Real easy, p.3
Real Easy, page 3
“You need regulars. What about that guy in the baseball cap? With the letter Z. I saw him earlier, by the deejay booth. You dance for him sometimes.”
“That’s Zack. He’s my boyfriend.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, he was. He dumped me.”
“Sorry,” Samantha says, though she wants to roll her eyes. Dating a patron is, without exception, a bad idea.
Jolene shrugs. “He just wanted to tag a stripper.”
“You deserve better.”
“Yeah.” But Jolene is looking at the door.
“The club is packed,” Samantha says. “You could make big money tonight. I’ll tell you how.”
An expression slips over Jolene’s face, almost iridescent, a little fish of supple happiness, so fleeting and lovely that Samantha pretends she does not see it. She gets right down to strategy. When she is done giving advice, her throat is dry, and she finds that she is nervous. It is because of Jolene’s silence. It is because of her adoring face. She is not bad, Samantha thinks, when she looks like this. Then Samantha wishes, suddenly, that she hadn’t said anything. She feels possessive—or rather, possessed by possession, curled into its damp warmth, held by the way she wants to hold on to Jolene’s transient beauty, the buttery skin and sloppy mouth, silver-fair eyelashes, devoted smile, all something that seems to belong only to Samantha for the very reason that it will be shared with everyone else.
“I bet you’re a good mom,” Jolene says.
“I can’t have kids.”
* * *
THE BOUNCERS CLEAR the parking lot of all clients at closing. The girls aren’t allowed to leave the building until the bouncers give the okay. This is a new rule. There is a rickety cheer in the girls’ voices as they call goodbye, walking out to their cars, that makes Samantha think that they have heard Bella’s story, too. The lot lamps cast a medicinal light and make the wet blacktop gleam like metal. The big bouncers try to look bigger. Keys jingle, car doors open and close. Jolene bops along to her car and gives a booty wiggle of triumph before she gets in.
Samantha’s window is down, the air washed and smelling of earthworms. She hadn’t meant to tell Jolene that she couldn’t have children. It’s not even strictly true. Someone else’s baby could grow inside her. She could get a donor egg. She used to set money aside each month. Then Nick said, Isn’t Rose enough? Samantha said yes, and meant it.
Samantha thinks about calling her parents, who live in Florida now, when she gets home. She thinks about how her pediatrician called it a syndrome. She had been just a nervous kid, only fifteen, and had heard “sin dome,” and was afraid to ask what that meant. The doctor kept talking. He was kind, but his kindness was worn out, the way fabric gets thin at the elbows and knees. Karyotype, dysgenesis. Time has chiseled the words, clarifying their slur, revealing how acutely she had listened to what she had not really understood at the time. Her mother interrupted. They had thought she was a late bloomer. No, not quite, the doctor said. A never bloomer. Or a maybe bloomer. Things could be done. Hormones could be taken. A beautiful young woman. A misplaced chromosome, XY instead of XX, but she was in all outward respects female, organs normal, fully functional. But not the ovaries, her mother said. The doctor’s smile was win some, lose some. Well, he said, in many ways she is fortunate. True, instead of ovaries she has streaks of gonadal tissue. Yet when you consider the symptoms of most intersex disorders, this is, ah, I won’t say minor. Preferable.
She sat with her mother in the car for a long time after. A storm was muscling in. Clots of navy clouds were edged by yellow sky. It was tornado season. If the sirens went off, they would have to go back inside the clinic and shelter in the basement. XY is for boys, Samantha said.
You are a girl, her mother said.
But not really.
You are my girl.
Samantha is sick of watching bouncers pace the club’s perimeter. She starts the car. She feels tired, but it is a tired inside. She won’t call her mother. Telling people you miss them just makes you miss them more.
* * *
JOLENE’S EYES BRIGHTEN when Samantha enters the dressing room the next day. Violet has her feet up on the beauty bar, calmly painting her toenails, but the other girls are visibly annoyed with Jolene.
Jolene bounces up to Samantha. “Guess what!”
“Um, what?”
“I changed my name.”
They all have stage names. To tell another stripper your real one is kind of a big deal. Samantha knows a few: Violet is Catherine, Morgan is Rachel, Paris is Paris. Name switching isn’t common but happens. Dante, a college student, became Titania, then Althea, then Molly, and then she quit.
“I bet you already know what it is,” Jolene tells Samantha.
“I really don’t.”
“Think.”
“Spit it out, Joey,” says Bella.
“See?” Jolene says. “That’s my problem, right there. I went with Jolene because it’s kinda Dixie, kinda cute.”
“Kinda Dolly Parton,” says Gigi.
“Dolly does have big starter buttons,” says Bella. “I bet she at least thought about becoming a stripper.”
“But everyone gets my name wrong,” Jolene says.
Violet selects another nail polish and rattles it.
“My new name is much better.”
“We can’t wait to hear it,” says Bella.
Jolene says, “Green.”
“Hoo-boy,” says Gigi.
“Yeah, that ain’t gonna work.”
“That’s your name?”
“That’s not my name,” Jolene says. “It’s a hint.”
“I think you should just tell us,” Samantha says.
“Lady Jade.” Jolene makes a flourish. “I am Lady Jade.”
“Okay,” says Samantha. “That’s nice.” But Jolene is holding a breath that has alchemized into an explosive agent. She blurts, “Because we’re a team.”
Samantha meets Violet’s hooded eyes in the mirror. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You and me,” Jolene says. “Red and Green. Ruby and Jade.”
“Oh.”
“I could’ve picked Diamond, but”—she shrugs self-consciously—“I’m not, like, that special. Ruby’s the best, of course. The prettiest.”
“Lady Jade’s a great name,” Samantha says. “Royal.”
The girl hugs Samantha tight. “I knew you’d love it.” Her skin smells nutty, her hair like a sugary latex glove. “I gotta pee! See you on the floor, sister,” she calls as she heads for the toilet. The door bangs behind her.
“Well,” Violet says to Samantha. “Aren’t you sweet.”
* * *
IT’S MIDWEEK. THE evening is lavender and layered with dryer-sheet clouds when Nick pulls into a Portillo’s drive-thru and they discover that Rosie has fallen asleep in the back. Nick reaches behind the seat to set Rosie’s meal beside her, then passes the rest to Samantha. The odor of hot dogs and fries rises from her warm lap.
He drives steadily, clicking every turn signal. The model homes of a new subdivision float along the passenger side. The houses’ lit windows show their perfect contents. Nick doesn’t take his gaze off the road, but Samantha senses the car drift toward the homes, and she wonders if he, too, imagines the three of them as a family framed in one of those golden windows. She bets those houses have huge backyards. Kids need grass, they need trees. Samantha has a nice home, but she is sure that one day they will have an even nicer one. Nick wants that, too, and although he had hurt her, wasn’t it because he was committed to her? Wasn’t jealousy a form of love? He knows her inside and out. Samantha has never told anyone except Nick about her syndrome. She is grateful to him for loving her anyway.
An oncoming truck approaches in the opposite lane, one headlight dark. Nick squints and straightens out.
Later, when Rosie is in bed and they are watching TV, he lifts Samantha’s large feet onto his knees and massages the soles, one for much longer than the other. She thinks that he is remembering the truck’s headlights, one on, one off, and the phototropic glide of their car toward the homes. He switches back to her other foot a little too quickly, like he knows what she is thinking, like she has caught him doing something wrong.
* * *
THIS NIGHT WANTS to bend into itself. Some Saturday nights do. Men buy because others are buying, then buy because they have already bought, then hide from what they are doing by doing it again. The club has no windows; there are no clocks. She is used to not knowing what time it is. She dances for a man with four kids. He shows her a photo from his wallet and is deeply pleased when she compliments the family portrait, the fluffy-headed children, his wife’s studied smile.
Then the hunched man, Ron, who had been in construction, whose back was broken on the job, buys a bottle of champagne, and the waitress jots down when his time in this room will end. Though he pays Samantha immediately in two starchy hundreds, plus extra per dance, and doesn’t care that she fake-drinks the champagne, which he has poured into flutes with strawberries at the bottom, he is difficult company. He shifts from skepticism that, in fact, no touching is the rule and the bouncers will enforce it, to cheated belief, to seeking compensation by talking dirty. Does she know what he would like to do? He knows she wants to hear.
It’s gross but also boring. There is nothing original about what men want to do to women. Listening to Ron makes her appreciate Nick more. He is a good man. He is the kind of man who keeps other men in line.
When the hour is up, the waitress pulls the champagne bottle from its slushy bucket and tells Ron he must buy another if he wants to keep the room. He reaches for his wallet. Samantha is relieved when Gigi interrupts, stepping into champagne even though she is not supposed to. “Your chia pet’s got a problem,” she tells Samantha.
“What kind of problem?”
“The kind that gets you fired.”
Ron is not smiling. He taps his watch. Samantha ignores him, grateful for the excuse to leave, and follows Gigi backstage. A cold creek of worry runs through her. What did “you” mean? Jolene? Or her, Samantha?
Then she sees Jolene floppy in Bella’s makeup chair, tears leaking from shut eyes, and forgets to worry about herself. “Hey,” Samantha says. “Honey. It’s me. What’s wrong? Come on, don’t cry.”
The girl opens her eyes. They are deep blue, the kind of blue that crayons get named after. “I am so happy.”
Gigi blows out a breath. “Lollipops.”
“I kept her back here soon as I realized,” Bella says. “She’s as high as a kite.”
“Dale’s gonna lose it. He’s gonna put her out on her ass.”
Samantha shakes her. “What’d you take?”
“Must be X,” Gigi says. “She keeps saying she loves everyone.”
“I do.” Jolene shivers. “I love you.”
Gigi rolls her eyes, one false eyelash askew. “We can’t hide her here forever. The twofer’s coming up. People will notice she’s missing.”
“We say she’s sick,” Samantha says.
“You say you did not find her with me,” Bella says.
“This won’t work,” Gigi says. “She does not look sick. She looks ready to fuck the chair.”
“There she is. I thought you’d want to know.”
It is Violet, with Dale right behind her. She meets Samantha’s flung-up gaze, and there is something about Violet’s expression that makes Samantha wonder what her own shows. Betrayal? How had Samantha come to feel so protective of a girl she didn’t even like?
Dale’s dress shoes clap the concrete floor as he approaches the chair, the girl’s prone form, her billowing chest, open mouth, open eyes, tear-streaked cheeks.
“She didn’t take any drugs,” Samantha says.
Gigi gives her a cynical look.
“I mean, it’s not her fault,” Samantha says. “Someone must’ve put it in her drink.”
Dale’s gaze doesn’t leave the chair.
“She’s new,” says Samantha.
“Not that new,” says Violet.
“Trusting,” says Samantha.
In the uneasy silence, Gigi turns to a mirror and tries to nudge the loose eyelash back into place, then catches Dale watching her. “Lady Jade’s got pennies for brains,” she says.
A hot hand slips into Samantha’s. “I want to go home,” Lady Jade says.
“I’ll drive her home,” Samantha says, though she doesn’t know where Lady Jade lives.
“Come with me, Ruby,” Dale says.
In his office, high up on the third floor, with an interior window overlooking the club, he pulls a manila folder from a wooden filing cabinet and sits at his desk with its blotter and an old-fashioned green library lamp that makes his hands look out of proportion to the rest of him. The club music is muted here. A large fish tank burbles, fish sliding behind the glass. He consults the file, writes a few lines on a pad of paper, and rips the paper from the pad. “Her address.”
Samantha takes it. She knows more or less how to get there. “Are you going to fire her?”
“No drugs at my club.”
“She didn’t mean to take it.”
“Maybe she didn’t, maybe she did.”
“Please.”
Dale smiles. “Lady Jade’s lucky to have you as a friend,” he says, a polite way of telling Samantha not to push it, and lifts the phone from its cradle.
She calls Nick and imagines him turning over in bed, burying his face into the pillow, and Rosie, who sleeps like the dead, sleeping on. She hears her voice echoing from the answering machine as she explains the situation, sort of (“another dancer has a stomach bug, poor thing”). Dale’s smile becomes one of amused confederacy.
A bouncer is summoned to carry Lady Jade. Samantha goes backstage and is changing in front of her locker when she hears, “Ruby.” She turns. Violet has a bar receipt in her hand. “That man in champagne was looking for you.”
On the back of the receipt, in delicate script, Ron says he understands why she never came back. He always runs his mouth. He says things he shouldn’t. He just hasn’t been the same since his accident. He has left his number.
Samantha folds the note. She looks at Violet, who doesn’t look sorry she betrayed another dancer. Samantha says it calmly: “Fuck off.”
* * *
THE LOT IS armored with cars. The club will be open for another few hours. The packed lot reminds Samantha of what leaving early will cost her. Four hundred? Five?
Jimmy carries the girl, who, while not exactly unconscious, is definitely not all there. Dale had the lock on the girl’s locker cut off, and Samantha has Lady Jade’s—not Jolene’s—earnings from the night, bifolded and rubber-banded, and keys. Although Samantha wiped off her makeup and changed into jeans and a T-shirt, Lady Jade still wears her slithery dress, which spills like mercury down Jimmy’s pants.
After Samantha’s in and the bouncer has strapped the slumped girl into the passenger seat, he pats the hood of the car, solidly, twice, instead of saying goodbye.
* * *
IT’S NOT CLEAR when Samantha notices the car behind them.
It’s late, but there are other cars on the road, at least at first. Since nothing comes from the passenger seat but murky breathing and isolated words dropped like laundry no one is going to pick up, Samantha chews gum to keep herself company. She snaps and pops. She fiddles with her pearl earrings.
Maybe it’s after she gets off the interstate. Maybe that is when she notices. This road is nothing special. Strip malls, mostly, strange only because everything is so empty, and that’s not actually strange—it is expected at this time of night.
And there is that car, that same dark car. It has been behind them all the way from the club.
The tank is three-quarters full. Samantha stops at a gas station anyway and takes longer than she needs to pay. She asks the man behind the counter for directions, though she is not worried about how to get where she is going. The attendant spits a long brown stream of tobacco juice into a paper cup and gives an endearingly detailed answer.
For a while, after Samantha drives off again, she is relieved. She takes a turn. Then she hears, “The lights.”
Jolene/Lady Jade is right. A set of headlights is following them. Samantha switches on the radio, keeping only one hand on the wheel. “It’s nothing.” There is always a car behind another car. This is a road. That is a car. This is what cars on roads do.
“I’m sleepy.”
“Go to sleep.”
“You—”
“Yes?” Samantha turns off the radio to hear better, yet there is nothing to hear.
The road is darker now, headlights brighter. Open land pours around them: prairie, probably. Or—a low crossbuck fence zips past—horse farms. Maybe the land has been bulldozed for building. It is too dark to tell.
A spongy anxiety makes Samantha say, although she has just said the opposite, “Hey, wake up.”
She doesn’t wake up.
They are not far from their destination. All Samantha has to do is drive, and it will not surprise her if the car behind her takes the next turn she doesn’t, and the rear windshield goes black, and her fear is wiped away.
She imagines the sleeping woman beside her as a child. Blond braids, the part in her hair as white as the spine of a feather.
Light slices into the car. Samantha’s heart goes fast. She reaches for the girl’s hand. Samantha wants to say her name, but isn’t sure what to call her. She is still holding her hand when the car behind hurtles into them, running them off the road.
* * *
SAMANTHA OPENS HER eyes in the jolting dark. Her head hurts. It feels broken. Her body is jammed into itself, her cheek pressed against rough, wiry carpet. The constant hum of the carpet makes no sense until she realizes that she is in the trunk of a car.
The motor accelerates. The car hits a hard bump. Her head rings with pain, the pain pushing her far away from here, until she forgets where here is, and then is nowhere at all.
