The Wild One (6 page)

“I'm going to the stockroom,” says Joe. “Can you girls be trusted not to steal from the bar?”

Angie shrugs, eyes still on her phone. “You think we think this place made more than ten bucks today? Let's be realistic.”

“Harsh,” mutters Joe, walking away.

Julia turns to me. “Coco, let's talk about your future career.”

I sigh. “Oh, let's not.”

Angie snorts, but Julia can't be dissuaded that easily.

“I was thinking about it on the walk here. You'll get another job easily,” she says. “You just need a regular babysitting gig over the summer and to apply to more preschools by the end of August. Let's get you on one of those sitter sites. I'll help you write a killer résumé and set up all the interviews.”

“Julia…” I don't want to be rude, but I really don't want my sister to “fix” this situation for me in that loving bossy way. She'll just tell me what she thinks is best without wondering what I want.

Then Julia smiles at me so nicely, and I suddenly realize she doesn't know how bossy she is being. She genuinely thinks she's helping.

It's not like she's being unreasonable either. Working with children is what I am trained to do. But the idea of spending the next few months babysitting, shepherding someone else's children through the scorching New York summer, from park to pool to playdate, makes me feel very tired. And then back to a preschool? For how long? The rest of my life?

“I don't think … I don't think that's I want,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “Working in a preschool, I mean. I don't want that.”

I'm supposed to be the opposite of old Coco, right? That means speaking my mind. I clear my throat, and my voice comes out stronger.

“I don't know what I'll do, Julia, but I know it won't be that.”

“Okay, well, let's think about what you do want to do, then,” says Julia. Always Little Miss Fix-it.

Pia grabs her phone, ready to make notes. “I'll help! What are your strengths and weaknesses? Let's brainstorm.”

“Fucking brainstorming…” mutters Angie.

My strengths?

I stare at them all, my mind a blank.

I don't have any strengths. I don't have any skills or talents or dreams or brains. I'm just me.

But I can't say that, they'd just think I have low self-esteem, and I really don't. I'm just realistic about my potential, i.e., it doesn't exist.

“Do you ever get the feeling Coco's doing all her talking in her head?” asks Angie.

“Yep,” says Pia. She turns to me. “You like baking. How about a pastry chef?”

“Um, no,” I say. “That's just a hobby.” I don't say it aloud, but can you imagine how much I would weigh if I did that for a living? I know it's stupid, but that alone puts me off it.

“I didn't think anyone had a hobby since the Internet was invented,” says Angie. “What about reading? I've never known anyone to read as much as you.”

I shake my head. “I can't get paid to read books.”

“You could be a librarian!” Pia says excitedly.

“I'm pretty sure libraries are an endangered species,” says Julia. “They're all closing.”

“Wow, that's depressing,” I groan.

Some of my best childhood memories are getting books from the library with my mom. I was so impatient that I always started reading them in the car on the way home, my cheek resting against the warmth of the seat belt, trying to ignore the sick tummy I always got reading in a moving vehicle …

The memory of that feeling is so strong that I have to put my hands on the worn wood of the bar to remind myself where I am. I wonder if it's weird that I can remember my childhood so well. It's almost like I feel so close to my past that I can't accept that this life is my reality. Grown up and living in New York City, drinking in bars, unemployed and only qualified to do a job I hate, treated like shit by every guy I meet, with a long life ahead of me with nothing but more of the same in store … My God, I am tired.

“You like watching E!” says Angie, interrupting my reverie. God, she's right, I really do all my talking in my head. “Want to be a celebrity journalist?”

I shake my head, not trusting myself to speak without crying.

“Try this!” says Pia. “Close your eyes. Picture yourself in five years. Where are you? What are you doing?”

I close my eyes. Me in five years. Me, age twenty-six. At first, my mind is empty, blurry, messy … Then an image starts to form. At first I see Rookhaven, and the kitchen, and everyone else … but then I appear, curled up in a leather armchair, next to an open window, reading a book and sipping a mug of hot chocolate. My hair is longer, and I'm smiling while I read. The image is so clear, so real, that for a second I wonder if I'm imagining it or if it's from a movie or something. But no, it's me. It's really me.

My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of Julia noisily getting down from her stool.

“I don't think we should make any decisions about your future until we talk to Dad. Right! I'm gonna drain the dragon.”

“You don't have a dragon,” says Pia.

“Joe!” Angie slams her empty mason jar back on the bar. “Ten out of ten on the Cold Hard Toddy. What else do you have for us?”

“Anything you want, sweetheart.”

“Joe, you're going to have to stop this flirting,” says Angie matter-of-factly. “I have a boyfriend with whom I am desperately, passionately in love.”

“And where is the lucky man tonight?”

“He's sailing in the Greek islands,” says Angie.

Joe starts to laugh, then stops. “Sorry. I thought you were joking.” He hands a drink over and Angie takes a big swig. “Amazing. Whiskey Sour?”

“With cassis,” says Joe. “It's called a Sour Blush. Sweetness with an edge.” He catches me looking at him and winks, and I quickly look away. Goddamnit. Why am I so self-conscious around guys? Especially the cool, self-confident, player kind of guys?

The band starts the sound check, and I take a moment to head to the bathroom.

Julia was right, Potstill is a total dump. The bathroom is down a dark hallway leading to a storeroom, and it's tiny and dingy as hell: two toilet cubicles behind doors barely hanging on to their hinges, a cracked sink, a dirty mirror, once-white grimy tiles, and a single hanging lightbulb. It stinks of cheap bleach, and the toilet seats look older than I am.

Ew. This is going to be a squat-and-hover pee.

I undo my jeans and go to peel them down, along with my underwear, you know, like you do.

But I can't. My jeans will come down, but my underwear is stuck.

What the heck?

Yanking them harder, I immediately squeal in pain. They won't budge.

I try again to yank, pull, and peel them off, but it's no good. They are soldered firmly to my … to my sugar, as Julia would say. To my ladygarden, my cha-cha, my fifi, my hoohoo, my, oh to hell with it, let's just be direct: my vagina.

They're not just stuck to the front either, but the entire thing … the undercarriage.

How on earth could that have—

Oh, my God.

I used that home bikini wax kit before I came out. And I guess I didn't use it properly.

Because hard wax is sticking my underwear to my entire vagina.

And I have to pee. Really. Badly.

 

CHAPTER
7

This would only happen to me.

Think logically.

Okay. I can't call the girls for help, I don't have my phone, and I can't just shout for them because they're all the way on the other side of the bar. Anyway, they'd find it insanely hilarious for
weeks
and Angie and Pia would tell everyone, including telling their boyfriends, and I don't want Aidan and Sam knowing that I did
this.

I am never waxing again. Ever. Angie was right. Why the hell would we put something as destructive as wax on our most sensitive skin and rip out the hair and call it beauty? It's so weird! It's, like, über-fucking-weird!

Focus, Coco, focus.

Wax. What will melt wax?

I once read a Martha Stewart tip that when you get candle wax on your clothes, you should iron them with a newspaper over the top. The iron heats the wax, the newspaper absorbs it, and boom, problem solved.

But I can't iron my goddamn vagina, Martha.

Wait! The hand dryer! The hot air will melt the wax, right?

The hand dryer is all the way over next to the door, so I quickly shuffle out of the cubicle, take my jeans off one leg, then realize I don't want my jeans to touch the disgusting bathroom floor, so I take my jeans off entirely, keeping my shoes on so my bare feet don't touch it either. Oh, God, I need to pee, I need to pee …

Then, with one hand pressed against the door to keep it shut, I throw one leg up the wall like a ballet dancer stretching, and try to angle my underwear toward the nozzle.

Yes. I am trying to mount the bathroom hand dryer.

But I'm not flexible or tall, which means by the time the hot air reaches my … you know … it's not that hot or that intense.

“This is bullshit! This wouldn't melt an ice cube!” I cry out, and then quickly cover my mouth. Jesus. I need to shut up. What if someone comes in?

I now have to go so badly I could cry. Trying to distract myself with that little I-need-to-pee bobby-jiggle, I catch my reflection in the dirty mirror over the sink, and I look so ridiculous that I burst out laughing instead and nearly fall sideways, only righting myself at the last minute. Come on! Maybe the dryer will get hotter. I press it again, maintaining my ridiculous spread-eagle pose.

“Hello?” There's a male voice from outside. Shit! Before I can throw myself against it, the door pushes open.

Joe.

We meet eyes.

And then he looks down.

I can't move. It's like one of those dreams where you're cemented to the spot, unable to scream or run. But this is real. I was mounting a hand dryer and cackling like a madwoman.

I think I'm going to throw up.

Quickly putting both feet back on the ground, I hold my jeans over my body like a shield. OhpleaseGoddonotlethimseemythighs.

“What the hell—” Joe somehow gathers himself and quickly turns around, leaving the door open a crack for him to talk through. “I'm sorry, but what are you doing?”

“I … I um…”

Man up, Coco
.

I mean,
woman up
.

“I administered a home bikini wax before I left my house this evening. And I need to go to the bathroom, but I seem to have leftover wax on my, um, and my underwear is now stuck to my—to my—to me.” There. That was as matter-of-fact as possible.

There's a pause.

“I think I understand,” Joe says.

“I don't know what to do, and the bathroom is so dirty. This is so bad, I'm, um, I'm freaking out.”

“This bathroom is dirty?”

“Are you kidding? It's disgusting.”

“Would you like some scissors?”

“Um … I don't see how that will help because it is
really
stuck. Tight. To my … all over … under … bits.”

I close my eyes. Whywhywhy is this happening to me?

“Look, I don't want to get into a whole anatomy discussion with you, but I think perhaps you can use the scissors to alter your, uh, undergarments to relieve yourself of, hmm, your immediate urinary needs? And then deal with the rest when you get home.”

“Okay,” I say.

There is something so old-fashioned and delicate about the way Joe is handling this, it's incredibly kind. If it had been Julia or Pia or Angie, they just would have screamed with laughter and made it even more of a
thing.

He's back within thirty seconds, carrying scissors, and knocks politely at the door.

“Um … are you still in there?”

Where does he think I'll go?

I open the door an inch and he gives me the scissors, handle-first.

“Thank you!” I call.

“Anytime!” he calls back.

I suddenly start giggling helplessly. Anytime?

Still giggling, I carefully snip in a sort of H shape.

By the end, my underwear is in rags, there's a belt of elastic hanging uselessly around my waist, and I'm sweating slightly from stress, but I can finally pee.

Is there anything better than peeing when you've been waiting a long time? It's, like, painfully good.

Then I put my jeans back on, wash my hands and the scissors, and walk out. I currently have the remnants of a pair of underwear stuck to my vagina with hard wax. But I don't need saving. I don't need anyone to look after me. If I can handle this, I can handle anything.

I can sure as hell deal with Ethan when he turns up. That little asswipe.

I walk—no, I swagger, with the kind of arrogance someone with underwear rags stuck to her junk should not feel—back to the bar and slide the scissors down to Joe, who accepts them with a nod and a wink, just as the band starts its first song.

It's “Leader of the Pack,” that hilariously dramatic song by the Shangri-Las. The drums and guitar dominate the opening chords, and Madeleine faces the crowd with a confidence that I've never seen in her before. Amy walks over and leans into the microphone.

Madeleine opens her mouth and starts to sing.

“Birds flying high, you know how I feel
…
”

It's “Feeling Good,” the Nina Simone song. But with a rock-pop edge. Everyone is mesmerized.

Pia whispers: “We should put this shit on YouTube. She's a superstar.” I nod. She totally is.

Tonight, more than ever before, I'm blown away by Maddy's voice. When Madeleine sings, you smile.

I look over behind the bar and see Joe checking his phone and uttering a soft “fock” under his breath. That's how “fuck” sounds in his accent:
fock
.