Outside the restaurant, I said, "Now we get you a little bit drunk."
She guffawed. "You think I need help getting wild?"
There was a line of Taxis queued in front of a hotel on the same block, so we went over and stood in line. It was a short wait to get to the front. As the next cab was pulling up, I opened my shoulder bag and pulled out a bra and a pair of panties.
She looked at them with surprise as I shoved them into her hand, along with a twenty dollar bill. I leaned in quickly and whispered, "Put these on in the cab. Tell him to go to 45th and Lexington. There's a bar there, Hutton's. They let drunk girls dance on the bar. But you probably want to be wearing underwear. Now you have a place to tuck your ID card. And the bra is for... well... they collect bras."
"You're sending me to a meet-market?" She seemed excited by the prospect.
"Yeah. Go into Hutton's, flirt and tease, drive everybody crazy. I'll pretend not to know you."
The hotel valet was holding the cab door for her, and eyeing her covetously. She held up the bra to eye level, and grimaced. "This is going to look a little dumb. I'm supposed to be bare under this dress."
"Just close the dress up some. Probably people will think you're strange, or they may feel a little sorry for you, being so desperate or out of touch. Besides, if you want, you can get out of it soon."
She kissed me softly. "See? It's about humiliating me."
"Maybe a little," I smiled.
She slid into the cab, all leg and chest and gleaming skin. The valet lingered over her as he held the door. She turned back and leaned past him, saying, "But I just thought of something. I don't ever get humiliated anymore. How weird is that?"
The valet closed the door on her, and let out a big breath. "Dreamboat," he told me.
I leapt into the next cab, and gave my cabby the same directions. It was almost a straight shoot to Hutton's, so I knew the cabs would stay close to each other in traffic.
I kept my eye on Carol's cab as we flitted through the traffic. We were pretty close for most of the trip, and I watched as Carol leaned back from talking to her driver. I couldn't see much through their rear window, but I saw the back of her head, as her back straightened. I saw the straps come off her shoulders.
When her dress was off (I guessed), I saw her head dip down. For a fraction of a second, I caught the tips of her breasts, as she arched her back against the seat -- pulling her panties up.
Then I saw her throw her head back and laugh. They were at a stoplight, and her cabby was turned around, talking to her. He had a big smile on his round face; he was a heavy man with curly red hair, and he seemed quite comfortable having a college co-ed changing clothes in the back of his cab.
Carol held up her bra in the spray of lights, and then shrugged into it. I'd picked it out earlier that day, with the underwear. They were both white and lacy. The bra was semi-sheer, fastening in front.
When we pulled up beside them for a moment, my cabby gave her a wolf-whistle. Of course he had noticed her.
"I wish there were more like her," I said.
"Me too!" he sang, and laughed.
I watched as Carol slid out of her cab, and then tried to hand her money to the cab driver. He wouldn't take it.
She spun on her toe, and stepped unwaveringly into the crowded bar.
The meet market
I paid my own cab driver (no freebies for
me!
), and got out. Though it was still quite early, the bar was packed, to the extent of spilling out into the roped-off area in front. There were tables and chairs on the sidewalk, all of it full of boisterous New York twenty-somethings. Handsome men and drop-dead gorgeous women in tight little outfits.
I eased into the crowd, and made my first priority the procurement of a pint of stout. Something I could sip for a long time before I had to visit the bar again. The bar was jam-packed, with a haze of cigarette smoke. Music was blasting in a continuous assault on the eardrums.
Carol was near the bar, already surrounded by several guys. Her bright blonde hair, piled in ringlets, was like a traffic light for guys. She could have entered wearing a turtle-neck sweater and jeans; they would have jumped on her no matter what she was wearing. Next to her open smile and friendly willingness to meet your eyes, the other girls in the bar seemed over-serious or even furtive. It goes to show, a willing smile is a lot more attractive than a showy outfit. But her outfit helped.
Someone had bought her a drink -- it was something that she didn't normally order for herself. She was shouting in people's ears, and they were shouting in hers, leaning in over her. She'd fastened the brooch on her dress so it was tighter, but the V in front still, at times, pulled open to below the clip that fastened her bra in front.
The fact that she was finally wearing a bra didn't seem to change men's behavior in the slightest. When she leaned over, or twisted at the waist they still gawked in a way that was hilarious to watch. I started to understand Carol's viewpoint, how going with or without a bra in daily life made little difference... guys stared no matter what.
I eased in closer, to try to listen to their conversation. When she noticed me there, I just pretended to be one of her admirers. The guys around her seemed to know each other, and they gave me the cold shoulder rather than talking to me. That was fine -- I was content to play the solitary weirdo on the fringes.
"My name's
Easy
," she she seemed to be telling the guys. "E. Z."
They all lit up at that. Three of them simultaneously leaned in to deliver bad jokes. They were in their zone: They were drunk enough that they knew they were immensely clever, and Carol was so pretty they knew she simply
had
to desire them.
Throughout the conversation, she built up more of a story. She told them she went to a city university, but didn't say which. She told them she was pre-med. She told them she'd heard about this bar, where you could get your bra nailed to the wall if you took it off. She said she had some guy friends who were always trying to get her to come here, to Hutton's.
"We're always going out and getting drunk, and they always end up trying to get me here. I'm like, 'I'll dance anywhere. In a club, on top of a bar. I'm Easy!'"
They loved her. They asked, did she go out a lot?
"Oh, yes," she laughed. "My family was really controlling, so when I finally got away to college, it's like I'm on a mission!" She had everything but the all-girl Catholic high school.
"Is your name really Easy?" one of them asked.
"E.Z." She spelled it out. "Elizabeth Zaftig Watkins."
She continued, "But at school, everybody called me 'Easy,' and it stuck. I always wondered why, but the football team never told me."
"You gonna lose your bra tonight?"