21. CHAPTER TWENTY #2
Nope . Can’t call Dad. And yes, I do have AAA but it’s my dad’s policy, so I’m not sure if that would somehow end up being reported to him. My dad’s the chief of police , you understand. The man is basically a cross between Sherlock Holmes and the Terminator.
That leaves Brady.
I punch my phone screen with my forefinger, locating him in my recent contacts. It rings twice before he picks up.
“Well, hello again. What’s up?” he asks.
“Hi,” I say. “I’m sorry to bug you, but I’m stuck at the Orleans rotary.”
“Stuck? What do you mean?”
“I hit the curb and my tire went flat.”
“Oh, shit. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just don’t know how to change a tire, exactly.”
“Okay. No worries. I can change a tire. I’m on my way home from the mall, so I’ll just come straight to you. Figure no more than 30 minutes? Can you stay where you’re at safely?”
“Yeah, I’m on the grass right off the rotary. If you head around it once, you’ll see me.”
“Okay. Stay in the car. I’ll get there as fast as I can.”
True to his word, Brady comes to my rescue in 28 minutes, not that I’m counting. Only problem is, the metal piece that holds the tire iron and jack in on top of the donut is rusted shut. Brady can’t get it to come loose.
“Do you have a donut I can borrow?”
“Yes, but it might not fit your car. The lug pattern has to match.” Brady scratches his head, thinking. “Maybe you should just take m y car. I’ll stay here and figure out how to handle this.”
“I don’t want to leave you stranded,” I say.
“Nah, no worries. I’ll be fine. I have AAA, so I’ll just get the car towed to Cape and Islands Tire. It’s right up the road, maybe two miles tops.”
“But what if they don’t have a tire?”
“Then they’ll get one. Might take a day or two, but the guys who run the place are good. And the prices are fair.”
“But you’ll be stranded,” I point out.
“Gretch,” he says, reaching out for my hand. “I can get an Uber. It’s no big deal.”
I sigh.
“Anyway, no sense in arguing. You need to be at work, don’t you? It’s almost 5:30.”
“5:30? Holy shit,” I say. “I gotta get the Jell-O. I need to make the shots!”
“Okay, so go. I’ve got this.” Brady gives me a kiss on my forehead and hands me his keys.
“You’re a lifesaver,” I say. “I owe you one.”
“Happy to help,” he says, and the fact that I know he genuinely means this makes me want to curl up in the backseat of my busted Fiesta and do all sorts of unthinkable things to him to express my gratitude.
Unfortunately, I really need to go.
I kiss him goodbye and head to Stop and Shop in Brady’s car. A basketful of Jell-O boxes later, I’m back on the road to Cosmo, and I honk the horn when I pass Brady. He’s on the phone, and gives me a wave from the driver’s seat of my flaming orange ride .
By the time I get back to the studio, I begin mixing and pouring the trays of shots as quickly as I can. At 6:30, they’re all in the fridge and I’m cleaning up the boxes just as Saffron and Indigo arrive with a Domino’s pizza in tow.
“Hey, girl!” Indigo hollers. “Cherry’s right behind us. She had to stop for some yogurt or something because she didn’t think her body could handle pizza after the appendicitis issue,” she explains.
“So, feel free to join us,” Saffron adds. “We can’t finish a whole pie before a party.”
“I’ll bloat,” Indigo laughs.
I grab a slice and sit with them. Cherry walks in moments later.
“Hey!” I say. “You look great. How’s the patient?”
“I think I’m finally ready to dance again,” she says. “No climbing, just to be safe, but I think I can do the basics and teach the choreo and all that.”
“Thank God,” I say. “I’ll be more than happy to go back to my role of partysitter.”
“Dress to pole anyway, though,” Cherry says. “Just in case I need backup or start to feel less than wonderful, okay?”
“No worries,” I reply. “So, your stitches are all healed, then?”
Cherry pulls down the left side of her sweatpants to show us her scar. “They’re mostly dissolved, yeah.”
“That looks badass, Cher,” Saffron says.
Indigo giggles. “When people ask, you should tell them you got in a knife fight.”
“I hate the way it looks. Eventually, I’ll probably get a tattoo to cover it .”
“It’s not bad,” I say. “I’m sure the scarring will fade.”
“All I can say is thank God for the high rise trend,” she says, pulling her pants back up. “I can still wear bikinis and booty shorts.”
“Amen,” Saffron offers, chewing on the crust of her pizza slice.
The girls finish eating and then change into their eveningwear, which is as much of a process as ever.
I obsessively check on the shots in the fridge, but, like the saying goes, A watched pot never boils .
I can’t get my shots to cook faster. By 7:50, I realize this is actually going to be an issue.
I pull Cherry off a pole, where she’s warming up.
“Cher. We’ve got a problem.”
“What’s up?”
“The shots aren’t ready.”
“When did you prep them?”
I sigh. “About 90 minutes ago.”
“Well, that explains it.”
“What should I do?”
Cherry shrugs. “I’m not sure. This has never happened before.”
“I would've had them done on time, but my car got a flat and I had to wait for Brady and switch cars and it took up a bunch of time,” I wail.
“Okay, relax. Listen, the girls paid for a good time, so we’ll just give them one. We good on alcohol?”
“Yeah, we’ve got cases in the back.”
“Then just run the party using regular shots. Nobody will complain.”
“We’re going to burn through bottles way faster that way. ”
“Yeah,” she agrees. “But it’s one party. What other choice do we have?”
I nod. “Okay,” I say. “I’ll get the shot cups and start filling trays up.” I don’t have a good feeling about this. I look down the other end of the room, where Saffron and Indigo are practicing a move called the Bird of Paradise. “Cherry?”
“Yeah?”
I look at her solemnly. “Have you heard from Arrow?”
She nods, turns her back to the girls and lowers her voice. “She had to take Kit to a hotel. They’re staying there together until Jenny gets out of rehab.”
“When will that be?” I ask.
“July 21 st .”
I calculate this in my head. “So, like, just over a week.”
Cherry nods.
“Then what? Will she come back?”
“She’s trying to get Jenny to agree to move back here, from what I understand. But Jenny’s in rough shape. Ricky’s back in jail. It’s a mess over there.”
“Okay,” I sigh. “How’s Kit?”
Cherry smiles. “Thankfully, she’s like a beam of light in a really dark situation.
She’s doing well, all things considered.
She gets to visit with Jenny a few times a week, and she and Arrow are like two peas in a pod.
Kit calls her Auntie Joy, which is maybe the cutest thing ever.
She put her in a half-day summer camp at the YMCA so she gets to swim and go to the playground and stuff, which is a whole lot better than being stuck in some random hotel room all day. ”
“That’s good,” I say. “Please send her my best. ”
“I will,” Cherry says. “Now, go get those shots ready. They’re going to be here any minute.”
The party consists of 23 guests, all from New Jersey.
They roll up in limousines (thank God, no tow lot tomorrow), come decked out in micro-dresses with sky-high heels and hair extensions and extra-plump lips.
Many have flashing penis necklaces on, and the bride is wearing a pink plastic crown made up of tiny upright penises.
Several of them come into the space double fisting bottles of hard liquor: Patron, Absolut, Jim Beam, Smirnoff.
One girl has a bottle of Boone’s, which would strike me as funny if I wasn’t undergoing a current alcohol crisis.
They’re not supposed to bring in outside booze, but maybe if we make an exception just this once, we won’t burn through our own supply.
I mean, they’re going to do shots either way.
Might as well let them drink what they want.
I look at Cherry, silently asking her the question of whether or not we should allow this, and when she shrugs, I get the sense that she’s thinking the same thing I am.
So, shots become more of a situation where most of the girls have affixed themselves to the bottle of their choosing, as if these were water bottles during a workout.
I put the pretzel bites on early, because the group gets turned up pretty quick.
They’re grinding all over each other, all over the poles – one of them gets sloshed so quickly that she actually starts licking a pole. Nasty.
By the time the strippers come, the group is largely out of control.
The three guys are dressed as wealthy businessmen in a Fifty Shades type of tribute, and before long the girls begin using silks and handcuffs and all sorts of other BDSM-ligh t toys that seem a bit over the top for the way we usually run things.
But, hey, who am I to say what’s okay and what’s not?
Cherry’s back now, so I look to her for guidance.
Only, she appears to be just as much of a deer in the headlights as I am.
Even the guys look a little surprised, but they’re busy being pawed at by the parched partygoers, one of whom clearly has a testicle fetish and keeps grundle-grabbing our guys.
I can only shake my head and pray this all ends soon.
I pay out the boys in the back office as the food arrives: they’ve ordered edible phalluses in every variety you can imagine, in keeping with their penis vibe, I suppose.
There’s sausage and peppers, foot long Sabrett hot dogs, pigs in blankets, you name it.
It’s actually quite repulsive, the stench of all that processed meat and condiments, but, um, the heart wants what it wants, I guess?
And if it wants dick-shaped dinner doused in sauerkraut? Ugh. I don’t even know.
It doesn’t take long for madness to ensue. There’s a girl by the end of the buffet who loses her footing. Another girl catches her. As soon as the first girl stands upright again, she vomits.
Right into the tray of Polish kielbasa.
I am reminded of the first time I met Arrow. “There are two things that fuck up a good time,” she said.
Vomit and death.
Saffron, Indigo, and I eyeball each other when it registers that this has escalated in to one of those, “If you’re going to puke, then I’m going to puke” situations, and before I can figure out what to do, a second girl throws up.
The vom it gets into the first girl’s hair. Cherry’s eyes bug out of her head.
I shift into crisis mode. Get them outside, I tell myself.
I hesitantly wrap my arm around the first girl and begin to usher her toward the door.
She stops to throw up once more on the way out.
Another partygoer follows me with the second sick girl, thank God.
I leave her out there with the two friends to get sick all over the gravel lot in front of Cosmo-pole-itan.
Back inside, the remaining girls have been ushered away from the food.
Indigo tries to get them back on the pole, and some of the more inebriated ones follow her, while Saffron offers each of the ones who are complaining of still being hungry a dry hot dog bun.
I guess she figures bread will keep this from continuing.
Meanwhile, I grab a black garbage bag and begin to throw the contents of the buffet area into it, trying desperately not to inhale the scent of regurgitation that lingers heavy in the air.
Cherry grabs the mop bucket and fills it with water and disinfectant, and she begins to mop the area.
I prop the door open to remove the filled garbage bag and check on the girls outside.
I’ll have to hose down the lot, I realize.
It reeks out here. The first puker, whose name I learn is Amber, seems to have gotten most of it out.
The second puker, Jessica, is only getting started, and I narrowly avoid getting a fresh round of splatter on my shoes as she gets going again.
The caretaker, Fiona, is studying to be a nurse, I learn.
She asks me if we have any water or electrolytes.
A lady walking a dog by flashlight notices us, but thankfully, doesn’t stop – just gives us all a disgusted, judgmental look. I get it lady. I ’m grossed out, too. I go back inside to get some water bottles.
Which is when I see Cherry holding her side.
“What happened?” I ask.
“I think I pulled something,” she says. “It hurts.”
She lowers her hot shorts and yup, of course. Her incision is bleeding.
“Fuck,” I say. “We need to end this. Where’s the bride?”
“Over there.” Cherry points to the spin pole. Sure enough, the bride is laughing and spinning like a child on a merry go round.
“Go sit down in the back. I’ll figure this out.”
I tell the bride we need to call the limos back, that her friends are sick outside and we’re so sorry, we have to shut down the party a little bit early.
I take her to the locker where we put all the cell phones so she can locate hers, and I promise her we’ll give her a 50% discount on the party because of this mishap.
I don’t need word getting out that a party at Cosmo was such a disaster on my account.
Fucking Jell-O shots.
She calls one of the limo drivers for me and hands me the phone. I explain what’s happened and he says the fleet will be back in ten minutes.
I cut the music to a chorus of very loud groans and announce that the party has to end early. “Your cars are on their way. Please come get your personal belongings and you can wait outside.”
By the grace of God, somehow the women listen, even though they’re pissed.
Indigo and Saffron help me get them outside.
I settle up the money with the maid of honor, and, tru e to my word, give her 50% off, which – since the strippers already took their share, leaves me and the girls with $400 for the night. $100 each.
I’d make more on a Wednesday at the Diamond Excelsior pub.
Finally, they leave. Cherry covers her incision with Band-Aids, since that’s all we have, and she leaves too, at my insistence. She can’t be mopping or picking up heavy trash bags, anyway, and she’ll need to see a doctor ASAP. Saffron, Indigo and I are left to clean up the extremely foul mess.
“I’m sorry, you guys,” I say. “It was my fault. If we had stuck to the plan and had Jell-O shots ready, this never would have happened.”
“Well, now we know,” Saffron says.
“Yeah. I’ll never break the protocol again, that’s for sure.”
“You think Cherry will tell Arrow?” Indigo asks.
“Shit. I hope not,” I reply.
My stomach turns.
And this time, it’s not because of the persistent aroma of vomit in the air.