“We don’t need to fish.” Cleo grinned and shook her bag. “I have Frank’s credit card.”
Zoe thought about saying something cutting to this, then let it go. At least she could get some free drinks out of it. Audrey whooped and threw her arms around each of their necks as they made their way toward the bar.
“Do you know what this is, ladies?” she yelled over the music. “It’s a motherfucking girls’ night out!”
Zoe never did find her friends that night, but it didn’t matter. The next few hours were a joyful swirl of drinking and dancing. To her surprise, she loved being in the protective sphere of the older girls, who laughingly eschewed the clumsy advances of any man who tried to talk to them and protected her in a sandwich of their bodies.
She had never had a group of close female friends. She usually had one person she was close to, a sidekick really, on rotation. These tended to be introverted, mousy girls with dreams of social greatness, who inevitably idol-worshipped Zoe. She knew that she was prettier than most girls and had accepted some time ago that the price of beauty was that she would always be a little bit lonely. It didn’t seem like the worst deal to her. But now, in the warm fold of Cleo and Audrey’s attention, she wondered if she had been missing out.
At 2:00 a.m. the night peaked, and the trio decided to head back to Cleo and Frank’s place. Zoe was sitting with Audrey on the large fire escape learning how to roll the perfect joint when Cleo clambered out, her arms laden with colorful Popsicles.
“I raided the freezer,” she said. “It’s too hot to eat anything else.”
“Amen,” said Audrey, expertly licking the rolling paper. She pinched the tip and shook down the blunt into a smooth, plump cylinder.
Across the street below, a trio of finance-looking guys in rolled shirtsleeves stopped to stare up at them, nudging each other.
Wow ladies, looking good! Where’s the party tonight? You wanna let us up?
“Sure!” yelled Audrey. “But you have to guess the password first!”
The men started laughing.
Open sesame! Abracadabra!
“Sorry, fuckers,” yelled Audrey. “Keep it moving.”
The men waited to see if she was joking. Once it was clear she was not, one of them shook his fist over his crotch at them as they wandered away.
“Charming,” said Cleo.
Zoe laughed. “So what was the password?”
Audrey lit the joint and took a deep pull. “Get-the-Fuck-Away-from-Me-You-Rich-White-Cunts,” she said on the exhale.
“You know, I think that was their next guess,” said Cleo.
Audrey shook her head. “White men in this country think they can do anything they like.”
“Now would probably be a good time to tell you Audrey hates white people,” said Cleo.
“Mostly just the men,” said Audrey. “But yeah, they all have the potential to be assholes.”
“I feel you, girl,” said Zoe, then looked to Cleo quickly to make sure she wasn’t offended.
Cleo raised her hands in surrender. “No disagreements.”
“I don’t think white women like me much,” said Zoe. She stopped to think about this. “Or any women, for that matter.”
“At least all men seem to like you,” said Audrey. Cleo looked at her disapprovingly. “I’m kidding!” she added. “Kind of.”
“You really think women don’t like you?” asked Cleo.
“I don’t know,” Zoe said quickly. “I’m generalizing. In my psych class we read this study that said what men feared most was pity, and what women feared most was envy. And it resonated with me. For a guy envy can be empowering, but for a girl it just means you’re going to get attacked or excluded.”
Zoe looked furtively at the others’ faces. She felt as though she had just exposed some hidden part of herself to them, a truth she had always felt but never articulated, and was afraid they might call her arrogant or delusional. But they were both nodding.
“I get that,” said Audrey. “That’s why girls always bounce back compliments. Like, if you say you like my hair, then I have to be all, no it’s so gross and lank, your hair is amazing!”
Cleo laughed. “But if you tell a man he has nice hair,” she said, “he’s like, thanks, and my cock is huge.”
Audrey unpeeled a grape Popsicle from its plastic wrapper and began scraping the freezer frost from it with her finger. “I understand why men fear pity, though. My dad’s like that, always has to be so tough and strong. It’s hard for Asian men in this country. They’re really emasculated here, which is crazy because Korean men are actually super macho.”
“They are?” asked Zoe.
“Oh yeah. Have you ever been with one?”
Zoe and Cleo shook their heads.
“You’re missing out,” she said. “They’re like sexy seals, all smooth and hairless.”
The three of them shrieked with laughter.
“But that guy from the bar was white,” said Zoe, taking the joint. “And you slept with him.”
“It’s true.” Audrey nodded. “What can I say? The colonialists got to me. I even fucked Anders, the original Aryan asshole.”
Zoe dipped her head. She had drunkenly made out with Anders after Cleo and Frank’s wedding, though she knew better than to tell anyone. Frank would kill her, and anyway, she had felt weird about it afterward. He was older than Frank, who was already pretty old. When she looked up, she noticed that Cleo seemed to be flustered by this information too.
“Did I ever tell you about the time a Hare Krishna flashed me on the subway?” said Cleo, clearly anxious to change the subject. “Just lifted up his robe. Never broke eye contact.”
Zoe shuddered dramatically. She told them about the janitor at her boarding school who used to bet the girls that he could guess the color of their underwear. If he was right, they had to give him the pair.
“He was Irish,” she said. “So he would be like—” She affected a near-perfect Irish accent. “‘What color are your knickers, girlies?’”
Audrey made a noise that registered both delight and disgust.
“But why would you agree to those terms?”
“Because, get this, he was also our weed dealer,” said Zoe.
They all laughed again.
“I gave my coke dealer a blow job once,” said Audrey when she’d caught her breath.
Cleo covered her mouth as if aghast. Zoe, who was genuinely shocked, tried to look unfazed. Audrey shrugged.
“Not for trade or anything. He was just hot.”
Zoe snorted with laughter. There was something so freeing about talking to the older girls like this. They weren’t surprised by anything. They didn’t judge her, and they weren’t jealous of her. They treated her as one of them.
“Guys, what do you think this means?” Zoe asked them, and recounted the story Kyle had told her about the man falling into the hole.
“And that’s the end?” asked Audrey. “There’s just two people in the hole now?”
“Apparently,” said Zoe.
“I’m too high to figure this out,” said Audrey. “Do they have sex in the hole?”
Zoe giggled. “I don’t think so.”
“The hole is loneliness,” said Cleo quietly.