Little Cat (10 page)

I ran downstairs right after I finished. Lani and Coco were smoking in the hallway before they went on. A lot of the girls there never really liked me, so I couldn’t ask them for a puff, even though I wanted one. All I ever needed was one puff.

It was disgusting for us down in the basement. Paint was flaking off the ceiling and it smelled like piss because the pipes were too hot. Adi was down there getting ready. I looked at myself beside her in the mirror. My eyes were starting to run. Sometimes I thought I looked like a hot sexy bitch right after I danced – not some pig-breathed, nineteen-year-old thing. But if I kept staring and staring, I saw a smeary-eyed person whose head didn’t belong on her body, whose tits hung too low, whose legs were too big.

‘Look at me,’ I said.

Adi was looking at herself.

‘Look. I look disgusting.’

Adi rolled her eyes.

‘I look like an elephant.’

‘No.’ Adi laughed. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be grey and fat.’

So why was I always looking down when I danced? Why did my tits feel like elephants’ trunks?

Adi got up and came behind me. Her long skinny arms roped round my waist. She stared at us both in the mirror and said, ‘Up there, on your hands and knees, you put some kind of spell on them. Makes them go crazy!’

Adi could stop me from crying. Well, I wasn’t really crying. Adi whispered at my neck, ‘You look so good. Everyone sees.’

I sat down and watched Adi finish her makeup. Her straight white-blond hair was tied in two ponytails. She put baby-blue eyeshadow high on her lids. All of it seemed so easy for her. I thought she must’ve known how to do this stuff forever. Makeup made her look even more beautiful.

Adi gave me a little kiss on the cheek before she left for upstairs. I tried to fix myself up, but I couldn’t do it right. I put too much gunk in the grooves around my nose. All I had was a pink skirt and a red tank top in my locker. I never really matched but I didn’t care. I didn’t think that the men cared either. If they didn’t like what I was wearing, so what. I had high heels and big tits.

Adi was the only thing that ever made me get back up there. I wanted to see her dance. The way she moved made it seem like nothing bad had ever happened in her body. Pushing away the floor with her feet, shaking her hips, smiling:
Come with me, come
… Adi’s tongue slid in front of her teeth, you had to be quick to see how she did it, first coming out between her two lips, then curling over her teeth, licking:
Come
. When she shook her ass at a guy, it was like she was in love with him. Her pussy out in front of his mouth, she’d hold his chin and practically feed it to him.

It was as if Adi had no fear. The way a vulture has no fear when it’s eating the dead.

When I watched her dance, I knew I could do it too. Rush through the beat of those hundred white eyes, plow through the stink of their forced-back come. The men in tight circles, with gritting teeth and short breaths, moving their bottles up to their mouths.

‘Mira! Mira!’

It all happened in slow motion. Those men didn’t know if what they were looking at was real.

‘Hey, I liked your dance, sweetheart,’ said the bald one in front of me. His stomach bulged out like a baby’s. ‘Sweetheart, c’mere.’

The guy tapped his knee. I moved hip to hip toward him and turned myself around. I always showed them my ass right away.

‘Yeah. I like that, darlin’.’

I sat on his thigh and wiggled around, pretending to get comfortable.

‘Yeah, shit! I like that.’

I arched my back over the guy’s gut and pumped my hips in time to the beat. I felt heat from the floor move up to my cunt.

‘Name’s Bill, darlin’.’

I kept moving myself.

‘How much for another?’

‘Forty.’

‘All right, another. I like how this one moves.’

There was a man at the table with Bill, a skinny guy who’d taken off his glasses. I saw his hands move underneath the table. Two of them, I was getting off the two of them! Bill started snorting behind me, telling me I was a wild girl. I thought for a second that the whole bar was watching my tits move up and down in my top, watching the way that my ass did a grind. I thought all the guys were going to gather around just to witness my cunt glistening.

‘Wild, Mira, wild!’

I stood up and braced my hands on the table. I bent my knees deep and pumped back in his face.

‘Oh man, shit, she likes that!’

I turned around quickly and raised my hands in the air. I was dancing now, just like Adi. I looked down at Bill’s eyes. They were squinty and roaming. I put my hands on his chin and made him look up.

‘I’m gonna take this wild one back to the hotel!’

‘Don’t do that,’ I heard the other guy say. ‘They have it right upstairs if you want it.’

I’m shaking
, I thought.
All I’m doing is shaking.

‘Nah. I want this one back at my place.’

‘I don’t do that,’ I said, smiling.

‘Yes you do, darlin’. How much you want?’

‘I don’t do that.’

‘Told you. She doesn’t do that.’

‘How much?’

‘No.’

‘Come on … ’

‘No.’

‘She thinks she’s better than you, Billy.’

‘How much you want, wild one?’

‘You can come to the back,’ I said.

‘Yeah? What’s at the back for a young guy like me?’

‘Private dance.’

‘All right, sweetheart, lead the way.’

‘Oh boy, now you’re fucked, Billy.’

I turned on my heels, holding on to Bill’s hand. It was soft and fat, all the fingers stuck together. I really thought everyone in the club was watching. ‘All right, Mira!’ they shouted. ‘I’m next! I’m next!’ The sound of my heels pockmarked the floor. A vulture, no fear, eating the dead.

In the booth at the back, I sat on the table. Bill slid in front of me, eyes at my crotch. Light pricked all over his face in white dots. I inched my panties down to my knees.

‘That’s it, sweetheart.’

I started rubbing my clit around with two fingers. Bill followed my rhythm on the mound of his pants.

‘That’s it, Mira. C’mon, how about a kiss?’

Still rubbing myself, I leaned close to Bill’s face. He smelled like perfume mixed up with beer. I pursed my lips at his torn-up beard. Then I leaned back and rested my ankles on his shoulders. I gave Bill a view. That’s what he wanted, to see:
That’s how she opens, that’s where I fuck.

All of a sudden, Bill gripped me hard by the waist. I slid off the table right onto his lap.

‘I know you’re a wild one!’

With me wedged in between the table and his gut, a tight little spot started to pulse in his crotch.

‘Another song, sweetheart.’ The music kept pounding. ‘Come on, darlin’, you know what I like.’

‘Sixty,’ I said.

Bill breathed like a fool. I was jiggling, splayed open, trying to turn myself around.

‘I see your pussy! What a pretty little pussy you got there.’

My skirt was up around my waist. I undid my bra and let him pinch my nipples as I tried to settle on his legs in the right spot. I was bouncing up and down. I wanted the cash.

‘Yeah, lemme feel.’

His hands moved to my ass. It smelled different in the room, like a match had just been blown out.

‘There you go, lemme feel.’

His finger was a slug.

‘You’re wet, sweetheart, yeah … ’

‘More?’ I whispered, looking behind me.

Eyes screwed shut, Bill was nodding his head.

‘Ninety.’

‘Yeah, just suck it, please.’

His finger fell out of me.

‘Kiss it, sweetheart, kiss it, please.’

I slid under the table. Old cigarette butts stuck to my knees. I swam forward an inch through the walls of his thighs. I trickled some juice on him, forming a suck. I looked up at Bill. He was as hard as the floor.

Just a few sudden mouthfuls of cock and I swallowed his cash like a curse down my throat.

‘Are you okay?’ I remember the way John stroked my forehead after we’d had sex for the first time. It felt repetitive, insistent.

I wanted to hide.

‘Mira. C’mon, baby, open your eyes.’

There was a candle making shadows on the ceiling. My back was glued to the couch. John was squeezed in beside me.

‘What time is it?’ I asked.

‘It’s okay, Mira. It’s not late at all.’

I was covering myself with my arms.

‘Why don’t you say something?’

‘I have to go home.’ The whole room was flickering.

‘Stay just a few more minutes,’ John said. He started drawing circles around my breasts. ‘You never finished telling me about your cousin, what’s his name?’

‘Who?’

‘Your cousin?’

‘Oh.’

‘Well … ?’

‘Ezrah.’

John dipped a finger in me. ‘Wow, you’re still wet.’

‘Stop!’

‘You want me to stop?’

I felt buzzing in my body. Buzzing through my nipples and all down my legs.

‘Okay, baby, okay.’

John reached over me to open a drawer under the coffee table. He took out a thin cigarette and lit it from the candle. He started taking deep puffs. Then he put it between my lips.

I shook my head.

‘Trust me, baby, it’ll make you feel good.’

I breathed in a bit but started to cough.

‘Come on. Just a little more,’ he laughed.

I tried but it still wouldn’t go all the way down my throat. Marijuana smoke, it smelled like bad cheese.

‘Let me do something to you, Mira.’

John looked up to the ceiling and took a deep suck of the joint. Then with his cheeks all puffed out he put his lips over mine. He blew such a huge blast of smoke down my throat that it inflated my stomach and went all the way to my vagina.

‘Feel good?’ John asked, sounding proud.

It smelled like him inside me.

‘God, you look beautiful.’

My mouth gaped wide. My eyelids were boiling.

‘I mean it, baby. You look like a princess.’

I started laughing. A Jewish American Princess!

‘Shhh … Mira, tell me about your cousin. What was his name again?’

‘Ezrah.’ I was dizzy.

‘Ezzzzraaaaah,’ John yawned. ‘What kind of name is that? Hey, baby, you okay? What kind of name is that?’

‘Hebrew.’

‘You’re Jewish?’

Tiny sharp prickling erupted in my wrists.

‘My family.’

‘So you grew up that way?’

I nodded my head up and down too fast. It made me feel sick.

‘Wow. Are you religious?’

‘No!’

‘Hey, hey, sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable … ’

I shifted around on the couch. I thought I might vomit.

‘Hey, come on, baby,’ John whispered. ‘I’ve just never met anyone Jewish before.’

My body felt like it was buzzing full of bees. They were swarming inside the veins of my wrists, making my skin balloon out all red. I was biting the inside of my mouth to make it stop. Sour stuff coated the walls of my cheeks.

‘Hey. Hey, Mira! I said I was sorry.’

John was trying to turn me toward him. I didn’t want to move. I shut my lips tight. But then he started stroking my arms softly and I felt a too-loud laughter coming on. It was like he was skinning me.

‘What happened to you?’ My nipples were raw. ‘When was the first time? Come on, forget about it, you’re so wet, it’s all good … ’

My skin was breaking apart like a net. Each time he touched me the holes got so wide. It was hard to breathe right.

‘Six. I was six.’

‘Really, six?’

‘Yeah, six. I was sicks!’ I started laughing and laughing. I was all made of holes.

‘What happened? God, mmmmbabe, you’re so wet.’

John’s big hand was a cup under my vagina. His other hand squeezed and squeezed on my tit.

‘He and his friends made me go down like their doggy.’

God, it was funny! Did I really say that?

John dropped his mouth to my mouth and pushed his tongue in me. I tightened. I sucked it. Sicks, I was sicks.

‘Like the woman on her hands and knees in the pictures … ’

John’s fingers went up me.

The Joy of Sex!

‘Shhh, babe, what’s so funny?’

‘All the guys stood around her in a circle.’

John’s fingers wiggled. I bucked up my hips.

‘Four of them were there.’