“You really like this girl Melody?”
I nodded like a child in my drunken stupor.
“Well then, ask her out. She’s waiting for you.”
I asked her how much would it be to take her mask off, and she told me it was against the rules. She told me her shift was ending but that she’d be here tomorrow night, and I should stop by if I wasn’t on a date. I handed her some money—maybe forty bucks, I’m not sure—and she left. Everything after that is a blur, I don’t even remember getting back to the hotel.
Last night was a movie.
“I’m never drinking again,” I say out loud to nobody in particular from the cold tile of the suite bathroom.
I try getting up but the darkness starts spinning and I have to sit back down, smashing my elbow in the process.
“Are you alright in there?” An unfamiliar female voice calls from outside the door. The door creeps opens and the silhouette of a woman fills the doorway. It reminds me of the old Batman comics when he’d appear out of the shadows before beating the piss out of a petty thief.
“Melody?”
The woman—who is not Melody—turns the light on and I cower underneath a towel hanging from the tub.
She turns the water on and rinses a towel in cold water before uncovering me and placing it over my face. The coolness helps stop the throbbing headache and, for the moment, my brain decides it’s content with staying inside my skull. “You look like shit,” she tells me. “Keep that there, it’ll help with the headache.”
“And you look unfamiliar,” I reply, realizing my guardian angel is a stranger in my hotel room.
“My bad. I’m Nikki, Lily’s friend from the club.”
“Right, I didn’t recognize you …”
“I get that a lot without the mask,” she interjects.
“I was gonna say with your clothes on.”. Her short hair is mostly black with streaks of purple throughout. I notice her tongue is pierced as she’s clicking it against her front teeth, causing just enough noise to make my head hurt again. Nikki has a goth chick vibe; I assume it’s probably a hit with the johns that wanted to sleep with one in high school but were scared they’d get mocked or stabbed. “You don’t look like Hulk Hogan.”
“Fuck does that mean,” she asks through clenched teeth.
“Nothing, where’s Lily?”
“She’s getting ready for class.” She gets up and turns the water off, stopping to pose in front of the mirror, checking her hair, and clicking her tongue ring against her teeth again before leaving the room. “There’s aspirin on your nightstand,” she says on the way out.
I find the aspirin and take double the recommended dose because, in my mind, it should work twice as fast. I look out overCentral Park, the playgrounds and trails stand out like islands amongst the sea of trees. This view is incredible and I understand why people pay for it.
After brushing my teeth I stare at myself in the mirror. Harmony’s last words linger.
She’s waiting for you.
They play in my head, over and over, like the songs you hear while you’re on hold with the cable company—the ones that stick in your head the rest of the day.
She’s waiting for you.
“I know she’s waiting, but am I ready? Maybe someone else asked her out in the last twenty-four hours and she decided he was the better option. Or she thinks I might be a serial killer and she turns me down after coming to her senses.”
She’s waiting for you.
“C’mon subconscious, can you let me play devil’s advocate for a second? You had no problem letting me do that when I was ready to kill myself. You were more than happy to hold the elevator door open for us to go to hell together. Don’t you dare forsake me now.”
She’s waiting for you.
“You know what? I’m gonna ask her out, not because you told me to, so wipe that smirk off your face. I’m doing it so, when she says no,—and she will say no—you’ll have to shove it up your ass. Then you can watch me blow enough money on lap dances from Amy, that her books will be covered for the semester. I might even jump on stage and shake my ass for the crowd. All to watch you, my Benedict Arnold of a subconscious, have to admit that you were wrong.”
“Miles, who the fuck are you talking to?” Lily asks from outside the door.
“Just thinking out loud,” I reply. “Don’t mind me.”
“Whatever, when you and Benedict Arnold finish your vagina monologues, I’d like to have breakfast with you before I head to class.”
“Got it, thanks.”
“One more thing. I put your credit card in my Uber app, so don’t call Capital One when you see the charges and we can settle up later,” she says it like she isn’t currently homeless and living with me.
When I get to the table, Lily is already there with a newspaper in on hand, glasses on the tip of her nose, and a cup of coffee in the other hand. She greets me with a naughty, knowing smile that makes my stomach churn—it might just be the alcohol though. “You look like shit,” she says.
“I’m aware of that, pass the syrup.”
It’s the good kind of syrup, I conclude upon tipping the bottle. A thick, slow drip pours onto my french toast before piling up on the edges of my plate. “So can we go over last night?”
“What’s there to go over?”
“Well, at one point, your face was so far inside an ass that you could’ve been passed for being in a pie eating contest.”
“Oh, you mean Gloria,” she says, like Gloria is an old friend. “Great gal, amazing life story. She oughta be a writer.”
Even her name was old. “She oughta be collecting a social security check.”
She laughs, banging her hand against the table causing the silverware to rattle—now my head starts hurting again. “I saw you get a dance from her. Hell, I thought she was gonna jump your bones.”
“That’s the vibe you got?”
I don’t know how she got that vibe. Gloria had a maternal presence, like she’s the mother hen of the dancers; giving out advice to the younger girls, carrying IcyHot in her purse for the ones with joint pain. Wouldn’t surprise me if she could skirt the IRS on her taxes, she did everything but write me a check for my birthday.
“Look, I know what I saw,” she says. She takes a long sip of her coffee, moving her cheeks as if trying to root out bread wedged between them, “Not that I’d blame you, her ass feels like it’s about half her age.”
With that, my appetite for breakfast disappears. I’m stalling because I know what’s on the agenda this morning. Lily knows too because she’s studying my every movement, waiting for an in. I switch gears before she can get the chance.
“You gonna go back to your apartment?”
“Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“No.”
We stare at each other for awhile. “Melody,” I say. Lily nods and smiles, ever the master deal maker, “So I take Melody on a date, and you’ll consider finding a stable living arrangement?”
“Not just a date. You have to pursue her.”
“Why do you care so much?”