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This was the thing about C.C. Babcock and holding her liquor: she can do it until she can’t. One moment the world is simply her oyster, and she is vibing, calm, collected, not to mention collecting numbers. In the next she is hovering over a public toilet, hurling all of it out plus the street-vendor hot dogs an insistent Fran Fine talked her into getting, “because gay clubs require more energy, didn’t anyone ever teach you.”
“That’s it, that’s it,” Fran coaxes and coos while holding back C.C.’s hair, she herself a level of buzzed. “Ya know this is what you get for acting such a Lothario once you got that lil’ bitty’s digits. Pure hubris.”
“I am never doing this with you again,” C.C. finally grumbles after a minute of nothing but sad retching, taking an offered piece of toilet paper to wipe off the sides of her mouth.
Fran merely shrugs, continuing to fix C.C.’s disheveled hair. “Suit yourself, you can puke in an alley on your own next time.”
“Nope. No next time.” The room at least begins to go from a Disneyland teacup spin to slight hypersensitivity to the Earth rotating on its axis, and ugh--she’s going to need a bath so bad.
“Alrighty, come on, big girl,” Fran huffs as she hoists C.C. up by the wrists, who elects not to dwell for too lengthy a time on how cool Fran’s hands are, or the close proximity they share upright in this cramped stall. Fran’s foot raises and settles down elegantly to flush the toilet. “Let’s get you out of here before someone decides to get finger blasted next door.”
“Jesus,” C.C. exhales incredulously, smiling.
* * *
It’s not that being around Nanny Fine is less of a skull-splitting neuron-killing experience. It still very much is, for how incessantly she spends the cab ride talking about her cousin Simona who came out in ‘89 and now lives in Berkeley California with her two partners, one of which also has a man on the side (“What?” “They’re so advanced there, baby, don’t even get me started--”). And it’s not that they’re exactly best buddies now either, cause they’re very much not, and C.C. is still saving her bottle of Veuve Clicquot for the day Maxwell commits to firing her.
(But Fran just had to catch the way C.C. looked at those actresses holding their hands a little too long during the closing show. She had to connect the dots, and she had to take her out to the Cubbyhole of all places. And well--of course she said yes. Sure. Alright. She wouldn’t hear the end of it if she didn’t.)
“You don’t have to escort me into my own home, Miss Fine,” C.C. objects with a heavy tongue despite leaning into it when Fran walks her to her door, hands supporting her waist.
With one arm still around her, Fran digs around C.C.’s purse for her keys without asking, like it’s her job. “You can barely walk straight, which I’m learning is the only straight thing you can usually do.”
“Ha ha. So funny.”
“Plus, you never use your Life Alert. Niles spent so much of his savings to gift you that.”
A slurred retort gathers inside her mouth about how she saw Fran’s birth certificate back when they were stuck at her parents’ for the holidays, which gets lost when she nearly trips over Chester, who immediately leaps into Fran’s arms and who then immediately begins intoning like she would to a baby.
“Touche, Francine,” she mutters, and decides to tumble over her couch when the near encounter with the floor has her realizing how strongly she longs to be horizontal.
Not a moment later, Miss Thang is already rummaging through her cabinets, ostensibly for a midnight snack. But when C.C. can manage to open her eyes, Fran is setting down a glass of water, downing her own, and rattling a bottle of ibuprofen, which she is sure she needs at least one more hand for? Vishnu?? God she’s so drunk--
“I’m putting these on your bedside for tomorrow morning,” Fran says as she walks back to the kitchen to deposit her empty glass of water, Chester in tow like a little traitorous minion, then to her bedroom to place the painkillers.
“You never stop running a household, do you,” C.C. says acerbically, sitting upright to take a generous drink.
Fran’s voice continues in the distance, carrying as it ever did, almost in surround sound in the state of inebriation that C.C. is in. “Where do you keep your PJs? If you’re gonna brech again you might want to stick with something a little frumpy, and I’m not gonna help you into a negligee I’m afraid--”
And here C.C. was, on the precipice of reflecting on how inordinately kind Fran is to her for perhaps no reason, and how she may enjoy it a little. Miraculously the sheer concept being dressed by her both has her craving another shot and her BAC lowering down a hundredth.
“Oh, would you just go home? I can take care of myself.”
She eats her words fairly quickly. C.C. maneuvers around her apartment with her hands to any surface they can find purchase on; Fran, watching from an archway says, “Okay, Bonnie Tyler.”
* * *
Fran has the audacity to be lying on the left side of her bed chewing a piece of gum and looking at an unfolded paper when C.C. finally emerges cleaned and dressed. She wags the paper around between two fingers.
“Angelique. Sexy. You gonna call her tomorrow or what?”
C.C. sighs, and evaluates her battles. Getting into bed, she haphazardly kicks at Fran’s leg to get her to scooch. “No.”
“And why not?”
“I just don’t do that sort of thing. I’ve got too big a name.”
Fran gives her a look, that hallmark uh huh I’m judging you expression, like she isn’t the one fully dressed and made up in another woman’s bed while reeking of perfume and bar sweat.
“Honey, you work in theatre.”
“Your point, Nanny Fine?”
“Miss Babcock,” Fran counters the formality with a tone that straddles condescending and sweet. “You don’t mean to tell me that you’ve never even had experiences with a woman before?”
“Oh, and you have, Miss Worldwide?” says C.C., which she soon regrets as Fran leans over to nudge her with an elbow and wink.
“I’m not just Fine to the boys, ya know.”
If C.C. blushes, no she didn’t. “Yeah? I didn’t see anyone slipping you their numbers back there.”
Fran looks at her sorrowfully as she retrieves three folded receipts from her bra, which is just another thing C.C. Babcock has to process. “It was your big night. Didn’t want to steal your thunder.”
“Ugh. Can you at least take the couch? I’m catching whiffs of that bathroom.”
Taking not a hint nor directive, Fran ignores her altogether and turns on her side to face C.C. like they’re at a sleepover.
“I’m so puzzled by you, C.C. Babcock. So what do you want?”
“That’s a therapy question and I’m not paying you.”
“If not Angelique, who, by the way, I will call if you won’t--I mean, who’s your type? What kind of woman you looking for?”
She’s neither sober nor drunk enough for this, but something possesses her to be earnest for just a single moment. It’s not like she has anyone else to talk to about this rather recent development. “I don’t really know my type yet. This is pretty new.”
The wide grin on Fran’s face is annoying as it is relieving; then just annoying when Fran boops C.C. on the nose with a finger. “Aww, look at you, a late-blooming lady killer.”
“Oh Christ on a cross, Nanny Fine, I just want to go to sleep.”
“Alright, alright, no need to keep invoking that guy, okay,” she relents, finally sitting up and making the motions to leave.
But in Fran Fine fashion, she leans over C.C.’s side of the bed and plants a red kiss onto her cheek. “Night, babe!”
C.C., face warm and pulse drumming, merely growls.
“Okay! Leaving now. Bye-bye!” And Fran scampers away.
* * *
“Actually, could I take you up on the couch offer? It’s just you know Manhattan at 3am and you know maybe we could commute together tomorrow morning, what time does your alarm go off? Got any spare pajamas? ... Miss Babcock? Hello, hello? C.C.? Oh I’ll just borrow your silk set. Goodnight.”