A Girl Called Shameless. Laura Steven

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СКАЧАТЬ don’t go picturing a charming Santa’s grotto. Giant frosted wreaths hang in the windows, which are all steamed up with sweat and condensation, and an obnoxious tinsel tree stands in the center of the room. Almost every available surface has been assaulted with a spray can of fake snow in a dogged attempt at festive cheer, yet it just makes it look like the ceiling fans have dandruff.

      Martha’s is famously shameless in how long it drags out the holidays. I’m pretty sure it’ll all still be here come summer solstice. The staff are still wearing Rudolph ears too. Well, all except Betty, who put hers in the waffle iron in protest, burned them to a fuzzy felt crisp, then played the Forgetful Old Person card. God love her.

      Anyway, the diner is still a good place to host a highly feminist business meeting. [Milkshakes and matriarchy, the classic combination.] You just have to look past the slightly unprofessional three-foot-high elf in the doorway, who greets diner patrons with an aggressive and insistent “Happy Holidays!” Only I think its batteries are running low because it sounds more like “herpy her-ler-derrs”. It’s literally a real-life meme at this point. Ajita put him in the meeting minutes under Any Other Business last time, just for the laughs.

      I dunk my forefinger into the whipped cream on top of my strawberry shortcake shake, ignoring the relentless drone of “Jingle Bell Rock” playing from the speakers behind our booth. Since she’s the designated minute-taker for this meeting, Meg pulls a pretty floral notebook out of her satchel, which she has completely covered in New Orleans Saints patches. Seriously, the girl is NFL obsessed. She’s promised to teach Ajita and I the rules of football sometime, and while Sportsball™ is not generally my cup of tea, I’m happy to invest in it a little if Meg wants to be able to share her passion with us. We got her hooked on SNL, so I guess it’s only fair.

      I watch as she notes down who’s present for the meeting: Izzy O’Neill, Ajita Dutta, Meg Martin, Derp Elf. Meg’s handwriting is all swirly and loopy and makes everything look awesome, except it takes her a million years to do. I want to crack a calligraphy joke at her, but I just don’t know if we’re at the ruthless piss-taking stage of our friendship yet. Even though it’s my way of showing affection, I don’t want her to think I hate her or anything. Cos I don’t. She raises the cool level of our group by a factor of seven, with her sportsball knowledge and all.

      “Okay, without further ado, let us begin!” I announce. “Meg, what’s our first order of business?”

      She clears her throat theatrically. “At the end of the last meeting we decided the first topic on our agenda this week would be –”

      There’s an ungodly clatter from the kitchen, as though Thor has dropped his hammer from a great height, and the swinging double doors burst open. The hostess who’s been serving us all night storms out, tossing her apron over her shoulder dramatically. I mean, aprons don’t weigh very much, and it just kind of wafts to the ground like a poorly made paper airplane, so it’s a bit anticlimactic. But still, I appreciate her penchant for histrionics.

      The chef comes yelling after her. “And if you don’t like it, don’t come back!”

      “Wasn’t planning on it,” the hostess hisses, practically in Parseltongue, before slamming out the main entrance and huffing down the street. The derp elf bids her farewell completely unironically.

      With the exception of our friend Derp there’s utter silence across the entire diner. Like, total quiet. You could hear a centipede fart. [Do centipedes fart? I doth not know.]

      The chef, a beady-eyed Bostonian fellow with an igloo of a gut, addresses the rest of us with a healthy dose of both derision and desperation. “Any of you on the market for a part-time hostess gig?”

      Silence creeps over the diners like a snowy blanket as the idea forms in my head. With a part-time job Betty and I could finally stop teetering on the knife edge of bankruptcy. We could eat actual literal fresh vegetables, and meat that isn’t part sawdust. I could even start a savings account. Imagine!

      And so I rise to my feet. “I volunteer as tribute,” I say, voice clear and confident.

      “Er, what?” Chef Man huffs haughtily, folding his arms across his snowdrift of a chest. He looks disgruntled. [Can you be gruntled? Because that’s a highly entertaining word.] “Look, do you want a job or not?”

      “Affirmative, sir. Absolutely I do. Very much.”

      “Good. You start Friday.”

      “Roger that, sir,” I reply, unsure why I’m behaving like an army cadet all of a sudden. Thankfully I resist the urge to salute and/or begin leopard crawling toward the kitchen.

      With that he barges back into the kitchen, so forcefully the swinging doors are almost wrenched from their hinges. I sink back down into the chair, blinking with disbelief.

      “Dude. That was awesome,” Ajita says, patting me awkwardly on the shoulder. Physical affection is roughly as appealing to her as squatting on a cactus, so I appreciate the gesture.

      There’s a faint buzzing in my ears. I assume this is what adrenaline feels like, but as a person who has never participated in sports I cannot be sure. “What in the actual name of fuckery?” I ask, stunned.

      “Eloquent as ever,” Ajita congratulates me.

      “Seriously. I’ve tried to get a job since the day I turned fourteen. How was that so easy?”

      “I’m trying very hard not to make a joke about your mom being easy,” Ajita replies.

      “Considering that my mother has been dead for over a decade, I appreciate your self-restraint.”

      Honestly, I cannot believe this. I have a job. I mean, there’s every chance I could royally screw up training. This is me we’re talking about. If I lay eyes on a tub of Greek yoghurt, for example, I may just start rocking in a corner due to post-traumatic stress. [This is an in-joke from Book One. If you recall, I accidentally touched my foofer after chopping chilies and had to seek relief in a pot of . . . Well, you get the idea.]

      But if I manage not to ruin this gig like I do all other facets of my existence, I might actually have money for the first time in my life. I may actually be able to pay for my own milkshakes, for once. Like, I’m not going to go crazy and stop leeching off Ajita’s Netflix account or anything, but still. Think of the possibilities. A new toothbrush! Bras with underwires! Limitless potential!

      “So, where were we?” I ask, not wanting to derail the Bitches Bite Back meeting by turning my entire life round. “Something about website wizardry and . . . corum fodes? Or forum codes, even.” I’m so excited the words are falling out of my mouth like potatoes.

      However, at some point between me turning my life round and my potatoey sentence Meg has blanched pure white. Ajita, who’s sitting on the same side of the booth, peers over her shoulder at the laptop screen, immediately beginning to chew the inside of her lip.

      “Oh fuck,” she murmurs, horror written all over her beautiful face. “Um, Iz . . .”

      Immediately I’m terrified it’s something to do with my scandal. The website has resurfaced, or the nudes have been picked up by another gossip site, or Senator Vaughan is back on his soapbox about family values. Familiar dread blooms in my gut, cramping painfully.

      “What is it?” I ask, too scared to even crack a joke about the fact Meg is so tense she looks like she’s trying to pass a kidney stone.

      “Another СКАЧАТЬ