Page 28 of Melt With You

Dori didn’t remember how she got home. Everything after the club was a blank. When she looked around, she realized that was a misstatement. She hadn’t gotten home. This wasn’t her home in 08 or 88.

So where the fuck was she?

She heard a high-pitched noise, and she squinted at the sound. Someone was talking to her. ‘Polly want a blow job?’

She turned her head and saw Bette’s parrot, neon-green head and dark emerald feathers, staring at her from a cage hanging by the window. ‘Pretty Polly. Pretty Polly. Polly want a blow job?’

God, only Bette would have taught her parrot to say something filthy like that. But Dori was grateful the noise was coming from a bird and not a human.

She blinked hard and looked around, and her head seemed to scream once more. The paint on the walls was scarlet. The color of the inside of a rose, she thought. No, not quite a flower. This was the color of Bette’s favorite nail polish – Voluptuous Vixen – and that voluptuous vixen herself, Bette, was in the bed next to her, crashed out hard with her face pressed deep into one of her silver satin pillows.

Quietly, Dori sat up in the bed. She knew the apartment well. She’d made extra cash in high school cleaning up for Bette twice a month. She remembered carting out liquor bottles, emptying ashtrays filled with kiss-imprinted cigarette butts. Once, she had found Bette’s vibrator tucked into the bottom groove of the frame when she’d made the bed, and she’d been mortified.

What to do?

Put the toy somewhere where Bette would find it and realize Dori had seen it? Ultimately, she’d let the thing roll to the base of the bed, where Bette might think the vibrator had wound up all by itself.

Now, she pushed off the black-and-white zebra-striped sheets and walked slowly to the bright pink bathroom. Colors, which had been her friends the night before, now hurt her. She wished Bette had an all-white bathroom rather than this fuchsia-and-black monstrosity. She splashed water on her face, then went to the kitchen in search of a glass of water. She was only half-surprised to see Mica and Van asleep on the leather couch, curled up together like puppies. Mica was fully dressed in the sleek indigo tank-dress she’d had on the night before, but the hem was up past her hip, and Dori could see that the woman was naked underneath the silk. Van’s shirt was off. Even fast asleep, he maintained his rock-god good looks. Dori remembered in a flash what they’d done the night before, and she felt her cheeks coloring, imagining the hue as bright pink as the walls in Bette’s bathroom.

She filled a glass with tap water, remembering that this was life before the bottled water phase. Glass in hand, she went outside, onto Bette’s tiny patio. It was late. The sun was high. Weren’t they all supposed to be at work? She drank her water and watched a hummingbird hover over Bette’s wispy purple flowers. She was still standing outside when she heard a burst of obscenities from within the apartment.

‘Oh, my fucking god. It’s after ten! How the fucking fuck did that happen?’

She turned to look through the sliding glass doors to see Bette, frantic, trying to dress herself. Or undress herself, Dori wasn’t entirely sure. She watched as Bette rushed around the bedroom, flinging colorful items of clothing in all directions, and then she saw her trip and fall over something on the far side of the bed. Dori walked down the patio to peek and then stepped inside the room to see.

It was Gael. He had been sleeping on the floor. Tall and tan and naked. Dori closed her eyes and tried harder to remember the previous evening. Had she slept with Bette? Had she fucked Gael? All she could remember was leaving the club, curled up on Van’s lap, letting his warmth soothe her.

Bette caught her watching and said, ‘Come on, Emma! Make me some coffee, will you?’ Bette looked as if she were in a far worse state than Dori. Her make-up was smeared, and her hair, usually artfully in disarray, was now just seriously messy. Dori headed back to the kitchenette to make the coffee, but found no coffee pot. She looked in cabinets until she located a bottle of instant. Grimacing, she heated water in the tea pot and made her boss a cup of Folgers. Then she went to the bathroom to tackle her own appearance.

‘You can wear something of mine,’ Bette called out, ‘if you need a change.’

Dori felt as if she were moving through quicksand. But when she saw her reflection, she realized that she didn’t look half bad. Her hair just needed a good brushing, and once she’d washed away the previous night’s make-up, she appeared fresh-faced. A sadness throbbed through her, but she guessed that was a combination of coming down from the X, plus confusion at being caught in the 80s.

Bette seemed to have decided Dori was her new best friend. She drove the two to work in her tiny celadon-hued Karmann Ghia, sighing with relief when she saw that Nina had already opened the store and the day was progressing appropriately, even though Bette’s internal alarm clock had failed. When she saw the OPEN sign hanging in the front door, Bette visibly relaxed.

‘I’m going out for real coffee,’ she said. ‘Do you want one?’

Dori nodded as the thought of real coffee perked her up. Then she settled herself behind the counter with Nina, who was busy painting her long talon-like nails. Dori remembered those nails from high school. Nina was one of the first people she knew to use acrylics, and she kept her nails nearly two inches long, cruel, curving daggers adorned in a gloss of rainbow colors. This meant that she had to use a pencil to punch in the buttons on the register or when making phone calls. Dori had always enjoyed watching her maneuver through life with those dragon-lady nails, although she’d never been tempted to put on a set of her own. Nails like that would have made her job as a make-up artist next to impossible. Clients would have shied away from her in fear.

‘What do you think?’ Nina asked, waving her hands in front of Dori for approval.

‘Mono Blue, right?’ Dori asked. She loved the fat round bottles of Brucci polishes, and recalled her own collection from her youth. She’d had over a hundred bottles in her nail polish collection, with very few ‘normal’ colors. Black, neon-green, and this beautiful deep blue with shiny silver flecks had been her favorites.

‘You have Van last night?’

Dori looked at her, certain she’d misheard. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Did you have Van?’ Nina repeated, an evil grin on her face. ‘Bette said something about you liking him.’

Dori swallowed hard. She remembered the way the ladies had discussed their sex lives, but she found it strange to actually be one of those ladies now, instead of a naïve outsider looking in. Nina was gazing at her with a combination of expectation and curiosity. Would Dori fit in with the group? This was the test.

‘I had … I had fun,’ she said, and Nina seemed to accept that answer.

‘Different from New York?’

Dori nodded, trying to remember what she’d heard about Manhattan in the 80s. She could only think of movies – Desperately Seeking Susan. After Hours. She tried to remember, but Nina was already off and running on a different topic. Dori watched her, recalling that this was what talking with Nina was always like – being an audience in front of a short-attention-span theater.

‘Did Bette tell you the plans for Friday night?’

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