The clock against the wall ticked slowly, rhythmless. The battery was dying but no one had bothered to replace it. It would pause for a few beats before picking up again, making the Friday afternoon trudge along slower than usual. In the back corner of the fifth floor office, the Xerox machine jammed, filling the room with a loud hum. Mandy barely glanced up from her desk as two IT guys raced passed her, the jammed copy machine clearly the highlight of their week. She heard their giggles echo down the cubicle corridor and she wondered if they were laughing about protons or neutrons this time. Or whatever else nerds laughed about.
Sighing loudly, Mandy leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms back, her fingertips touching the wall of the next cubicle. She tapped them lightly against the partition, hoping to stir the girl next to her. Moments later, she heard a tap-tap-tap reply before a cute Pixie face popped up.
“Let’s learn Morse Code!” the young girl suggested enthusiastically, giggling to herself. With Jessica Edwards – known more commonly as Jessie – everything came out of her mouth sounding enthusiastic. She could announce the death of her dog and would still sound bubbly and cheerful. “We could talk about everyone that way and no one would know!”
“Great idea!” agreed Mandy teasingly. “It’ll work until someone invents typing on phones.”
Jessie scoffed and waved her hand, dismissing Mandy’s ludicrous idea. “You’re talking cray, no one’ll ever think of that!” she joked back, giggling again. “Hey, let’s go out tonight! I’ve been listening to Blurred Lines totally on repeat and I need to dance!” To demonstrate her desire, Jessie shook her arms over her head and attempted to beatbox a tune.
“Sure,” Mandy agreed. “But let’s do dinner first. Josh has Gavin this weekend, so there’s no way I’m cooking anything.” And I hate being home alone, she thought to herself, but she didn’t divulge the information to Jessie. Being just twenty three years old, Jessie didn’t understand the life of a divorced mom nearly ten years her senior. And she shouldn’t have to – Mandy remembered wistfully when she herself was twenty three and blissfully stupid. She wanted Jessie to have those same dreams, so when her own desires came crashing down around her, she’d at least have her naïve twenties to reminisce about.
“Deal!” Jessie confirmed happily, bouncing out of her cubicle. “I’ll go rally the troops!” she declared, flouncing off and not caring who saw. Jessie was easily the most inefficient worker in the department, and yet, the only one with a completely clean file. Being young, flirtatious and blonde certainly had its advantages when your boss is old, horny and balding.
“Okay,” Mandy answered, though Jessie was already out of earshot. With a sigh, she turned back to her desk, put her headpiece back on and turned to her computer.
“Hello, this is Mandy from Griffin Logistics and we are conducting a research survey on behalf of Best Buy. I understand that a member of your household recently made a purchase…”
“… so then he just stood there, in the hallway, with my ass in both hands!” Monica Freemont continued, butting out her cigarette and taking a long swig of beer before lighting another Marlboro Light. “I think he thought he was LaBron James and was ready to just dribble it down the court!”
Hysteric laughter erupted from the table as the coworkers painted a mental picture of Ivan Jessop – the ultimate definition of nerd and geek combined – grabbing anyone’s bottom, let alone Monica’s. She was the cougar of the group, the Samantha. With her platinum blonde hair, husky smoker’s voice and collection of push-up bras, she could easily eat someone like Ivan alive.
“What did you do?” Jessie asked, eyes wide as she leaned in closer, horrified and yet entranced by Monica’s tale.
Monica shrugged, blowing a puff of smoke over her shoulder. “I made some flirty comment about how tugging on all those computer wires over the years really made his hands strong,” she answered, a wild gleam in her eyes. “Computer wires, right?” she added, suggestively wiggling her eyebrows.
“Oh, gosh!” Erica Kidman exclaimed, covering her face with her hands. A married mother of two, she was easily the tame one of the group. Months prior, she’d attempted to start a swear jar for the group, in fear that their Friday night conversations got too R-rated for her sensitive ears. Monica was the only one who obliged, dumping her entire change purse onto the table as she proceeded to cuss like a sailor. “You didn’t! He probably peed his pants right then and there!”
Monica shook her head. “Not quite,” she answered. “But I think something else was going on in his little flood pants, if you know what I mean!”
“I don’t believe it!” Mandy declared, leaning back in her seat and taking a long sip of her Pinot Grigio. “I don’t even think he knows that asses are grabbable!”
“Believe it, kid,” Monica advised her. “It happened. The day has come, girls,” she went on, holding her drink up to toast. The other girls looked at her curiously but followed suit with their own drinks. “Today, Ivan Jessop has finally discovered the opposite sex!”
“Here, here!” Jessie cheered with a giggle, clinking her vodka tonic against the other glasses. “I just hope he doesn’t find my ass as desirable as Monica’s!”
“He won’t,” teased Mandy, nudging Jessie playfully. The topic of her assets – or lack of – seemed to come up on a regular basis, but being the good sport she was, Jessie didn’t mind much. Besides, she knew that as soon as she had enough money, she would have fantastic assets like Monica’s store bought perks.
“I think maybe I should try that trick that the slut in Now and Then tried,” mused Jessie, woefully looking down at her breasts. “What was it she used again? Jell-O?”
“Pudding,” Erica and Mandy, the 90’s kids of the group, answered in unison. “Jell-O was too jiggly,” Mandy added matter-of-factly. “Pudding gave a more realistic texture. Vanilla, to be exact.”
Erica nodded in agreement. “Exactly,” she answered with a grin. If there was one thing the two girls had in common, it was their love for everything bad that came out of the 90’s. Music, movies, bad hair and horrible catchphrases were their passion. If there was one meaningless piece of trivia from the grunge slash pop era that one didn’t know, the other was sure to know it. It was Erica’s love of the 90’s that first brought her and Mandy together. While Mandy had been in a singing group when she was nineteen and had been a Mousekateer as a child, no one recognised her. Most of the diehard boy –and-girl-group lovers didn’t even know her group – The Cupcakes – had existed. But they had. For two short years in the late 90’s, Mandy and four other girls donned the platform shoes and short skirts and danced around on makeshift stages at local malls. They put out exactly one CD and made exactly two videos – one of which was never even released. The highlight of The Cupcake’s True Hollywood Story was the summer of 2000, which they spent touring with the Backstreet Boys. They were the opening act… for the opening act. They sang exactly four songs while the ticketholders were waiting in line for Backstreet Boys merchandise and hotdogs. But they loved every minute of it. When their contract with Jive Records was terminated due to extremely low record sales, the Cupcake girls tried to find new representation and attempted to break out of the pop music cookie cutter. It didn’t work. The bubble gum pop era was on its way out the door and without making a name for themselves when the rest of the Big Names did, the girls had no chance. Parting ways, they all still held onto the hopes that one day, fame would find them.
Fame found a couple of the girls, but not Mandy. Finding Mandy, however, was Erica. Mandy had just moved to Texas to be with her now-ex-husband and was in the middle of Wal-Mart, trying to figure out why Texans put everything in the store in such silly places. Wandering through the pet food aisle as a last attempt to find Febreeze, her cart crashed into Erica’s. Mandy apologised but the girl stared at her, creeping Mandy out until she finally blurted out, “Red Velvet!”
Dumbfounded, shocked and more than a little pleased that this girl recognised her from her Cupcake days was the beginning of their bond. At first, understandably, Mandy wondered if Erica liked her because of her past or because of herself. She quickly proved to Erica that she was lame, boring and living the life of a housewife in Texas, not an onstage superstar and the two became fast and close friends.
“You guys are seriously uncool,” Jessie informed them with a roll of her eyes. “Who remembers stuff like what flavour the pudding was?”
“Hey!” Mandy retorted. “Who wants to do stuff like put the pudding in her shirt, huh? Talk about uncool…” she added, a teasing twinkle in her eye as she ordered another round for the table from the approaching waitress.
“You’re just trying to talk me out of it ‘cause you know I’d get all the guys…” Jessie answered innocently, downing the last of her drink and slamming the empty glass onto the table with flourish. “Okay! One more drink and then we’re dancing, chicks!”
“Bust it,” Mandy stated, humming the first few bars of the song before Jessie covered her face with her hands.
“Enough with the 90’s!” she pleaded. “Trust me, they weren’t cool! I’m over it!”
