Come Monday morning, Winona collapses gratefully at her desk. Her weekend has put her through the wringer.
Friday night, there was no escape from taking her JAFA cousin Angela around the bars of Courtenay Place. When Winona describes Angela to her friends, they invariably protest, “But not all Aucklanders are like that! My Auckland friends are lovely!” Winona is quite sure that they are. However, they’re not Angela.
Angela might have become the capitalist stick insect she is today to rebel against her sweet artsy mother, Agatha, Wilhelmina’s sister. Or it might have been the cumulative effects of growing up in “Remmers” and going to Auckland Grammar. She may even be a cyborg under the platinum hair, eyelash extensions, nail extensions, and spray tan – who can tell any more?
With the two of them being like chalk and very spoiled fromage, Winona was hard put to it to show Angela a decent time out. Until she realized that all she had to do was…the opposite.
So, Angela got taken around all the bars and hangouts that Winona and her mates have slated as too dull, too pretentious, or too expensive. The kind of places that catered to out-of-towners. Perfectly plucked eyebrows lifted in appreciation (only slightly due to her early start on Botox) as Angela checked out stratospherically priced cocktail menus, and was checked out in turn by dull men in suits or Ed Hardy shirts. She didn’t seem to want to be entertained. Being dressed up like Friday Night Barbie, in a short black dress and tall black heels, and given her due as the hottest in the room, was enough. At their third bar of the night, a windowless box charging $22 for a sickly pousse-cafe, Angela hit it off almost too well with a few blokes.
Thinking that, perhaps, if she put her foot in it, they’d be able to leave these bores, Winona had asked loudly, “Won’t your fiancee mind?”
“I’m texting him right now! Here, take a picture of us and I’ll send it to him.” Winona complied, stunned with disbelief. Fortunately, she was able to pour Angela into a taxi soon after.
[…] dance class changes a single woman’s life, but it happened to her. Her great and good friend Angela from Auckland suggested over Skype that she take a burlesque class, to shake her out of moping over the […]