The phone rang far too early the next day.  Michelle groaned to no one before stumbling out of bed. 

“Hello?”

“Hi, Sweetie.  Are you okay?”

Michelle rolled her eyes.  “Yeah, Mom, I’m fine.”

“You sound funny.”

“I just woke up.”

“At this hour?”

She glanced at the clock.  It was one thirty in the afternoon.  “Um, yeah.  You know.  The bar runs late.  I don’t get home till about four sometimes.”

She heard her mother make a tsk noise.  “You should really try to get on a better schedule.  Sleeping all day isn’t going to make you very appealing to companies.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“You should talk to this Geraldine woman.  That’s your boss’s name, right?  Tell her you need different hours.  Why don’t you give me her number.  I’ll talk to her.”

“No, Mom!  Jesus.  I’m twenty-three.”

“Well, I’m just worried about you.  You haven’t had any auditions lately, have you?”

“Um, no.”

“You are keeping in shape, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Don’t take that tone with me.  You know I’m just looking out for you.  I just worry about you when I’m not around to cook for you.  You remember in college when you left.  You came back at Christmas and you had gotten so heavy.”

“Thanks.”

“Well, now.  I know you were on that medication then, so I don’t think it was all your fault.”  (Birth control pills had been her scapegoat when her freshman weight gain could no longer be denied, and she stopped taking them after only a few months.  Adding insult to injury, she never even got laid during that brief time period.  Adding injury, she never took off all the extra weight afterward.)

Her mother sighed.  “I just worry about my baby.  It’s a mother’s job.”

“Sure.”

“Anyway.  I’m calling to see if you have any time off in the next few weeks.  We need to get you fitted for that bridesmaid’s dress.”

“Oh.  I don’t know.  I can talk to Geraldine.”

“That’s great.  And you tell her you need better hours.  I just hope you’re staying in shape.”

A few nights after her mother called, she noticed the sad, dumpy man was back, sitting alone, drinking the same unidentified liquor.  He smiled at her, and she felt in her chest a tiny flutter.  Was this her first regular? 

He bought two dances, tipped well, and was respectful.  She felt like a therapist, dancing for him.  At the end of each dance, his step seemed more youthful, which somehow, in turn, reciprocally awakened her own sense of youth and vitality.  After dancing for her regular, with youthful brazen courage mustered, she ventured back to the boss’s office and knocked.

“Come on in,” said the rusty male voice.  She opened the door.

Abe Jackson sat in his blue pinstripe suit and wide tie with his feet up on the desk.  If he had been wearing a fedora, the look would have been complete.  Claudia sat to his right, typing into a computer.  Hanging in the upper right corner of the room, six TV screens showed the activity of each private dance room.  Three of them were empty, two screens showed lap dances by girls Michelle didn’t really know, and on the last one, a young woman was sitting alone, crying. 

“Can I help you?” said the man.  He held up a thin hand, gesturing for her to come in and have a seat.

Michelle walked in and sat down.  “Um, hi,” she said. 

“Now, baby,” said Abe.  He was filing his nails.  “I’m sorry, what was your name?”

“Michelle,” said Claudia.  Her typing rhythm and gaze remained steady. 

“Ahhh,” he said.  “Michelle.  Darling name.  You French?”

“Uh, no, I don’t think so.”  It was about the tenth time she had answered some form of this question.

“I took some French in high school,” he said.  He looked disapprovingly at his left hand before blowing off his fingertips and beginning to file again.  “Parlay voo and juh mahpell and what not.  Lot of good it does me now.  Now they all speak Spanish.  Shoulda taught Spanish in high school, you ask me.  That might have done me some good.”  Michelle made a noise that could have been interpreted as agreement.  “Claudia here, she speaks Spanish, don’t you, babe?”

“Si.”

“ ‘At’s my girl.”

He nodded at his newly filed left hand and dipped it into a bowl of liquid that sat on his desk.  With his other hand, filed already to perfection, he scooped a small amount of cocaine from a pile on a mirror into the basin of his long, ovular pinky nail.

“You want to do one?” he offered, extending the digit toward Michelle.

“Um, no thanks.”

“Now, this ain’t the stuff that the girls do.  This shit is premium.  The Princess, she’s an amateur.  Angel and what’s-her-name… Bunny-bun or whatever, they’re even worse than amateurs.  This shit, it ain’t even the same animal.  You sure you don’t want to try it?”

Michelle shook her head. 

Abe Jackson shrugged.  “Suit yourself.”  He drew his pinky to his nostril and snorted it up.

“Do you need something?” Claudia asked, raising her eyes from the computer screen.

“Um, yeah, I was wondering if I could have next weekend off.”  She was proud to say it without misspeaking. 

Claudia furrowed her eyebrows.  “You’ve only been here a week.”

“Close to two.”

“Why do you want off?”

“Well, my brother’s getting married.  I need to go get fitted for a bridesmaid dress.”

Claudia’s lip twitched, but rested pursed in poise as ever.  “Cute.”

“Always a bridesmaid, never a bride,” Abe said from his position, leaning back, staring at the ceiling.  “That’s what they say, in’t it?”

Claudia sighed and looked back at the dancer.  “Sure, honey, you take next weekend off.  We got plenty of girls to cover.  You have a good time.”  Michelle said thank you with the uneasy suspicion that the woman was secretly making fun of her.

When she walked back out to the floor of The Caribou, her regular had gone.  She took the stage twice more that night and landed one more private dance with a man in his thirties in an expensive suit and tie.  The man had licentious hands and a degrading mouth, but she discovered this only once they were alone.  As she danced for him, his fingers would find their ways, accidentally of course, brushing across her thighs, her stomach, or her ass.  Each time she pushed the offending protrusion away and wagged her finger in reprimand, but he only smirked and did it again.  She wasn’t worried.  She knew Claudia was watching everything that happened on the TV screens in her office, but still her stomach turned and her heart pounded. 

“Fifty extra bucks if you suck my cock,” the man said with a huge, wicked, pirate smile.  Michelle felt her throat close, forcing the bile back down her esophagus and into her gut.

Filed under: Michelle, Michelle's family, The Caribou, clothes, dancing, wedding, weight by Jade