THE END

And I know I should just leave it alone, but my impulsive fingers are already dialing the number at his grandma’s house.]]> The mid-afternoon sun streams through my bedroom window and into my face. I sit up in bed, groaning. Shielding my eyes with one hand, I feel around on the nightstand for my cigarettes.

The cats are asleep at the foot of the mattress. They wake together, their ears perking when they hear me flick the lighter. The bigger one stalks over to me and plants herself in my lap, apparently not bothered by the cigarette. I sit back, allowing her to put her enormous weight on me. She purrs loudly.

The small one mews, wide-eyed.

“Food would be good, wouldn’t it?” I agree. “Let’s see if we can do that for you.”

My own stomach rumbles, and I climb out of bed. Both cats follow me into the kitchen. I shake the remains from a bag of dry food into their bowls, then open the refrigerator. When I see the date on the milk, I pour the contents of the carton into the sink. Looks like it’s time to get some groceries.

In the living room, I switch on the TV and flip through channels. Daytime TV is as bad as it’s ever been – no surprises there. Soap operas. Reruns. Shopping channels. “Start building your exciting career today!” blasts a commercial for the DeVry Institute. I switch off the tube and head towards the shower.

What do people do with themselves while it’s light out? I don’t actually know. Stripping ate my whole life. There is no one I can blame for that, because I let it happen.

I suds myself up over and over again, dawdling under the comforting hot water. When I’m finished, I let my hair hang damp around my face. I don’t put on any makeup. I throw on a t-shirt and an old pair of jeans.

Sprawled on the living room couch, I busy myself with a shopping list. It crosses my mind that my budget will be smaller now, and I crumple up the page I was scribbling on. Then I wince, disoriented by the sunlight. I’m not ready to face the supermarket while it’s teeming with its myriads of daytime people who all have somewhere to go.

My acoustic guitar is leaning against the wall in the corner of the room. I haven’t touched it since New Year’s Eve.

Oh, why the hell not.

The big cat rubs her cheek against the guitar’s tuning pegs. I get up off the couch. I stroke the wood and then the metal strings, brushing away the dust.

The guitar is hideously out of tune, and it takes about five minutes to rectify that. Most likely I need to re-string it, too. Later. One thing at a time.

I play a chord, slowly. My fingers cramp, reminding me that it’s been awhile.

Easy does it.

I take another deep breath, curl my fingers back and forth to stretch them, and try again. This time I manage a chord. Then another. I open my mouth and let the words come out without thinking about them.

“She knew that shadow / is a consequence of light / and so she played / She wound her emptiness through colorless delight / and walked the maze.”

I don’t know if these lyrics are about Sharon or about me. Or maybe both. I stop playing. I could use someone else’s input.

My eyes light on another corner of the room. Sean’s bass and his amp are still there, also gathering dust.  I haven’t seen Sean in months. He mentioned something awhile ago about coming to get his equipment, but he never did.

I miss Sean.

I’m getting a lump in my throat just thinking about him.

He hates me now. I made him hate me. He gave me the benefit of the doubt, over and over again, and I wound up throwing it all back in his face. He needed to be drunk just to be in the same room as me. No wonder he’s gone.

And I know I should just leave it alone, but my impulsive fingers are already dialing the number at his grandma’s house. His shrill kid brother answers the phone.

“Sean? No, he’s not here.”

“Is he back at school?” I ask, tentatively. “Do you know?”

I hear the phone being tossed onto a table, static in the background. “GRANDMA!” the boy yells. “DID SEAN GO BACK TO SCHOOL?”

An old woman takes the line. “Sean’s at Edie’s,” she says, without bothering to ask who I am. “Do you want the number?”

“Yes, please.” I jot it down, thank her, and hang up.

The other number rings and rings. I’m just about to slam down the phone and forget about it when I hear a girl’s sleepy voice on the other end. “Hello?”

“Edie?”

She yawns. “Uh huh.”

“Is Sean there?”

“Hang on.”

I feel a flash of guilt, hoping she doesn’t know about the last time I slept with him. Then he comes on the line.

“Yeah?”

“Hey, Sean.”

“Oh. Hi.” Sean doesn’t bother trying to conceal his disappointment.

“Sean… I…” I pause. I hear him breathing, and other than that, silence. “Sean…”

“Are you okay?” he asks. There’s grudging concern in his voice.

I don’t even know where to begin. My head is spinning. It’s going to take a lot of work if I really want to salvage our friendship.

I want to. In fact, I think I want that more than anything in the world.

Closing my eyes, I blurt out the very first thing that comes to mind.

“Sean, do you ever think about starting a band?”

“You leavin’?” she wants to know. She snaps her gum.

“Yep.” I throw my coat on.

“You sick?”

“In the worst way.”

She looks confused but then recovers.

“Well, ma, I hope you feel better,” she says. “Can I have your locker?”

I stifle a giggle. These girls never change.

]]> I’m lightning fast in the dressing room as I climb into my street clothes. These torn up jeans have never felt so good. I’m breathing so hard with relief, I sound like I just ran a marathon. I pitch the stilettos into my knapsack and throw everything else in on top of them.

A Puerto Rican girl I’ve never spoken to stops to look at me while I’m pulling everything out of my locker. She’s really young. She looks like she just turned eighteen yesterday. For heaven’s sake. She’s still got her braces.

“You leavin’?” she wants to know. She snaps her gum.

“Yep.” I throw my coat on.

“You sick?”

“In the worst way.”

She looks confused but then recovers.

“Well, ma, I hope you feel better,” she says. “Can I have your locker?”

I stifle a giggle. These girls never change.

“It’s all yours, babe,” I reply.

She smiles at me with a mouth full of metal and chewing gum, and then I really do burst out laughing. The girl laughs with me, automatically, though I know she doesn’t get the joke. On a sudden impulse, I hug her.

I leave her staring after me, dumbstruck, as I make my way down the stairs.

Peggy Lee’s “Fever” is playing in the main room. A stripper cliché. This is the last time I’ll ever see the inside of this place – I know it in my bones. With my knapsack slung over my shoulder, I pause, feeling like a voyeur but needing to look anyway. Just one more time.

The Nancy Spungen girl is onstage. She slinks out into the center, grabs the pole, and starts to walk around it, swinging her hips.

“Chicks were born to give you fever…”

Nancy leaps up and lands in the middle of the pole. She starts to swing around, faster and faster. It looks like she’s flying.

“What a lovely way to burn.”

I turn away. I don’t want to see the Kewpie doll expression that I know will be on her face when she lands.

The front door slams behind me, sealing me off from the sounds and smells of Lucille’s. Instead of taking the rickety elevator, I open the door to the stairwell.

I take the stairs two at a time. Buddy is napping in the hallway. He doesn’t notice me when I pass him. I giggle again, putting my hand over my mouth so I won’t wake him.

And then I’m standing on the sidewalk, looking out at the rest of the world. Looking at 54th Street. Watching it move.

The night air has a bite to it, even though it’s springtime. Car horns honk irascibly at each other all the way down Broadway. A cab whizzes by through a slushy puddle, splattering mud in its path. A couple pushes ahead of me on the sidewalk, arguing playfully – no, make that flirting. He shoves her a bit. She squeals in response.

The brightness of the city appears to be coming from everywhere at once. Windows, street lights, and traffic lights all illuminate the chaos of life in New York City. I take everything in, catching my breath, as if I’m seeing it all for the first time.

The city has a pulse. Sometimes it races and sometimes it crawls. And when I walk here, I’m part of that pulse, whether I want to be or not.

My own pulse quickens as I see my car. I dig eagerly in my pocket for the keys so I can finally go home.

She slumps as if she’s carrying the world’s weight. Her eye makeup is too thick, and her lips painted too bright. Her face is pinched with stress. She looks much older than twenty-one.

I sit on the stage. The girl in the mirror follows suit.

Suddenly I’m more tired than I can ever remember being.]]> Lucille’s is now the most depressing place in existence. It feels like it’s darker in here than it’s ever been. Nobody else seems to notice.

I had to come here tonight. I never wanted to see the inside of this place again. But here I am, searching for some kind of answer. Are there clues in this room? Clues that I missed?

I think about the first time I saw Sharon crawl across that stage. She didn’t even look like a junkie. Her body language contained a self-possession that felt larger than life.

She was a hell of an actress.

I’m in the corner, in the shadows, chain smoking behind a potted plant. Ostensibly, I came to work because I was on the schedule, but as the time goes by, I realize I shouldn’t be here. Anyone who bothers to glance at me has got to be able to tell I’m a mess.

My wristwatch ticks loudly. I can even hear it over the slow R&B song that pads the room with – as far as I’m concerned – the equivalent of white noise. My senses are skewed. Could be that I’ve finally lost it.

I’m marking time with my head down in a place I’ve never belonged and never will.

Sharon has not reappeared. Nobody but Willy claims to have seen her body, and nobody has seen Willy in days. Nonetheless, I know it has to be true. True because it’s Sharon, and true because I dug out the last phone number she gave me and called it looking for her.

“I don’t know where she is,” a man’s voice snapped. “She left here on Easter and never came back. Stupid bitch – after everything I did for her. Don’t call here again. That fucking whore is dead to me.”

I chuckled at the irony of his statement as he hung up the phone. I have no idea whether he heard me.

An hour goes by. I don’t budge except to cross my legs and light cigarettes. In a different club, management would be all the way up my ass. But at Lucille’s, they don’t seem to care. There are plenty of other girls on the shift. Most of them are new ones I’ve never seen before.

A mark gets out of his seat and moves to approach me. He smiles, a preamble to a pickup that promises to make the job easier for a change. I shake my head at him, startling myself. He looks bewildered, but he moves on. There’s only one other punk rock chick in the club – a Nancy Spungen clone. He taps her on the shoulder, and a moment later, they’re headed towards the slow dance lounge.

My mouth is dry and tastes bitter. I haven’t eaten, haven’t drank anything all day. All I’ve ingested is nicotine. Now a headache is starting behind my eyes.

My stage name is being called. Mechanically, I clamber up the stairs to do my set. I grip the pole, cringing at the music – some horrible nameless dance tune, if you can call it a tune at all. My knuckles are white.

I bend over slowly with my fingers on my crotch. When is the last time I bothered to dance? Then I pull off my dress and step out of my panties. The men will get no sensuality here.

Another mark who is sitting in front of the stage motions to me with a dollar bill. I ignore him. He finally crumples it, tosses it up next to my stiletto, and gets up to walk away.

I stare into the mirror. I see a pasty, haggard excuse for a young woman in stilettos and the buff, clinging to a brass pole for dear life.

She slumps as if she’s carrying the world’s weight. Her eye makeup is too thick, and her lips painted too bright. Her face is pinched with stress. She looks much older than twenty-one.

I sit on the stage. The girl in the mirror follows suit.

Suddenly I’m more tired than I can ever remember being. I lie down flat. I stay in this position until my set ends. I can recall a time when I would have gotten fired for a stunt like this, but now it doesn’t even seem to register with anyone.

The girl who takes my place onstage looks down at me with mild curiosity before she grabs the pole. I frown back at her. She looks away and starts to dance. I put my dress back on. I return to my seat in the corner to resume my chain smoking.

A shock of platinum blonde hair on the other side of the room makes me jump in my chair. My chest closes up. I want to run to her, screaming, and crush her body in a hug. Before I tear her a new one for scaring me senseless.

But the girl turns around, and of course it isn’t Sharon.

This is ridiculous.

Did she care about the people who loved her? Did any of us really love her?

Did she ever let anyone love her?

The club is filling up now. I watch some of the other girls – the ones I’ve never spoken to. Tall or short, broad or thin, they all look essentially the same. The smiles are plastered on. Any thoughts wavering beneath the surface are well hidden.

I turn my attention to the marks and look closely. Although they try for the same impassivity as the dancers, they are easier to read. Some are wistful while others are angry. One or two are completely drugged with lust – nothing else in their expressions at all – but not as many as you’d think.

The façade is a roaring good time. Some are better than others at portraying it. Still, that’s all it ever is. A simulation. Nobody in this room has come here to celebrate.

Where would they all really be if someone could wave a wand in front of them, and whisk them off to either bliss or absolution?

Anyone in this room could be Sharon. Including me.

Especially me.

Another customer approaches, a tall, thin guy in his forties with good shoes and a suit. Looks like he has money. This Greta Garbo bit seems to work for me. Who knew?

“Hey, darling. You sure are beautiful. What’s your name?” He gives me an oily smile, like a used car salesman.

“Which one?” I don’t meet his eyes. There will be nothing in them anyway, and I know it.

He chuckles a fake, hearty radio announcer’s laugh. “How many names do you have, sweetheart?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” I ask.

“Oh, we’re playing guessing games now? Okay. Let’s see… how about Fantasy? I’ll bet your name is Fantasy.”

He’s still grinning. I wish he would just go away.

I wonder if she stopped trying before I even knew her. I probably could have helped her at some point. I know I could have. We understood each other. She wanted to act as much as I wanted to play music. Both of us were capable of reaching for our respective brass rings. Both of us hid behind our fear and our disappointments instead. We justified wasting our best qualities in flamboyant self-destruction. We fed off each other.

I feel like I helped Sharon to die.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” The suit sits next to me, uninvited. “Fantasy?” He nudges me and his big stupid grin gets wider.

I pull away, grimacing. “No.”

I’ve been a stripper for the bulk of my short adult life. Whenever I’ve considered quitting, the biggest deterrent was the poverty I left behind as a young girl first out on my own.

The mark pulls out his wallet. “I understand,” he says. “I need to tip you before you’ll talk to me. That’s how it works, right?”

Slowly I turn to look him full in the face. He reminds me of a puppy – wagging its tail, bringing you its drooly toy and placing the disgusting thing in your lap again and again, no matter how many times you throw it on the floor and tell him no. “There are lots of other girls working tonight,” I say, as neutrally as I can.

If I let myself face life from this angle, I’ll watch it slowly ebb away while I wait for the world around me to change. I will always feel poor. And somehow the money I can make in here is no longer tantalizing. In fact, it feels like dirty money. It feels like I sold my soul.

Unlike Sharon, I’m still alive. I can still buy it back. Maybe even at cost, if I’m lucky.

“You’re the one I want,” says the mark. Now there’s some irony. I’m his brass ring. “So how much?” He nudges me again.

This time I nudge him back, hard enough to make it hurt. “Don’t touch me.”

“All right, all right. How about I buy you a drink then?”

I don’t answer him. He’s a nonentity. He’ll figure that out soon and he’ll chase down some greener pastures, or he’ll keep on talking to the wall. Either way, it’s not my problem.

I’m not saying the fear I have of joining the rest of the world isn’t hanging over me. That’d be a lie. I don’t have any idea what else I might do. I don’t know how I can simply stop hating myself and build a real life. I don’t know, for Lord’s sake, what a real life would even look like.

Not knowing these things suddenly doesn’t seem as important as it’s seemed all along.

And my uncertainty doesn’t seem important at all. I prefer it to the alternative.

For the first time in ages, I think I can live with not knowing what happens next. In fact, I think it may be the only way that I can live.

I have got to get out of here.

“Hey,” says the mark. “Fantasy! Wait. Come back.”

I ignore him.

My legs are now carrying me over to the cashier’s desk, where Ritchie putters uselessly with his paperwork. He’s putting black marks next to all the girls’ names as they earn dance after dance. They’re tally marks. The same ones that prisoners use.

“Ritchie, I’m leaving,” I announce.

“’It’s so sad, it’s so sad,’” I mimic. “Don’t you goddamn get it? She’s DEAD!” I scream into the phone. “You lost your chance to do anything for her. What did you do for her when she was alive?”

]]> My feet are up on the coffee table and I’m eating a chocolate bunny that I bought on the way home from the park. This is dinner. The movie Moll Flanders plays in front of me for the umpteenth time. I don’t know why, but I watch it whenever it comes on. Something about it speaks to me.

The phone rings. I look at the clock – it’s just past eleven. My mom wouldn’t call this late.  Who else do I even know? I’m tempted to ignore it, but the answering machine’s broken. So I hobble into the bedroom to grab the receiver.

“Hello?”

I hear muffled noise in the background. Whoever’s calling is in a crowded place. I think I also hear music. The person on the other end is inaudible.

I’m about to hang up, and then I hear someone saying my stage name.

“Yeah, it’s me,” I answer gruffly. “Who’s this?”

“It’s Lily,” says the person on the other end. “I’m at Lucille’s.”

“Lily?” I don’t remember giving my phone number to any of the girls from there.

There’s a pause, and more background shuffling. It sounds like Lily is talking to someone. I’m still thinking of hanging up. They probably want me to cover a shift, and there’s no way I’m going in there on my day off.

“Is it true that Kelly died?” Lily asks abruptly.

“What?” I sit down on the bed.

Kelly is Sharon. She’s talking about Sharon. My stomach lurches and my heart begins to race.

There’s another pause. “Oh,” she says. Her voice is flat. “I just thought… you know. That you would know. Because you were her friend.”

“Where did you hear it from?”

“Well, we all used to see you together before she went to work at The Velvet Rope,” she says. “Everyone knew you two hung out.”

I slap my forehead. This dumb little twat…

“Where did you hear that she’s dead?” I raise my voice.

“Buddy just came upstairs and told us. He said Willy was at the door, and he was crying.”

“As far as I know, Sharon left Willy a while ago,” I say.

“Sharon? …Oh, you mean Kelly. No,” Lily says. “They were back together. Buddy said Willy got high with her –”

“She was clean,” I protest.

“Yeah – that’s true, that’s what I heard, too,” Lily says. “Buddy said Kelly hadn’t been high in awhile. He said she shot her normal dose but she wasn’t used to it anymore. She OD’d.”

Oh, God, Sharon – what the fuck did you go and do?

“It sounds like you already have all your facts,” I say harshly. “Those two would know better than I would. I haven’t heard from her.”

Lily clucks her tongue. She doesn’t sound the least bit disturbed by the fact that she’s unwittingly let the cat out of the bag.

“Is there something else?” I say. My fist curls and uncurls involuntarily.

“I heard her body’s in the city morgue. We should do something for her.”

“Do something?” Now I’m beginning to lose it. “What the fuck are you talking about? What do you do for someone who’s dead?”

There’s a moment of stunned silence from Lily. But she quickly recovers.

“I was thinking we could all put together the money for a decent funeral,” she says. “Like if every girl gave, you know, a hundred dollars. Her body’s just lying in the city morgue, away from anyone she knew. It’s so sad.”

And there it is. The real reason I’m getting a phone call. It always comes down to money with these bitches. Because money fixes everything, right?

“’It’s so sad, it’s so sad,’” I mimic. “Don’t you goddamn get it? She’s DEAD!” I scream into the phone. “You lost your chance to do anything for her. What did you do for her when she was alive?”

I hang up the phone, hard. Then I bite my lip until it bleeds.

What did I do for Sharon while she was alive?