Daphne Vs. Daddy

by Mona Cox

  Second difference? My dance moves on the dance floor of Bungalow 8 were voluntary. My current moves? Not so much.

  I tap Erica on the shoulder. Well, to be fair, I think I kinda whacked her across the face, but close enough, right? “What?!” she yelled, jumping in surprise.

  I might’ve gotten her in the eye. It’s hard to tell in the dark. And, I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but I am slightly inebriated.

  Slightly.

  Why do they make the word “inebriated” so hard? Who can actually say that word when they’re drunk? Now drunk – that’s a good word. Anyone can say drunk, even if they’re—

  “Brittney, are you okay? You’re mumbling a lot. What about being drunk?” Erica asks.

  Oh.

  Right.

  I had a question.

  “I gotta go. Like, really bad. I might just cop a squat and pee right here,” I announce. All three of my besties shut up and turn to stare at me.

  Well, at least I got them to stop staring at their phones for five seconds.

  “Brittney, you cannot cop a squat right here and go pee.” There goes Ashley and her logic. Such a Debbie Downer. We should call her Ashlowner. Get it?

  Get it?

  But instead of waiting for me to tell her my latest idea, Ashlowner takes off down the street.

  Where is she going?

  I stare after her, trying to figure out where the fuck she’s going, when a small part of my brain registers that she’s moving towards a business where I could probably use their bathroom.

  Right. Because I need to go pee. I’d totally forgotten, although my bladder comes roaring back to life as soon as I remember. I stumble after her, trying to keep up. Why did New York make such uneven sidewalks? They really should pour smooth sidewalks. I’d be less likely to fall over if the ground was smooth.

  I open up my mouth to share my brilliant idea with my besties when Ashlowner turns back and says, “I can’t believe it – they’re closed!” I catch up to her and stare at the sign.

  OPEN 24 HOURS A DAY! it proudly proclaims in all caps. Right above a “Closed” sign.

  Liars.

  “Is that even legal?” Lisa asks huffing from exertion in my ear. We need to go to the gym more often. We’re ridiculously out of shape.

  Ohhhh…I could probably find a cute guy to fuck at the gym! I haven’t tried that strategy. Plus, bonus points, I could run up the street and not get winded! A twofer!

  Ashlow…

  Ugh. Now I can’t even remember my nickname for Ashley. Dammit, it was such a good one!

  Anyway, Ashley turns back and heads toward the nightclub again. I find myself trotting along behind her to try to keep up. The ground is so uneven here. I wish they’d pour smooth sidewalks. I’m going to break my neck if Ashley doesn’t slow down. I catch up to her just in time to see her pound on the front door of the club.

  What is she doing? They’re closed. Even I know that, and I’m so drunk, I’m not entirely sure I know my middle name.

  Do I have a middle name?

  Tap, tap.

  I jerk my head up, which sets the world to spinning, and try to focus my eyes on Ashley. “Yes?” I say, although it comes out sounding like “Yesssshhhh?” I’m not sure why. It’s almost like I’m drunk or something.

  “The nightclub is closed,” she says. “It’s four in the morning – I don’t know if we’re going to be able to find you a bathroom anywhere nearby.”

  Oh! Bathroom! Damn, do I have to go pee.

  “I think I’m just gonna cop a squat right here and go pee,” I announce to the group. I start hiking up my skirt, but Ashley grabs my arm and starts dragging me.

  “Where are we going?” I ask her as we stumble along. Well, I stumble. I probably shouldn’t have had those last five tequila shots. Or eaten the worm, really.

  “An alleyway. If you’re going to go pee in public, let’s at least do it in a semi-private alley.”

  Ohhhh…so smart. This is why Ashley is the Big Boss at Blush. She’s such a smartie. I should get her Smarties for her birthday.

  Hmmmm…I wonder when her birthday is…

  Lisa opens up her purse and starts rummaging around. “Let’s create a little landing pad for her to aim for.”

  I stare at her. It’s like she’s speaking English, but I don’t understand the words coming out of her mouth. She triumphantly pulls a wad of napkins out of her purse. “I knew these would come in handy someday,” she says, waving them around. She starts laying them down on the asphalt.

  “Oh, I see,” Erica says, obviously as confused as I had been. She digs around in her purse and pulls out a feminine pad, spreading it on the ground too.

  I stare down at my pile of pads and then back up at my friends. “I have to aim for that?” I ask. It seems a little…difficult. Intense. You know, something that I should be sober for or some shit.

  “You’ll be fine,” Ashley assures me. “We’ll stand right here and form a human shield for you.” My three besties move and link arms together, a sight that has me super emotional.

  “You guys are so nice!” I blubber. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Well, for starters, you should go pee on that pile of napkins.”

  Oh! Right! I have to go pee real bad. I don’t know if I told you that or not yet, but damn, I have to go! I’m so glad that my friends made this pile of napkins for me.

  I hike up my skirt and pull down my panties. I try to lower myself directly over the pile, but I tell you what, you try squatting over a pile of napkins, at four in the morning, drunk off your ass, while wearing stilettos and a pencil skirt, and we’ll see how well you do.

  Let’s just say that this isn’t my finest hour.

  Yeah, yeah, you can do better than me. Showoff.

  Just about mid-stream, which I’m praying isn’t splashing up and getting my favorite stilettos wet, I hear it.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” I jerk my head up, trying to push the yellow liquid out of me faster as I spot a cop heading down the alleyway towards us.

  God oh god oh god oh god…

  “Pee faster!” Ashley whispers.

  “I’m trying!” I whisper-yell back. It’s not exactly like it’s fun down here or something.

  “What are you doing down here?” the cop demands, huffing, once he stops in front of us. At least I’m not the only one who needs to go to the gym.

  “Just going for a midnight stroll, Officer,” Lisa says, and from my view from the ground, it looks like they’re doing a dance, but I think they’re just trying to block his view of me, swaying back and forth to keep him from seeing me.

  Finally, thank god finally, the stream spurts and sputters to a stop and I stand up, trying to pull up my panties while it not being obvious that I’m pulling up my panties.

  While also not falling over into my pile of pee-soaked napkins.

  Have I mentioned that this isn’t exactly my finest hour? I do feel better now, so that’s a bonus.

  “I smell urine!” the cop says angrily. “You ladies need to move out of the way. I need to inspect that pile behind—”

  The loud sound of glass breaking zings through the cold night air, and the cop whirls around. “What the hell?!” he yells, taking off back down the alleyway, towards his police car parked across the street, its windshield busted in. A guy waves, smiles, blows a kiss, and takes off running. I hear the cop yelling into his walkie-talkie, “Backup, I need backup! Suspect on foot…”

  I drape my arms around my besties, propping my head between Lisa and Ashley. “Thanks, you guys. I sure love you guys. You guys are the best.”

  “Yes, and you are very, very drunk,” Ashley says with a laugh. “We need to get you home.”

  Home. That sounded lovely. We should all go home.

  71

  Kaden

  I see Mark Anthony head towards me, and I smile grimly. I’m about to get an earful and I’m not sure I’m up for it, but on the other hand, I don�
�t really have much of a choice, do I? I am the client and I do pay him stupid amounts of money to be my attorney, but he also doesn’t hesitate to tell me when he thinks I’m being a dumbass bastard.

  “Kaden, you dumbass bastard, what were you thinking?” he hisses, holding out his hand and shaking mine as if this is a normal meeting. As if he isn’t bailing my ass out of jail. He smiles broadly for the cameras, the reporters all wanting a shot of us greeting each other, and then the police shoo the reporters away, telling them that they have their picture – they can go now.

  I know they’ll be waiting for us outside, but at least now I don’t have to pretend to be happy while getting my ass chewed by Mark. My smile instantly drops the second that the door closes behind the reporters, and I sink down onto the bench in the visiting area.

  “I was just…bored,” I say with a shrug, not meeting Mark’s eyes.

  Truth time (which I am absolutely not going to tell Mark this, but I’ll tell you): I’d first seen the girl on the dance floor of the Bungalow 8. She was amazing. She could dance. I loved watching her out on the floor, and had just decided to buy her a drink when they started shutting the place down.

  I was one of the last people to leave, and saw her with a group of friends, discussing how hard it was to get an Uber. I was standing off to the side in the shadows, debating whether or not to approach her or just keep showing up at the Bungalow and hope she comes back at some point, when she loudly announces, “I’m gonna cop a squat.”

  I thought I’d bust a rib, trying to keep my laughter in. I like it when girls say it the way it is, and…well, she was definitely doing that. I stayed in the shadows and watched the whole thing – the futile trip down to the closed Starbucks, back to the club, then down the alleyway, all in search of a place for her to go pee.

  I’d just pushed out of the shadows, ready to go home and try to meet up with her another night (because what kind of weird stalker follows a girl down an alleyway and tries to pick up on her while she’s peeing on a pile of napkins?) when a cop car passes by, driving real slow. I’d stopped and melted back into the shadows. A cop was never a good sign. He flipped a U-turn and stopped across the street, and then headed down the same alleyway. He’d spotted the girl, and I knew she was going to get in trouble for urinating in public.

  So…I reacted. Was it smart? No. And my lawyer is right to chew my ass about it. But I don’t regret it. Leading the boys in blue on a merry chase for a while was more excitement than I’d had in a long time.

  Plus, bonus points – the girl got away. Well, at least they didn’t bring her into the same precinct as me.

  I wonder for a moment when she’d show up at the nightclub again. It’s not like I have any other way of tracking her down.

  “Bored?!” Mark thunders, jerking me back to the present. “You’re a multi-billionaire. How on god’s green earth are you bored?!”

  I shrug again. “Maybe I’m bored because of that.”

  He sits back and just stares at me. “You have too much money and time on your hands?” he asks sarcastically.

  “Something like that.”

  The truth is, I hit it big two years ago, when I bet some serious cash on the oil prices going down when everyone else thought they were going up. When the oil prices took a sharp tumble as more oil reserves opened up in Alaska, my bet paid off. In a big way.

  I don’t need to work another day in my life – hell, my hypothetical grandkids won’t need to work a day in their lives either – but I didn’t step down as the CEO of my investment firm and float off into the sunset on my yacht. Who wants to just sit around all day and have their every need taken care of, almost before they can think of it? It sounds good in theory, but I get bored easily.

  I can wipe my own ass, thankyouverymuch. I don’t need someone to do it for me.

  Speaking of getting bored easily, that character flaw is what got me into this trouble to begin with. Lately, even the challenge of making my clients boatloads of money wasn’t much of a challenge.

  I need something new. Something interesting. Something I can do that keeps my interest for more than three minutes.

  I hear my lawyer mumbling something that sounds like, “God save me from spoiled rich kids,” but when I ask him to repeat himself louder, he brushes me off. “Nothing, nothing,” he says brusquely. “I’m here to post bail. I’ll get you out, and with any luck, I’ll get you off with just some fines.”

  “Thanks,” I say gratefully. Because as bored as I’ve been lately, not even I am bored enough to want to continue to sit around in a jail cell all day long. That’s a new level of boredom that I just can’t stomach.

  As my lawyer takes off to get the paperwork done and out of the way, I stare at my hands clasped in front of me, my hands cuffed together like a common criminal. I really need to find something to do with myself that doesn’t include breaking the windshields of police cruisers. Maybe I should try hang-gliding. I’ve heard it’s a lot of fun. It would certainly mean less time behind bars.

  Either way, I’m going to put in a word with the bartender at the Bungalow 8. A few Benjamins might convince him to keep an eye out for Ms. Mystery. Greasing palms has never failed me before, and she’s worth whatever I need to pay.

  72

  Brittney

  “Read this,” Erica says, shoving a newspaper into my hands. I stare down in shock at it – first off, who reads newspapers anymore?? – but then the words on the page jump out at me, and I’m just blown away. I stare at the grainy black-and-white photo above the article, trying to decide if that was really who I saw on Friday night. It’s hard to say. I wasn’t exactly sober when the guy had been busy bashing in the cop’s windshield, plus it had been dark and he’d been far away.

  But…yeah, sure, it looked like him.

  “Kaden Charles was the one who broke the cop’s windshield?” I ask in shock. “Kaden? Really?!” Everyone knew of Kaden the Wonder Kid. He’d made a name for himself a couple of years ago with some oil trade or something, and he was worth billions because of it.

  So why was he going around, breaking windshields? It didn’t make any sense.

  “That’s what the article says. Apparently, he spent the weekend in the clink.”

  “Do you…” I hesitate, the words sounding insane, even to me. “Do you think he did it for me? To distract the cop?” God, how self-centered do I sound! Am I seriously suggesting that someone would go to jail for the weekend, just to save my sorry need-to-go-pee-right-fucking-now ass? That seems a little extreme.

  Erica stares at me contemplatively. “Well…I don’t know. It sounds a little nuts, I’ll grant you that, but on the other hand, does it really matter why he did what he did? Whatever way you slice it, he saved you. And I think that deserves a proper thank you.”

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I ask her breathlessly.

  “If you’re thinking that you should fall face first onto his lap and give him the blowjob of a lifetime, then yes. If you’re thinking we should go out for tacos for lunch, then also yes.”

  I roll my eyes and toss the newspaper at her. “I have places to go, people to do,” I say with a naughty grin. “Don’t expect me back in time for tacos. I prefer hot dogs anyway.”

  Erica bust out laughing. “I cannot believe you just said that,” she said between snorts of laughter.

  “How is it that you’re surprised by my naughty side?” I ask with another naughty grin, slinging my purse over my shoulder. “I’d think you would expect it by now.”

  “I should, I really should!” she calls after me. I saunter out, putting on my sunglasses to ward off the too-bright sun. It’s time to see what the Wonder Kid’s dick looks like. With any luck, it’ll be as magnificent as his bank account.

  73

  Kaden

  I know it’s Tuesday morning because the calendar app on my phone says that it is, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s really Monday. After not getting out of jail until late – even Mark A
nthony, as good as he is, struggled to save my ass – I just didn’t go into work yesterday. Which makes it the first day off that I’ve taken in almost two years, and quite frankly, my idea of a day off really shouldn’t include an orange jumpsuit.

  I contemplate hang-gliding again. It could be fun. It could give me the rush I’ve been missing for a while. Gweny, my secretary, hurries over to greet me as soon as I arrive on the top floor of my office building. This whole floor is my office – ridiculous, right? Who needs 10,000 square feet of office space? But I will admit that the view is fabulous.

  “Oh my god, you’re here!” Gweny says, checking me over as if she’s expecting that I’ll be covered in knife cuts and bruises. “I was so worried when I heard about the reports.”

  “I’m fine,” I say, shrugging away her concern. She’s in her late 50s, and in many ways, feels like my grandmother.

  “If you say so,” she says with a frown, stepping away from me. “I sure wish you’d take some time off, though.”

  “What do you think about hang-gliding?” I ask her.

  “Hang…” She’s just staring at me, mouth hanging wide open. “I haven’t been hang-gliding before, if that’s what you’re asking. But if you’d like me to research it, I can find out death rates and—”

  “No. Don’t worry about it.” Only Gweny would think to research death rates for a hobby. “What happened over the weekend?”

  “$52 million dollars.” She flashes me a happy smile. “Those stocks you picked skyrocketed because of what’s happening in the Middle East, and your customers made $52 million dollars just in the last three days.”

  “Great.” I’m trying to sound enthusiastic, but let’s be honest here – I’m failing miserably. It is all too easy, too predictable. I need a challenge. I need someone or something to force me to do something difficult. The financial markets stopped being difficult a long time ago.