“My boyfriend would love them. The red ones are great too.”
He walked back toward me. Stepping behind the counter, he slid the tray of pasties out and set them on the counter.
Lifting one off the black velvet, I asked, “So how did you get Cecilia to take it all off?”
“I didn’t really,” he said wearily. “I started talking her up onstage, telling the boys to show her some appreciation and maybe they’d get a treat or something like that. Eventually she gave in and took one bra strap down but—oh god.” He sighed. “It’s not a very nice memory. Usually we had a terrific time.”
I kept my eyes on him. He sighed again. “Well, next thing you know, some marine runs onstage, grabs hold of her bra, says he wants to see those titties. I jumped in—I really did, but he shoved me so hard I landed on my caboose. And then, well, I just upped and clocked him one and the whole place exploded. They got hold of Cecilia and pulled her over their heads into the crowd.” He sipped from his smoke again and stared at the wall of photos. “The cops just stood there at the back. And someone, our drummer, I think, grabbed the baseball bat. I plowed through those sons-a-bitches like my life depended on it. I really did. They were grabbing up my skirt and I was thinking, if they find my little surprise, we’re all fucked, pardon my French. But I did it anyway. I could almost touch her, and then all of a sudden a screech came out of her like nothing you ever heard. She was all teeth and nails and spitting and kicking. None of them could get a grip on her—I think because of the oil. Then bung!—the cops fired a shot in the air and everything stopped. One of them says, S’time you boys all get yourself a soda now. I’ll never forget that. And out they went, fellas with their heads cracked open being dragged by the able-bodied ones. I don’t think there was any of them not bleeding.”
I peered into his face. “Did they, I mean did they—was she—”
“No. The oil saved her—they couldn’t get a good grip on her. No.” He puffed and shook his head vehemently. “Just a little beat up. I got beat up too. Maybe worse. She scuttled over to the side and sort of huddled there. Cops said for another two hundred they wouldn’t charge us with indecency. We broke down the midway that night and got the heck out.” He gave a vague smile. “Henry put her in the other show. The Wildgirl of Borneo cage around back.”
“And she didn’t mind?”
“She liked it better, I think. She was sort of animalistic after that marine mess anyway, you know, liked to keep to herself, didn’t bathe much. Actually, I remember a girl came in there looking for her one day, making a big fuss. A stripteaser, big bosoms … what was her name. Guns …?”
“West? Annie West?”
“Maybe. I remember she was sort of famous at one time. And she was very upset about Cecilia.”
I turned over the pasty in my hand and let the tassel drop down toward the counter, slowly twirling it.
He watched my fingers. “But there was Cecilia out back in a cage biting heads off chickens and all dirty and it wasn’t very glamorous.”
“She bit heads off chickens?”
“Well, not for real,” he said, still staring at the pasty I held.
I looked at it too and back at him. “Thirty bucks?” I asked.
He brightened a little. “Oh, these are very nice.” He took the one from my hand and its match off the velvet. “I make these myself, you know.”
“Really? … So she didn’t really bite chickens.”
“They’d tie the chicken’s real head down and put a fake one on with a blood pellet inside and she’d bite it off and everyone would scream. She stayed in a doghouse and an MC would come out and he’d say—”
“That guy on your Web site picture with the cigar and the top hat?”
“Yes. He’d say she was raised by wild apes and there should be no harsh noises because it was feeding time and then he’d dump the sack in the cage. And the chicken would run all over the place banging into everything because he couldn’t see, you see. It was a good gimmick.”
He placed my pasties in a small box on a bed of tissue and carefully folded the paper.
“How long did she work there?”
“Oh, I don’t know, couple months. Mostly I remember her because of that big upset and because she switched to geeking. And she was very pretty. High-class type of pretty. But girls came and went. And I did too.” He set the lid on the box and pulled a length of slim ribbon from a roll on the wall.
“Did she just get sick of it and quit? Do you know where she went?” I watched him clip a second length and pull scissor blades along it to form coils of shimmering blue.
“That was another mess.” He looked at the ceiling. “She stole a fella’s car. Okie Joe, the candy butcher, he had it bad for her, and I think they shacked up in a hotel room once or twice. She used to get insomnia and I’d give her pills sometimes. I can’t remember how it all went but I think she gave him those pills and stole his car while he was sleeping. He was a real crumb that guy. Probably had it coming. That gal who came looking, she really grilled him. Made a big fuss. What was her name? …”
“Annie West?”
“Mmm …” He set the box in front of me and I gave him my credit card. “Funny days,” he said and swiped the card. A poster of a grinning magician framed his head as he set the card back in front of me. We waited in silence for the receipt to roll up.
Back at home, I sat on the couch a few minutes before snatching the photo album and pulling out Annie West’s number. I grabbed the phone and poked the digits before I lost my nerve. We’re sorry. The number you have reached is not in service … I dialed again. What did I expect? She was going to stay in the same house for thirty, forty years? I tried directory assistance for San Anselmo. Nothing. San Francisco. Nothing.
I lay on my sofa the rest of the afternoon until the growling of my stomach hauled me out of the carnival. The sun was down, and the windows were black. I flipped my wrist: 8:35. Shit. Frank. I sat up and pressed fingertips to my eyelids, tried to get the circulation going.
In the bathroom, I threw my head forward and finger brushed my hair, hairsprayed the underside and flipped it back up. I rushed some extra concealer under my eyes, and relined them, touched up my mascara and threw on some lipstick. Rushing down the hall, I pulled a scooped-neck top off a hanger and checked myself in the hall mirror. Normally, I was happy when I was down a couple pounds but my reflection was lank and bedraggled.
I didn’t want Frank to be embarrassed by me in front of this Brian guy. I reached down my top and pulled my boobs into some reasonable facsimile of cleavage, went to the bathroom mirror and dusted brown shadow between them for contour.
Seeing vodka on my horizon, I called a cab.
Down at Nevermind, the music pumped and waitresses in black Lycra pants slithered through the crowd of university boys in loose jeans and leather jackets standing around the bar. I ran my eyes over the room, across the pseudo–log cabin walls and the dingy lacquered wood tables until I caught sight of Frank sitting at one of the black light–lit booths in the back with another guy. I approached their table as the waitress strolled past. Frank’s friend leaned to watch her go.
“You’re late!” Frank called. I paused beside the booth on Frank’s side. “Brian, this is my girl, Vivian. Viv, this is Brian, Webmaster extraordinaire. He’s gonna hook us up.”
Brian ran his eyes unabashedly up and down the length of me. “Girl’s got potential!” he hollered as if we were at a rodeo.
“Damn right,” Frank bellowed back, apparently at the same event. He reached out and looped his arm round my hips, tugged me into the seat beside him.
“Ever operated any sort of Internet business from home, Vivian?” Brian asked. He was a cartoon version of handsome, all his face bones overgrown and determined. I opened my mouth to answer but he continued. “Not that it matters, because this game is unlike any other. And the money—you will cream your jeans when the cash starts coming in.”
Frank yucked it up beside me. I�
�d never heard that particular laugh out of him and tried to think what it reminded me of, when suddenly his hand reached across the table to high-five Brian’s. A girl in an ass-high pink cheerleader skirt, a white blouse tied at the waist and knee-high black boots stood beside our booth now. Attached to the back of her sleek brunette hair was a sixties-style hairpiece. She swung her butt in beside Brian with a singsong “I’m ba-a-ack.”
She had large brown eyes that gave her the look of some sort of woodland creature. False eyelashes sprang off her lids and liquid eyeliner sloped upward as though she were trying to give her doe eyes a little feline scratch. She reminded me of one of the girls in the I Dream of Jeannie reruns, the ones Major Nelson would date in the episodes when Jeannie still addressed him as Master. “Are you Vivica?” she shouted over the music.
“Vivian.” I reached across to shake her hand.
“Oh!” she giggled, shaking my fingers as though they were a novelty item. “I’m Sienna? Vivica’s a cool name.”
Frank waved down the waitress and ordered me a vodka cranberry.
“So, you’re getting into the business too, hey? Are you gonna do the Jerkflirt stuff from home or are you gonna do movies in Brian’s studio?” she asked. The shrill of her voice carried well over the bar’s sound system.
“Home.”
“Cool,” she grinned and bobbed her head several times. “Are you just gonna do one-on-one shows? Or videos too? Lots of girls when they do videos just do girl-girl at first or only do it with their boyfriends or whatever?”
“Just the model shows. Maybe videos with Frank.”
“Hank?”
“Frank,” I said and pointed beside me.
She bobbed her head some more. The waitress put a green martini in front of me. I tried to catch her but she slipped into the crowd. Sienna’s head followed her and snapped back. “She’s totally got a great ass, hey?” she giggled. “You could bounce a quarter off it.” Her eyes glazed on the black faux-logs on the wall beside us. A moment later she added, “I work out a lot? Do you work out?”
“When I can,” I said, adding my own nod for good measure since the likelihood of being heard over the music and our men, who’d taken to hollering most of their conversation, wasn’t great.
“Because you totally have to in this business. To look good from all the angles? Especially when you’re a girl? With guys, it’s not so …”
My gaze drifted around her face but I’d stopped listening. I took mouthfuls of sweet green appley vodka. Beside me, Frank leaned into the table, hanging on Brian’s every word. “This chick, man,” Brian was saying, “she’s got me in her ass, my buddy Paul in her snatch, Sienna’s workin’ the camera and this broad wants Sienna to put the camera down so she can lick her tits at the same time—she couldn’t get enough!”
Frank let out a hoot of exultation. His eyes were saucers.
Sienna had realized I wasn’t listening to her and tuned in to the men. “Yeah,” she shrieked. “Wasn’t that girl funny?”
The waitress slid past the table again, setting a vodka cranberry down just as I reached the bottom of the martini glass. Brian doodled a finger-circle over the table as he barked, “Nother round.” His eyes left the ass of the retreating waitress and shifted to my chest. “So, Vivian …”
“Vivica,” Sienna corrected.
Frank laughed; Brian turned a blank look on Sienna and then continued. “Vivian, you thinking about getting your tits done?”
I knew I should have worn my push-up.
“Implants are so over?” Sienna looked at me, shaking her head with a boys-will-be-boys eye roll. “Don’t you think they’re out of style?”
“Big tits are never out of style,” Brian announced. “Sienna’s got little titties but that’s her specialization while she’s young like this. She’s doing the sweet baby virgin thing, but that’s not your look.”
I glanced to Frank, whose face had become pensive verging on concerned.
“You’re like …” Brian paused for words. “Well, you’re the insatiable slut, you know?”
“Got that right.” Frank leaned over and spread his lips over my ear.
“There’s a big-big market for that. Guys like the idea that there’s this bitch who’s just a fuck machine and she can’t get enough.” Brian pointed at me. “That’s your mien,” he added, pronouncing it me-enne, as though it were a kind of French raunch. Like ménage à trois.
I must have had a frown. He explained. “Mien is like, ah, your thing, your externality that tells everyone who you are.”
“Mien,” I said, “It’s meen.”
“I’m not sayin’ you should be mean,” Brian clarified patiently. “You gotta be approachable too. Accommodating.” The waitress set four more drinks on the table and walked away as I tried to order something to eat.
The black light over our heads lit up Brian’s teeth. I said, “It’s pronounced—” and Frank kicked the side of my shoe.
“What’sat?” Brian asked. As he tilted his head, the light hit pockmarks along the sharp edge of his jaw.
Frank shrugged. “It’s an investment to consider—whoa, makin’ up for lost time?” He nodded at the last of the cocktail sputtering up my straw. “My little alky,” he said playfully and put his arm around my shoulders, giving me a squeeze.
“I’m hungry,” I told his neck.
“So, Frank, which way do you think you wanna go with this?” Brian hollered over the techno remake of “Push Push in the Bush” pumping through the bar now.
“Why don’t you order some food,” Frank said into my hair and waved to the waitress with his free hand. I liked the reverberation of his voice against my head and wished he’d take me home.
Frank must be a far better waver, I thought, when the waitress appeared suddenly at my side. I ordered chicken fingers.
“Frank, Frank,” Brian bellowed, leaning back into his corner of the booth. Frank’s hand dawdled off my shoulders and he leaned in to hear.
“Hey, where you going?” Frank called after me. I’d slipped out into the alley between booths. I’d forgotten. Looking at him a moment, I said, “Cigarette.”
“Bad girl—when’d you start smoking again?” he asked, grinning.
I shrugged and headed through the crowd.
Outside, a few other pariahs were puffing on the terrace. I moved away from them out on to the sidewalk and lit up, taking a long drag as I stared out across the expanse of Fourth Avenue to the deserted park. Car lights rushed toward me like a locomotive, exploding in my brain as they passed. I closed my eyes and opened them to the pool of street light I stood in. I stared at the edges of my chewed nails as I blew smoke. When I broke my tobacco fast the other day, I’d gotten such a rush off the nicotine. Now the rush was down to nothing, just simple relief from craving. I should get my nails done, I thought. Sienna has long acrylics like that weather-girl wannabe. Men love those. If I’m going to do this, I should at least get my nails done. A semi-truck rolled by and I shut my eyes to the roar, threw down my cigarette and walked back down the steps. Staggering a little, I grabbed the railing. Had to get something in my stomach.
The music slammed as I came through. Everything felt so sensitive all of a sudden. Two girls in glowing white spandex tops and bare midriffs above their low-risers shoved giddily past me into the crowd and I paused, swaying. I have to keep swimming, I thought, or I’ll drown.
Chicken fingers sat waiting in a basket when I reached our table and I plucked one up and pushed it past my teeth before the seat of my pants hit the bench.
Sienna’s fingers wiggled at me in greeting. I stirred my next drink and Brian glanced at my chest once more but didn’t acknowledge my return. “Speaking of investments,” he yawped, “I’m thinking of starting up a Bambi Hunt out in Kelowna like that guy did in Vegas?”
Frank’s face lit up. “A hunting lodge? I used to go deer hunting with my dad.”
“Well, this is not your father’s deer hunt.” Brian winked. “This guy in
Vegas has a ranch where you can pay ten grand to chase naked girls around and shoot them with paintball guns, and they videotape the whole thing for you.”
“No way,” Frank said.
“Totally,” Brian confirmed.
“That’s so gross?” Sienna said.
“Ah, you’d love it.” Brian nudged her. “These chicks, each of ’em makes a grand for the hunt and twenty-five hundred if they get away without being shot. All they wear is running shoes. I’m looking into some property out in Kelowna. Maybe something near Hope.”
I sipped. “It was a hoax,” I said.
“What?” Brian’s eyes grew suspicious as they turned to me.
“There’s no Bambi Hunt,” I snapped. “Some asshole staged it for the media so he could sell videos. It was in all the papers.”
“I never heard that.” He paused as a thought occurred to him and he sniggered into his glass. “Probably got shut down by a herd of pissed-off feminists.”
Frank gacked with laughter. “Yeah, the ‘Wimmyns Studies’—” he crooked the first two fingers of either hand into quotation marks “—department at the University of Nevada came and ran the poor guy’s ass out of town.”
I sucked greedily on my straw. Their teeth all glowed demonically now under the black light. You’re just drunk, I thought, eat. I picked up another chicken finger and chewed and imagined being in McBride Park across the street, walking in the quiet. Bar lights against the shellacked tabletop became flashlights in the park: hunters with guns slung over their shoulders wearing fatigues, and me naked and cold, blinded by beams of white light. I prefer to play cat and mouse.
Leaning my cheek against the knuckles of one hand, I glanced at Frank. I wished he’d take his eyes off Brian’s glowing incisors and say something gentle and comforting. I put my lips on my straw again and watched a drop of something land in my drink. I leaned over to examine the blood-pink liquid and poked it with my straw. Looking up at the ceiling, I wondered if the pipes were sweating. “Holy fuck!” Sienna shrieked. “Your eyes look like lasers right now. They’re, like, glowing, like they can see through walls? Can you see my bones, Vivica?” She laughed, holding up her palms. Her face dropped and she leaned in. I couldn’t make out her words. She traced two fingers from her eyes down her cheeks. I touched my face.
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