“Margot!” Brooke shouted when Margot picked up the phone.
“Hello to you too,” Margot said. She was just back from the gym.
“Drop everything,” Brooke said, “we’re doing an intervention.”
“For whom?” Margot asked, wondering if Brooke was kidding.
“That Jonella person is trying to talk Lux into becoming a stripper.”
Margot dropped her latte in the sink and ran out the door.
“But I could lose everything!” Lux shouted at her friends.
Aimee, Brooke, and Margot told her again and in no uncertain terms that she should not even consider becoming a stripper.
“It’s a step backwards,” Aimee said.
“Right! Number one, stripping is going to make you feel like meat,” Margot began listing all the negative aspects of stripping. “You have just begun to own yourself; don’t sell it back to a bunch of ogling strangers. Number two: that job will expose you to people and things that are not good for you. Number three: you have to spend a great deal of money on the costumes and so, number four: it will not provide you the income you think it will. Five: Jonella is a moron. Six: that kind of job will distract you from better work. Seven: it’s night work. Night work sucks. Eight: it will…”
“It will make you feel bad!” Brooke interrupted. “And what are you so afraid of losing that you’re willing to become a stripper just to keep it?”
“All my money,” Lux said. “I got three grand a month coming in from one apartment. If that tenant flakes I got nothing, plus the thousand bucks each month I suddenly gotta pay for maintenance. Can you believe that? A thousand bucks a month!”
“What’s the rent on the place?” Margot asked. She was confused as to how Lux was clearing three grand a month on a thousand square feet.
“Four,” Lux said.
“And your maintenance is one thousand?” Brooke asked.
“Yeah,” said Lux.
“So what’s your mortgage?” Aimee asked.
“Well, nothing,” Lux said. “I paid cash. I own it.”
In the loft next door, Aimee’s neighbor stopped and wondered for a moment what could be going on in Aimee’s loft to make girls squeal and shriek so loudly.
“You own it outright and you’re worried about money!” Margot exclaimed.
“I dunno what ‘outright’ means, but I’m saying I paid cash.”
“Lux,” said Aimee, “take the money out of the apartment. Buy two more apartments. Live in one, rent out the other.”
“But I ain’t got enough money to buy two apartments.”
“You have more than enough money for a down payment on two apartments,” Brooke said. “And the two rents will cover all three mortgages with enough left over for you.”
“Lux,” Aimee said, “it’s time for you to live.”
They devoted the rest of the afternoon to quelling Lux’s uncertainties regarding debt and mortgages. Brooke sorted through the discarded newspapers around Aimee’s bed until she found the real estate section. They reviewed specific apartments on sale in the area, and circled several to be visited. At their insistence, Lux enrolled in a course to acquire her real estate license.
“Ok! Ok! You’re right. I mean, even if I don’t use it I should know what the rules are, right?” Lux said.
“Right,” her friends heartily agreed.
Some weeks later, just as Lux was bidding on a pair of apartments in the same building, Jonella called her on the telephone.
“Hey Lux,” Jonella said over the phone, “can I borrow some money?”
“I thought you were raking it in at the club.”
“Yeah, but I spend a lot of it.”
“Christ, Jonella! What you spend it on?”
“Fuck you Lux, I spent $200 on that costume for the first set. And the rest on drinks and some other shit to get me through the night.”
“Really?” Lux said.
“Fuck-yeah. Strippin fun but I dunno where the money goes. And girls like us need money, alright? And the thing is I’m momentarily outa cash, and I look like shit in the clothes I got. Let’s go out, girl. Me and you like we used to.”
“Nah, nah, nah,” Lux said. “Can’t. I got this class and a big test I’m studying for.”
“That suck, girl. So can I get some money from you?”
“For what?”
“Well, I ain’t got no big test I gotta study for. Just cuz you stupid why should I suffer?”
While Lux appreciated Jonella’s logic, she said no. Jonella believed that Lux was too proud to strip. She figured Lux was still taking cash from “old cock,” and she believed Lux should share just a little of it with her. So Jonella asked again, this time not as nicely. Lux had rent coming in on her first apartment, but that money was earmarked for the future. She had a history with Jonella, but the future was somewhere else. Lux cut Jonella off.
“Girl, I just can’t,” Lux said. “I’m saving up for something big. Something for me.”
Jonella was furious. She raged. She swore. She threatened, but Lux wouldn’t give her another dime. Lux wasn’t going out dancing and shopping and drinking; why should she foot the bill for Jonella’s party?
“It’s about the future,” Lux told her.
“Fuck it,” screamed Jonella, “and fuck you. I ain’t helping you no more. And we ain’t friends no more neither, Little Miss Lux Sucks and Fucks!”
The old nickname stung, especially coming out of Jonella who had once been her protector, slapping anyone smaller than her if she caught them chanting the ugly rhyme. Jonella had been her compatriot, coconspirator, compadre. Why she talking trash like this, Lux wondered. Don’t she see how things are getting better for me?
“Girl, you driving on the D train?” Lux asked, inquiring if Jonella was doing any drugs.
“Hey,” Jonella shouted, spewing some frothy spit onto the receiver of the pay phone she was using, “you ain’t the boss of me! You owe me. An’ Carlos owe me. He got him his house-painting business now, he owe me! You owe me, Sucks and Fucks!”
The icy fingers of an ugly adolescence squeezed tight around Lux’s soul. She rubbed her forehead, anxious to return to her studying. She wanted to call Brooke and talk about the apartments she had bid on. Aimee said she would rent one of them, if Lux got them both. Margot wanted to help pick out paint and sinks for the smaller, more broken of the two. As Jonella continued to explain in louder and more abusive language why and what Lux owed her, she sounded smaller and her words more garbled.
The world of Miss Sucks and Fucks seemed so far away from the tomorrow that was waiting for Lux of light and truth. This bright light that was coming at her off her books and investments was soothing over some of those old hurts. She wanted to share the light with Jonella. She wanted to tell her that there was a better way to make your way. Lux began to explain this new world, as best as she understood it, but Jonella had already hung up.
28. Alexandra Grace
“ANNIE’S NIPPLES WERE GROWING HARD and pushing at the thin fabric of her bathing suit. She told herself it was the cool air racing across her wet suit that made them that way, and not a reflection of the previous seven months without sex. Annie looked down the bar at the young hotties all smiling back at her. The wind picked up over the water and for a moment Annie wished she’d brought a shawl or a T-shirt to cover herself, although that would ruin the effect of those last five weeks at the gym.”
“Ok,” Aimee said. “Now that I’m reading it out loud, it’s a total fantasy. I haven’t even seen my toes, never mind touched them, for four months. I feel silly. I can’t read it. You go, Brooke. I’m done.”
“No, no. Read it, Aimee,” Brooke said.
“It’s good,” Lux said.
“I can’t. I wrote myself beautiful,” Aimee said. “How embarrassing.”
Margot opened her mouth to speak, but Aimee, anticipating what Margot was going to say, stopped her.
“I know, I know,” Aimee said, “but I want t
o be beautiful in the way that makes a man want to touch me, not just in the joy-bubbled-up-from-within sense.”
Brooke tried to interject a thought, but Aimee was on a roll.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re right, both are good, I know. Ok, I’m just going to read what I wrote.”
Aimee shifted on the couch and started to read.
“Her girlfriends were laughing at her. They’d all scored great guys the moment they stepped out of the van that brought them from the airport to the resort, but Annie was rusty. She couldn’t remember where she’d left her bump and grind. Maybe at her desk. Maybe it was lost in the divorce papers. Everyone promised that the pool was hot. Annie had to just hold her breath and dive in.”
Aimee tapped a button and the next screen on her lap top computer flicked up. She continued to read.
“The curly haired blond guy seemed sweet and easygoing. Annie took a step towards the bar when she felt a hand tug at her arm.
“‘Annie Singleton?’ he asked. The voice was warm, the eyes were blue and the face familiar. When she nodded he said, ‘I think we went to high school together.’”
“See, I think what I’m looking for is something new, but familiar,” Aimee said critiquing and psychoanalyzing herself as she went.
“Could you just read it?” Brooke said.
“The next twenty hours were a roller coaster of conversations, memories, and philosophical reflections on what ever became of the nastiest popular girls, and did they really deserve such bad luck. When they made their way to his cabana at dawn she was still wearing the same bathing suit she had worn when she walked into the bar that afternoon. With his help, she slipped it off in the Jacuzzi. The water and his hands were hot and both were everywhere on her body. He jumped out of the hot tub without using the steps, lifting her out by the arm. Then they raced each other for the sheets.”
Aimee suddenly folded down the cover of her laptop.
“And, of course, then they have sex,” said Aimee in a way that indicated she was done reading her story.
“But we’d like to hear how they have sex,” Margot asked politely.
“I don’t know. I would have written that part except that I forgot how it happens,” Aimee said. “It has something to do with a penis, right?”
“Yes, and if it’s heading towards your ear, he’s doing it wrong,” Margot offered.
Aimee sat upright on the couch between Margot and Brooke. She felt a little woozy, but thrilled to finally be erect. When the baby weighed in at an estimated five and a half pounds the doctor ended her bed rest. Aimee was surprised to find it a difficult to maintain her balance and even stranger that a little piece of her missed the quiet of her captivity. So far, she had ventured out of her apartment only once, yesterday, for a short walk to the elevator, to pick up her Chinese takeout. Following that excursion, she returned to her living room and fell asleep on the couch.
In the middle of the night her nearly ex-husband called to say that he had received and signed the divorce papers. He would not contest the divorce. He would not drag her into court and pick over their lives in public. He promised to pay whatever sum of child support she and the court thought appropriate. After the papers were filed, their divorce would be final in about six weeks. Aimee said a very quiet thank you. In the silence that followed she heard a tinkle of dissonant Asian music and a background of daytime voices. His morning was her night.
“Aimee,” he said, “are you ok?”
“Fine. The baby is due in a week and a half. She’s your little girl too and if you want to be here for the birth you can.”
“Week and a half? I’ll see if I can get a flight.”
There wasn’t much to say after that. Where there was once such passion, now only silence.
“I’m going back to sleep now,” Aimee said, “my writers’ group is coming over tomorrow.”
“All right then,” he said and after polite good-byes, they hung up.
Aimee woke up the next morning with an inexplicable urge to clean her house. When her friends arrived around lunchtime they found her on her hands and knees, scrubbing the oven. When they suggested she stop, Aimee promised she was only going to finish the bathrooms and then she’d be done. Rather than scold her, Brooke, Lux, and Margot snapped on their own rubber gloves and gave the large apartment a quick once-over. The gleaming porcelain and stacks of folded laundry brought Aimee peace. When it was all in order, she was able to join her friends on the couch and listen to the other women’s fantasies. She did not find it strange that she should feel so peaceful.
“So Brooke,” Margot asked, “would you like to read your piece next?
“I didn’t write anything,” Brooke said. “I am momentarily flummoxed about sex. That’s F-L-U-M-M-O-XE-D, Lux.”
“What’s it mean?” Lux asked as she wrote the word in her book.
“Kind of what it sounds like,” said Brooke as Aimee suddenly shifted uncomfortably on the couch.
“Sound like stomach flu,” said Lux.
“Actually it means ‘bewildered,’” said Margot.
Lux was not happy to hear that one could reach the ripe old age of Brooke and still be bewildered by sex. She wished she had some words of comfort for her friend.
“Um, I had lunch with your friend Bill a few days ago,” Lux said.
“How is he?” Brooke asked with a little frost on her words.
“Good. He wishes you’d call him back.”
“Has he started counseling yet?”
“If you’re talking about a shrink, no. But he’s hanging out a lot with this friend of his dads, Miles Rudolph or something.”
“Miles Randolph!” Brooke exclaimed. “Miles is way too old for Bill!”
“Nah, nah, nah!” Lux said, waving her hands and laughing at Brooke’s sudden, passionate, protective outburst. “The old guy’s a friend of his dad’s. He’s just talking to him about you know, shit and stuff. Bill’s boyfriend is younger, about thirty-five. Cute, but he like totally wins the title as ‘most boring homosexual I ever met.’”
“Bill has a boyfriend!” Brooke gasped.
“Uhhhhhhhhhhh,” Lux said, amazed that her attempt to cheer Brooke up had backfired so spectacularly. Since she’d come this far, though, she figured it was best to tell the whole story. “Yeah. He does. I stopped by to return some books and the guy was there, at Bill’s place. And they were wearing bathrobes at four in the afternoon and it was pretty clear that they’d been naked not too long ago. Bill looked kind of happy, though. He introduced the guy as his friend. I think his name is Bannister. He was wearing this bathrobe and black socks. Dress socks. I’m pretty sure he’d had sex wearing those black socks cuz you don’t just put black dress socks back on after afternoon sex, right. Anyway, this Bannister guy, he’s almost as interesting as a fence post. He’s got this English accent, and…”
“Alistair Warton-Smythe!” Brooke gasped.
“Yeah, that’s him,” Lux laughed. “Bannister Warthog-Smith. Tall, thin, blond. He kind of looks like you, Brooke. I mean, if you were the most boring homosexual man in New York City.”
Brooke looked from Margot to Lux and back again. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or cry. Margot tried to push the balance towards the former.
“Oh my gosh! Brooke! You are so lucky!” Margot said.
Brooke and Lux both turned to look at Margot. Neither could imagine how Bill’s stuffy new boyfriend translated into Brooke’s good luck.
“You just missed giving twenty painful years of your life to a man who prefers other men,” Margot explained.
“Other boring men,” Lux chortled.
“Yeah,” Brooke said, smiling just a little. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I just gained twenty years of happiness.”
Aimee sat quietly on the couch. She was listening, but felt very far away, as if other music was playing for her alone.
“So Margot,” Brooke asked, “would you like to read your piece next?
“Ok, but I wrote about
my vibrator.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Brooke said.
“Certain people have pointed out to me that my attachment for the mechanical will ruin me for the real man. But, hey, I’m fifty now. I don’t drink or smoke. I think I should have a pleasurable vice just like everyone else in this city. And I’m teaching Trevor how to operate it.”
Aimee suddenly got up and walked to the bathroom. She sat down on the toilet and checked her underwear. Then she sat for a moment in the quiet of her shining porcelain and wondered how she was going to do this all by herself.
Margot waited for Aimee to return from the bathroom. When she did, Aimee stood there, looking at her friends. She did not sit down.
“I just blew my mucus plug,” Aimee announced.
“Oh my god!” Margot said. “What does that mean?”
“If she breaks the amniotic sac we’re having the baby in the apartment,” Lux said as she rose from her chair. “Jonella had most of her baby at home. Mucus plug went when we was out dancing, and we didn’t know that meant we had to stop. So when we got home and the sack went, the baby starts flying out.”
“We do not want to do that,” Margot said firmly.
“I’m really excited,” Aimee said quietly.
“So what do we do?” Brooke asked.
“Ok, ok, I’ve thought this out. I, ah, I know, ah,” Aimee stumbled and faltered and couldn’t remember what to do. Then she hit a giggle fit that would not stop. Margot took charge.
“Ok,” said Margot, “we’re going to the hospital. Lux gets the suitcase. Margot calls the car service, then the hospital and then Aimee’s mom. Brooke helps Aimee down to the street.”
Everyone stood for a moment, impressed with Margot’s sense of order. Margot did not know why they were not executing her very clear instructions.
“Let’s make it happen, girls!” Margot said cheerfully without a trace of the panic she was feeling.
Thanks to Margot’s excellent planning, the car service was pulling up to the curb just as Brooke and Margot walked Aimee through the lobby of her apartment building. Lux took one last turn around the apartment to make sure everything that needed to be shut off was, that house keys were put in purses and cell phones slipped in pockets. She caught up with them as they stepped into the street.
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