Jordan stood and pointed a finger at Irma, saying, “You owe me.  Big time.”

Irma nodded.  “Irma will make good.  You will see.”

Claire and Lillian joined the trio, grinning broadly.  Lillian said, “So what do lesbians do for fun next?”


Ambushed

 

Amy was humming an Indigo Girls tune as she entered the ER to start her shift. It was a damn fine day.  The sun was shining.  Mount Hood with its spectacular white cap seemed to substantiate the awesome beauty of nature.  And Amy was on her third cup of coffee for the morning and flying high on caffeine and infatuation.  She was certain she was falling in love for the first time in her life.  None of her other relationships compared.  Not that there were that many to compare to, but she knew she’d never felt like this before.

Chad snuck up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist and whispered into her ear, “Good morning, my little love button.”

Had Amy been taller, more muscular and trained in martial arts she would’ve kicked his ass right there.  He’d be lying on the floor gasping and holding his nutsack as pain coursed throughout his entire body.  As it was all she could do was wiggle away from him.  “What the hell are you doing?” Amy said, disgustedly rubbing at the wet spot on her neck.

“I saw you come in,” Chad said.  “Whistling and smiling.  Looking like a woman in love.”

“So what if I am,” Amy said.

“Maybe I am, too,” Chad said with an icky smile.  He reached out and stroked her cheek with one finger.  Amy swatted his hand away like it was an annoying fly.

“I made lunch plans for us,” Chad said.  “I know how you love Italian.”

“I have plans without you forever,” Amy said.  “And I’ll be eating in the cafeteria today.”

“I know,” Chad replied, tapping his cleft with a forefinger.  “I know.”

Amy watched him saunter off down the hall, wondering what that weird exchange meant.  That was when she noticed his shoes.  He was wearing pink Converse high-tops.  She looked down at her own blue high-tops.  That fucker!  He was trying to do that thing where couples in love start dressing alike.

She turned to the two nurses at the nurses’ station.  “How long has he had those shoes?”

Meet Veronica and Valerie.  Identical twin sisters.  Beehive wearing, bubble gum popping, sisters.  The only way to tell them apart was by their nametags.

“Since yesterday,” Valerie said while Veronica blew a bubble.

“He says the pink makes him more manly because only real men can wear pink.  It means they are secure in their manliness. Those were his exact words,” Veronica said while Valerie blew a bubble.

“He told us that he hopes you two can bond over your joint love of high-tops,” Valerie said.

Amy recoiled.

“It’s disturbing, we know,” they both said.

Usually Amy found their ability to speak simultaneously amusing or at least interesting. But today she found it annoying, more annoying than it should be because she was angry at Chad.  Angry might be a poor word choice.  She was livid.

Valerie and Veronica must have seen the smoke coming out her ears.  They both said, “We can do something about those shoes.”

“Oh, yeah.  How?” Amy snapped, studying her day’s roster.

“We can make those shoes disappear,” Veronica said, snapping her gum for emphasis.

“Disappear?” Amy said.  She felt like she was in an episode of the Sopranos.

“With this,” Valerie said, pulling a bobby pin out of her piled high elaborate beehive hairdo.

Amy didn’t get it.  “You’re going stab him with a bobby pin?”

They sighed simultaneously.  “No,” Valerie said.

“We are going to pick the lock on his locker and steal his shoes because he is an absolute fucker and we hate him,” Veronica said.

Amy finally connected the dots.  “Aha.  You both slept with him too?”

They nodded.

“At the same time?” Amy asked.  She quickly used her hand as an eraser on an imaginary chalkboard.  “Erase that.  Don’t answer, I don’t want to know.”

“Let’s just say he’ll get what he deserves,” Veronica said.

Valerie popped a bubble.

Amy smiled.  She felt a strange symbiosis with the twins.  “You’d do that for me?”

“No.  Not just you.  We’ll do it for all the women of this hospital,” Valerie said.

“You will be our mascot.  The anti-Chad.  We’ve named you Amy the Banana Slayer,” Veronica said.

Amy didn’t really want to be the Banana Slayer but if the twins could make the shoes disappear they could call her anything they liked.  “What do I have to do?”

“Act like nothing happened,” Veronica said.

“This conversation never happened,” Valerie added.

Amy nodded.  “What conversation?”

Valerie knitted her eyebrows.  “This one.  The one we just had.”

Amy smiled and lightly punched her in the arm.  “I know.  I was pretending it never happened.”

“Oh,” Veronica said.  “You’re good.”

“Really good,” Valerie said.  She handed Amy a manila folder, saying, “Mr. Bolster is back.  He’s in room three.  It’s his testicle again.  If I were you I’d get that one over with first.”

“Right,” Amy said, and went to exam Mr. Bolster’s man tackle.  Again.  He showed up at least once a week asking specifically for her.  All the other doctors figured he had a crush on Amy, which was alarming because he was eighty-six and only had one testicle.  There wasn’t anything technically wrong with his testicle.  He insisted it didn’t fire properly.  Amy tried and tried to explain that age did things to one’s manhood equipment.

After the testicle debacle, Amy went on to set a broken finger, stitch two lacerations – one a two-year-old who ran into the corner of the wall while being chased by her brother, and another by a prep cook who was having an argument with his girlfriend while cutting up carrots julienne style.

She advised the cook to not text and chop as he could have lost his finger.  At eleven forty-five things slowed down enough that Amy could actually catch her breath.  She told the Veronica-Valerie duo that she was headed to grab a bite at the cafeteria.  They nodded and went back to charting.


That’s Amore

 

In the cafeteria there was an ominous silence when Amy walked in.  It was reminiscent of the banana-peel incident.  She glanced around but saw nothing out of the ordinary until Jeremy took her by the arm.

“If you would just follow me this way, Madame,” he said.

“What’s going on?” she asked, stumbling along beside him.  “What’s this about?”

“You’ll see,” Jeremy answered.

She allowed herself to be led her to a table where Chad was sitting with his dimple on display.  The cafeteria table was covered with a red-and-white checkered cloth.  A lit candle sat in the middle along with a vase containing a single red rose.

She looked at Jeremy and tried to telepathically send him a thought message:  Help.  Get me out of here.

But Jeremy only smiled and gestured elegantly at the empty chair.

It occurred to Amy at this moment that she’d been leaving her roommates out of the loop. Jeremy hadn’t a clue that Amy was in love with Jordan.  She hadn’t told Isabel either.  She liked to think it was an oversight on her part but perhaps not.  After coming out to her mother and being in the newspaper kissing another woman, Amy had figured it was now de rigueur that she was gay and everyone knew it.  Wrong.  It figured that the people closest to her were the ones she was going to have to spell it out for.

“Jeremy, what’s going on here?”

“Only the biggest, baddest booty call ever.  Chad is major courting you.  The dude’s got a bad case of the ‘love me tenders.’” Jeremy said.  He cocked his head and his Adam’s apple twitched.  He appeared to be moved.

Amy felt certain she was going puke.  “Please tell me this isn’t happening.”

Chad stood, put his hand over his heart and began to sing in an off-key baritone about the moon and pizza pie and amore.

When he finished, Jeremy pulled out a chair for her to sit.  Chad whipped the lid off a serving dish, exclaiming, “As the Italians say, mangiare mangiare, amore.”

“Pizza,” Jeremy said.  Like she couldn’t see that for herself.  “How do you say pizza in Italian?”

“I think it’s pizza,” Chad answered.

“I am not doing this,” Amy said.

“Just sit and we’ll have a nice meal,” Chad said, beginning to get nervous.  The whole cafeteria watched - everyone painfully aware of a man pleading his case for the woman he loved.

Amy sat.  But only because she didn’t want to cause a big scene in the middle of the cafeteria.

“You can go now, Jeremy.  Thanks,” Amy said, giving him the I-will-deal-with-you-later look.

Jeremy fist-bumped Chad.  “Good luck, dude.”

Amy smiled at their audience who now went back to stuffing their mouths, trying not to look like they weren’t engaged in group-stare.

Chad reached across the table and took her hand.  In return, she grasped his pinky and bent it backwards.  He squeaked.

“Listen to me you ignorant fuck,” Amy said harshly, “if you ever pull a stunt like this again I will personally castrate you.  You will have one less ball than Mr. Bolster.  I don’t want to have any sort of a relationship with you ever.  Do you understand?”

Chad’s red face bobbed up and down.  Amy got up and slammed her chair back under the table.  She turned to leave and that was when she saw Jordan.  She was standing in the middle of the cafeteria watching the scene with Chad.  Confusion and hurt were etched across her face.

Amy grabbed Jordan’s hand and dragged her out of the cafeteria.  She threw open the first door she saw, a linen supply closet, and stepped inside.  She turned on the light and faced Jordan.

Amy said, “Take me to lunch.  I have to get out of here.”

“That’s why I dropped by.  To apologize for the fiasco last night.  For threatening to beat up your mother.  For the lesbian on stilts not being funny.  I wanted to make it up to you by taking you out to lunch.  I should’ve called first.  I wasn’t stalking you.  It probably looks like I was, but in reality I wasn’t.”

“Stop talking,” Amy said.

“Why?”

“So I can kiss you.”

Amy threw her arms around Jordan’s neck and kissed her.  And when an orderly opened the door, goggled at them a full minute before grabbing a stack of linens and then shutting the door, neither woman noticed.


Nobel SurPrize

Back at The Original Dinerant, Jordan nibbled on a blue-corn tortilla chip.  She had never seen anything so sensual, so intoxicating, so downright sexy as when Amy took a huge bite of her taco.

So far Jordan had refrained from asking anything further about that man in the hospital cafeteria.  For one thing, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.  On the other hand, it was going to bother her until she did.  “So what was with that guy?” Jordan asked.  She tried to make her voice sound light and carefree, however it came out sounding more like Alvin Chipmunk, “Somebody escaped from the psych ward?”

Amy reacted like Jordan had thrown a bucket of ice on her.  “What guy?  Oh, that guy.  He… he… he…  We went out for drinks one night.  He can’t take no for an answer,” Amy said and shoved a blue chip in her mouth, signaling the end of the conversation.

Jordan dropped the subject.  “How’s your taco?”

Amy froze with her taco halfway to her mouth.  “Uh oh.”

Jordan froze with her tea glass halfway to her mouth.  “Uh oh what?”

“Petronella is in the building,” Amy whispered.  “And she’s coming this way.”

Jordan’s first instinct was to hide.  It was too late to crawl under the table, so she did the next best thing.  She draped her napkin over her head.

Two seconds later, she heard an icy voice say, “Hello, Jordan.”

“Petronella,” Jordan said back.  Sighing, she took the napkin off her head.

Petronella looked down her nose at Amy and said, “I am sorry, but I do not know your name.”

“We met once,” Amy stammered.  “Here, in fact.  I mean in this restaurant.  Not at this table.  You were leaving.  You probably don’t remember me.”

Recognition flashed across Petronella’s face.  “Oh yes, the girl with toilet paper stuck to her shoe.”

“Yep.  That was me.”  Amy chuckled nervously.  “I don’t have toilet paper on my shoe today.”

Petronella leaned to see.  “Indeed you do not.  Good for you.”  Petronella’s skinny neck swiveled back to Jordan.  “I saw you at my poetry reading and…”