Apartment 118C smelled of exotic incense, disinfectant spray, and cat litter. The basic layout was the same as in Michelle’s apartment, but her neighbor had a greater propensity towards deep, rich colors and knick-knacks. There was a slightly Victorian feeling to the stiff burgundy sofa and green velvet draperies, but the room was peppered here and there with a Buddha statue or a snow globe, throwing off the harmony. Michelle also experienced an amorphous, ineffable lived-in feeling to Sam’s place – one which her own had not approached, the ballerina not having lived all that much since she moved in.
Michelle sat on the Victorian sofa waiting for Samantha to make tea. A puffy white cat rubbed languidly against her legs.

“That’s my baby,” said Sam as she reentered with two cups of earl grey, one in each hand steaming. “Her name is Lily when she’s good and Lilith when she’s bad.”

“That’s cute,” Michelle said nervously reaching down to pet the cat, and then just to fill the air said, “my roomie in college told me about her.”

“She told you about my cat?” the woman said, one eyebrow raised.

“Oh no. About Lilith. The Christian myth.”

“Jewish,” said the pale woman, setting down the teacups. “But I don’t put much stock into religions. They’re all pretty much the same, and none of them suit me well.”

Michelle took her black tea from the coffee table and realized it was too hot to drink. She held it uncomfortably in her lap.

“Do you want milk or sugar?”

“Um, okay. I mean just sugar. I don’t drink—just sugar.” Sam disappeared back into the kitchen, leaving Michelle free to put down her cup.

When Samantha returned, Michelle added the sugar to her tea, fumbling with the spoon and dish as if her fingers were numb with frostbite.

“So, what made you change your mind?” Sam asked as the blonde sipped her sweetened tea.

Michelle had no answer, so she said, “I don’t know. I thought it would be fun.”

Samantha furrowed her dark brow. “All right, well, it’s not, really. It’s not bad sometimes, but it’s a lot of drama and stress and dirty old men.”

The ballerina shrugged. “Well, I guess I just really need the money.”

Sam laughed. “Well, it is lucrative,” she said. “It is that.” The pale woman sipped her own tea black. “You’ve just got to be careful. Do you do drugs?”

Michelle had smoked marijuana a handful of times in college, and it had invariably made her so paranoid that she either embarrassed herself or locked herself away in a room until the weed’s insidious effect wore off. “No,” she said.

“Good,” said the stripper. “That’s what traps a lot of girls. They get in and get used to making all this money, buying coke and stuff. Then their tastes get richer and they end up turning tricks to make ends meet. Either that or they just never get out, and I assume you want to get out?”

Michelle’s stomach was turning even more than when she first walked in. “Yeah, I mean, I don’t want to make this my life.”

The words were already out of her throat and she caught herself too late, realizing she might have offended her neighbor.

Sam only smirked, taking a graceful sip of her tea, pinky extended. “Most people don’t. It’s just something that happens. Me, I’ve been doing it for nine years, and I never touch the hard stuff.” Lily rubbed against Michelle’s calf and purred.

“Nine years?” Michelle said. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight,” Sam said. “I started when I was nineteen.”

Michelle studied her pale neighbor. Her smooth face looked like that of a young college student. “Sorry – you look really young. I thought you were my age.”

“Yeah, well,” said the stripper, picking up her teacup to take another sip, “I stay out of the sun.”

A week from Friday was amateur night. To be offered a job at The Caribou, Michelle would have to dance in the contest and place in the top three, measured by audience applause.

“Do you have any sexy lingerie?” Sam asked, leaning forward like a sister, like a best friend.

“Um… I have a lace bra from Victoria’s Secret.”

“Black?”

“No, white.”

Samantha cupped her chin in her palm. “Well, we could make that work. A cute, sexy, virginal thing. Any stockings and garters?” Michelle shook her head. “Okay, how about matching panties?” Another shake. “Um, all right. We might need to go shopping, or you could borrow something of mine…”

Michelle took one look at her tall, thin neighbor and knew that she wouldn’t fit into anything she offered. Sam’s breasts were barely a quarter the size of her own. “I guess I’ll need to buy something,” she said.

“You want me to go with you?”

“Um, no, I think I’ll be okay. Just something sexy you can take off, right?”

“Pretty much. It helps to have a theme, too. Like a naughty office girl or an exotic temple whatever girl.”

“Okay, I think I can manage.”

Sam smiled in a way that unnerved Michelle. “I don’t know what else I can tell you. Just dance how you think a stripper should. I’m sure you’ll pull it off. Just trust yourself. All that matters is to be sexy.”

The ballerina felt a shiver run down her spine. “Yeah, okay,” she said, staring at her cooling tea. “Only – Sam?”

The dark-haired woman elevated her eyebrows. “Yes?”

“I really –” she started, then paused. “I really can’t dance – at all.”

As if trying to punctuate the young woman’s humiliation, Lilith leaped up onto Michelle’s lap, spilling earl grey tea all over her jeans.

Samantha produced a napkin instantly. “Don’t worry,” she said, absorbing the spill. “It’s not the most difficult hurdle to overcome.”

Michelle went shopping by herself the next day. She had a week to come to terms with her body being naked in front of a hundred strangers, a week to be okay with writhing on stage and being sexy. She decided to starve herself, then she decided not to care and to eat whatever she wanted, then she decided that moderating her diet might be a good idea, but not to go overboard. After all, if she passed out from hunger onstage, she probably wouldn’t place in the top three.

She went home and did sit-ups and pushups and all the yoga poses she remembered, then she tried on her new lingerie with stockings, shoes, and the gauzy robe she grabbed on impulse at the cash register.

Not horrible, she thought. Not perfect, but not horrible. She sucked in her stomach and let the gauze wrap slide down her shoulders as she began shifting her hips to imaginary music. The wrap fell to the floor and she reached for the clasp of her bra and released her breasts. This isn’t so hard. Not near as hard as ballet. Only the apartment ghosts and the flies on the wall could see her as she swayed out of time to the nonexistent song.

Deep down, she had always known she lacked rhythm. She could learn the motions of dances and count beats in her head, but as far as feeling it, really feeling it like she knew great dancers could, she had never had the gift.

The ghosts and flies laughed as Michelle closed her eyes and swung her hips left and right.

There was no sense to the beat she apparently adhered to, just sporadic thrusts in every direction. One poor elderly fly laughed so hard that his heart went (his family had begged him to have it checked out for years) and he fell dead from the ceiling to Michelle’s erratic feet. She squished his corpse, unaware.

Michelle concluded her one-woman show with a twirl and a bow. Perhaps not the sexiest ending, but she smiled self-satisfied and gathered the clothes she had stripped off from the bathroom floor. The flies and ghosts (one new one now) applauded sarcastically.

She sat down on her sofa in her underpants, lounging. She felt sexy, she decided, and that was all that mattered. This wouldn’t be so hard. Just get drunk, go up there, and wiggle your ass a little bit. If you don’t get the job, you don’t get the job, you go back to plan B, you go back to your mommy, back to a semblance of security. But you can’t go back to your childhood, said the tiny voice in the back of her head. Fortunately, Michelle had long since learned to ignore that voice.

She sat for a long time, just feeling how it was to be in her own skin. She ran her hand up her stomach and her breasts, around her neck and her long, thick blonde hair. It was just glorious at times to be a young woman.

Yes, yes! She was a young, attractive woman. Beautiful, some might say. One boy in college had said she was the most beautiful girl at the entire university. She hadn’t believed it, but it was nice to hear.

And she was a ballerina! Not professional, no, but more of a ballerina than 99.9 percent of the population. To most guys, dating a ballerina was second only to dating a model, status-wise. She was practically a commodity.

She turned a quick, giddy pirouette and went to her freezer, pulling out the bottle of Grey Goose vodka her brother had given her for Christmas. She had been saving it, but since she really didn’t have anyone or anything to save it for, she screwed off the lid and poured herself a neat glass.

The vodka was smooth and cold like nothing. The more she drank, the better she felt about herself and her plans. Dancing was dancing, after all. She probably didn’t realize how much of his gift she’d let herself drink when she returned to the freezer for the fourth time, but suddenly, calling her brother seemed like an exceedingly logical thing to do.

She dialed the numbers sloppily and slouched back into her soft garage-sale sofa. She was still topless in only her panties and heels, and as she waited for Jake to pick up, she ran her hand languidly over her hips and stomach.

Four rings passed, and just as she reached to turn off the phone, a voice answered.

“Hello?” said the weary, decidedly female voice on the other end.

Michelle paused for far too long.

“Hello?”

“Um, hi. This is Michelle.”

“Michelle who?” the woman snapped.

“I’m, um… I’m Jake’s sister. Is he – is he, uh, there?”

Michelle could almost hear the woman’s facial expression soften. “Oh, Michelle. Hi, this is Rachel. I’ve heard so much about you.”

Sure you have, bitch. “Oh, really? That’s so nice. Is Jake there?”

“Um, yeah he is. Here, hang on, he just walked in.”

Michelle waited as muffled movement and speech came through the receiver. She was sure she heard a kiss right before Jake picked up the phone.

“Hi, T.D.”

“Hi, Big B.” A pause. “What’s going on?”

“Not much… I, uh, Rachel and I are getting married. I was gonna call and tell you today.”

Michelle felt nothing but a cool rage and low buzzing pain in her temples. “Oh, wow. When did this happen?”

“Just the other day,” he said. The rage turned lukewarm, the buzzing spread outward over her skull. “You were gonna be the first person I told.”

“That’s, um, that’s kinda fast, isn’t it? I mean… I’m happy for you if that’s what you want, but I, uh, thought you weren’t too sure about it. This relationship.”

“Oh yeah, well, sometimes things happen differently than you expect, you know? I mean, things don’t always go the way you plan them. It just kind of like, happened.  And it seemed right.  And well, I’m happy about it.”

“But how long have you been seeing her?”

“A few months – look, Michelle, when you’re older you’ll understand that sometimes life just happens. You can’t always control it.”

The rage came to a boil. “Jake, I’m only two years younger than you! I’m just saying I think this is a decision you should be sure of is all!”

Jake’s deep voice grew harsh, rough. “I am sure! Fuck, I mean, as sure as I’ve ever been of anything. She fits me well.” He stopped, paused, took a breath. “You’ll see, T.D. You’ll like her.”
Michelle sat up straight. A friend in high school had told her she had perfect breasts, and as she sat rigid and tense, they didn’t sag at all, despite their size (34C).

“Look, I don’t want to fight with you,” she said. “I really just called to say congratulations. I mean, I called to say hi, and now I want to say congratulations. Sorry, I’m a little drunk.” She resisted the urge to pound her head violently against the coffee table, drawing blood, causing severe concussion and her corpse’s discovery by the landlord in a few days. Maybe a week, when the neighbors would start to complain of the smell. Poor thing. Just fell asleep and never woke up. Such a lovely girl. So young. What a future. Who knows? Lovely thing.

“Okay, I know. I know it’s a shock to have your big brother getting married.”

“Yeah. I guess it means we’re growing up.”

“We’re grown up, T.D. How’s the job search going?”

“I, um, I think I have some prospects. I’ll let you know.”

When the conversation was over, Michelle was left half-naked, half-drunk, and entirely alone. She put herself to sleep by looking through old high school yearbooks. Reading what her friends had written made her feel momentarily warm, but the sensation was fleeting as she realized how few of these people she had kept in touch with over the years. She could count them on one hand even if she lost her pinky and thumb.

That evening, she fell asleep on top of her covers still in her underpants and heels. Halfway through the night, she wrestled herself awake and found her way between the sheets, kicking her shoes off sloppily onto the floor next to her bed. Sleep was a welcomed escape for her overactive mind, and it offered some solace in a whirlwind of frightening developments and uncontrollable change.

Filed under: Jake, Michelle, Samantha, dancing by Jade