Chapter 29
NICOLETTE WAS NOT A VIOLENT person, but if she didn’t get out of this old car soon, she was definitely going to go postal on somebody.
At least the front seat of Sam’s giant Lincoln Continental felt cooler than the backseat, but the odor from the gold crown air freshener suctioned to the dashboard was still giving her a headache.
She was tempted to take it off and toss it out the window, but it wasn’t her car, and it wasn’t her crown, and so that would be rude.
Of all the things people called her behind her back, rude was her least favorite. She only ever meant to be honest, though her words often came out blunter than she intended.
The heavy breathing in the backseat had tempered a bit, suggesting that Lorelei and Sam had taken a break and might actually be paying attention to the final scene of Where the Heart Is.
Lorelei and Barb were both suckers for a good romantic movie—their collective all-time favorites being Dirty Dancing and Pretty Woman—but Nicolette was simply too cynical to appreciate a happy ending.
Wedding or not, Natalie Portman’s character Novalee would forever be stuck in that small Oklahoma town, only now she’s anchored to it by a kid and a husband. That is not a happily-ever-after.
As far as Nicolette was concerned, there were no happily-ever-afters in real life.
There were just afters. There’s no way a real Baby and Johnny would ever survive Baby’s first semester at her fancy liberal arts college surrounded by all those like-minded students from good families.
And there’s no way a rich man like Edward would ever stick it out with Vivian once he saw how deep her issues had to go for her to become a Hollywood Boulevard– walking prostitute in the first place.
The credits began to roll, and beside her, Barb let out a contented sigh.
Glancing over, Nicolette rolled her eyes at the dreamy expression on her friend’s moon-shaped face, her lips shiny from the giant tub of popcorn she’d almost single-handedly finished.
The thought of all that fake butter was revolting.
“I’m getting out,” Nicolette said abruptly, reaching for the door handle.
“Good, I have to pee,” Lorelei said from the backseat. “Which means that you have to get out, too, Barbie.”
For a car as huge as Sam’s, it was ridiculous that it only had two doors.
The front seats had to be folded forward for Lorelei to climb out the back.
But Barb didn’t move. She remained transfixed by the screen, where an animated bucket of popcorn and a bottle of soda were marching down a movie theater aisle in retro cartoon colors.
It was the same commercial the drive-in always played at intermission, unchanged for as long as the drive-in had been open.
Let’s all go to the lobby, let’s all go to the lobby Let’s all go to the lobby . . . to get ourselves a treat!
“Move,” Lorelei said, bumping the back of the front seat with both hands. The sudden movement made Nicolette feel sick again. “We’ve seen this commercial a hundred times.”
“Hold on,” Barb says, her voice soft. “It reminds me of my dad, when I was little.”
Whoa. Nicolette turned around and gave Lorelei a look. Giving up, Lorelei sighed and leaned back against Sam, who seemed just as immersed in the classic animation as Barb was.
Their friend rarely talked about her father, who’d remarried and was living with his new family somewhere outside Chicago.
Barb didn’t even have his address. Nicolette’s father might be in prison, but at least she knew where the fuck he was.
She couldn’t begin to imagine what Barb was feeling right now, and suddenly she felt tears well up in her eyes.
Furiously she blinked them back, because she wasn’t going to cry over a fucking drive-in commercial.
In any case, there were no fucking happily-ever-afters here.
The sparkling drinks are just dandy
The chocolate bars and the candy
So let’s all go to the lobby . . . to get ourselves a treat!
The song ended, and without a word, everyone got out of the car. Nicolette took several deep breaths of the warm night air, and her nausea subsided just a bit.
“You okay?” Barb said to her, brows furrowed. “You look kind of pale.”
“You really do,” Lorelei said. “You getting sick?”
“I’m fine,” Nicolette snapped. She wasn’t used to people worrying about her, and her friends’ concern made her uncomfortable. She was fine, and even if she wasn’t, she’d take care of it herself, just like she always has. “I just need to use the bathroom.”
“I’m gonna have a smoke while you girls hit the ladies’ room,” Sam drawled.
He already had a cigarette in his mouth and a lighter in his hand. Leaning against the Continental, he lit the tip of the Camel and inhaled. A couple seconds later, dual streams of smoke from his nostrils cut through the night air. He jerked his head toward someone standing nearby.
“Hey, you girls know this fucker, right?” Sam asked them. “If he doesn’t stop taking pictures of us, I’m gonna rip his balls off and wear ’em like a necklace.”
Startled, they all followed Sam’s gaze to where a tall boy with red hair was emptying the trash cans. He was wearing a Starlight staff T-shirt, a Polaroid camera hanging around his neck.
Lorelei made a sound of disgust. “Oh, that’s just my stepbrother, Marty. He works here.” She flashed Marty the finger and mouthed the words fuck off. “He’s also socially awkward and has no friends.”
“Well, I can’t really fault him for that. Neither do I.” The tension eased from Sam’s body. “Get him to come over here.”
Nicolette exchanged a look with Barb, who looked alarmed.
Lorelei sighed. “Just ignore him—”
“Get him or I will.”
Lorelei called out Marty’s name and gestured for him to come over.
“Don’t you know it’s rude to take pictures of people without asking first?
” Sam said when her stepbrother approached.
It didn’t matter that Marty had at least six inches on him; he wasn’t intimidated by the boy in the slightest. “What is it with you and this fucking Polaroid? Let me see the pictures.”
Barb and Lorelei both seemed tense as they watched the exchange. Nicolette stifled a yawn; her friends wouldn’t last a day in her house if this kind of thing made them nervous. Sam wasn’t even raising his voice.
Marty had barely extracted two Polaroids from his back pocket before Sam plucked them both out of his hand. “Not bad, I guess,” he said, analyzing the first one.
“Let me see that,” Lorelei said, and Sam handed it to her.
She showed it to Nicolette and Barb. All four of them were in it, caught unawares, standing around Sam’s Lincoln Continental, which somehow looked even longer in the photo.
“This one’s cute, I’m keeping it,” she told Marty, before tossing it into the front seat of the car.
Sam didn’t like the second one. “See how I’m standing?” he said to Marty. “I don’t think this particular angle flatters a person, do you? What were you planning on doing with these pictures, anyway?”
“Nothing,” Marty said, his face blank, as usual. “I just like taking them, is all.”
With his cigarette dangling out of the side of his mouth, Sam fished his lighter back out of his pocket.
Flicking it, he touched the orange flame to the corner of the offending Polaroid.
The smell of the burning paper and plastic was strong.
Nicolette covered her nose with her hand, and several moviegoers in the immediate vicinity looked over and made a face.
Once the photo was halfway melted, Sam dropped it on the gravel and stomped it out.
“No more pictures, kid,” he said to Marty. “I catch you taking another photo of me, and I’ll be shoving that camera so far down your throat it’ll come out your ass. Now get.”
After Marty loped away, Sam pulled out a tattered leather wallet and extracted a ten.
“Since you’re going to the little girls’ room, why don’t you grab me a cheeseburger on the way back,” he said to Lorelei. “And don’t you girls take forever. You don’t want to miss the start of Gladiator. I saw it last month in San Francisco, but it’s definitely worth a second watch.”
“A burger just for you? But we’re all hungry.” Lorelei tossed her hair, looking at the ten-dollar bill as if she were insulted. “You don’t want us girls to be hungry, do you?”
Nicolette saw Barb cringe at this, but personally, she was impressed.
Lorelei never had a problem demanding what she wanted.
She’d probably ask Sam for the moon if she thought he could climb up and get it for her.
She had no fear, no shame. What’s the worst that could happen? she always said. They say no?
Sam seemed amused as he stuffed the ten back into his wallet and plucked out a fifty instead.
“Fine, you girls go get anything you want,” he said, offering it to Lorelei.
When she reached for it, he pulled her in for a kiss, which went on about three seconds longer than was necessary.
Yick. The nicotine in his mouth would taste disgusting, and Nicolette felt her stomach turn again.
“But I want the change back, pretty lady.”
A few minutes later, bladders emptied, the three of them stood in a row in front of the long mirror as women of all ages drifted in and out of the Starlight’s bathrooms. Turning the faucet as cold as possible, Nicolette washed her hands slowly, willing her latest bout of nausea to pass.
“Sam’s a good kisser,” Lorelei informed them, examining her face in the mirror. Satisfied, she reapplied a coat of lip gloss. “And he’s even better with his fingers.”
“Hurl,” Barb said, making a face as she pulled a ChapStick out of her pocket. “Remind me not to shake his hand.”
Nicolette said nothing, distracted by her reflection. The fluorescent lighting wasn’t doing her any favors. Her chin had broken out, and despite her layers of foundation, the bumps were clearly visible under the harsh bathroom lights.
“You guys like him, right?” Lorelei asked, looking at them in the mirror. “He’s cute, right?”