The Dimple Strikes Back by Lucy Woodhull

right?”
    “Right!” Nicolette toasted me and only spilled half her drink on the table.
    “This is my first step to world domi—dom—conquer. Conquering. First, I play second banana in a couple movies, and then, next, I play top banana in a Mel Brooks joint!”
    Ellen dipped her napkin in some water and dabbed at my boobs. I looked down to behelded that I’d dribbled some accidental drinky there. “Whoops,” she said. “Does Mel Brooks do joints anymore?”
    “He will for me. It is my destiny and my…future destiny.” My head fell to the table of its own accord. And then it stayed there because heads are really heavy, you know? Because my brain is so big and full of cheese. I turned my mouth to the side. “I do not need some stupid man getting me all jacked the fuck up because he can’t keep his paintings in his pants and then they kidnap me. That is poor life management.” I was finally able to lift my noggin. I held my drink aloft. My righteous bitches did the same. “To money!”
    “Mo money!” Ellen said.
    “Mo stress!” Nicolette added.
    “Mo’Nique!” I finished my pink thing. “I like her.”
    Nicolette nodded. “She’s got a lot of talent.” She finished her round and set the glass very carefully upside down. “Fuckers in my department won’t promote me to detective. Funny how White dudes are always the most qualified for everything.”
    I grabbed her hand affectionately, feeling more at home with her now that she’d begun with the potty mouth. “It’s because they play golf with each other with their dicks and balls. And then the dude with the smallest pair gets to be in charge because he yells the most.”
    Ellen burst out laughing. Nicolette slumped farther into the seat and said, “Maybe they take the detective exams with their…members. Maybe magic ink flows out.”
    “I’ve seen it a hundred times. Magic ink. They think it’s magic. It’s mostly just sour, usually.”
    And that was when Ellen fell out of the booth. She came back up for air and said, “I’m gonna write a movie for you, Lytton. It’s gonna be called Sour Grapes and it’s about one woman’s quest to improve the flavour of life.”
    “No! Let’s make a movie about all women. Like after the apocalypse, but only the women are left, but we have science, so there are still babies.”
    “I want to see this movie,” Nicolette slurred very sincerefully. “I want to live it.”
    “To Ellen! Best fucking writer in the world!” I had nothing to toast with, but I held my glass aloft anyhow. Nicolette joined me, hers upside-down. Ellen didn’t seem to mind, for she leaned over me to sloppily kiss her lady. I just kinda sat between, my eyes bobbing like a pool buoy, until the groping began. “Hey, hey—that was my boob. Nice grabbing, though. Ellen?”
    “Yeah, sorry. You can’t blame me, though. You have terrific tits.”
    I clasped my hands to my mammaries. “Thanks!”
    “Hey!” Nicolette sat up and pointed to me, then Ellen. “Have you two ever…”
    I said, “Oh, God, no.”
    “Noooooo,” Ellen agreed.
    “Fuck, no.”
    “That’s horrible. Why would you say that?”
    “I’m not that terrible!” I snapped. Geesh, Ellen had such impossible high standards. I dived into my purse and found a bunch of paper moneys that looked rainbowey and weird, so I set them on the table in the hope that someone else might count them into the required denominations. “Ellen has never tickled my taco.”
    “Wait!” Nicolette’s brown eyes turned as wide as really wide brown eyes.
    Wow, was I drunk.
    “Wait—didn’t your low-rent Ryan Gosling name his cat ‘Captain Taco’?”
    I straightened my spine. “Yes. After Tito’s Tacos.”
    “I fuckin’ love Tito’s Tacos,” Ellen said with a burp. She set to figuring out the money, thank goodness. I love her.
    Nicolette nodded. “Me, too. Anyway, that cat is named after pussy.”
    “No.” I shook my head, and then the whole bloody restaurant joined in