“That’s not acting,” he said.
“It’s performing.”
He looked back toward the counter. The woman had her drink, the whipped cream piled on like an impossible cloud atop a mountain. The coffee sloshed a little as she sat down at a table and pulled out a home decorating magazine. Seth shook his head.
“You know, I thought maybe if you were performing that might, like—well, it’s like Mr. Solloway says: you have to be doing art to do art.” I ran my finger around the edge of my cup. “You just haven’t put a video up in a while, and I thought that if you were in the play and onstage and performing, then maybe you would start feeling more creative and—”
“That’s not the type of performing I do.”
“I know, but—”
“And anyway, why are you suddenly so concerned about my video production?”
“I’m not. I mean, it just seems like something you care a lot about.”
“I do care a lot. And that’s why I’m waiting to do something good. I’m writing all the time, you know. Testing out ideas.”
“You are?”
“Sure,” he said. “I only want to put my best work out there.”
“Oh,” I said. “That makes sense.”
“Of course it does.” He put his hand on top of mine. “I’ve got things under control. And nobody likes a nag.” He jerked his head toward the lady with the mocha who was dog-earing a page in the magazine. “What do you bet she goes home to her husband and is like, ‘Honey, I really think we need to open up this wall and put in some French doors and the color of the year is periwinkle so let’s redo the bathroom.’ I bet she even has a honey-do list.”
“Gack,” I said.
“Right,” he agreed. “You know what she needs? She needs a Not-So-Good Feeling reminder.”
I wrapped both hands around my paper cup, contemplated the milk foam design some more, then took a sip.
“Give me your book,” he said.
“What?”
“Your Good Feelings Book. Give it to me.”
He held out his hand and shook his fingers at me, so I pulled the little book from my pocket (it was warm and dangerous). He took it and turned to the back, where there were blank pages for you to write your own Good Feeling messages. From his own back pocket he took a black fine-point pen and wrote, Renovating your house won’t change who you really are.
I chuckled, but felt heavy stones in my chest and throat.
He handed the book back to me, his thumb marking the place. “Go give it to her.”
“I don’t—”
“Go on, it’s funny. And it is actually a helpful message. If she focused more on herself—”
“But we don’t know the first thing about her. Maybe she is just fine the way she is.”
He raised his eyebrows. “She is not just fine. Go on.”
I took the book from him and stood up. “All right then, but meet me outside.” I put the top on my coffee and handed it to him.
“Okay, sure.”
He took our coffees and headed for the door. I watched his back. I could see his sinewy muscles through his black T-shirt.
I had my forefinger and thumb on the note Seth had written. As I approached, the woman looked up at me. Her eyes were milky blue and set a little too far apart. Her lipstick left a mark on the edge of her cup. I looked down at the book, and turned back a page. This one read You are stronger than you know. I tore it out and handed it to her. She looked down, read it, then looked up at me, perplexed. “Just trying to spread some goodwill,” I said, then turned and walked out the door. Seth was waiting for me with the coffee and a kiss on the cheek.
SEVEN
Once upon a time, a princess was born in a kingdom on a cliff. The view of the sea was so magnificent that no man could go to the edge of the cliff without throwing himself from it. Many great men were lost, and so the king issued a proclamation: any man who could go to the edge of the cliff and resist its pull would have his daughter’s hand in marriage. Princes and commoners traveled from near and far to test their will, but not one could pass the test. The princess could not bear the loss of life another day. At the break of dawn, she marched out to the cliff’s edge. There she stood, the sun rising over the ocean, which had momentarily stilled. She had passed the test. When she turned, she saw beside her a bold knight, his armor glinting in the early sunlight. He was filled with envy and rage, and he charged at her. She tumbled backward off the cliff and down into the water.
NOW
“When we get home I’m having Mom and Dad take you to the doctor to have your bladder checked.”
“Are you serious?” I shoot back. “You guys are the ones who have needed to pee every hour on the hour. This is the first time I’m asking for a stop!” My bladder is pressing against all my other internal organs like a drunk trying to get to the bar. “There!” I say. There’s a neon light flashing Open! Open! Open! I don’t care what it is, I’ll just run in, pee, and run out.
Zack navigates the car into the parking lot. It looks like someone’s house, a double-wide plopped down on this stretch of country highway. Then the light above the door crackles on and I see a sign: Sherri’s Gentlemen’s Club. I guess it’s probably like the Knights of Columbus or the VFW or some other weird place for old men to hang out, but I figure if they’re really gentlemen, they’ll let me use their bathroom. I push on Charlie’s seat. “Move it,” I say.
“We can’t go in there,” Charlie replies.
“They’ll let me use their bathroom,” I say. I push on Charlie’s seat again. “Come on!” It’s like now that I’m in the vicinity of the bathroom, my bladder can sense it and is pushing against me even more urgently. “Seriously, Old Faithful is about to blow.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Move!” I bellow.
“I think we should let her go in,” Zack says.
“My parents will kill me.”
“Our parents are already going to kill us,” I say.
Zack opens his door, steps out, then, after a few unsuccessful tries, flips his seat forward. He holds out a hand to me. “Milady.”
I take his hand and he pulls me from the car. Maybe a drop of pee slips out. Maybe. I half jog, half stagger to the door. Zack is a few steps behind me, and I hear Charlie get out of his side of the car.
I yank the door open and there’s a big man with an impressively long beard blocking my way. “I understand that this place is men only, which, I mean—well, I’m hoping you will make an exception because I really, really, really need to pee.”
“How old are you?”
“How old am I? Is this a bar or something?”
“Or something,” the man says. He doesn’t move, not even a centimeter.
“I’m fifteen. And I made the mistake of getting a giant slushy. That was a long time ago, and I did go once, but I guess those things have staying power, and I didn’t realize we were entering a barren bathroom wasteland. And I just really need to go.”
“We could get in a lot of trouble.”
“You can escort me straight to the bathroom. I won’t try to order a drink or anything. I might not ever—” But then I stop because I notice the stage. More precisely, I notice the woman in red high heels and a red sparkling thong and nothing else who is casually swinging her hips from side to side, a bored look on her face. “Oh.”
“Oh,” the man says. I think he is smiling under his beard.
“The thing is, I still really need to pee.”
He laughs then. “Come with me.”
Instead of leading me through the bar, though, he takes me around back with Charlie and Zack trotting behind. He gives three sharp knocks on a yellow door, and someone yells, “Come on then!”
He holds the door open for me. “On the left. You boys wait out here.”
“Oh, they don’t interest me much,” Zack says.
They? I step through the door and seven heads swivel to look at me. Their hair is piled high and they h
ave perfect red lips and perfectly lined eyes. Glitter and sequins and gold hang from clothes racks in between the mirrors. “Hi,” I mumble. “I’m Lexi and I need to pee.”
“What do you think this is? Pissers Anonymous?” one woman asks.
Another woman puts her hand gently on my arm. “Right over here, sweetheart.” She pushes open a small door and I step into the bathroom. There’s glitter all over the seat and the floor and I wonder if strippers have more STDs than other people, or if that’s just a stereotype or a prejudice. I decide it’s better to be safe and hover above the seat. I pee for five minutes. I make sure to clean off the seat when I’m done. I wash my hands and dry them on my jeans.
When I come out, the women are back to getting ready. They are all different sizes and shapes, but I am pretty sure all of them are white. It’s hard to tell in the dim light and because they all seem to have heavily dosed themselves in self-tanner. Self-tanner and glitter. Maybe there is some sort of special product that is a mix of glitter and tanner and it is marketed almost exclusively to strippers. Or exotic dancers. Adult performers? I’m not sure what the right word is. Seth always said that pornography was empowering for women. That it allowed them to use their bodies that men were so eager to exploit.
(He said this. He really said this. And I never saw the irony there.)
But these women do not look especially empowered. They look like women I would see at the grocery store, only with fewer clothes and more glitter.
“I’ve never been in a strip club before.”
“You don’t say,” the woman who laughed at me when I first came in says, and the group around her laughs, too. But the nice lady who showed me the bathroom just smiles.
I look around from face to face to face. This is a tiny town, but there are seven of them. And there are at least half a dozen cars in the lot. Is the stripper to population ratio particularly high?
“My name is Lexi,” I say, because I realize that’s what you’re supposed to do when you meet new people, even if those people are hardly wearing any clothes and you suddenly feel very warm and very self-conscious.
“I’m Jewel,” the nice woman says. “Where you headed with those two boys, sweetheart?”
“That’s my brother and our gay neighbor,” I say.
“One of them’s a queen?” the Pissers Anonymous woman asks.
I flush, but say. “Zack. The bigger one. But I’m pretty sure he’s not a queen. A bear, maybe?”
This sets the women laughing again. They are like this happy little family. This is not what the world of movies and television has led me to expect. Strip clubs are always in the city, usually on lower levels. But this one looks like a house. And onscreen the woman is either just background to whatever the men in the show are doing, or she has some sad, sad story and needs to be rescued by the leading man who will love her even though she has this troubled past. This is not that. “Are you all—” I begin. “I mean, this is sort of a strange place for a, you know—”
“A what?” the woman asks.
The woman at the dressing table next to her says, “Ease up.”
“Why? She’s in our space looking at us like she’s wandered into a freak show. This poor little lost lamb who’s never seen the world—crock of bullshit. She pisses me off.”
I know she’s right, but I’ve never thought about strippers that much before, about how someone becomes one.
Jewel puts a hand on my arm. “Don’t let Avery bother you. She’s mean to everyone.”
She sits down backward in a chair that I think might be part of her act. “Anyway, everyone needs a little entertainment, right? Even in little country towns.”
“Especially in little country towns,” Avery said.
“How’d you end up in this part of Pennsylvania?” Jewel asks me.
“My brother had this crazy idea to go look for Adrian Wildes.”
“Oh,” says another woman. She is small and her outfit is all black with not even one piece of sequins. “I dance to his stuff sometimes. College boys like it, and college boys tip well.”
“Makes their mommas proud,” Avery says.
“So you heading up to Winsacondor then?” Jewel asks.
“Winsacondor?”
“The old summer camp. He went there as a kid.”
“Yeah, but it closed down,” another woman says.
“Closed down and he bought it.”
“Really?” I ask. We’re supposed to be heading back to where the tour bus last was, but maybe this is the type of clue we’ve been looking for.
“Sure, two or three years ago. Big news around here.”
“Lacey thought he’d come into the club.”
“I did not,” the small woman says.
“Anyway, it’s just another twenty miles or so. The sign is down, but the posts are still there. And the street is Winsacondor Way.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“Give him a big kiss hello for us,” Avery says.
“Yeah, send him down our way, sweetheart.”
“Okay, sure. If we find him, I’ll do that.”
And this makes them laugh and laugh.
I push my way back out into the cool evening air.
“What took you so long?” Charlie demands.
“I was talking with the dancers.”
“The strippers?” Charlie asks.
“Yeah.”
“I thought I was going to have to bust down that door and save you.”
“Hardly.”
“Hardly what? I could save you if you needed it. Remember that time Max Hicks pushed you off the swing?”
It was ten years ago. “I’m not the one who needs saving.”
Charlie huffs and turns to go back to the car.
“Anyway,” I say. “The dancers told me where Adrian Wildes is. If either of you still cares.”
BEFORE
October
Seth cupped the beer bottle in his hands to make them cold and then he put his hand on my neck.
We’d gone through the list of famous couples we could be for Halloween: Sid & Nancy, Carol & Mike Brady, John F. Kennedy & Lee Harvey Oswald. Then we’d tried more subversive ones: Velma & Fred, Smurfette & Gargamel, Holden Caulfield & Yoko Ono.
In the end we decided that couples costumes were stupid. “We each have our own identity, right?”
“Right. It’s not like we’re subsumed by this relationship.”
So he dressed up as White Trash Guy in a NASCAR T-shirt, ripped jeans, and baseball cap. I was a sexy Muppet. We had seen the costume at Total-Mart and decided it was a totally ironic critique of Halloween as slut fest.
“You mean,” I’d said, “the way girls feel like it’s their only chance to display their sexuality without judgment?”
“Right. Slut fest. Male gaze. Sure.”
Only it seemed the student body of Essex High School didn’t get irony, because I was given numerous compliments for how cute and/or hot I looked.
“You do look pretty cute-slash-hot,” Seth said.
“Thanks?”
He gulped from his beer, then offered me some. I don’t like beer but I didn’t want to be one of those girls who only drank froufrou stuff: peach schnapps and whatever else has been raided from the backs of parents’ liquor cabinets. So I took a sip. It was cold and sour. “I think that’s skunked.”
“A sexy Muppet and a beer scholar. This could be love.”
I took another sip.
Gwen was there. She dressed as a sexy sailor zombie. The makeup job was impressive—gory and real—peels of fake skin curled off her cheek to reveal pink and red flesh. If anyone was doing a send-up of the sexualization of Halloween, it was her. I’d have told her this if we were talking.
She sat on the porch swing with Ione and Silas. I watched them through the window. They were smoking pot and probably talking about the latest book in the Nightshade Trilogy, or whether they were going to play laser tag this weekend or go to the movies.
�
�Cute.” It was Remy Yoo. “Disturbing, but cute.”
“It’s supposed to be ironic.”
“I know.”
Remy wore a tuxedo with her hair slicked back. She was beautiful. I stepped closer to Seth, closing the distance so there was only a hairline fracture between us.
“What are you?” Seth asked her. His voice was edgy and hard.
“I’m in drag.” She looked past him as she spoke.
“That’s a how, not a what,” he said.
“Sure,” she said, and looked ready to step away.
I still had the beer in my hand, gripping it around the neck. I took a long drink, then handed it to Seth who dragged a pull as he slipped his arm around my waist.
“It feels kind of empowering, actually,” she said. “Everyone knows it’s me, but they still look at me different. Give me a little more space.”
“Respect the cock,” Seth said.
She frowned. Hard. “It’s totally ridiculous is what it is,” she said. “But it kind of makes me want to come to school like this.”
“Nothing would make our faculty happier than to have a transgendered student.”
On the one hand, it was hard to believe they dated, the way they were looking at each other with this impossible mix of boredom and antipathy. But the frisson between them—I think that’s the right word—it was undeniable. Like if this were a movie, the next scene would be them having angry sex.
“I wouldn’t be transgendered. Just dressing like a man.” When she talked, she looked at me, not at him.
“A subtle distinction sure to be lost on most of the faculty.”
“It would just be a mask,” I said.
“Which is no different than how we go through life every day. Mine would just be obvious.”
“I don’t wear a mask,” I said.
“Oh, sugar,” she said. And she laughed and laughed. And that wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t turned to see Seth smirking right along with her even as he rubbed the back of my hand with his thumb.
NOW
As we walk back to the car, snow starts falling. The big fat kind of flake that you can actually catch on your tongue and it stings you for a moment before melting away.
Good and Gone Page 15