The next night found me ditching my Snuggie for the first time in months and letting my sofa fend for itself as Dana drove me through the packed Hollywood streets in her brand new convertible Mustang. Cherry red. With the top down. I had to admit, I was digging this last hurrah already.
Crush was located on Sunset Boulevard between Highland and Vine, in a black, square building set between a posh Italian restaurant and a women’s boutique that specialized in pumps in size 11 and up. A single blue neon sign above the door was the only indication anything interesting lay within. That is, if you didn’t count the line of women in tiny skirts and guys in skinny jeans spanning the side of the building, hopefully eyeing the door. Guarding the unassuming entrance stood a guy who looked like a heavyweight champ, a pair of black sunglass over his eyes despite the absence of sunlight.
Luckily, being that Dana and her plus one were on the list, we marched straight to the front of the line and were let in immediately. I thanked the gods for small favors. My shoes were already starting to bite into my feet as we entered the noisy room. In all honesty four-inch, pale pink, patent leather pumps probably weren’t the most practical choice for when With Bump, but, my like my fav T, they were on the list of things I was not willing to give up, pain or no pain. Especially this pair. They were part of my new spring collection I was calling “Heaven in Heels.” The entire collection was done in soft, ethereal colors, and I was just three shoes away from completing it. With any luck, they would be walking the runways in New York in a matter weeks, and hitting exclusive boutiques everywhere in just a few short months.
At Dana’s suggestion, I had matched my Maddie originals with a pair of cropped, black stretch pants and a long sequined tank that used to be a dress, but with the basketball protruding from my mid-section, was now more of a long shirt. But the overall effect was sparkly and cute, and if you saw me from the back, you could hardly tell I’d put on fifteen pounds.
Dana, on the other hand, looked like she’d come right from the set of one of her Lover Girl cosmetics shoots. She was in a tight, red mini-dress and tall, spikey red heels, and she wore a pair of silver earrings that dangled all the way down to her shoulders. I sighed watching heads (both male and female) turn her way as we entered the club. Oh, to be slim, hot, and un-bloated again.
“Isn’t this place great?” Dana yelled to me above the pounding bass.
I nodded. “Great,” I agreed, meaning it.
The interior of the club more than made up for the lackluster exterior. Plush red velvet lined the walls, pairing with shiny chrome fixtures and pendant lights. One large glass bar sat in the center of the room, packed two and three deep as people jockeyed to get the attention of the dozen bartenders in tight black shirts behind it. A pair of staircases snaked along the two opposite walls, leading up to a second floor where a DJ was playing music at top volume, spinning remixes of pop songs while bright blue, red, and green lights flashed across a crowded dance floor.
I had to admit, it looked like Ricky’s financial advisor was a good one. The place was packed. On the dance floor dozens of wanna-be starlets crushed up against each other as VIP’s looked on from private booths lining the walls. I could only imagine how much Ricky was making off this place, even if he was only making it off one-sixteenth of it.
“Let’s get a drink,” Dana said, grabbing me by the hand and threading her way to the far side of the bar where there seemed to be a small gap in the crowd waiting for drinks. After a minimum of elbowing, we finally made it to the front.
“What can I get you ladies?” yelled a bartender that was pierced in about fifteen different places. That I could see.
“Pom-tini,” Dana yelled back over the noise.
“And a cranberry juice,” I reluctantly added, really thinking a Pom-tini fit the atmosphere perfectly.
He nodded, then grabbed a couple of glasses.
“Excuse me,” I heard behind me.
I swiveled to find a girl with long dark hair wearing a lot of eye make-up and very little dress, scowling at me. Her feet were encased in black, satin pumps with heels that ended in deadly looking silver spikes, making her tower over my 5’1½” frame. Behind her a redhead in an equally tiny dress, hers with a fashionable one-shoulder strap, and equally high heels did an equally ugly mirror image of the scowl thing.
“I’m trying to get a drink, here?” Dark-haired Girl said, her voice doing a bored-slash-annoyed thing.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, trying to shimmy to the left a bit in the tight space. “I’m just waiting for my cranberry juice.”
The girl did an exaggerated sigh, throwing her long hair over one pale shoulder, and she and her friend tried to squeeze past me. Which was a losing battle. The bar was packed with bodies, and there was nowhere left for me to get out of the way.
“I’m sorry, it’s just really busy here-” I started.
But the girl ignored me, turning to her friend. And even through the crowded club I could hear her pseudo whisper, “Freaking whale’s blocking the whole bar.”
I froze, feeling steam gather between my ears. “What did you just say?”
“What?” she asked, blinking at me in mock innocence.
“Did you just call me a whale?”
“Did I?” she asked, still playing dumb.
“Yes. You called me a whale.”
She shrugged. “Well, you’re taking up way too much room, and you’re not even drinking,” she said, waving a manicured finger at me. “That is, like, way not cool.”
“Uh oh,” I vaguely heard Dana say beside me. But my full being was focused on Skinny Bitch Chick at the moment.
I clenched my teeth together. “For your information, I am drinking. A cranberry juice. So there.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Whatever, Shamu.”
For a full second the world turned red, my face was filled with lava, and my tongue got stuck somewhere between my throat and my toes.
“What did you just call me,” I hissed through my teeth, feeling all three tons of my weight clenching for a fight.
“Maddie,” I heard Dana behind me. I felt her hand on my arm, tugging me in the opposite direction. “Honey, let’s just go.”
“I think this stick figure just called me a whale,” I said. “I’m gonna kill her. I’m gonna sit on her. I’ll suffocate her,” I yelled even as I felt Dana drag me away from the bar. “How do you like that, Stick Figure? Ever been suffocated by a whale before?!”
Skinny Bitch Chick just shrugged again, sent me a look that said I was clearly the pathetic one, and slipped her emaciated little self toward the bar.
“You okay?” Dana asked, handing me my cranberry juice.
“Did you hear her? Did you hear what she called me?”
Dana nodded. “She’s a twit. Ignore it.”
Easy for her to say. She was still a size two. I sipped at my cranberry juice, willing the cool drink to cool me down even as I watched the Skinny Bitch walk triumphantly away from the bar, a red and blue cocktail in one hand and her equally smug sidekick a step behind.
“Come on,” Dana said, watching my eye line nervously. “She’s not worth spoiling our evening over. Let’s go dance.”
Normally The Bump and dancing don’t mix well, but considering the anger still seething through me, I had some extra energy to burn off, so I let Dana lead me up a flight of stairs to the main dance floor.
As with downstairs, up on the dance floor it felt like everyone in Hollywood was at Crush. At least everyone who was anyone. We spotted a couple of Kardashians drinking in the corner, a couple of Disney Channel faux-teens dancing near the DJ, and a couple of current Dancing with the Stars contestants trying to tango to a Madonna re-mix. And along with Hollywood’s elite were a few non-elite’s that Dana and I recognized as well. Namely a slim, Hispanic guy in zebra printed, vinyl Daisy-Dukes and a red mesh tank with a boy toy in one hand and a martini in the other.
He waved the moment he saw us, wiggling his plastic clad butt our way. “Maddie, dahling, what are you doing here?” he gasped in an accent that was 50% Valley Girl and 50% San Francisco.
Marco worked as the receptionist at my step-father, Fernando’s, salon while cultivating his budding career as a party planner. He was known for wearing more eyeliner than Lady Gaga, owning more pairs of leather pants than any other man (or woman) on the west coast, and having enough drama-queen in him to single handedly keep Broadway in business for the next decade. His current look included dying his hair bright yellow and drawing in a large, black beauty mark on his cheek, just above the cheekbone.
I greeted him with a couple of air kisses, before answering his question. “Dana’s boyfriend is a part owner of the place.”
“Fabu, honey!” Marco exclaimed, giving Dana a shoulder bump before he turned back to me. “But what I meant was what are you doing here? You know… in your condition?” he asked, pseudo whispering the last word as if saying it out loud might suddenly make pregnancy a catching disease.
“I’m having a good time,” I hissed.
He scrunched up his nose. “Is that allowed when you’re… you know?”
“I’m pregnant, not dead,” I shot back.
Marco threw his hands up in surrender. “Okay, geeze, sorry for asking.” He turned to Dana. “The hormones are making her a little touchy, no?”
“Who’s your friend?” Dana asked, wisely changing the subject lest she need to pull the hormonal woman off another unsuspecting skinny person that night.
Marco’s face brightened up immediately. “This,” he said gesturing to the boy toy, “is Gunnar.”
Gunnar was tall, blonde, tanned, and built like he’d just escaped from the set of Baywatch.
“Nice to meet you,” Dana said.
Gunnar flashed a bright white smile at her and nodded.
“Gunnar’s Norwegian,” Marco said. “He doesn’t speak a word of English. Isn’t that precious?”
Gunnar smiled and nodded again.
I nodded back and did a universal “hello” wave. “He doesn’t understand any English either?” I asked.
Marco shook his head, beaming. “None. He’s an exchange student staying with your mom and Fernando,” Marco explained. “They asked me to show him around. Some days, I love my job.” He sighed, eyeing Gunnar’s biceps.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Gunnar,” I told his blank expression. “But I think I have to go find the ladies’ room. Cranberry juice overload.”
Dana looked down at my glass. “But you only took a couple sips.”
My turn to sigh. “I know. Peeing has become my hobby lately. You dance, I’ll catch up to you,” I told her, heading back toward the stairs.
It took a good twenty minutes to shove back through the crowded club again before I finally reached a door near the back with a little blue stick figure in a dress pasted on it signaling my Mecca. I quickly pushed through, instantly assaulted by the scents of hairspray, body spray, and something else that was lightly less aromatic. Three young, annoyingly slim, and fashionably dressed so-used-to-be-me women stood at the mirror primping, while two stalls sat behind them. Even in here the noise from the DJ was still deafening as I bent down and tilted my head under the stall doors, trying to peek for tell-tale feet. Just my luck, a pair of stilettos stared back at me under the first door. Next to a pair of loafers. I heard a moan from behind the metal door and it didn’t take much imagination to realize what was going on in there. I think I blushed as I moved on to the second stall, and did a repeat.
Again, shoes. This time black, satin with tall, metal spiked heels. Great. Bitch Chick was in the second stall. Just my luck.
I crossed my legs, leaned against the hand dryer, and waited. And waited.
And waited.
Three minutes into it, I thought I was going to explode.
“Um, you going to be long in there?” I called out.
No response.
“There’s a pregnant woman out here about to burst,” I warned.
Again, nothing.
I moved to bang on the door with my fist, but the second my hand made contact, the door swung open.
And that’s when, for the first time in five months, peeing dropped to number two on my priority list.
Sitting inside the stall, slumped backward on the toilet seat was the dark-haired girl I’d had words with earlier. And while she wasn’t doing what one might think a person in a toilet stall would be doing, it was clear she was not going to be getting up any time soon. Her head lulled to one side, a trickle of blood dripped down the front of her dress, and her eyes stared at the ceiling, wide and unseeing. And totally dead.