The Wrong Side of Twenty-Five

by Dionne Abouelela

  Her backside wobbled away underneath of her light pink polyester pencil skirt and I decided now was the perfect time to do some serious calculations. I may be small town, I may be running away from my demons, I may be lost, but I will be damned if I am sitting here staring at my future. I’ve had enough polyester and synthetic fabrics for two lifetimes and after I finally get settled, I will get my first ever salon haircut with non-peroxide highlights. Maybe I’ll even go crazy and dye my hair black. Who knows? Staring at the nameless woman seething in failed expectations made me feel like the world was full of hidden possibilities. All I had to do was keep moving.

  I pulled out my wallet and counted the money left inside: $215 and some change. Thanks to Tyler’s extra top up, I could survive a few more states as long as I cut out the milkshakes and stuck to the necessities. If I took breaks in the afternoon and only drove during the cooler temperatures, I hypothesized I would save some gas. I learned this after watching Superstition Provers. Two overly excited scientists got paid to try and disprove every modern Internet tip people circulated without fact checking. Turns out, the one about what time to fill up your car and how to save gas was true — even if doing so would only get me an extra four or five miles per tank, this was still four or five extra miles away from Franklin.

  “Whatcha adding up?” the nosy waitress asked and eyed my dirty bandaged hands. I really needed to be more diligent about my hygiene. She slid a turquoise plate with a small chip over the counter top, sending the welcomed scent of grease and potatoes rushing towards my face.

  “How far I’ve come and how far I can go,” I replied. “I just want to go as far as I can and hopefully, when I run out of money, I’m in a town a little bit bigger than here.” I realized how rude I sounded only after I finished. “Sorry,” I quickly gasped. “I didn’t mean to insult your town.”

  “It’s impossible to insult this hell hole. Like I told you earlier, little girl, you have to toughen up. Stop apologizing if you want to make it out alive.”

  “Okay. Hey, can I ask you something?” I proceeded with caution. I wanted to phrase my question carefully, to coax a short answer that wouldn’t require listening to too much of her voice. She didn’t answer but raised one eyebrow and tilted her chin, which led me to believe she was saying yes. “What else is here? I mean, I know cities aren’t always by the exit, but there’s literally nothing else here,” I said and stared out the window into the gravel parking lot the diner shared with a grey windowless building advertising nude women in large neon letters.

  “Oh, sweetheart, you’re looking at almost everything. This town has 20 full timers and the rest are old truck drivers stopping through on their routes for cheap food and cheap tits.” She sputtered out another phlegm filled chuckle before she continued. “People don’t stick ‘round these parts long. Even the strippers come and go. This town can’t even keep a half rotten hooker around.”

  I instantly regretted what slipped out of my mouth. “Why are you here?”

  “Same reason you are. I ran away and this is where I stopped. I don’t know why except I was sure no one would find me here.”

  My mouth kept going while my brain cringed. “What did you run away from?”

  “The cops. Robbed a gas station when I was 17 and knifed the man behind the counter for laughing when I told him to give me the money. I don’t know if he died or not. I don’t think I’ve ever cared, but I got enough money from the till to get far enough away that no one ever looked for me.”

  I felt my brain sigh in relief but my mouth failed to close itself or to form a sentence in reply. I caught her eyes as mine widened. I immediately understood why she only eyed my bandages, and why she was confessing to me. She thinks we have common ground; I’m a knifer on the lam. The nameless waitress turned her back to me and I saw her shoulders bob with the rhythm of a person unable to control the way their body reacts to indulging in a good private laugh.

  “Can I have my check, please?” I stammered.

  “Oh, honey,” the potential murderess cooed as she turned to look me in the eyes, “as long as you don’t tell my secret, it’s on the house today. But know I’ve written down your license plate number and if the cops come for me, I know people who will come for you.” She winked.

  I shuddered and jumped down from the stool with the sound of Velcro coming unfastened when my thighs ripped from the warm vinyl. Her laughing propelled me through the dust covered glass doors into the humid air of the parking lot, where I was left gasping for air.

  “Come on, you piece of shit,” I screamed and pounded on the steering wheel hard enough to restart a corpse’s heart. “Don’t you dare fail me now! I will not be stuck in this town. I need to keep moving. I NEED to keep moving. I NEED TO KEEP MOVING!”

  I realized I was faced with one of two choices. Merle had, for the first time in his two and a half years as my trusty automobile, let me down. I had to either go back into the diner and face the woman who might change her mind and knife me to death for whatever change I had left in my wallet, or go to the strip club and hope they would take pity on a stringy haired girl who smelled like two-day old armpits. I turned to look at the diner and turned to look at the strip club. One had plenty of windows in case I was in trouble; one had none. Both were full of dirty roadmen. At least one had women who might come to my rescue if I screamed bloody murder. I chose the strip club.

  I crossed the dusty gravel parking lot with slow, calculated strides. I felt my stomach rise into my throat and I was pretty sure my intestines were tickling my uvula. I had never been in a strip club, not to mention I had never really even seen a naked body except in a movie. Even then, I found myself with a case of the giggles and the neighborhood kids I was with refused to ever watch another rated R movie with me.

  The club doors required all of my energy to open, and my senses were instantaneously beaten to a pulp. A cloud of smoke assaulted my face, brutally pounding in to my nostrils before burning down my esophagus in a heated rage. The bass line from the pumping music forced its way into the ring, easily jumping the ropes surrounding my brain, the deep knocks pummeling the pink mushy mass controlling my functions from one corner to the next.

  A pile of well-worn indoor/outdoor carpet squished below me, reminding me slightly of home until the yarns threatened to pull the shoes off of my feet. I cringed, unsure of why the floor was so sticky in the first place. For the first time in my life, I found myself slightly afraid of bacteria and all of the other nasty things the eye cannot see. I tried to bring myself back to reality and digest what slowly came to focus in front of me. The room was half empty with barstools haphazardly tipped over here and there. A dartboard crookedly hung on the wall and a three-legged pool table tipped over like a drunken trucker occupied the back corner near the bathroom. Broken pool sticks lay splintered over the floor. The only thing in the entire room that looked taken care of was the pole in the center of a decrepit runway.

  “Are you here for auditions?” a voice called from the back of the room.

  “Um, no,” I stammered, horrified at the thought of someone wanting to see me strip or shove money down my panties. Clearly, he couldn’t see my pathetic injury or he would know that swinging myself around a pole was not in my abilities.

  “What do you want then?”

  “I, um, well, my car is broken down outside. Can I use your phone? Or, do you know of an auto shop around here that can look at it for me?”

  “Closest shop is twenty miles up the highway. You’ll need a tow truck and they’re closed for the next two days. Fishing season.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I half screamed.

  “Whoa there, little girl,” the voice bellowed, followed by a scraggly man who popped up from behind the bar. “Let’s take a step back. It’s only two days and if you’re out here in this town, I would say there’s a good chance you
don’t have anywhere important to go. You could hang out here a few more hours and get one of the truckers to help you. Just be warned they may ask for alternate payment and it may be hard to convince them you’re not a lot lizard.”

  “A what?”

  “A lot lizard — a truck stop prostitute. It’s what our strippers move on to when they become too fat to swing on the pole. Luckily, you’re not too fat. Are you sure you don’t want to audition? We haven’t had a new face in about five months. It might help to get us some business tonight if I call out on the CB that we have fresh blood.”

  My brain was fully in control of my mouth for once and refused to let it speak or even utter a sound. In a responsible and grown up manner, my brain began calculating and registering what just happened and fed the conversation through a reality translator until my body understood I would be stuck here for two more days with no where to go and eating into my mileage potential, one real milkshake and murderess waitress at a time.

  “Don’t look so scared,” he said. “My name’s Jeremy. I’m the bartender. My dad owns the place.”

  “Your DAD?” My brain finally surrendered control of my mouth; the outburst happening so quickly I gasped in frustration, which he took to be a gasp of disgust.

  “Oh, come on. Look at this place. It’s not the worst family business to be involved in. At least it’s not moonshine or meth. When you’re out here, the only way to earn a buck is off of someone else’s vice. At least I get to look at pretty things while I’m making my money. Well, sometimes we get pretty things. Right now the well is a little dry, but I have a good imagination. A tit’s a tit, after all,” he laughed. I did not. “Listen, I know a thing or two about cars, as long as it isn’t one of those fancy new import cars with a computer smarter than the people who built it.”

  “Do I look like I’d have an expensive car? I’m pretty sure Merle was built by a dinosaur with a peanut for a brain.”

  “Let’s go take a look and I’ll see if I can at least give you an estimation of what might be going on.”

  “Turn the key again,” Jeremy called out. I crossed my fingers and channeled my inner Dorothy, the same one I had just willfully abandoned a few miles down the road, whispering some sort of prayer to push Merle to start. I wanted nothing more than to leave this dusty parking lot. “Damnit. Girl, you are in trouble.”

  “What? What do you mean I’m in trouble?” I whined and threw my hands against the steering wheel, yelping in pain. I craned my neck to see through the small opening between the raised hood and the car body only to find Jeremy splattered with oil and elbow deep in the very parts keeping me stuck in this parking lot.

  “I think you’re going to need a few things. For one, your starter is out, but that could also be your alternator based on what I’m looking at. If the problem was just your alternator, the starter would click but the car wouldn’t start. The car isn’t clicking when you turn the key, but I’m also not able to get a spark out of the alternator,” he tried to explain and lifted up something he called a battery charger.

  “Well, what is that going to cost me?” I cried out.

  “Don’t get too upset yet. I’m only 95% sure that’s what your problem is. But let’s see,” he said, rubbing the oil off his hands on an old threadbare rag pulled from his back pocket. “The tow will be about $80, an alternator will probably be another $75 plus $40 in labor, I’d say. If you need a starter, you’re looking at another $70 plus labor. You probably need to change your oil, put on a new fan belt and you definitely need a new air filter. That will put you up another $50. So probably $350?”

  I felt a wave of panic flood over me. This was my fate. I upset the gods and I was destined to become a knife wielding, gas station robbing, attendant murdering, sloppy and downtrodden, small ghost town, diner waitress. My knees wobbled and I braced myself against the car door to avoid falling face first in a childish tantrum.

  “This can’t be happening,” I whispered.

  “Well, how far did you expect to get in this car? I’m sure it treated you well wherever you’re from, but when you’re on the highway, when you’re taking down long stretches of road, you’re really making the thing work for you. At least you broke down here and not on the road. Who knows who you’d run into out there.”

  “Who knows? It couldn’t be much worse than the ax murderer of a waitress back there,” I screamed.

  Jeremy laughed with such force his wirey voice resonated from the bottom of his gut and bellowed over the parking lot. “Oh, Norma? Let me guess. She paid for your meal? She must have taken pity on you. Probably the hands. She tends to become a mother hen to those who are down and out, or injured. Like little baby birds that fall out of a nest, she will scoop you up and try to get you right again. She does it in her own way, of course. Doesn’t want you to know she has a heart. Good ol’ Norma has never hurt a fly and she’s never been out of this town. She used to be one of our strippers but, well, when your looks go to shit you have to find something else to do.”

  “She was a STRIPPER?” I said, incredulously. “No way. So she didn’t kill anyone?”

  “Not a soul,” he chuckled. “Well, I can’t say for sure. At the end of her dancing days she was looking pretty rough. If you weren’t drunk, the sight of her might have caused serious damage to your health.”

  I breathed a deep sigh of relief, and we both laughed. This simple act felt good, even for a second, before I realized I had to figure out what I was going to do with my now broken down life.

  “Listen,” Jeremy started, “there’s a small apartment behind the strip club. It’s not much. It doesn’t even have a shower. It’s used for, well, use your imagination. I can wash the sheets and you can stay back there for two nights but after that, I’ll have to charge you.”

  I thanked him while my mind tried to register the fact he just told me he was going to have to wash the sheets — as in people went in there to add more dirt to the already soiled sheets and this was considered normal. I had two days to figure out what to do, how to do it, pray that Jeremy didn’t know shit about cars, and I would be able to leave this broken down town in my broken down car with my broken down life.

  Chapter Ten

  Jeremy poured me a gin and tonic, leaving me at the bar to drown my nerves while he cleaned the room. He returned within ten minutes and settled down on the stool next to mine.

  “You’re already finished?” I questioned.

  “Well, it’s not that big. It’s not that fancy, either. I hope you aren’t expecting the Ritz.”

  Shame shadowed my face and I realized how ungrateful I must sound. “Well, of course not. I’m sure it’s the loveliest temporary room this side of I-70 for the next thirty miles.” I smiled and looked him in the eyes. A deep sigh of relief escaped when he finally broke into staccato laughter. “So, what time does this place start hopping?”

  “Well, it all depends on the traffic. The bigger the loads passing down the highway, or the more tired the driver is, it’s more likely they’ve met their daily hours and have to stop. If it’s just lightweight local deliveries, we might not start until eleven, midnight, or we might not start getting business at all.” The door swung open behind us and ricocheted off the drywall causing small flecks to shatter from the hole that was increasing in size daily. “I have told you girls to stop throwing the damn door open. You can enter the building without tearing it down. Sweet Jesus,” Jeremy called.

  I turned my head to see three frames of various stature start to saunter, sashay, and limp their way through the permanently cigarette smoke stained murky air. I tilted my head in curiosity and disbelief and tried to make sense out of the oddest group of women reporting for work at a strip club.

  “Who’s this whore?” the tall one called out in a thick Jersey accent. “This bitch better not be here to take my rounds. I’ll
cut you before you take my spot. Girls like you are a dime a dozen and they roll in through here like off duty cops.” She was menacing and made my blood run cold. I shivered and my mind raced for the words to respond, hoping that whatever I squeaked out would save my life.

  “Don’t pay attention to her,” Jeremy said before I could make up a response. “This is Jersey. She’s not from Jersey, has never been to Jersey, and runs a no-kill rescue shelter for elderly dogs and cats. The short one is Fudge because she was offended by the name Pudge and because the name Candy was already taken by big red over there. Ladies, this is a straggler who will be staying in the slush pot the next two nights while her car is getting fixed. Try to be nice and keep your g-strings out of her face.”

  “Hi, ladies.” I half whispered, half choked on the stale air. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “You must be real desperate if you’re staying in the slushpot.” Candy laughed. The closer she stepped, the larger she became. She had the build of a mythical giant — tall, bulging biceps, long flowing red hair, thighs the size of my head showcased by gold glitter hot pants and feet the size of my forearm crammed into rainbow platform stilettos. “You might want to take a body condom back there with you. Even I won’t take my shoes off — no matter how much they offer me.”

  A shiver ran down my spine and circulated through my limbs. The trio of motley strippers roared in laughter before continuing behind a curtain of mirrored circles dangling on beaded strings. Typical, I thought to myself, even though the only thing I knew about strip clubs was what I had seen on various television shows. I wasn’t sure if television tropes were exactly reliable. If they were true, I knew I would be the poor, exhausted, white trash girl so desperate for friends she was willing to make herself the butt of all jokes. In real life, I wasn’t desperate for friends, but try to tell society you don’t care about society and see what it says in response.