by Ketty Rouf
At the bar, we wait for Ariane to pour us the first drink of the night.
“So, how’s it going with Fleur?”
“With Fleur? What do you mean?”
“Oh, everybody can tell what’s going on; we get it. And we know Fleur! She’s crazy about you! Are you bi?”
“I like men.”
“Men, sure. Look, here comes one now.”
The guy approaches the bar. He’s thirtyish and tentative, standing very straight in his gray suit. His white shirt is wrinkled. He scans the room with his shifting gaze and finally dares to look at the stage, searching for a glimpse of ass and then quickly looking down. His slight lazy eye does nothing to conceal his shame. He’s walking on eggshells.
Iris arches her back slightly, the fingers of one hand trailing over her cleavage.
“Watch this,” she whispers in my ear. “He’s one of those shy late bloomers who likes a girl to be forward.”
“Hey there, you,” she purrs to him. “Wanna kiss, or should we get straight to licking each other?”
The man doesn’t speak. He turns his back to us and orders a drink.
“Don’t worry; this is normal,” she murmurs. “He’ll bite, you’ll see.”
Smoothing her palms over her breasts, she approaches the customer again. While she’s trying to get his attention, the green-eyed man arrives and sits in his usual spot.
I pull Iris toward me.
“Who is he?”
“Who? That guy over there?”
“Do you know him?”
She turns away from the customer, who is finally working up the nerve to talk to her, and says to me, her tone impatient now:
“Don’t bother. All the girls like him, not that he does anything to deserve it. He’s not normal. I’ve never seen him with a girl.”
“What’s his name?”
I’m irritating her with my questions. I’ve interrupted her game. I think she’s mad at me; she steps away abruptly, tossing the name “Thomas” over her shoulder. The customer offers to buy her a drink. Iris was right. He’s a shy late bloomer who likes a girl to be forward.
Thomas, then. I try to figure out how long I’ve been seeing him here, in the VIP area, sitting in the same place. Has he always been there? Normally, I never approach customers sitting at reserved tables. They buy magnums of this or that, bottles costing more than a thousand euros, profligate with champagne and intoxications of all sorts. I don’t like such conspicuous displays of wealth and luxury. I watch them from a distance, with no desire to be the instrument of their pointless gratification. But for the past few weeks, my eyes have been going in that direction more and more often. I don’t remember exactly when the first time was. Thomas is a vague impression, his face melting into the night and sometimes reappearing during the day, a blur. When he’s there, I watch him, night and weariness on his face. Vulnerability concealed behind alcohol and indifference. Between drinks, customers, dances, I often pause, hoping to see him, sitting there in his spot. Past the wide lobby staircase, past the ticket window and the cashier, past the dressing room stairs, the door opens and closes thousands of times every night. Being here means waiting for him, just a little.
Ariane calls me, but I don’t want a drink anymore. I go down into the dressing room and surprise Fleur, peeing behind the half-open bathroom door. She winks at me. “Are you watching me, you vixen?” she says. Her face is lined with fatigue, but she doesn’t want to tell me what she’s been doing instead of sleeping. “To sleep is to die,” she says, dodging the question. “I’ve been living.” I don’t push it. She offers to let me try her new lipstick. Pressed against my side at the mirror, she nudges me and murmurs, low: “You seen the chick? The new one? Poppy told me she made a thousand euros cash on top of her pay. Big tits, sweetie, big tits—and stupid. Blows my mind.”
“May I remind you that I’ve got big tits, too? Not that big, but . . .”
“But you don’t have a brain the size of a marble, sweetie.”
We hear the dressing-room door slam. Andrea’s in a rage. We’re about to be treated to an emphatic reminder of the rules. No one speaks. Andrea has one of the dancers sit down in a chair, demonstrates a couple of dance steps, and recaps the restrictions that are clearly outlined and posted in the dressing rooms:
“Employees must comply with the following rules . . . no physical contact with the clientele. ‘To all dancers. IMPORTANT!!! We remind you that physical contact during private dances is strictly forbidden by French law. In other words, NO TOUCHING of the customers. Thank you for your cooperation.’”
I go upstairs with Fleur, knowing we’re going to have to be extremely careful tonight. I’m planning to allocate tonight’s earnings to my next purchase. I saw the most beautiful stilettos in a boutique on the Champs-Élysées, and I’ve been dreaming of wearing them. They’re the kind of shoes that make a woman feel privileged to be a woman. That was part of the reason I decided to work over the whole Christmas vacation from school. To treat myself to some luxury, and a few souvenirs of the time when I was Rose Lee. But there are more important things in the main room tonight than my new heels. Thomas is still there, alone at his table, with his magnum and the still-empty glasses. He lifts a hand to shoulder height, fingers playing across imaginary piano keys. Did he just give me a sideways glance? I take two steps, three, and stop in front of those dancing hands. His fingers stop fluttering, and he holds out a hand to me and invites me to have a drink with him.
Sitting next to him—I’ve never been this close to him—I talk without knowing what to say, searching my mind for words I can string together that will make me sound clever or amusing. The smile I plaster on my face is forced, like it’s catching on something somewhere. I cough instead of speaking, cover my mouth while my eyes search desperately for help, scan the room, simulate surprise. What’s happening over there? Is someone calling me? I’m tempted to get up and flee. Except that absolutely nothing is happening over there, and no one is calling Rose Lee. I’m scared, that’s what’s going on. I look around the room again. Where are Iris and Fleur? Why aren’t they with me? Iris must be with her late bloomer; I saw them heading for the ticket-window not too long ago. Fleur, I have no idea. All I can do is drain my glass in one swallow; the alcohol will help. Thomas doesn’t make any effort to keep the conversation flowing. I’m sure he thinks I’m new here, incapable of enticing a customer.
“My name’s Rose Lee.”
The words come out of my mouth like a belch. Finally, relief. Telling him my name is a start, isn’t it? He smiles and refills my empty glass, then raises his own in a toast. We drink while we wait for the words that will come along with drunkenness. The DJ approaches the table to shake his hand. Thomas hands him a brimming glass and whispers something in his ear. Wink, thump on the shoulder. I don’t know what’s happening. All I know is that the seat I’m sitting in, holding a glass of champagne and wearing the outfit of a cheap courtesan, isn’t mine anymore. Thomas sets his glass down next to the ice bucket, pushes the table away slightly with his foot, and invites me to do what I’m here to do. Dance for him. Strip. Arms resting along the back of the sofa, he tilts his head back and spreads his legs so I can get very close to him. He knows how to arrange his body for a dance, but I don’t want to dance anymore. I gyrate without desire, sway without believing it. I slide between him and the table and adjust my G-string before settling myself astride his lap and slipping off my dress. I look deeply into his eyes, which is what I really want to do, deflowering him gently with my gaze, slowly, taking my time, savoring this endless moment, this unique moment, the first one, that only happens once in a lifetime. I don’t take off my bra, but I seek out his lips. I kiss him, tangling my tongue with his. There it is, that thing we were trying to say.
“Bravo,” he murmurs. “That seems real.”
“Maybe it is . . .”
He suggests, uncertain
ly, that I come and find him when I’ve finished work.
“Not tonight. Another time. When you’re not drunk.”
He laughs, lets his head fall back, starts playing the piano with his fingers again. It’s his silent music, suspended in the emptiness of his alcohol-filled nights, and he tells me no, there’s no way, drunkenness is his shadow, without it he would disappear. He plunges a hand into his pocket and pulls out a five-hundred-euro note, which he crumples like a receipt and stuffs into my hand. I clench my fist. He stands up while I get dressed, and I whisper in his ear that I’m working next Wednesday. “What’s your name?” I ask, but he’s already walking away. I feel like I didn’t have time to accomplish anything; I stay there, sitting in the spot he’s left, feeling like I’ve failed at something. I unclench my fist: it really is five hundred euros. I set it on the table and smooth it with my hand. I’m going to buy those shoes. They’ll be a gift from Thomas. Now we know each other, he and I. Maybe, one day.
Yes, but what day, when there is only the night?
He comes back Wednesday night. Maybe for me, but without his shadow, with its absence. He seems perfectly sober. I catch a glimpse of him between two private room sessions. I cut short my dance and cash out the customer so I can go and talk to him. I run toward the abyss. He’s already gone.
9
Sunday, already.
No more panic. Since I’ve been living this endless weekend, I don’t dread Mondays anymore. Not only is it the school holidays, but Monday’s my day off, like it is for all artists. Mondays used to give me migraines. Nausea, just from setting the alarm.
At four-thirty in the morning, among the few customers still dotted around the place, I recognize one of Thomas’s friends. I go up to him without hesitation. “Hi, how are you? You’re a regular, aren’t you? What’s your name?” Always the same words to get the conversation going. He buys me a drink. Jean-Philippe has a kind of old-fashioned elegance, a disdainful detachment, like, “Nothing can affect me, because I’m untouchable and always will be—so you can go to hell.” He wears cashmere and Weston loafers. He slips me a hundred-euro tip and invites me to come for one last drink at the home of some friends of his. Thomas might be there, so I’d like to go. But Fleur doesn’t want to come with me; she’d rather go to another afterparty. I watch her getting ready in the dressing room, redoing her makeup, chattering excitedly with Poppy. I put on a fresh coat of lipstick and head out alone to the address Jean-Philippe gave me.
I’m disappointed from the moment I walk in the door. This isn’t a party, just an icily opulent orgy, with two girls Jean-Philippe invited for his friend Ben, who owns the apartment. Slumped on a couch, his gaze lost in hopelessness, Ben is just staring into space. He’s depressed; his wife has left him. Jean-Philippe thinks he’s being a good friend: cocaine, alcohol, prostitutes. I want to leave. There’s no point in my being here, but they bring out a bottle of Cristal Roederer, just for me. Jean-Philippe makes himself right at home. He’s authoritative. You’d think he was in charge, master of the house.
“Are you sure you want to open that bottle?”
Sometimes I forget myself. I ask stupid questions without thinking; the pleb in me comes out, worried about wasting. The virtuousness of the not-so-well-born. But how can I not see the waste? Their extravagance makes me cringe. And yet I can’t deny the truth: luxury is bliss. It’s so nice not to give a fuck; that’s one of the pleasures my second identity has allowed me to experience. Undreamt-of orgasms. Sometimes I feel like I’m licking up the crumbs they let fall with tact and caution. Could their waste be a calculated move?
I say yes to a glass of Cristal.
Ben summons the last dregs of his wherewithal and rises, heroic and dignified, to offer me a tour of his princely apartment. Showing off his wealth boosts his spirits a bit. I contemplate the Jacuzzi. He tells me about all the parties he throws, says that Thomas—“You know Thomas, right?”—has gone in there naked more than once. I drop my gaze and don’t say anything. The bathroom trash can is sterling silver. He pulls open his wife’s dresser drawers, crammed with lingerie, and takes out a few items, suggesting that I try them on.
I say no to Chantal Thomass.
The two girls are starting to get restless. They eye the bedroom and the super king-size bed while Ben stays glued to my side, takes me by the arm, refills my glass. Right under our noses, without being asked to do it, the girls start to fondle and undress one another. Their eyes are hungry, their movements clearly practiced, like two machines. Their greed disgusts me, and their faces distorted by lying, their poorly cobbled-together act. There’s nothing erotic about it. It’s all just a cheap show.
Arm in arm with Ben, I’m almost taller than him. I hate being taller than a man. I need to feel like I can be physically dominated. I let my arm drop to my side, freeing myself from his embrace, pretending I need the bathroom. The two whores take advantage of the moment to lead him into the bedroom.
Back in the living room, I sit down next to Jean-Philippe and pick up my glass of champagne. I proceed to drown myself in it while he reminisces pleasurably about the more memorable parties that have been held here. Amid these four hundred square meters of marble sculptures, long hallways, hot tubs and high ceilings, it’s clearer than ever to me that Paris’s endless metro-job-bed treadmill most of us are stuck on is a shit deal. We slave away like dogs while others, to forget their petty little sorrows, have bitches in heat make house calls. Who’s the prostitute? The answer’s not entirely clear to me. Before I’ve even finished this fresh glass of champagne (I’ve learned to measure time in emptied glasses), I see Ben running toward us with little hopping steps, like a child’s. He’s still got his white shirt on, but he’s bare-assed, the little pink head of his dick flopping around. He starts blubbering and clings to me on the sofa, legs curled beneath him. I don’t know what to say. Jean-Philippe doesn’t bat an eyelash. I suppose all of this is perfectly normal. The girls come back out into the living room, too, of course. I don’t find them any more beautiful without clothes on. One of them grips Ben’s ankles so he’ll stretch his legs out on the sofa, while the other lifts his shirt, exposing his penis, and gets right down to business, swallowing a mouthful of soft flesh in the hope of reviving it. Her partner keeps a firm hold on Ben’s ankles, while he clutches my arm even more tightly, making sharp little noises that aren’t sounds of pleasure. The bobbing mouth reveals intermittent glimpses of wrinkled skin. The girl holding Ben’s ankles pulls a few tissues from her purse—“Get out of the way; let me do it!”—and kneels down in the other’s place, unfolding the tissues and arranging them around the flaccid penis before starting to suck with a vengeance. After a few minutes laboring unsuccessfully on the recalcitrant piece of flesh, she’s replaced by the first girl again, who launches herself at Ben’s balls. During all of this, the object of their efforts keeps his eyes shut, pressing my hand to his cheek, repeating mechanically: “I want to stay with you. I want to stay with you.” I push him away gently and say: “Go ahead. Go with them. I’ll wait for you.”
“Swear?”
“I swear.”
Ten minutes later, he’s back. Unbuttoned white shirt, white underpants. Smile.
“Now will you please dance for me?”
10
So you managed to pull it together enough to work, after the party on Sunday?”
Lipstick in hand, Fleur is chatting with Poppy. They’re sitting side by side in front of the big mirror in the dressing room. I blow their reflections a kiss as I enter the room and head for my locker. They keep talking:
“Yeah, I came in; I wasn’t tired. I didn’t drink that much at your friend’s house. I can even remember what happened!”
“I can’t!”
“Truth or Dare! You really can’t remember? That young blond guy was a good kisser.”
“I thought I’d been kissing someone, but I don’t remember who!”
“The lawyer licked your right ass-cheek!”
“There was a lawyer there? Good thing we left at nine! Otherwise, who knows how we might have ended up!”
“Well, not in some big orgy. I wouldn’t go that far . . .”
“No, but one or two little blow-jobs . . .”
While Fleur and Poppy were playing Truth or Dare, I’d been coming home from Ben’s apartment. I didn’t dance for him. The two girls hadn’t been able to understand why I refused. “He’s going to pay you so much money!” they’d squealed in my ear after dragging me into one of the bathrooms on the pretext of touching up our makeup. I’d thanked Ben for his hospitality and left. I didn’t sleep well after that, and fatigue is setting in now. It seems like I can still feel last night’s dancing thrumming inside me. It was hard to stand when I woke up this morning. Pins and needles in my thighs, knees popping, shins cramping. The first steps I took out of bed were a reminder of the sometimes graceful, sometimes obscene, frequently uncomfortable positions I have to contort my body into to be desirable, to make men horny. Male desire is a heavy burden to carry. Six nights a week (vacations are great for working) I’m an arching, swaying body, sinking into a full split to wow the audience. But the fatigue is getting more intense, feeding my doubt and my guilty conscience. When you’re tired, you’re vulnerable, and the guilt comes back full-strength. I have to stop doing this. But tonight I go upstairs again with Fleur and Poppy as if this life were mine. We sit down at a table without being asked. They’re young, and there are three of them, three of us. But the conversation just doesn’t flow, going in awkward circles. Irritated, Fleur whispers in my ear: “It’s too early, they’re not giving anything up. They need a few more drinks, the assholes.” Then she says to the three men: “So can we all have a drink, or what? You ever heard of chivalry?”