TWENTY-SEVEN
“I bet it’s gonna be another one of those nights,” Dahlia says gloomily.
She huddles close to me over the little table between us, shivering, and takes a light off my cigarette.
When the club is empty, it feels like an icebox. They keep the A/C blasting on us no matter what time of year it is.
“Tim, it’s cold in here,” I complain, knowing full well that it’s fruitless. He doesn’t even turn around.
“Go move around and hustle. Dance for somebody. You won’t be cold no more,” Tim says with his back to us.
Dahlia and I roll our eyes at each other. She makes a sour face in his direction, mimicking him. Both of us have tried every guy in the club. Sloane’s in the back already, but it’s dead slow for everyone else, and we’re all bored shitless. We’d be down in the basement, but Alannah and Anisa have beaten us to the punch. Now we can’t go down there until they feel like coming upstairs.
Tina walks by us, and mutters, “Girls, separate.” I wait till her back is turned, and then I flip her off.
“It could still pick up,” I say, resuming my conversation with Dahlia.
“I don’t care anymore. I don’t need more than forty bucks to keep from getting sick.”
“Lowering your standards?” I ask.
She snorts. “Look at me. I’m fifteen years older than every girl in the club. I’m lucky if I make tip-out.”
“I saw on the sheet last night that you had a bottle with someone,” I say, trying to be helpful.
“Oh, please. You don’t even wanna know what I had to do back there.”
I look at her sympathetically. “At least you admit it.”
Dahlia curls her lip. “Why not? We’re all doing something in those rooms, and everyone knows it. You think Tim doesn’t want it to happen? He’s happy as long as he gets his cut and he doesn’t have to hear about it.”
“You’re right,” I agree.
Tina hobbles by a second time, mumbling, “Ladies, I don’t want to have to tell you again.”
“What does she want us to do, keep trying guys that already said no?” Dahlia hisses in my ear before getting up. “I could survive on one tenth of the stash that bitch needs just to keep from falling over where she stands!”
She circles the stage and then sits down on the other side of the room directly across from me. We take turns pulling silly faces at each other and making fun of the customers in pantomime. I’m really going to miss Dahlia when she’s gone.
Alannah emerges from the basement and makes a beeline for me.
“Mama,” she whispers to me, her eyes glowing, “Can I borrow five bucks?”
I shake my head. “I would, but I haven’t even made stage money yet.”
She frowns, looking around the room, ostensibly for someone else she can possibly hit up.
“Kaia’s got weed to sell,” she announces. “If you wanna go in with me later on a bag, let me know.”
“I don’t think so. Kaia never has good weed. I can get better shit than that in Queens.”
“Yeah, ma, I know, but I want it now.”
“Won’t she smoke you up?”
“She already did.”
I shrug. “I’m sure you can make more than five bucks in the next ten minutes if you want. You’re the only girl here who hasn’t tried any of the customers yet. You never know.”
Alannah grimaces. “You know I don’t ever ask these guys for shit.”
“Yeah, you know, I’ve been meaning to ask you about that for a while now. What’s the deal with that? Asking them for money is sort of the point of the job.”
She’s still scanning the room. I’m struck by the unpleasant epiphany that Alannah is always borrowing something from someone. It now occurs to me that perhaps her priorities need more work than I’d thought. The other girls in the club are here to make money. When Alannah isn’t onstage, all I ever see her doing is socializing with the other girls. And smoking blunts downstairs. Are we, Alannah’s co-workers, also her marks?
As if she’s just read my mind, Alannah volunteers, “Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about the money I owe you.” If I’m not mistaken, it comes out sounding a little bit testy.
“I wasn’t even talking about that, Alannah. I’m concerned about you.”
“I’m not gonna get in trouble with Tim, if that’s what you mean,” she says.
The girl cannot possibly be this thick.
“Why even come into a place like this unless you want to make money?” I blurt. “Why show your pussy and then take home scraps?”
Alannah stares past me. “Look, I’m not naming names, but… I’m not giving out blow jobs in the VIP like some other people we know, okay?”
“Yeah, fine. But do you even lap dance?”
She shrugs. “If they ask me.”
What is this, your prom?
I light a cigarette, just as Tina walks by a third time, scowling at me.
“Tina, I have tried every single guy in this club,” I tell her. “Until we get some new blood in the room, it ain’t gonna happen.”
“Okay,” she chirps. She sounds cheerful, but I know she’s being snide. “I’ll just make sure that the DJ knows to put you into heavy rotation… so that the girls who’re actually working can catch a break.”
“You do that, Tina,” I say. “Excuse me, Alannah.”
I make for the basement just as Roy, the new DJ, comes out of the booth and spies me. “Next up,” he says, pointing at me.
“No,” I say. “Ask someone else.”
“Everyone else is busy,” he says.
Oh, hell no, mister – you’re the new kid on the block, so don’t even try it.
“Not my problem,” I say.
I make for the basement, and open the door without asking permission first.
“Hey!” Jose exclaims, still sore because he’s finally realized that he is never getting into my pants.
“What is this, kindergarten?” I retort, slamming the door.
“You want a fine, missy?” I hear him say, but I ignore him and totter down the stairs. My feet hurt already.
There’s a new girl in the dressing room. I’ve only seen her here once before. She’s a white girl. Average height. Brunette. A few pounds overweight. She makes up for the extra weight by having massive tits – those things are enormous. Cruise missiles. I nod to her and sit down in one of the two rickety chairs they’ve given us. She smiles.
“What’s your name?” I ask her, not really caring what the answer is. So many girls have come and gone from this place since I’ve been here, returning at random or not at all.
“Nikki,” she tells me, pausing for effect before adding, “That’s my real name.”
“Oh,” I reply, and then tell her my stage name. If she wants to use her real name in a strip club, she can have at it. It doesn’t mean I’ll tell her mine.
“I used to work at The Velvet Rope,” she continues. “I’m only here until I can lose enough weight to go back there. That’s where the real money is.”
“Enjoy that,” I say. “I hear the minimum tip-out over there is two hundred bucks.”
“Yeah, but you make so much more that it doesn’t matter,” Nikki says, and I wonder how she could have gotten hired there when they wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pole. She’s not really that pretty.
“I don’t care how much I make, I wouldn’t give any club that much money just for the privilege of making them more,” I huff.
“They wouldn’t hire you, huh?”
Okay, so she’s not as stupid as she looks. I ignore the question.
“It has nothing to do with what you look like, you know,” she continues. “You shouldn’t feel bad. They just, you know, like big tits over there.”
“Whatever,” I say, waving my hand dismissively.
“So what drugs do you do?” she asks, changing the subject abruptly.
“Oh, is it that obvious?”
“Of course not, silly. But tell me… do you like E?”
“Not in particular,” I answer. “Good luck finding MDMA in this city that isn’t laced with all sorts of other shit. I mean, if I’m gonna do heroin then I’m just gonna do heroin, you know what I mean?”
“Heroin’s not really a party drug,” Nikki comments.
“Do you see any track marks on me? I’ve never used a needle in my life!”
“Okay, I believe you, take it easy. All I wanna know is whether or not you like to trip.”
“Why?” I’m suspicious.
“Because I have a few hits of really good blotter acid on me, and tomorrow night I’m bringing mushrooms.”
“There’s no such thing as ‘really good blotter acid,’” I contradict.
“Tell ya what, doll, how ‘bout I give you a hit, you test it out, and if you still believe that in a few hours, it’s yours to keep,” she says. “But if you feel the way I think you’re gonna feel, you owe me three bucks tomorrow night.”
“Just three bucks? Fuck it. I’m down.”
“Okay,” she says, reaching into her purse. “One thing, though.”
“Mmm?”
“You have to take it now so that I know if you really got off or not.”
“How ‘bout I just give you the three bucks in an hour and then take it at home?”
She grins wickedly. “Three bucks is my special club rate. I want to make sure you have a good time.”
“Nikki?”
“Uh huh?”
“You are,” I say, holding out my hand for the tiny little piece of colored paper, “Totally and completely full of shit, do you know that?”
Nikki cackles. “You’re not going to think so in an hour.”
“Yeah? We’ll see,” I answer, placing the hit under my tongue.
Upstairs, back at work, Nikki keeps shooting me smug little knowing glances. I’m just about to call her out on giving me shitty acid that’s having no effect at all, when suddenly the trip kicks in full force. I start to peak while I’m onstage. Perfect fucking timing.
I’m immediately aware that this was a bad idea. For one thing, I can see my pupils in the mirror from the stage. They’re grossly enlarged. The low light and smoky mirrors aren’t doing much to hide me. I look like a cartoon character.
I turn my head slowly to sneak a peek around the club. I try to keep my breathing even so that I’ll seem normal to anyone who happens to look my way. Okay. Spatial definition is slightly off, depth perception’s widened, colors… whoa. Way more vibrant.
Every person in the club looks sickly from where I stand. The girls have become garish nightmares, their overenthusiastic smiles stretching larger and larger, right into the black hole sun that is our whole existence here… oh, wow, I hope the DJ doesn’t play that song.
The stage has become a pedestal with its two poles that extend above me like Roman columns, and I’m looking down from it. Hallucinating? Ha. This is more like being overloaded by reality from all directions. Extra dimensions are nearly – but not quite – visible in the periphery. And everything’s symbolic of something else.
I’m naked, mister, and hey, so are you, because I can see into you… only you don’t realize that you’re as naked as I am.
Here you are, surrounded by a decay that you have sought out, perhaps wishing to confront some vague fear of living that you can’t put your finger on. But that same fear traps you in your seat with your eyes riveted guiltily to my body. That dollar in your hand? Worthless paper.
Do you hear me, mister? It won’t buy back the precious moments that both of us are wasting by being here, right now – real time, baby. The one thing that no one ever gets back. Do you think that folding a piece of paper and tapping my skin with it is going to bring you closer to my youth? To my heat? Do you think it’s going to rekindle yours? Do you care?
Is there a single person in this club who’s ever thought about why he’s here?
And the girls. What are any of us doing here?
I’m cast momentarily back down to earth when Alannah comes to take the stage, relieving me. As I extend my hand to help her, she notices my eyes.
“Mama,” she whispers, “What’s up with you? You look tweaked.”
I stare at her blankly, waving my hand. “You see all this?” I indicate the club.
She gives me a quizzical look.
“This is pointless,” I mutter. “Every single sorry asshole in here is still better than this.”
Before she can answer me, I step offstage, and make my way into a seat.
Sleep is not an option, and so I don’t even try. I’ve been sitting in bed with Barry all night. Now he’s dozed off. Silently, I watch the thin, off-white curtain blow away from the open window. Then back. Then away again. I can smell autumn’s charcoal aroma wafting into the room as dawn slowly breaks.
The bedroom door cracks my reverie. Alannah pads into the room in her stocking feet, yawns, and crawls into the bed next to me. She puts her head on my shoulder.
“He gone?” I whisper.
She nods.
“Was it any good?”
Her grin is sheepish. I didn’t relish having to barricade myself in the bedroom with Barry so that Alannah could fuck Roy the DJ on my living room floor. But I’m glad to see her finally looking happy.
It was also good that she found someone to drive us home in my car. It would have been a bad scene if I’d had to get behind the wheel.
“You still tripping?” she wants to know.
“I don’t think so. I’m mellow now, but I can’t fall asleep yet.”
“Can I sleep in here?” Alannah asks.
“Um… sure,” I say, surprised.
She climbs over me, snuggling in between my body and Barry’s. He shifts slightly, opens his eyes, and then closes them again.
This reminds me of the way I used to crawl into bed with my parents sometimes when I was really small. My father would snore, my mother would mumble, and I’d get stuck in the crack of their two twin beds pushed together to make a poor man’s king. It was comforting. It’s one of the few happy memories I have from childhood.
Soon, Barry and Alannah are both fast asleep. Their bodies are entwined. Not like lovers, though. The way they’re sleeping reminds me of the way the cats curl up together.
I gently lift Alannah’s arm off mine. I tiptoe over to my desk. This is too good to pass up, and I can’t sleep anyway.
Soon, I am sitting at the foot of the bed, drawing them first in pencil, then shading over the outlines with my chalk pastels. I look up every now and then to check a shape or a shadow.
For an hour or more, I work. I blot out time and everything else with my burning need to finish this portrait. My hands are covered in colored dust and so are my pajamas. My body is stiff with concentration and my eyes start to hurt from being so close to the page.
I’ve replicated Barry’s face nicely. The likeness is so dead-on that it could be a photograph of him. But I’m having trouble drawing Alannah.
First I get her forehead wrong, and then her nose isn’t right. I color and shade, lines on top of more lines, trying to fix the mistakes. I can’t pinpoint exactly where I’m missing it. I just know that it doesn’t look like her. Instead, I have conjured a generic cartoon of an all-American blonde girl with absolutely no light in her eyes.
I keep playing with the image until there is too much Conte crayon on the paper. Eventually I give up. It’s passable, but disappointing to me.
I’ve known Barry for years. His face is etched indelibly into my brain. I could draw him with my eyes shut.
I stuff the portrait into a drawer.
As much as I’d like to be close with her, I don’t really know Alannah at all.
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March 14th, 2009 at 6:09 am
Lauri’s writing just gets better and better.
March 14th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
*grin*
*blush*
March 14th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
I’m your biggest fan.