Public Relations

Chapter 9: Mia

As it turns out, Harmony is a stripper.

We learn this, elated and buzzed, when she climbs onto a vacant pole at the first club we're at and performs what she calls her slow Tuesday night routine.

I'm hanging onto the sparkly, fake tanned shoulder of Elizabeth, watching Harmony spin circles and do intricate, groin-tearing splits while the club employees contemplate pulling her down. Elizabeth insisted we all get ready together, which became all of us sharing makeup and clothes, which became me, five-foot-ten, in a dress made for a child-sized human. I was so high on the girl camaraderie that I put up not an ounce of fight, letting their French nails pull me into the unforgiving fabric.

"Drink this," Vanessa shouts, handing me a plastic cup with a pale yellow drink in it. I open my mouth, but she beats me to it. "It's water with a dash of lemonade. You're drunk."

"I'm not," I protest, but I totally am.

It's a weird feeling, the sharp edges of my week being softened so quickly with a few vodka tonics, the strings keeping me upright - uptight - slowly loosening. Time has become an elastic, slippery thing. 

The room lurches and Vanessa grabs me, forcing the cool lemonade water into my hand.

We're all drunk, a cloud of designer perfume and glittery body lotion hanging around the four of us. Elizabeth has been drunk since I got to her apartment. Harmony is handling it the best, an elusive, mystery of a woman, still twirling gracefully on the pole directly in front of the rest of us.

Elizabeth turns to me as I take a sip of the drink. Not as sugary as I would have liked, but it will certainly help combat some of the alcohol in my blood. She pulls herself up to my ear. "I'm glad you're here," she tells me earnestly.

Her cheeks are flushed, color painting down the front of her neck, to the divot between her collarbones. She offers me a watery smile, something lazy and unsteady. I reciprocate.

"I'm glad I'm here too."

We're shouting, our words barely rising above the remix of Party in the USA playing. A few feet away, Harmony is asked to step down from the pole by a security guard, a Greek god of a woman whose eyes are positively glued to her. Harmony seems to pick up on this and leans in to whisper in the security guard's ear.

Elizabeth and I, witnesses to the scene of this crime, exchange a look. Her head throws back in laughter, and although the sound is drowned out by bass boosted Miley Cyrus, it still rings clear as day in my head. I want to fold up this moment and tuck it in my back pocket like a love letter.

The security guard takes Harmony's hand, and the two women start to walk off. We shout "Be safe!" at her as she leaves, but I'm relatively certain she could kill several people at once with a pen as a weapon.

Vanessa, Elizabeth and I stumble to a table in the corner, giggly and wobbly and nursing our filler drinks to prevent hangovers tomorrow morning. We slide into a booth seat facing the dance floor, all three of us on one side of the table with Elizabeth in the middle.

Vanessa, the intern, has turned out to be quite the delight. She curled my hair, her touch so gentle and considerate it felt like a small flurry of fairies. We got all the intel on her not-boyfriend, who she thinks could be forever. She is only a few years younger than us, but so full of life and optimism. Part of me wants to think she hasn't been jaded by the industry yet, but a more realistic part of me recognizes that she's just the kind of person who is comprised of bubbles and sugar. 

Vanessa leans in. "There's a guy who's been watching us for, like, the last hour. I think he's got eyes for you, Mia."

I point to myself. "Me, Mia?"