From the Duckpond she looped downtown past the Hippodrome and bumped along the old brick streets in front of it. Betsy propped the bike against a brick wall in front of a dusty vintage shop, locked it, and wandered in. It was a closet-sized space stocked with square-heeled shoes for tiny, pre–WWII feet and stiff dresses decorated with decaying lace. She found a pair of black, cat’s-eye sunglasses and stuck a felt bowler hat on her head, then studied her reflection in the swivel mirror that stood on the counter.
“Nice hat,” said a voice behind her. Betsy turned around to see a woman hidden by giant black vintage sunglasses, her skin the blue-white color of glacial ice. She wore a Metallica T-shirt modified with a pair of dull scissors into a tank top, which was half-covered with a cascade of dyed black hair.
“Betsy, right? From the bagel place?”
“Oh hey, yeah.” She recognized her as one of the pizza-swappers from Armando’s.
“What’re you up to?”
“Just, uh, buying a hat,” said Betsy, gesturing to her head with one hand, then immediately feeling silly for doing so. She fished four dollars out of her pocket with the other.
Another Armando’s employee with a Louise Brooks bob and a shock of brick red lipstick emerged from the dressing room with an armful of 1940s print dresses. Betsy wasn’t sure who Louise Brooks was, but she had read about her hair in one of Caroline’s magazines and was pleased that she used the phrase “Louise Brooks bob,” even if it was only to herself.
“We’re off to find AC and cheap drinks at Diggers,” said the shorter of the two. Betsy realized her window of opportunity for asking their names, and thereby admitting that she’d forgotten them, was closing rapidly. “You in?”
After a suffocating fifteen-minute ride, she locked the bike onto a street sign in front of Diggers, the cave-like lounge at the Holiday Inn on University. Once inside, she squinted in the dark to find her companions, who had saved her a stool at the bar. Betsy shared her philosophy about day-drinking while she waited for the bartender to shuffle over and take their order: If there was a substantial serving of fruit (strawberry, pineapple, coconut, etc.) and/or vegetables (celery, olive) in a cocktail, it could be consumed pre-sundown without remorse.
“I’m partial to the Bloody Mary,” Not-Louise said. “It’s like a salad in a glass. You can argue that tomato is a fruit until you pass out, but I will still think that’s bullshit.”
Betsy settled on a five-dollar Digger daiquiri, a caloric, high school drink that she would never have dared to order in front of Caroline, but her judgmental friend wasn’t back from summer break yet, and wasn’t there to witness her transgression. It had what tasted like at least a serving of canned peaches in it, so it qualified as a drink and a snack. The first few sips were so cold and smooth that her buzz rode in on the back of an ice cream headache. The frozen drink and the blast of recirculated, sixty-five-degree air was enough of a reprieve from the heat that she didn’t mind the dull, chemical sweetness of the Schnapps floater. For the next round, because two-for-one almost always equals four-for-two, she would switch to rum and Diet Coke. Betsy liked to plan ahead.
She peeled her bare forearm off of the wood bar, which was covered in a thick layer of milky-looking lacquer, which itself was coated with a thin film of something that the bartender’s mildewed rag couldn’t remove with a perfunctory swipe. She sniffed the soft, pale skin below her wrist for clues about what could have dried down to the tacky consistency of packing tape and pasted her arm to the bar. She narrowed it down to either Midori or margarita mix.