I kick my shoes off inside the door, leaving them scattered in my haste to catch the phone. The grocery bags slide down my arms to rest on the floor
“Hello?”
“I need you to come and get me,” Cici says sounding frantic.
“What happened?” My blood rushes, my mind kicking toward all the worst-case scenarios. A small well of disappointment mingles with my thoughts, because when I heard the phone ringing from outside I had hoped it was Trey. He left for Stanford two days ago, and I feel like I’ve lost a limb.
“My car broke.” Her car is a piece of crap that she has been holding together with duct tape and spit for months.
“Where?” I put a pen to the notepad to write down her answer.
“I’m heading to work. I can’t be late.” There is real panic in her voice, desperation. “Come get me,” she whines. I let out a long sigh, not excited about driving in San Diego’s rush hour
“Fine. Where are you?” I ask, needing more details than on my way to work provides.
“On 15. Heading downtown.”
“I’m on my way.” I slip on my shoes and head out. I let Trey fill my mind as I drive. I can’t believe how much I miss him. We’ve talked all month about him going, about how we will stay in touch. How he’ll be home some weekends, and I can come there. But Stanford is eight hours away, which is almost halfway back to Illinois. It seems too far.
I find Cici on the freeway, pretty much where she said she would be. She is standing on the grass side of a guardrail, and her car is facing the wrong way along the edge. She is dressed in a tiny black dress that I am surprised hasn’t lured droves of men to her aid. She scrambles into my car and pushes her duffle bag between the front seats to the floorboard in the back. She looks frazzled, but only around her eyes. Her hair is perfect, slicked and straight, and her makeup is clean, so she hasn’t been crying. But her eyes are wide, pupils dilated.
“What happened?” I ask as I start gearing up to merge back onto the freeway.
“I don’t know,” she squeaks. “I was just driving, ya know, and it, like, I don’t know . . . it, like, gave a little shimmy, and then it just stopped.”
“It’s facing the wrong way. Did you get hit?”
She looks at me, and I look back at her, her mouth open in a small circle. Then her wide eyes look past me. “No, it, like, stopped, the wheels stopped, and it just spun. I thought I was gonna die.”
“Wow. I’m glad you’re okay.”
She lets out a long shudder. Cici holds herself pretty tight most times, so that shuddering breath tells me a lot about how shook up she is.
“I need a drink,” she says, and a small laugh cascades over her lips, rebounding from the windshield.
She tells me where to exit and into which dirty parking lot to enter. The low-slung building has blacked-out windows and a neon sign that says The Club, flashing in pink. She gets out of the car, and I sit there, trying to decide what to do.
“What are you doing?” she asks, leaning back into the door.
“Nothing.”
“Well, you can’t sit out here all night. Come on.”
“I don’t want to go in there, Cici.”
“Well, you can’t just sit out here. You’ll get, like, raped or something.” She is impatient, needing to get inside.
“Why do you work here?”
She rolls her eyes and rubs her thumb and her fingers together. She sighs. “You do whatever you want, but inside is better than outside, and I have to go. I’ll buy you dinner.” I shake my head but pull the keys out of the ignition. I can’t leave her without a way to get home. The risk of having some random guy bring her home and then knowing where we live is too great. I think about calling Trey and seeing if he could do something, but of course he’s already up at Stanford. I run through the list of other people I could call. John, or one of the girls at the apartment, but that would mean leaving my car here. I’m pretty sure Cici will be lit when she is done with the night and doubt she could drive a stick, even sober.
I push myself out of the car and hurry to catch Cici as she opens the door to the ugly building. A beefy, bald-headed man waves her in, and me behind her. It is dark, and there is something about the feel of the low-pile carpet beneath my shoes that suggests moistness. I nearly gag when I think of where that moistness could have come from, but I swallow hard and follow her around the stage and through a door that leads to the dressing rooms. The floor back here is at least linoleum, old and cracked, but not moist, and I am relieved.
“You’re welcome to sit out front and watch.” Cici gives me a lascivious wink as she slings her bag onto the counter in front of a mirror. There are three other women here, all in various stages of undress and redress. Cici gives me names for each—one is Bambi, one is Coco, and one is Jasmine. I am sick. These are not real names. These are stage names, of course, and I ask Cici what she goes by. She smiles. “I go by Destiny.” I would laugh, but it seems so sad that I just nod my head.
“If it’s okay, I’m gonna just sit here,” I say, heading for the sofa that backs up to the wall behind the stage. “I have to work early tomorrow.” I am grateful for my jeans, because I don’t want my skin to touch the fabric. I fold my bare arms across my chest, disgusted. Is there really such a difference in them using fake names and me going by Ali on my comp cards? We are all trading on our looks.
Cici nods but doesn’t say anything as she begins stripping out of her tiny black dress, which is apparently still more clothing than acceptable at The Club. She pulls out her costume from inside the duffle bag, and I wonder where she gets the sequined bras and g-strings. They are clearly made for her body, to show off every curve in the best possible light. Tonight she is wearing a silver set, and over that, she pulls on a tiny white dress that almost suggests a wedding dress, with a short, flared skirt that does a full peekaboo of her rear when she spins. She checks herself in the mirror, adding a sheen of gloss to her lips, puckering, smiling, checking her teeth.
The reverb from the dance floor shakes the wall behind my head, and I close my eyes, not wanting to feel like a voyeur to her preening. I would never have the confidence to dance. I’m not even comfortable dancing in my clothes.
Behind the dark lids of my eyes, I see my mother, from a night long ago. One of the nights when Mr. Billups had given me a ride home from the hardware store. I had seen her from the front window, pulling her bra free of her breasts in a game of strip poker. I see, replaying in my memory, the practiced releasing of the clasp, the theatrical shift of her shoulders setting her breasts in motion, freeing them without the assistance of her hands. Was this something my mother had done? Had she stripped in a club somewhere along the way? Or just at the kitchen table with her friends? Mr. Billups never let on that he saw, but the window was lit and she was glowing like an image from a television into a darkened room. I don’t know how he could have not seen. I try to reframe my memories of her, trying to remember if she ever said anything to suggest her dancing in a club. I try to remember if I ever saw her practice dance moves, the way Cici does, with careful attention to the pivot of the hip. There is nothing, and I don’t know if it is because it wasn’t there or because I wasn’t noticing her.
