Читать книгу Little Green - Loretta Stinson - Страница 8

Gimme Shelter

March 1976

JANIE HUNCHED UP HER BACKPACK AND TILTED HER head down to keep the rain from running into her eyes. It would take hours to dry the contents of her backpack let alone her sleeping bag. She crossed a gravel parking lot and headed for a windowless building with a lone silver El Dorado parked in front. She’d seen only fir trees through the rain since she started walking from the freeway about a mile back. This morning she’d caught a ride on the Oregon side of the river because in Washington you couldn’t hitch on the freeway. An older guy picked her up after only a few minutes. He drove a sedan and looked like a businessman. He had a briefcase and a suit hung on a hook covering a window in the backseat. He said he’d drive her all the way to Seattle. For awhile it was fine. They made conversation about the weather and what he did and where he lived, and then he asked her if she liked to party. He asked if she wanted to get it on. After she said no a few times, he pulled over on the shoulder and kicked her out, leaving her in the middle of nowhere in the rain.

A neon sign flickered above the building’s door – The Habit. A bar. The parked El Dorado made it possible somebody was inside. Maybe she could use the bathroom and dry off, maybe get something to eat. Janie wiped the rain off her face with a damp blue bandana. She shook herself and opened the heavy door.

From the back a man yelled, “We’re closed.”

Janie walked toward the voice, her cowboy boots thumping on the threadbare carpeting. “Can I use your bathroom?”

“I guess,” said the man. “It’s back here.”

She passed two pool tables near the door, a dartboard, a cigarette machine and stocky wood tables. Captain-chair stools stood around a curved stage. Burgundy curtains hung to the floor. In the mirror behind the wooden bar, she saw herself come into view, wet and bedraggled as a stray dog.

A fat man with a ponytail stood behind the bar stocking a case of imported beer into a cooler. “Back there.” He jerked his head toward a beaded curtain.

“Thanks.” Janie took off her pack and set it on the floor. The beads rattled as she stepped through into a narrow hallway. The bathroom door stood open. She washed up and dried off as best as she could with paper towels. Janie was a stickler for hygiene even when it was only powdered soap and paper towels.

When she came out, the man at the bar was sitting on a stool working a crossword puzzle.

“ What’s a four-letter word for ‘stop’?”

“Halt.”

“Yup. You’re right.” He looked at her for the first time. “Why you so wet? You walking?”

“Yeah. It’s raining pretty hard out there.”

“Springtime in Washington.” He chuckled.

“You got anything I could do around here? I’d trade some work for something to eat.”

He shook his head. “Nope. Pretty slow until the afternoon when the plant lets out.”

Janie sighed and stooped to pick up her pack. She didn’t want to go back outside until the rain let up. She’d have to walk for miles to get to a better hitching spot.

The bartender scratched his chin. “You dance?”

Janie had heard you could make good money dancing. If she thought about what it meant – to dance around without any clothes on – she wouldn’t be able to do it. She could at least buy a little time. “Sure.”

“You’re eighteen, right?”

“Right.” She hoped he wouldn’t look too closely at her fake ID.

“Go ahead and let’s see you dance then. Dressing room’s next to the bathroom.”

Janie found a towel in the dressing room and undid her braids, drying her long brown hair as best she could. There were some robes on hooks. She slipped out of her jeans and plaid work shirt, draping them on chairs in front of a wall heater and pulled on a white silky robe. Embroidered blue letters spelled Champ across the breast pocket. She’d had to do some unpleasant things since she left home. No good thinking too much about what she did to get by. She’d make some quick cash and get a Greyhound to someplace – someplace warm and dry, maybe LA. She looked in the dressing room mirror. She walked out and up to the stage, the music started, and she dropped the robe.

Janie danced. She closed her eyes tight, moved her head from side to side, her damp hair slid across her bare back and shoulders. She knew the fat man behind the bar suspected that she was underage – a runaway – jailbait. Mostly, she figured he just wanted to see her naked.

Marvin Gaye’s voice spun from the speakers. She listened as she danced. She tried to look like what she imagined an exotic dancer looked like, but because she’d never seen one she was having trouble. She felt awkward and bigger than she was. Not just big. She felt fat. Janie bobbed her head around trying her best to look seductive.

The man yelled, breaking her attention. “What are you doing with your arms?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Janie stopped dancing and glared at him, hands on her hips.

“ Well, if it looked like you was dancing I wouldn’t be asking.” He shook his head. “Look, just don’t wave your arms around so much. It looks like you’re playing airplane.” He wiped a glass with a dishtowel and put it on the shelf, then looked back up at her. “Go ahead.”

She closed her eyes again, trying to imagine dancing in her room back home in Yakima. From her bedroom window she could see the trees in the cemetery. Her mom and dad shared a plot just inside the back entrance where the street deadended. Mama wrapped her car around a tree in Mabton on an icy December morning in 1966, a few months shy of Janie’s sixth birthday. Two years later, her dad met and married Norma, a cashier at the Giant T drugstore. Janie was twelve when her dad had the heart attack, leaving Janie with Norma. Norma hadn’t been so bad at first, but they were never close and when Norma started dating Janie started leaving. She learned to skip school before her thirteenth birthday and began hitchhiking out to the Naches River to avoid going home. The times she was there she hung out in her room. She wore her hair like Janis Joplin’s and learned to swear like her, too. Posters of Jim Morrison hung on the ceiling above her bed. With his leather pants slung low on his hips, he looked down on Janie like the Dark Angel of Sex. She burned sandalwood incense from the only head shop in town to cover the smell of the pot she smoked. She started staying out all night and leaving for days at a time. The last time she’d been home she was fourteen. She’d been gone a week and Norma had already redecorated her room and boxed up all her stuff. When Janie overheard her on the phone talking about turning Janie over to the state, she knew her days were numbered. It made it easier to leave knowing that to Norma she was already gone. It felt more like checking out of a Motel 6 than leaving home. That was two years ago.

Janie stopped dancing and looked down at the bartender. “Forget it. I can’t do this.” She picked up the bathrobe off the stage floor.

“I didn’t say you couldn’t dance.”

She slipped on the robe and stepped off the stage. “Didn’t say I could either.”

He pulled a cigarette from a pack. “You really eighteen?”

Janie looked him dead in the face. “Yep.”

He stared her down. The trick was not to look away.

“Okay. I’m probably going to be sorry. Oh, what the hell.” He lit his cigarette. “You look like one of them hippie chicks, but you got a nice ass. Tell you what – you got something that says you’re eighteen?”

Janie nodded yes.

“You can go on at four and we’ll see how you do. I’m Ernie. Me and my business partner own this bar. You got any problems take it up with one of us.”

Janie pulled the robe around her. “Thanks.”

“You ought to meet Stella too. The girls you’ll meet later.” Ernie yelled down the hall. “Hey Stella – you back there?”

A man appeared from the back of the hall. He was tall and black. His head was shaved and a ruby shined from a pierced ear. He wore a sleeveless white T-shirt, and on his right bicep a tattoo of three stars balanced on a slipper moon.

Ernie introduced them. “Stella, this here’s the new girl – What’d you say your name was?”

Janie looked up and up at the giant in front of her. His arms were bigger around then her head. “I’m Janie.”

Stella nodded and walked away.

Ernie took a drag off his cigarette. “Don’t take it personal. Stella’s not much of a talker.”

After Janie put her clothes on, she helped Ernie while waiting for four p.m. She wiped down the tables, cleaned the bathrooms, and vacuumed. He made them each a sandwich of bologna and white bread with Thousand Island dressing and barbecued potato chips smashed into the bread. Janie had been on the road long enough to eat whatever was in front of her and not complain. The sandwich was actually pretty good.

At about three, a woman came through the door. She wore a green scarf tied around her red hair and a pair of dark glasses. She went to the cooler behind the bar and took out a can of tomato juice not looking at Janie. “ Who’s this?” she asked Ernie as she popped open the can and poured the juice into a cocktail glass, garnishing it with a lemon slice.

Ernie was doing another crossword puzzle. “New dancer. Delores, this here’s Janie. And vise versey.”

Delores took off her sunglasses and squinted hard at Janie. “You ever done this before?”

“Strip? No ma’am.”

“Baby, we aren’t strippers here. Stripping’s different from the shit Ernie pays for. We’re dancers. You just get naked and dance.” Delores smiled. “She’ll do. She’s respectful.” Delores picked up her juice and took Janie by the elbow. “Let’s get you ready for show biz.”

Janie followed her to the dressing room.

“How old are you?” Delores asked.

“I’m eighteen.”

Delores snorted. “Sure. And I’m really Ann Margaret.”

Janie spoke softly. “I’m sixteen.”

“Anybody out looking for you?” Delores asked.

“Nope.”

Delores shook her head. “You have a place to stay?”

“I’m just going to be here a couple of days.”

“You can stay at my place tonight.”

A blonde girl in a pair of tight jeans burst into the dressing room. “Hey Dee! Look what I got at the Bargain Barn. Don’t you love this little top? I love pink. Maybe I’ll do my nails to match.” She noticed Janie. “You going to be the new girl? I’m Amber. You’d look good in blue – baby blue! Set off your eyes.”

Amber tossed Janie a pair of ice-blue bikini bottoms from a box on the floor. Janie wondered how a pair of blue panties on her ass was going to make her eyes look blue, but she didn’t say anything. Delores handed Janie a tube of lipstick. “You better get ready. You’re up first.” From her purse she took a metal box and opened it. She handed Janie a pill. “Take this. It’ll make your life easier.”

Janie swallowed the rocket shaped pill and looked at her face in the mirror. Whoever she was once was just about gone. She smeared on lipstick, took off her clothes, and pulled on the blue bikini bottoms, licking a pair of pasties and sticking them on her nipples. She put on the white robe and cinched it shut. She’d be Mohammed Ali and float like a butterfly. Nothing would touch her.

Music blared from the bar. The voices of men and the occasional crack of billiard balls reached the dressing room as the place filled up.

It was almost four.

Delores smiled at Janie. “You look real sweet, honey. Don’t worry. Today’s payday for most of those monkeys out there. They just want to see some fresh tail. Shake your ass around and you’ll be fine. Dance three numbers and then come on back. You can pick out your own music on the jukebox. Okay?”

Janie walked to the jukebox and looked at the playlist. Patsy Cline’s Crazy. Lots of Rolling Stones, some Marvin Gaye. Janie peered over her shoulder. The men in the bar wore work boots and denim jackets; they smoked cigarettes and drank beer; their loud voices erupted into even louder laughter. Janie looked at every song twice before picking out her three.

Ernie yelled from the bar. “You’re up.”

Janie took the stairs one at a time. There were only two steps.

Her first song started with Keith Richard’s guitar solo, Can’t You Hear Me Knocking. She’d loved dancing to this song since the Sticky Fingers album came out when she was twelve. She dropped her robe, and somebody whistled. Men yelled up at her. She couldn’t move. The men were so loud she couldn’t think. She thought she would throw up or pass out.

Stella appeared at the edge of the stage. “Come on down.” His voice was deep. Janie took the steps quickly this time, pulling her robe on as she went. The crowd booed. Stella handed her a pair of sunglasses. He motioned to the room full of men. “You going to let them mess with you? Get your Zen on, girl. You’ll be fine.”

She put on the black-mirrored Ray-Bans. “Can I start over?”

Stella walked to the jukebox and pushed some buttons. Keith Richards started playing again, then Charlie Watts on the drums, and finally Mick Jagger. Janie took a deep breath. You could do just about anything if you thought about it right. Janie jumped up on the stage like a fighter coming out strong from her corner. She remembered watching boxing matches with her dad a long time ago. The boxers would always dance in their corner throwing punches at the air. Janie pretended she was a boxer. She threw punches at an invisible opponent. The crowd yelled and catcalled. She took a deep breath and dropped her robe. Somebody whistled. Somebody shouted. She kept her shades on and danced the set, glad the songs bled into each other and she’d be through soon. She concentrated on the music, singing along in her head and ignoring everything going on around her.

As abruptly as it started, it was over. The music ended and Amber came out.

Janie stepped off the stage.

Ernie yelled over to her from the bar, “You got the job. We’ll call you Shady Lady.”

Janie pulled the robe around her and went back to the dressing room to wait for her next set. She wondered how she could do this again but knew already that done once, it would be easy enough to just keep going.