

We had more than enough screen grabs to embarrass him into the next millennium, and I copied every single photo in that horrendous file with the offensive name. I erased the previous hour’s worth of browser history, the temporary folders, and removed the flash drive.

Mel bounced with agitation, looking as if she’d peel off her skin if we stayed there any longer. But halfway to the door, I stopped.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“Nothing. It’s just…” I set my purse down right in front of the door and started for the bedroom. “He has to think he got laid, right? I don’t want him really putting it together that my face equals email leak.”

I hurried back into the bedroom and turned on the light. He didn’t twitch. He wasn’t even snoring anymore. I untied his two ankles and wrist and began peeling off his clothes.

168. This might be the grossest fuck-up of them all

“I can’t look,” Mel chirped from the doorway, sounding as if she’d rather watch Jabba the Hut take a shower.

“I’ll take one for the team.” With my eyes ninety percent closed, I unbuttoned his shirt and pushed him to and fro until it could be discarded on the floor. Then, wishing I had taken a shot of some liquor with paint-peeling capabilities, I yanked off his pants. I left the boxer briefs on, because I’m only human, and my gag reflex already twitched. Touching this gross excuse for a human being—who’d been pampered and paid for all his life, who drugged women and, yeah, raped them—made my skin want to flee and assemble into another life form far away from this planet.

Finally, I messed up the covers and pulled down a towel or two in the bathroom to make it seem like someone else had spent time there. I left a scrawled note from ‘Amanda’ about what a good time she’d had.

When it was done, and he lay sprawled across the bed, I didn’t feel like tying him up again. Rage tinged my vision red and I swayed as I stood there, staring at his pathetic ass. So what if we got him off Mel’s back, or fired? He’d buy into another job, better than I’d ever have, in a trice. And no doubt his disgusting perv habits would continue unabated. I mean, sure, I’d tried to seduce my almost boss, but when he’d said no, I’d respected it.

But what could we do? If we emailed the files on his computer to the police, we’d admit to the B & E. Well, kind of. He’d let me into the apartment, but I didn’t know the murky legal ramifications of rummaging around on his computer. They were probably not in my favor.

Mel touched my shoulder gently and I jumped. “You okay?”

“I’m enraged at this piece of crap.”

“Me too.” She chewed on her lip, seemingly as at odds with herself as I was.

“Is your boss Charlie—his uncle, right?—is he a good guy?”

“Oh, yeah. The total opposite of this asshole.”

The gears clicked in my brain. We didn’t need to send any of this to the cops if we could at least send it to Charlie. Then his current job would be gone, the pipeline to another would be damaged—at least through Charlie—and people would know how he was a scumbag.

Then I got the most amazingest idea to have ever idea’d. I whispered to Mel, “We need to send these files to his mother.”

She rocked backward. She put her hand to her heart. “Dag. Giselle. Whoever. I think you may have been taken over by the angry spirit of a vengeful Amazon warrior goddess, for this is the most amazingest idea to have ever idea’d.”

169. Told you

We dived back into his email and, sure enough, we found his mom. She seemed like a sweet lady who sent him recipes, restaurant reviews, and…a maid over to do his laundry once a week.

“He doesn’t even pay the maid himself,” I said with an eye roll.

170. My eyes would get stuck staring at my brain if I kept rolling them

Mel took note of his mom’s email address. I’d send her the terrible photos from a dummy account. Some of them had his face in them, his body, his hands on the women…so no doubt about their authenticity.

We took a moment to scan the rooms, to make sure we’d left nothing behind. Mel’s glove-clad hand had just gripped the front doorknob when I said, “Wait.”

“What now?” She gave me a very exasperated pair of eyebrows. “I’ve created a monster!”

“I’ve created a monster! Bwaahahahahaaa!” I threw my head back and did my evil villain laugh again, and my BFF leaned away from me.

171. Yes, be afraid

172. Be very afraid

The laughter ripped from some deep, dank part of me, perhaps building up for years—decades. Was this what happened to a goody two-shoes in the end? Maybe I should adopt a weird hair color, or a villainous costume. Where was my catsuit? Where was my spell book!?

I took off for his bathroom and ran some hot water into a glass he had on the counter. Then I fulfilled a ten-year-old me dream—I put his hand in it. Cool girl Adrienne Johnston had done this to me at my very first sleepover. I’d completely pissed myself, and all the girls had laughed. Even my sister. I hadn’t even known about such a trick, and would never have done it to someone. After that, I became a nerd pariah and Adrienne, the most popular girl in our class. She dubbed me Kostopeelos, and it had stuck.

Well, I wasn’t Kostopeelos anymore. I was Giselle! Or something! “Fuck Adrienne,” I whispered as I kneeled by his bed. In no time at all, it happened. Taylor whizzed all over the bed, and Mel collapsed onto herself on the floor laughing. So did I, spilling the water on his duvet, sheets, and floor. I didn’t care, I plopped down next to her, and we had maybe the best laugh of our lives, even better than the time we’d gotten drunk and gone to see a midnight showing of Twilight.

I had no idea how long we lay there, faces hurting, eyes weeping uncontrollably. My body seemed to float lighter. As if my soul had been injected with helium, like a Mylar balloon with the words ‘I don’t give a fuck’ emblazoned across it in sparkly pink.

Mel squeezed my hand and sniffed a wet-sounding glob of snot. “I’m glad you’re on my side.”

“Always.”

Our mission accomplished flawlessly—

173. With bonus wee

We left the apartment. Wee left? Heh.

A chilly wind hit my still-grinning face on the way out of the building. I departed first, as if I were leaving after a hook-up. Mel followed five minutes later, just to be all sneaky spy about it. We met a couple of blocks down, both shivering and happier than hell. I was in pain from the laughter…but it had replaced any crying I’d been trying not to do. About Blade, or my job. For better or worse, I was actually calling the shots now.

174. And damn, did it make the blood pound in my lady boner.

“I’m fucking up, and I love it!” I screamed to the street, filled with New Year’s revelers spilling from bars and restaurants.

This gleeful admission was met with scattered applause, and one offer of, “Wanna fuck up with me?”

New Year’s Eve was the perfect fuck-up night. It and me were one. One gorgeous entity dressed in tackiness, filled with frivolity and contemplation both. And covered in sparkles.

We naturally gravitated toward the revelers outside the bars. They had drinks in their hands, even on the sidewalk, but nobody cared. Not tonight. Not at the start of a brand new and shiny year—a happy baby who never exploded into poop.

175. So to speak

176. Of course, many years did, in fact, explode into poop

177. This last year had dumped on me quite a bit

178. Pun intended

Mel grabbed my arm. “It’s only ten minutes to midnight.”

“Then we must acquire cocktails post haste.”

We shook on it and hurried into the nearest bar. The place was a lovely zoo, and while we waited at the bar for literally anything inebriative—

179. Totally a word

—I gave Mel my faux fur so she appeared more festive, and I took her hoodie so I looked less hooker-ey.

180. Less hooker-ey because the hundred I’d just been offered was an insult

181. I had an MBA

182. I was a thousand-dollar-an-hour girl

183. At least!

We barely made it into the street before the collective New York voice began counting. Ten, nine, eight—my heart leaped into my throat—seven, six, five—I was a whole new woman this year—four, three, two—

“This is my year!” I screamed.

One!

Everyone whooped, clapped, hugged. Three different men attempted to grope me, so my first acts of the New Year were an instep smash, a hip check, and a low punch to the groin.

184. Fitting

Mel turned to me after helping me get a very drunk and drooling redhead off my hoodie. “I don’t have a boy to kiss,” she said.

“Me neither. But it’s better!” I took her into my arms and squeezed with all my might. Into her ear, I yelled above the din, “Boys might come and go, but my Mel is forever, and I love you!”

I planted a smackeroo right on her mouth. The quick and dirty—

185. Wink wink

—Kiss ended with her laughing at me, which was terribly fitting. I’d been getting rather a lot of that lately.

As one, we downed our cocktails and joined in the impromptu dance party now boogeying into the street. Cabs honked for us to get the hell out of their way, but not a one of us paid attention.

We danced. And danced. And danced. My feet stung with more blisters than in a Violent Femmes song, but this two square feet of dress was surprisingly comfortable. At least the shoes were good for dropping fuckboys trying to grab my whatnots.

By three a.m., Mel had had enough, so we went back to her place and just passed out, grins on our faces and stamps on our hands.

 

* * * *

 

186. Hung over

187. So hung over

188. Had I invented hangovers?

189. No

190. Not even I would fuck up that much

191. Giselle probably had

192. Dagmar’s contribution—pleading the fifth

My heaaaaaaaad. My stomaaaaaaach. My haaaaaaaair. Ouch. I rolled over. Ugh, this bed was lumpy.

“Get off me, ass breath,” muttered Mel. “And answer your phone.”

I got off her, as requested. My tummy lurched, but I kept rolling right off the bed so that I wouldn’t barf on her with my ass breath. Bam! I landed on my elbow and my face both. “Auuuugh,” I moaned while holding my broken face and flailing on the floor for the phone still screaming in my purse. “What,” I answered with Kathleen Turner’s voice.

“Shut up!” offered my loving friend.

“I’ll breathe on you more,” I threatened. I couldn’t follow through, however. I dropped the phone and crawled to her trash, barely making it before my revelry made its reappearance.

Me and the trashcan had a nice lie down. I’d just worked up the gumption to do something about the acid burning a hole through my esophagus when I remembered my phone. Oh, whoops. Dang it. The phone sat all the way over there.

193. Three whole feet away

I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. A weak noise floated to my ears. “Are you okay?” I heard. Aw! Someone cared about Dagmar on my phone!

Roll. Roll. By the third roll, I’d made it to the thing, still lit up with my call. I rolled on top of it so that I faced up. But then it was underneath me.

194. Why was life so haaaaaard

Okay. Time to woman up. I pulled the phone out from under my ass and said, like a human, “Hi.”

“Giselle?”

Someone cared about Giselle.

“Yash. Hi. I’m sorry. My hangover is having hangover babies in my head, and those little brats are playing drums.”

He chuckled in that low way of his and my body tingled with a new feeling. No, not bile, but lust. “I’m sorry. I hope you had fun at least.”

“I did.” Taylor, roofie, B & E, bed piss—his, not mine. “I really, really did.”

“Good. I was going to ask you out to dinner tonight, but perhaps—”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure you feel up to it?”

My tummy threw itself into my ribcage by way of protest. “Quiet, you,” I muttered.

“What?” Yash asked.

“Nothing. Uh…Maybe you’re right. But I really want to”—bang you, bang you, bang, bang bang bang—“see you. I mi—”

I clapped my teeth closed. I’d almost said “I miss you,” but that would be disastrous. Both to say…and to admit to myself. Especially after one date!

The only date I had meant to go on.

“Tell you what,” he began. The phone rattled, and I heard a smile in his butterscotch voice when he returned. I suddenly understood why Bonnie got so stupid over Clyde…if he’d had a sexy damn voice like Yash’s. “Do you enjoy dumb movies?”

“Dumb movies are the best kind.”

He exhaled a grin. “Will Ferrell?”

My mouth dropped. “I love Will Ferrell. I would marry anchorman Ron Burgundy even though we all know what it did to Veronica Corningstone.”

“I knew you were a keeper, Giselle.”

195. Uhhhhhhhhh

I fell onto my back.

He continued being far too marvelous. “Listen, come over tonight. We’ll order in greasy food for a hangover and watch every Ferrell movie you can stomach, pun intended.”

“I should hope so.”

“Although…if you feel more comfortable, I can come to you. I am a man you just met, after all.”

196. No no no!

“No, that’s okay. I’ll give your info to my best girl, and if I’m never seen again, she’ll report to the police the person in whose freezer my body is dismembered.”

“Excellent. I’ll just have to dismember a different lady instead.”

I snorted. Wow, my imaginative beau could get very dark.

A pillow landed upside my head, and my best girl said, “If you don’t shut up, it’ll be my freezer.”

I managed to crawl into the living room. “Aren’t you worried that you might be in danger from me?”

“All the time. Especially when I can’t stop thinking about you. You might break my heart.”

197. Don’t say things like that!

I inhaled to make a witty rejoinder…but this was one piece of bullshit I couldn’t bear to blow. “So tonight, what time?”

“Come over around eight. I’ll have everything ready. I’ll text you the address.” He paused. “I wanted to take you with me to the UK for Christmas. Is that a loser thing to confess?”

His adorable earnestness mixed with macabre jokes sucked all free will from my body, and I was no longer a lying mess of dork lying ten feet away from her own hangover, but a wonderful, worthy woman who could make such a man’s eyes sparkle.

Seconds ticked by. His silence on the other end became labored. Don’t ask me how I knew. My heart knotted. My veins froze. “What is wrong with you?” I blurted.

He gasped.

“No, no.” I fell into the couch. Well, my head did. Sitting would have required too much effort. “I mean…what are your flaws? Because I’m a mess, Yash. I’m not great, and—and I’m not great. I’m flailing in life right now. Why are you into me?”

The silence this time turned ponderous. I think. I wasn’t a psychic, I was Ass-Breath of Loserville, in the Famewhore Blogs District.

“Giselle,” he began. “You’re funny. And you’re hotter than hell. And you’re obviously smart and adventurous, no matter what mess you’re currently experiencing.”

Hot? Adventurous? He should have met me two weeks ago when he’d’ve died of boredom. Blade almost did.

198. Better not think about that too hard

He blew into the phone and I managed to throw one leg over the couch. I was still on my back, but I’d achieved that much. “Let’s see, my faults,” he began. “I’ll have to think hard because they’re so few.”

“Uh-huh. I’m going to make you watch a Dance Moms marathon with me tonight.”

“Christ, no! Okay. I write alone in my apartment in my underwear.”

“Yum,” I said.

“Not so much. I write in my underwear and…the shirt.”

My intestines gurgled. “The shirt?”

“It’s an old, unbelievably holey rag that used to be white, but is now gray. If it were named in a clothing catalog, it’d be called ‘despair gray.’ Or perhaps ‘disease.’”

I burst into laughter.

“It’s got many stains, most of them brown and/or green, as if I took a giant shit on it, and then blew chunks.”

“Ugh, you are a writer, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am. It’s disgusting. Pit stained. And I think it has a bit of a permanent funk.”

“Why? Why do you keep a disease shirt to work in?”

He laughed. “It’s lucky! I wrote most of my first book in it—I was pretty single at the time, go figure—and I got the call that my agent wanted to represent me and also the call that the book had sold while I wore it.”

“Aw.”

“The second call happened on the toilet.”

I covered my mouth so that my guffaws wouldn’t wake Mel again. “Wow. Nice detail.”

“You wanted the bad. Turns out—I poop.”

“Not me, you pervert.”

He listed more grievous faults. “I bite my nails. I will leave dishes crusted until they smell. And I will likely have to spend solid time cleaning my bathroom today so you don’t faint from horror.”

“That’s… That’s gross.”

“You’re the mess, not me.”

“Don’t sass me, stinky shirt.”

“Fair enough.” The line clicked and echoed for a moment. “Let’s see… I put almost everything off until far past the point of being a responsible adult. I had to start letting them take the rent directly from my account. I got many eviction notices because I just forgot.”

“Holy shit. That’s next-level irresponsibility. I feel a lot better about myself now.”

“Excellent.”

I threw my other leg up over the couch. “Out with it—more dirt.”

“Oh, come now,” he said, very British-ly. “I have to save a few terrible habits for the third date.”

“Someone’s optimistic.”

He laughed, the adorable and smarmy sound of a man whose performance on date number two would not be in doubt. I joined in, because I had no doubts, either.

“I’ll give you one more,” he dangled promisingly. “I write fan fic.”

“My best friend does that.”

“It’s X-Files. And I didn’t write it in the 90s, I write it now. And it’s about Mulder…and alien Scully.”

My mouth dropped. “You mean…Scully is an alien?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“And…I’m going to regret asking…what sort of alien is she?”

A great and terrible silence descended through the line, and I began picturing a redheaded FBI agent with three boobs.

The truth was weirder. “She has tentacles,” he finally ground out.

I began giggling uncontrollably. Mel yelled from the other room, but she would forgive me once we Googled and read this fan fic.

199. “Oh, my God, I love you!” I blurted into the phone

He gasped. It was a manly gasp, but still very gasp-y in nature.

“I mean…” Oh fuck shit fucker fuckery fucking fucksticks! “I didn’t mean love love, I meant—”

“You mean ‘tentacle Scully reaming Mulder’ love you.”

My leg fell off the couch, I laughed so hard. Every cell in my body had turned into a bubble and I floated away on a sea of Yash. “Yes. Wow. That is a very damning flaw. And also a very damning virtue.”

“Thank you.”

“You understand I will be reading these immediately.”

He sighed. “Yes, I understand. Please be forewarned that I’m not half the lover alien Scully is.”

“Neither am I. It’s Scully as played by Gillian Anderson. She’s the hottest person on earth.”

“Or on Saturn Five.” He laughed at his own silliness and said, “Until eight, my dear. Enjoy the first day of your New Year.”

“January first!” I agreed with enthusiasm. Wait… January first. The first? “Oh, shit, I have to work! What time is it?”

“Noon-ish.”

“Aaaah!” I flipped my legs to the ground. I should have been at the coffee shop an hour ago! I’d agreed to work January first before I knew I’d be enacting mighty and glorious revenge the night before. And also drinking.

Yash’s voice got higher. “Oh, no. You have a flight? Will you be back by eight?”

I paused on my knees while the world swirled. Shit.

200. Shit

“Uh…yes. I have to… I’m not flying. I’m… I’m…teaching?”

201. Yes. Teaching

“Yes, teaching,” I agreed with myself.

“Oh. What do you teach?”

Uh. Uh. “Landing.”

“Landing? Fuck me, you can land a plane?”

202. Landing?!

Uh. Uh. “Yes, of course.” I stood, but barely. The hangover babies in my head were having grandchildren, and these crotchlings were real second-generation trust fund assholes. “All flight attendants can land a plane. In case the pilots die.”

He groaned. “Does that happen often?” His voice had risen in octave, like Mariah Carey’s. “I don’t love flying—are pilots constantly dropping dead?”

I stumbled through Mel’s room and into her closet. I could not barista in my Forever 21 jailbait garb. “No, of course not. It’s just standard protocol. For safety.” I shoved clothes aside until I found a simple button-down. “For us.” Jeans. Jeans. Where were her jeans? “Flight attendants. Like when we…uh…” Her shoes were too big, shoot. “Shoot hijackers.”

“What?”

Wait—what had I said? My head swam, my stomach swam, and the thread of this stupid conversation had been lost on me at ‘tentacles.’ “Just kidding?”

“Oh, good. You—you don’t carry a gun on the plane, do you?”

203. I really needed to start listening to what came out of my mouth

“Nope. Well, I’ve got to be getting to Flight Attendant…College…of…Piloting and…Safety Systemic…Systems.”

204. I was the best liar ever

“I had no idea it was a college degree that flight attendants got. You learn something new every day, eh?”

205. Apparently

“See you later,” I told him before hanging up before I said anything else ridiculous before I ruined my chance of getting laid forever.

I yanked on two pairs of Mel’s socks to make her shoes kind of fit. She glared at me while I bent down to give her a kiss on the forehead. “Thanks for a great night, baby.”

“Your breath is even worse now. And you can just send that garbage can down the garbage chute if you don’t have time to wash it.”

Dutifully, I scooped it up and held my nose on the way out. “I’ll get you a new one.”

A happy grunt was my only reply. I trashed her trash and hopped a cab to work. Thanks be to all that is holy, I found a mint in my purse and sucked on it while spreading into the cab seat like a pool of, well, vomit. The whole world was made of angry molasses, and I swam through it with a headache the size of Alaska. Hopefully, Hunter wouldn’t fire me.

Actually… Who the heck cared?

And yet I did actually care that I’d put my fellow retail drones out—

206. Fucking up should not adversely affect the drone underclass

The cab pulled up to JaVaVaVoom. I paid and leaped from the door. And face-planted on the sidewalk. The tumble knocked the wind out of me, not to mention the rest of my stomach contents. On my hands and knees, I panted and spit out the rest of last night. Oh, gross. So, so gross.

Laughter erupted above me and I managed to lift my head just enough to see Hunter guffawing a safe distance away. “Well, Dag,” he said. “I see why you’re late.”

I collapsed onto the sidewalk in the posture adopted by lazy fetuses. The ground could not possibly be dirtier than the satanic rituals happening inside my body. “Ugh,” I replied, saying it all.

“Go home. We can handle it.”

“I’m sorry,” I groaned. Oh, God, I wanted to die. “I tried.”

“I hear you, and I appreciate that.” I heard a shutter click and I knew what that meant. “But I also reserve the right to mock your sorry ass forever.”

I flashed him a weak thumbs-up, and he, still laughing, returned to the coffee shop. My hand dropped to the sidewalk with a smack.

Home. I had to get home somehow. What should I do about the pile of puke? Was it rude to leave it on the sidewalk? But how did I clean it?

207. Ugh, I’d lost my lunch more in a few weeks than I had in a few years

208. That’s a sign of high-quality living

Two old ladies stopped beside me. “Oh, dear,” said one, a white lady in a leopard-print hat.

“My goodness,” said the other, a black lady in a leopard-print hat.

“Help me,” I groaned.

White friend said, “Mavis, this silly bitch is hung over. Ha! Don’t get your Keds in her mess.”

Black friend said, “She might be still drunk. If she isn’t, she should be. You get her other arm, Hazel.”

Hazel and Mavis hauled me with all their might to my feet. That is to say, they tugged weakly, and I hauled my hungover ass to my feet. “Thank you,” I managed to groan. I shoved my hand into my purse for my sunglasses, which I’d forgotten existed up to now. Aaaaaahhh. Bye, bye, evil sun. Swaying, I said, “I have to get a cab so I can go home. I have to rest because of cute boy.”

Hazel sucked on her dentures. “Cute boy?”

Mavis sucked on her dentures. “I haven’t had a cute boy in twenty years.”

“That’s because you don’t put out soon enough,” Hazel admonished. “At our age, you can’t wait three dates. He might be dead by then. It’s happened to you already.”

“Twice.”

I just stood there, rocking and holding my stomach. I could only dream that Mel and I would be discussing senior sex in leopard print one day.

They got me a cab and poured me into it. I asked them if I should do anything about the vomit, and they said no, that New York in the seventies had been puke as far as the eye could see.

Would they let me move in with them?

The two ladies waved as the cab took me away, and I slid all the way to lie in the back seat. The number of germs now swarming my body probably numbered in the gazillion range, but perhaps they’d be killed by the alcohol. Alcohol. I sniffed. I sniffed my arm—I smelled like booze. It oozed from my very pores!

209. Perhaps even…my soul

210. Scumbag achievement unlocked

By some miracle—i.e. the cab—I made it home. The walk to my elevator and into the apartment was a blur, and I just made it into the bedroom before I collapsed.

As I lay on my bed for a while and stared up at the ceiling, I thought about the pain I was in. The trouble I had caused last night. The excessive partying. The disregard for the laws of man.

211. And I loved every single moment of it

212. It is a far, far better thing to barf from fun times than to barf from sadness

Via crawling, the party girl’s method of creeping, I made it into the kitchen, where I grabbed a sports drink from the fridge.

213. Plan ahead to get a-drunk

Sports drink and I crawled into the living room and collapsed onto the couch. No doing my taxes today, no freaking way. Heh heh. I sipped and flipped on the TV, where daytime talk shows would lull me to sleep. Before I conked out, I set three different phone alarms for a few hours from now—neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor hangover would keep me from sexy Yash tonight.