2: EN LA NOCHE-1
2004 Words
2: EN LA NOCHEVicki maneuvered her car into the only open space outside Hypnotic Encounters. The flashing neon sign, depicting a naked lady falling into a martini glass, illuminated the slush-covered front entrance.
She slipped on a patch of ice as she reached to open the front doors to the club and her hand slid right off, breaking one of her Pampering Pink–colored fingernails. She flapped her hand to help lessen the sting. When the pain subsided, she opened the door, and a large man in a blue shirt adorned with the strip club’s girl-in-a-martini logo greeted her, the ear-piercing thump of “When Doves Cry” filling the venue as Vicki could see the profile of a girl grinding on the pole to the beat.
“ID, please,” he said.
Vicki reached into her back pocket—her broken nail snagging on the fabric of her tight jeans—and retrieved her driver’s license.
The bouncer glanced at it and handed it back to her. “First time here?”
“What makes you ask that?” Vicki asked, while returning the license into her pocket.
“Says you just turned twenty-one this month.”
Vicki blushed. “I’m here to see my friend. She’s working tonight.”
“Oh? And who’s that?”
“Caitlin.”
The bouncer chuckled. “Look, girl. Real names mean nothing to me. In here, they only go by their stage names.”
“I think she picked Aurora. She’s new. Last night was her first night.”
The bouncer leaned backward and folded his arms. “And it was her last night too.”
Vicki furrowed her brows and shook her head. “I’m not following.”
“Aurora—Caitlin—had a meltdown onstage. Froze like a two-bit w***e in church. One of our regulars actually had to talk her down. Pissed off the boss. Gramps not only talked her down, he talked her right into getting dressed and quitting. We tossed out the old man on his bony, frail ass.”
Vicki snickered and raised her hand to cover her mouth. The idea of Caitlin paralyzed with fear onstage for her first night as a stripper filled Vicki with childlike glee. And she had no idea why.
Vicki thanked the bouncer for the information and headed toward her car in the parking lot, the muffled sounds of Prince trapped inside the smoke-filled den for the perverted.
After she had merged with the commuter traffic, she pointed her car toward Caitlin’s house in Lynn. Keeping her eyes on the road, Vicki rummaged through the messy pile of cassette tapes scattered on the passenger seat. When a red traffic light forced her to stop, she located the album she had been looking for. She inserted Side B of the white cassette into the deck and let the radio autoplay the first track.
With the intention of distracting herself until she could vent to her best friend about her blind date blowing her off, she turned the music louder and drummed on the steering wheel, while her favorite rock star serenaded her with wanting flesh for fantasy.
“So I made a fool of myself tonight. Twice!” Vicki said, when Caitlin opened the door. Without waiting for an invitation, Vicki rushed past her best friend into the living room.
“Umm, come in,” Caitlin said, snickering at her friend’s unabashed entrance, and closed the front door.
“Wait. Are your parents home?”
“Nope. They won advanced-screening tickets on the radio for some movie that doesn’t come out until next week. Johnny Dangerously or something like that.”
“Grody to the max. I hate old detective tales.”
Caitlin chortled. “You mean, crime-noir?”
Vicki inserted her index finger into her mouth and made a gagging gesture. “Yeah. So boring.”
“But it does have Michael Keaton in it.”
“Yeah, he can be my Mr. Mom any day.”
Caitlin rolled her eyes and grabbed Vicki’s hand, pulling her toward her bedroom.
“When are you moving out?” Vicki asked. “You’re twenty-one now. It’s kind of embarrassing.”
“That’s why I took the job at Hypnotic Encounters. Was gonna save up to get my own place. I’ve been keeping my eye on some really cheap places over in Parkview.”
“Well, that leads me to one of the things that happened to me tonight.”
“Wait.” Caitlin stopped. “Wasn’t tonight your blind date with … with … What was his name?”
“Tony. Donna never told me his last name. Just told me how hot he was, used to be the star quarterback in high school, yada-yada-yada. Doesn’t matter anymore anyway.”
Caitlin nodded. “I can only imagine the reason why you’re here instead of there is because he was a real jerk.”
“I think I’d take a jerk over being stood up.”
“Bastard,” Caitlin said under her breath. “Come in here. Let me show you what I got today.”
Caitlin dragged Vicki by the wrist into her purple-vomited-everywhere bedroom and handed her a vinyl album cover.
“My parents hate her, so I had to hide it. I played it as soon as they left.” Caitlin reached across her vanity and replaced the gramophone’s needle on the first song. Madonna’s voice filled the room.
“So I went by to see you dance after I left the restaurant. Thought maybe a good laugh would cheer me up.”
Caitlin shot her friend a fake-angry glare and then laughed. “I don’t know what happened. I hit the stage for my first dance, cowboy hat and all. ‘Hold Me Now’ to boot.”
“By the Thompson Twins? Eww. I hate that song. You should’ve used this song.” Vicki gestured to the record player. “This sounds like your personal theme song. No wonder you were fired.”
“I was not fired! And are you calling me material?” Caitlin teased and shot a glance at the speakers. “I don’t know what happened, Vic. Stage fright? Regret? Shyness?”
“An awful song?”
Caitlin punched Vicki in the arm. “I just froze. I couldn’t stop staring at that pole, like it’d have some transcendent wisdom for me or something. Some old guy snapped me out of it and put a lot of things into perspective. He was tossed, but I feel like I was saved. In more ways than one last night.”
“What’d you do?”
“Chucked my cowboy hat in the trash and came home. But that’s so sweet you tried to see me dance.”
“I only agreed to go out with Tony to make Stepp jealous.”
“Girl, you got it bad! I’ve never seen you have the hots for anyone this bad before. And I’ve known you for more than half your life.”
“He’s just so hot. It doesn’t matter if he’s paying me a compliment or yelling at me from his office about something I royally f****d up. Both make me flustered. I break out in a sweat every morning he shows up. I try to get to the office before eight so I can open it up, and I make sure I’m there to have his coffee ready.”
“Isn’t he married?”
“Divorced.” Vicki went off into her la-la land daydreaming.
“Aren’t you curious about his first wife?”
Vicki frowned. “Why?”
“To see what kind of woman he fancies?”
“And then divorces,” Vicki reminded Caitlin.
“Still,” Caitlin continued, “what broke them up?”
Vicki tilted her head.
“If you know what broke them up, then you’d know better how to handle him—or if you should even be dating him.”
Vicki sighed loudly. “I wish he’d look at me just once like I could be more than his secretary.”
“He is a sharp dresser.”
“And he wears those suits so well. I just hate it when he calls me Mouse.”
“Mouse?”
“It’s a stupid pet name he has for me. His little mouse. But I can swallow that if we were, you know, together together.”
“Hey, in five weeks, it’ll be a new year. You never know what the future holds. You want a drink?”
Caitlin reached behind her row of hanging jean jackets and retrieved a duffel bag. She opened it and removed two unopened nips of vodka. She twisted the lid off them and handed one to Vicki.
“Here’s to us, Vic. That 1985 will bring me my own apartment and bring you a roll in the hay with your hunk of a boss.”
The two girls took a warm swig from their small glass bottles.
The record player needle glided from track two into the beginning of the third song.
“This song is so bitchin’,” Caitlin said when Madonna sang her most-current hit.
“Totally. I know who I’d like to touch me for the very first time.”
The two girls clinked their nips together in agreement.
Smith unlocked the front door to his house. Sci-fi sound effects and giggles floated from the living room. He took a deep breath and held it before subjecting himself to the almost-violent barrage of affection he knew he was about to receive. When he felt he was ready for the chaos, he entered.
“Grandpapa!” Addie yelled and flung herself at his legs.
“Hiya, sweet pea,” he replied and rubbed her shoulders.
His only grandson bolted at him and collided with Smith’s stomach, an audible Oomph! escaping his lips. His oldest granddaughter sat on the couch, somewhat unfazed at his arrival and not removing her gaze from the Dr. Who episode on the television.
“We made you cookies!” Addie yelled in excitement.
“You did? Well, good thing I’m hungry!”
“Mel spilled the whole bowl of eggs and flour on the floor. It was such a mess!” his grandson added.
“Shut up, Shaun. You’re such a tattletale.”
“Okay, Melissa,” Smith said. “That’s enough. Don’t talk to your brother like that.”
“Little twerp,” she whispered before returning her attention to the television.
“So where are these cookies?” Smith asked his two grandkids still attached to his legs.
Addie took his hand and led him toward the kitchen. “C’mon, Grandpapa. In here!”
“Isn’t it too late for you guys to still be up?”
“Well …” Addie said, “I already had my beauty rest when I took a nap today. I think Mel could use some beauty rest too!”
“I heard that!” Melissa yelled from the other room.
Smith reached for the cellophane-wrapped plate of cookies on the table.
“Grandpapa? Why are your fingers so dirty?” Shaun asked.
Smith glanced at his hands and saw Blind-Date Guy’s dried blood trapped underneath his fingernails and caked into the wrinkles of all his knuckles. “Let me just wash my hands before I touch any food. Did you guys wash your hands before you made the food?”
“Uh-huh. Grandma made us.”
Smith scrubbed the blood from his skin under the running sink faucet, more to race against Wynn entering the room and seeing his hands than for any sanitary purposes.
Addie and Shaun each grabbed a cookie and handed both to Smith.
“Well, thank you.”
Addie curtsied in acknowledgment of her grandfather’s gratitude.
Smith bent to meet their faces. “You guys don’t really like Dr. Who, do you?”
Addie shook her head. “Mel picked it.”
“At least it wasn’t stupid Grease again,” Shaun added.
“How about we go back in there and pick something we all like?”
Smith’s two grandchildren nodded, eyes wide, and grabbed just enough cookies for themselves, leaving Melissa’s share resting on the plate.
“The committee has deliberated and unanimously agreed,” Smith announced when he entered the living room. “Dr. Who has been voted off the tube to make way for something the young’ins might like instead.”
“Who’s the committee?” Melissa asked with a sourpuss scowl.
“Me and the kids.”
“Fine. Whatever. I’m going to the basement,” Melissa retorted and stormed from the room.
No one spoke as she barreled past her brother and sister.
“You know what? She’s getting too old for these sleepovers,” Wynn said, joining the rest of them in the living room. “She’s hitting the age where she’d rather be at the mall with her friends on the weekends than hanging out with her younger siblings and two old farts like us.”
Smith took his first bite of cookie and laughed. “Old farts. That certainly describes us, all right.”
“Your farts are old!” Addie said, and Shaun giggled.
Smith approached the large cable box sitting on top of the television. “C’mon, kids. Go sit with Grandma. Let’s see what’s on.”
Addie and Shaun snuggled on either side of Wynn with their cookies, and Smith pushed the row of buttons in order, navigating through the channels.
“There! That! That!” Addie yelled.
Smith clicked the button for the next channel. His reflexes to stop moved slower than his repetitive motion.
“No, Grandpapa! Go back!”
Smith pushed the previous tab–like button. “This?”
Both grandkids nodded.
Smith walked across the living room toward the couch with the opening theme song to Fraggle Rock entering its final chorus behind him.
- Writer
