She never saw Morris again.  She didn’t need to.  She didn’t want to.

That Friday, after Michelle had just given a two-hundred dollar private dance, Princess found her.  As she approached, a small entourage of customers lingered at a respectful distance, giving the dancers privacy.  Princess hugged Michelle before she spoke.  Michelle had never seen her look so well.  Her skin almost glowed.

What Princess tried to say was this:  “Michelle!  I can’t tell you how happy I am.  I’ve been offered a modeling contract and a contract as a spokesman for AIDS awareness.  I’m going to make enough money to quit here, and for drug rehab and anti-retroviral drugs.  I’m going to live a long time, and I’m going to be famous!  I just wanted to say goodbye.  Tonight’s my last night here.”

Of course, she actually said, “Micheru!  I so happy!  I been offeredo modering conracto an conracto as AIDSu spokusuman!  I gettin nuhf money to quitto here, an for dlug lehab an antiletlobilal dlug.  I goin to rib a rong time, an I goin to be famous!  I jus wan to say goobye.  Tonighto my rast nighto here.”  Again, she hugged Michelle.

“Oh,” Michelle said.  “Congratulations.”  She understood about five words of what came out of Princess’s mouth.*

That night in July, Princess gave her farewell performance.  John made the announcement over the speakers, and the crowd moaned and booed the notion of Princess retiring from exotic dancing.  Her last dance consisted more of people handing her money and shaking her hand than of actual dancing, and when she walked out, kissing the air and waving, a third of the customers walked out with her.

Those left were left disgruntled as they realized their favorite dancer had just quit before their eyes.  A low, mass grumble traveled throughout the club as more people began to gather their things and gesture for their checks.

“Isadora, could you please make your way to the main stage, please?” John called over the speakers.  “Folks, I know we’re all sad about Princess, but we have another beautiful blonde coming right up for you.  Please say hi to Isadora, and show her some love.”

Michelle danced.  By the time the first song finished, people were crowded three deep around the stage trying to hand her tips.  At the end of the second song, every eye lingered on each of her movements.  The gazes, the energy, it all radiated and pulsed together with the bass line of the music even more intensely than when Samantha would dance.

As she stepped off the stage into the awed crowd, a young man, drunk, approached her.

“Congratulations,” he said.  “You’re my new favorite dancer.”

She noticed a dark-eyed, pretty young woman staring at her, face tilted slightly sideward.  She stood shyly, but her eyes were powerful and still.  The crowd parted for Michelle as she walked over to stand beside her.

Meanwhile, a cop was writing Julie Han a ticket for jaywalking.  His police car had nearly hit her as she crossed the street on her daily walk to work.

“Where are you from, young lady?” the middle-aged, white, mustachioed, balding police officer said.

“Ohio.  Not China.”

The man laughed a wheezing, contrived laugh.  “Now, don’t you go making assumptions about me, miss.  My son married an Oriental girl.  I know you’re not all from China.”  He took out his citation book with a flourish.  “Are you aware that jaywalking is illegal in this city, miss?”

“I am.  It’s illegal in Ohio, too.”

“All right.  And are you aware that you walked directly into oncoming traffic, endangering not only yourself, but other people?”

“I guess so.”

The man rested his hand on his back and looked at Julie with an expression that lingered between contempt and amazement.  “Young lady, did you even look before you crossed the street?”

“I don’t think I did.”

“You on drugs?”

“Nope.  Never touched the stuff.”

The cop shook his head.  “Miss, why the hell did you do that?”

Julie thought for a second about what she said next, deciding that it would really only be funny to her, and certainly wouldn’t gain her any favor with the policeman.  She said it anyway.

“Well, I guess what it comes down to is, I really have no regard for human life.”

As expected, instead of laughing, the cop wrote her a three-hundred dollar citation for jaywalking and reckless endangerment.

The crowd was thinner than the past few nights as she entered The Caribou, ticket crumbled and shoved into the back pocket of her jeans.

“Hey, what’s up?” she asked Lucy.  “Where is everyone?”

Lucy did not stop moving as she answered.  “Princess left.  She got offered a million dollars to be a model or an AIDS poster girl or something.  Lotta the customers left with her.”

“Princess is a model?”

“That’s what I heard.  Don’t ask me, I’m just the server.  Ask Claudia or Michelle, she talked to them.”

Lucy disappeared into the crowd.  Julie stood for a moment among the customers before going to the dressing room to change.  As she dressed, she made no eye contact or conversation.  She barely moved a muscle in her face.

The air that night vibrated with a more violent sexuality than it had for the past week.  Those who had been there for the human aspects of the dancers had left with Princess.  Walking through the crowd, she could tell they were hungry.  Five minutes into her first stage dance, a large bearded man leaned in and whispered, not whispered, growled in hot wet breath to her ear, Show us some pink.  A thick-necked young man with a military haircut leaned back away from her as she approached, shouted, Grow some tits! and laughed.

Afterward as she roamed the crowd, she saw not strangers.  No, she knew these people.  Those she had never seen, she knew.  They were the worst of humanity.  These people who were blessed enough to live in the United States where they had food and shelter, where children went to school for free and everyone could obtain with hard work a house, a car, and a television set, and the people here even more blessed, having the disposable income to pay ten dollars for a cocktail and thirty dollars for three minutes of anticlimactic dry-humping.  They squandered it, these people.  Worse, they used what they had for selfish, destructive purposes.  They were filth, parasites.  She saw it as she passed through them.  To her right, a wife-beater, to her left, a misogynistic cheating husband.  To the front, a heartless, thieving business man, to the back, a man she knew, knew, was a child molester.

She relived silently the phantom-like memory of her first friend in the city beating an animal to death, trying to murder a fellow dancer, all on the stage on which she was now expected to be sexy.

She was on the second stage, smaller and lower to the ground than the main stage, surrounded by sofas and easy chairs.  The second stage was more relaxed, and the tipping was generally less frequent, but more substantial.  Julie usually liked the second stage better.  It reminded her of the dive bars she worked when she was younger.

That night an older white man with silver hair and thick, meaty lips sat forward in one of the easy chairs.  He held out a dollar bill and when she moved to take it, he let it drop to the stage.  He grinned.

Julie squatted to pick up the dollar, and as she did the man reached over and slid his index finger between her thighs, tracing the mouth of her thong-covered vulva.  The touch of his filthy, calloused finger sent a shiver of anger and terror ripping through her entire body.  Her teeth clenched.  Slowly, with total control, she leaned over to the man.

“If you do that again,” she said in her most pragmatically threatening voice, “I will shove my heel through your hand.”

The man’s smile did not fade, the look in his eyes that of a predatory mammal stalking its prey.  A quick bark of a laugh escaped through his sneering mouth.

She danced clockwise around the second stage, spending a few moments with each customer, collecting a dollar here, ten there, until she arrived back at the chair where the silver-haired man sat.  She could see in his eyes – bobcat eyes – that he was waiting for her to come back, waiting to do it again, the intention all but written in the spiral of his iris.

Again, he held out a dollar and dropped it on the stage in front of him.  An instant, a nanosecond passed, Julie frozen, eyes locked with the man’s gleaming, unblinking orbs.  Then she spread her knees wide and crouched deeply in front of him, reaching slowly for the bill.  His hand shot out professionally and traced the same warm nethercleft before returning to the stage.

She smirked, barked her own laugh, but hers was a loud, shameless, aggressive bark.  The bark of a guard dog who has found an intruder and knows she has free reign to attack.  Julie fingered the dollar into her garter belt, stood up, and began to turn away, then picked her foot up high and centered it over the rough, cracked hand.  By the time he felt the pain, Julie had already jammed her heel down as hard as she could, and two of the delicate bones in his hand had snapped.

The man screamed and drew his hand to his chest.  His face was red and shiny as an apple as he shouted at her incoherent threats and swears.  Stupid faggot fag cold bitch cunt net gut fuck! Other customers were laughing around him, a circle of damning, shaming demons pointing, making him aware of his sins in this dark, musty, spotlit hell.  In front of him the head she-demon, the cursed female laughing along with her minions up on her raised platform, cackling in the purple light.

Then she wobbled.  Julie had used all her weight to crush the man’s hand, and as she tried to regain her balance, one foot had searched for a hold off the stage.  For a moment Julie teetered on one foot at the edge, then tumbled spastically onto the floor.

“Ouch,” she said from the dirty carpet.  She felt her knee and knew it was going to bruise, but she was used to bruises now.

The man was still shouting disjointed, schizophrenic insults at her, ugly hole bitch sucker, but the words passed over her white noise.  She stood up and limped past the man to the dressing room.  She put on her jeans, t-shirt and tennis shoes, shoved all her belongings in her bag, and left without closing her locker.  She pushed her way through the crowd and back to Claudia’s office and threw the door open.

Claudia looked up from her screens.  “Julie, what the hell was that?  You should have told a bouncer to kick that man out.”

“Oh,” Julie said,” you saw that?”

One of Claudia’s eyebrows rose as if independent of her will.  “I see everything.”

Julie walked in a few steps and set her bag down on the desk.  “Look, Claudia, don’t worry.  I’m gonna save you the trouble of firing me.”

“I wasn’t going to—”

“I’ve been doing this for seven years.  That’s longer than anyone should ever do it.  Look at me, Claudia.  I’m bruised and beaten.  I’ve got back pain and shin splints from this job.  I hate it.  I’ve never hated anything or anyone as much.”

Claudia crossed her legs and shifted her chair to face the dancer.  Her face was so calm.  “Julie, please don’t leave,” she said.  “You’re one of our best dancers.  Now with Sam and Princess gone, you and Michelle are all we have left.  Frankly, we need you two right now.  If you leave, The Caribou might not survive.”

“You don’t need us.  This place is famous now.”  Julie threw her arm toward the television screens.  “Look at all the people out there!”

Claudia’s eyes moved, her head did not.  She glanced once and glanced back.  “They came to see a girl who no longer works here.  Half our customers walked out when she left.  If this is a problem with Laura, I can fire her.  She doesn’t bring in half the money you do.”

“It’s not Laura.  It’s me.  Claudia, I have a degree.  Strippers don’t have degrees.”

Claudia looked at her with no expression.  For a long moment, Julie waited for her to speak, to rebut, to convince her to stay.  In the end, she said nothing.

“You don’t need me,” Julie said.  “Have another amateur night.  Have ten.  Every day, another stripper turns eighteen.  Every day, another stripper is born.  Shit, go down to the maternity ward and pick out an infant with hot parents.  In eighteen years, she’ll be ripe for a fabulous career in exotic dancing.  It just takes a little patience.”

Julie turned to walk out.  She held the door wide, ready to shut it dramatically for good, to leave without looking back.

Then she stopped and looked back, just once, over her shoulder at Claudia, who sat stoically at her desk.

“Good luck,” the dancer said, then turned and left The Caribou, never to return.

---

* Months later, Michelle saw Princess on a MAC cosmetics billboard for World AIDS Day and figured out what had happened.  After that, she began noticing her picture in magazines and promotions for AIDS awareness.  She even saw her interviewed on a popular late night talk show.  Her English had improved, and she spoke well and even wittily with the host.  Her message: “Know your partoners.  Know yourseruf.  Testo often.”

Labels: Julie Han, Princess, The Caribou

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There was no answer at Sam’s door when Michelle knocked.  No rustling.  No giggles or hushed lover-voices.  Not even the sound of Lily running over the floor.  She stood for a moment in the stale-smelling hallway listening to the silence, then she walked to work.

That Monday the girls couldn’t fill all the dance requests.  Around Princess in a swarm sat and stood admirers.  The dancer wore dark pants and a black t-shirt as she spoke.  The crowd nodded at intervals, holding their drinks in limp fingers.

Michelle walked past them, past all of them, and barely glanced.

Then he was there, sitting as always alone, sipping a glass of liquor and glancing around in a stream of interconnected gestures.  Her regular.

His skin seemed even more tired, and his eyes darted around the club.  She knew he was looking for her.  Suddenly she felt tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.

When he saw her, he smiled.  The nervous energy surrounding him slowed, for a moment at least, to a comfortable hum.  As Michelle sat down beside him, background noise faded away, the strange buzz of his movements the only vibration approaching sound.

“Hi there, young lady.”  He was folding his hands over each other again and again.

“Hi,” she said.  “I haven’t seen you around here for a while.”

“Well, I’ve been busy.  You know, not everyone can be young and carefree.”  A sigh, drawn and deep.  “Once you get old like me, responsibilities, they just keep piling up.”

“So I’ve heard.”

The man stared into his glass for a moment, then sighed.  “How ‘bout you, little lady.  How old are you, twenty-one?  What do you plan on doing with the rest of your life?”

Michelle hesitated.  “Actually.  What I always wanted to be was a ballerina.”

The man nodded.  “That’s lovely.  Are you still planning on becoming one?”

“No, not really.”  The words, coming from her own mouth, should have shocked her, but they did not.  They settled comfortably, and she continued.  “I never really had a chance in that world.”

“I’ve seen you dance.  You’re phenomenal.”

“Thanks.  That’s really nice of you to say.  But I have a new goal now.”

“Which is?”

“To love as many people as possible.  And to grow.”

The man coughed, disguising a blush.  “That’s an ambitious desire.”

“It’s about time I grew some ambition,” she said.  “I don’t think I ever got your name?”

“Morris.”

“Morris, I’m Michelle.”  She put out her hand.  “That’s my real name, not my dancing name.  Would you like to go somewhere with me?”

“Where would that be?”

“I –” she stopped.  Hesitated.  “I don’t know.”

Morris coughed and began to fidget.  “Oh, Michelle.  You’re young enough to be my daughter.”

Michelle’s eyes dropped and she started wringing her own hands.  She looked from side to side, then up.  “I—I’m sorry,” she said.  “That’s not what I meant.  Really.  I just wanted to talk.  And we can even stay here if you want.  I—I just thought it might make you feel better.”

She reached out, hesitated, and touched his arm.  The man shivered, turning a visible shade of pink.

“…Michelle.”

From the touch, Michelle garnered a feeling.  An old, cold desire that lay within Morris.  She tried to concentrate.

“Morris,” she said.  “You’ve been alone since your wife died.”

“That’s right,” he said, breathing slowly.

“You say you’ve never looked at another woman.  That’s true, isn’t it?  But just because you’ve never been with anyone physically, doesn’t mean you want to be lonely.  But you’ve completely shut yourself off for years.”

Morris nodded, took a deep breath and adjusted his tie.  He looked at her and said, “You are beautiful, Michelle.  You truly are.  And a thing of beauty is a joy forever.”  He sighed and cast away his eyes.

“Isn’t that a quote?”

“Keats,” he said.  “My first true love.”

There was a beat during which the interaction could have gone a number of ways.  Morris might have walked out, they might have moved on to safer conversation, they might have taken each other to bed, but instead, Michelle followed a strange, foreign instinct and grasped his hand.  She held it and noticed with detached interest that he grasped back, passionately.  She felt a warm rush flow through her body from the contact point.

She looked at Morris with new eyes; he was suddenly beautiful.  All the pain and sadness in him – sadness stemming at its core from hope and love – came to the surface, and was visible on his face and body.  She saw the relationship between his physical appearance and the sum of his life experience.  The deep crease between his eyebrows from worry during his wife’s illness.  The bags under his eyes from loneliness.  Strong lines around his mouth from long forgotten joy.  Every breath, every movement was an expression of his experience, and never had she seen that connection so clearly.  She saw him, really him, and when you see all of someone, you almost can’t help but love them.

She gained an entire life’s worth of experience in moments.  She felt his pain, his sorrow, his happiness, his failings.  She smiled at his wedding, and cried at the funeral of his wife.  Lines and pages of poetry flowed into her brain.  Keats, Milton, Byron, Blake.  Words flashed through her mind and fixed themselves in her memory.

Morris seemed to grow younger as she watched him.  Lines firmed, his eyes reflected the smoky lights of the club with iridescent clarity, and a ruddy glow found his cheeks.  She knew he was seeing her the same way as she saw him.  She had never felt closer to another human being in her life.

They each let go in the same instant and took deep, exasperated breaths.  Michelle looked at him.

Morris, glowing with new vitality, let a single tear drop down his burning cheek.

“Excess of sorrow brings laughter,” Michelle said.  “Excess of joy brings tears.”

Morris blew his nose, his eyes still red.  “Very true.  You know Blake?”

“I do now.”

Labels: Michelle

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