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Authors: Cathy Lamb

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BOOK: The First Day of the Rest of My Life

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W
hen I arrived in the office at eight in the morning, wearing an expensively tailored, deadly dull suit, Georgie was already there, as usual. She was wearing a Japanese-style kimono wrap, jeans, and a peacock feather sticking out from the back of her head.

I wish I could dress with style like Georgie, but then I’d lose my armor.

“I told May to wait for you in your office,” she said. “I told her to power up.”

“Good. Thanks. I like your peacock feather.”

She stroked it. Stanley barked at me. I shook his paw and hugged him.

“The peacock feather reminds me of my particular love of birds,” Georgie said.

I could not help but wonder what she would wear if she had a particular love of dolphins.

“The gals who are arranging the Rock Your Womanhood conference in Portland called and they want to talk to you about your opening and closing speeches. They’re all atwitter about you being there. I can feel their almost oppressive, hysterical-cheerful dolorophak around me when I talk to them.”

I did not know what a “dolorophak” was. I would ask later.

I nodded. I’d been asked to speak at this conference months ago. I agreed to do it. It was a conference for women, with lots of classes and speakers on everything from medical advice to nutrition and exercise, money, emotional health, travel, fashion, career building, starting your own business, makeovers, journaling, crafts, everything. I was the headliner. At first it was going to be held in a conference room downtown, but the number of attendees grew too high. Then it was going to be in a hotel, but that didn’t work because more attendees signed up. Now we were at a convention center, huge, with three levels.

“Tell them I’ll call soon.”

I would call them back and tell them about my speeches. My speeches are filled with lies, as I do not even follow my own advice, which makes me a hypocrite. I know what to tell women to do with their lives, but I have no idea what to do with the workaholism, the fear, and the scraping memories that drive my own.

“So you’re still using sex as a weapon, May?”

“Yes, I am,” May said. She sat up straight and proud in my leather chair, chin tilted up. “It’s a good gun to have in your Vaginal Arsenal.”

I nodded, tried not to laugh out loud.

“I have other guns, too.” She pointed to her boobs, which had been surgically enhanced—not too much, but enough so that she could “swim in her own sexuality and float through her raging hormones.” She calls them The Bouncers.

I stifled another laugh.

“The only way to manage men is through sexual blackmail,” she said.

May Shenecko looks like your stereotypical white, blond, wealthy, country-club-attending woman.

She is not stereotypical.

May owns an electrical company. May’s Electrical Company: We’ll Get You All Charged Up. She employs three other women. They all look about like her. Blond, stacked, sexy. Needless to say, business is booming, and it’s not all because of the sexiness. They’re good at what they do. They know their electrical stuff.

“You know I’m a life coach, right, May? Not a marriage counselor, not a sex therapist. We’ve been over this.”

“I know. You’re a hellaciously good life coach, Madeline. The very best, and you specialize in relationships, so here I am.” She saluted me. “I owe my company to you.”

“No, you owe your company to yourself. You built it.”

“But you showed me all those nature pictures, and I was attracted the most to the picture of the lightning obliterating a tree. We talked about why I liked lightning, and you told me I should be an electrician and it was like I’d been electrocuted in my own head. I’ve always liked sparks, fire, wires, that sort of stuff. I knew that being an electrician was what I’d want to do for the rest of my life.”

I nodded. She had a liking for that photo. I e-mailed it to her and she had it blown up to a five-by-four foot photograph, framed it, and hung it in her office.

“I was about three months from being homeless before I came here, you know. After I finished my schooling and my apprenticeship, I had to work with a bunch of sexist, hairy men with slow-firing brains. Three times The Bouncers and I got into minor fistfights with them, twice I was fired.”

It wasn’t exactly that simple. They weren’t “minor” fistfights. She knocked out three teeth on one co-worker because he continued to make comments about her “tight, sexy ass.”

The other co-worker whispered several disgusting suggestions in her ear. He was a married man; he had done it before and she’d warned him, but this time she kickboxed him so hard in the groin he had to be hauled away in an ambulance.

“I believe you almost destroyed one man’s left testicle.”

She humphed at me. “If he hadn’t been lewd, it wouldn’t have happened. There would have been no crushing.”

True.

“His wife divorced him.” She sat up straight. Woman power! United we stand! “No one should stay married to a man who had to have his testicle kickboxed for being sexually creepy.” She shook her head, as in, Good for her, and humphed at me again.

“So you told me to start my own business and to wear red because that’s my favorite color. So now I have my own company and we wear red.” She stood up. “What do you think of our uniform? I don’t think I’ve ever been wearing it for my O’Shea Reencouragement and Reigniting Sessions.”

The uniform was a tight red T-shirt that said, “I’m here to charge you up,” tight jeans, and a red belt with rhinestones. “I think men probably get hard-ons looking at you and your employees.”

“Probably,” she said cheerfully. “All those hard-ons paid for my Porsche. Sal”—Sal is her husband—“he wants to do it in my Porsche. He’s built like a truck. He’s six foot five. How am I going to do it in there without having my butt pressed against the horn?”

“You know you can go to a marriage counselor for this.”

“Screw to death marriage counselors. You’re my life coach. Tell me how to fix this problem. Use one of those acronyms you have. How about this acronym? D.I.C.K. Or this acronym, P.E.N.I.S.”

“May, I have told you that you should not tell your husband if he mows the lawn and uses the edger he gets sex.”

“I don’t see a problem with it.”

“It’s sexual blackmail. You make him earn sex with you. It should be freely given to your husband, when you want to, with a lot of love and hugs, and passion, and he should do the same for you.” What was I talking about? I didn’t know anything about this stuff.
Noth-ing.

“He likes it.”

“He likes the sexual blackmail?” I swung my foot in its boring low heel and fiddled with a button on my boring suit. My clothes do not attract men, unlike May’s getup, which is the way I need to have it.

“Sure he does. I told him if he built me a shed, I’d stay in bed with him for four hours on Sunday dressed like a hooker.”

“Did he build you a shed?”

“Duh. Saw, pound, nail, smile, it’s up. Gee, Madeline. He can’t get something for nothing.” She threw up her hands. “It was a great shed, too. I gave him extra”—she winked at me—“attention, down there, because he hung all these hooks for the rakes and shovels and stuff. It’s a shed of legends.”

What a shed! And it only cost her a few hours!

“Maybe you should surprise him one night and give him a free pass.”

Her jaw dropped. “A free pass for sex?”

“Yes. Bring up some chocolate, turn the lights down low, light a candle. That sort of thing.”
What sort of thing?

Her head shook back and forth. “Hell, no, Madeline. Last time I brought in chocolate and beer and Twinkies, he had to re-roof our house.”

“He had to re-roof the house for a romantic evening?”

She flipped her hands out like, And what’s wrong with that? “Yeah. You think I’m going to put out for nothing? We needed a new roof.”

“Did he enjoy his romantic evening?”

She laughed. “Sugar. He re-roofed the house so he got one long night of passion. I even added in the Tiddly Wonder Ropes and Stash ’N Sticks games.”

Tiddly Wonder Ropes? Stash ’N Sticks?

“He couldn’t even get up the next morning.” She clapped her hands once and rocked back and forth with laughter. “He actually begged me to stop. Begged me. He limped down to the couch to watch football and I said, ‘Was that worth it to re-roof the roof?’ and he said, ‘Sugar, I’m never gonna forget it.’”

“Okay, then. What do you have to do for sex from him? Do you have to do some sort of chore before he’ll make love to you?”

She laughed, giggled, laughed more, snort-laughed. “You’re so funny, Madeline. You crack my funny bone. You have such a dry wit, that’s what I’d call it, a droll and
dry
sense of humor. Like a dry martini. You get irony. Not many people get it, but you’re an expert.”

I resisted laughing out loud. “So what can I help you with today, May?”

“Fire me up, but I don’t know how to say this. . . .”

“Spit it out.”

“I could, but the idea is still formulating, mixing around in my head. . . .”

“It is a personal issue? A business idea? Please tell me it’s a business idea. I don’t know what else to say about your sexual blackmailing.”

“It’s business, pure business. I’ve got a head for business and you’ve given me the confidence to know that I can do it. The day when you and I went boating in bikinis in the rain helped, although I don’t think that you wearing a bikini over a T-shirt and shorts was fair play, but you’re modest, I get it. And when you and I wrote poems about becoming queens and decorated cardboard crowns, that helped, too. I could practically see the crown on my head.”

“You can do anything. May, you’re a natural leader. You’re tough and sharp. You have vision.”

“I love it when you talk like that, Madeline. Frickin’ love it. Frickin’. Me and The Bouncers dig it.”

“So what’s the new business idea?”

May pursed her lips together, then stuck her chest out. “The Bouncers.” She pointed to her boobs. “The Bouncers and I think I should open another business.”

“And that business would be?”

“Bras.”

“Bras?”

“Yep. I’m going to make bras and call them The Bouncers.” She opened up her bag. “I took the liberty of making you one, Madeline—36C right?”

Man, she knew her breasts. “Yep.”

“Here. Try it on.”

It was padded. It was lined. I put it on and stared down at my cleavage. It pulled ’em up and stuck ’em together. It was an incredible feat of brassiere engineering. “Wow,” I said. “But, I’m confused. You own an electrical company and you want to make bras? Those are two leaps away from each other.”

“Not really. The Bouncers get men charged up, electrically speaking, and The Bouncers will get women charged up, personally speaking.”

I could see the electrical connection.

“Yep. That’s it. Wow. Your bouncers look a lot better in my bra. You know, Madeline, you’re a pretty woman. Sweeping cheekbones, poufy lips, a lot of hair. You cover it up. I don’t know why. You gotta get some bounce in your own life. Some sparkle. I’ll send you some sparkle. But how do you think The Bouncers will do?”

I grabbed my boobs. “I think you’re in business, girlfriend. I think you’re in the boob business.”

My next client cried. Head in hands, despondent, despairing.

“No one will hire me. No one.”

I looked at the young man across from me on my leather couch. It was raining, lightning and thunder. My dad would have said it was Mother Nature throwing a temper tantrum.

“No one will take a risk and let me prove myself.” His hands were worn out, his face waaaaay older than twenty-two. He was too skinny.

“I go in, fill out applications, ask to speak to the manager, I start to hope. . . .”

He shook his head, defeated.

“But they get to that one part in the application, and I can see it in their eyes.
I can see it.
”

He crossed and recrossed his roughened work books, dirt on the bottom.

“They don’t want me.”

His shoulders slumped.

Ramon Pellinsky is from Youth Avenues, a nonprofit for homeless and troubled kids. Ramon’s twelve-year-old brother is in the program because their childhood was based in chaos. What did I see in Ramon? Potential.

“I did everything I could, Miss O’Shea. I took college classes when I was there, got a degree, stayed out of trouble, went to the counseling sessions, and when my sentence was over, I got out.”

He ran his hands through his brown, not too clean hair.

“How can I be anyone when no one will give me a chance? How can I make a life when I can’t even get a job?”

BOOK: The First Day of the Rest of My Life

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