Brooklyn Girls

by Gemma Burgess

  “Do you cut yourself?”

  “I don’t,” she says, quickly, folding her arms.

  We lock eyes for several long seconds.

  “Okay, I used to. A long time ago. But then I saw a therapist and now I don’t.”

  “Do you—”

  “No. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Maddy—”

  “Pia, I said no.” She hesitates, and then looks me right in the eye. “I’m allowed to have my secrets, too.”

  “You might feel better if you talk about them,” I say. “I did.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll take my chances.” She looks up. “C’mon. It’s our stop. Don’t worry about me today, okay? I’m fine.”

  When we get home, it’s nearly 11:00 A.M. Julia and Coco are sitting on either end of one sofa, Angie is curled up alone on the other, all silently watching a Babar cartoon.

  I sit down between Julia and Coco and pull them both in for a hug. Coco immediately folds into me like a little kid, crying noisily, but Julia just turns the TV to mute and blinks furiously.

  “I can’t cry anymore,” she says. “I can’t … or I’ll never stop.”

  “What happened?” I say softly.

  “Vic rang the doorbell really early this morning.” Julia is playing with the stitching on one of the cushions. “I opened the door and thought he was having a heart attack, he was so gray, he looked awful, but he couldn’t say anything, he just grabbed my hand and took me downstairs.”

  “Oh, God, no.” Julia had to confirm Marie was dead? That’s not fair, not after everything with her mother, she shouldn’t have had to do that.

  “And then Angie came down.”

  “I heard the doorbell,” says Angie. With no makeup on, not even her usual morning-after panda eyeliner, she looks about five.

  “Angie called the ambulance, and they came and.… Anyway, Coco and I stayed with Vic and tried to make him eat, but he just stared out the window and ignored us. Marie’s daughters turned up half an hour ago and he left with them.”

  “It was so awful.” Coco is crying into my shoulder.

  Madeleine gets blankets and covers us in them, and then sits down silently on the other sofa next to Angie. I stroke Coco’s hair. She seems so fragile and young. Who is going to look after her? Who is going to look after Vic? Who’s going to look after any of us?

  “Do you want to talk about Marie?” I ask, but Julia shakes her head. “Is your dad coming down?”

  “He’s in California for work.”

  We all watch Babar toddle around the screen.

  “You know, I don’t know why I’ve been making myself so stressed about my job,” says Julia. “I should just quit. I could die at any moment. I should be traveling the world and sleeping with men and taking drugs and being wild.”

  “What?” Coco sits up in panic. “Don’t do that!”

  “Unless that’s what you want,” I say.

  “It’s not,” she says, sighing. “But I want to be happy.”

  We all sit there for a few minutes. That’s all any of us wants, really.

  “So. Anyway. How was jail?” says Julia.

  We meet eyes for a second. The entire living room is in total silence.

  A second later she giggles, and repeats “jail!” in a disbelieving tone.

  Then we all lose it.

  I laugh so hard I feel like I might burst. We laugh with that hysterical edge you have when you can’t cry anymore or you’ll collapse, when right at that moment existence is so awful that the only option left is to throw your head back and cackle. Julia is laughing so hard she gets the hiccups, and Coco runs out of the room, gasping, “I peed my pants!”

  “Do you have Vic’s nieces’ numbers?” I ask after we’ve calmed down. “We should coordinate with them to, I don’t know, look after Vic—or clean the house, make sure there’s food, stuff like that?”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” says Julia. “He’s staying with them for the next week, I think, but I offered to fill the fridge before he gets home, and strip Marie’s bed.…”

  She gulps, closing her eyes.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I say.

  “I don’t want her daughters to do it,” she says quietly.

  “Then I’ll help,” I say. “You can do the fridge, I’ll do the bed. When is the funeral?”

  Julia shrugs. “They don’t know yet. End of the week, I’d guess.”

  I know I should shower, sleep, or think about how the hell I’m going to get to the vehicle impound place in Queens to collect poor Toto and my ten thousand dollars before Cosmo comes over tomorrow night. But I can’t bear to be alone, and I can’t bear to leave the girls alone, either.

  And you know what else? The money, and the debt, and everything else, just doesn’t seem that important compared to this.

  All I care about right now is being here.

  So we turn Babar back up, watch it to the end, and then Coco makes popcorn with her traditional topping of salt and dark chocolate chips, and we put on The Mighty Ducks, Julia’s favorite childhood movie.

  Halfway through the movie Angie comes over and squishes herself between Coco and me. She curls up under my arm, with Coco cuddling into her. Then Madeleine grabs a cushion and props herself on the floor in front of Julia and me, leaning her head on our knees. The five of us sit there for the next hour, draped over one another like kittens, all staring unseeingly at the trials and tribulations of the Mighty Ducks.

  We’re lost in our own thoughts, but I’ve never felt like more of a unit than I do right now. The five of us, together, no matter what. We’re all in this together.

  Considering the situation, it’s probably strange I feel happier than I ever have before. But I do. I feel quiet, and calm, but happy.

  The movie ends and we all sit there, strewn with popcorn crumbs.

  “I have a cramp in my leg,” says Julia.

  “Yeah, me too,” says Madeleine, rolling herself flat on the floor and then pulling her knees up to stretch.

  “I need to brush my teeth,” says Coco.

  “I need to get Toto,” I say. “And then I need to get ready to see Cosmo tomorrow night.”

  “Tell us what we can do to help,” says Angie. “We’re in this together, remember?”

  “Will you come to Queens with me to get my truck?”

  “Goddamnit. I knew I shouldn’t have offered.”

  Picking up Toto takes the subway-walking-GPS-iPhone-waiting-begging hell you’d expect, but by four o’clock we’re on the way home.

  Angie is with me, not that she’s been much company: she’s barely spoken.

  When we reach Brooklyn Heights, she lights a cigarette. I hate people smoking in Toto. “Dude, seriously—”

  “Mani broke up with me,” she replies.

  Smoking is suddenly not only understandable, but necessary. “Merde. I’m so sorry. Give me a drag of that.”

  “I saw him last night. He said he thought it was best if we stopped seeing each other.” She says it almost without any emotion at all.

  “What a cockmonkey,” I say.

  “He’s a fucking asshole! We only slept together for the first time last fucking week! One orgasm! He didn’t even look my vagina in the face!”

  “Hang on.… You can get off during sex? Like the sex bit of sex?”

  “Of course. Can’t you?”

  “No, oral only.”

  “I can’t concentrate during oral. They never know what they’re doing, and I start wondering what’s going through their minds as they toil away, and then I start thinking about what I’m gonna wear tomorrow, and then— Wait. That’s not the point, Pia. What’s wrong with me? Why am I only attracted to fuckpuppets?”

  “Nothing is wrong with you! Obviously Mani’s just another cockmonkey,” I suggest. “Plain and simple.”

  “Cockmonkey!” shouts Angie. She leans out the window and screams it at the top of her lungs all the way back to Rookhaven. Screw it, I think, and j
oin in. All men are cockmonkeys. So what if I was the psycho date from hell with Aidan? He’s probably just a cockmonkey anyway. I saved myself a lot of time and bother and unnecessary underwear purchases.

  Cursing at the top of your lungs while driving is surprisingly therapeutic. The last twenty-four hours have been crazy, but tomorrow I’m paying off my loan once and for all, and crazy Cosmo will leave me alone, and I’ll never see Nicky or Nolan again. I’ll be free.

  “Cockmonkeys!”

  As soon as we park on Union Street, I reach under the passenger side carpet to get the envelope containing Cosmo’s ten thousand dollars.

  It’s gone.

  My whole body seizes up in shock. “No!”

  “What?” says Angie.

  “No!” I shout, ripping up the carpet entirely. “It can’t be— It can’t be—”

  I throw myself over to my side of the truck and scrabble at the carpet there. Nothing. Then I check the glove box, under the seats, the carpet in the back. Nothing!

  “It’s gone. It’s gone!” I yell.

  “What? What’s gone?” says Angie. “Fuck, you’re a drama queen! Calm down!”

  “My money—the money—the ten thousand dollars—they stole it—the impound people!”

  I drop to the pavement and scream.

  CHAPTER 27

  “Stop screaming, you’re freaking me out!”

  A deathly quiet and calm overtakes me. “It’s over, Angie, everything is over. I’ll call my parents and tell them everything so they can give me the money to give to Cosmo when he comes over tomorrow. And then I’ll go back to Zurich with them and never come back. I’ll never pay the money back any other way. It’s over.”

  “There must be another way,” says Angie.

  “There’s not.” My mouth is dry with horror. “This is it. End of the road. It’s over.”

  Two hours later, sitting at the kitchen table with the girls, I find myself saying it again.

  “It’s over. I made the money. It’s now in the pocket of some impound dude in Queens. It’s gone.”

  “It can’t be,” says Coco, for the sixteenth time.

  “There must be another solution,” says Julia.

  “There isn’t,” I say. “I can’t sell the truck, it’s not worth what I paid for it. I don’t have any other money. And as much as you guys might want to help, I know you don’t have ten thousand dollars between you, and you can’t ask your parents. You just can’t.” I look around. No one is arguing. “It’s over. I want you all safely out of Rookhaven tomorrow afternoon. I’ll deal with Cosmo, alone.”

  “No way,” says Coco.

  “We’re here with you, no matter what,” agrees Madeleine.

  “Girl power.” Angie gives a fist pump. “That was ironic. An ironic fist pump.”

  I smile at them all. It’s what I’d do if I were them, too.

  “Don’t sell the truck,” says Julia slowly.

  “I just said that I couldn’t. That Al guy said it was worth like, nothing.”

  “No, I mean, don’t sell the truck … sell the business,” says Julia.

  I frown at her. Sell the business? “But it’s only six weeks old.”

  “It’s successful,” she says. “It’s a unique idea, you’ve completely cornered the market. Your profits are incredible, you’ve had loads of publicity, your followers on Twitter and Facebook are passionate advocates. You have created a small, successful business, Pia. You could sell the whole thing for ten, twenty, fifty times what the truck is worth.” She pauses. “I mean, I have no idea how much the business would sell for. But it sure as hell would be more than the truck.”

  I stare into space, thinking. She’s right. She’s completely right. I could sell the business. Just like Vic said all those weeks ago. Have an idea, make it work, sell it on.…

  “But how … how do I do that?” I say. “Who would buy it?”

  “I don’t know,” says Julia. “I haven’t gotten that far. What about a venture capitalist?”

  “What the hell is a venture capitalist?” says Angie.

  “VCs invest in start-up companies in return for an equity share,” says Julia.

  “What the hell is an equity share?” says Angie, in exactly the same tone of voice. I crack up despite myself.

  “You guys, be serious,” says Julia.

  “We are being serious!” say Angie and I in unison.

  “Venture capitalists give you money to run your company, and in return, they part-own the business,” says Madeleine. “They look for original ideas, you know, things no one else is doing.”

  “Aidan works in venture capital,” I say. It’s the first time I’ve said his name aloud in days. “I have his card.”

  “Call him!” says Coco.

  “No,” I say, closing my eyes tight to try to force away the thought of him. “That is not an option, either.”

  “I know you’ve been thinking about him,” says Julia. “You get that moony look on your face.”

  Ugh, I hate it when I’m easy to read.

  “You do,” agrees Angie. “I think you should call Aidan, too. The date was good until you saw Eddie, right?”

  I think back. It was good. In fact, it was more than good. It was perfect.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I repeat.

  “Do you still have feelings for Eddie?” asks Coco. “Is that what it is?”

  “No!” I say instantly. I haven’t even thought about Eddie at all, only Aidan. Seeing Eddie at the restaurant that night was just the past coming up to slap me in the face. And that’s where Eddie belongs. In the past. I should have dealt with it years ago, instead of letting his stupid flight-risk comments haunt me like that. He wasn’t perfect. He didn’t know me. But it just doesn’t matter. I’m over it.

  And I’ll get over Aidan, too.

  “I am not turning to a guy to fix my problems, goddamnit,” I say. “And anyway, he probably wouldn’t help me. He thinks I’m a total psycho.” Because I acted like one. But never mind that now, either. “So what do I do next? Google ‘venture capitalist?’”

  “Probably not,” admits Julia. “You need an introduction … contacts. Aidan would have them.”

  “I will not call Aidan … and I don’t have any contacts. I’d have to make a list. Cold-call them. But none of them will be at work till Monday anyway, and Cosmo is coming over tomorrow night.” I feel sick at the thought.

  “Maybe you could call people who should own a food truck that sells low-fat, low-carb, high-protein food.”

  “Can we order in from Bartolo’s?” asks Coco. “We need to eat.”

  As we wait for our pizza to arrive, we brainstorm who might want to buy SkinnyWheels.

  “Jenny Craig?”

  “Ew, come on…”

  “A gym chain? Equinox?”

  “Tracy Anderson? Gwyneth’s trainer?”

  “That Soul Cycle place? Seriously, everyone who goes there is cut like a fucking diamond.”

  “Condé Nast? So they can feed all the skinny bitches who work for Vogue?”

  “A model agency? I bet a model agency would love it.”

  “One of those weight-loss reality TV shows?”

  “The Today Show?”

  “Why the hell would The Today Show want SkinnyWheels?”

  “Oprah? Oprah would totally buy it.”

  “That Hungry Girl chick?”

  “No way,” I say. “Even if those people should use a food truck to promote themselves, it doesn’t mean they will. I can’t convince them. They have strategy people who decide what they should do, and before that they have, like, focus groups and market research.”

  “How do you know all that?” says Angie.

  “Lina told me,” I say, pouring myself another glass of wine. Then I pause, thinking aloud. “Lina … who is VP of strategy for some big hotel and restaurant group. Carus International! She might have advice for me! Or contacts! She might be able to help!” I look at the kitchen clock. “It’s eight o’cloc
k on a Saturday night. I can’t call her, can I?”

  “You can e-mail her,” says Julia. “Or text her. She lives around here, right?”

  I nod. “I think so. I mean, she must, I met her at Bartolo’s. I saw her on the street with her kids.”

  “So text her. Offer to bribe her with coffee tomorrow in return for a little career advice. It’s flattering. People love to give advice. I must have e-mailed a hundred people for advice over the years, then we meet up and I listen to them talk about themselves.”

  “Really? Okay! I will!” I grab my phone.

  Then the pizza arrives, and as we all start scarfing, I draft a text.

  Hi Lina. Pia here. I was wondering if there’s any way that I could steal thirty minutes of your time tomorrow for coffee and a chat? I need career advice … apologies for the late notice; it’s a (semi)emergency.

  That’s good, right? I’m underlining the importance of it without being melodramatic.

  Ten minutes later, I get a response.

  Of course! Chestnut, 11 am?

  * * *

  By eleven-thirty the next morning, I’ve told Lina everything. From being fired for the Captain Morgan Facebook incident, to the ten thousand dollar loan from Cosmo, to everything I did to build SkinnyWheels, to—finally—spending the night in jail. I keep it as brief as I can, and skim over the Cosmo-is-a-crazy-freak elements, but it still takes twenty minutes.

  “I’m not particularly proud of the loan shark.” I’m using my spoon to make little circles in my yogurt and granola. Then I realize it looks disgusting, so I stop. “Or jail.”

  “Jail happens. I was arrested for smoking a joint in Washington Square when I was eighteen. So looks like I’ll never run for president. But the loan shark is a different story. You don’t want to get involved with people like that. I’m kind of worried, I think we should call the police—”

  “No, no, it’s fine, don’t worry about that,” I lie quickly. “I’ve got the money. My parents transferred it to me. But now I, um, need to pay them back. Like urgently.” Urgh, I’m terrible at lying.