My body is still singing on Saturday morning from the night I spent with Trey. He’s home for Thanksgiving.
“Where were you all night?” Cici asks when I come back to our room, my hair wrapped in a towel.
“Hmmm.” I smile, letting her use her very active imagination.
“Really?” The juicy tidbit is just what she likes. “Who with?”
“Trey.”
“Oh.” The disappointment drips off her tongue, and she flops back down onto her bed.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Monogamy is dead. I keep telling you,” she purrs.
“I like our monogamy.” I pull the towel off my head and start running my fingers through my hair, working through the tangles. “You still gonna take me to the airport?”
She moans. “Lover boy doesn’t want to?”
“They’re on their way to Black Bear. They’re skiing today, getting ready for Aspen.”
“He didn’t ask you to come?” She smirks.
“He did ask me, but I already have a ticket to Illinois, remember?” I look at her though my hair. “Hence, the airport this morning.”
“Oh yeah.” She rolls her eyes.
“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”
“I’m going to Vegas with Amber,” she says, nonchalant.
“Not going home then?” I sit down on her bed, and she reaches out, drawing her fingers through my hair, helping with the tangles.
“This is home, silly.”
“You know I love you?”
She meets my eyes and smiles, but I only see the sadness.
Cici has a new car—a black, two-door Thunderbird. After her Rabbit spun out in August, she sold it for scrap and had me drop her at a car dealership in Escondido. She wouldn’t let me stay, and when she came home, she had the Thunderbird. Clearly, stripping is paying well. I could probably get a new car, but I hate to spend the money and my Little Red has personality.
“I picked up my cards yesterday,” she says, turning down the radio when the thought strikes her.
I have a vague memory of a dusk-to-dawn conversation about her “Destiny” cards. “How’d they turn out?”
“They’re great. Reach around there. They are in the box in the back seat.” I shift and reach across into the back seat, into the box, fingering the edges of the cards before catching one and bringing it out. It is full color and glossy, just like mine. I’ve pulled it out facing front and see her full body, where mine is only a headshot. She is standing in one of her sequined costumes with the camera positioned low, shooting up her body. The backdrop is black, and she looks tall and lean, exotic. Even as I think it doesn’t look like her at all, it is absolutely her. She looks strong and sexy, her lips glossed to a high sheen and her eyes looking into the camera with such desire that I feel a small pull in my stomach.
This is not so different from some of the images in my portfolio, highlighting bathing suits and underwear. There is good money in lingerie advertising. Victoria’s Secret is, of course, the biggest, but there are several catalogs that pay well. Catalogs are the real moneymakers—for me, anyway. I’m too short for the runway, so I won’t ever get one of those contracts.
“Wow,” I say, feeling numb and stunned. “Why are you not modeling?”
She laughs, “Who says I’m not?” She cocks an eyebrow, daring me to ask. “Just because I don’t model the stuff you model, doesn’t mean I’m not modeling.”
“I had no idea. Why didn’t you tell me?” All along I’ve felt like I had to keep it to myself, low key, because I was afraid she’d be jealous.
“Honestly?” She quirks an eyebrow.
“Yes! You can tell me anything. You’re my best friend.”
“I don’t know.” Her voice rises in doubt, mocking me. “Sometimes you’re kinda old woman, you know.”
“A Mildred?” I ask, remembering the day she had called me that, way back when.
She laughs. “Yeah! I forgot that! You are definitely a Mildred.”
I let our laughter roll until the car is quiet again. “Seriously, though, you can tell me anything.”
“Anything?” There is a dangerous glint in her eye. “I got my butt bleached.”
I swallow wrong and cough until I can finally speak. “What does that even mean?”
“Use your imagination.” She giggles.
I pull my lips back and narrow my eyes. She catches sight of me and guffaws. “See, you’re a prude.”
“No. No, not all. That’s cool. Awesome. Wow.”
She busts out laughing, and when I can’t think of anything else to stammer, I laugh with her.
“Look at the back,” she says, and I flip the card. There are three separate pictures of her, the center one lying on her stomach looking up into the camera, her back arched, pushing her rear up to create a curve, like a cat stretching. The side images are sedate, photographed from the waist up, much like my first card, but with more sex, one in a lacy, white, button-down blouse and the other in a black turtleneck.
A phone number lines the bottom of the card along with her name “Destiny” in a script that breaks into the more sedate picture.
“Wow,” I say again, at an utter loss for words.
“Isn’t it great?” There is so much pride in her voice that I reach out and touch her arm.
“It’s gorgeous,” I agree. “Wow. You’re stunning.” I am transfixed. “Wait, that’s not your mobile number.”
“My manager’s number,” she says, and even in that, there is pride.
“You have a manager?” I don’t have a manager yet. Sean is my agent, and I guess that’s the same thing. “Wow,” I say again, and she laughs. “So what does this open you up for?”
“Everything, you know, modeling, film, commercials, parties . . . you know, everything.” I get the feeling that everything really does encompass everything.
“That’s great,” I say, although there is a small, dark hole growing in the pit of my stomach.
“You should meet him. He’s really great. He looks out for us, you know?”
I nod, finally pulling my eyes off the card.
“There’s more money in what I’m doing than you can imagine. You are so wasting yourself.”
“I like what I’m doing,” I say, and she humphs, because clearly the party is happening wherever she is.
I look over at her, Cici, with her dress so tight that there is no room for underwear, an hour before noon, and her face made up from foundation to lashes. Neither of us came from a good start; neither of us came from people who necessarily believed in us. Why am I such a prude and she’s not? Is it those little moments I remember with my mother, before she became so broken and stopped looking at me, that make me want to do something more? Did she instill that in me somewhere along the way? I don’t want to be somebody’s toy. I don’t want my life to be about sex. I don’t want people to be around me because they think I’m going to blow them for twenty bucks or a line of cocaine. A small click sounds in my head, like a bell or chime, and I realize something that I hadn’t known before. Ed did that to me. He’s the one that made it so I could never be free about sex.
I like sex, and I don’t like sex. It’s all very complicated inside of me, and sometimes my not liking it gets folded in with me liking it, and I just feel all off. I know, and knew even before taking the psychology class, that all of my emotions about sex are tied in with the emotions I have about the men my mother dated and how they treated me. It’s not so hard to see that Cici is just living the life she knows. “They repeat what they know,” Vaude had said, and I can’t say we don’t.
I wonder if Cici doesn’t feel the same conflict about sex because she got something from it when she was young. Is she like Pavlov’s dog, working her way through the maze, looking for whatever reward comes at the end? Is she okay making sex a business now because she got a cut from her brother and the neighbor boy? Or is it because nobody ever told she was good for something else? Did anyone ever tell her how smart she is or how much potential she has? Did anyone ever tell her she has value beyond sex? The thought just makes me sad. It’s not the life I want for her, but it’s not mine to choose.
“Do you think I could go by Mildred?” I make a great show of puckering my lips into a grotesque pout.
She snorts and laughs, a great belly laugh, letting the car swerve as she reaches over and puts her hand on my arm. “Yes! You would have to go by Mildred.”
I laugh with her, letting the moment fold around us like a cocoon. I wish I could keep her here like this, smiling and happy, beautiful and strong. For this moment, she is my best good friend Cici, and it is as if everything else just washes away. Even if she does have a bleached butt.
She pulls up to the drop-off zone, and I climb out, letting the front seat fall forward to get my bag. I stand on the curb and lean in to give her a long-distance hug. “Thanks for bringing me.”
She waves her hand. “Pshaw.”
“You know I love you, girl,” I say, and her eyes flutter. “Be safe.”
“I love you, too. You be safe,” she says, watching a plane rising up from behind the building. I nod, feeling there is something more I need to say, suddenly feeling I will never see her again. “I’ll fly back next Tuesday.”
“I know. I’ll pick you up. It’s on the calendar.”
I squeeze her hand then, and my fingers slide free as the driver behind us revs his engine and blows his horn. She looks in the rearview mirror as I straighten out of the car, closing the door and stepping back. I watch her drive away before I head into the airport to figure out where my gate is.