Mandy lets out a loud, booming laugh. “Shayla, you are a hoot! I’ve never known anyone who puts their foot in their mouth as often as you. Girl, I love ya!”
Chapter Thirty-Three
It’s the kind of frigid cold that gets into your bones outside and I’d give anything to avoid being out in this weather. Unfortunately, the kids love it and I’ve promised them an extra-long recess so we can do our art outside. Instead of the usual finger-painting or coloring activities, we’re making snowmen. Every little kid deserves to make a snowman even if it means me having to freeze my ass off. It’s worth it. The smiles on their faces are enough to warm my heart. And, as for warming my hands, my gloves aren’t doing diddly-squat. My fingers are freezing. I withdraw my hands from my gloves, blow on them like an insane person, trying to bring warmth to my pink-tipped fingers.
“Okay, kids,” I say. “Time to head inside.”
They groan. I have a feeling that they won’t be complaining for long. I sent Ronnie inside a little while ago to make hot chocolate and set out graham crackers for snack time.
“Do we have to go in now, Ms. Ross?” Angelica tugs at my pant leg, imploring me to let them stay out “just a little bit longer.”
I shake my head and frown. “Sorry, love. It’s time for a snack.” I say. I’m a pushover and have already kept them out five minutes longer than I’d intended.
“Walk carefully,” I say as we all shuffle along in our boots. “It’s icy.”
No sooner have I said this than I forget to look where I’m going. The heel of my boot slips and I do a nosedive into a snowbank as twenty eight wide-eyed kindergarteners look on, open-mouthed as their teacher falls face-first in the snow. Wanting not to appear any more foolish than usual, I play the whole thing off as if it were intentional.
“Look kids, snow angels!” I exclaim as I move my arms and legs around and pretend not to be a klutz. On second thought, the snow angel ruse is probably not such a good idea because, before I can stop them, every single kid lays face-down in the snow and begins flailing around, imitating me. By the time I get myself, and them, back on our collective feet and inside, we are all covered in snow. Red-face and shivering, the kids and I strip off our jackets and shake the snow from our boots.
“Who wants hot chocolate?” I ask.
“We do!” they chorus.
As we head back into the classroom, I notice Principal Hane coming out of my classroom a few seconds before we reach the door.
The kids run inside and begin eagerly devouring their snacks.
“Was Principal Hane just in here?” I ask Ronnie.
“Yeah. She was just wondering where you and the kids were and why I was in here alone. I told her about the snowman and she left.”
“Oh, okay. Phew!”
Is it my imagination or is Ronnie deliberately avoiding eye contact as she hands me my mug of steaming hot chocolate?
Chapter Thirty-Four
I am dressed to the nines. It’s Valentine’s Day and Dunkin’s taking me to New York City for dinner and a show, then we’re staying in an upscale Manhattan hotel.
“You look beautiful.” Dunkin leans against the doorjamb as I come down the stairs, soaking in the sight of me.
“You don’t look so bad yourself.” I love the sight of my boyfriend in his suit—sans tie. He’s got on pinstriped black pants and a pinstriped jacket with an emerald green shirt underneath. The shirt brings out the green in his eyes. I am rendered momentarily breathless by the sight of my beautiful boyfriend.
Sometimes, when I’m with Dunkin, I want to pinch myself just so I know I’m real and he’s real.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” he asks me. “You’ve got a funny expression.”
“Oh, I’m just happy,” I say.
“Was that really what you were thinking?”
“Actually, I was wondering what someone like you is doing with someone like me?”
“Oh, you mean an intelligent, beautiful, insightful, fun, and dynamic woman?”
“I mean a hapless klutz.”
“I love that you’re a klutz,” Dunkin tells me, taking me into his warm, strong embrace.
“Want me to trip, just to get you off?” I joke.
“I’d rather you get your fine butt into the car so we can head up to New York for our romantic night.”
“Let me just grab my purse,” I say.
I run back up the stairs, take my handbag off of the bed, and throw a few additional items—a lipstick, a pocket mirror, and a pen—inside.
The drive to New York City is one I’ve made many times before but never with Dunkin. A few years back, Brice, Robin, a few of Brice’s friends, and I had gone to New York for the Pride parade. Now that was a fun time.
“When was the last time you came to New York?” I ask Dunkin.
“I guess it must’ve been for a medical conference this past summer. What about you?”
I tell him about Pride—about getting drunk on Chocolate Martinis and making friends with drag queens, about shouting, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” so loud my throat ached for days afterwards.
“You’re so adventurous, Shayla. I love that about you,” Dunkin says.
Readying myself for a kiss, I slip a hand into my purse, withdraw a mint, and pop it into my mouth. At the next red light, I lean over and kiss Dunkin on the lips, a long languorous dancing of the tongues that feels…delicious.
When I pull away, I notice that his lips are a dark, odd shade of blue. I stare spellbound at his strangely discolored lips.
“What’s wrong with your mouth?” I ask him.
“What do you mean?” he looks in the driver’s side mirror then glances over at me. “Oh crap. You have it too. What’s wrong with your mouth?”
Checking my own mirror, I see that my mouth is ink-stained. Shit! My pen must’ve exploded in my purse. We look ghoulish suddenly. How are we supposed to get through Valentine’s Day looking like a couple of aspiring Goths or a science experiment gone horribly wrong?
But, Dunkin says we’re in New York City where anything goes. Not only does he not mind the ink but he stops outside of the Mac store on Columbus Avenue on our way to dinner, double parks, runs in, and emerges with a hideously blue lipstick that he applies first to his own lips then to mine.
“There!” he declares. “Now, it looks intentional.”
So we go through the rest of the night like that—to the show, to dinner, to everything. And, the next morning, when the ink still won’t come off, we reapply our blue lipstick and go downstairs to breakfast. Because what the hell? It’s New York City and, just like Dunkin said, absolutely anything goes in the Big Apple.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Li Chen!” I exclaim, wrapping my arms around the tiny Asian woman who seems taken aback by my enthusiastic greeting. Li Chen is not, it seems, much of a hugger.
“Miss Shayla how ah you?” she peels me off of her and smiles wanly. I know the woman likes me. She’s just not very affectionate. Once, she brought her son to work and when he fell and skinned his knee, her response to his crying was to pat him on the head once and say “You big boy. No cry. Get over it.” He was three.
Needless to say, I don’t take her lack of warmth toward me personally.
“Are you all better?” I ask. “You were sick.”
“Stupid cold,” she growls at me as if her sickness had been my fault. “I’m all betta. Chinese herbs. Very good. They help me lot. You Westerners very stupid with your doctors.”
I think back to my Xanax mishap and do not disagree with her.
“Why you here? Your eyebrows not look too bad.”
Miraculously, they don’t. They’ve grown back and I’ve been doing a good job tweezing them.
�
��I need a Brazilian bikini wax,” I whisper to her in hushed tones.
I’m looking to surprise Dunkin. I usually have a landing strip, but have decided to go bald and mix it up just for shits and giggles. I read in Cosmo that altering one’s grooming habits south of the equator can infuse more passion in the bedroom.
Not that Dunkin and I have anything to worry about in that department. And I aim to keep it that way, thank you very much.
“You want all off?” Li Chen looks me over appraisingly.
“Yes.”
“Why you want look like little girl?”
“For my boyfriend.”
“In China these men like little girls they very bad men. Pedophiles.”
“I assure you that my boyfriend is not a pedophile,” I laugh. The woman is a waxing extraordinaire but lacks diplomacy.
“Okay, you come with me.” She leads me to the back room, instructs me to remove my pants and underwear and I lay on the table. What follows is perhaps the most excruciating twenty minutes of my life. I scream, she rips. I swear, she shakes her head. We go on this way, her immune to my pain and me unable to behave with the stoic dignity required in such a situation.
After a few minutes, one of the other waxing women sticks her head in the room. “Be quiet. You scare customers,” she hisses at me.
I recognize her as the woman who destroyed my eyebrows. “You!” I shout. But, she disappears quickly, recognizing me at once. I’m covered in hot wax and not about to chase her. Besides, Li Chen rips off another waxing strip and I let out a howl so loud it might raise the dead.
“Don’t be cry baby,” my sympathetic Li Chen tells me.
I hold the pillow over my mouth to keep from making any more noise. When she finishes I am, as requested, completely and totally bald. The entire area is red and sensitive and when I put my panties back on, they chafe.
“Ouch!” I say. I pay for the services then walk out of the nail salon, careful not to walk too quickly lest the fabric rub against my unmentionables any more than absolutely necessary. It is a strange sensation in my nether regions, not altogether unpleasant, but weird.
I hadn’t realized when I booked this appointment that my skin would be so sensitive afterward. But, who cares? Beauty is pain. I learned that from my mother.
I’ve asked Dunkin If I can swing by his office after hours.
“I want to show you something,” I told him, knowing about my waxing plans and wanting an impromptu rendezvous.
“Sure thing,” he’d said. “Stop by at 6:30.”
So I do. At 6:30 sharp, I am at the door to the office, knocking. Can a knock be seductive? I hope so. At least, I try my best to knock alluringly.
Dunkin answers the door with a smile. “Hey, Shayla.” He kisses me hello.
“Are we alone?” I ask, my voice breathy, my tone suggestive.
“Yeah. Why?” He looks puzzled.
I waste no time. Right there in his office waiting room, I strip down to nothing. I stand naked before my boyfriend and he can’t take his eyes off me. His gaze is riveted to my genital area. Thank you, Li Chen!
“Um… Shayla, is everything okay?” Dunkin points. Pointing during sex is never a good sign, especially when followed by laughing. And I can tell from his expression that my boyfriend is trying not to—laugh that is.
I look down. My vag is an angry, red, discolored mass of excoriated flesh. Apparently, I needed to give it time to heal. Instead, I stand here with my genitals looking like a stop sign, a red octagonal area clearly saying “stay away” when what I wanted to say was “come hither.”
“Oh crap!” I say. “I got waxed. I wanted to seduce you.”
“Baby, as your physician, I gotta tell you, that doesn’t look good. I think you need to ice it and rest it for at least a couple of days. Maybe even put aloe vera cream on the area.”
We table the sex and instead opt to go out for pizza. So much for romance.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Crash! I hear the screeching of tires, the impact of metal upon metal, and the sound of a car peeling away as it careens down the road. A curious soul, I look out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever is happening just outside my door.
I see a car speeding away—fast. There must be an accident. I stare after the vehicle then scan the street. I am about to walk away from the window when I notice that something is wrong. What is it? I look closer. What happened doesn’t register until the car is gone, leaving my own back bumper horribly disfigured. The rear of my Honda is crumpled. Omigod! Someone hit my car and then fled the scene. I hurry outside, cell phone in hand, ready for action. But, whoever hit me is so far away by now that I’ll never be able to get their license plate number. I survey my rear bumper.
The back side of my blue Civic is dented pretty badly and one of my taillights is shattered. I dial 9-1-1.
“Hello. What is your emergency?”
“My car was involved in a hit and run. Someone hit me.”
“Okay. Are you safe?”
“Yes. I’m safe. My car’s safe. But, the driver got away.”
“We’ll send an officer out to meet you. Where are you now?”
I give the dispatcher my address and ask her if it’s okay for me to wait inside the house, instead of with my vehicle, until the officers arrive. She tells me that it is so I trudge back inside feeling frustrated and helpless. They’re never gonna find the driver of the other car. What am I supposed to do? Will I have to pay a big deductible to have my car fixed? Will my insurance go up?
I’ve never been in an accident before.
The phone rings.
“Hey, Brice.”
“Hey, hot stuff. What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
“Something’s wrong. I can hear it in your voice.”
“It’s just that I didn’t expect to be so shaken up by this.”
“By what?”
“I’ve heard about other people getting rear ended, but it’s never happened to me.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. This morning. What a jerk!”
“Wait, you did it this morning?”
“Yeah.”
“Is he still there? As you’re talking to me about it…?”
“No. He left. Hit it and quit it. The asshole. The cops are on their way.”
“You called the police?”
“Of course.”
“For rough sex?” Brice is as incredulous as I am confused. “Does Dunkin know you called the cops on him?”
“I didn’t call the cops on Dunkin. I called them on the guy who hit me.”
“It wasn’t Dunkin?”
“No. Why would Dunkin do that to me?” I ask, stupefied.
“Do what to you?” Brice asks.
“Bump me in the rear.”
“It wasn’t Dunkin?”
“No! Some other guy bumped me in the rear,” I say, “Now, stop being dense. I’m really shaken up.”
“Shayla,” Brice says, his voice heavy with concern. “If you’ve been anally raped, you need to get to the hospital. I’m coming over.”
“What?” Anally raped? What is he talking about? But, my doorbell is ringing. “I can’t talk right now,” I say. “I’m fine, but the cops are here and I have to go.”
The dial tone is my only answer. Brice can be strange, but this is unprecedented. I shake my head, confused, as I make my way toward the front door to let the officers in.
Officer Logue is a burly forty-something man who looks like he should be a butcher rather than a cop and Officer Heddy is a real muscle head with a total God complex. They look me over appraisingly.
“Ms. Ross? I’m Officer Heddy and this is Officer Logue. We’re here to file a police report.
Can you show us your car and explain what happened?”
I slip on my sneakers and walk the two out to my car which is parked across the street from my house in front of the nosiest neighbor on the block, Ms. Peg. Officers Heddy and Logue listen to my account of hearing my car being rammed into and running out into the street.
“Did you see the other vehicle?” Officer Heddy asks.
“It was a gray car,” I say. “Or maybe green.”
Ms. Peg comes out onto her front stoop. “Nasty accident,” she remarks. “Whoever was driving that silver Audi ought to be arrested. He was driving so fast I almost didn’t get his license plate number.”
“You got his license number?” Officer Logue scratches the top of his bald head incredulously.
“Yes. He was a bearded fellow—reddish-brown hair, driving a silver Audi with the license plate 276TWH. They were New Jersey plates. He just plowed into the back of Shayla’s Civic then took off down the road. I saw everything and I’d be happy to testify.”
“I doubt it’ll come to that,” Officer Heddy says. “But, we’ll take down your information and we appreciate all your help.”
Officer Heddy is on Ms. Peg’s front stoop interviewing her more thoroughly when Brice pulls up in front of my house, jumps out of his car (as if a 300 pound man could jump out of anything) and comes running toward us. He arrives breathless and panting.
“Shayla! Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Of course, I’m okay.”
“That son of a bitch! I’ll kill him!”
“You may not want to say that in front of a police officer,” I point out.
“How dare he? What did he do, sneak into your house? How are you ever going to feel safe again?”
“Brice, it’s not that serious,” I say. “I just got rear ended.”
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