Simone
Even in college, I was never much of a party girl. I would sometimes see party girls coming home if I got up early to go to the gym or catch a shift at the café where I worked as a waitress because I didn’t want to live entirely off Mom and Dad. They always look hollow-eyed, drugged-out, completely disconnected from what was going on around them. Tonight, sitting in the bar with Cecilia and her friends for the bachelorette party, is no different. I’m still not a party girl, and I have no desire to be one.
We sit in a corner booth, Cecilia with a Soon to Be Taken banner across her dress, hot pink just like her dress, so that in the flashing strobe lights it’s difficult to make out the text. All around her, her friends sit, women I’ve only just met tonight. Most of them are club girls, I learn, which means they’re girls who hang around the Seven Sinners’ clubhouses when they’re partying, and fuck them. The idea repulses me, just going to a party and waiting for some random biker to come onto you. The woman I’m sitting next to is called Jess, one of the more sensible ones.
I ask her what this club girl stuff is all about.
“It’s just a bit of fun,” she tells me, and then takes a shot of vodka. She makes a disgusted face and wipes her mouth. “It’s just . . . I don’t know. They’re big, burly men. They know how to give a lady a good time. Why do women have to defend themselves when it comes to this? That’s what I want to know. The men can just do it and nobody says anything, but women have to write a whole book about why they’re allowed to get fucked and never speak to the man again. It’s so annoying!”
“I guess so,” I mutter, sipping my water.
I sink into the chair and let the party whirl around me for a time. I look at the women, each of them melting into each other. Most of them look similar to Cecilia, with dyed hair and short skirts. I look at them, and I wonder. I can’t help but wondering. I don’t want to wonder, but it just happens.
I wonder if any of them have had sex with Rocco. It’s been two days since the lunch and for some reason he keeps coming back to me, invading my mind. One morning I wake up with my hands between my legs and the aftermath of a dream pressed all around me, his phantom hands on my breasts, his phantom lips on my clit, his hands on my ass, too, all of me touched by him in the way only dreams can make happen. I look at a woman with large breasts pushed up in her bra to make them larger, and think about Rocco burying his face in them. It shouldn’t, but the thought makes me angry. I hate to think about it.
Cecilia drops next to me, breaking my reverie. “Drink, Mona!” she squeals. “None of that water stuff!”
She slides two shots to me. Usually I would push them away. But my mind is annoying me, hounding me. There has never been anything in my life which has followed me like this. I guess our lives have been too easy. There has never been a constant nagging, a constant source of distraction. I’ll stare at my computer screen trying to work up a business plan for my current client—I’m doing some freelance business work in between jobs—and I see Rocco. So instead of pushing the drinks away, I neck both of them. They burn down my throat, searing my insides.
“Ah!” I shout, coughing. “Ah! Ah!”
“Oh my . . .” Cecilia claps me on the back, and then screams for the entire table to hear, “My girl has become a woman!”
The table erupts into screams and cackles and clapping. Cecilia puts two more glasses in front of me. Without giving myself time to ponder what I’m doing, I take another drink, and another, and soon I’ve taken five or six and I’m on the dance floor, pumping my hips and nodding my head up and down to the music. I have no idea if I look ridiculous. I must look pretty silly, since I’ve never really danced before. But it feels good. The music gets under my skin, into my bones, pulses into my skull and into my brain. I don’t think about anything . . .
And yet now Sensible Jess and I are in the toilet, Jess dabbing makeup onto her face, me talking a mile a minute with no clue what I’m saying. It’s like tuning into a radio. When I find the right frequency, I hear my own words.
“. . . It’s not that I want him or anything like that. I don’t even know him. I just want to know if every woman in this place has, like—” I catch myself, my sober half taking hold for a second. I’ll regret this if I keep on.
“Who’re we talking about?” Jess drops her makeup into her handbag. “Sorry, honey. I’m buzzed.”
“Nobody!” I blurt. “I need some air.”
“Do you want some company?”
“Sure, sure. If you want. Fine.”
“I want a cigarette, anyway.”
“Okay, cool. Cool.”
We stand outside the club, Jess smoking and me leaning against the wall, letting the cool spring air caress my face, hoping to sober up and yet not wanting to sober up. I’m in that in-between drunken state, where it could go either way. Shots or water, that’s the question.
“Do you want one?” Jess asks, presenting her packet of cigarettes.
“Really?” I lick my lips, nervous. I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life. Cecilia has. I caught her on our fifteenth birthday at school, waiting at our usual spot to walk home with one nonchalantly hanging out of the corner of her mouth. “What kind are they?” I’m just stalling for time. I know nothing about cigarettes or if there are different types. She could say anything and I wouldn’t know if she’s messing me around.
Even though Jess is the sensible one, she has a dyed red streak through her bright blonde hair. When she shakes her head, the red streak multiplies and wobbles. I grip the wall, giggling pointlessly. I’m not drunk, I tell myself. “Cigarettes don’t have types, or do they?” I ask.
“Here you go.” A cigarette appears in front of my face. “Smoke away.”
She hands me the lighter and I try to light, but I can’t get the flame to catch. After a minute of trying I’ve just managed to light the tip when somebody screams in my ear, “Simone?”
I leap back, hands raised, swiveling to the shouter. A blur stands there, at the front of a few blurs. I focus my eyes, try to get a shape to appear from out of the blur. Slowly, a woman emerges, middle-aged with graying hair and a friendly, confused face. The blurred shapes behind her are her friends. It’s Ms. Hennessy, I realize, from my internship at the MGM Resorts marketing division.
“Is that you . . . Simone?” She says my name like it’s a foreign word she hasn’t learned how to pronounce.
“Hello, Ms. Hennessy.” I offer my hand, trip, recover and offer my hand again.
She watches all of this with a blank face, and then a socialite’s smile plasters over it. “Okay, nice to see you,” she says. “What a coincidence!” She looks over my shoulder, at Jess, and then whispers to one of her entourage, “What odd little friends she has.” She turns away and begins walking down the street, tittering with her gang.
I should let it go. There’s no reason for me to be angry. I hardly know Jess. And yet Jess gave me a cigarette. Jess danced with me. Jess got some air with me. Jess has been my friend tonight. Before I can give any serious consideration to what I’m doing, I’m at her shoulder, tapping a quivering forefinger against it.
“Uh, yes?” She turns.
I stand close to her, eye to eye. “You’re a stuck-up bitch. Who do you think you are, sneering at her?” I point at Jess, who watches dumbfounded. I think she missed the whole exchange. “She’s a good person. Just because she doesn’t laugh like ha-ha-ha, it doesn’t mean she’s not a good . . . get away from me!”
I head into the bar, Jess trailing after me. “What was that about?”
“Drinks!” I shout. I throw my arm around her. “Nobody sneers at my girl!”
I can hardly walk. I can hardly see. Soon, maybe, the drunkenness will turn sour and I’ll want nothing more than to sober up and stop feeling like a fool. But right now, I find I like feeling like a fool.