Waiting for the Punchline

by Natasha West

‘Yeah. But you promised me a fun summer. And I’m not having that yet so you’d better work a bit harder. You said no backsies? Well that applies to you too.’

  ‘You’re a ballbreaker, Fitzgerald.’

  ‘And you’re a flake, Hunter.’

  ‘Yeah and I’ve always loved that about me. It means I don’t have to do shit I don’t like doing.’

  ‘You got through two years of A-levels that you technically didn’t have to do. And you talked about chucking it in every day but you never did. Why not?’

  Megan knew the answer to that. But she wasn’t going to admit to Phoebe that she’d stayed at school for her. Not a chance.

  ‘It was either that or get a proper job. Probably would have ended up at KFC. Bugger that.’

  Megan went quiet as she contemplated. Eventually, she turned back to Phoebe. ‘Fine. We won’t quit. But you can’t moan if it gets worse.’

  ‘Alright. On my head be it.’

  Twelve

  Megan looked at the rabbit costume and closed her eyes at the horror. ‘Mike, no. Please.’

  Mike, the children’s entertainment co-ordinator, slapped a conciliatory hand on Megan’s back. ‘Everyone takes a turn in Bugs, I’m afraid. I clocked a lot of field time in this bad boy back in the day.’

  Megan desperately tried to come up with some reason she couldn’t be forced into the costume. Super girl was one thing, she’d been wearing that costume for a few weeks and she’d gotten used to its tightness. But this monstrosity was another level of hell altogether.

  Just as Megan was about to give Mike a load of crap about being allergic to whatever the hell the thing was made out of, Mike said ‘Oh and if you get any stains on it, you’ll have to sponge it down at the end of the day. It’s not machine washable’ and he walked off, apparently considering the matter dealt with.

  Megan picked up the head and sniffed inside. She almost swooned. Had someone pissed into the thing? Megan didn’t know how she was going to get through this. Trapped in a stifling, stinky rabbit costume as the British summer hit its highs? Surely, she’d pass out. Or puke. Or both. Maybe she’d die in there? Her epitaph would read ‘Expired in a rabbit costume, being jumped on by kids who didn’t realise she was dead.’ It seemed about right.

  She briefly remembered the coach that left every morning. But it was pure fantasy and she knew it. She’d made Phoebe a promise that she wouldn’t flake. She’d have to keep it or all this was for nothing.

  She slipped into the body of the costume, slowly, trying to delay the moment her entire body was encased in polyester rabbit, the moment the head had to go on. But eventually, there was nothing for it. She was due to go out. She took a deep breath, holding it as she placed the dreaded head on.

  Show time.

  Megan went out into the kids play area and heard the roar of numerous children reacting in excitement to her visage.

  ‘BUNNY!’ cried out one little girl with a snotty nose who then ran at her, headbutting her in the stomach. ‘Oof’ Megan expelled as she bent double, winded. Rule one of the job - always make the kids think you’re having fun - had just been broken. Her smile had dropped. Megan quickly checked around for a staff member who would come and tell her off. And there he was, Mike, watching her with the kids. But he didn’t look annoyed. He was giving her the thumbs up.

  That was when Megan realised the hidden benefit to the costume. Before she’d had to be ‘On’ all day. But today, no one could see her expressions inside the costume, nor did she need to speak. As long as she kept moving her body, her face could do what it wanted.

  The two hours inside the costume was the turning point. All she had to do was jump about in the ball pit, getting plastic balls thrown at her full force and not only was her face protected but no one knew that she was off somewhere else. She could allow the kids to jump on her and be yawning in the costume. It was as close to a perk as she’d yet to find in this job. And she grabbed it.

  Three hours later, Megan popped her sweaty head out of the costume in the break room, so as not to traumatise any kids who might see ‘Bunny’ pull her own head off. Mike walked in. ‘Megan, you’re a trooper. If you wanna jump out, we’ll put you somewhere else after break-’

  ‘Nope. Think I’ll stick with the cossie if you don’t mind.’

  Mike’s mouth dropped open in astonishment but he was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. ‘Great, you can stay on Bugs today then.’

  Megan spent the rest of the day in the costume. It was sweaty but she was free, in her own little way.

  Thirteen

  It was ten minutes before the next show and Phoebe was tuning up, trying not to look across the stage at the drummer, Joy. She was a bit older than Phoebe, about twenty-five at a guess. She was a raven-haired beauty with delicate cheekbones and a roman nose, and the fact she was wearing the absurd Dinkles green and black lycra band costume took nothing away from her exquisiteness. Phoebe didn’t know who had decided to give her the name Joy, but it was a truly ironic moniker. She was one of the angriest people Phoebe had ever met. Phoebe was terrified of her.

  ‘Oy, Guitar Girl’ Joy yelled across the stage.

  Phoebe looked up.

  ‘Before we go on today, I just wanted to let you know you need to slow the hell down.’

  Phoebe felt adrenaline pump into her veins. It wasn’t that she couldn’t handle a little criticism, far from it. It was that she’d never heard it shouted at her by someone she barely knew before. She didn’t know how to react.

  ‘Guitar Girl, did you hear me?’ Joy said, standing from her drums.

  Phoebe froze as Joy stalked toward her. And then she was simply looking up at the woman, standing over her, furious.

  ‘I said you need to slow down. If you’re deaf, you picked the wrong career.’

  ‘I heard you’ Phoebe said. Joy looked down at her a moment longer and then turned, walking back to her drums. And then Phoebe, who’d feared this woman on sight, found her real voice. The voice that knew she’d been doing good work for the last fortnight, under less than easy circumstances. ‘And my tempo is fine.’

  Joy stopped walking. Phoebe heard someone let out a whistle and realised that the rest of the band, three guys, were listening with growing interest.

  Joy turned back to Phoebe, her eyes ablaze. ‘I set the rhythm. You know that, right? So, if I tell you you’re going too fast, then you’re going too fucking fast. Alright?’ And with that, she went back to her drums and sat down smugly.

  Phoebe put her guitar down carefully on the stand and stood. She didn’t enjoy confrontation in the slightest but when it came to her music, she knew her business. She wouldn’t be told otherwise, even by Joy. ‘You don’t need to talk to me like that. If you want to discuss the set, we can do it calmly. Like adults.’

  Joy’s eyes fell upon Phoebe with something like hell in them. ‘Are you calling me a child? When you’re… what? About twelve? You cheeky little-’

  ‘Right’ the stage manager said, strolling onto the stage, unaware of what she was breaking up. Everyone immediately picked up their instruments and put their eyes to the ground. ‘Going on shortly. Everyone ready?’ Mumbles and nods came back and she pulled the curtain back on the tiny stage, sat in the corner of the bar.

  The singer did his patter to the already semi-drunk crowd, gave his cue and band struck up. Joy started up first and Phoebe went in, listening to Joy, trying to discern if there was anything in her remarks. But if there were any lags, she couldn’t find them.

  Eventually, the rhythm of the song took her and she found her attention drift away from the incident, her concentration only on the instrument in her hands.

  They played three covers and then, somewhere in the fourth one, Phoebe heard someone shout ‘duck’ and she turned just in time to dodge out of the way as a drum stick came flying at her person. As it clattered behind her, everyone stopped playing and a moan went through the audience. Phoebe turned to Joy angrily whispering, ‘What the hell?!’

/>   Joy shrugged. ‘Slipped. Sorry. Guess I was having to go too fast to keep up with you.’

  The singer picked up the stick and tossed it back to her with an apology to the crowd for the break. He gave everyone the nod and they began to play again.

  But Phoebe kept a watchful eye out for flying drumsticks.

  Fourteen

  Megan locked the room with her key and turned from the door, moving down the hallway. Another sweaty day in the bunny and she was ready for some fun. After she’d grabbed a burger from the restaurant, she decided she really wanted to watch Phoebe play so she headed back to the room, showered off the remnants of the bunny costume (it took a long time to feel truly clean), got ready and headed back out.

  As she approached the bar she saw looked through the glass walls, watching Phoebe playing, performing backing vocals, muted by the glass. It was funny, Megan had watched Phoebe play a selection of instruments but she was always struck by how different she looked with a guitar in her hands. She was calm, content, queen of her own private kingdom. She was a pretty girl with her long red hair and perfect skin but when she played, she looked like something else. ‘Beautiful’ was the word that came to mind.

  Megan pushed the thought quickly away, as she’d learnt to do. Now and again she had that type of thought about her best friend. But she had a handle on it, had it sussed. Phoebe was the person closest to her on the entire planet. And she was attractive, that was difficult to ignore. And Megan was a bag of hormones with nowhere to direct them. Megan wasn’t intellectually gifted but she could do those type of sums and she knew what they might add up to if she let herself get carried away. She refused to become that girl, mooning over someone she’d never be able to have. All it would do was twist her up in painful knots and ruin their friendship in the process. No sir, not her and Phoebe. She wouldn’t allow it.

  When these feelings crept over her mind, or indeed her body, Megan would picture a steam roller, crushing the thoughts to dust. It helped to keep them under control most of the time. And when that didn’t quite work, she’d take those feelings and put them somewhere else. There was usually someone around who’d do. The supply teacher with the naughty looking dimples, the girl who stocked the shelves in the local Tesco who displayed her tramp stamp every time she went for a high shelf, that one woman she always saw on the number twenty-eight bus with the legs. She could let her mind wander all over the place with these woman, safe and sound. She didn’t know them and she didn’t care about them, in her mind they could be whatever she wanted them to be.

  So it didn’t matter that Megan’s pupils occasionally felt like they were ablaze when she looked at Phoebe. It was just her sex drive misfiring. Megan poured all her strength into believing that. She had no choice.

  Megan entered the bar, just in time to hear the singer announce they were playing the last song of the evening.

  She caught Phoebe’s eye and waved at her. She nodded and smiled back. But there was something in her eyes, something off. And then she looked across the stage and saw someone else. The drummer. Megan felt like someone had just shot electricity into her downstairs area. The woman was sex on a stick.

  As she found herself staring at the drummer, the woman’s eyes caught hers but she didn’t look away, holding Megan’s gaze. She winked. Megan felt her face go red hot. Had a sexy woman just winked at her?

  Although Megan knew she liked girls, it had been theoretical up to this point. But that wink… Was it possible she might have a shot? The thought was fantastic and terrifying.

  After the set ended, Megan waited in the bar for Phoebe, who appeared looking strangely frazzled.

  ‘The rock star arrives’ she said and held her hand up to invisible paparazzi. ‘No pictures, please.’

  Phoebe smiled thinly.

  ‘You alright?’ Megan asked, sniffing out trouble.

  ‘Yeah, just tired.’ Phoebe could have explained about the drum stick incident but it had been embarrassing and she wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, not even to Megan. But she was still burning up about it.

  ‘Not buying it. What’s up?’

  Phoebe took a deep breath, thinking maybe she should talk about it, get it off her chest, when…

  ‘Hey, Guitar Girl’ a voice said behind her. Phoebe turned, as did Megan. Both reacted to the sight of Joy. But in rather different ways.

  ‘Sorry about earlier. Drum sticks can be slippery little fuckers when you get sweaty’ she said, insincerely.

  Phoebe wondered if she should call her out, let her know she knew full well it hadn’t been an accident. But she had to work with this person. If she let it go now, it might all turn out alright in the end. Perhaps they’d be laughing about it next week. ‘Don’t worry about it’ she said, trying to feel as forgiving as she was pretending to be.

  Joy smiled briefly and then turned to Megan. ‘Who’s your friend?’ Megan felt her face do that hot thing again.

  ‘This is Megan, she works with the kids’ Phoebe told Joy and then glanced at her friend. She looked kind of weird. ‘Megan, this is the drummer from the band, Joy.’

  ‘Yeah. I’m Megan’ Megan parroted. She couldn’t seem to think of anything else to say.

  ‘Megan. OK’ Joy said, giving her a quick look up and down.

  Phoebe caught the look and realised what was happening.

  ‘There’s a thing tonight, staff party in the quarters. You two coming?’ Joy asked them. But mainly Megan.

  Phoebe opened her mouth to say thanks but no thanks, but in the momentary polite pause she took to pretend she was considering it before deciding she was feeling kind of tired, she heard Megan say, ‘Yeah. We’ll be there.’

  Joy gave her a small nod and said, ‘Maybe I’ll see you there’ and walked off. Megan watched her walk away, feeling useless. A woman like that had spoken to her and she said only two things to her. ‘Yeah, I’m Megan’, which was utterly redundant being that Phoebe had already mentioned her name, and ‘Yeah. We’ll be there.’ Rubbish.

  Phoebe rounded on Megan. ‘Err… What was all that?’

  Megan shrugged. ‘All what?’

  ‘Do you seriously want to go to the party?’

  ‘I dunno, really’ Megan lied. She was absolutely going, if only to try and be slightly more interesting in front of Joy.

  ‘But you told her we’d be there.’

  ‘It’s in our quarters, so technically, we will be there.’

  ‘I’m not up for a party’ Phoebe said, snappily.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m tired and I want to go to bed. I’m not going to hang about with that lot, getting wasted.’ Forgiving Joy for throwing the stick was one thing. Hanging out with her was quite another. And she didn’t like the way Joy had been looking at Megan. And vice versa. It gave her a bad feeling. Joy seemed like more than Megan could handle.

  Megan looked at Phoebe. ‘What’s up your arse all of a sudden?’

  ‘Nothing. What’s up with you? Why are you so desperate to go?’ Phoebe asked. But she knew why.

  There was a silence which was broken by Megan saying. ‘Go to bed, then. I’m going to the party.’ And then she walked off, leaving Phoebe to wonder how someone like Joy had just managed to come between them. But the answer was obvious. She was sexy and Megan liked it. And that fact pissed Phoebe off very much indeed.

  Fifteen

  It was midnight and everyone was officially off and partying, barring a few unlucky night staff. Megan was standing with some of her fellow children’s entertainers in the common room, chatting about the job to a soundtrack of particularly boring indie music. But it was a façade.

  As she listened to them ramble on about playing with the kids and how they were trying to ‘Use this opportunity as a springboard to the stage’, her focus was fully on the other side of the room, where Joy was drinking with the rest of the band, minus Phoebe. They were three guys of differing horniness levels and they were hanging all over her. Megan was a little jealous. But she took comfo
rt from Joy’s obvious disdain for their desperate efforts to get her attention.

  Eventually, Megan decided enough was enough. It was doing her no good to stand and wait for Joy to get dropped into her lap. She was going to have to go and talk to her. The thought of trying to make a move brought her out in a cold sweat but this night had to count. She’d had a row with Phoebe over it. If she’d had a tiff with her best friend for the sake of standing Joy adjacent for two hours drinking warm beer and listening to Coldplay, then she really was a drip.

  So off she went to talk to Joy, like a sherpa taking her first step onto Everest, not at all sure if she’d be coming back alive or die on the mountain.