Chapter Text
Rizzo can hear Frenchy’s smile through the phone.
She hasn’t had a chance to get a word in edgeways since she picked up the damn thing, as Frenchy immediately started babbling on about her new hair colour (“I did it myself, from a box, but you’d never guess, it looks real professional!”) and the vacation she’d just got back from (“such a shame we had to leave early, but my old man got sick. I think it was the clams...I mean who eats clams at a buffet?”) and the boy she’d seen with Marty at the pictures the night before (“another new one, I don’t know where she finds them.”)
Rizzo is only half listening, twirling the cord around her finger as she searches the cupboards for something she might be able to turn into dinner before her shift at the diner. She can tell Frenchy’s smiling though, can hear it radiating out of her voice.
She can picture her, practically vibrating with excitement as she describes the shade of pink her hair has turned and wrinkling her nose in displeasure as she talks about the clams. She is probably perched on one of the high stools in her parents’ kitchen, kicking her legs idly because she’s too short to reach the ground, maybe doodling on a scrap of paper as she talks. Frenchy is always in motion, even when she’s seated, her mind always jumping off and away to the next source of excitement.
“Oooh!”
Frenchy proves Rizzo’s last point with an abrupt change of subject, her voice rising an octave as she exclaims “did you hear about the new pool?”
“Hear about it?” Rizzo chuckles. “It’s all anyone in the neighbourhood will talk about!”
“Have you been yet?” There is a hint of a pout in Frenchy’s voice now, the words ‘without me’ hanging unspoken at the end of her sentence.
Rizzo shakes her head, realises that Frenchy cannot see her through the phone and elaborates. “Not yet. I’ve been picking up extra shifts at the diner, not had time for much else.”
“We should go!” The squeal is back in Frenchy’s voice and Rizzo has to hold the phone away from her ear a fraction to avoid being deafened. “Saturday? I could invite the whole gang! And I got this cute new swimsuit just the other day, you’d all be the first to see it.”
Rizzo is busy trying to bat away the image of Frenchy in her new swimsuit and nearly misses the next change of topic.
“You know who else might like to come?” Sandy!”
“Who’s Sandy?” The question comes out more abruptly than she intended, but Frenchy doesn’t comment, already gushing about her new neighbour who is, apparently, just the most heavenly being ever to walk the earth.
“It’d be real great for you all to meet her!” Frenchy says. “She’s shy to start off with but she’s a doll once you get to know her. It might help her when school starts to have some friends already.”
Rizzo makes a non-committal sound in the back of her throat. She is not remotely interested in coddling some wet blanket of a girl just because Frenchy has decided she’s her new plaything. This Sandy can sink or swim like everyone else at Rydell, and if Rizzo is one of the ones holding her head under the water, well isn’t that just the natural order of things?
She goes back to her search of the cupboards while Frenchy continues to extol Sandy’s many virtues. So far she has found the end of a loaf of bread, slightly hard and with the beginnings of mould spots, and half a limp onion. Oh and a quart of whiskey, definitely not there the night before but already half drunk. Clearly her old man still has his priorities in order.
She unscrews the bottle cap and takes a slug, then almost spits it back out at Frenchy’s next words.
“Maybe we could make her a Pink?”
Rizzo coughs and swallows hard, the whiskey seeming to stick in her throat all of a sudden.
“Last time I checked the only one around here with the authority to decide on new Pinks was me,” she says icily, replacing the bottle where she found it. If she shows up to work reeking of spirits she’ll lose her job. She’s already on thin ice after backchatting the manager just one time too many, and she needs this job. Without the money she’s earning she’ll be stuck in this dead-end town forever.
“Of course you are,” Frenchy’s tone is now hesitant and conciliatory, her former excitement evaporated. “I didn’t mean to tread on your toes, Riz, I just thought it might be nice. But you can decide for yourself when you meet her.”
Rizzo makes another non-committal noise. Frenchy’s description has told her everything that she needs to know about Sandy Dumbrowski, and that is that she’s not Pink Lady material.
Frenchy either takes this sound for agreement or knows better than to push her luck because she doesn’t try to take the subject further.
“You’ll be there Saturday then?” She asks instead. “I’ll call Marty and Jan, see if either of them can get some guys along. Will you talk to Kenicks?”
“Look I’m not sure I can come,” Rizzo says. “The diner keeps asking me to pick up extra shifts, and Saturday’s our busiest day.”
It sounds lame even to her own ears. Since when did Betty Rizzo choose responsibility and hard labour over a good time?
“Aww c’mon Riz!” Frenchy wheedles. “Say you’ve got plans. Say you’re sick. Say your grandma died for all I care, just say whatever you need to be there.”
Rizzo says nothing, worrying the inside of her lip with her teeth and swallowing hard again. There is a raw feeling in her throat, like the whiskey took half the lining with it on the way down.
“Please?” Frenchy continues. “For me?”
Rizzo can picture her vividly again, this time fluttering her eyelashes and clasping her hands to her chest. The image makes her concede that she will, at least, try her best to get the day off.
“But no promises,” she warns, the words already lost amid Frenchy’s excited squealing.
The kitchen feels almost eerily quiet once she’s replaced the phone in its cradle. She makes one more perfunctory search of the cupboards, tucks the whiskey bottle back where she found it, and heads for the diner. If she’s lucky she can convince one of the line cooks to slip her a basket of fries before her shift.
All the way there she thinks about the pool party. She hasn’t seen much of the Pinks this summer and she misses them. She can picture Jan cannonballing into the pool, Marty screwing up her face as the splashing water threatens her perfect hairdo. Mostly though she thinks about Frenchy.
About Frenchy parading along the poolside in her new swimsuit, telling anyone who will listen about her famous “eye for fashion”. About droplets of water, tinged slightly pink with cheap hair dye, running down her body. About Frenchy laughing, head thrown back and nose crinkling.
About Frenchy sitting on a lounger, head bent close to another girl’s. Whispering. Sharing secrets.
She shakes her head to clear the images. This isn’t like her, to waste time thinking when she could be doing. It certainly isn’t like her to get sentimental. Maybe that whiskey was stronger than she thought.
That last image follows her around though, as she smiles her widest, fakest smile at the old ladies who complain that the iced tea isn’t sweet enough and the children who wail if they have to wait more than thirty seconds for their ice-cream sundaes and the middle-aged men who leer at her as she crosses the room and comment on how the cheap polyester skirt clings to her curves. It chips away at her, as much as the difficult customers and the heavy plates and the heels far too high to walk around in all night.
And when old Roger tells her there’s a sign-up sheet on the cash desk for weekend shifts, it’s that same image that flickers through her mind as she scrawls her name down in the Saturday column.