It Takes Two, page 6
“Great!” Liza smiles eagerly as Jazzy types in the number she shows her on the screen of her phone. “Amanda and I will stop by early at your place to help you get ready.”
When Jazzy gives her a questioning look, Liza cocks her head in guilty sympathy.
“No offense honey, but if the last time we went out is anything to go by, your nightlife look needs some serious re-thinking.”
Jazzy’s in too good a mood to be offended.
As Liza heads out and Jazzy walks back toward the elevator, her eyes are drawn to a figure entering from the side doors of the lobby, sunglasses pushed up onto his head as he looks down at his phone and nearly stumbles into everything and everyone he passes so violently that Jazzy finds herself giggling to herself at the display.
It’s Glen. The man who she keeps running into at the elevator. The one who had been wearing those same dark sunglasses over his eyes when she had embarrassed herself in front of him the first time they had crossed paths, she realizes, which makes her embarrassed all over again. But he apparently didn’t mind because he has been kind enough to talk with her every other time they have met.
Remembering how he had held the door for her the last time, she reaches forward and pushes one hand against the closing elevator door for him, finding she actually might not mind not being alone in the elevator today.
But Glen stops for a moment, halfway to the elevators, still looking down at his phone.
She waits a little while longer, but he still doesn’t move forward. But she still presses her hand against the door, as if caught in a comical time freeze. She’s not even a hundred percent sure he is going to the elevators. And he definitely would never notice if she let the doors close and continued on her way. Nevertheless, she finds herself reluctant to lower her hand, keeping a persistent grip against the protesting door.
Finally, he moves forward again, lowering his phone only when he gets right to the elevator, making Jazzy quickly lower her hand and step back, hoping she looks somewhat natural and like she had not been standing there for at least thirty seconds holding the door back.
“Hey,” he greets, looking surprised, but happy as he steps in beside her, pressing the button for his floor.
“Hi.”
He grins back at her, and she finds she quite likes the familiar, jovial look in his eyes. As if she were a good friend of his that he is genuinely happy to see. The pleasant feeling she gets in her chest at the simple gesture is slightly confusing, but nice.
“We seem unable to stay away from each other,” he jests as she turns to look at the closed elevator doors.
“Yeah,” she agrees, taking a short breath before continuing, “it’s almost like we live in the same building or something.”
She cringes at the bad attempt at a joke, but when she sneaks a peek at him out of the corner of her eye, she sees him give a small chuckle.
He asks if she just came from school, and she says she did. He asks how that’s been.
“Up and down, I guess,” she replies after reconsidering just answering with “good”.
“That sounds about right,” he sympathizes. “You’re in your first year?”
“Second. Are… are you in school?”
“Not anymore. I guess I would have graduated by now, but it wasn’t for me.”
She finds she is not surprised at this revelation. Something about Glen doesn’t feel much like classrooms and lectures and workshops are the right places for someone like him. Almost like he wouldn’t be able to sit still enough to get through them.
In a weird way, she can’t help but be sort of relieved at his words. Not that she would ever consider dropping out of college herself, but she had been slightly afraid he was seconds away from hitting her with the ever familiar “it will get better” phrase she hears as the only ever response to any of her stresses about school.
The rest of the short elevator ride is filled with basic pleasantries like this until she arrives at her floor. But she finds she doesn’t mind the small talk.
When she gets back to her apartment, she immediately starts cramming to get all of her homework done, including the reading for the biology lecture she missed today. She does the entire chapter and additional practice for the lesson, figuring that can at least partway make up for the notes she will be missing.
By the time she has finished everything and is contently reading The Scarlet Pimpernel while lying comfortably on her bed, she is pleased to once again hear the soft hymns of the mysterious classical music playing all throughout the later part of the night and aiding in whisking her away to a land of aristocrats, sword fights, and adventure.
Chapter 6
There is a knock on Jazzy’s door at six pm on Friday night. She opens it expecting Liza and Amanda to be standing there in the hallway dressed and ready for their night in the city, but her mouth nearly drops open when she also sees two other girls she doesn’t recognize at all, who immediately bustle their way past the doorway along with Liza and Amanda, as if the entire group were dear friends who walk into this apartment at least a couple times a week.
Jazzy had already been nervous about hosting both Liza and Amanda in her apartment, seeing as she is not much of a host at all. But now, having so many people in her already small living space, people she hasn’t even met before…
But Liza and Amanda seem like the kind of people who do this all the time, so she doesn’t want to freak out and make things awkward for everyone. Not that she would ever be brave enough to ask people to leave her apartment anyway.
She learns that the tall, short-haired girl is named Julie and the shorter girl with long shiny black hair is named Amber. After those basic introductions, they all go on to act as if there is nothing left to be said.
“I don’t know what kind of makeup you have,” Liza starts, pulling her into the small bathroom and standing her in front of the mirror while she sits her purse down on the tiny counter, “but I brought some stuff that’s gonna really do wonders for you.”
Jazzy wonders if her face has needed so much fixing and she hasn’t even known it all these years. She hasn’t even bought a tube of lip gloss once in her life.
Liza works lightning fast with all the strange-looking powders and brushes in her bag, painting them all on Jazzy’s face, making it look completely and unnaturally smooth before running her lips over with black lipstick and decorating her eyes with dark colors. After about ten minutes, Jazzy hardly recognizes herself in the mirror.
“What do you have to wear?” Liza asks, still laser-focused on running a black pencil around her eyelid.
“Um…” Jazzy sighs, afraid to move her face too much.
“Hey, Amanda!” Liza hollers back into the kitchen where the girls are all lounging, talking, and laughing very loudly. Jazzy is sure this apartment has never heard so much noise in her time living here, and probably never will again.
“Yeah?”
“Can you see what she has to wear?”
Jazzy hears the sound of several pairs of heeled feet clomping toward the direction of her bedroom and the rumble of the closet door opening. All the while Jazzy can only sit and let Liza finish up her makeup, before she moves on to her hair, pulling it up into a high ponytail and spraying it madly with a can of something that smells very chemically and makes her loose strands of dirty-blonde hair go stiff.
“Nothing,” the tall girl, Julie, says as she stands at the doorway of the bathroom. Jazzy keeps her eyes down, embarrassed that this stranger had gone through her closet and apparently didn’t like what she saw.
“Hey, why don’t you go back to my place and grab something?” Liza tells her as she uses her hand to poke and prod at Jazzy’s hair until it sits the way she wants it to.
What Julie ends up grabbing from Liza’s place is a body-hugging black dress and a pair of fishnet leggings. The ensemble is something Jazzy never would have thought to touch in her lifetime, but in five minutes, she’s putting it on.
At first, she thinks she must look ridiculous wearing something as intense as this makeup and outfit, but when she steps out from her bedroom and is met with the approving cheers and hollers from these four girls she hardly knows, she can’t help the smile and bubbly feeling that overtakes her. And suddenly it feels the way she thinks it’s supposed to. The way she'd feel when she was three and used to dress up with all the crazy accessories from the preschool dress-up box. The crazier and more exotic, the better.
The dance club the girls take her to is way bigger than the bar she had gone to with Liza and Amanda last week. She is a little overwhelmed when they first walk in and are bombarded by thumping music and flashing lights and a crowd of people all jumping around in the middle of the room that feels far too small for what it is being used for.
Jazzy would never have imagined she would find herself in a place like this. But she is suddenly surging with excitement and adrenaline, and when Liza grabs her hand and pulls her along with the other girls right into the middle of the madness without any hesitation, she decides to let loose all her anxieties, just for a little bit. To have fun. She deserves it after all, does she not? She got a job and has caught up on all her schoolwork. There is nothing left to worry about for now.
She doesn’t really know how to dance, but it looks like everyone is just jumping around, so she follows suit, and it seems to work out all right.
Julie and Amber have already attracted a couple of male dance partners, and Amanda seems to have a few lined up waiting for her to notice them. But Jazzy is content with just dancing with Liza. She’s too bashful to dance in the way the other girls are dancing, and definitely far too awkward to dance with a complete stranger.
They dance and laugh and sing along to the lyrics when they know the song that plays. Time becomes a blur until it is one in the morning, and the club is still going strong. Jazzy begins to feel the lateness of the night, feeling nauseous from still being so overstimulated at this hour. She knows she will most definitely have to take a pill or maybe two when she gets home if she wants any chance at getting to sleep.
But she couldn’t care less at the moment. She feels adult and independent, just like she is supposed to be feeling. She could stay out and party all night long and have absolutely no consequences. This thought sends a sudden giddiness bubbling through her stomach and leaves her willing to push her slightly delirious feelings aside. And keep dancing.
Even when they are charging down the streets like they own the block, laughing and hollering at two in the morning, Jazzy can feel her blood rush excitedly under her skin, delirious on the pleasant overstimulation and the excitement of the new, exhilarating rush of the city.
***
Jazzy arrives at her first day of work nervous but also eager to get the day started. The place is relatively mellow, but there are still quite a few students filing through the bookstore, since it is the beginning of the semester. So the manager on duty quickly puts her onto a cash register as soon as she has watched another employee work it for a few minutes. It’s pretty easy to pick up, not much different from the one she worked with at her old job.
She becomes acquainted with Zoey, the only other employee working today at the register next to hers and the one who taught her how to work everything correctly. She’s a third-year student and has apparently been working here since her very first day of college. She’s even from Washington, having grown up surprisingly close to where Jazzy had lived.
Zoey asks random questions throughout the day, whenever they have a brief moment where there are no students at the register buying something. Jazzy wonders if it is because she’s bored or she’s just trying to get to know her better.
“What color is your hair?” she asks one time, glancing mindlessly around the store as she leans against the counter.
“Um… it’s like a dark blonde, I guess. I always thought it might be light brown, but it gets lighter sometimes when I’m outside a lot…”
Zoey nods, running a hand through her own light-blonde hair that hangs around her shoulders.
“I’m not a natural blonde,” she tells her. “I wish I was. My hair’s a pretty ugly color. You’re lucky to have a natural streak of blonde. Mine just looks like mud.”
Their respites of conversation go mostly like this throughout the day. But Jazzy doesn’t mind. It feels good to talk with someone so casually, as if this is their fiftieth day at work together. It forces her usual social reluctance to vanish almost completely.
Plus, she never loses patience or looks annoyed when Jazzy asks for help, and even volunteers to help whenever she can plainly see her struggling.
Jazzy couldn’t appreciate the help more, but throughout the day, she can’t help but be a little jealous of how easy it all looks for Zoey. Not just working the cash register and knowing where everything is, but just how she handles… everything. Even whenever she talks to customers, it’s with ease and assurance. Jazzy in the meantime can’t even say hello to a customer without somehow making it uncomfortable for both parties.
It reminds her of how she had felt at her old job. After working four years at the same clothing store, Jazzy never reached that level of comfortable. But everyone else seemed to. Things so simple that come so naturally to everybody else, but that she just can’t seem to figure out.
Thankfully, her shift ends before she can psych herself out too much.
There is another employee named Eugene that she meets while stocking shelves who is in the same year as her. She thinks she recognizes his head of red-tinted spiked hair from one of her lecture classes, but she can’t be sure which one. He is really nice as well and funny, and in a rather similar situation as her as it turns out.
“Yeah, I transferred from Sonoma,” he tells her after she had told him where she had transferred from. “Found a really mangy apartment just down the street from here so that I wouldn’t have to take the bus. Where do you stay?”
“A couple bus rides away,” she answers, hefting the small box of Philosophy workbooks up onto the cart and cutting it open. “Redway.”
“Well, those places are a few nickels better than where I’m staying, that’s for sure. Even still, it’s tough trying to make ends meet sometimes. But, I guess that’s what moving out on your own is all about.”
Jazzy doesn’t want to admit that that is what she has started to think as well.
“How do you do it?” she can’t help but ask as she finishes stickering price tags to the workbooks and organizing them onto the shelves. “I mean how do you… manage everything? Don’t you ever get worried you won’t be able to?”
“Not really.” Eugene sets three copies of an advanced English textbook on the shelf across from her. “I live with my girlfriend, and she’s got a pretty well-paying job. Takes care of half the rent and expenses.”
Jazzy considers this for a moment, staring off into nothing as she begins mechanically stacking the workbooks onto the shelf in front of her.
“I never even thought about that,” she marvels, wanting to laugh.
“What, a roommate?”
“Yeah.”
“Helps,” he admits. “Especially when it’s… well, you know, a roommate you get along really really well with.”
“I imagine,” Jazzy grins quietly. “Is she… a student here?”
“Nah, she’s not in college. She got some kind of apprenticeship right after high school and it turned into a full-time job. I met her at the restaurant she manages when I first moved here. Turned out she was looking for a new place to move into, so… well, the rest is history.”
“That’s cute,” Jazzy tells him, kneeling to arrange the workbooks neatly on the bottom shelf.
“Yeah, helps to know someone’s there to keep us afloat if I ever mess up with this job.” Eugene nods, the red dye in his hair glinting under the fluorescent lights. “Kinda sucks sometimes cause we don’t get to see each other much, with her working weekends and me pretty much busy all throughout the week. But it’s worth it.”
She slowly glances up at him when she realizes he is staring down at her pointedly.
“So what I’m telling you is, if you feel so stressed about making rent, just find yourself a snack of a roommate who has at least a middle-class full-time job that they can bring to the table. Two wins.”
Jazzy flushes and turns away as Eugene laughs.
Chapter 7
When returning from work at a halfway decent hour, Glen could not be feeling happier. The short film is only scheduled to keep filming for one more week, and with Tony’s style of moving things along, that means they should be wrapped up in about two and a half weeks. Glen decides to look at this as a positive, as if they are in the final stretch of misery before they can all begin to move on and heal from what feels like the longest short film in cinematic history.
He went to the film studio the other day and dropped off his information, and has been obsessively checking his phone to see if they called, but nothing so far. Maybe it’s silly to be hoping for a response so quickly, but every second spent without word feels like yet another promise to spend an eternity either in the hell of Lovely Things, or the equally discouraging purgatory of unemployment.
On top of this, he locks eyes with Liza once he enters the lobby tonight, but he also decides to view this as a positive.
“Waiting for a hot date?” he asks her loudly as he passes by where she is seated on one of the sofa chairs in the seating area and typing something on her phone.
“Oh, I’m sure that’s what you would like to think,” she replies back without missing a beat, making him chuckle. She often seems to have her own personal radar for whenever he’s around and it is sure to piss her off every time. “As it so happens, my life isn’t a series of boyfriend after boyfriend; I do have a life of my own.”
Her light blonde hair is still splattered with bright patches of turquoise. It looks nice on her, but he wouldn’t dare tell her that.
