Little Cat (13 page)

John’s hips started moving back and forth. His hands looked like they were holding my ass. ‘Yeah, I could get Michael and the guys and we’ll come for you after work, follow you home … We can just have you there in your daddy’s backyard, yeah, doing the train. And you’d probably moan exactly the way you moaned with me:
Oooh, wait, wait, oooh
… ’

‘Fuck off! Just fuck off!’

‘Mmmm, yeah, all right. Wanna hit me? Is that it? You want to hit me?’

I raised the broom from the floor.

‘Yeah, smack me with it. Do it. Smack me.’

John closed his eyes and puffed out his chest. His lips had turned white. I lifted the broom up over my head. I wanted to knock off his head.

‘Fuck you! I hate you!’

John’s eyes bolted open as the broom whacked his head. It scratched into his ear and onto his face. He started swatting me away but I just kept on smacking. I heard weird grunts from the back of my throat. I was breaking through skin. I wanted to do more.

But I stopped when I saw he was cradling his face. Light red blood was dripping through his middle fingers. When John saw the blood, it was like he got happy. He started laughing with his jaw open and was practically singing: ‘A slut, a slut, a good-time fuck, the kind of fuck that’s yours for free … ’

We heard my boss coming back upstairs. John looked at me and smiled and ran.

I’d been there for a month before I finally went onstage. The titty bar was full of exotic-dancer-visa Russians, and Nadia had been right, Romanians. There were a few girls from the Philippines, too, like Lani, who’d defected from her nannying gig. Everyone was tarted up like poodles or something and poodles hated me because I was a mutt. I’d been hanging out with the dj and walking around the bar in a bra and skirt and heels for a month. I shaved my underarms and my thighs. Adi had to almost force me onstage the first time.

‘I started out like this at home,’ she said as she made up my face with too much blush. ‘I was born with a thong on, girlfriend.’

I could never tell if she was serious or not.

I ignored Nadia every time she called me. It was like I thought talking to her would mess up my act, like it would cut the thing that I’d started between me and Adi. I told my parents that I was at the Second Cup in Union Station and that I was staying at Nadia’s most nights.

In the basement dressing room, girls were running around under fluorescent lights. They stopped to look at me getting ready for the stage. Lani started laughing her sharp birdy laugh. Adi kept me wired on her pot while she handed me things: a short dress, shiny shoes. I raised my arms, dizzy for a second.

When I told Adi that I wasn’t going to make up any stage name for myself, she was surprised. She said, ‘So this is Canadian brave?’

I stared at myself in the mirror. I didn’t feel brave. The dress was too small. My tits rubbed together, my thighs rubbed together, my lips rubbed together. I was fucked.

‘This is what they like, Mira.’ Adi slathered lipstick on my lips. ‘This is how they like you.’ She brushed my hair, pinched my cheeks.

I just wanted to stay down there with her. Lie on the floor. Turn off the lights. Lie down and not move.

That was when she told me that all the girls want to dance naked for men. All girls would do it. Every last one.

‘Not every one!’ I got high again laughing. I knew so many who would never do this, wouldn’t even think it. They’d never show their tits.

‘Listen,’ Adi said. ‘You find me a girl who won’t take off her clothes after you tell her what you like, there’s no girl like that. A girl who won’t strip after some guy tells her he wants to see her tits moving around in the air and tells her all he wants is her ass to get shaking. Then you’ll see how she wants it, how she’ll do it for your friends.’

I was thinking about Ezrah, me and Ezrah and his friends.

‘You just tell a girl how you like her sexy hot body, that you like how it moves, that you like what it does, you tell a girl this and you’ll see how she’ll do it.’ I felt Adi’s breath steam up my forehead. ‘A beautiful girl like you, though, you’ve really got something, Mira.’

Nadia was always the beautiful one between us. I was the plain one, fleshy and hairy and brown.

Me and Adi held hands as we went back upstairs. Sweat from her palm wet the middle of mine. Now I felt more relaxed as I walked with her like that. Our hips were moving at exactly the same time.

Adi led me up near the stage and talked to the dj. He winked at me; I mean, he’d been encouraging me the whole month. ‘You’d be good at it too,’ he always said as we watched the girls dance. The dj let his tongue out of his mouth panting like a dog when he saw me all made up. It made me feel good that he thought I was hot.

The girl onstage was Lani’s best friend, Coco, a Romanian, and she was folding herself in half. Coco peered backward at the crowd through the slit in her thighs, tensing her ass cheeks open and closed. It was like she was talking to the men through her ass. I thought she was telling them:
I’ll squeeze you in my cheeks. It’ll be the best feeling any one of you ever had! My asshole’s strong, fuckers! Come on! I dare you!

‘dj said you could go after,’ Adi whispered, her lips near
my neck.

It felt good with her there so I leaned back. ‘I know,’ I said.

Adi laughed as she took my weight. ‘You’re a funny girl, Mira.’

I turned around and wrapped my arms around her. ‘I can’t!’ I moaned. My hands slid down her skirt.

I didn’t want to tell her I was scared of that man being in the audience. I meant Gio, who was there almost every other night. He didn’t think I was hot. He always ignored me. He took dances from Coco and Lani and I didn’t know why them, what did he like about them? Adi told me to stay away from him. She wouldn’t say anything about him but that.

Adi kissed me on the lips. Coco whipped by us.

‘Go. Go ahead.’

There was blood in my ears, I felt blood down my neck.

‘Go, Mira! Go!’ Adi gave me a shove.

After Coco’s dance, the room was always ready. I was taking Adi’s normal spot.

There I was. Standing over the men. Including
him
. And his horrible eyes.

I was watching my toes all crushed up in the shoes. I hated those shoes. I kicked them off. I heard clapping below me. Strong lights overhead. I felt myself moving. My hips were too loose. I felt my breasts bouncing bunched tight in the dress. God, I was stoned, with my hair in my face. I wanted it to stop. Pull my tits from my body …

‘What’s her name?’ someone shouted.

‘That’s Mira.’

‘Go on, Mira!’

The dress was clumped like rubber at my hips. I was twirling around, reaching behind me.

‘Jesus, check out the hooters on that little babe.’

I was taking it off.

Then my hands hit the floor. My hands and my knees. I saw the dress under me black as a rag. Sweating, I’m sweating. My bra and my panties. I looked down between me, crawling away. Hundreds of eyes were watching my ass. Animal, animal.

‘Look at that ass!’

Beats shook the floor. I put my ear down. They all want to fuck me. Mira. Fuck Mira.

My ass tilted higher for Gio’s mean eyes. I hated that
he
didn’t want me.
Butcher-man, why do you hate me?
The shame of that helped me. I was pulling my underwear tight up the crack.

‘Spank yourself, Mira!’

My hand made my ass red. Flat on my face, humping the floor …

‘Kinky little chick.’

I don’t know how long I was down there like that for him, spanking myself for hateful him. I was licking my lips when the thumps started changing. I pressed up to stand with the dress tight against my chest. There was wetness on my thighs, splinters in my face.

‘When’s she coming down here?’

‘Yeah, I want a piece!’

I looked for Gio out there in the pit. I wanted to jump straight down through the fire, throw myself to the lion …

But Gio wasn’t sitting where he was before. Maybe he’d left in the middle of my act. I stood there, dumb, thinking:
I am the lion
.

I ran off the stage and right into Adi.

‘I’m not what those guys are used to, I’m not!’ All of my breaths started to pour out at once.

‘Fuck you, yeah you are! That was fucking hot!’

Suddenly Adi kissed me, longer than before. My underwear was soaking wet. I felt myself opening, my tongue on her lips. I heard her sink a little moan into my mouth. We started frenching, our saliva was sticking. It felt really good just to play with her tongue. Adi’s hands were sliding toward my ass. I was too wet. My teeth dug in her lips. She tasted like smoke.

‘But Gio didn’t stay,’ I whispered. I felt for a second like I was going to cry.

‘Good,’ Adi said. ‘I told you to leave him alone.’

Then I bit down so hard on Adi’s lip that she pushed me away. I think she was shocked, she was covering her mouth, but I just started laughing. Laughing instead of crying.

When Adi realized that a few guys were watching us, she grabbed me by the waist hard and pulled me back close. She was going to forgive me. I opened my mouth on her neck and I felt us shuffling over toward their table. Then we were kissing again, full-on making out, this time grinding ourselves into each other. Adi squeezed the sides of my breasts. I think a few guys got closer around us. Someone undid the string of her bikini-top bra. Adi pulled down my dress from the neck. She pressed and rubbed her nipples into mine. She forgave me for thinking about Gio. I held her naked back. We were stepping on money, sliding on bills. Then Adi’s hot nipple hit my mouth. She held my face down as I licked and sucked hard.

I wish it could’ve stayed like that longer. When I knew Adi liked me and I liked her too.

Everyone believed me when I told them I worked at the twenty-four-hour Second Cup at Union Station. My family did, anyway. I told them I liked the people I worked with and that the money was better when you worked the night shift. I mean, how much does anyone really want to know anyway?

The only one I ever told the truth to was Ezrah.

We hadn’t seen each other in a while because he was away at school. I hadn’t seen him that much since the first year of high school, actually, because his family had moved up north and we’d stayed downtown. We just saw each other on holidays. It was Yom Kippur when I told him. We were in the back seat of his brand new white car.

I’d stayed inside synagogue longer than Ezrah because sometimes I liked hearing the people singing, that wailing coming out of their nostrils.

Ezrah always made fun of me for wanting to stay. ‘Being a good little Jew?’ he asked when I got in the back seat with him.

‘No. I don’t understand what they’re saying.’

‘Yeah? That’s because it’s in Hebrew.’

‘I know, Stupid, but it still bugs me. You’d think I would understand something after all this time.’

‘Why?’

Ezrah was staring at my dress.

‘Because what’s the point of being there if you don’t understand anything? What’s the point of standing up and sitting down if you don’t understand what the rabbi says?’

‘You’re not supposed to.’

‘You are too. People understand a priest when they go to church.’

‘Whatever, Mira. You want to go to church?’

‘I would understand it at least.’

‘No you wouldn’t. You’re Jewish.’

‘Because our family is.’

‘No, because you are.’

‘Well, I’m not. I don’t feel it.’

‘That’s really fucked up, Mira. You know what the Jews have been through to survive? You know how amazing our religion is? Don’t say that.’

Ezrah always acted the same. Ezrah always looked the same. It was something about his eyes – he always scrunched them up to sound moral. I wasn’t going to be Jewish just because he made me feel guilty. I knew there was something I was really supposed to feel. What was the point of doing it all if I didn’t ever feel a thing?

I assumed everyone felt something when they were in the temple. I remember how proud Nadia looked when she went to church with her mother. In a taffeta skirt that was black blood red and high heels, she looked like God was going to personally inspect her. She told me once that her mother said that they had to dress up for God so that God could feel their respect. I’d never even imagined that God could be in a man shape, with man thoughts. I thought God was more like a bird than a man, whipping and trapped up at the rafters.

‘All Jews believe in God,’ said Ezrah. ‘It’s totally different than believing in God if you’re Christian. God, for Jews, in case you care, is a moral force.’

That was fucking funny. I imagined moral God as some light-sabre Luke who whispered in people’s ears as they stood up and sang.
Keep singing for me, Sir. Keep singing for me, Miss.
Moral God’s voice would be deep and fulfilling:
I’ll watch you, Man. I’ll protect you, Woman. Just keep rocking back and forth.
Isn’t this the only reason people would do it every Saturday? Because they felt God as a moral force breathing inside them, because they could feel some real presence worming into their heads? I knew that the feeling of God would have to exaggerate things like this. Until there was some kind of needy hole in your system – like the beak of a baby bird waiting for its mama, shrieking until she drops nourishment through. If you prayed every day you developed this hole and God would stick his little moral tongue through.