Good As New by Jennifer Lynn

                  YoLaGringo CC



​Good as New


I went to school with her, the woman says. 

She sits at the bar, an empty beer bottle and shot glass in front of her, the room dingily lit, black and neon. The bottles are lined up in front of her and behind them is a mirror. She sees herself in it; her face weather beaten, her hair dyed so many times that the ends are blackened and the roots a brassy reddish brown, her eyes lined and tired. She wears a red dress. Its material, cheap to begin with, is worn and aged, shiny in places. She picked it up for two dollars at the St. Vincent de Paul downtown. The bartender stops wiping the counter and looks up at the TV overhead. Images flash of a pretty red-head, dramatic and smokey-eyed. Underneath the text reads, actress Heather Fox, dead at 49. She doesn’t look 49. She looks more like 30. There is no further information, the TV on mute.

   You did not, says the bartender, incredulously.

   I did. Swear to God. Gardner Elementary sixth grade and Bancroft seventh grade.

   You’re shitting me, says the man sitting next to her.

   Swear to God. We went to the same ballet class too.

   The man laughs. He pulls on his vape and runs his other hand across his balding and greasy head. 

   You don’t look like someone who did ballet, he says. 

   Well, I did. Horse-riding and figure skating too. We weren’t some down and outs you know.

   Ok, I believe you. It’s just funny.

   Why?

   A hostile expression crosses the woman’s face but she quickly masks it with a smile, arranging herself in front of the mirror in as attractive a light as she can. She does this, putting on gestures and expressions based on the feedback received from that reflection. They are learned, lifted from film and TV. She wonders if there is anything left of the real her inside.

   Get us another drink and I’ll tell you this fucked up story. 

   She leans in towards him flirtatiously. He signals to the bartender who brings over two bottles of beer and two shots of tequila with little slices of lime and a saltshaker. He thanks her and he and the woman lick the inside of their thumbs, sprinkle the salt and then suck it from their hands, down their shots and bite into the lime wedges. 

   So, it was 6th grade. We used to hang out together after our ballet class while our moms were in their class. This was up on Sunset near the big Guitar Centre and back then that whole area was crawling with prostitutes. 1970’s, you know? The police used to be on horses, mounted police. So weird when you think about it. They’d tie the horses up to the railings of the burger joint on the corner. Heather and I loved all this, used to walk around exploring and watching all this going on. Anyway, there was this little girl Angie who was staring into the windows of the ballet studio for weeks when we were in our class. She looked like Pippi Longstocking or something, with two long braids and this little blue checkered dress that was about two sizes too small for her. So, the teacher kinda took pity on her and gave her a pair of old ballet shoes and let her join in. She looked ridiculous in that dress with her underwear showing every time she did a pirouette.

   Pirouette, the man repeats, laughing.

   Yeah, it’s a turn.

   I know what it is, the man says.
   
   Ok good. So, I thought she was just weird, you know? But, Heather really liked her and convinced her mom to give Angie some of her old clothes and stuff and Angie was a bit of a regular in the ballet class for a while after that, until this one day. We were kind of on orders not to go to her house but we weren’t exactly sure why, you know? Of course, we broke that rule a few times. This one Saturday, Heather was late for our class. She used to spend one week with her mom and one week with her dad and he always dropped her off at ballet at the end of his week. I was sitting out on the stoop waiting for her when they drove in in his shiny new Volvo. I see him pat her on the head and give her some money. He used to give her fifty dollars every week, and that was a lot of money back then. She never spent it either, saved it all up in a secret hiding place. So, her mom runs out in her leotard and ballet shoes and she has this like big feathered Farrah Fawcett kind of hair. She’s shouting, Pete, you’re late. I think that was his name anyway. He starts going on about the traffic and she’s like, no, you’re late with the money. He gets all angry and says money doesn’t grow on trees and he’s not made of money and all this stuff. Heather’s just standing there looking down at her shoes. Her mom says they’re struggling and don’t have enough to pay their rent and he just looks at her and says, you’re a fucking user. Go and find someone else to bleed dry, and he gets in his car and screeches out of the parking lot.

​   Well, we go inside and Heather’s mom is crying and Heather looked so embarrassed. All the women from the class were giving her mom hugs and saying it’ll be alright. The law is on your side. She says, he was the one who couldn’t keep it in his pants, you know? Never showed and ounce of affection to me and now he acts like it was all my fault. Then she points to Heather and she’s really angry and she says, and that one there, she thinks he can do no wrong. Heather just looked at her straight in the eye and said, I hate you. Oh my God, her mom totally lost it. I don’t think those problems with her mom started when she was famous. I mean, everyone knows about all the money her mom stole from her over the years and how they didn’t speak to each other for most of her life, but it started way before she got famous.

​   I didn’t know that about her, the man says. To be honest always just thought she was pretentious. She did a lot of weird movies.

   Yeah, there were all these stories about her mom pushing her to take these roles she didn’t want to do, some really inappropriate ones too, and then pocketing loads of the money. I read it all in the magazines. So, that Saturday, we’re standing there in front of the All American Burger and Angie wasn’t in class that day and Heather says that we should go see if she’s alright. I was like, no, we can’t go over there and she was like, why not? And I was like, we’ll get into trouble. She just started walking on ahead and said, well don’t tell anyone. That’s what she was like. So, Angie’s house was one of those duplexes and there were apartments at the back, always a bunch of weirdos hanging out in the driveway, but you had to go in to Angie’s by the back door. Heather’s walking along in front of me and she has that white-blond hair and it’s glowing in the sun. She was so blonde back then and totally natural. People would pay a lot of money to have hair like that.

   I thought she was a redhead, the man says.

   That was only later she got that real vampy kind of look. When I knew her she was real girl next door.  So, Heather knocked at the door and we waited. I was like, maybe they’re not home, hoping we would just leave, you know? But just then, the door clicked open and there was Angie’s mom looking at us. She had this bleached out peroxide blonde hair with like black roots about two inches thick and she was sketchy looking. Oh, ballet girls, she says and we follow her into the kitchen and she shouts for Angie. There were scissors on this old Formica table and there was all this hair on the floor behind one of the chairs. The floor was this really cheap linoleum, all scuffed up and torn, and the windows had cracks in them that were taped up with duct tape so that there were all these weird shadows coming into the room. Her mom says, we’ve just been cutting Angie’s hair, and Angie came in and she looked like she’d been crying. Her mom says, doesn’t she look like a little punk rocker?

   You know, why don’t you get us a couple more drinks there.    
   The man signals to the bartender again and she grabs two more cold bottles of beer out of a little fridge, opening them on the bottle opener set into the wall, and places them down on the bar in front of the man and woman. She then fills two more shot glasses with tequila and put the bottle back on the shelf. She flings the bar towel over her shoulder.

   I couldn’t help overhearing, the bartender says, you know she came in here a few times over the years.

   The man looks at the bartender and asks, into this dive? 

   You know we had a certain reputation back in the day with musicians and artists and so on. Not so many Hollywood types, but she was different wasn’t she? She ran with her own crowd

   The man asks, what she was like?

   She was a bit of a mess to be honest. She got sloppy when she drank and you sometimes wondered what she was on when she came in.
She was fucking beautiful though. Such a shame.

​   Well, you wait there and let me tell you the rest of this story, the woman says. So, Angie looked awful. Her hair was a shredded mess, all poofed out on top and with these uneven little bits that were sticking out underneath. I was in shock, but Heather seemed to think differently. She walked over to Angie and ran her hand over her hair and said, you look so cool. Angie’s face just lit up and she gave Heather a big smile. Next thing, Heather’s asking Angie’s mom if she’ll cut her hair and I was like, what the hell is going on here? Angie’s mom goes up and she’s playing with Heather’s hair and she says, your hair is so beautiful, she says, you’re like Suzy Chapstick or the Coppertone girl. Look at you. You don’t know how lucky you are. She took one of those long brown cigarettes out of her pack and lit it up. Remember those?

   You can still get those, the bartender says.

   I never see anyone smoking those anymore.

   More. That was the brand, remember?

   Yeah, that’s it.

   The man gets impatient and asks, so what happened?

   So, Angie thought this was a great idea and she was really excited and Heather is saying how much she hates her hair and wants to cut it all off. I kept saying it wasn’t a good idea. I knew her mom really had a thing about her hair, you know? Her mom was like obsessed with Heather’s hair. It’s funny she became a red head.  But, no one was listening to me. Angie’s mom says, do you know that I trained as a hairdresser? She’s waving her cigarette around as she talks and she’s pulling at chunks of Heather’s hair like measuring up what she’d do with her. Marinello School of Beauty, 1968, she says. Didn’t finish though. Had this chicken instead, she says. So, she’s going on about how she could do a real nice haircut for Heather and how her hair would be real easy to work with. I mean, I could tell she sounded like a total bullshitter but Heather was going along with it. Heather points at me and says, what about her? And I’m like, shit, no. Angie’s mom says how she could do something really awesome with my curls. She went off to the kitchen and filled a little glass from a bottle of whiskey that was on the windowsill. She opened one of the cabinets. It was broken so when she opened it, it was just like hanging off one hinge, and she took out a bottle of pills. She popped a couple of them into her mouth and washed them down with the whiskey. She said, Let’s put on some music. Angie was shouting for her to put on Beat on the Brat. 

   That was a great song. Great album, the bartender says.

   Yeah, well I’d never heard it. Wasn’t my kind of music. And wasn’t Heather’s either I didn’t think. So, they had this little record player, like the one I had at home. Light blue thing with a plastic cover. You know, one of those kid’s ones? She put the record on and Angie and her mom started jumping around and bouncing off each other in their bare feet, laughing. Heather joined in, singing along with them, Beat on the Brat, Beat on the Brat…

   The bartender and woman sing together: Beat on the Brat with a baseball bat, Uh Huh, uh huh, uh,uh,uh.uh. 

   I was way too self- conscious to join in and I didn’t want to be a poser, you know? But Heather didn’t care. She was like a chameleon. Angie ran through to her room and when she came back she had on black lipstick and a t-shirt that she’d cut into all over the place so you could see right through to her skin. Heather said she looked awesome and asked her to do hers. Next thing, Heather’s ripping off her shirt and flinging it to Angie. Angie’s mom was drinking her whiskey and dancing around, throwing her head side to side. I mean, she was nuts. She looked at Heather and she said, so what are we going to do with you? She walked over and ruffled her hair again. I mean, it was kind of weird. And Heather says, cut it all off, and she’s like, okay honey. Heather looked at me and was like, and you’re next. She wasn’t laughing or anything. She was like real serious. It was hard to say no to her.

   The bartender seeing that the drinks are empty brings two more beers and the bottle of Tequila which she sets in front of them. She pours three shots this time and they all have one.

   This one’s on me, the bartender says.

   The man asks the woman, so did you do it?

   Just wait. So, Heather still doesn’t even have a shirt on you know? She’s already got boobies and everything. I was still totally flat chested.
So, I was kind of a bit uncomfortable that she was walking around like that. Angie’s mom gets her to sit down at the table and she says, we’ll cut it real short on this side, and make the bangs real short, and we’ll leave it a bit longer on this side. She was really unsteady on her feet at this stage. Her voice was really slurring. She picked the scissors up off the table. They weren’t the hair cutting type of scissors either. They were like the kind you use in the kitchen. OK love, she says in this fake English accent. She grabbed a bunch of hair on the left side, above Heather’s ear and she sheared it right off. It fell to the floor like yellowy white cotton candy and landed right on top of Angie’s hair. She brushed Heather’s hair forward over her face and cut very short bangs. Then she just started to snip willy nilly, here and there. There you go sweetheart, you’re a rock star now, she says. Heather was feeling around her hair with her hands, nearly shaved all the way off on one side. The short chunky bangs. Angie came through with her cut up shirt and she put it on over her bare skin. Angie held out the black lipstick and painted it onto Heather’s lips. She pulled her into the bathroom to have a look. Angie’s mom says, come on chicken, let’s do you, and I go and sit in the chair and I’m looking around and she’s nearly falling over at this stage and Angie and Heather walk back in and they’re watching me and even though I think they look really awful, they look really cool too, you know? So, I’m steeling myself up for it but when Angie’s mom lifts of the scissors, I just can’t do it. I burst into tears, ran into the bathroom, and locked the door and I could hear them all laughing, you know?

   That’s shit, the bartender says.

   But wait, that’s not the end of it. So, there’s like this loud knocking on the door and we hear this man shouting, Candace, you in there? Yeah, that was her name. Candace. I’d forgotten that. This guy sounds like someone off a cop show, you know that East Coast kind of accent, like from the Bronx or something? Angie says, shit, it’s so and so, and she looks for somewhere for us to hide and you can hear him outside, Candace, get your ass out here. You owe me a lot of fucking money. Angie says he has a key so she pulls us into the hallway and pulls the door behind her, but she leaves it open a little so she can see. Candace, I hope you’re not sitting on your ass, he says. So, we’re standing there and everything feels like slow motion and we hear the key enter the lock and the little click and then the door being pushed open. The guys sees Angie immediately because she’s looking through the little crack of the door. Where is your fucking mother, he says, and she points to the living room. The door’s open now so we can see into the living room and Angie’s mom’s there passed out on the sofa, her arm is hanging off over the edge so she looks like she’s dead, you know? I thought for a minute maybe she was. Goddamn it Candace, the guy says and he starts shaking her and she’s kinda murmuring and it’s all gobbledygook and so he lifts his hand and smacks her across the face. Angie shouts, no, and goes running through and we run in behind her. Angie’s mom says, Hey, whassa big idea, all slurry and it’s like something out of a movie. I almost started laughing. He tells her to get her ass up and get herself ready or he’s gonna send that kid out instead of her, and he points at Angie. She starts kind of tugging on his jacket and begging him for a pick me up, says she can’t go out like this, she needs a little pick me up. He says, Goddamn it Candace, you’re breaking my balls, and he tells Angie to get out and take her little friends with her and I see him take out the little baggie of white powder. I was totally innocent back then. I had no idea what they were doing. We stayed in the hall behind the door and there was all this muttering and cursing and where are your fucking shoes, Candace? and do something with that fucking hair, Candace, and then they were gone.     

   Well, Heather’s hair was cut and mine wasn’t. I knew she was pissed off with me about that, you know? We went back to the All American Burger eventually and all the street walkers were out there. I mean there was no hiding what they were in their shiny hot pants and platform heels. Heather said, why don’t the police just arrest them? I mean the police were there, standing around. It was weird to us I guess, we didn’t understand you actually had to do something to be arrested. You couldn’t just be arrested for standing around even if everyone knew what you were doing. We walked back and people were staring at Heather with her torn clothes and spiky blonde hair. Old women gave us dirty looks. We turned down the alleyway, past this old shoe repair shop that always reeked of glue and when we turned the corner into the parking lot, there was Angie’s mom, handcuffed to a rail. That’s what they used to do, used to arrest the women in batches and leave them handcuffed to something until they had a few of them to take off to jail or wherever. But, I mean Angie’s mom didn’t look like the other women out there. They were kind of glamourous almost, you know? Colourful. She just looked sad and wasted. She was so out of it, she didn’t even see us. I said we should go tell someone. I mean, that meant Angie was all on her own, you know? But Heather was like, no way. She said it was none of our business and don’t say a word. She was hard to say no to. So, we went back and that was that.

   What did her mother say about the hair, the bartender asks?

   Oh, she freaked out. She was crying and screaming at Heather. One of the other women was a hairdresser and said to bring her in the next day and she’d fix her as much as she could. Said she’d be good as new. And you know, she didn’t come back to ballet again but when she started Junior High, she had this cute short bob and she looked great, so I guess they fixed her up. And then the next year, she was gone, into the Hollywood machine. The rest is history, right? She never really had much to do with me after that day. I think she never really forgave me for not cutting my hair too. 

   So, what happened to Angie, the man asks?

   You know, that’s the weirdest thing. I heard she got taken away and adopted and we never heard anything about her again, but about ten years ago, I came across this photo online from some music awards ceremony and it was Heather and another woman with their arms around each other and the caption said, Heather Fox with childhood friend Angie Martin, music photographer. Can you believe it? They found each other again. So fucking weird. I guess, you never can tell who’s gonna make it in this world.

   The TV above the bar is frozen on an image of Heather Fox on the night of one of her numerous arrests, her eye make-up smeared under her eyes. The text at the bottom of the screen reads, the troubled life of Hollywood superstar Heather Fox.

   I gotta close up you two. One for the road? the bartender asks.

   They each have another shot.

   I’ve got a bottle of something at my house, the man says.

   Well, that’s the best idea I heard all night. I knew as soon as I saw you I was gonna like you. You have a kind face, the woman says.

   The two stumble out of the bar and the bartender locks up behind them. She turns off the television with the remote control and the lights go out. 


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Jennifer Lynn is a writer and poet from Los Angeles, based in Ireland for the last twenty years. She currently lives in the seaside town of Bray, Co. Wicklow. She's interested in themes of exile, outsiders, homes and homelessness. She holds a BA and MA in English and has complete. The Stinging Fly Writer's Workshop in Dublin. Her poetry has appeared on crowofminerva.com and she has short stories forthcoming with No Parties Magazine and The Honest Ulsterman. She has been funded with an Arts Council of Ireland Agility Award in 2021.

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