The day after Michelle ran from Richard’s apartment, she showered for longer than usual. Viewing her pink legs and stomach in the full length mirror stepping out of the shower, she decided to skip breakfast and go for a walk before work instead.

As she gathered her keys and wallet and put them in her purse, she was frozen by a knock at the door. She crept up to the peephole and saw not Richard, but a fish-eyed, distorted vision of Samantha.

Michelle opened the door, relieved to see only her possibly evil neighbor and not her positively duplicitous ex-boyfriend. Sam immediately placed one arm inside leaning against the wall, towering over Michelle and looking down at her like a high school jock with his girl against a locker. The woman smelled intrusively of coconut and baby powder. Michelle wondered if her stomach was hanging over her pants.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked.

“I’m just going out for awhile.” The ballerina tried not to think about her thighs, which touched each other slightly as she stood in the doorway.

“You want to come eat?” the vampiric woman said.

Michelle was about to say no, she was fine, but the way Sam’s white skin twitched in the slightest way above one eyebrow in anticipation caused a pause.

“Uh, yeah, okay. I’ll go with you,” she said. “But I’m not really hungry. I’ll just get some coffee or something.”

Sam smiled, showing white teeth. “Groovy,” she said and, once Michelle had grabbed her coat, turned to lead the girl out of the building.

At the café, Michelle ordered a coffee and Samantha ordered an omelet, toast, and orange juice, which she drank in one long, breathless swallow.

“You sure you don’t want some breakfast?” she asked, orange liquid still clinging to red lips.

“No, I’m fine,” Michelle said. “And it’s three thirty.”

Samantha blinked. “Oh, I sleep late,” she said with a blithe laugh. “I work at night. Never been much on daylight, you know?”

“Yeah. I work at night, too.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a dancer.”

The woman smiled, every muscle in her face drawing itself tight, giving her the impression of growing even younger. “Oh, really? Me too. Where do you dance?”

Michelle lowered her eyes. “I, uh, don’t have a job yet. I’m still auditioning. Right now I’m bartending to support myself.” She began to fidget with her coffee mug, rotating it in slow circles with her forefinger and thumb.

Sam nodded. “Hey, if you want, I can get you an audition where I dance. Where have you danced before?”

Michelle groaned internally. If this company hired tall, bone-thin Samantha, it wouldn’t give her a chance.

“Nah, I’ll find my own job,” she said. She watched Sam eat her eggs and Michelle sloshed the coffee around in her mug. Some spilled out over her fingers and onto the table.

“Come on. You’re super cute. If you’re any good at all, they’ll take you. Where have you danced before?”

“In college,” Michelle said. “I only graduated last spring. I danced in college and high school, but nowhere professionally.”

Samantha’s lips pressed into a smile. “Oh, you’re one of those.” Hair stood on the back of Michelle’s neck. “Look, you have to start somewhere. Besides, it’s mostly about looks anyway.”

“Am I too heavy?”

“Are you kidding? They’re looking for girls like you. They already have a bunch of twigs. And men love hour-glass figures. You’d be super popular. You’d make a ton of money.”

Michelle nodded in agreement and appreciation, then choked on her next sip of coffee.

“I’m not a stripper! I’m a ballerina!” she erupted almost involuntarily. Bits of coffee and spit flew from her lips.

Samantha took a bite of toast. With her mouth full, she said, “Oh… a ballerina. Sorry. My mistake. So you’re auditioning for ballet companies?”

Michelle swallowed the rest of the coffee, thinking, do I look like a stripper? and saying, “Yeah. I have an audition tomorrow.”

“That’s great,” Sam said. “Let me know how it goes.”

“I will.”

Thin, wicked, pale stripper Samantha had food all over her lips and chin. She soon ordered another juice and a piece of apple pie with cheese melted on it. Michelle reveled in revulsion as Samantha smacked her food with her mouth wide open.

“If you want,” Sam said, without even the decency to swallow first, “come to the club. It’s full of men and women. It won’t be weird. I’ll get you in for free and make sure you get some free drinks.”

“Oh, thanks,” Michelle said, knowing perfectly well she would never go. “That’d be great.”

“I’m serious. I’ve worked there for years now. It’s a great place. Bring a boyfriend.”

Michelle nodded. This woman was no more her friend than the terrible people in college had been.

When she was finished with her coffee, she excused herself. She had never been much on small talk, not disliking it, just simply inept at it, and she preferred to leave an awkward situation rather than stew in it. She told Samantha that she had to get ready for work, which coincidentally turned out to be true.

After leaving the bar that night, she drifted home, went to bed, woke up, dressed, and drifted back out into the world. It was nearing mid-December, and every day the temperature crept closer to freezing. She walked in a haze, that cloud that can so easily overtake a person who hasn’t spoken to anyone all day.

Her first words caught in the mucus and saliva that had gathered in her throat overnight and hadn’t yet been cleared away. She coughed and repeated her name to the people with the list and the clipboards.

None of the girls at the audition talked to Michelle. She made quick, casual acquaintances with a small, thin boy named Pedro a few years younger than she was. They stood together in the downtime of the audition, a tense few feet separating them who were not friends, but were in this place for the time being. Michelle sat to tape her feet.

“Does the smell ever bother you?” she asked Pedro, who stood pretending not to pose for the mirrored wall opposite them.

“What smell?” his face turned toward her, but his eyes darted back and forth between Michelle and his reflection. “You mean the cheap lotion?”

“No. You know, that smell. The chalk and the resin and the spandex and the leather and the wood. I guess the lotion’s a part of it. All of it. Doesn’t it ever just get to you?”

His eyes looked only at her now, and one eyebrow raised. “Honey, that smell is home.”

Her heart beat low and sullen in her chest, and she felt old for the first time watching girls eighteen, nineteen, or younger spinning with the confident smile of adolescence. She was well into her prime dancing years, and still only an amateur. She knew she couldn’t smile like that now if she tried.

When she finished dancing Pedro squeezed her shoulders and assured her she had done a good job, but she knew before she left that she would not be offered a position. It was a feeling, a vibe, maybe just an expectation that would prove self-fulfilling, but she knew as she walked home that she was still an amateur, only a student of ballet.

When she reached her apartment it was already late afternoon, the December sun weakened but looming overhead all the same. The approaching winter air made her shiver despite the jacket and sweater she wore. Her stomach growled.

She would go to her kitchen and make herself comfort food to rub away the feeling of failure, the pain of anonymity. With purpose she walked through the doorway, but her foot landed on an envelope and slipped across the carpet, bringing her to the floor in an undignified lump. Rubbing a rug-burned knee, she picked up the envelope. It read:

To: Michelle
Hope to see you there!
Love, Sam

Inside she found two free passes to a club called The Caribou. The tickets advertised: Sexy Girls! Blondes! Two stages! Asians! Voted hottest dancers in town! Michelle thought of a caribou at a strip club and laughed to herself.

Though she entertained a mild, curious desire to see her strange neighbor writhe around naked on a pole, she moved for the trash. Before she could throw the tickets away, however, she paused with some novel trepidation. She looked at the tickets once more and, unsure of why she was doing so, stuck them on her refrigerator with a magnet, then went about getting together a good, rich opiate and sitting down to eat.

She barely tasted the food passing her tongue and pushing its way down into her gut. When she was finished eating, she stacked her plates on the precarious pile of dishes which brimmed above the sink’s basin and went to watch television. There will be other auditions. This was just the first one, and the requirements were unrealistic. If they want girls who starve themselves, they can just get someone else because I’m not living my life like that. Like that girl in college who only ate cereal, who dropped thirty pounds but never ate butter or cheese or lived because she was so worried about what she weighed. That’s not me. That’s not me.

Michelle almost picked up the phone and called her mom, but she stopped herself. No, no, do it on your own, girly. Then she thought about calling her brother, but Oprah was on TV and Michelle became enthralled by the images of Indian bride-burnings and couldn’t pull herself away.

The next night, Michelle was still on the lookout for Richard. The bar was dark and musty and full of despondent, bitter people, but working there was better than living at home with her parents. Geraldine, her boss, was easygoing and didn’t mind when Michelle requested a weekend off to go to an audition. Geraldine hired mostly women, and they were mostly all young and attractive, as the bar was in a prime position to attract businessmen. The girls were there to give them something to look at before heading home to their wives and kids, but Geraldine always made sure that there was at least one guy working the bar at all times just in case the men wanted someone to talk to.

The attention of the businessmen gave Michelle an excuse to wear all the cute outfits she bought in college. She could dress up everyday, put on makeup, do her hair. In a way, it was like a performance, and she was on five nights a week.

In her normal life, her words dropped like bricks when she tried to flirt, saying what was on her mind when a generic throwaway phrase was all a man expected. When nothing was on her mind, she said nothing. Her dates were filled with long, tense periods of silence.

But at the bar, the men did the flirting. If she had nothing to say, she could flit off to another customer and ask if he needed anything. If a man made her uncomfortable, a coy laugh would diffuse the situation, or at worst she could ask Geraldine to make the offender leave. The bar lay in front of her, a shield, and there she had the power.

When she got off work, usually after midnight, she and another girl (whoever happened to be working at the time) would walk out to the bus stop together, each one making sure the other was safe. It was a big city, after all, and after dark sometimes bad things happen.

That night, Michelle was wiping down tables (it was near closing time and only the most loyal or defeated regulars remained on their stools at the bar) when Geraldine asked to talk to her privately in the back room.

The lowlight of the office increased the intense effect of Geraldine’s scowl. “Michelle,” she said. “I want to make it abundantly clear that my bar is not a pimping service, and…” she took a deep breath, her neck muscles tightening, “and if you want to accept money for sexual acts, please do it on the street corners.” She paused for too long, then added, “Like the other whores.” Her eyes darted down, up, left, right. Anywhere but into Michelle’s.

“What? What are you talking about?” Michelle asked, her voice cracking.

Geraldine clenched her jaw, her chapped lips spreading to nothing. “Your ‘friend’” (she somehow managed to voice the quotation marks) “Richard came by today. He told me what you’ve been doing. Do you know that I am a Christian?”

“No. I—”

“I don’t expect you to know that. Or to care. But this business is run by a moral woman, and I can’t abide amoral practices under its roof.”

“You… abide? What did—”

Geraldine had turned and wasn’t listening. She made that clear by shaking her head and waving her hand dismissively in the air. Michelle was fired.

It seemed like it should have been cold enough for the raindrops to freeze into snowflakes on their way down as Michelle walked into the parking lot alone that night, but the stinging liquid pellets hit her hard and fast and exploded on impact. By the time her bus arrived, her hair was plastered to her head and her teeth were chattering. Fortunately, there were no lurking attackers waiting to steal her bag or her virtue in the parking lot that evening. Her despair may have caused her to lie down and accept whatever brutality the ruffian planned to dispense, or her rage may have led her to unintentionally kill her assailant, and the last thing she needed was a manslaughter charge and the weight of a taken human life on her conscience. So many worse things could have happened, really.

The bus carried her home on the slick streets safely, and soon she was in the comfort of her apartment eating ice cream in her over-stuffed, second-hand sofa and watching television. She fell asleep on the couch with the TV on, and the next morning she called her mother with the news that she would be home for Christmas even earlier than she’d hoped.

Filed under: Michelle, Samantha, ballet, dancing, food, weight by Jade