by Tara Sivec
I started laughing. And once I started I couldn’t stop.
“Shut up! It could totally happen!” Claire argued.
“Right! It will happen just like My Little Pony will make a comeback. Give it a rest, Claire. You’re not the one-night-stand type and that’s perfectly okay. One slut in a friendship is one slut too many.”
Claire shook her head at me. “You’re not a slut. You’re just equal opportunity. You buy eight pairs of shoes at one time because you can’t stand the idea of leaving a pair in the store to get lonely. It’s only natural you do the same with your vagina. You never want your vagina to be lonely. It’s so beautiful.”
I chugged half the bottle of Boone’s while Claire laughed.
“Okay, in all seriousness, I really want to own a bakery some day. What if we sold like sexy lingerie on one side and cookies and cupcakes on the other?” she suggested.
I started to make fun of the idea, but then I thought about it. And thought about it some more. I thought about it while I polished off the rest of the bottle and then chucked the empty onto the floor.
“Heeeeey, wine whore!” Claire complained as I jumped up from the bed and started pacing the room.
“Sex and cookies,” I muttered.
Claire paused in the process of opening the second bottle of wine. “Huh?”
“Sex and cookies. Oh, fuck, Claire! You’re a GENIUS!” I shouted.
“Wait. Let me drink some of this and catch up to you before you shower me with more compliments.”
She held her hand up in the air in the universal sign of “hold the fuck up” while she downed half the bottle. She wiped her arm across her mouth and belched loudly. “Okay, I’m ready. Tell me more. Make sure to add how pretty and nice I am.”
I walked over to my desk and sat down, grabbing a pen and a notebook. I wrote “Sex and Cookies” really big at the top of a blank page.
“So, I like sex and you like baking. Jesus, this is brilliant. BRILLIANT!” I screamed as I made a list of things we could sell at this store and a rough estimate of how much money it would take to get something like this off the ground. Turns out my Business Administration classes were actually useful. Who knew?
“Fuck. They put more than four percent alcohol in this shit. I think I’m drunk,” Claire mumbled as she squinted her eyes and tried to read the label on the bottle.
“Nah, I just roofied you.”
Claire sniffed the opening of the bottle and then shrugged. “Cool. Make sure you take advantage of me when I pass out. Anyway, back to this Snack and Sex thing. Tell me more.”
I scribbled a few more things on the paper before turning the chair to face her. “Sex and Cookies, asshole. It’s the name of our future business endeavor, although we might have to tweak that a little. I’m not sure the city would allow us to put the word ‘sex’ on our sign, but whatever. You can have your bakery on one side and put people into sugar comas every day and I can sell sex toys and lingerie and shit like that and put people into erotic comas on my side. Then, we can make sure the building has a loft upstairs and live above our businesses and throw awesome parties every weekend. WINNER!” I shouted.
Claire bolted forward on the bed so fast she smacked her head into the wooden slats of the top bunk.
“SON OF A BITCH!” she yelled, rubbing her hand on her head as she got up and walked over to me.
I got up from the chair and we stood staring at each other for a few minutes before both of our faces broke out into huge smiles. We grabbed onto each other and started screaming and laughing and jumping up and down in the middle of the room like a couple of assholes.
After we got that nonsense out of our system, we went to work making more lists.
“This is totally happening. We’ll go to a Pi Kappa Phi party next weekend and make THAT dream come true, and then right after graduation in two years, we’re opening this fucking business!” Claire stated.
We finished off the second bottle of Boone’s Farm in celebration and popped our worn out copy of Heathers into the VCR on the dresser, reciting the words to the entire movie while we dreamed about our awesome future.
I STOOD IN the corner of the room, staring at Claire and thinking about the day we came up with the idea for Seduction and Snacks as the nurse got her IV started. She doesn’t look sick. How in the fuck is this happening? Sure, we’re in our mid-forties, but we’re still young. This does NOT happen to young people and it most certainly doesn’t happen to one of MY people.
She met my eyes across the room and huffed. “Will you stop looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” I ask, pushing away from the wall and going to the edge of the bed.
“Like you’re expecting me to start spewing green vomit or keel over.”
I scoff and put my hands on my hips. “That’s not funny. This is serious, Claire. You… you’re…”
“I have breast cancer. It’s okay, you can say it. My tits may be small, but they’re deadly,” she says with a laugh.
“The doctor just gave me this form she says you need to fill out,” Drew interrupts, walking through the door.
For the first time since I met him, I’m actually glad to see Drew. Ever since Claire told us the news and we almost got kicked out of Fosters, he’s been the calm, rational one. We met Drew when Claire met her husband, Carter. Drew and Carter had just recently moved to our town and they worked at the same car manufacturing plant where my husband Jim worked. From day one, Drew was always the guy who said whatever he was thinking no matter how inappropriate or disgusting it was. He’s the jokester in the group, the crazy dude you sometimes don’t want to be seen in public with. Who am I kidding? You never want to be seen in public with Drew. The last few days, though, he’s kept us all from falling apart and on a few occasions, I’ve actually thought about hugging him to thank him. Then I remember the story he told us last week about how he and his wife Jenny decided Tuesdays were now referred to as Taco Tuesday in their house. Something to do with salsa on his penis and Jenny wearing a sombrero. I’ve blocked out the rest of that story out of respect for my mental health.
“What’s the form for?” Claire asks, craning her neck to look at the paper Drew holds out to her.
“It’s all about your likes and dislikes and some ‘getting to know you’ shit. It’s like the cancer version of Match.com. I think they want you to get a little action while you’re here,” Drew replies.
The nurse finishes up Claire’s IV and smiles at us. “That’s just a way for the staff to get to learn a little more about you. We want you to be as comfortable as possible and we feel that knowing some personal things about you helps us make that easier.”
She fiddles with the IV machine, presses a few buttons and then leaves the room, telling Claire she’ll be back in a little while to check on her and pick up the finished form.
“I don’t have the energy to fill that thing out, will you guys do it for me?” Claire asks, closing her eyes and resting her head on the pillow behind her.
At this point, I would strip naked, light myself on fire and run screaming through the halls of this hospital if she asked. It’s not easy for someone like me to feel helpless. I’ve spent my life being known as the bossy, take-charge one in this group. Having to stand off to the side and watch your person suffering and not being able to do a damn thing about it is sobering.
“Don’t you worry your pretty little head, Claire. Jim and I will fill this out for you,” Drew announces with a smile as my husband and Carter walk through the door, their arms loaded with coffee, bags of chips, Snickers, Pepsi and anything else they could find in the vending machine down the hall.
“Dude, they had pudding cups in the vending machine?” Drew asks, his eyes growing wide as he snatches a chocolate cup out of Carter’s hand.
“Uh, not exactly. We found a fridge a few doors down and it was filled with a bunch of free stuff!” Jim explains.
I shake my head at them. “You guys, that’s probably the nurse’s
lounge. You just stole someone’s lunch.”
Drew already has the top off of the pudding cup and we all watch as he reaches into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out a mini bottle of Kahlua. He unscrews the top and dumps the entire thing into the cup of pudding, using his fingers to stir the mixture around.
“Mmmmmm pudding shots,” he mutters before tipping the cup back and slurping the entire thing down in one gulp.
Carter busies himself dumping all of the food on a table in the corner of the room, lining it up by size and then rearranging it by color. He huffs and then tries organizing the items alphabetically. Carter has been manically arranging things since Claire got the call from her oncologist last week. He started at Seduction and Snacks, putting all of the butt plugs with the ball gags because they both start with B. After that, he took every item out of their pantry at home and lined them up by expiration date. When he tried to rearrange Claire’s baking cupboards, that’s when she put her foot down and told him if he put the cinnamon near the coriander she would castrate him.
I feel for the guy, I really do. He needs to keep himself busy so he doesn’t dwell on what’s happening with Claire. I tried doing something like that after she told us. I decided it was a good idea to take up running. Jim found me an hour later, two blocks away from our house screaming about how no one in their right mind should run unless someone with a gun was chasing them. Even then, I might just let the guy shoot me. Running is dumb.
“Carter, stop diddling the applesauce cups and come help us fill out this form,” Drew tells him, waving the piece of paper up in the air. “I have more yummy goodness in my pants and pudding cups to fill.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Jim mutters next to me. Still, it doesn’t deter him from going over to Drew, grabbing one of the pudding cups and an offered mini bottle of vodka that Drew just pulled out of his back pocket.
I watch as Carter goes over to Claire’s side, leans down and whispers something in her ear before kissing her on the head and disappearing out the door with Jim and Drew. This is the first time the two of us have been alone since we all got the news. It’s also the first time I have no idea what to say to my best friend. Everything that runs through my mind right now is completely stupid.
“So, this kind of sucks, huh?”
“At least your oncologist is cute.”
“Would it be wrong to ask if they have some extra morphine I can use?”
“Sorry if I can’t stop staring at your boobs.”
“Stop staring at my boobs,” Claire deadpans, her eyes still closed on the pillow.
“How the hell did you know I was staring at your boobs?”
She opens her eyes and raises one brow at me. “Because the lump in there has a special homing beacon that can sense boob ogling.”
I cross my arms over my chest and roll my eyes. “You are being entirely too flippant about all of this.”
“What do you expect me to do, Liz? Scream and cry about the unfairness of it all? What good will that do me? Do you think the cancer will be like ‘Well, shit. If she thinks it’s unfair then we obviously need to skedaddle.’”
“Did you just say skedaddle?”
Claire nods her head. “Yes, yes I did. Now quit being a pussy, come over here and sit by me.”
She pats the bed next to her. “It’s not contagious.”
“I know it’s not contagious, asshole,” I tell her as I gently climb into her bed and lean back against the pillows next to her.
We don’t say anything, each of us staring up at the ceiling. I want to tell her how sorry I am, but that’s so fucking cliché that I can’t even form the words. I want to reassure her that whatever she needs, I’ll be here for her, but what the hell could I give her right now to make this all better? I don’t have a magic wand that will take this stupid fucking disease out of her body. In less than an hour, she’s going into an operating room to have a double mastectomy for stage 2 breast cancer. I have nothing that will make any of this go away.
A half hour later, the boys walk back into the room, snickering and shoving each other, clearly a little tipsy from pudding shots.
“What did you guys do? How many of those cups of pudding did you have?” Claire questions.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Zoltron,” Jim replies with a laugh.
Drew chokes on his own laugh, bending over at the waist.
“Zoltron? Do I even want to know what you three idiots are talking about?” I ask as Jim walks over and hands me the questionnaire the nurse asked Claire to fill out.
I grab it from his hand and scroll through the questions, along with the answers the boys filled in.
“Question number one: Do you have any nicknames?” I read aloud.
Claire leans forward to look over my shoulder, reading the answer that they wrote down. “My full name is Sheba, Princess of the Night, but I will only answer to Zoltron.”
The boys start giggling like fools from the doorway.
“Keep going,” Drew says in between laughs.
I sigh, moving on to question number two. “Do you have any hobbies?”
I feel Claire’s rumble of laughter next to me as she reads the answer. “My hobbies include running a meth lab in my basement, throwing down gang signs, mailing underwear to members of Congress and breeding ferrets.”
I quickly scan the rest of the questions and answers.
What is your favorite color? Clitoris. A combination of clear, teal, orange and island blue.
What is your favorite song? The Silent Song. I could sing it for you, but you wouldn’t be able to hear it. Only alpacas and very rare mice have the ability to hear The Silent Song.
Do you have any children? rufus, joseephus, artie choke, woody bush, pat may wiener, meowy, boopsie and bob.
What’s your favorite movie? It’s a tie between “The Anal girls of tobacco road: vagina slimes” and “sex starved fuck sluts #22: stinky white women.” The well-developed plot and range of emotions portrayed in vagina slimes far outweighs that of stinky white women, but at the same time, the complexity in the cinematic quality of stinky white women should not be overlooked.
The questionnaire goes on for two pages, each answer they wrote down worse than the last. The only thing stopping me from throttling the idiot men we married is the fact that Claire thinks it’s funny and it’s taken her mind off of the fact that her boobs are killing her. Those little bumps of fat sitting on her chest are literally sucking the life out of her. I keep running through every single memory of the two of us together. Every time we’ve made each other laugh, cry, snort, puke, trip down stairs or scream in frustration. Thirty years of going through everything together. I can’t imagine living the rest of my life without her and I have no idea how to find the humor in any of this bullshit. We have so much more living to do, she and I. We have a business to run together, the wedding of our children to plan and future grandchildren to corrupt.
The nurse walks back in to grab the form, clearly irritated that there are three drunk men giggling like little girls in the room, trying on hospital masks that they drew smiley faces on the front of.
“There’s no drinking of alcohol allowed on hospital premises,” she tells them haughtily.
“Pudding shots do not equal drinking alcohol,” Drew informs her, his voice muffled through the hospital mask that has a porn stache drawn on the front of it. “Pudding shots equal awesome. Can I call you ‘Puddin’?”
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” she tells him.
He throws his arm around her shoulders. “Awwww, don’t be like that, Puddin. We’ll share some with you.”
As I wrangle the guys and get them out of the room to give Claire some peace and quiet and get Nurse Ratched off our backs, I suddenly wish I could turn back time. I’d go back to something better than this. A time when my best friend wasn’t getting ready to go into surgery so they could try and cut out the part of her body that’s killing her. A time when I was young and dumb. Those w
ere the good old days…
HERE’S A LITTLE secret that not too many people know: Claire wasn’t the only one who had a one-night stand that one time at a frat party. Unlike my dumbass friend, at least I remembered the birth control and didn’t get knocked up. Well, birth control that works. I guess it isn’t her fault condoms break every once in a while.
That one time, at a frat party…
CLAIRE HAD DISAPPEARED with some really cute guy about twenty minutes ago and honestly, I was glad she walked out of the room. The two of them were trading lines from Heathers while they played a thousand games of beer pong and it had started making me feel stabby. Heathers was our thing. OURS. Now that whore decided to finally listen to me about losing her virginity with a dude who was going to steal her away from me. Some pretty boy with a sweet smile who was going to pop her cherry, ask her to marry him and then they would move away and I’d never see her again. Okay, I know I’m being dramatic, fuck your face. I’m a good friend, though. I stood watch over the guy all night long and made sure he wasn’t some pompous frat boy who would slip a roofie in her drink and take advantage of her. The fact that he was actually nice made it harder to hate him for stealing my best friend. Thank God Claire strapped on a set of balls and took the lead, otherwise that guy would have just stared at her with those stupid googly eyes all night long and never manned up. That guy was two seconds away from kissing the ground she walked on. Really, I’m happy for her. If she’s going to lose her virginity, at least it’s with someone like that and not some douche who will hit it and quit it and she’ll never see him again. I hope she at least remembers to get his damn name.
“You look bored. How can you possibly be bored at a frat party?”
I turned around so fast when I heard a voice close to my ear that my full cup of beer sloshed all down the front of the guy’s clothes.
