“Nothing doing, bride.” She lit a cigarette and exhaled right in my face. “And put your veil back on. Someone’s got to be the virgin around here.”
More hysterics. They were out-of-control giddy, even Sandy, who was getting lots of compliments on her new Bubblesish look. It was beginning to have an effect on her, too. She wasn’t acting quite herself.
“Hey, ladies,” Genevieve shouted. “Pay attention to the first act. It’s a good one. They come on as construction workers and then strip down to Speedos.”
Sandy and I exchanged looks.
“By any chance have you been here before?” I asked Genevieve.
“Me? Here? Of course not.” She patted back her silver hair. “The only reason I’m here is for you, Sally, for support. I consider these establishments to be the downfall of America. It’s bad enough that men come to places like this, but women? It’s the end times, I tell you. The end times.”
“Hey there, Annie. Looks like you’re itching for a bigger gun.” A simply gorgeous man with smooth black skin wearing not much more than stirrups and a cowboy hat sat himself on Genevieve’s lap. Then he proceeded to rustle up one of her hefty earlobes.
She squealed and produced a wad of bills for his G-string. “I was hoping you’d be working tonight, Tex.”
Like an arcade game that had just been fed quarters, he proceeded to move his body up and down over Genevieve’s massive frame. If I’d been management, I’d have been concerned. That was a lot of Lithuanian mass times cowboy energy for a couch that didn’t look all that sturdy.
“Tex?” I said, as he walked off to lasso up some more cashola.
“It’s a coincidence. He bags at the ShopRite.”
“Looked like he wanted to bag you.”
Genevieve turned red.
The shots arrived as an emcee performed introductions. All the women lifted their glasses to their lips, except for Sandy and me. She stared at hers with suspicion.
“Go on, Sandy,” I said. “Just do it. I’ll drive home.”
Sandy sniffed the shot. “It smells kind of sweet. Like peppermint.”
Yes. That would be Lorena. She was a Lehigh Valley girl, born and raised. If it’s sickening sweet and alcoholic, it’s down her throat.
“On the count of three,” Lorena ordered. “One . . . two . . . three.” They knocked them back.
Sandy took a stingy sip, smacked her lips and regarded the shot glass with new appreciation. “Oh, my. That’s strong, isn’t it? It burns.” Then she finished it and squinted in pain.
I’d never seen Sandy drunk before. I doubted it would take much.
“Another round!” Lorena demanded. Apparently not wishing to be pretzeled into one of Lorena’s famous head locks, the waiter reappeared like magic.
“Take mine,” I said to Sandy.
“Should I?” She frowned, as if she really, really shouldn’t.
Mama, who was now sitting on top of the couch, not on the seat, raised her shot and declared, “To Bubbles!”
“To Bubbles!” everyone agreed.
This time Sandy downed the shot in one gulp and even licked the rim of her glass.
“Here they come!” announced Genevieve, who had assumed the role as our one-woman guide to Hubba, Hubba.
Indeed, there they were. Four construction workers, dirty from a hard—and I mean “hard”—day on the job, manly and sweating, strutted onto the catwalk. What was this? Why, they were ripping off their pants. Who knew you could just rip off Carhartts? And look what they were wearing underneath? Jockstraps!
Drawn by estrogen-fueled madness, two women rushed to the stage, waving dollar bills. I turned to make a crack to Sandy and noticed that she wasn’t sitting next to me anymore.
No. In fact, she was front and center on Genevieve’s massive shoulders.
“Take it off!” came Sandy’s distinct voice. “Take it
all
off!”
“Yeah,” Genevieve echoed. “We want to see your package.” Then she stuffed a wad of bills in the rugged driller’s G-string (because, let’s face it, a G-string is as necessary on the construction site as a hard hat) and was rewarded with a red bandanna that seconds before had been carefully positioned in a strategic place.
I was beginning to see the practicality in that no licking rule.
The construction workers went backstage to take showers or whatever it is construction workers do after working all day and coming home to rip off their clothes and prance around in bikinis. Delirious to have handsome, built, naked men all to themselves, the members of my bachelorette party ran back for another refill of peppermint schnapps before the next act came on.
“Okay,” said Sandy cautiously, “but I can only have one more round.”
Though it would be two, as she was also sucking down mine.
This time, no one even bothered to stage the pretense that this party was for me. There was no countdown. No salute to the bride. They just downed the shots and rushed off to secure a good spot by the stage to catch the next act.
Public servants. A cop. A fireman. And . . . I think the last one was supposed to be a doctor. Wasn’t quite sure. He was in his greens and wore a stethoscope. Correction, he
twirled
a stethoscope while removing his pants. Yes, that did require seven years of schooling, not to mention residency.
“And the poor bride-to-be is left all alone.”
I stood up, nearly knocking over the table of shot glasses. It was Phil Shatsky, a menacing gleam in his eye.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I’m still pissed,” he said. “You owe me, Bubbles.”
Frankly, I didn’t owe him a thing. If anything, he owed me for giving him that opportunity to put on the public display of heterosexuality for the benefit of Ginger Burge and all his groupies, who’d been staring in my window the night he kissed me in my living room. What a phony.
“Ada, Esther, Ruth and Martha. Where did you get that?” He blocked me so I couldn’t leave.
“I don’t know. It was something someone said.”
“I want that CD.”
“I’ll make you a copy.”
He grabbed my sleeve, threateningly. “No. I want it now.”
“But I’m at—”
“Now!”
I’d never seen Phil this way before. Usually he was so docile and accommodating, not threatening and scary like tonight.
“Let go,” I said evenly.
“Come with me. We’ll go to your house.”
“No!” Geesh. Wasn’t anyone going to help me out here?
I looked at the stage, where a cop was just a few feet away. Okay, he wasn’t a real cop and he was wearing only a hat, a pair of Ray-Bans and a holster. Still, a cop was a cop, no?
“Why is it so important?”
“Because it is. Stop stalling.”
At that moment, he gripped both my arms and I knew I was really in trouble. If I didn’t do something drastic, this was going to end badly.
“Let go of me!” I threw my body toward him, off the couch, disrupting his equilibrium. It was enough for me to break free and hop onto the stage.
It was against the rules, getting on stage. I knew it. That’s why I did it.
“No way, lady,” the stripping cop said. “You gotta get down. Get off and take a cold shower, sober up.”
I grabbed him and was nearly overpowered by his misuse of Old Spice. “Listen, I’m not drunk. You’ve got to help me. There’s a man over there who’s after me.”
“Bubbles! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Genevieve bellowed.
The cop took off his Ray-Bans. His face was instantly familiar, though I couldn’t place the name.
“Bubbles?” he asked. “From the salon?”
People started booing. “It’s me, Eric,” he said, cheerfully. “From the medical examiner’s office. I was in the House of Beauty the other day.”
Oh, great. Sissy Dolan’s grandson. Once Sissy found out I was here, the whole world would know and my rep would be dirt.
“You work here?” I said, to keep up the conversation. Of course he worked here. He was prancing around in his skivvies.
“Moonlighting.” Keeping a protective arm around me, he shielded his eyes and looked out to the crowd. “What’s this about some guy being after you?”
“Save her! Save her!” the crowd yelled, apparently thinking a cop checking the horizon while saving a virginal bride was part of the act.
A bouncer approached the stage, ready to haul me off. I saw Genevieve say something that caused him to reflexively cover his testicles.
“Do you know who it was?” Eric asked.
“It’s Phil Shatsky.” I pointed a shaking hand toward the couches. There was no sign of Phil. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin your act. It’s just that I was so scared. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” he said calmly. “I’ll take you backstage. And then we’ll get the bouncer to do something.”
He signaled to the deejay, who wound up the exit music. Swinging his baton as he exited, Eric guided me, the frightened, virginal bride, into the wings. A bouncer was waiting for us or, rather, waiting for an explanation. When Eric told him what had happened and I gave him Phil’s description, he went off to see if Phil was still around and to find out how he’d gotten into the club in the first place.
In the absence of adrenaline, my body started shaking. “I shouldn’t have jumped onstage. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Eric gave me a quick hug. “Are you kidding? That was so good, we should write it into the act.”
It was not until we were under normal lights that I could appreciate Eric’s fine physique. He wasn’t that tall, but he was built. Sissy Dolan was often going on and on about what a great kid he was, how he was putting himself through Drexel’s medical school by working as a tech in the medical examiner’s office. No wonder his nails were bitten to the quick. The guy was stressed and overworked.
“Does your grandmother know you do this on the side?”
“No, and if you tell her I’ll never hear the end of it. She thinks I’m a good Catholic boy who’s waiting for a good Catholic girl to come along and make me six babies.” He went to the watercooler and poured me a cup of water into a white plastic cup. “Drink up.”
As I drank, I also came to my senses and immediately felt foolish. Poor Phil. Once again I’d overreacted. I needed to get a prescription for valium or something. Mickey Sinkler was right: I was a mess.
“I’m thinking about it now,” I told Eric. “I completely overreacted.”
“You wouldn’t be the first bride-to-be to flip out here,” he said. “It can be a little intense. And it’s not like you had an easy week. I remember your expression when I told Sandy that I’d found the glue in her toilet. Both of you were freaked. I felt kinda bad. Maybe I should have waited until the salon was empty.”
“So you think Sandy’s innocent?”
“Well, they weren’t her prints on the container, were they?”
I nearly dropped my cup of water. “What?”
“The prints on the Tupperware that was found in the bathroom. My understanding was the prints didn’t match hers. They matched Debbie Shatsky’s and someone else’s. I don’t know whose. They don’t let me in on that level of the investigation.”
Fingerprints. Why hadn’t I thought to ask the cops? This totally cleared Sandy. She could come out of hiding now and go to my wedding and be my matron of honor and . . .
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I planted a huge kiss on Eric’s cheek just as the bouncer returned, followed by Genevieve, Mama and Lorena, looking concerned.
“No sign of that guy you described,” the bouncer said. “And Harry at the door says he didn’t see him come in. How many of those schnapps you have?”
Lorena rushed to my rescue. “Buzz off, fat boy. If you’d done your job like you were supposed to, this wouldn’t have happened.” She put an arm around me and helped me off the chair. “Come on, Bubbles. I think we better cut the night short.”
“Thanks, Eric,” I said.
Eric winked. “Anytime, hot stuff.”
Boy. I should have hung out at the coroner’s office more often. Who knew med techs were so cute? And helpful, too!
The bouncer directed us to a back door that led to the parking lot so I wouldn’t have to face the embarrassment of going into the club. It felt great to be out of the hot club and in the brisk December night air.
Lorena took out her cell and dialed for a cab. Mama and Genevieve leaned against the wall, fanning themselves. Tiffany had found a friend and was staying. They were having a heck of a time.
“Me? I’m ready to pass out,” Mama said. “Where’s Sandy? She staying, too?”
I hoped not because I did not want to have to stick around to drive her home.
“Her car’s gone,” Lorena said, pointing to an empty parking space. “That’s not good. She had three shots.”
Six,
I thought, those horrible prickles of alarm spreading over my body. Lorena was right. Sandy’s car was gone. “Something’s wrong. Sandy would never have driven drunk.”
Lorena shook her head. “That’s the problem after you’ve had a few. You think you’re invincible. I bet she just got in the car and left.”
“Without me?” I said. “Never.”
Chapter Thirty-four
T
hat night I found it was impossible to report a missing woman who had already been reported missing.
Martin would move out if he knew that Sandy had not only lied to him about taking birth control pills while they were trying to get pregnant, but had also hid in my house without calling to let him know she was safe. There was no way I could explain that Sandy so loved him and was so scared of losing him that she’d dropped out of his life. It was too illogical.
And if I told the cops that I’d harbored a fugitive, I’d really be in hot water, Lorena pointed out in the cab on the way home.
“Look at it this way. If you were on the lam from your husband and the law, would you want your best friend to call the police?” she asked, point blank. “
Especially
if you were driving around with six shots of peppermint schnapps in your system?”