Few lovers meet for the first time naked, let alone on Christmas Eve. Okay-so it's really the night before The Eve and they're wearing G-strings, but that's more or less how it is with Kathy and Mona.
Topless bars are great places to play Santa in, for both the girls and their customers indulge year 'round in a caricature of giving. One side offers flesh, the other money, but these "offerings" are never very real. Things are true to form tonight onstage. A pouting girl in white-trimmed red panties stoops to take a twenty from the man in the corner with the Santa hat. He peels the bill like a tobacco leaf out of the hand that clutches his cigar. The girl tilts her head and winces thank you, then stands up again and moves on to cajole the next guy in line into loving her forever. She steps past Kathy and Mona, who are resting by the mirror. She glares at them and says, "Time-out time is over, girls-unless you got anothah agenda."
Kathy tells her, "We'd haul ass, too, if we had an ass like yours." Kathy's the aggressive type, fierce and sprightly.
The Santa girl sidles off, still pouting. Mona begs her, "Now don't you tell on us."
The Santa girl gives Kathy and Mona a fuck-you shrug while at the same time she lets her breasts transmit a jiggle to the men. Then she says under her breath, "What's to tell? It's all up there for the world to see."
As soon as she goes, Kathy leans over and whispers in Mona's ear, "Wish I could give that bitch The Finger."
"You can't," Mona whispers, "you can't."
At last Kathy turns to the men with a cold-eyed, brazen smile. She shakes her breasts, then stoops, and spreads her legs to show what's there between them. Then again she rises, her back smudging against the mirror, and says to Mona, "How come we can do all that, and still not give anyone The Finger?"
Both women are leaning against the mirror now, this mirror that for all the beauty in front of it is not what you'd ever want a mirror to be. It's mottled with hand-prints, arm-prints, butt-prints, loose hairs and sebaceous oils, sweat and smoke and spittle. Kathy treats her reflection with defiance. Breathes into it, then strikes a line across it with her finger.
"I hate this job," she says.
"But you got talent for it," says Mona.
They both do. They have bodies.
Kathy's the taller one. White-skinned, brown-nippled, hard-breasted and slim-hipped. The men love her because no matter what weird pose she makes, she holds her form so well. That is what she treasures most, not her figure but its perfect, impenetrable constancy. Mona's shorter, darker, plumper. A crinkly-headed blonde. Not an athlete, not a mover-more a woman meant to stand, with breasts as soft as clouds and fecund, bulging hips. The men give her money to see her move, to watch her take their cash. Her body is changeable and surprising, nymph one moment, Earth Mother the next-but she doesn't like these shifts. There's another mirror on the wall across the bar, but she seldom looks at it. Looks at the men instead. Give me your attention, baby, and I'll be more than happy to give you mine. A tight-lipped young man with narrow shoulders and rat-colored hair steps up and offers her a dollar. She squats, smiles, and reaches out to take it, sucking in her tender belly as she does. When she rises, Kathy's gone. She's found someplace else to resume her bump and grind. Mona catches her eye and Kathy winks. Then in synch, though far apart, they turn to the men; they nod and smile.
Their shift ends. A new crew struts out, their street-time figures supple beneath the disrobables of their choice. The artsy type, with her beret and shawl. The cowgirl, with her Stetson and rawhide skirt. The Time Machine Go-Go Queen, in her tight green glitter mini; and those bright white knee-high pumps.
"Folly's Burger, babies," Kathy cries on passing them. One girl shouts back, an innocent vamp in red, "That's Folies Bergere!" "Whatevuh," says Kathy. "Just ace one for the troops." Stepping down off the stage, she raises her small, clenched fist.
Kathy emerges later, after the women's room shuffle, in a tight canary dress. She's only just sexy now, anonymous while clothed. An irrelevant attendant while the men transact the business of their staring.
A black guy is slouching on the back shelf of the bar. With a hip-hop flat-top and horn rim glasses, his face is big and friendly. His clothes drape him like serious equipment. Scarlet power tie. White shirt with studded collar. Black cashmere coat. Foot-wide fluffy scarf. He'd resemble a woolly mammoth if he were wearing any more. His beer curdles in his hands as Kathy walks on by.
"Yo, K." he says. "What's up?"
Kathy turns to him instantly. Likes his color. Then homes in.
"Your're..."
"Joe Brewster, late of Citibank."
"Riiiight."
Joe Brewster gives Kathy the eye for a while, saying nothing, grinning all the way. Then pushes his glasses up his nose and announces, "I admire your morganatic pulchritude."
Kathy, hands on hips, replies, "Is that supposed to mean you think I'm gorgeous even if I am this cheap, dumb bitch who doesn't know what you're talking about?"
The man beside Joe, a six-foot white guy apparently his friend, thumps with laughter and Joe says, pushing his glasses up his nose again, "I don't know what the hell I was saying, frankly."
"Speaking in tongues?"
"Oh, I wish..."
Kathy feels obliged to make some wise remark, but doesn't think she's got the energy. Besides, she sees Mona in the back, trapped in that nervous hell between the men's and women's rooms by the owner of the place, who's trying to get her tips. She seems smaller now, delicate-boned, not so fat. Her little round face is taking the owner's shakedown like it's Papa's scolding. The owner has no mercy. Gray-haired, pock-marked, hulking, the old man is fossilized in testosterone and always gets his way. He works sixteen-hour days and chain-smokes all the time, but never seems to die. After he strips Mona of her cash, she walks into the center of the bar and stands there, staring at the girls. Kathy taps her on the shoulder.
"You didn't have to give him that, hon. That money's yours."
"Yeah, I know that, but he wants it."
Kathy steps up a little closer. As she approaches Mona, the owner in the back sucks on a tube of embers and observes her philosophically.
"He'll want more, you know. He's full of surprises."
"I can handle it," says Mona, still staring at the girls.
"Not him, hon. He's complicated. He really is better than he looks. And if you got the bad taste to like it, he'll know it-then you're trapped, and forget about it after that. He's one of those assholes who says 'wimmin' like 'Woe-Mahn'. We're all the same to him. He actually does think there's only one of us, if ya know what I mean. He hates to feel outnumbered."
After this, Mona is silent, and Kathy begins to feel that much of what she's said is also true about herself. Sometimes she looks at other women and sees them as children, as fools, and that only she knows what it's all about. And other times she feels women are all one entity, of which she stands at the center of its collectiveness and is its only conscious cell. She will often look at a woman and, even while gauging her in rivalry, will feel as though she wears her skin, that she lives inside her and comprehends her soul. As she stands by Mona, she truly feels her skeleton to shorten, her breasts to soften, her skin to bask in a pigment darker than her own. If Mona were to shift her feet, she would, too, and helplessly. Her empathy's so strong it controls her will. Yet she worries now-what have I confessed?
Mona turns to her and says, "I can't imagine any girl taking that old dude seriously. Can you? I mean, sex-wise?"
Kathy shakes her head. Mona flares in anger.
"He wouldn't be on my case at all, if it weren't for you! Making me stop and talk like that. I can't afford such craziness."
"You're new."
"I'm new, all right. That's the point-and I didn't make any money at all tonight, practically. We need it, too. My guy and me. God damn-he's gonna beat me up, you know."
"Don't go home then."
"What you mean?"
"Stay with me."
Mona shrugs. She's stiff. Kathy thinks she suspects something, but might not care. What alternative has she got anyhow? Kathy sees her guy as a red-skinned animal with a face like a fist. Nobody's dreamboat, that's for sure.
"Let me ask you something," Kathy says. "Your 'guy'-has he got you anything for Christmas yet? A little something under the tree for you?"
Mona snorts. "What tree?"
"No tree, huh? That's bad enough. But he gotta have something somewhere. You check his stash? What about in his dresser between his socks and his condoms?"
"His condoms are his gift, I think."
"Still promisin' to be safe wid you, huh? Oh, boy."
Mona tilts her head and blinks resignedly. Kathy presses home.
"Your guy's no good. You ought to come crash with me. I got a tree. Got some stuff, too. Good stuff."
Kathy has finally found that one thread of cool in Mona and now pulls it tight. Drugs. She knows drugs. Mona turns to her, sly-faced and shrewd.
"Where you live?"
"Jersey City."
"Convenient."
"Yeah."
Their time is up; they go. Their bodies disappear into long coats and scarves and bright knit caps, and they step outside into the falling snow. In the darkness, they can barely recognize each other. Their warm, smooth figures were imprinted on each other's minds the moment they met as if these were parts of their faces-so that once they're bundled up it seems they're wearing veils. They become strangers again, and that relieves the tension. They walk up toward the World Trade Center past Stock Exchanges and Business Schools, bankish and bunker-like, Scroogified and solemn. Neither woman has ever thought herself all-powerful in the beauty of her flesh, and so this zone of money makes them silent, thoughtful, even a little sad. Kathy hooks her arm through Mona's and says, "Let's pretend we're secretaries. Out to lunch for girl-talk, before we go back to keeping secrets for the men."
The way Kathy says "secretaries" sounds romantic to Mona, like she thought it was some dreamworld thing. Mona asks her, "How come you're not married, Kathy?"
"I'm hard to please," she tightens her grip on Mona, "maybe someday though."
They walk past The Towers-giant things-while on the plaza lasers spin red and blue snowflakes out of light, twirling and collapsing them using the power of someone's brains. The intimate perfection of their bodies is like nothing compared to this.
"I feel like an ant beside those towers," says Mona.
"Yeah, well I just feel dumb," says Kathy.
They enter the World Trade Center. It seems empty and swollen, its escalators still flowing like a waterfall in a cave. They ride down in tandem, Mona out in front. Kathy wants to put her hands on Mona's shoulders, and steer her like a bumper car in fun. But she doesn't-just looks at her wool-capped skull instead. Mona's cap is round and green and blue-as if it were a globe of that planet on which we all live, even though she herself is just one comely speck. They are both so small. It annoys Kathy when the guys tell her she looks so much taller onstage than standing right in front of them. That is the one big comedown of her business, the way bright lights and nudity make her seem larger than life-even when she's not. It makes even Life seem larger than itself, but no one involved would want it otherwise. It's a tightrope act, and that's why the men enjoy it so. It gives them hope. Defying the gravity of death with the transient beauty of your body is one way of telling your audience they're immortal, too, no matter how much they goddamn smoke and drink. It would be nice to be a creature whose body never goes to seed. Some bird in a land where it never snows, its bill like plastic, its feathers like iridescent silk.
"To hell with bein' a secretary," Kathy says. "Let's go to Africa and be secretary birds-that's where it's really at."
Mona shrugs, this person on the lower rung, and says with deep-voiced weariness, "Thought we were going to Jersey City."
"That, too."
When they get to Kathy's place off Journal Square, it's nothing much. Just a walk-up over an Indian boutique that deals in saris. Bedroom, bathroom, one rusted kitchen sink. It's cozy though. While Mona sits down on a hassock in her glitzy spangled dress, Kathy goes into the bathroom and changes. Puts on a sweater and the power that is invested in a pair of jeans.
"Nice place," says Mona when Kathy comes out.
"Least the landlord keeps up the heat."
Kathy sticks some Vanilla Ice in her cassette player and raids her makeup kit for her vials of crack. Once she finds them, she cups them in her hand with delicacy, like some gallant defender's broken teeth. They are, after all, the fragile core of this night's situation. She extracts her crack pipe from the bottom drawer of her dresser with a violent yank, then settles on the bed behind her, the mattress bouncing.
Kathy smiles at Mona, and she smiles back, but her shyness has made her mute. Kathy feels smart in contrast. Scientific and in control. Ruthless and observant. She notices how the snow outside has frizzied up Mona's hair. The Bride of Frankenstein, she thinks. She squeezes the glass bulb of her pipe. This is the source of her laboratory pleasures, the tool by which she mixes enjoyment with discovery. One hit and she can think as well as anyone, miles above those men in their red ties who stare at her. She ignites the stream of butane hissing out from the can in her hand, and holds the torch of it to the bowl of the pipe. Then she crouches over it, and puts her lips to the Pyrex mouthpiece. Sucks in. Meanwhile Mona sits on the hassock, legs together, simpering social worker-style, or like some Bergen County wife. When Kathy's lungs are full, she hands the pipe to Mona. "It's alive," she says.
Then they smoke for a while, and lie around till the crack is gone and the pipe is too hot to handle.
Mona is now cross-legged on the floor.
"The bowl's like a machine gun barrel," she mutters.
"What, hon?"
"My brother was in thuh Army, and he says machine gun barrels get hot like that, when they been fired a lot."
"Oh, this been fired a lot all right." Kathy shakes her head and ponders things. "I wonder if they do crack in The Gulf."
"I don't think so. I don't think it's that kind of place."
"Yeah," says Kathy. "They're just gearing up to 'kill,' I guess. Men do such violent things."
Kathy sits for a full minute then, twisting an empty vial around and around in her fingers, looking for white traces of her drug. Mona cries out suddenly, "I hate the pipe when it gets too hot-it burns."
"Uh-huh."
"It burns like when my guy burns me."
"He burns you?"
"Yeah. He does. One time he's cooking us dinner-you know, being 'nice'-and I get down on him. He lifts the pan off the range and touches my hand with it. Then he puts it back, and keeps on cooking."
"Shit."
Mona rubs her face. She is teary now.
"He hurts me all the time!"
Kathy gets down on the floor with her. She's now teary, too.
"My daddy broke my arm once-here," Kathy takes Mona's hand and places it on her wrist. "And another guy tried to strangle me." She brings Mona's hand to her throat, and now Mona catches on. Mona takes Kathy's hand gently in her own and brings it to her cheek. "That's where my guy punches me. He's a lefty, so it's always on the right." She shakes her head, and tears stream down her cheek to Kathy's fingertips. "And he pokes me here, too." She brings Kathy's hand to her breast, and keeps it there. Mona and Kathy look at each other and each of them holds her gaze. They both feel sorrowful and close.
Kathy knows she loves women more than men, but what does it really matter? As she
strokes Mona's wounded breast, she sees that this is the main inversion of her
life, the way she turns the sites of pain on other women's bodies into these origins of
healing.
James Elliott is a graduate of Tufts University and lives in Hoboken, New Jersey. He is in his thirties and has written for years but has only recently made a real effort to get his work in print. He has been a PR writer for a chemicals company (where he learned how to lie outrageously) and is now the R & D Manager of a software firm in Manhattan. "Sisters of the Flesh" will be his second short story to be published. He has had other pieces accepted by Whiskey Island Magazine, Blue Unicorn, and Fantasy & Science Fiction.
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