Steamed

by Conan-Park, Jessica

  The next ten minutes proved to be the most romantic of my life. Josh fed me bites of the warm cake and, in between spoonfuls of chocolate, kissed me and whispered how beautiful he thought I was, how much he wanted me, and . . . not needing any more persuading, I went to the bathroom to get a good scratch in—by then, I was itching like anything—and dig into the CVS bag.

  I slipped into the bathroom and lowered my pants. In possibly the most horrifying moment of my life, I discovered something worse than razor burn: I had a viciously contagious-looking rash all over my legs, with the worst of it right on my bikini line. “God dammit!” I screamed. Well, that explained the itching and the growing burning sensation I’d been feeling. I cursed myself for buying that stupid Smoothie Pad. Smoothie? Ha! I might as well have taken sandpaper and rubbed it all over my body. I gently eased my pants up over the skin I had left.

  “Are you okay?” Josh called with concern in his voice.

  “Um, well, no,” I said pitifully. I was all prepared to have passionate sex with this wonderful guy, and now there was no way. If his beautiful body rubbed against mine, I’d break out in screams of agony. “I sort of have a problem.”

  “Oh, is it . . . that time of the month? You know, that’s okay.”

  “I wish. No. I’ve done something so stupid. I’m too embarrassed to tell you.” I’ll just stay in this bathroom forever, I decided. This is totally humiliating, and he’s going to bolt out of here thinking I have some crazy STD.

  “Chloe, what is it? Are you going to come out of there?” I heard Josh just outside the door.

  I was just going to have to tell him the truth. How else could I explain why one minute I’d been ready to leap into bed and the next I was wailing in the bathroom? To get ordeal over, I spoke as fast as I could. “This is awful, Josh, but I wanted to be all cute and sexy tonight, and I thought something might happen, see, so I got this thing that was supposed to rub off all the hair on my legs better than a razor, and now I have something that looks like some freaky jungle rash. I think I took off half of my skin!”

  To his credit, Josh started laughing. “Are you okay? It sounds like it probably hurts.”

  “No, I’m not okay.” I moaned from behind the closed door. “You better go. I’m way too dorky to ever come out of here. I’m going to spend the rest of my life locked in this bathroom.”

  “Let me see,” he insisted. “It can’t be that bad.”

  “Yes it can! In fact, it already is.”

  “Chloe, please open the door.”

  “Fine. But promise you won’t laugh anymore. It is not in the least bit funny.” I cracked the door. “All right, come in.”

  “Okay, pull your pants down,” Josh said.

  “That’s romantic,” I said sadly. “This isn’t at all how I pictured it.”

  “I’m serious. I want to help you,” he said. “I’m not coming on to you. Well, not right this minute. Just let me see.”

  I sighed and, thanks to all the wine I’d consumed, lowered my pants.

  “Man, that must sting.” Josh grimaced. “But I think I have an idea.”

  He led me to the bedroom. “Okay, take your pants off,” he instructed.

  “More romance,” I sighed.

  “I’m going to get the cold packs I used to bring the food over, and we’ll put those on the worst spots. That should make you feel a little better.”

  I lay down on the bed and covered my eyes with my hands. “I can’t even look at myself!” I screamed. “This is awful!”

  My beloved returned with ice packs wrapped in paper towels and placed them on my bikini line. “There, now keep those on for a while. I’m going to pour us more wine, and we’ll watch some TV together, okay?”

  “Can you turn off the light?” I begged. “Neither of us should have to look at me.”

  “I think you look gorgeous, rashy legs and all, but I’ll turn it off if you want.” Josh kissed me deeply before getting our drinks and hitting the lights.

  Josh and I spent the rest of the evening with me sitting in front of him, leaning back on his chest and exposing my poor legs to the air. I thanked him a hundred times for the amazing dinner and apologized even more times for not being able to ravish him the way I was dying to. He ran his hands through my hair, kissed the top of my head and my cheeks, and promised there was no rush. We channel surfed and talked and cuddled until midnight, when we both fell asleep. I woke up for a few minutes around three and got up to turn off the television. I crawled back into bed next to Josh and drifted right back to sleep. I’d found a cure for my insomnia, yes. But how permanent a cure?

  SIXTEEN

  BRIMMING with frustration, I dragged myself into my field placement the next morning. In between yawning from a late night, scratching my itching, burning rash, and muddling my way through hotline calls, I called my parents.

  “How’s the chef?” my mother asked eagerly.

  “Amazing. Dinner at Magellan was fantastic. And then he came over last night and cooked for me, too.” In all seriousness, I announced, “I may have to marry him.”

  “Well, that’s wonderful, dear,” she said distractedly. “I have to go now and check on Mrs. Ainsley’s yard. She seems to think her water fountain is bubbling too loudly. Love you!” I’d just have to confide all the details to Ade.

  I called Detective Hurley again and left him another message telling him that Eric was not the wealthy bachelor he’d made himself out to be and that I’d be happy to discuss the implications of this matter at his earliest convenience.

  Josh called to say he was off on Wednesday night and wanted to take me to Essence, in part to check out his old rival’s food and in part to support Tim’s restaurant. Of course, I agreed. Maybe my legs would’ve healed by then. If I hadn’t sanded off half my skin last night, I could’ve been basking in a sexual afterglow. As it was, I was still itchy. In more ways than one.

  When Wednesday finally arrived, my Group Therapy class proved to be more irritating than it had been the previous week. This time, instead of continuing to learn about group process by discussing Eric’s murder, each of us was forced to pair up with a partner and play the roles of client and therapist as a way to improve our counseling skills and encourage the expression and verbalization of emotion. We didn’t even get to pretend to be a single parent fighting poverty or a person with bipolar illness struggling with medication; instead, we were stuck being ourselves. Worse, each team had to sit in front of the class and demonstrate its techniques.

  The only positive note was that Gay Doug grabbed me and rescued me from having to partner with someone to whom verbalizing emotion was a new and foreign experience.

  Doug and I sat together in a corner of the room and practiced.

  “I don’t want to do this,” I informed him.

  “Yes, I can tell. Can you expand on that feeling?”

  “Yes. If I wanted to be in therapy, I’d do it on my own. Why am I paying eighteen thousand dollars a year for this?”

  “So you’re frustrated?” Ah, reframing and reflecting back.

  I sneered at Doug.

  “Chloe, look, part of being a good therapist is learning to understand yourself, so just behave.”

  When it came time for us to present our skills in front of the class, I noticed an unusual amount of interest from my fellow students. Before Doug had a chance to try to engage me in a scintillating interview, Gretchen cut in.

  “Chloe, we were just talking about you.” She gestured to a few women near her. “And this seems like a good opportunity to catch up on where you’re at emotionally with the murder. Are you maintaining your support structures? Have you disentangled yourself from the victim’s parents?”

  With eager social work faces on me, I looked to Doug to bail me out. Instead, he said, “Yes, Chloe. Can you express to us how this experience is affecting you?”

  Thanks, Doug. I gave a summary of my dinner with the Raffertys and noticed eyes widening when I mentioned Eric’s financial woes
and his parents’ imminent move.

  “And how does it make you feel to be caught in this lie with his parents?” Gretchen wasn’t going to let up until I’d had a meltdown, preferably one complete with hurling objects and bawling.

  I sighed. “I feel,” I emphasized, “cranky that I’m stuck in the lie, and I blame my downstairs neighbor for being such a dork and making me so desperate to find a boyfriend that I went on the Internet for a blind date and now have to deal with this stupidness. And I just want to have my chef without all this other nonsense.”

  Determined to be the responsive social worker, Gretchen said, “But you need to own your part in this. Your neighbor didn’t make you do anything. You have to accept responsibility for your choices. And perhaps you’re more angry than frustrated? Maybe share a little bit more with the class?”

  Although I could’ve said a lot about the anger I was feeling toward Gretchen just then, I refrained from causing a scene by making some insightful-sounding BS comments on restoring my mental health. The class then bounced around the same theories I’d run by Josh last night. To my disappointment, no one was strongly convinced of any suspect’s guilt.

  Sensible Julie piped in. “The point is, first of all, you’ve gotten yourself caught up in this situation with the parents, and you simply have to extricate yourself and end their disillusionment ASAP. Like you said last week, you feel sorry for them, and you’ve become a victim of your own empathy. But now it’s time to wind things up there.”

  I actually agreed with Julie and promised the class and myself that I’d phone Sheryl and Phil and straighten things out.

  She continued. “Second, you should be careful trying to name the murderer. That’s not your job, and you may tick off the wrong person,” Julie warned. Students nodded in agreement.

  I carried a cell phone, I assured everyone, as though the miracle of wireless communication would keep me safe from a knife-wielding killer. Don’t slice me open yet! Not until I make a quick call to 911! But I did promise to be careful.

  In spite of finding my classmates somewhat intrusive and pushy, I was somehow relieved to know that I had a group of supportive peers to check in with once a week. In fact, I left the class with a surprising feeling of being cared for. During my next class, however, I was so busy fantasizing about Josh that I barely took in the professor’s lecture on the social worker’s responsibility to collaborate with multiple agencies when assisting families in crisis.

  When I got home that afternoon, there was a voice mail from Josh saying he would pick me up at seven for dinner. My wounds from the hair-removal fiasco were healing nicely. A good omen!

  Still, at five o’clock as I was looking through my closet, I decided not to doll up too much for dinner. Except on the morning we’d gone to the deli, I’d been primped and polished every time Josh had seen me, and I thought it was time for him to get used to the real me. On the other hand, Essence wasn’t just anywhere, so I had to wear something nice. Furthermore, I couldn’t very well get all dressed up and leave my hair in a ponytail. So, cursing my mane of curls, I caved in and blew out my hair. Puffs of smoke leaped off my head as I kept the dryer on high heat and worked to beat the clock. When my hair was finally smooth, it was still too puffy for my taste. Not knowing what else to do, I leaped onto the bed, lay down, and tried to flatten out my hair against the pillow. Cosmetic remedies having failed, I willed my hair to behave itself. Please decompress. I apologize for burning you. If you stay nice and straight, I will not blow dry you for an entire week!

  Thank God, Josh was ten minutes late. He looked completely handsome in a pale blue button-down shirt. As he drove us to Essence, I could barely keep my hands off him. When we got to the restaurant, we were immediately welcomed by Joelle, the motherly hostess.

  “Josh!” she smiled happily. “What are you doing here? Don’t tell me you actually have a night off?”

  “Amazingly, yes. I wanted to come in and see how Tim’s doing—with everything that’s been going on. Have you met Chloe?”

  Joelle checked me out with a mixture of curiosity and confusion. The last time she’d seen me, I’d been here with Eric, and I now felt as if my mother had caught me doing something morally questionable.

  Joelle said, “You went out with Mr. Rafferty, right? You were here with him the night he was killed. How do you know Josh?”

  “I was on a blind date with Eric that night. I met Josh after.” I refrained from revealing that I’d picked Josh up at Eric’s funeral.

  “Chloe just had the bad luck to be here with him when he was killed,” Josh said before changing the subject. “So how’s business been?”

  “Crappy. For the most part. Tim had to fire a couple of the waitstaff. And you won’t believe the menu.” Joelle rolled her eyes. I wondered exactly what she meant. “At least we’re not totally empty. We’ve still got a few loyal customers, and some of the people here are just curious to see a crime scene. I mean, come on! There’s nothing to see. They took the body away, for Christ’s sake! The bathroom’s been cleaned. That’s it. Get over it. If one more customer asks me about that night, I’m going to chuck them out the front door.”

  When we’d been seated at a corner table, Josh practically yelped with surprise when he saw the menu, which was nothing like the lengthy one I’d seen here before. Dinner was prix fixe, with two choices of appetizer, two choices of entrée, two choices of dessert . . . and that was it.

  “Wow,” Josh said, dumbfounded. “Tim must be hurting to do this. I don’t even know what to say.”

  “Is this saving him a ton of money?”

  “Well, think of everything they don’t have to buy. Certainly controls the food cost.”

  “Yeah, but aren’t they going to lose people who actually want a choice?”

  Josh nodded. “Yup. Usually you do a set menu for special nights, like Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day, when you’re going to be swamped all day and you need to have a limited number of dishes you’re making. It doesn’t make sense to do something like this now.” He shook his head and tossed the menu down. “I don’t know what’s going on. It looks like Essence might be on the verge of closing.”

  Cassie came to our table. Although she was the same waitress I’d had when I’d been here with Eric and the one who’d sat with me after he’d been killed, she showed none of Joelle’s confusion or discomfort. “Hey, guys! What’s up, Josh?” She was as perky and adorable as I remembered. I glanced at Josh to see his reaction as she leaned in for a hug.

  Josh hugged her back. “Hey, kiddo! How you been?” Good. I sensed more of a brother-sister friendship here than anything flirtatious.

  “Well, I’m still working, so that’s good. Ian and I are the only full-time waitstaff left. Katrina works part time. Actually, she’s here tonight. You’ll have to say hello.” Cassie turned around and called over to yet another beautiful woman, who immediately came to our table. Katrina was tall, with long, thick hair that fell down her back in a cascade of unfrizzed curls. Was I the only woman in the world who couldn’t get her hair to be either straight or curly and not some mess in between? I stared at her scalp in search of extensions, which were the only plausible excuse for having such phenomenal hair. Nope, hers looked real.

  Katrina and Cassie sat down with us at the table and traded restaurant gossip with Josh for a few minutes. “They both used to work at Magellan,” Josh explained, “and they came over here with Tim when he opened this place up. Ian, too.”

  Katrina snorted, “I don’t know why Tim wanted him. Ian’s a dirtbag.” She pointed at me. “Does Chloe know about him?”

  Oh, I loved gossip! “No, what about him?” Eager for juicy details, I looked to Josh.

  He sighed. “See, while Tim was in the process of opening Essence, Madeline figured out that Ian was scamming Magellan out of money. Instead of just firing him, she sent him over to Tim’s place without warning him.”

  The two servers nodded in agreement. “Yeah,” Cassie said. “Ian was ma
king good money from it, too.”

  “How did he do it?” I was totally ignorant of how cash registers and credit card machines worked.

  “Well, in a couple of ways.” Katrina leaned in with excitement. “Ian would run the customer’s tab through on their credit card and then have them add their tip and sign for it. The check stays open on the computer until the end of the night. Ian is the headwaiter, so he’s one of the only people who can void out items on the register. He’d just go back and void out an item or two, run the check through with the same total, and pocket the extra money for a bigger tip. Forging a signature isn’t that difficult. When the customer gets their credit card statement, everything looks right—except that the restaurant got a smaller percentage of the money they paid, and they’ve inadvertently left Ian a bigger tip. Same thing if the person pays in cash. After the customer leaves, Ian can void out their old check entirely, as though that table was never there, or ring up a new charge with a smaller total, and pocket the difference in cash.”