When Katie Met Cassidy

by Camille Perri

  “You’re new here, aren’t you?” she said. “You must be, because if you’d been here before I’d remember.”

  This was all too much. Katie needed to either take a breath or vomit. “Excuse me,” Katie said, and then disappeared herself into the crowd, searching for the restroom.

  It was all the way in the back, in a dark corner, of course. Katie assumed it was unisex because the signage on the door was a chalk drawing of a stick figure with very big hair, giant boobs, and an equally giant penis.

  She knocked pointlessly, checked to make sure the pro golfer hadn’t followed her, and then pushed open the door using only her knuckles. Inside were two stalls, one with a door and one— “Oh, pardon me,” she said.

  Two women were going at it inside the doorless stall in a way Katie thought only happened on Xtube. One of them had her back to Katie—a harmless enough white T-shirt and blue jeans—but the other one was all skin and leg meat. Her thigh was flexibly suspended over the T-shirted one’s shoulder.

  They didn’t acknowledge Katie, and rather than repeat her apology for the intrusion, she opted for the stall with a door. To her horror, though, the door had no lock. Also, one look at the toilet paper roll and it was obvious to Katie that it had previously fallen into the toilet and been fished out. But she really did have to pee, so she did her best to not touch anything and tried to keep calm by reading the walls. There she found the usual hearts and arrows. SlutWhore Wuz Here. MJB gives great head. I hate that bitch. Fuck U Ho. You have HPV.

  Boy had this night taken a turn. If that wine bar had simply been where it was supposed to be, Katie would probably have had the bartender’s phone number by now and she’d have been using a restroom with one of those bamboo air diffusers that made everything smell like citrus. Instead she was here drip-drying on account of the toilet paper situation, certain she was about to contract a staph infection.

  To the left of the missing door lock, Katie noticed a numbered list of names in hot-pink block letters. Best Fucks List. Cassidy was listed at number two, beneath a girl named Dana, but then someone had crossed out Dana’s name and written Cassidy on top, which then prompted a few others to weigh in: Biggest Slut! Total Playa! Someone else had written, Totes worth it tho!

  So it appeared that Cassidy Price was something of a cad. Hardly the hero Katie had witnessed earlier in the boardroom. She had to wonder then if Cassidy’s eagerness to get her to join them tonight was more than a simple gesture of goodwill. Did the total playa think she could get her into bed?

  And, oh Christ, one of the young women in the stall beside hers was reaching orgasm, she was pretty sure. Katie had to get the hell out of here. She had to chug that drink waiting for her without touching her lips to the glass if possible, and then get herself back home to her couch. No, even before the couch she would take a shower. A long, hot, steaming, cleansing shower.

  Katie exited the bathroom rubbing her palms with the peach-scented hand sanitizer she kept in her purse.

  “Check out Miss Priss over here,” someone called out, followed by a round of mean female laughter.

  “This one’s got to be one of Cassidy’s,” someone else said.

  Katie frantically searched the room and caught sight of Gina’s shark fin at the pool table. She was chalking up a cue. Then Katie saw Cassidy carrying their drinks from the bar toward the two empty stools near the corner of the pool table. She caught Katie’s eye and nodded at the stools with her chin.

  When Katie reached her, Cassidy handed her one of the glasses, and Katie immediately swallowed down a healthy sip.

  Cassidy settled onto the red leatherette stool beside hers like it was her favorite living-room recliner. She stretched her long legs out in front of her and crossed her boots at the ankles. “So what do you think?” she asked. “Have you ever been to a place like this before?”

  “I’ve been to dives way worse than this,” Katie said. “You should see my hometown.”

  “Not what I meant.”

  Cassidy was smiling, so Katie smiled, and while smiling she said, “Just to be clear, you know I’m straight, right?”

  Cassidy laughed, then folded her arms over the chest of her chambray button-down, which was tailored as smartly as her work shirt had been but was untucked for a more casual effect. “That’s why I thought this might be your first dyke bar,” Cassidy said.

  “Oh. It is,” Katie replied matter-of-factly.

  “So, then, what do you think?”

  Katie scanned the space, hoping not to lock eyes with the pro golfer or those bitches who’d laughed at her because of her sanitizer.

  “No offense,” Katie said, “but aren’t there any nicer lesbian bars?”

  “Not really.” Cassidy uncrossed her ankles. “Well, there are some, but they’re not the Met.”

  Gina looked up over her pool cue. “That’s a lie. There’s plenty of fancy places with clean glasses and girls Cassidy’s own age. But she prefers ’em young and dirty.”

  “Speaks highly of you,” Katie said.

  Cassidy shrugged, unapologetic.

  “How old are you?” Katie asked.

  “Probably about the same age as you.”

  “I’m twenty-eight,” Katie said.

  “Me too.”

  “She’s thirty,” Gina called out, just before sinking three balls with one shot.

  “You came on a good night.” Cassidy pretended she hadn’t just been caught lying about her age. “You’re going to see all our best celesbians.” She pointed with her bourbon glass. “See that girl over there? You recognize her?”

  The woman Cassidy had gestured toward was black with a shaved head and had the most beautiful smile Katie had ever seen on anyone.

  “That’s Sabrina Weil,” Cassidy said. “She’s a model. There’s a giant billboard of her in her underwear in Times Square right now. And the girl standing next to her, that’s Chef Becky. Have you seen that cooking show Knife Fight? Becky was on season three, but she lost.”

  Gina stood up straight at the sound of Chef Becky’s name, planting her pool cue hard at her side. “Becky used to be a vegan. She’s got a goddamn vegan tattoo across her stomach. Right here.” She indicated her own belly. “Old English letters, v-e-g-a-n. And now she’s famous for being a nose-to-tail butcher. One of these days I’m gonna call the TV station and tell them about that tattoo.”

  Cassidy whispered an explanation into Katie’s ear. “Gina got her little heart butchered by the butcher once upon a time.”

  “My ex was a vegan,” Katie said, in an effort at consolation that came out a few decibels too loud.

  Gina, about to line up her next shot, paused. “So that means you’re single, then?”

  Katie pretended not to hear her and was quickly bailed out.

  “Who’s your friend, Cassidy?” The chef herself approached their corner.

  “Katie Daniels,” Cassidy said, “meet Chef Becky.”

  Becky was on the short side, adorably chubby in the exact way you want a chef to be, and she was wearing a purple bandana around her head.

  She reached for Katie’s hand, lifted it to her lips, and kissed it. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance. What are you drinking, honey?” She picked up Katie’s empty glass and sniffed it. Then she lifted her arm and called out to the bartender with the pink stripe in her hair. “Dahlia, a round of whiskey shots over here!”

  “Wow,” Katie said. “You have a very impressive sense of smell.”

  “Oh, baby,” Becky said. “You have no idea.”

  Cassidy gave Katie’s elbow a little tug to pull her back from Becky’s forward lean.

  Quick to notice this move, Becky narrowed her eyes at Cassidy. “Oh, I see how it is. She’s officially one of yours.”

  “I’m nobody’s,” Katie shot back. “And actually I think I should probably get going.”

&nbs
p; “Whaaaat? No,” Becky said. “We’ve only just met.”

  “We have an early morning,” Katie said to Cassidy.

  “That’s true,” Cassidy said. “We do.”

  Except just then their shots arrived. Becky took one for herself and handed one to Katie. “Come on,” she said. “Stick around for a bit.”

  The second Katie took that shot glass in hand she knew—if she drank it, she would be a goner. But down the hatch it went. Her brain fuzzed and the light dimmed, and she was feeling pretty frigging good then.

  Soon an Asian girl with spiky hair and aggressive green eye shadow, whose name Katie didn’t catch, had her hand on Katie’s back and was asking if she lived around here. She was saying something about the girl party she threw on the first Friday of every month, and drink tickets, something about how she would give Katie free drink tickets.

  Then the model Cassidy had pointed out earlier crowded into their corner as well. Close up her skin looked so soft and smooth, she could have easily done commercials for Dove soap.

  All the while, Cassidy stayed put at Katie’s side, bookending her with whoever this spiky-haired stranger was rubbing her back.

  “You like to eat?” Chef Becky asked. “You eat meat?”

  “She eats meat,” Cassidy answered for her. “Only meat.”

  The model threw back her beautiful head and laughed, and Katie was sure the whole bar brightened. “We’ll see about that,” she said. Then she picked up Katie’s empty glass. “What are you drinking?”

  “Wild Turkey!” Chef Becky slammed her hand down on the edge of the pool table. “She drinks Wiiiiild Turkey! Because she is my kind of girl!”

  “Hey, Chef,” Cassidy said. “Take it down a notch.”

  “What?” Becky adjusted her bandana like she was gussying up for a fight. “You think just ’cause you bring ’em, you own ’em? Well I think this young lady is free roaming, just like the chickens on my sustainable farm upstate. Am I right, Katie?”

  Katie nodded in agreement, because how could she not?

  Becky raised her glass. “She’s meant to run wild!”

  The others raised their glasses in accord.

  Katie sort of couldn’t believe any of what was happening. There was literally a circle of women around her, and every single one of them was hitting on her. They were practically fighting over her! And these were the celesbians. They must have been, like, the elite of their world.

  Katie found herself giggling, electrified by the attention. If this were a group of men she might have felt overwhelmed, threatened, even. If it were just one man crowding her with such a blatant attempt at seduction, she would have gotten the hell out of there faster than you could say rape whistle. But this felt harmless rather than predatory, and even the way Cassidy had positioned herself at Katie’s side, like her own personal bodyguard, struck Katie as amusing.

  At some point they all just started calling Katie “Wild Turkey.” Instead of What are you drinking? it became Wild Turkey, you ready for another?

  The Asian girl with the spiky hair had worked her arm all the way around Katie’s torso and was holding her so close she could smell her cologne. Katie was way taller than she was, definitely stronger, and could have easily pulled away, but the closeness felt good, safe somehow.

  Chef Becky went on about the restaurant she was opening in DUMBO. “. . . I am talking whole hog. Nothing will go to waste. Ears, tail, we’ll serve old Porky’s head right there on a bed of mustard greens.”

  The model, whatever her name was, was more on the quiet side. She let her million-dollar smile do most of her bragging for her. But then her girlfriend showed up, and she stopped smiling so much and sulked away into the crowd.

  Becky jumped at the opening of having one less competitor. “What do you say you and me go out back for some fresh air?” she asked.

  “There’s a backyard here?” Katie asked.

  “Nope.” Cassidy grabbed Katie by the hand. She pulled her free from the spiky-haired stranger’s hold and Becky’s forward lean and escorted her through the crowd to the other end of the bar.

  “Is somebody jealous of all the attention I’m getting?” Katie said, but Cassidy ignored her.

  Katie thought Cassidy might be taking her to the backyard herself, but instead they stopped at a game machine called Megatouch that looked like something out of the eighties movie Big.

  Cassidy shoved a dollar into the machine, and its screen came to light. She chose a game called Erotic Photo Hunt, which was simple enough to follow. It was basically the same game as the one in the back of the tabloids, except you had to find the differences between two nearly identical pictures of scantily clad women. The women were posed explicitly in otherwise innocent places like backyard barbecues and holiday-themed dining rooms.

  “I don’t get jealous,” Cassidy said in a delayed response to Katie’s allegation. She tapped at the screen’s dissimilar flower pots and areolas. “I assumed I was doing you a favor.”

  “Oh please,” Katie said. “It’s not like I would actually—”

  “Hey, Dahlia,” Cassidy said, cutting Katie off, calling out over her shoulder. “Can you send over a glass of water? A big one. Maybe a pitcher.”

  “It’s cute that you’re worried about me,” Katie said. “But I’m fine. I’m having a blast. I’m so happy you brought me here.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Cassidy said. “But it is getting late. Probably a good idea to start winding down.”

  “Why did you bring me here?” Katie asked.

  Cassidy turned from the screen for a moment to look at Katie straight on. Her features were bathed in the machine’s erotic hot-pink glow. “I’m not sure what you’re asking me. You were alone. It was the polite thing to do.”

  “Do you really have such good manners?” Katie got too close to the machine and accidentally brushed up against a spot that made Cassidy lose the game.

  “Probably not as good as yours.” Cassidy slipped another dollar into the machine and began again. “Where’d you grow up? Somewhere in the South?”

  “Kentucky,” Katie said, and then hiccupped.

  “That explains your accent.”

  “I don’t have an accent.”

  “You sure do, Wild Turkey. And it gets heavier with every drink.”

  “Well so do you,” Katie said. “You have the accent of New York coastal elitism. Let me guess, you were born and raised in Manhattan, private schooled. Your parents are probably both doctors.”

  Cassidy cracked a half smile but said nothing.

  “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “No,” Cassidy said. “Only my father is a doctor. My mother’s an artist.”

  Katie lost it then. “Ha! I knew it. Wait, wait, what kind of artist? Does she, like, throw paint or sit in public and stare?”

  Cassidy turned away from her game and looked down at the filthy floor. “She’s really into traffic cones right now, like putting eyes on them.”

  “Oh my god, I totally know her work.” Katie leaned all the way against the Megatouch machine now. “My ex-fiancé was a curator. So I know all about that crap.”

  Cassidy eyed Katie cautiously. “What happened?”

  “He dumped me for my best friend. Like three days ago.”

  “I mean, how did you, Katie the Wild Turkey from Kentucky, end up a corporate lawyer engaged to a New York curator?”

  “Exactly,” Katie said, just as Dahlia appeared with their water.

  Katie accepted the glass from Dahlia and then handed it off to Cassidy. “I don’t want this. Let’s do another shot instead.”

  “Absolutely not,” Cassidy said, but the next thing Katie remembered was doing another shot—and then dancing. Which was interesting because there wasn’t a dance floor at Metropolis. There was, however, Pat Benatar, or something equally awesome and ridicu
lous, ringing in her ears.

  The rest was a blur of hands and hair and perfumed hot skin and sweat.

  At some point Katie fell down. And someone—possibly Dahlia?—said, Get this drunk-ass bitch out of here.

  Then it was Cassidy’s arms.

  A cab.

  Where do you live?

  Katie recited her address, but it was the wrong address—the one to Paul Michael’s SoHo condo—so she course-corrected them to the right address, but was crying, then sobbing. I don’t even know where I live anymore!

  Katie remembered the front door to her apartment. Cassidy losing her patience. Which key, Katie? Which key is it?

  “I don’t know. I don’t know!”

  Finally they were inside Katie’s apartment—the right one, in the West Village, with all the cardboard moving boxes strewn about.

  Off with her shoes, and maybe her dress?

  It was hazy, what happened next, but Katie distinctly remembered how sweetly Cassidy cared for her and how she carted Katie to the bathroom—fortuitous on her part, because they made it to the toilet just in time.

  Katie couldn’t remember anything after that.

  FOUR

  Cassidy helped Katie into her building and up the four flights of stairs to her apartment because the likelihood of her wiping out and cracking her face open on the stairwell was much too great. She’d planned to turn right around and make her escape the moment Katie was safely inside, but curiosity took over once she laid eyes on the place. She followed Katie into the foul-smelling living room, stepping over cardboard boxes and empty food containers. A plastic bag that doubled for a trash can overflowed with Kleenex.

  Cassidy remembered then, about the ex-fiancé, and it all started to make sense. This apartment was a disaster—Katie was a disaster—because she was in pain.

  “Do you need anything?” Cassidy asked. “Before I go?”

  Katie shimmied off her dress and stepped out of it.

  Cassidy averted her eyes, but it was too late. She’d already seen Katie’s silky black bra and underwear.

  “Please don’t go.” Katie came closer, wrapped her arms around Cassidy’s neck. “I’m all alone.”