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There are things that I want in this world: to go to school at McGill, far away in Montreal. To have everyone else think I'm pretty. To be good at the things I can do. Some people have lots of different talents that make them special, but me: I only do a few things, but I do them well. Life is too short to spend time doing things you're no good at. One thing I'm really good at is my job.
My parents know about it but they never say anything; well, that's not true. My mother knows. I don't know about my father. I know he sees me leave every evening at six-fifteen, my orange flowered tote bag over one arm and the high heels clicking on the crappy kitchen linoleum, but he never really raises his head from the TV. I don't think he's seen me in years.
Sometimes I miss Kara so much I can’t breathe.
"You going now?" my mother says, nervously twisting her hands. She's all brown and grey, my mother. Her eyes are brown, her dress is brown, her hair is grey, but it used to be brown. Her skin is grey. She looks like meat going bad.
"Back late," I tell her with a kiss on the cheek that never touches. I don't know when we stopped touching each other.
She scrubs her lipstick off my cheek. It's called Sunset Row, and it's barely pink. Almost not a lipstick at all, it's so faint. It was the first I ever wore, when I was little and sat in front of the mirror dabbling in the pots and jars and tissues that were all strewn around. Tonight, of course, I'm perfect: eyelashes as long as your forearm, helped by Clairol Waterproof Extra-Lash and some glued-on extensions. Eye cream, then powder, applied with the pinky finger and smudged gently. Don't pull the gentle skin of the eye or you get wrinkles before your time. They say that about smiling too, but I think I'd rather have a few wrinkles than never smile. It's easy to smile, when it doesn't matter that it reaches your eyes.
My lipstick now is Coral Blend; it's dark and bold. I look best in slightly orangey reds. It matches my skin tone.
Kara's lipstick was dark: black cherry. It made her look as though she'd been drinking blood. I kept a tube, in my drawer, way in the back. I don't remember what we buried her in; probably the limp frosted pinks of the funeral home make-up artist, who makes your dead sister look sweet and pretty and demure when she wasn't any of those things in real life, and that's not how anyone will remember her anyway. I expected half the kids who came to the funeral to get up to the coffin to pay their last respects and see her, and then pull their pants down to check.
"That's not the shade it was," they'd whisper to each other, “See?" The smears dark as veins.
She was popular, Kara.
I'm popular too.
The doors don't open till seven, and most of the rest of them get here at five to, rushing in with a clatter of platform heels and the squeak of patent leather and cheap polyester. Their hair bouncy and full, lipstick smearing on the cigarettes they puff and throw away. I don't smoke: bad for the lungs. There's enough secondhand to keep me on a nicotine buzz anyway.
They're not supposed to be late, and they never are; arriving just in time, one last dust with the honey powder that makes your skin soft and smooth and smell nice and then they're swinging out onstage, fresh from the street, while someone calls a name. Never their own name. "Desiree," they say. Or, "Jazmina." Once, we had a girl passing through who called herself, "Florida," but she put the accent on the middle syllable so nobody noticed it was the name of a state. "Maybe I'll call myself New Jersey," Harri said.
Harri's real name is Harriet, and her dance name is Milk Chocolate because her father's black. His friends come in to see her sometimes. I don't know if her daddy's ever here, and she doesn't say. She and I have been here the exact same amount of time: seven and a half months. We came in together, scared and small in our street clothes, and now we're out there spreading our legs, and later, peeling dollar bills from the sweat on our thighs.
It's harder than you think it is. Physically, I mean; I don't mean any of that stuff about how it grinds you down and makes you sad, or how many of the girls have to take pills or put something up their nose to get on stage, where the glitter and the lights make them look like angels. The men out there smell of cigars and despair, and they tuck the bills in like they haven't touched a woman's leg in a year.I don't mind them.
The girls have names for everyone. I don't know who starts it, but one day everybody knows them. There's Sad Man, who cries into his beer and feeds bill after bill to any girl with small tits and dark hair. Pierre has a little tiny moustache. Mr Principal is the big fat one who sits in the corner and leans forward whenever Desiree does her pleated skirt schoolgirl dance.
It’s nice to be someone’s favorite.
Today, I take my time: check the wax job for stray stubble, powder touch-ups, and lace the tottery heels on. It's a ritual. We all need ways to worship, or take our minds away. When I'm done, they're all here, twittering around and peeking through the curtain. Is he here? He's here. Let me see. Is that him? When I straighten up, tall and proud, my hair loose and full of the gold glitter dust I keep in the cabinet, where anyone can borrow if they want to, I'm ready.
"Your friend's here, Kara," they tell me, “Daddy Warbucks." It's a stupid name, but when they see the fifties he gives me, peeled from a stack of the same, they whisper it. They try to get him, catch his eye, but it never works. He comes to see me.
I use her name for myself. Just to borrow; I would never keep it.
And then there's the music, and I'm out through the curtain and my skin's already shining from the grease and smoke that hits me like a wrecking ball, and there he is.
Here's Kara, long and lithe.
He sits a bit back from the stage like he can't bear to be seen looking too closely. His pocket is thick with another bulge of bills; must have been working late today. His suit is open, necktie loosened; some kind of drink is in his hand, but he never drinks it. They don't let you sit without dropping five dollars on a shot of jack and lime or SoCo, and even though they know him by now - know he's a big spender- he buys it anyway: To be nice. He's nice.
I catch his eye. He nods. It's time.
When I finish I'm panting and sweaty, and my ankles hurt; they weren't meant for this kind of abuse. Six-inch heels and three-inch platforms, people fall off these things every day and break an arm or leg. They make me look long and lanky, and make my tiny little ass stick out enough to get the guys who drool over cheeks. But he's not a butt man. Even before I'm finished my first sip of water, there's a knock.
"He wants you, Kara," Gillene says, sticking her head through. I nod. Leonard Cohen plays out front, the heavy bass line making my ribcage stutter.
The private rooms are very private. He’s already at the back, shirtsleeves rolled up, that full drink on the table. I go to him, pull the curtain. The music pounds through my head. This is the part I like best, when my body moves almost without me and hits the beat, every note. I can go away, be good. But this time he ruins it by talking.
"Thank you for coming back here," he says.
I nod, grinding. Don't talk, it spoils it. Don't talk; I don't want to hear your voice.
"I guess you remember me."
I nod again. Of course I do. He's here every week. He's given me thousands of dollars. That earns you special treatment. I press his face against my tiny breasts and jiggle a bit, then do the same with my ass cheeks. The honey powder smears his suit in streaks and he smells of roses.
"Kara..." he says, and his voice is strangled.
It's too much. I remember. Before Kara, before… It was a football game. My first boyfriend, who probably didn't even know he was a boyfriend: Stan Bridges. Holding my hand when no one was looking and a quick awkward kiss that smelled of cologne. He touched me down there, once, in the furtive darkness of his backyard, when he could claim to be drunk if anyone saw. I went to the bathroom, leaving Stan to hold our seats. With a bottle of Jim Beam poured into about a quarter-cup of Coke, he was so far gone; he barely noticed I was missing. On the walk back through empty halls, the heels of my shoes rang in the echoing shadows, and drew him out.
"Hello? Who's there?"
Somebody's father; he was sweaty, but handsome, suit coat unbuttoned. He saw me and smiled.
"You're Stan's friend, aren’t you?"
Mr. Bridges, of course.
"Enjoying the game?" But I saw his eyes, the way he licked his lips. But then came what happened with Kara and I didn't want anything anymore. It’s been easier to get lost in the music, forget. But now, with his first word, he’s ruining it for me, bringing it back.
Bringing me back.
He's panting now. I shake my crotch in his face, the tiny silver strap barely in place.
"Is this what you want?" I ask him, and my voice pitches down an octave from the stress.
Almost a year of hormone therapy, bought off the Internet, delivered in plain paper wrapping, foreign stamps, and my father looking the other way: The trip to Mexico. He shakes his head. I'm not what he wants after all, but he comes anyway, to see. It's all a joke. He doesn't want me. I take his hand, like a hot, fleshy orchid, and press it to my crotch, make him cup the spot where now there’s nothing, nothing.
"Is this what you want?" I repeat, and he grinds his teeth when he feels for what isn't there.
Bernie arrives on cue, after I hit the button with the toe of my shoe. Strappy and high heeled, they come in handy. He sees Mr. Bridges with his hand where no girl is allowed to be touched and hauls me off him, brings him to his feet, one, two, hit, hit, and blood from the nose. His bewildered eyes.
"It's not what you think," he burbles to Bernie.
"I know what I saw," and Bernie’s thick belief stands like a wall I hide behind.
He won't be back now. I know what I saw. Everybody knows what they see.
There aren't very many things left to want in this great grey and brown world, but I found something I can actually get. I got Kara back. © 2008 Claire Litton Claire Litton has been writing professionally since 1998, and has published fiction and poetry in literary magazines in Canada and the U.S. She has had nonfiction articles published in both local and national magazines. She won the Three Rivers Review Short Fiction Prize for 2005, and the University of Pittsburgh Film Studies Writing Award for 2004/2005. She also won the 2006 “Short Grain” contest for Grain Magazine. She currently has a young adult novel with Jodi Reamer of Writer’s House, and several recent magazine publications.
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Erotic Fiction 
