Fresh produce had never seemed so extravagant. Michelle stood in the grocery store doing sloppy mental arithmetic with prices and found herself drifting toward the canned vegetables and frozen pizza. It was food she would have scoffed at that summer at home, eating her mother’s cooking.

At 118A, with nothing to do but wait for her next audition, the television began to seem even friendlier than it had before. Days went by as she sat on her thrift-store sofa, making periodic trips to the refrigerator and daily pilgrimages to the bathroom for a compulsory shower or bath. On New Year’s Eve, she called her brother.

“Hi, Big B. Happy New Year.”

“Oh, hey. Happy New Year, T.D. What’re you doing tonight?”

“Not much. I think I might go out with some people later or something. There’s a couple things going on. We’ll see. You?”

“Nothing special. Rachel’s here.”

“Oh – sorry.”

“No, don’t worry. We might go out to a club with some of her friends, or we might just stay in. We’re not sure.”

“Well, I don’t mean to keep you.”

“Don’t worry about it, really.”

“I’ll talk to you later.” Michelle hung up before he could reply. She opened a beer and slouched back to her big, empty living room.

After three beers, her living room seemed bigger and emptier. She went to the fridge for another beer and possibly a frozen pizza when her eye landed on the free passes to The Caribou. Hot Girls! Redheads! Two Stages! Latinas! Voted sexiest girls in town! No, she thought, shaking her head. That’s the last place I need to be tonight.

Twenty minutes later, she was squeezing her breasts into a sexy top and sucking on a breath mint. It could be fun. It could be fun. It could be fun. She ran a hand over her legs, which were covered in stubble. Jeans. Wear jeans. Tight jeans.

Outside it was snowing, and the thin sweater she had on over her tank top wasn’t shielding her effectively from the cold. She had been trying to hail a cab since she left her apartment, but the holiday left no taxis without fares. By the time one stopped for her, she was within blocks of The Caribou and motioned for it to pass her by, fat wet snowflakes smacking her in the face.
Neon lights advertised the best club in town. The town’s pretty big, she thought. A group of loud, laughing men shoved their way past her and through the doors. She thought she felt somebody grab her ass, but didn’t say anything. The cold night had shocked the edge off of her buzz, and going to a strip club alone on New Year’s Eve didn’t seem like quite as good of an idea as it had an hour earlier. She wiped the melted snow off her face with a wadded up tissue and approached the bouncer.

“I have this,” she said, thrusting her free pass awkwardly in his general direction.

“Great,” he said, taking it. He was thinner and shorter than she expected a bouncer to be. His thick glasses obscured his eyes. “Do you have an I.D.?”

“Oh,” Michelle said. “Yeah.” She fumbled in her purse and pulled out her driver’s license. The bouncer looked it over unaffectedly.

“No man with you tonight?” he said, handing back her license.

“No, is that – um, that’s okay, right?”

“Meeting anyone?”

“No, it’s – I know one of the dancers.” She could feel the hot flush of embarrassment in her cheeks. She knew her face was glowing red.

The bouncer smirked at her over his glasses. “That’s fine,” he said. “I only ask because when ladies come in on their own, they get their first drink on the house.” He handed her a small voucher. “You give that to Mina at the bar. Tell her Jordan said to make it strong.”

Michelle walked through the dark labyrinth of bodies and tables to the safety of the bar. Small spotlights shone down on the liquor lining the back illuminating Mina, a stunning young woman of possibly Middle Eastern descent with full, raven hair. Michelle ordered whiskey and diet coke. She caught the bartender before she walked away.

“Uh, Jordan said to make it strong.”

Mina pressed her dark lips together and produced a bottle of whiskey from under the bar. She poured liberally into Michelle’s glass.

“Thanks,” Michelle said, mixing her drink with her straw.

“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart,” Mina said with an old-man wink. “We take care of the cute ones.” Michelle took a slow sip and examined the club for the first time.

The main stage was a catwalk that ran directly through the center of the room. The décor was dark and exotic, with black, lush furniture and purple lights. Expensive-looking blankets and tapestries were strategically scattered over the furniture as if the decorator were unenthusiastically trying to evoke a king’s harem from some fantastic empire. In the center of the catwalk was a round platform with a pole which ran all the way up to the high ceiling.

On the main stage, a thin blonde girl was gyrating against the pole, her large breasts exposed and bouncing. She grasped the pole with both hands and began climbing up to the ceiling. At the top, she let her hands go and spiraled upside-down all the way to the stage with the brass phallus in between her thighs. So there’s more to stripping than a nice rack, Michelle thought, looking at her.

Several yards away from the main stage was a smaller, round stage complete with its own gyrating girl. This stage was surrounded by lush sofas and upholstered chairs. Several men and a few women were sitting around both stages handing dollar bills to the dancers, neither of whom were Samantha. Most of the occupants were seated at tables, staring at the blonde girl in the center. She had a tattoo of a Japanese kanji on her lower back. Michelle wondered if the girl knew what it meant.

She sipped steadily her drink and scanned the scene for Sam. The New Year’s crowd was overwhelming. Everywhere she looked was thick with people, and every table looked the same. The crowd was mostly men, with a few women here and there (one table seemed to be populated entirely by well-dressed businesswomen) and every once in a while, a dancer. They walked around dressed as sex kittens or Playboy bunnies, as femme fatales or school girls. They wore eye makeup thickly and smelled like coconut. They approached tables and made conversation, soliciting private dances from men and women. Eventually, a dancer would rise from a table with someone and lead him or her back into a dark hallway with a sign above it that read Private Rooms.

Then she felt Samantha like a chill racing up her spine. She looked behind her.

“I’m so glad you came!” she was saying, all gothed-out in a black lace bustier, black stockings and platforms. In the club, she looked even paler, her hair even blacker, and her lips, painted deep red, even more dangerous. They parted when she smiled to reveal glistening, pearl-white teeth.

“Oh, yeah,” said Michelle, her eyes darting this way and that, not wanting to rest on her neighbor. “I didn’t really have anything else to do.”

“Oh, that’s a shame.” She pulled herself up on the barstool next to Michelle’s. “Well, this is a pretty good place to be, all things considered. There’s a lot of beauty here.” She noticed Michelle’s dubious expression as she watched a table of slovenly men, one of whom was obviously rubbing himself beneath his clothes. “Well, you have to take the ugliness with the beauty,” Sam said with a shrug. “Mina, make sure Michelle’s drink stays full. I’ve got it.”

“Sweetie, I got it,” Mina said, leaning her large breasts over the bar to hand Samantha a glass of water. The barmaid smiled, and Michelle noticed her gold incisor. “This your new flame?” she asked, nodding in the ballerina’s direction. Michelle felt herself go red again.

“Ha, no,” Samantha said. “Just a friend from my building.”

Mina’s voice was sultry in a way befitting a much older woman, and she laughed deeply. “How do you like it here, honey?” she asked Michelle.

“It’s um, nice,” said Michelle feeling the flush on her cheeks stronger than ever. “Really… really fancy.”

“Oh, honey, is this your first titty bar?” laughed the bartender.

Michelle knew she looked like a crimson crayon. “Sort of.”

“Well, you could do worse than The Caribou, let me tell you.”

“Ha, yeah,” said the ballerina. Two beautiful, topless women walked by them. Michelle was horribly aware of the wet bangs plastered to her forehead from the snow. Her shiny, round, freckled face. “Hey, uh, Mina or, um, Samantha – Sam – why is it called The Caribou?”

The two others exchanged glances. “Honey,” Mina said, placing a vaguely unwelcome hand on the ballerina’s shoulder, “owner’s a coke-head. We don’t know why he does half the things he does.”

No sooner had the bartender spoken than a thin girl with deep brown skin and mounds of curly hair slid in between Michelle and Samantha. “‘Scuse me, darlins,” she said sweetly. “Mina, I need two Heinies, a G n’ T, a Vodka Gimly, and one of those fucking girly-assed pink things I wouldn’t be caught dead drinking.”

“A Cosmo,” Mina offered.

“Whatever,” said the waitress. “Just get em quick, they’re fucking loaded.”

Michelle watched Mina make the drinks. They had nicknames for different drinks at her bar, too, only Michelle didn’t work there long enough to learn all of them. The thin waitress turned to Samantha. “Taking a break?” she asked.

“Sort of,” said Sam. “This is a friend of mine. She’s here by herself, so I thought I’d come keep her company. Michelle, Lucy. Lucy, Michelle.”

They shook hands and Lucy smiled, but she was already balancing the tray of drinks on her other hand and turning to hurry back to the waiting table. “Nice to meet you, doll.”
Mina also turned and made her way over to a portly gentleman holding up an empty glass. Michelle had never been that kind of a bartender.

Sam sat with the purple light clinging to one half of her face, making the other half dim and grey, leaving the part illuminated blanched and violet. She smiled absently, watching the girl on the main stage (a different girl now), while Michelle shifted in her seat, sucking her drink down to the bottom.

“Um, Samantha – I mean, Sam – I think I might go soon.”

When she turned to look at Michelle, the light reflecting off her dark eyes made them appear to burn white with no iris and no pupil. “All right,” she said, “but I’m going on soon.”

Michelle wasn’t sure if this was meant to be a lure or a deterrent.

“Mina, Michelle’s drink needs freshening,” called the pale dancer. “Just stay for a half an hour. I promise it’ll get more entertaining.”

As Mina poured her another whiskey and coke, Michelle noticed the blonde girl from the main stage sitting on a suited man’s lap. She handed him something that looked like a business card.

The second drink slid down smoothly. As she began her third, she turned around to find Sam had disappeared. Instantly it seemed she became open territory, and was approached by several men in rapid succession. Each one seemed to think that asking her if she needed someone to kiss when the ball dropped was exceedingly clever. They spanned age- and class-ranges, and Michelle grinned and bore it for twenty minutes or so before exploding at some unsuspecting young man in glasses and a polo shirt. “Jesus!” she shouted. “There’s naked girls all over! Why don’t you talk to them?”

The man called her a bitch (or a fucking bitch, or an ugly fucking bitch – she didn’t catch it all) under his breath and skulked away. She tossed back the rest of drink number three and turned to head for the door when she saw her.

Her neighbor, Samantha, on the main stage, twirling and twisting around the pole in graceful, hypnotic spirals, her body writhing like a snake. The bustier and stockings were gone now, and the dancer’s white flesh shocked the little ballerina at the bar. Black tattoos crept up her torso like ivy, and her dark hair whipped around her as she spiraled and spun. Had Michelle been able to break her trancelike stare, she would have noticed that every gaze in the establishment was focused on the pale, thin, writhing persona in the center of the room.

Filed under: Jake, Michelle, Samantha, The Caribou by admin