“What do you have?” Pog said.
“This body. A job. Some friends.” Beth glanced timidly at Pog, who only nodded. “Can he take those? He took everything else,” she said desolately.
“He has only the power you give him,” Pog said.
“He took my children from me,” Beth flashed. “Somehow he turned them against me. They just don’t care what happens to me.”
Pog didn’t say anything.
Beth remembered what Delilah had said. “That’s over. They’re gone.”
That was a lie. It had to be. She didn’t feel like her children were gone. They were in her heart, in her life. If she glanced at her watch right now, she would remember what day this is, and then she would jump into the car and go run an errand for Darleen, pick up the grandkids from daycare, buy something online that Darleen couldn’t afford.
Only she wouldn’t. That was over.
Delilah had said, They won’t know you. Had she signed away her children and grandchildren when she took that contract?
Or had she already lost them in the divorce? It seemed so.
The room began to spin queasily for Beth.
“I’m gonna go out on a limb here and make a guess,” Pog said. “I think you were going to go see Blake and get him all impressed with your new beautifulness. And then at some point you were gonna tear off your whiskers and say ‘Ta-da, it’s me, your wife. Now do you want me?’ Or maybe, ‘Hah, I’ve caught you, you miserable philandering schmuck, you can’t even stay faithful to the woman you left me for.’”
Beth covered her face with her hands. “Yes! Both! Yes!” The truth burned her with acid shame. “I’m pathetic.”
“Beth, I’m gonna explain this a different way,” Pog said more kindly.
Beth cringed. “Explain what?”
Pog slowly sucked down some beer. “I don’t have anything to offer about your ex. Don’t know the guy, don’t want to, he’s just another putz. But this you might want to think about.”
“Yes?”
“You are not wearing a mask that hides you. You are wearing a mask that reveals you. Repeat that?”
Numb and obedient, Beth said, “I’m not wearing a mask that hides me. I’m wearing a mask that reveals me.” What the heck did that mean? She felt battered inside, the way she had after sitting in the divorce hearings.
“She’s glazing over, Pog,” Amanda said from her chair in front of her video game.
Beth started crying. She covered her face again.
She felt Pog’s hand on her shoulder. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe that’s the problem, huh?”
“Maybe,” Beth croaked from behind her hands.
“Weren’t you tired of being a good girl? Aren’t you sorry you did everything right?” Pog’s lips nearly touched her ear. She whispered, “Wouldn’t you like a second chance to go back and do it wrong?”
The spinning kitchen slowed. Beth felt her stomach begin to settle. She drew a shaky breath and wiped her tears off her cheeks with her palms. “Don’t know if I can.”
“Well,” Jee said, speaking for the first time and flashing her a smile full of teeth. “That’s where we come in.”
Pog
Once we got the new girl put to bed, Jee and I went down to the factory deck and settled in the broken lawn chairs to watch Amanda go over Reg’s sneaker prints on her freshly-painted basketball court. She’d changed into sweats and flipflops so she could crawl around with a teeny roller dipped in battleship-gray paint. Jee and I still had on our party-wear.
“Seriously, we can make Reg do that,” I told Amanda between samples of Baz’s treasure trove of microbrew. Damn. We’d have to place one big order with the liquor store when this stuff ran out. “He’ll be back soon enough.”
“We’ll try something different next time. This guy can make us miserable if we let him,” Jee pointed out.
“So we don’t let him,” I said, full of beer and optimism.
“Admit it, you kinda overreacted there,” Jee said.
“This is you telling me that?” I said incredulously. “All right. I overreacted.”
“Was that true, what you told Beth?” Amanda said from her hands and knees on the wooden deck. “Will he not remember being chucked off the balcony?”
“I’m pretty sure,” I said. “I’ve admitted I could probably have handled it differently. But he was mauling the new girl, and she was freaking out. I didn’t want her to get the idea that we have to put up with any crap.”
Amanda grunted. “Well, we’ll have to put up with a manager.” She crab-crawled across the floor, now repairing the damage to the black lines.
“No, we won’t,” I insisted darkly. “We will fix this. One way or another.”
“You don’t have to apologize to me,” Jee said. “I’d have killed him.”
“Ah,” I said, “but if you kill him, he won’t learn anything.”
Amanda grunted again. “If he’s got a contract, he can’t be killed.”
Jee smiled wickedly. “Kinda makes it more fun, doesn’t it?” She looked at the beer in her hand. “Hey. This shit is awesome. Have you tried this?” She passed it to me.
I took a swig. It was a nice stout, malty and hoppy with chocolate and coffee notes. I nodded approval with my mouth full.
“Gimme back,” she said, and after another swallow I returned the bottle. She pulled out her phone and took a picture of the label. “I’ll send you this, and you can put it on your shopping list.”
“Awesome,” I said. In the building less than forty-eight hours and already I was Chore Girl. That gave me an idea. “We need a cabana boy around here.”
Jee was about to drink, but she put her beer down and stared at me. “You’re fiendish.”
I was a beat behind her. We have to have an onsite manager.
“Oh.” I smiled slowly. “But how do we motivate him?” I said.
“Leave that to me,” Jee said.
“Here’s another problem. How are we going to know if he remembers anything from today?” Amanda argued. Often she seemed to be out of it, or dumb or bored, but she was tenacious, and she asked the right questions.
I pursed my lips. It had been a long day, and I was sinking into a beercation.
“That’s easy,” Jee said. “Take a firm grip on his arm and lead him toward that door to the manager’s balcony. If he panics, you’ll know he remembers something.”
“Great idea.” I sighed. “I’m crapping out, ladies.”
Jee thrashed her way awkwardly out of her broken lawn chair like a spider with three legs. “Shit, I wish I was drunker. Or soberer. Or asleeper.”
“I’m done,” Amanda said, climbing to her feet. We left her cleaning her rollers at the sink and limped upstairs.
Beth
The following morning, Beth awoke feeling energized, alert, physically fit, and starving. The only garment she could stand to put on out of her sorry suitcase was a kimono she’d bought in Kyoto twenty-eight years ago, when Blake took her with him on a business trip. She wrapped this around herself and shuffled down the hall to the kitchen.
“I’m out of shampoo. Can I use somebody’s?” she said.
Three lady sex demons looked up from their waffles. Then they looked at her feet and broke out in a clamor of advice.
“Don’t go barefoot in there!” Pog said.
“I’ve got some flipflops you can use.” Jee said.
“Do you want hepatitis?” Amanda said.
“She’s safe from infection, but not from the gross,” Pog said.
“I already peed,” Beth said, bemused.
“Seriously, don’t walk in there barefoot,” Jee said.
“Don’t even shower barefoot,” Pog said.
“Get her the flip-flops,” Amanda said. “She needs food.”
Jee gave Amanda a look, but she got up and went out and came back with a pair of black flip-flops with jeweled bands. Beth thanked her and slipped them on. Amanda pulled her into a chair at the
big table. Pog put a pile of waffles on a paper plate.
Beth was so hungry, she ate the first three waffles with her hands as if they were toast, without butter or syrup. When Pog put the second batch in front of her, she took the trouble to butter them. They went down the hatch even faster. While she waited for more, she got up, poured herself some coffee, and noticed the half-gallon carton of heavy whipping cream on the counter. “What’s this for?”
“Well, I’m too goddam lazy to whip it for the waffles,” Pog said in a suggestive tone.
“Fuck, that’s what aerosol whipped cream is for,” Amanda said.
“Doesn’t taste as good,” Pog said.
“Has more calories,” Jee said, not looking up from her tablet.
Beth took a deep breath. She had been drinking her coffee black for twenty years, ever since Blake told her it was time she lost her baby weight.
She put her mug down on the counter. She opened her kimono and looked down at herself—a tall, slender, muscular version of herself, or some ideal of herself she’d never realized she had.
Yup. Still skinny and hot.
With another deep breath, Beth poured a big dollop of whipping cream into her coffee. Then she stirred in three spoonsful of real white sugar. “Mmmmmmm. All right, ladies. That was so good, I will whip you some cream for your waffles.”
At that point, breakfast became an orgy of value-added waffles.
Amanda produced a big carton of fresh strawberries and one of blueberries. To Beth’s amazement, she actually hulled the strawberries herself.
Jee dug liqueurs out of the lower cabinet and added them a glug at a time to whatever bowl Beth was whipping, or tucked the bowls into one of the six fridge-freezers along the kitchen wall.
Pog made waffles like a madwoman, until they were stacked in the oven like cordwood. Then she announced they were out of eggs. “No more batter. Let’s do this!”
The four of them sat down and got serious. Waffles layered with fresh strawberries and Framboise-sweetened whipped cream. Waffle sandwiches glued together with fresh blueberries that had been smashed into whipped cream that was laced with birthday-cake-flavored vodka. Waffles piled so high with Cointreau whipped cream and fresh fruit that Beth could bob for berries, getting cream up her nose and giggling hysterically.
“Hey, Beth,” Jee said at some point when Beth was feeling sated enough to use a fork. “Isn’t your husband named Blake?” She was browsing a big tablet with one finger as she licked her hands clean.
“Ugh, you had to mention him.” For a whole night, Beth had forgotten to be angry. At this hour, she felt pretty good, even after scrambling out of barroom toilet windows and running on a twisted ankle in spike heels away from her husband—her ex-husband. Beth blinked. “Hey. My ankle doesn’t hurt today.”
“It shouldn’t. You really have to work at it to mess up one of these bodies,” Amanda said.
“Because somebody has filed a missing persons report on you, and your ex is being sought for questioning. Looky here.” Jee handing over her tablet. “In the Tribune.”
Beth squinted at it. There was her photo, taken at a company party five years ago. “My God, I was fat,” she blurted. She’d been a succubus all of two days and already she was sneering at her old self. Of course, she’d also sneered at herself back when she was...herself. Mrs. Blake Saunders, missing since late last week. If you see her, contact her daughter at this number or email, blah blah and her car’s description and license plate. Right, the car she’d left at the motel, an old beater Audi Blake had given up ten years ago. “What does this mean?”
Jee said, “He’s going to try to establish your death. Lets him out of the settlement.”
“If they don’t find a body, he’ll have to bank it for you for seven years,” Amanda said.
“He has nothing to bank. He’s in money trouble,” Beth said. Then she remembered the mystery apartment at the Doral. “At least, I think he is.”
“Right, that’s on this morning’s agenda,” Jee said. “Do you have that card he gave you?”
Beth went to her room and found the card. “Here you go.” She gave it a glance. “Wait, it says Blake Shanley. That’s not his last name,” she said, feeling stupid.
“But he gave you the card. He was hoping to get you into that apartment with him,” Jee said.
“I’d say he was counting on it,” Pog said drily. When Beth squinted at her, Pog put out a palm. “Hot young thing gives him her undivided attention for nearly two hours? Oh yeah.”
“Did you wait for me all that time?” Beth said, suddenly remorseful.
“Not wait, exactly. We had the rest of this month to take care of,” Pog said. “Okay, you slackers. Clean up, or you’ll cook your own breakfast tomorrow.”
The other two groaned, but they got up and cleared away the soggy, sticky paper plates.
Beth collected the dirty flatware, which was a sturdy Oneida pattern at least forty years old, and loaded it into the dishwasher, along with the plates out of the waffle iron. She caught Jee and Amanda eying her. “What?”
“I forget, you’ve been a slave for twenty-eight years,” Jee said.
“Excuse me,” Beth said, straightening and putting her hands on her hips. “I was married. I had children. I was a homemaker, not a slave.”
“Were you paid?”
“I had all the money I could spend. For a long time,” she added scrupulously. Blake’s money troubles had begun while the kids were in college.
“But you kept working the same amount, even when the pay went down.”
“I was not paid,” Beth snapped. “I did it for love and because it was my job. My contribution to the family.”
“How many hours a week?” Jee said.
“I don’t know! A lot less when the kids went off to college. It was—I felt—” I felt retired, Beth thought. I felt put out to pasture. She felt sick now. She’d been sent to the glue factory.
“So the money started to dry up,” Jee said.
“Why are you saying these things?” Beth cried.
“And then he fired you and took up with the teenager,” Jee said relentlessly.
Beth slapped the whisk down on the counter. “He took up with the teenager first!” Her anger was back, filling her backbone with fire and corroding her heart in the acid bath of Jee’s words. She realized suddenly that that burned, helpless, crippled feeling she’d been living with since Blake served her with the papers had vanished sometime in the night, vanished and stayed away, all through breakfast.
Because now it was back again, making her weak-kneed with self-loathing. She clung to the edge of the counter, wondering where all her tears had gone, waiting out the wave of helplessness.
“Take it easy on her,” Amanda said. “She’s still recovering.”
“She still hates herself,” Jee said. “That’s gotta change.”
Pog said casually, “So you call her a slave?”
“Spade’s a spade. When you work twenty-four-seven and your pay is at the discretion of your owner, when you’re expected to do it no matter what the emotional cost to you, when you can be shitcanned for no reason with no notice and no severance package...what do you call it?” Jee sounded enraged as she recited her twisted interpretation of marriage.
Beth knew that wasn’t true. Not always. She’d known plenty of women who, well, who were happier in the job than she had been. “There’s a difference,” she said quietly. “When love goes both ways. When your family is grateful. It’s honorable work. The women who do it deserve respect.”
After a pause, Amanda said, “Yeah. They deserve that.”
Beth sent her a thank you glance. She felt her own anger cooling as she took in Jee’s dark, flashing eyes and the curl of her lovely fingers around the plastic honey bear. Jee must have her own reasons for feeling rage. She wondered suddenly how Jee had come to be in this place, in her perfect young body.
How had they all come here? Were they all old, sagging cripples inside, th
e way Beth felt herself to be? Broken horses given a reprieve from the glue factory, given fresh new bodies and sent out to work again...for hell.
Why exactly did these three do what they did?
Beth swallowed, suddenly feeling trapped in a way that felt familiar. She blushed until the backs of her ears burned. She changed the subject. “Was I supposed to have sex with Blake last night?”
Jee snorted. “Only in his dreams.”
“Did you want to?” Pog said, looking interested for the first time during this conversation. “Wipe the table and counters,” she added, looking at Amanda.
Beth wetted a sponge and handed it to Amanda. Amanda went to work on the countertop.
Jee and Pog were still looking at Beth.
She blurted, “Why would I want to touch him? He was disgusting.” She heard wonder in her own voice. Her eyes filled suddenly with tears. “I used to think he was so sexy.” Her mouth twisted out of control. “Oh!”
Jee took the sponge from Amanda, wetted it again, and pressed it into Beth’s hand. “You do the table. I’ll call the Doral. C’mon, girlfriend. If we can, we’ll get into his apartment today and find out some more.”
Panting, bawling, feeling waves of heat and cold pour over her, Beth set herself to wipe down the table, the sink, the cabinet doors, and all six refrigerator fronts, while her tears dripped onto the formica and her hand.
Past the roaring in her own ears she heard Pog say, “Way to distract her from her misery, Jee.”
“I’m putting her emotions to work,” Jee said. “First the work. Then the reward. Hold on, I’ve got somebody—hello? I’d like to speak to the manager on duty, please. This is Agent Tyra Hasselhoff of the Internal Revenue Service. My badge number is A-twenty-one-eleven. Please write it down. Thank you. I’m calling to inquire about the apartment of a Blake Shanley, number eighteen-forty. Yes. Who holds the lease, please?”
Beth fled to her room.
Pog
The unspeakable Reg showed up while Beth was dressing, thank the powers. I’d bullied the others into cleaning up what she’d left undone, which wasn’t much, and we were enjoying a post-breakfast beer when he came prancing into the kitchen as if he owned the place. Again.
Coed Demon Sluts_Beth Page 6
