Eben watched the woman in the smoky room, mesmerized by her swaying movements up on the platform. Slowly, she unbuttoned her already low-plunging top, slid each of her arms out and swung it around in her fingers coyly before dropping it to the floor. With now only a g-string on, she arched her back and slithered around the pole. As she came closer to him, Eben started, fished me out of his pocket, rolled it up tightly, and beckoned to the lady. She smiled a small, mirthless smile and moved our way, so he could slide me up in between the smooth skin of her hips and the thin red band stretched across. Reluctantly, Eben made his way past the bar and out into the bright night of the city. Giselle wandered out around to the back of the club, through the door that said Employees Only. She moved behind the ripped curtain and pulled on her old sweatpants and thin tee shirt from the’95 Hawaii Ironman Triathlon, which she had not participated in, but had dug out of a sale box at a cheap thrift store in Oklahoma.
“Honey, wait for me”
Giselle turned at the sound of Libby’s voice and as she began redressing, her friend said, “Kinda slow tonight, huh?”
“Yeah. In a way, though it’s nice like that.”
“Agreed, but more people means more tips and that’s even better.”
“For sure.” Giselle laughed tightly,”Don’t like anything better than money, do we?”
Libby pulled her hair tightly into a ponytail, coughed and said, “K. Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Giselle ran behind the ripped curtain again and grabbed me up off the floor, along with two other $5’s. “All set.” The two walked quickly down the sidewalk, with the me clutched tightly into Giselle’s fist, crushed up against the others. In a small, out-of-place convenience store down the street, she placed me along with one of the others on the dinged up counter and demanded a single pack of blue camel and a bottle of janky-looking green liquid. The greasy guy behind the counter got a glare from Giselle as he hacked on her change before dumping it into her outstretched hand. The man continued his unearthly coughing as he flattened the me out and rudely shoved me into the register and Giselle grabbed Libby’s arm and they both lit up as they headed back to the dingy apartment they shared.
Stepping out of his cab, a balding man in a business suit let his eyes have the momentary pleasure of resting on the backsides of the two girls leaving the convenience store. That short enjoyment over, he sighed and went into the nearly empty store himself, asking, in a surprisingly gentle voice for a bottle of gin and a little bag of cheddar chex mix.
The scrubby clerk saw a lot of his type in the place but he was still fascinated with the man. Someone’s sleeping alone tonight, he thought, smirking. Although he thought this about nearly everyone who came into the place, it was true this time and Willard J. Podd himself was going to spend some quality time with his bottle of gin, unconsciously trying to forget all the wasted years of loneliness and success that felt more like failure. He scooted a $50.00 across the countertop and the guy behind it plopped me and a couple of other bills down for Podd’s change, who folded us carefully and slid the two of us into his plump wallet. Before leaving the corner store, he opened up the empty brief case in his hand and stuffed the gin and snack mix into it, then stepped out onto the street. Reaching the end of it, Podd turned down a dimmer, narrow little side street, empty except for the ragged woman staggering toward him. As the two met up somewhere in the middle, suddenly the woman, with surprising strength, roughly shoved him up against the side of a brick building and pointed a shiny black revolver at his head.
“I don’t want no violence,” she said in a rather husky voice, “just give me what you got and there won’t be no trouble.”
As she scrutinized his every move, Podd shakily reached into his back pocket and retrieved his wallet which she immediately snatched from him.
Must be hard up to risk something like that, he thought.
The woman rifled through the wallet’s contents, snagging me and the rest of the goods. She dropped the empty wallet to the ground and backed out of the alley, gun still pointed at the ridiculous Willard J. Podd, left frozen against the wall.
As soon as she got around the buildings’ corner, Jocelyn stuffed me and the rest of her loot into her bra and sauntered off down the city streets. She knew the man she left in the back street wouldn’t bother to come after her, and he probably didn’t have the to balls anyway. So JoJo took her sweet time, pausing to look luxuriously in the windows of the club’s and the other brightly lit buildings. An hour later, she crossed one more street, ending up in “her part of town”, and now moved faster toward the unwelcoming but familiar broken down hotel, crawled through the glassless window at the bottom, into the empty basement below and promptly fell sound asleep. I spent the night with the others down her shirt, strapped against her warm, small breast.
Upon waking the next morning alone and covered in dust, JoJo remembered last night’s luck and decided to treat herself to a real breakfast. Peering out to see that no one was watching, she pulled herself back up through the opening from where she had come, and meandered in the direction of the diner. Approaching the eatery, Jocelyn came upon a little boy, dressed in a dirty white shirt and tie, crying rather loudly but trying not to, which only made it worse. With a sudden display of compassion, she stood near him for a moment until he met her gaze with big, sad eyes.
“What happened to you?” she said, sounding fiercer than she expected.
“I don’t know where I am,’ he whimpered.
“Well…..” She thought. “What’s your name?”
“Trevor Michael Andrews,” he told her in a small voice, and then stronger, “But I’m not supposed to talk to you.”
“And why is that?” she questioned, amused.
He glared at her. “Mum told me not to talk to strangers,” he informed her with conviction.
JoJo hadn’t heard of this rule before. “Oh! Well, my names JoJo. There. Not strangers anymore.” She observed him solemnly then smiled and said, “So…you don’t know where you’re at, huh?”
Glancing at her timidly, he shook his head. She realized that she didn’t want to get too involved with this kid, but would still feel guilty just leaving him alone there, considering the variety of bums that spent time on these streets.
Trevor stared open mouthed as JoJo reached down her shirt and pulled me out of her bra. Not really a big bill, but not so little you couldn’t do anything at all with me, JoJo felt generous and grand giving me away and even though Trevor hadn’t grown up the way she had, he still took me with shining eyes.
“Thank you, Miss JoJo!”
“Yeah…..” she felt a little awkward now, but she pointed him toward a payphone down the street, “Get on now. Go find yourself, boy.”
The boy trotted off in that direction, but once he got inside the booth, he sat there for a few moments, dismally aware of the fact that he had completely forgotten his mother’s phone number, which he was supposed to have memorized.
Maybe I’ll never be found. Maybe I will have to live on the streets and be a hobo forever! An idea that had once sounded marvelous now made him want to cry again. Maybe I’ll never see my mum….or go fishing in Salt Lake with dad….or…or…..anything!
While he sat there lost in thought, time passed and he remained there, unaware of its existence. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the glass door of the telephone booth burst open, Trevor screamed, his dad shouted and his mum rushed in, flung herself upon him and began sobbing. He sat there, stroking her head for a long while. Mr. Andrews knelt beside the two of them, surrounded both mother and son in his strong arms. Finally he said gently, “Come on. Let’s all go home now.”
He was so, so sleepy as he climbed the staircase up to his room. Lacking the strength to even redress or shut off the light, little Trevor collapsed onto his big ‘ol bean bag chair into a deep sleep. He slept right on through dinner time and then into the night. At 2:17 the next morning, Trevor woke up when he fell off the big ‘ol bean bad chair and onto his toy car lying there on the floor. Finding JoJo’s gift still crumpled in his small fist, he stuffed me into his blue ceramic piggy bank. Then, with a little sigh, he flopped back onto his bean bag nest and slept soundly until the next morning when he awoke to his mum calling him down to eat his scrambled eggs before they got cold. Meanwhile, in the darkness of the piggy bank, I patiently awaited my next adventure.
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