Sam never caught her name, but suddenly she was there every night.  A slight girl in her mid-twenties with light brown hair that fell limply around her shoulders, glasses too big for her face, and unflattering, baggy clothes.  One night Sam saw her alone in the back of the club.  Delicate and dryad-like, she moved like an anxious cat sipping her drink through a straw and watching the dancers.  Her eyes were the color of the ocean at night.

“Hi, mind if I sit down?” Sam said.

The woman blinked at her.  She sucked the final drops from her glass and placed it on the table.  “No,” she said.  “Not at all.”

Sam sat.  The woman’s eyes were lowered.  She didn’t speak.

“Weather’s crazy tonight,” said the stripper.

“Yeah.  Crazy.”  She shifted in her chair.  Picked up her glass.  Set it back down.

“May I interest you in a private dance?” Sam said.  She flipped her hair off one shoulder.

The woman covered her mouth with her hand.  “Heh, I don’t think so.  I’m happy just to sit here and watch.”  Her eyes shone in the reflection of the stage spotlight, dappled light in dark pools.

Sam lingered a moment, watching her, then stood up.  “Sure.  No problem.  I, uh, hope you enjoy the show.”

“I enjoy you,” the woman said to Sam’s back.  Sam turned around, but the woman had looked away.  “I mean, I like it when you dance the best.”

“Thanks.”  She paused.  Did she say it right?  Thanks? Yes, that was fine.  That was the right word.

On stage, Samantha danced for her mystery woman.  She was sure she felt her dark eyes caressing her body as she moved.

The next night, she sat in the same seat.  Sam did not approach her again, but danced like mad, like a dervish hoping to feel her eyes again.  When she finished a set, she would look back to her critic, but the mystery woman’s expression betrayed no delight or disinterest.

Mademoiselle X, as Samantha would come to call her when remembering (if there was one thing she loved, it was a good cliché), sat night after night in the same seat.  Each night, Sam’s heart would race as she opened the door to The Caribou, and each night she would see Mademoiselle X sitting, waiting for her.  That week, she received more tips and sold more private dances than she ever had, or ever would again.

One week to the day after she first noticed the slight woman with the frumpy, loose clothing, she looked to her as she was dancing and found that she was looking her in the eyes, and that her gaze went unbroken even when met with Sam’s own.  When she stepped off the stage, she knew what would happen even before she saw the woman motioning for her to come and sit next to her.

“Hi there,” said Samantha as she pulled up a chair.  The strange woman was wearing the same oversized glasses and clothing that had unflattered her all week.

“How are you enjoying the show?” Sam asked.

“It’s very nice,” said the woman.  “Very, um, very bendy.”  She moved her drink toward her.  Took a sip.  Moved it back.

They sat at the table for a few moments.  The silence was painful.  “Well,” said Sam, sliding her chair back from the table.  “I’ll see you around.”

“Wait,” said the woman, touching Sam’s elbow.  “I wanted to ask you…” she swallowed a word in her throat.  Samantha leaned toward her.

“I wanted to ask you,” the woman continued.  “You’re so beautiful.  Why are you doing this?”  Her eyes were focused on nothing in particular.  The glass.  The napkin.  The surface of the table.

Sam had heard this question before, but usually from dirty old men or dirty young men or spiteful young women who assumed they already knew the answer.  It was different this time.  It was sincere.

“I do it because it’s my calling,” she said.  “Some people are priests, some are painters, and I’m a dancer.  It’s just what I was born to be.”

The woman placed her hand over her mouth, stared a moment, and removed it.  “How do you know that?”

“How do you know when you love someone?”  She loved a good cliché.

The woman laughed airily without a laughing sound, shaking her head.  “I wouldn’t know.  You know what?  Twenty five years old and I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone.  Not one single one.  Pretty funny, huh?”  Her eyes like limpid, reflective ink moved up and caught Samantha’s.  “Pretty funny.”

Sam found herself shifting, fidgeting in the woman’s gaze.  “Why, um, why are you telling me this?” she asked.

She lowered her eyes again.  “Sorry, I just thought maybe you could help me.  You seem so… open.”

“It’s just a job.”

“No, not dancing.  Something about you….  I don’t know what it is.  Like I’ve known you for ages.  You have something.  You’re – you’re beautiful.”  She coughed hollowly and folded herself up in her arms.

“Thank you,” Sam said.  I’ve known you for ages – the line would usually send her flying in the other direction faster than a most powerful locomotive, but this woman said it without malice or subtext, like a young adolescent certain she was the first person in the history of the world to feel attraction.

“How do you dance like that?” Mlle X asked at length.  “I’d give anything to be able to dance like that.”

“Come on.  No you wouldn’t,” Sam said.  “A lot of things are worth more than being able to shake your ass.”

“That’s not what I mean.  I mean the way you move.  You know?  Like you understand it all.  Like you have no fear.  How do you do it?  I’d give anything to feel like that, just for an instant.  Just an instant.”  She coughed a breathy, nervous cough intermittently between some of her words, then she didn’t say anything at all, holding her own torso tight within her arms.

“Look, sweetie,” Sam said, leaning close.  “Do you need me to go call someone?  Are you okay?”

“No – I mean, no, don’t go.  I’ll be fine.  I’ve just… had a very long day.”

“Sure, sure you have.”  Sam patted the young woman’s shoulder.  “What is it you do?”

The woman sniffed.  “I’m a PhD student in biology,” she said through a pathetic laugh.  “Isn’t that funny?”

“What’s funny about it?  That’s very respectable.”

“No – ” she coughed.  “I mean I study life, but I don’t know anything about it.”  She looked like she was about to cry, but she just sat there.

“Look, sweetie, I don’t know what you want from me.  I’m a stripper, not a psychologist.  Now, I don’t put too much stock in them either, but you see what I mean?  You seem like a very nice girl, but I just don’t know what I can do for you.”

The woman sat very still, staring at the table.  Again, Samantha lingered, looking at her for a moment before sighing and turning to stand.

“Can I – ” she said, looking up at the dancer.  “Can I have a private dance?  You said – that’s right, right?  I – I have money.”  Sam stopped.

“Sure, honey,” she said, taking the girl’s hand.  Mlle X took a moment before standing up.  Head lowered, she was shrinking, demure, and Samantha looked like a Victorian gentleman leading his lady to her carriage.

They walked slowly back to the dark hallway that held the private rooms.  Each step seemed to last longer than the last, until by the time they reached Samantha’s favorite room (with the purple sofa and red gauze over the lights) time seemed to have stopped altogether.

The woman followed Sam in and sat on the couch.  “It’s okay,” Sam said.  “I’ll take care of you.”

Mlle X raised her blackwater eyes.  They absorbed the color of the red-tinted light, and the pit of Samantha’s stomach burned.

“You get one song for thirty dollars,” Sam said.  “After that, if you want, you can get two more for another thirty.  You understand, sweetie?”  Mlle X nodded.

They sat stiffly, waiting for the current song playing over the club’s sound system to end.  When it stopped, there was a pause of a few moments before the first chords of the next song (“When Doves Cry”) began.

Sam started to dance.  She moved her arms above her head and turned away from the woman.  Still moving with the music, she touched her fingertips to the ground.  When she stood back up, she slid out of her top and ran her hand up the sides of her body slowly.  Then she heard the words, coming from all directions.

“Can I touch myself while you dance?”

Samantha broke character and looked at her customer.  Mlle X’s legs were spread wide, her oversized navy blue skirt stretched tight.  Her hands rested tentatively on her stomach.  Later, Samantha became certain that there had never been a more erotic phrase in the English language than Can I touch myself while you dance.

“Sure,” she whispered.  Her words were incidental, her acquiescence apparent on her face.  Mlle X drew one hand beneath her skirt.

When they left the private room, Sam took this mysterious woman home to her apartment.  She had never been so silent, her bedroom never so peaceful.  In the arms of this woman, she wanted and needed nothing.

When Sam woke up the next morning, Mlle X was gone.  After that night, she always scanned the floor of The Caribou when she worked.  Every now and then, a movement or the bridge of a nose would be reminiscent of the missing woman, and Sam’s heart would jump for one moment before seeing the whole, seeing a face which was invariably baser, more banal, and more hideous than that of the absent nameless woman, and she would go back to work.

Filed under: Mlle X, Samantha, The Caribou, sex by Jade