After my shower, I climb into bed naked as the day I was born, a nap-that-spans-infinity on my woe-weary mind. Instantly, my speak buzzes to life.
“Butler,” Zoë says. “What’s beat?”
“In-n-out,” I mumble.
“How did throwing pointy sticks and running in circles go?”
“Track? Canceled due to rainage.”
“Word. So, pick you up in an hour?”
I grumble, “Dunno, Zo. I’m hacked, massive.”
“Gay.”
I sigh. “Jack—”
“Unacceptable, human,” Robo-Zoë says. “Pre-evening activities will officially commence in T-minus thirty minutes.”
“You get cooler every time you talk like that.”
“Obviously,” she deadpans. “Now get your butt in gear, flippity-flap. Box chain dynasty dining waits for no man.”
I groan and we hang up. I mentally assemble an outfit, which is much simpler than actually getting dressed. I’d forgotten that it’s Thursday, aka Betties’ Night Out, starring the usual suspects—Zoë, Maya, and me. I’m pondering who this me character might be, without much success, when a threatening buzz arrives.
Get ur ass outta bed or we’re U-Hauling ur sad sack by the teats into Zoë’s whip if it’s the last mortal thing we ever do. Clothes, or no.
It’s like that?
Believe.
So I lift my sad sack from the warm damp of my sheets, take a fistful of pain meds, pull on my visualized outfit, and even push my shag around under the blow dryer a bit. We go out for dinner at the cheapy chain restaurant with the cute waiter Maya always flirts up, and we sneak sips of peach schnapps from a stainless steel canteen called the Five-Fingered Flask that I pinched from a convenience store many moons ago.
After a few rounds, I find my stride. Here, with these betties, I’m Queen Badrat and I’m up to no good and visions of Eve Brooks fade into the diner’s faux-wood facade and knickknack trinkets strung along the walls. I’m superfreeze fly in my patterned button-up and cock-eyed navy hat and I’m one shady character with a big, sideways grin.
“Maya-Jack,” I say. “Give Waiter-Shaver a sneak peek of your new PG-13 tramp stamp and he’ll think you’re so switch he’ll finally ask what you’re into tonight.”
Zoë scowls as she pulls last sip from Five-Fingered. “Or,” she says. “Slip him your fake and order Mama some more happy sauce.”
I’m in rare form. Medium rare. “Or, flash him the Marilyns and you, my dear, can have it all.”
Maya spits her water back into her glass, blushing like a 1950s hemorrhoid cream commercial spokeswoman. Zoë pounds her fist on the table—she loves when I call Maya’s breasts by their proper name.
“Lu,” Zoë says. “I’ll show you my tits if you give me Five-Fingered.”
“Whoa, Jack. Go Children Slow. You can offer to show me your crank water-bra bumps a million times, but you’ll never get this flask. I risked my life for this thing. I’m practically an outlaw.” I grin, hold up Five-Fingered with one mitt and a peace sign with the other. “Mine-not-yours.”
As we heel it out, Zoë and I secretly scratch Maya’s name and number on the back of the check, tell him to buzz and we’ll whisk him away from his mortal hell in the Flaming Chariot of Fire, aka Zoë’s hot whip. But Waiter-Shaver doesn’t buzz and we don’t say a thing.
We linger in the lot to drag tars and then climb into the Chariot, pour more schnapps into Five-Fingered, and cut a wheel to the club to slice it up. Into the wee hours of night we go mega robo-teckto on the floor, our blood thumping in time with thick, pulsating electro-switch beats. I grind my pelvis into slick-rick shavers all night and even manage to sneak off and talk up the sexy-betty bartender a bit. And, per usual, I’m glad I let my Jacks drag my sad sack out. I’d never tell them as much, but I’m pretty sure they know.
On the late-night drive home, Zo and My sit in the front, scatting up a goddamn gossip storm and I’m sauced and loose in the back, fighting the urge to spill my Never-Ending Pending soul to my apple-Jacks. But instead, I zone out, watching them laugh and wondering where we’ll be in two months, ten years, a lifetime.
Us three cats have been apple-Jacks forever, our small group the broken remnants of a larger clan eroded away over the years, school’s high tide wishing and washing Jacks in-n-out with the moon. Freshman year, after Eve Brooks ditched my sorry behind for shinier, more glamorous shores, the three of us crystallized into this gang of mismatched socks. These betties know almost everything about me. Almost.
I catch Zoë’s eye in the rearview and she pulls a face, faking like Maya’s boring her with prom speak when I know Zo’s just as hyped as the next flap-Jack. I think on how much I’m gonna miss them both. Don’t know what I’ll do without them.
Zoë and I are partners in crime. A terrible twosome. Boris and Natasha, Cheech and Chong, Thelma and Louise without the scarves and skirts. Zoë’s a tough nut, hard as rocks, stiff as a board, straight as a nail. Her mom’s a dropout and her dad’s a hillbilly hick. She makes it with flap-Jacks in the city—gutter-mouthed Jacks who bartend, and rough, slick shavers who sauce up and work on whips and enlist in the Service. We got mixed up on alters a year back, rolling too hard for too long, totally strung out. Bad news bears and near disaster. But we’re on the wagon with the hardgoods. She’s superfreeze on the dance floor and riot as hell. She’s my closest ally. My rock. Zoë’s Tabby Cat.
Maya opens her eyes wide, eating it up, as Zoë interrupts to spill on some detail of the particular shape and contour of some unfortunate shaver’s nether parts.
Maya, she’s way into heart-Jacks. She’s henna-dyed redhead, sly, mysterious, awkward, and demure. She’s Wife-in-Training and she wears her bleeding heart oozing and dripping onto her perfect sleeve. Clash-Jacks pick on her, shavers especially, who feel her need and desire and use it to wound her. Maya’s a good listener and a hornet’s nest of honey. Maya’s Siamese Cat.
I flip open my Zippo on my pants, over and over, watching the last dim lights of the city fade as we cruise home to the burbs, thinking on what it’d be like to pull a U-ey and speed away from the familiar treetops and ramshackle old farmhouses, plastic-sided McMansions cluttering wide-paved cul-de-sacs. Don’t look back, never look back.
Me, I wish I were Tom Cat, but I’m not. I’m Feral. I’m private and elusive, wild and unpredictable. Lone. I’m quick and gritty and keep my scrappy nest of secrets in a den under an old, rusty junk banger. Houdini-junkyard-hobo, that’s me.
Together, we’re Tabby, Siamese, and Feral. We’re a pack of strays and as we pull off and into a twenty-four-hour Quik Stop, Zoë points at the machines, a cuppa joe on her mind; Maya cranes her neck to scope a group of shaver Jacks lingering by the gas pumps; and I have my eye on an ad for a carton of tars inside the store. We get out, go our separate ways without saying a word.
We are feline. Hear us meow.