Little Cat (12 page)

‘Daddy says you take care of me! Daddy, come!’ she yelled in English.

It was witchy. She was witchy. I felt witchy too.

Nadia opened another can of Coke. ‘I can’t fucking take this tonight, Mira, not tonight. Holy mother of Jesus. Can you help shut Adi up? I just really can’t take it tonight. I just need her to shut up. She’s been here for hours.’

‘Okay.’

‘Oh God, thank you, Mir. You’re a good girl. Always.’

I jumped off the bar stool. I don’t even know if I walked or ran. But now I was standing before Adi’s long and tightly crossed thighs.

She handed me one of the cigarettes, which was now half-done. ‘Smoke,’ she said.

I took it and started smoking. I felt Nadia watching me closely, stressed. I wanted to chop off her bunny head. It’s, like,
You asked me to do this, now leave me alone!

Right away, up close, I knew Adi was something special. I mean she was hard like Nadia but blond-Russian-sexual times ten.

‘You know about this titty bar?’ Adi asked.

‘You mean the one down the street?’

Adi was looking me up and down, thinking.

‘You have never come,’ she said, smiling.

That shocked me. I mean, I knew she meant that I had never come. When I had. I’d come!

‘Guys who come to my club know exactly how they come, why they come, you understand?’

I smoked. I looked at the exit sign. I wanted to be friends with this fucked-up Russian girl. I mean, she seemed radical, as if she knew all about men. This girl wouldn’t ever be scared of a man. This girl could tell me what I’d been doing with John.

The last time I’d been at Carousel’s Nadia had slipped me about five rum and Cokes and I got so drunk I gave some roadie a blow job in the toilet. I cringed at the thought of that. He was disgusting, disgusting.

Adi reached out and grabbed the hand I was smoking with.

‘Closer,’ she said.

It made me nervous. Heat from the cigarette moved toward my fingers. I shuffled in toward her.

‘You have good eyes.’

Then Adi let go of my wrist. Nadia started coughing hysterically, trying to get me back. I couldn’t stop staring at Adi, though, how light her eyes were with these star-shaped gold slits. The makeup made her look so dramatic, like a queen. For more than ten seconds we were eye into eye. My face froze. I felt pulled to a stop in the middle of running. How long can a girl keep looking at a girl?

Then the corners of Adi’s eyes twitched and she looked away. I think she was surprised that I didn’t stop staring at her first. She banged on the bar. She yelled at Nadia in Russian.

Nadia didn’t come. She was talking to another girl from our class where I had been with her at the opposite side of the bar. I hated that girl, who wore her hair in these toddler-style pigtails. We were nineteen! We were too old to wear our hair like that.

‘Immigrant!’ Adi screamed at Nadia.

I laughed in shock. Nadia was totally anxious and fired up as she came over to us. ‘If my father hadn’t plucked you out of the gutter you would still be there, okay?’ Nadia said to Adi.

‘Fatherfucker.’ Adi spit on the bar again. Her spit was a puddle of foam.

I stood at Adi’s side and I felt something for her. Or I felt so different all of a sudden with Adi, as if I were already on her side against Nadia. I felt totally grossed out about Nadia’s father. It was like some secret fucked-up childhood thing had just been exposed.

Nadia looked like she was about to cry. ‘Mira, come talk to me before you leave, okay?’

Adi let out a mean little laugh. ‘Don’t worry, Mira’s gonna
come
.’

I laughed at that too. Nadia pleaded at me with her eyes. What the fuck was Nadia so scared of? That her father was being outed as a prick?

‘I’ll call you later, okay?’ I said to Nadia.

Adi began to laugh hysterically at what was going on between me and Nadia. It was embarrassing, like she knew everything about our friendship, all its weak parts, its cracks.

Adi jumped off the bar stool and got her goat’s fur from the ground. ‘Tell your daddy all is good,’ she said to Nadia. ‘I don’t bug you people anymore.’

Adi’s body was so skinny but she had too-high tits and a bubble-type ass. I felt like a guy watching her. Adi twisted her shoulders into her coat and I was standing there like a fool, thinking:
But I just got here, don’t go!

‘So, you coming or what, baby?’

Baby? Someone else calling me
baby!

There was something about Adi’s neck. It kept tilting to one side. It was thin like a branch that would snap in the wind.

‘Okay, that’s it. She is coming. She likes us Russian girls. We are smart.’

Adi winked at Nadia. She rubbed two fingers together. Money.

I didn’t look back at Nadia and the pigtailed bitch at the bar. I felt like she hated me now. I went with Adi into the night. My chest felt empty. Nadia. Adi grabbed my wrist. Then my hand.

‘You make a name for yourself,’ Adi said, lighting a joint. ‘Not your true name.’

The titty bar was down near the water where all the factories were. Me and Adi shared the joint. We didn’t really speak and I didn’t know why. I couldn’t imagine myself with a different name. Adi sounded real to me. I couldn’t believe I was holding her hand. The pot was so strong that my heart started seizing, skipping beats. Cars were double-parked along the sides of the road.

The bar was unmarked – it looked like a factory building. There were silver circled mirrors on the front door.

When Adi pulled me inside, she let go of my hand. What was my name?
Mirat? Mirnot?
It was a dark flashing room, full of mirrors, high ceilings and painted black walls. Girls writhed upward, humping on poles. Inside their mouths it was shining like sirens. I crushed my face into Adi’s fur coat. She elbowed me off her. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know who it was in those mirrors: men squatted in circles with beers in their crotches or girls with their nipples pushing through their bras. Those girls looked like wolves with the hair all shaved off them!

‘Bitches,’ Adi whispered. She took my hand again. Thank god.

I was coughing, but I was with her.

‘Hey, Adi, who you got there? Who’s your little friend?’ I saw this one guy staring at me like a hunter. ‘What’s her name? You bring her for me?’

My name is not Mira. Call me Sexpot.

The man was so weirdly hot. He had thick eyebrows. He held out his hand. It was massive, with veins jutting up above each knuckle. I squeezed Adi’s hand even tighter.

‘Tell me, Adi, where’d you find this little hairy one?’

He thought I was disgusting?

‘Go fuck yourself, Gio.’

The man stood up, smiling. He was probably six foot five. I stepped backward, away. That
hairy
thing hurt.

Adi was dragging me past him too fast.
Wait a second!
I wanted to scream. I felt suddenly violent and bold from the pot. I wanted to stay and kick his asshole in. I didn’t brush my hair, that’s true. So fucking what? My legs were unshaved, my armpits too. What did that asshole know about my thighs?
My name is Mira, you asshole.
I have only one name. I tried not to stare back at the guy as Adi yanked me away from him. Suddenly we stopped – Adi bumped into some girl wearing a muzzle and a thong. The music turned into a woman’s heavy breathing.

I made myself look back at Gio, that guy. He was watching me with this horrible smile. His eyes were wild, too wide, outlined with black. He looked like a man who could slice a goat’s neck and not blink. I really couldn’t take it. I let my eyes drop to his legs. His two huge thighs shifted open a bit.

I thought he was telling me:
It’s okay. I’m sorry. Come back.

I hated myself. I was getting wet. I felt tinier and younger than anyone in the room.

Then the man turned both his palms up and showed me the basins of his grip.
Come here
, he signed. I felt the motions in my pussy.
Come over here and sit on my lap.

I heard Adi getting in some kind of fight with the muzzle-thonged girl. Adi started swearing. She was pulling me away. Sticky wet lines smeared between my thighs.

When I finally looked back up at Gio’s face, he had a woman climbing on his lap. He hadn’t been motioning to me. Gio’s thick-knuckled hands were on the girl’s waist and she was writhing around like a puppy in pain.

‘Cocksucker,’ Adi hissed at the sight of Gio and the girl. ‘Fucking bitch, Lani’s got his cock in her mouth like a bone.’

It was about fifteen minutes before we closed the next Saturday when John came back to the café. He was carrying flowers and he’d shaved. It was like he thought I was the love of his life.

I hadn’t given him my number because I didn’t want him to call me at home. I didn’t want my parents to ask who he was. I took his number, though, and said I would call. He made me promise I would call. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I felt too weird after I left that night. John had called me a cab, he’d even given me money for the ride, and I started hyperventilating the second I got into the car. It was quiet, I mean, the cab driver didn’t know, but I couldn’t stop thinking:
What’d I just do?
I could still feel John’s tongue pushing into my mouth, his tongue making all the noises of sex.

Seeing him standing in front of me, with those flowers, at work, all I could remember was his sandpaper tongue. And his purple hanging cock, how it swung from side to side. I remembered exactly how the whole thing went in me. Over and over, that feeling in my gut, and the second time, too, how I wanted it to happen … But I knew I didn’t want it to happen ever again! I didn’t want him as my boyfriend in that house that stunk of meat.

John kissed my forehead. He seemed sheepish. ‘Hey, Mira. How about the flowers?’

I took them and put my face in them. Ribbon carnations. Their gross perfume made me think of my period. I’d gotten it in the middle of the night a few days after the sex. I bled so much that it went through the mattress. My mother was mad. ‘That was your grandfather’s mattress,’ she said.

‘You’re getting off soon, right? I’ll wait for you here. We’ll go get something to eat.’

John thought I was just going to go with him? That I was his girlfriend or something? He was standing too close to me. I wasn’t even off work yet. I had to sweep the floor, mop it and put away the cash.

‘I’m still busy,’ I said.

My voice sounded mean. I didn’t mean for it to be so mean. I left the flowers on a table and started sweeping. My head was saying to him:
Leave, leave, leave
.

‘I’ll wait.’

John just stood there. I had to sweep around his greasy, fraying jeans.
Fucking leave! Just leave!
I was going to scream it.

‘Stop for a second, Mira.’

I looked up.

‘What’s the problem here, huh? Didn’t you have a good time last week?’

John’s eye twitched and then widened. I really didn’t want him to be here.

‘I couldn’t stop thinking about you all week. You know that, Mira?’

God! Stop saying my name!

I started sweeping again, moving behind the counter. I wished my boss would come up from the basement. I wished I’d never gone with this person. I wished I’d never done any of it.

John was following me. I heard him saying stuff under his breath. ‘I thought things had finally changed. I thought some things had finally changed … ’

I was looking at his hands, his hands clenched in fists. I wanted to scream for my boss, but I just stood there listening to John’s jerky breath.

‘You let me have so much of you last week. You can’t tell me you didn’t like it. Remember how you were kissing me? You loved it. You can’t tell me you didn’t love it.’

His fingers opened. They were coming out toward me …

John started laughing. ‘I’m not going to hit you, fuck! You think I’m going to hit you?’

No! Fuck! You were the one who started all this! You were the one who did everything, god, why’d I let you do all that stuff?

‘You don’t want to see me again, is that it? Huh? What kind of game you playing? Say something.’

I was watching the floor, still checking his fists. I just didn’t want what was next.
How much time does he have to be here? Look. Look what I got myself into
…

‘What, you’re not going to talk to me? Who do you think you are? Some good girl, huh? Not by a long shot, baby. I’ve been around and I can tell you that. You gave it to me, Mira. I’ve seen how most girls are and you were willing, yeah. Other guys are going to want you to go with them too. They can tell you’re that kind of girl. They just look at you and know. You know that, too, huh, don’t you? Well, no one’s gonna do to you what we did, I can tell you that. I’ve been around. I’ve seen how things are. You’re a rare bird, baby.’

John reached out and stroked my face. I didn’t flinch. ‘Fuck, you’re probably gonna end up sleeping with any guy who says a few nice words to you. You’re a real little sex fiend, you know that? Yeah, you know that. Fuck, I’ve never been with a girl who got as wet and horny as you did, Mira. You could probably take ten guys at once!’