Seattle Girl (17 page)

“Yes cherry lips. It’s me.” he said, and I could tell how pleased he was that I recognized his voice.

I vowed to keep my shit together on the air. I’d save my freaking out for later, preferably with a bottle of Baileys and my two best friends to comfort me.

“You know what, Jerry?
 
I really don’t want to know how you found me or even why you were searching for me. So you better make this quick before I go to the next caller.”

“Aren’t you even going to tell your listeners who I am, my crunchy dill cucumber?” he asked despondently.

I sighed. “Fine. Everyone, Jerry is what is commonly known as a stalker. And he’s got a really bad attitude and thinks all women are whores. Do I have it just about right, Jerry?” At least now if anything happened to me, the police could reference the tapes of my show.

“Yes. Thank you,” he said politely as if I had just announced his arrival at the ball.

“Your point, Jerry. Before I hang up,” I reminded him in a less-than-friendly manner.

“Oh, Georgia,” he sighed. “You are as much of a plump, fruity strawberry as ever.”

“Uh huh. I’m counting down here, I’m not kidding. You have ten seconds to spit whatever you’ve got to say out.”

He cleared his throat. “I woke up this morning and realized that when all females finally accept that they are dirty, very dirty, girls, we will have world peace. Especially you, my sour lemon bar.”

“Ha, ha. Very funny.” I was not feeling up to playing along with his sick-o antics tonight, ratings or no ratings.

“I would never joke about something that pains me so much.”

“That’s it. You’re out of here.” I hung up on him. “Sorry about that little interruption. I think it’s time for a commercial and then we’ll get back to our original topic.”

But even after I welcomed everyone back to Seattle Girl after the commercial break, my listeners couldn’t get over what Jerry had said. I have to hand it to him; he really knew how to push people’s buttons.

In fact, I was starting to wonder if he should get his own show. You know, sort of like a cross between Howard Stern and the guy from Silence of the Lambs.

Even though Jerry had tracked me all the way out to XTRA in Harborside–which really wasn’t all that much of a leap from University of Washington, so I wasn’t that impressed with his tracking skills – the more I thought about it, the less I felt like I had anything to fear from him. He was just a weirdo who wanted some air-time like the rest of us.

And that was something I, for one, could certainly understand.

* * *

By the next morning, I had finally managed to push all thoughts of creepy Jerry from my mind, and when Diane, Seth and I met for mocha’s I told them all about my new crush.

Seth pursed his mouth as if he had just accidentally bit into a lemon. “Let me get this straight, my darling. First, you tell us that you are swearing off men.” Imitating me, he put on a silly falsetto. “Listen up people! I am done with men forever!
 
And ever!” Diane and I giggled. “And now, you have already given in to the pull of your nasty little sex drive. Do I have it about right?”

I gave Seth my toothiest grin. “Yup. Exactly.”

Diane clapped her perfectly manicured hands together. “Your love life is so exciting, Georgia.” Then she frowned ever so slightly. “But how am I ever going to meet anyone?
 
There isn’t one single guy at the spa that isn’t gay and the only people who come in for treatments are bitchy rich women.”

“What about becoming a lesbian?” I suggested in my most helpful voice.

Diane rolled her eyes. “I just don’t think I have that gene.”

Seth made a face. “Me neither. Blech.”

“Maybe you could meet one of their bitchy rich sons,” I suggested somewhat facetiously.

Her face lit up. “You know what. You’re right. There’s got to be a filthy rich investment banker son lurking around somewhere. I’ll get straight to work on it.”

I smiled, certain that Diane would do exactly that. In a way I pitied the poor women who were coming into the spa, thinking they were in for nothing more than wax and rip torture, having no idea that vulture Diane was going to pick their beloved little boys right from the marrow in their bones.

Diane poked me with one magenta nail. “But back to you and your bartender. Is he hot?”

I thought for a minute and nodded. “He kind of looks like a hot, big-lipped rocker.”

“Hell,” she said. “I say go for it.”

Seth nodded, then added, “Just be sure to use a condom, girl. You don’t want to catch anything from him.”

I blinked a couple of times at the thought of catching something from Dillon. Damn, I hadn’t even thought of that.

I couldn’t help but feel like my innocence was slipping off of me in sheets recently. I was trying to pretend it was a good thing – especially since my friends were cheering me on so heartily - but deep down, the whole thing was scaring me half to death.

* * *

When Diane and I walked into our apartment later that evening, there was a message from my mother waiting.

“Georgia, this is your mother.”

She always said it in that same tight little voice that made it sound like I was in a hell of a lot of trouble for something that I would soon find out about.

“Your father and I would like to talk to you.”

Diane shuddered. “Good luck,” she said, closing her bedroom door behind her.

Sighing, I plopped down on the couch and dialed the house. “Hi Dad,” I said. “Mom said you wanted to talk to me.”

I knew he was nervous about something because he immediately started clearing his throat. “Uh, yes, here she is.”

God I hated how my heart started racing whenever I had to deal with my mother. Was I ever going to grow out of this?

“Georgia,” she said in her sternest voice, “I have a question to ask you.”

Uh oh. This wasn’t going to be good. I could feel it in my bones. “Uh huh?”

“Uh huh is not proper English,” she scolded.

“What is it?” I asked, wishing she would just get to it already.

“I called the radio station this afternoon to speak with you and they told me that you are working at...”

I almost laughed out loud. So, they had finally found out where their sheltered little girl was earning rent money. Well it served them right for being so non-supportive of my radio internship, didn’t it?

“A casino?” I finished for her, feeling suddenly gleeful.

I heard her gulp loudly across the phone lines. “And that you are actually working as a...”

“Cocktail waitress?”

“How could you?” she accused. “Do you think your father and I raised you to dress like a tramp and serve good for nothing drunks?”

Well, when she put it that way, I could almost see her point. Not that I would ever let her know that, of course. Putting on my best insouciant voice, I said, “I had to make rent money somehow.”

“Enough of this nonsense,” she said. “You’re going to quit that job and your father will pay your rent.”

“Really?” I said, tempted to take her up on it. How much easier would my life be if I didn’t have to work back to back jobs? How much would I love to burn my polyester uniform and never have to serve whisky on the rocks ever again?

But then it hit me. If I quit my job at the casino, I’d never see Dillon again.

And even though it probably would have been wiser, so much wiser to do just that, I was hopelessly ensnared.

“I can’t let my boss down,” I said.

My mother snorted. “They’ll find a replacement soon enough. How hard can it be to serve drinks?”

The truth was I really didn’t want to be a huge disappointment to my parents. But I also didn’t want to let them make every decision for me for the rest of my life.

Which I was sure my mother would most happily do, and before I knew it I’d have an arranged marriage to some nerdoid guy from my father’s office.

 
“Look, I’m going to have to keep the job until they find someone new.” But then, feeling sort of bad about the whole thing, I added, “But thanks for calling, Mom.”

I put the phone on the coffee table and lay back against the back of the couch, staring at the ceiling, wishing it was easier to make everyone happy.

Especially myself.

* * *

The next day, while I was sitting in the back room with Sandy and the other girls before our shift began, Dillon came back to pick up a stack of towels. The room went silent as he walked in. Everyone ogled him. He turned to leave, but just as he got to the door, he turned back around and winked at me.

As he disappeared into the bar, one of the girls said, “Isn’t Dillon hot? I bet he’s great in bed.”

The other girls nodded in fervent agreement.

Per my awful habit of saying too much, too soon, I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Maybe one of us should make it a point to find out.”

They all stopped smoking for a minute and looked at me. Really stared at me. Finally, after everyone left the room, Sandy and I remained behind. She looked genuinely upset.

“Georgia, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go after Dillon.”

“Really?
 
Why not?”

“I know him pretty well. We’ve worked together for a couple of years and I think that either you’re going to break his heart, or he’s going to break your heart.”

I stood up and brushed out my uniform. “What makes you say that?” I was trying to act like it didn’t really matter either way, but the truth was that suddenly it did matter. In a far wimpier voice than I intended, I said, “But I kind of thought that he was acting like he had a thing for me. Don’t you think?”

“Honey, I’m sure he does,” she said in a very warm and maternal way. (Well not maternal by my mother’s standards, but you know what I mean.)
 
“But apart from the fact that he’s already engaged to someone else, can’t you see you’re not good for each other?”

I cocked my head to one side in silent question.

She took a final drag of her cigarette and then threw it to the ground and crushed it out with her heel. “I don’t know you very well Georgia, but I can tell you come from a different world than the rest of us here.”

I immediately took this to mean that I wasn’t cool enough, or sexy enough, or just plain enough, and all of a sudden, instead of sexy Georgia Fulton, flitting about the bar in my short shirt and tight top, I was back in high school, feeling geeky and left out and pathetic.

Now I’m not sure if I’ve made it clear to you just how little I fit in with the Harborside locals. For the most part, as I had quickly figured out, people who live on the beach and work at the casinos, are either coked out, boozed up, or doing so much pot that they stumble around in a daze all day.

People came to Harborside to surf for a season and ended up there for decades, still in a crappy apartment with barely enough money to keep up their two big habits — drugs and the water. In a way Harborside was more like a homeless shelter than a city. If you had nowhere else to go, the town would take you in, give you enough money to live and surround you with people just like you who will be your surrogate family.

Right off that bat I realized that if I wanted to fit in, I needed to talk the talk and walk the walk by seeming a whole lot dumber than I actually was.

No wonder why my mother didn’t want me working there. Honestly, I wouldn’t want me working there either if I were her.

My face started heating up, which Sandy must have seen, because she waved her hands in front of her as if to clear the air and cool me down.

“Honey, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. You’re a doll. I just want you to know that Dillon is used to hanging out with a certain kind of crowd.”

Curiosity got a hold of me, which quite effectively launched me back from high school into the present. “What kind of crowd?”

Sandy looked longingly at her box of cigarettes. “I don’t think you’d like them much at all.”

I was disappointed that she had totally sidestepped my question, but since I could see how uncomfortable the conversation was making her, I tried to gracefully let it go.

Frankly, I wasn’t sure what to say to any of her advice, but all of sudden I was flashing back to what Seth had said that morning about not catching any diseases.

She took in my silence, knowing damn well what it meant, but I could tell she wasn’t judging me. Sandy wasn’t like that.

“You’re not going to listen to me are you? You’re not going to keep your distance.” The last bit was said as a statement, not a question.

I didn’t want to lie to her, so I shook my head. “I can’t, Sandy,” I said. “I don’t why, but I just can’t.” Even though a part of me really wished that I could.

But something in me wanted, desperately, to see how the story was going to turn out. Even if she was right about Dillon and me, even if we were as well matched as a lion and a lamb, he was something I had to experience for myself.

“That’s too bad,” she said as she reached for the door. “I really like both of you.”

I stood alone in the back room, mulling over what she had said. How could she be so sure that Dillon and I were going to break each other’s hearts?
 

Right then and there I decided to be mature about it: We were just going to have a simple fling.

I was simply going to flex my new hot-babe muscles and then call it a day after sampling the merchandise.

It didn’t need to be some big romance. Nothing wrong with another notch on my headboard, right? Men did it all the time.

Suddenly, the feminist in me popped to the forefront and starting ranting about how a woman’s right to her own sexuality is vital, and how sexual exploration is healthy, and so on.

I’d been to enough Take Back The Night rallies on campus to know a thing or two about how the issue of women and sex was all fucked up. About how men had created a patriarchy to make us feel guilty about owning our clits, while at the same time expecting us to submit to their every whim.

My brain started spinning and it wasn’t the most pleasant sensation, so I pushed my musings way into the back again.

For the next couple of days, Dillon was almost effusive with me. No one would ever call him a chatterbox, but we managed to talk here and there while he made my customer’s drinks. The more I got to know him, the more I liked him as a person. I was a little surprised by this. I had thought my attraction to him was surface only, but once I started getting beneath his surface, I was starting to wonder if buried underneath his grungy façade was a guy I could actually relate to.