Cross Country Murder Song (22 page)

Song 11: Exotic

He couldn't quite remember, but he figured he'd had five or maybe six drinks when she'd come to his table to ask if he wanted a private dance, but he waved her away, he didn't want the company, and flicking through his wallet saw that he couldn't afford it either.

Next time, she called out as she walked away, her brilliant smile glancing back at him over her shoulder. He watched her leave and admired the gleam of her silvery thong, her long, brown ponytail bouncing in a high arch off her shoulders. She was wearing flimsy chaps like none he'd ever seen in a Western and elegant, almost absurdly high heels. Now he thought about it he vaguely remembered her onstage earlier, making her entrance with a glittering Stetson perched on her head. She'd had to throw it on the stage behind her, once the music had picked up and she'd followed along with it, her kicks higher, her hips more pronounced as the beat quickened, her stare dared those in the front to meet her. She was the only source of light moving on the matt black stage. He smiled dreamily and thought about moving seats to be closer. Then he noticed the man standing next to his table. The man's attention was also focused on the stage and he surprised him when he spoke.

You okay, pal? the man asked him. He managed a nod. He suddenly felt sleepy and realised his head was listing a little bit and very close to the table itself.

Long day? the man asked him again. He was looking directly at him now, his hair was brushed back and held in place with some kind of gel, it shone like a puddle of oil shines, his tie was knotted tightly and he looked as though he'd just returned from an important meeting. As he thought all of this, he realised that the man had his hand under his arm and was helping him to his feet and guiding him quite gently to the door. Another man, huge and brooding, with a frame wide enough to cause a brief eclipse came over to help, but the man who was now pretty much holding him up raised a hand to ward him off.

He's no trouble, he said. He just needs to go home. Almost asleep at his table. The huge man lumbered off with a shrug and for a moment he saw the stage again and there was the girl he'd met earlier, she held her Stetson above her head as if she were a cowboy trying to stay atop a bucking steer. Did he imagine that she smiled at him just before he was gently pushed out of the door? He turned to look back, but he was outside and all he saw was the doorman, impassive and unmoving, lounging on a scuffed barstool.

Good night, said the doorman and as he staggered towards the cab rank he knew it was the end of his evening.

She'd left her goodbye note on the fridge. Not even a note really, just a message in coloured plastic letters, some numbers too, like the E with the number 3.

Fuck this and fuck you too Eve it said in a wavering line.

Punctuation, he muttered to himself (it was the kind of mumbled remark that always turned into an argument, usually at the kitchen table for some reason; he blamed his escalating indigestion on Eve's ripe mood swings) then he stared at the 3 at the beginning of Eve for a long time before wiping the message away into a disarrayed rainbow with his hand. An F clattered to the floor making a clicking sound as the magnet bounced out of its plastic holding. He grunted as he kicked it under the cupboard and then he stood on the hollow letter until he heard a crack.

They'd both agreed, no babies, though towards the end (and when was the end, the last screaming match in the bathroom as he stood in the shower, was that the end?) she had decided that she did in fact now want babies. It had become the blunt end of her argument, her one nagging hook in his skin. They rattled cutlery a lot then and she looked at him some mornings as he rose from their bed as if she'd been drugged and he'd done it just to sleep by her side and take something from her.

At night her tight fists would cling to the corners of the bedding as she crunched herself up into a huddle; the edges of the blankets receding like melting snow. He'd come to, his legs bare and a misshapen lump lying next to him. He endured momentarily and then began tugging at her in the half-light, trying to find a vantage point that would free the bedding and upend her on to the floor with a thump. He usually came away with a finger that felt like it would never straighten again. He'd make do by cuddling up close to her prone form, then she'd come to life and wriggle away from his every touch until she reached the end of the mattress and could go no further. There he'd hold on like an infant clenching a balloon, as she sulked her way back to the recesses of sleep.

She left in instalments. The first time she returned she went through the house like a shopper in the sales, fists filled with plastic bags. She thumped around upstairs for a while and then thundered back down so hard that for a moment he thought she'd slipped and fallen. Seeing her again was fraught, naturally, but he had to corral his feelings, he surprised himself not just in the way he had to combat the sadness welling up inside him, but with the dull ache in his dick and the longing that slowly pulsed through his limbs. She slammed the door so hard it sprang back momentarily in a juddering swing and in that moment as she turned they caught each other's eye in the wedge of daylight, the one pulling away from the other and that thing that had connected them both, the inexorable thread, was now stretching, now snapped. Then the click of the door, the simple clunk of the lock and then the silence pooling around his feet as the cat nosed its way past him, head alert, tail twitching a mysterious semaphore.

He'd passed the strip club dozens of times on his commute to and from work. It was out near the airport and on the journey home it glowed dully in the long shadows cast by the highway that ran overhead. It promised dancing girls and liquor in a flashing neon sign that looked underpowered as if the filament was damaged and worn down. He'd first ended out here drinking with some friends after work. He had worn his heartache with a hangdog expression and long, contemplative silences until finally they crowded his cubicle and harangued him out of the door and to a series of bars that ended, with an ever-thinning retinue, at the strip club. He had no idea where everyone was by the time he was gently led out of the door. He wasn't sure how, but he woke the next morning, fully dressed in the chair in his lounge, his shoes neatly placed in the hallway. His answering machine flashed irritably at him with a string of messages. When he sat down to think about it a few hours later he realised that at some point late in the evening he'd moved tables away from his friends on the way back from the bathroom, leaving his case and coat with them. It transpired that he'd come back, forgotten about the people he'd arrived with and found his own table and ordered another drink. They ribbed him about that at work the following week when they'd returned his things.

Man, were you back in the private booths getting lucky? his friends asked. He'd nod silently, forcing a grin and raise a thumb in affirmation, but his eyes never left his computer screen. He remembered he'd called Eve drunk and loathed himself for doing so. He wrote her a letter that he sent to her parents' house, but she'd never replied. A few times he drove slowly past, but had no idea what he might do if she stepped out on the porch and called his name. He briefly imagined the scenario from the Say Anything movie where he stood out on her lawn playing their favourite song from speakers he'd hold aloft above his head. They didn't have a favourite song though and he didn't have speakers big enough. He thought about backing the car up next to the house and opening the doors and playing the stereo loudly, but he knew it wouldn't have the same effect and he worried about her parents' grass. They didn't like him much anyway. Then, much to his own surprise, he found himself down under the highway one night, parking his car near the strip bar. He sat silently and felt the engine cool down. He imagined he saw a shooting star, but realised that it was a domestic flight coming into the airport. He wished on it anyway. If the doorman knew who he was then he didn't show it. He just nodded at him silently as he entered. He didn't recognise the room he was in, though the low stage and some of the haughty-looking waitresses with their giant, circular trays looked familiar. A short brunette girl made a circuit of the stage trying to drum up enthusiasm from the dry-faced men sat in front of her. Her thighs looked taut, the muscles outlined in the spotlight as she made her way slowly to the floor in an exaggerated split and then threw her arms up in the air like a gymnast dismounting. She stood and gave a curt bow and waved. It was a little after six and the stragglers who sat there day after day almost blind and now oblivious to the action were starting to drift away and the evening crowd who replaced them were just coming in.

In transition, he muttered to himself as he found a table near the back and ordered a drink. He tried to pretend that he wasn't waiting for her, but he knew he was. He straightened up almost the instant he spotted her silver cowboy hat circling the stage to disparate whoops and whistles from the thickening crowd at the foot of the stage. That was all he could see though as stragglers filtered in, standing in the space in front of his table peering around in the gloom for a free seat.

Hey, sit down, will ya? he called out to no one in particular, just throwing it off into the throng in front of him, though one man in a black trenchcoat and with a low hairline turned to glare at him. He was worried that the man was about to say something when the guy on the next table called out too; hey, sit down! The man in the trenchcoat turned his attention to him and then the two men were both standing close like they were about to slow dance, bumping their chests and squaring shoulders like prize fighters at a televised weigh-in. The giant of a man he recognised from the other night appeared almost dreamily through the cigarette smoke like a zeppelin that had escaped its mooring and laid a heavy hand on each of the men's shoulders, they both suddenly looked shorter as if gravity had decided to play a cruel trick on them.

Gentlemen, he said, you're spoiling the floorshow for the rest of these people, and they both melted away without a word. The girl in the cowboy hat was miming a lasso and pretending to pull those in the front row towards her. They, in return, were braying lustily and thrusting bills at her. She took off her hat and held it upward and watched it fill with money. She turned, bent seductively over and placed the hat carefully on the floor and pushed it away with the toe of her shoe and then undid the bow at the back of her chaps and snatched them quickly away to more whooping and whistling. She dropped to the floor backwards, he couldn't see how over the heads of those at the front craning their necks for a better view and then he caught sight of her momentarily, she looked like she was humping the floor and then she flipped over and arched her back and thrust her crotch in the air, then bunched her knees up to her breasts and then collapsed back on to the stage like a starfish washed ashore. Then she was back on her feet, legs splayed, leaning towards the audience, then moving sensuously forward in measured steps, just out of reach of the imploring hands before her. He felt a pang of envy and anger that surprised him as someone made a grab for her arm, but she ducked it with a smile and gave the over-eager patron a generous jiggle before she turned and then she too dropped gracefully to the floor to end her set with the splits, one fist held defiantly high.

The next time she asked him if he wanted a private dance he said yes and followed her blindly from his table to a tiny private room in the back. It wasn't much bigger than a toilet stall and had about as much charm. A small lamp cast a dusty umbrella of light and she was suddenly much closer to him than he wanted her to be, he imagined seduction or something like it, but she flicked her head and her hair was in his mouth. Rock music rattled out of a tiny speaker behind him, the bass notes making it vibrate and every so often a face would appear through the curtains that acted as a partition and one of the club's security men would check to see that the no touching rule (written in marker pen on a piece of A4 paper tacked to the wall) was being adhered to. He tried to strike up a conversation, but she just laughed and placed a finger against his lips without missing a single, gyrating beat. As he paid her she placed a lingering hand on his thigh and he felt a stab of delirium rocket through his brain and he found himself sitting back out by the bar finding warmth where his loneliness had been. He'd just stepped out of the club when the large black car pulled up near him and the man with the oil in his hair got out. They nodded at each other.

You good? asked the man.

Thanks for the other night, he replied. Sorry, you know, I was pretty drunk.

I've seen worse, smiled the man as he made for the entrance. He looked back. Looks like we'll make a regular of you yet, he said. The doorman patted him gently on the back as he made his way in.

He was right about that, it went from one night to two to three nights a week. The doormen started to nod hello as he made his way into the club. His friends at work asked where he was running around to at night and soon the rumour spread that he'd found someone new and he let it. He couldn't afford the private dances every time he went there, but he was happy to sit in a space near the back, order drinks from the waitress and wait for her to appear on stage. He found solace and comfort in the routine. She'd stop by and talk to him some nights and try to entice him to come through to the back, but he showed her the open maw of his empty wallet and they'd both laugh and she'd walk away with her glittering chaps riding high on her hips. One night he came in already drunk from another bar that he'd visited after work and when the waitress asked for his drink order he realised that he had no money on him and no money on his card to set up a tab and so he asked if he could just sit quietly for a while and just watch.