No joke.
When I did this, Elvira just laughed and I figured she just laughed because she already thought she was in my girl posse or intended to be.
“Good God, this is where he lives?” Cam asked, wandering in behind Tracy, also looking around with surprise and a small but unguarded hint of wonder.
“He likes space,” I answered.
“He’d have to,” Cam replied.
“Who’re you?” Elvira demanded to know, eyeing up Cam and Cam looked at her.
“Gwen’s best friend,” Cam answered.
Tracy had made it to the bar and she leaned both forearms into it, saying to Elvira, “We share that title.”
Elvira looked over her shoulder at me where I was positioning myself at the back counter.
“If that’s true, girl, you better make up your mind ‘cause you can’t have two maids of honor. I got a friend, she tried that shit, did her head in. Those two competed for everything. Sure, first it seems all good, two bridal showers, two bachelorette parties, two women bent on givin’ you your every whim. But that shit turns nasty. They all ended up fightin’ and by the big day, no one was talkin’ to anyone else. It was a disaster. I had to step in and the dress didn’t fit. They had to lace the f**ker together with a shoestring at the back. You can’t walk down an aisle and hide a shoestring. So I scooted in from the side. Looked funny. I don’t like lookin’ funny. Now I don’t talk to her either but it ain’t because of the shoestring. It’s because she works my last nerve. She always did but I guess I’m just too nice, that is, until I don’t feel like bein’ nice no more.”
I was stuck back on “you can’t have two maids of honor” and therefore fighting back hyperventilation at the same time flashing pictures filled my head of a commando-style wedding; Hawk in black cargos, me in a white flak jacket festooned with lace. The picture of me carrying a bouquet of flowers and Hawk carrying an automatic weapon. The picture of me admiring Hawk’s huge-ass hunting knife. The picture of Hawk carrying me out of the reception in a fireman’s hold while bullets flew and flames caused by Molotov cocktails danced on the dance floor.
Tracy was stuck on it too, her flashing pictures way, way different than mine, and therefore she clapped and shrieked, “There it is! Elvira’s the insider and she says this is going somewhere!”
“Oh God, I don’t even have my ass on a stool and I already seriously need a cosmo,” Cam muttered.
“Well get yo’ ass back here and man the shaker, girl,” Elvira said to Cam and then looked at Tracy. “As for goin’ somewhere, I don’t know if Hawk’s the marryin’ kind and, you asked me a week ago, I would have said, ‘hell no’ but a week ago he also wasn’t the shoe-buyin’ kind so right now, my guess is, anything goes.”
“Cam, hurry, cosmo,” I whispered.
“I gotcha covered, babe,” Cam muttered.
“Well, I see good things but I always saw good things,” Tracy declared, hitching her ass up on a stool and leaning forward to grab an olive off Elvira’s board.
The breadknife Elvira was using clattered to the counter and Tracy bought her hand a quick, sharp slap.
“I’m not done,” Elvira declared when Tracy snatched her hand back and held it with her other one, staring at Elvira in shock. “It’s about presentation. Don’t mess with my presentation.”
“Okay,” Tracy whispered, her eyes sliding to me, I pressed my lips together and Elvira went back to work and, scarily, she also went back to talking.
“Boys at the base, not big on gossip, it’s frowned on, doin’ anything too girlie or sissy, and I say frowned on in the sense that, you do that shit, you court bein’ water boarded.”
Holy crap!
Elvira went on. “They might share whose ass they’ve tagged but that’s pretty much it. Worst part of the job. Who ever heard of a job where there’s no gossip? But I can tell you this,” she turned to me and jabbed the breadknife in my direction, “you been an object of fascination for a good long while.”
Oh shit.
Elvira went back to her bread. “No talk. No whispers. Hawk would freakin’ go psycho badass on their ass and Hawk’s badass enough, goin’ psycho, no one wants to go there. But that don’t mean looks weren’t exchanged and a look sometimes says it all.”
In order to steady my breathing, I looked to Cam who was the steadiest person I knew. Cam was coming back to the counter with a shaker full of ice and she was biting her lip.
Oh shit.
“Cam?” I called.
She stopped biting her lip but kept her eyes to the martini shaker when she replied, “Yeah, babe?”
“Do you have something to say?” I asked.