Mary exited through the club's black doors, stepping into the nascent evening. The air wasn't quite as bright and warm as it had been during her lunchtime jaunt to the sushi bar, but it was much more so than it had been inside the club. Mary inhaled deeply, trying to force herself to gradually get used to the contrast between the two worlds.
She walked out to her car, hopped in, rolled the windows down, and sped out of the parking lot onto the boulevard. Her car engine hummed in the temperate evening, droning much more gently than the booming bass speakers in the club had all afternoon. With the windows rolled down and the breeze caressing her hair, she zoomed toward her apartment in the waning sunlight.
***
Back when Mary had lived at home in Glenoak, Annie Camden had done her best to domesticate her daughter. Despite teenage Mary's burgeoning interests in basketball and boys, Annie had attempted to teach Mary some basic skills she thought every girl should learn: cooking, cleaning, some sewing, even a bit of plumbing. But Lucy had always outshone Mary at these kinds of tasks, so Mary eschewed them to focus instead on what came easily: her jump shot.
Unfortunately, on this particular gentle Florida evening, Mary found herself wishing she had paid a bit more attention to her mother's domestic lessons. Mere moments after she had begun heating oil to stir-fry some vegetables, the skillet erupted in flames. Of course, thanks to her prior firefighter training, as well as the experience of accidentally charring the Colonel's guest bedroom that one time, Mary knew not to panic. She grabbed an oven mitt, took the skillet by the handle, and set it in the sink. She didn't turn on the water, for she knew that this would scatter the oil and spread the fire outside the skillet. Instead she let the fuel burn itself out, keeping her fire extinguisher handy in case things got out of control.
Of course, as the fire burned out, it produced clouds of black, oily smoke, which eventually wafted up to the apartment's smoke alarm. It was one of those alarms that, when triggered, produced a high-pitched whine loud enough to wake a coma patient. The sheer eardrum-rupturing volume forced Mary to cover her ears as she fled to the balcony. Panicked, she opened the balcony door and flipped on her ceiling fan to circulate the cleaner outdoor air into the apartment. Then she rushed outside to escape the din.
As she stood bathed in the flaming orange glow of the setting sun, impatiently hoping for the smoke in her apartment to dissipate enough so that the screeching alarm would silence itself, she thought, "Screw this. I'm going to Subway."
***
Thanks in part to Florida's lack of sales tax, Mary spent just under five dollars of Jewell's money on dinner. She kept the receipt to remind herself exactly how much she owed Jewell.
Then she returned to her apartment and climbed up the two flights of stairs to find Doris standing in the hallway, her right hand on her hip. "What is that horrible smell coming from your apartment?" Doris asked sourly.
Mary blushed as she sniffed the air. It smelled unmistakably like smoke. "Oh, um, I tried to cook dinner earlier and it didn't go so well."
"What do you mean?" Doris looked at her suspiciously.
"I kind of accidentally set my dinner on fire."
"You started a fire? Young lady, there are no fires allowed in this apartment."
"I know. I told you, ma'am, it was an accident."
Doris didn't seem to hear her. "I told Harold I heard one of those infernal smoke alarms beeping earlier and he said I was crazy." She cracked her apartment door and shrieked into the opening. "Harold, I told you I heard one of those damn-blasted smoke alarms. The young lady across the hall started a fire."
Harold's voice issued from the apartment, "Damn right she did…in my pants!"
"Oh, shut up, you dirty old scoundrel!" Doris shouted back as she entered her apartment and slammed the door, neglecting to say goodbye to Mary.
Mary stood for a moment in stunned silence. "Wow. I really have some charming neighbors."
***
After Mary had attempted to air out and freshen up the apartment a bit more, she realized that the time was approaching for her appointment at the salon. Jewell had written the address and directions from the Foxxy Laydee, so Mary drove to the club first in order not to get lost. The place looked impressive at night, glowing in all its neon glory, with several fancy cars waiting in the valet parking line. Mary felt a bit curious about what sort of wildness might be going on inside, and what kind of big spenders might be in there, but she didn't really have any reason to stop in. Plus she needed to hurry to her appointment at the salon.
"Turn left on Broward. Three blocks. Traffic light, then turn right on Fourteenth. Wow, there it is. For once in my life I didn't screw something up."
Mary found a parking spot and entered the building. It was clean and brightly lit with vinyl-covered chairs lining the aqua-colored walls and magazines on wooden racks next to the chairs. A receptionist sat behind a counter clicking away at a computer keyboard, and Mary approached her to announce that Jewell had set up an appointment for her.
"Oh, you work at the Foxxy Laydee?"
Mary nodded. "Just started there today, actually."
"How exciting! A lot of our best and most loyal customers work there. Don't worry about a thing, honey, we'll take good care of you. Debi's going to give you your bikini wax tonight, and she'll be with you in about five minutes, OK?"
Mary smiled and thanked the woman, and picked up a fashion magazine with which to pass the time.
***
In a few minutes a chubby blond appeared and asked for Mary. Mary stood up and nervously wrung her hands.
"Hi. Come this way, sweetheart. We'll get you taken care of." Debi led Mary down a hallway into a private room with a paper-covered chair in the middle. It reminded Mary just a bit too much of a doctor's office. "Go ahead and get out of your pants and make yourself comfortable. I'll be back in a couple minutes to wax you."
"Take off my pants and get comfortable?" Mary stared at Debi for a moment before she could form words. "Wait," she blurted nervously. "I've never had one of these done before. Could you explain how it works, exactly?"
"Oh, certainly. Basically, I'm going to spread a melted waxy substance across your pubic area, leaving behind only a stripe of hair above the vagina. Then I'll place some contact paper on the wax. As it cools, the wax will bond to the paper. Meanwhile, the excess hair will get stuck in the wax. Once everything has cooled off, I'll remove the paper, which will take the wax and hair with it. Then I'll trim and shave the leftover stripe of hair to make it attractive."
Mary grimaced. "Is it as painful as it sounds?"
Debi smiled and patted Mary's arm reassuringly. "Not nearly. I'm pretty gentle. Now go on, sit down, relax. I'll be right back." She closed the door after she walked out to give Mary privacy.
As Mary removed her jeans and underwear, she felt that strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, the one she used to get before a basketball tryout or a first date with a guy. "I've never really had anyone messing around down there before. This is going to be weird."
***
Debi did her best to make Mary feel comfortable, despite the awkward fact that Mary's vagina was the focus of all the activity occurring in the room. The proceedings went just as Debi had described them, although the paper removal did bring tears to Mary's eyes.
"Wow! I remember one time I ripped a band-aid off my older brother Matt's leg, and he actually cried because it hurt so bad. I made fun of him at the time, but now I realize how he felt."
"Aw, I'm sorry, honey. I tried to be gentle, but you gotta admit, you did kind of have a jungle down there. Is this your first time waxing?"
"Yes."
"Oh, that's right. You told me that when you first came in. I'm sorry, it's been a long day."
Mary looked up at a wall clock, which read 8:50 PM. "It certainly has, hasn't it?"
***
After Debi had finished, she removed her gloves and commented, "Wow. We should have taken a 'before' shot, because you could definitely pose for a magazine now as the 'after'. It looks great."
Mary looked down at the result. She thought it looked rather pink, bald and unattractive, kind of like a newborn baby's malformed head. But whatever. If it would make her more money at the club then it was all good.
"Gosh, it kind of itches," Mary commented as she stood up to put her pants back on.
"The area might be a bit red and irritated for a day or two," Debi said.
"A day or two? But I have to work tomorrow! I can't go to work with a red crotch!"
"Don't worry, it won't look too bad. I can sell you some soothing cream to put on
it to reduce the irritation…"
"Yes, please," Mary interrupted while zipping her jeans.
Debi led her back to the cash register in the front and placed a white tube of lotion on the counter. "OK, the wax is forty-five dollars and the cream is seven fifty. Your total is fifty-two fifty." Mary had exact change after her trip to Subway, and she handed it to her. Debi counted the money and said, "Oh, OK. Um, thank you." Mary smiled but Debi didn't smile back.
She turned and headed back toward her car, wondering why Debi had looked at her so strangely.
***
Mary returned home and was relieved to find that neither Doris nor Harold awaited her in the hall. She entered her apartment and noticed that the smoky stink still lingered ever so faintly in the air. Oh well. It had seemed like a long day, and she felt too tired to do anything more to freshen the apartment that night.
She checked her answering machine. No new messages. Had she given Robbie her new number? Probably not. Oh well. She puzzled for a minute about why she had thought of him first, before anyone in her actual family. Perhaps it was because he had been the last person living in her old house to whom she had spoken.
God, what would he say if he knew? A part of her wanted to call him up, just to blurt it out: "Hey Robbie, guess what? I'm stripping for cash!"
But she knew he had been living in that house with her father and Matt for too long. They had influenced him to act like themselves, spying and reporting back to Eric and Annie anytime something sounded wrong. And stripping would definitely sound wrong to Robbie now.
What had happened to that cool guy she had met during her community service stint? Sure, he had been a bit grabby and pushy, and definitely way too messed up for her. But of course, that had been a large part of his appeal to her, the preacher's daughter. That guy would have heard the news about her stripping and laughed. Then he would have come out to watch her work, with a wad of ones handy. But the new Robbie was different, far too brotherly. He was the one who had advised her to break up with Captain Jack.
The new Robbie, always with the advice. No. She could not tell him. He would just lecture her on the impropriety of stripping for money, and then he would tell Eric and Annie. And that would be unacceptable, because of course she could never tell anyone else in her family. Talk about your lectures.
Nope. She could never tell anyone she knew from back home. Never ever ever.