Free Ride Around Shining by Chris Leslie-Hynan Page B

their crew-cut scalps. Their heads were square and null as new erasers. I watched them shining the dull, unforgivable shine of my own people. I turned away with the bitterest feeling.
    At our little table, beneath a plastic banner that proclaimed “It’s the Water,” Antonia was pushing up her sleeves and letting down her zipper. Two pints had appeared. I went through the smoke, past the hungry faces of men pretending to be fed. The club was full and disordered, and I had to pass near the stage to get by. A dancer smiled a terrible smile. Her nipples were hard, like objects all their own. Of course I felt naked.
    I got to my seat and Antonia took a long drink from her pint. It looked any color but gold.
    â€œI’m driving, you know,” I said.
    â€œThis is NA beer.”
    On the near stage, a girl with purple hair had focused her energies on a man at the rail. His face was young but his hair was prematurely gray. It was the first dance, she was still clothed, but she was locked in, staring down at him with electric contempt. She slapped herself on the thighs, the sounds puncturing the music. She squeezed her breasts together like she wanted to mistreat them. The man was cringing and bent and dropping bills over the rail all the time.
    â€œI’ll get some cash,” I said.
    She pulled out a wad of singles and patted it. “I’m paying for this,” she said.
    â€œMadame appears seasoned.”
    She shrugged a little, and you could see she was proud. “I used to go in college. Just me and the ladies.”
    I lifted my pint. “To temperance,” I said.
    â€œTo an understanding.” I took a sip of the beer, and it was pretty well Pabst, and I knew I had no understanding of anything. Of course, there was a certain line of thought—the girl in the door, whoever she was and whatever they’d had, and then this, Antonia watching, relaxed and intent, as the first dance ended and the tops came off. The girl with purple hair slung herself out there indifferently. But in tracing this line, I felt the leap of it, the stupid male paranoia it required, the belief that a woman’s unhappiness was an abandonment waiting to happen, that always, at any moment, we could be betrayed in favor of anyone of either gender.
    â€œSo, is this your last bit of fun?” I asked.
    She laughed. “I hope not. Is it yours?”
    â€œNot yet.”
    She took a long but somehow elegant drink, like a thirsty person in a commercial. “I suppose I am,” she said, “rededicating myself.”
    â€œYou like men after all,” I said helpfully.
    She looked at me with pity.
    â€œAnd women, too, of course. But. Except . . .”
    When she spoke it was like she only wanted to stop my floundering.
    â€œI was going to leave him,” she said, in a plain, clear voice. “And now I’m not.” When she said it she was even looking at the dancers, not casually, but as though they absorbed her as much as anything.
    â€œOh,” I said.
    â€œYes. That house? Forget that house. I don’t want it. I’m letting it fall through.” She took another long drink. “Do you like them to be real?” she asked abruptly.
    â€œWhat?”
    Only then did she look at me, and the look was direct, almost severe in its scrutiny. “On your dancer. Do you like them to be real, or not?”
    â€œYes,” I said. “Real.”
    â€œReally? I like the fakes,” she said. “If she were my wife I’d want them to be real. Otherwise, so what.”
    I looked over at her, at the tough cross of her arms and the jaunty angle of her head. Her hardened poses sat oddly atop her real blend of sensitivity and indifference. When I was hardly less than her age and delivering my food, I truly did not want to look. It was almost a pleasure to deny myself, to ensure that the body of the woman I might have been about to meet would never be lessened by