Page 9 of Service Included

And I say, let it begin. Go be indecent!

FU. The mixing lyrics kills me, you know that. And FU.

[waving hand emoji]

Aleesha

[cardboard box emoji, disco man, eggplant, praying hands]

[middle finger emoji]

It was time to put the phone on the workbench and get back to work with all the energy from texting Aleesha.

The middle shelf was empty, but the bottom rack held three blue-and-white boxes, the type with a separate lid that her father called bankers boxes. Faded stickers marked “Beatrice” identified them as containing things that had belonged to her mother’s late sister, the infamous Aunt Bea. Ten years older than Megan’s mother, she’d left Megan’s grandparents’ Eastern Oregon wheat farm at age eighteen. Family lore claimed Bea had gone to town to buy church shoes, but instead purchased a one-way bus ticket to Sodom, or maybe Gomorrah, or possibly New York City, depending on who was telling the story. Megan’s mother had left the farm the slower way, via college, but Aunt Bea had never been slow about anything. She’d started as a Kelly Girl, which she’d proudly told Megan at least twenty times was a classier term than temp, married her way into becoming a society columnist, and then divorced her way into roles as an extra on earlyLaw and Orderepisodes. Megan remembered hearing Aunt Bea had even had a career in magazine publishing in the eighties and nineties.

Cancer was a bitch. Aunt Bea should have been taking road trips with Megan’s mom, retired versions of Thelma and Louise—okay, not quite, that didn’t end well—instead of being reduced to memories in cardboard containers.

She squeezed her eyelids closed, knowing it wasn’t dust that made them hot and scratchy. Why hadn’t her mother taken these boxes?

A few deep breaths later, she felt capable of looking inside and slung theoof-inducing weight of the first box to the workbench. Instead of photos or clothing, she found dozens of magazines. The top one, dubiously titledHot Shortz Magazine, showcaseda female cover model whose long, frizzy hair angled out from a vertical pouf of bangs to form the sides of a triangle. Megan recognized a classic 1980s style, even though back then, she’d still been reading Dr. Seuss. Text splashed across the fuchsia background teased articles featuring lost bathing suits and flashing the mailman, and a long-ago someone had circled a headline about working late.

She plunged both hands deep into the box, searching for a scrapbook or photo album, but found only more copies ofHot Shortz. The stories about her Aunt Bea, who’d had a big-boned Scandinavian build, didn’t include working as a model, so why would her mother have written Bea’s name on a box with dozens of cheesy old magazines? Megan doubted these would be in demand at the library book sale, so she should assign the contents to be recycled.

Instead, she sent a photo of a cover to Aleesha.

So many of these. Pure vintage.

Aleesha

Crazy sauce.

She waited out the little dots.

Aleesha

On bus to rally now. Too crowded to text.

She replied with a fist emoji. By coming to Eugene to help her parents, she was missing a march Aleesha had helped to organize in support of women’s health and bodily autonomy. As if their and their daughters’ rights should even be a fucking debate.

She pushed clingy wisps of hair off her forehead. The magazinesmusthave meaning; otherwise, her mother, a womanso ruthlessly organized that every reusable food container had a lid, wouldn’t have kept them for thirty years.

With the garage basically finished, five minutes of reading wouldn’t disrupt her schedule, so she chose the second one from the stack. A hand-drawn star marked a headline that shouted, “The Fireman Who Rang My Alarm,” copy that she couldn’t imagine anyone, even in 1986, writing while sober. She rested an arm on the tool bench and stretched her left leg behind her to work her hamstring.

About ten pages in, she found the story. Someone—presumably Aunt Bea—had scrawled, “Kathy, a little present for you and the new guy!” across the page featuring the purported fireman. He was dark-haired and shirtless, both arms raised to clasp his hands behind his head. Wide black suspenders skimmed the outer edges of his flat tan nipples and emphasized the chest hair that swirled across his pecs. It was a lot of hair, dark like she assumed Nico’s would be, and it spun to the center of his chest, where it became a thick stream heading toward his stomach, then surrounded his navel. Not only did eighties models sport more natural thatch, they hadn’t been as deliberately bulked and defined as modern shirtless dudes.

She’d bet twenty bucks that Nico’s chest would look like this if he took off that geology shirt. The thought made her mouth go dry—she needed water—and she yanked her attention away from the picture to focus on the article.

A Request from Barbra in Chicago

Dear Editor,

I’m writing toHot Shortzto share what happened when I went to a department store searching for a black lace brassiere for my birthday.The lingerie department offered two regular-sized dressing rooms and a larger one for brides. Because the smaller two were occupied, I took the big one, which turned out to be an excellent idea.

I put my purse on a built-in corner bench, but left both small chairs empty. As I unbuttoned my top, the women from the other rooms exited, talking to each other, and I was alone. In the mirrors, I could see myself from every angle. Normally, I don’t stare at my body, but on the day in question, I had worn my brand-new Jordache jeans. My regular bra was so dull, the elastic band nearly yellow, that I never wanted to put it back on. I leaned forward to let my breasts swing into the cups of one of the new bras, straightened, and then plumped myself into the correct shape.

Occasionally, I’m embarrassed about the abundance of my breasts and jealous of flatter women. Plunging necklines hang so well on them, and they can wear mesh tops or tuxedo jackets without blouses for that Hollywood-awards-ceremony look. Unfortunately, because I’m more porn star than rock star, the support I need isn’t pretty. This bra was no exception, with a band that dug into my rib cage. However, the hint of nipple bump gave me the idea to pinch myself through the cups. That felt good enough to repeat, and I’ll admit I twisted my nipples too, which isn’t as easy through fabric as it is when I’m in the shower. I’ve never watched closely as I touched myself, so I moved to the mirror and lifted my breasts until my nipples poked out over the tops of the black cups.

I forgot about wanting to be smaller and instead wanted to keep on playing. Because I’ve been at the pool this summer, my arms are way tanner than the band of skin across my breasts. The contrast between my hands and the pale triangles usuallyshielded by my bikini top resembled the look of someone else’s hands on me. My nipples darkened and grew longer the more I pinched them, and then I had that feeling where you want to grind your hips, like in a music video. The more I played with my nipples, the more I needed to stuff something firm between my thighs, but the two chairs and four walls gave me nothing to hump.

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