Chapter 74
Has anyone ever used their phone as a vibrator?
That’s what was going through Willa’s alcohol-soaked brain as she downed her fourth Irish Car Bomb in a booth at the bar next door to a movie theater that would later host angsty 20-somethings in thigh-high fishnets, butler costumes, and heavy black eye-makeup for “the Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
Funny that one of the characters, Magenta, had always reminded Willa of Dee, what with that frizzy red hair and manipulative personality.
It was Friday, Willa’s last day at FitFams, and she had said her goodbyes at 5 p.m., leaving the studio before the final class at 7 p.m. Still, the coaches kept texting her about the mic pack and the toilet and the door code and the sequences for next week. She flipped the phone face-down on the table and vowed not to check it unless she heard the three-buzz pattern that meant it was a call from home.
Willa pictured the FitFams coaches as tiny birds in a nest, squawking for regurgitated worms from their mama, who swung back one of her scrawny legs and used it to punt them into the sky.
Willa giggled. When she was this drunk, she and her brain shared a lot of inside jokes.
“What’s so funny?” Jeremy asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “Let’s get another drink.”
Jeremy gave her a quick salute and headed to the bar.
She and Pete were supposed to have gone to counseling this week, but they’d bailed, each citing scheduling conflicts that could easily have been resolved. He hadn’t been particularly impressed when she told him she was quitting FitFams; he didn’t agree that her “problematic” drinking was a byproduct of that toxic place.
Such a buzzkill, she thought, looking at the last of the foam in her glass. No wonder Pete was getting it on with the class parent — nice, organized, vanilla Beth, who probably whispered in his ear about bike-safety skits and yelled “PTA” during sex.
Willa had always used gallows humor as a coping mechanism.
Jeremy returned with her drink, and she dropped her shot of Irish cream and whiskey into the pint of stout and threw it back.
“Congrats on getting out of that hellhole. You OK if I keep working out there?” Jeremy said, smirking.
She sat back and crossed her arms. “It’s not up to me, what you do or don’t do.”
“You have more power over me than you think,” he said.
She watched to see if he was joking. It appeared that he wasn’t.
Her phone buzzed again. She checked her watch. It was 7:10 p.m. Why would anyone from FitFams text her after class had already started?
“Do you need to get that?” Jeremy asked.
“No,” Willa decided.
“OK, cool,” he said. Then he reached under the table and tapped her knee. She peered to look at what was happening and saw that he had, in his palm, an open baggie of mushrooms.
Fuck it, she thought, then smiled at him and pinched two out of the bag and popped them into her mouth. It had been years since she’d shroomed, but the earthy taste and rubbery texture were instantly familiar, bringing her back to an Atlanta music festival where she hadn’t been able to stop staring at an empty, mesmerizing, gorgeous, undulating can on the ground.
“Before I maybe don’t want to stand up again, I’m gonna go to the bathroom,” she said, grabbing her phone and slipping it into the back pocket of her jeans.
Willa weaved through the patrons standing three-deep at the long bar. A very drunk woman in mom jeans and a saggy, striped tank top stumbled out of the single-person, unisex bathroom, and Willa went in.
At the sink, she looked at her reflection in the smudgy mirror and saw that Jeremy was there too.
“Oh,” she said, turning around, not really surprised. “Hello.”
“You have no idea how glad I am that I met you,” he said.
“I’m glad I met you too,” she said, briefly imagining what it might be like to touch his strong chest and shoulders underneath his vintage Megadeth T-shirt.
“I’m not sure you know how glad,” he said.
Willa thought about Pete. And then she thought about Pete and Beth.
“I think maybe you need to show me,” Willa said.
Jeremy hooked his fingers in her beltloops pulled her to him. She rose up on her tiptoes and he kissed her, pressing her against the sink. Soon, one of his hands was in her hair and the other was reaching for her ass.
Which had begun vibrating. And would not stop.
“Goddammit,” she said, pulling away.
“What? You OK? Am I going too fast?”
“No, it’s these texts,” she said, coming down from her toes and looking at her watch. It was 7:30 p.m.
Someone started pounding on the bathroom door.
“I guess I should check my phone,” Willa said, pulling it from her pocket and opening the bathroom door.
There were 15 texts from Jen, who was supposed to be coaching right now. Willa started reading from the top, and the first message had her grabbing on to a wall for support.
“JAMIE IS UNCONSCIOUS IN THE STUDIO AND WE DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO HELP US. SHES NOT BREATHING HELP”
Oh my God. Oh my God.
“What’s wrong?” Jeremy asked, trying to steady her.
“I … I have to go,” Willa faltered. “Someone is hurt at the studio.”
She didn’t have a car there. Neither did Jeremy.
“I’m so trashed,” Willa said, starting to cry. “I … this is so bad. What do I do?”
“I’ll call you a Lyft right now,” he said.
Willa ran outside, then stood with her hands on her knees and her head down, trying not to pass out. A very early-arriver for Rocky Horror yelled out, “You’re not doing the ‘Time Warp’ right, y’know!”
“Shut the fuck up, nerd,” Jeremy snapped.
He put his arm around Willa’s waist to keep her from falling and was probably saying some things that were soothing but she couldn’t hear him because a swarm of murder hornets were now living inside her skull.
When Jesus the Lyft driver arrived in his beige Camry, Willa threw herself into the backseat and asked him to please drive as quickly as possible. He tried to make chit-chat about the Atlanta United’s recent soccer season but all she could hear was the hornets. Now, they were talking, telling her that she should have done more to help Jamie, that this was all Willa’s fault.
Next Willa’s uncooperative, drunk, tripping-balls brain was picturing Jen on the mic, cuing Mase and Brooklyn to hoist Jamie up by her armpits and ankles and overhead-press her body into the Dumpster behind the studio.
“Did you call 9-1-1?” Willa texted to Jen.
“YES THEY R HERE PLZ HURRY”
Outside the studio, all Willa could see was flashing lights. She flung herself out of the car and through the studio door, stumbling over her sneakers and landing on her knees in the reception area.
There, the EMTs were shocking Jamie’s slight chest with paddles. Jen and Mase were close by, clutching each other and crying. Clients were scattered around the room, some staring, some sobbing, one filming the proceedings with her phone.
Alexis Junot, that entitled and gorgeous client who had once borrowed Willa’s sportsbra for class, was talking on her phone and rolling her eyes: “Yeah, I lost 10 minutes of working out because that train wreck Jamie died or something.”
Was this real?
Willa struggled to her feet and tried to get close to the cluster of first-responders.
“Jamie,” she croaked. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Twice more the EMTs shocked Jamie.
And then they stopped.