If you followed the bank of the river to the west, only thirty miles away from Preston Mills, you would find Tammy, in Brockville, Ontario. She worked in a strip club but was not a stripper. She was something even dumber than that: she was a topless waitress. Serving drinks, emptying ashtrays, wiping up tables, taking crap from drunken idiots. All with her shirt off. In a bar called Jiggles.
Dumbest job ever.
When she had first started working at the bar, she had felt so exposed, like she had been peeled. She didn’t know how to stand, how to walk, how to bend over and pick things up. Everything felt like a pose. And she couldn’t keep her eyes off the girls on the stage, their legs in the air, opening and closing like fans. But it didn’t take long to forget, for it all to seem normal. For the dancers to fade into the background. For her own skin to start to feel like a uniform she slipped into at the start of each shift.
Until the day she met Fenton. Fucking Fenton.
A mouse of a man, sitting with a loud tangle of municipal workers in the back corner of the bar. One night, he had detached himself from the group and started following her around. Clearing tables for her, helping her restock the bar at the end of the night, asking her questions about her life. Her family. And suddenly, she felt nude all over again. And angry. And in love.
In love with Fenton Osborne. How could it be? Short and skinny, crazy as a loon. But he just wore away at her like sandpaper on a board until everything was smooth and easy and she couldn’t imagine her life without him anymore.