Leslie Silko - The Almanac of the Dead

Tiny waddled out of his office when he heard the yells and whistles. He had gained a lot of weight since the last time Seese had seen him. He had to keep watch on the girls constantly. They’d show any little thing to get big tips from the audience. Being outside the city limits still didn’t make it legal to spread her legs that wide. Seese laughed. Tiny had always been scolding her when she danced, complaining that she was going to get the Liquor Control boys down on him. But that had been when Tiny was hot for her, and the scolding had been his way of letting her know how sexy he thought she was. Tiny made a sudden cutting motion with his fat hand across his throat and swore at the redhead. As she closed her legs, Seese saw a sequin flash from deep within the folds of her flesh. The men at the foot of the stage booed Tiny and gave catcalls, but they didn’t want the Stage Coach shut down by the Liquor Control Board either.

Tiny had turned to go back into his office, but caught sight of Seese. She took her double shot of whiskey from the bar and walked over to him. “Seese,” he said as if he were seeing a ghost.

“Hi, Tiny.”

“I heard you left,” he said, still surprised. Tiny meant the rumor that Seese was dead meat. “Ancient history, those rumors,” Tiny said, warming up, stepping closer.

Seese took a big swallow of whiskey. “Yeah, just rumors.” She was scanning the barroom for Cherie. Dancers in garter belts and no bras, dancers in baton-twirling skirts, and dancers in bikinis circulated past the tables, passing the hat for tips before they danced.

Tiny had been in love with her once, but then David had come along. Seese finished the whiskey and Tiny nodded for the bartender to bring her another. Sweat was forming in the folds where his chin met his neck. Tiny was living proof that snorting cocaine didn’t always cause weight loss. “I heard about your baby. I’m sorry.” Tiny sounded sincere. He patted at his neck with a handkerchief and made a motion toward his office, but Seese shook her head. “I have a little something,” Tiny said, meaning drugs.

“No. I’m looking for Cherie.”

Tiny seemed short of breath. He wheezed. She would not have fucked him even if David had not come along. Tiny gave up too easily. Despite everything that had happened between Tiny and Beaufrey, Seese knew Tiny would not help her because he was afraid of Beaufrey. But Cherie owed her one.

Tiny nodded his head at a table against the far wall. Cherie was hunched over the table, her head close to a man in a worn denim cowboy shirt and scuffed cowboy boots. She was trying to convince him of something. She looked startled when she saw Seese. The cowboy was suspicious. He studied Seese intently. She tried smiling but he had already sized her up. “Seese!” Cherie scuffed the chair back from the table and hugged her. She was dressed for her act. Baby-blue, see-through, shorty pajamas and blue satin high heels. “This is my husband, Teddy. Teddy, this is Seese. Remember, I told you how she helped me that time.” Seese could see that Teddy didn’t like to remember anything he knew about Cherie’s past.

Seese didn’t know where to begin. Cherie was nervous. Probably because the husband got jealous when she danced. “I guess you heard what happened — about Monte, I mean.” Seese was surprised at how quiet her voice was, almost a whisper. She felt nothing when she said “Monte.”

“Did David—?” Cherie stared down at the ashtray where her cigarette was burning into the filter. The husband reached over and squashed the butt. His jaw was set hard. Cherie was trying not to cry, but Seese saw big tears. Seese hardly cried anymore except when she woke up dreaming she was holding Monte in her arms. “Seese — it’s just so sad — not to know—”

Seese nodded at Cherie. The husband had relaxed. He leaned back in his chair and watched a tiny flat-chested blonde bump her way out of a belly-dancer skirt. Women’s tears or sad talk didn’t seem to interest him.

“You been back in town long?”

Seese shook her head. She finished the whiskey. Cherie signaled the barmaid for another round. Tiny let dancers have all they wanted. It kept them loose and limber. “I waited for a long time. I thought David took Monte.”

Cherie became alert. “You mean it wasn’t David?”

Seese could not shake her head or reply without something breaking wide open inside herself. She took deep breaths and sipped the whiskey. “There’s a woman who can help. I have to find her.”

Cherie glanced at her husband watching the stage. She was rolling the hem of her shorty pajama top between her fingers. Seese could see Cherie was nervous, afraid something from the old days might slip out.

“Listen. I saw this woman on TV. She finds missing persons.”

Cherie had looked puzzled. “I don’t know anyone like that.”

“Look,” Seese said, raising her voice, “the only thing I have to go on is something about a crippled biker — a guy who works—”

At the mention of a man, Cherie’s husband sat up with both elbows on the table making a barrier between the two women. Cherie shook her head.

“The old woman is with this biker—” Seese began, but Cherie had pushed back her chair.

“I’m up now!” Cherie looked at her husband, then glanced at Seese. “Ask Tiny!”

Seese nodded slowly and leaned back in her chair. The husband moved forward in his chair, gathering himself like a rodeo cowboy. His turn next. For eight minutes he had to stay in his chair while the men at the edge of the tiny stage leaned over to pry their eyes into his wife. Cherie selects her music on the jukebox. Roy Orbison. Chubby Checker. She dances staring straight ahead, her eyes miles away from this place. Neither of them were ever really dancers. But the men never cared as long as they got an eyeful. Cherie’s husband looks down at his hands. He’s a blond cowboy with a pretty face. Green eyes. Hands and fingernails stained with motor oil. There never has been quite enough money for Cherie to quit dancing. The husbands and boyfriends come and go on account of this.

Cherie holds the filmy blue nylon in both hands and flips it over her face to reveal her breasts. Mangoes — golden flesh served peeled — Beaufrey’s morning meal in Puerto Vallarta. Metallic-blue sequins glitter on each nipple. The husband finishes his beer and motions for another. He ignores Seese. He ignores everything but the men reaching up on the platform, with both hands grabbing for her crotch or her breasts. An old man in white painter’s coveralls grins so wide his false teeth slip. He’s tucking five-dollar bills in the front of the shorty pajama bottom. Next to him, two men in identical work khakis huddle together, company logos and their first names embroidered on the front pockets. The black lights overhead make the scar and stretch marks on Cherie’s belly glow uranium blue. Cherie has never lost a baby. Cherie can’t stop getting pregnant. Still, the stretch marks only show under the black light. It doesn’t seem fair. Cherie has four, can have five more, and Seese could only have one.

“Mama’s got a squeeze box — Oh, my love, darling, I’ve hungered for your touch a long, lonely time — Daddy never sleeps at night”—off comes the blue pajama top. Cherie drops it casually, oblivious to the whistling and clapping. She stretches her arms up and can almost touch the purple tubes in the light fixture. Her breasts jut out. She turns away and shakes the cheeks of her ass, then spins back around. They want the bottoms off. They want the G-string now. The old man is standing up. He’s got a twenty-dollar bill in his hand. She smiles and tosses him the pajama panty. He tucks the twenty into the blue satin G-string. For a moment the attention is on him, not her. The old man lifts the shorty pajama bottom high over his head, then brings it down to his beer glass. He stretches the crotch across the rim of his glass and downs the last of his beer. The others applaud and laugh. The cowboy is sweating. Seese smells it — hard labor. Sweat, great exertion. His hands clenching and unclenching fists. Seese wonders how Cherie manages to always find men who will eventually want to kill her, but remembers the bullet through the penthouse window and has to laugh at herself. Cherie’s cowboy gives Seese a murderous look. She starts to explain that she is not laughing at anything here, that she is, laughing at herself, but the cowboy has already turned his head away. It takes a certain kind of man to watch his wife or girlfriend striptease in front of a crowd of drunk, grab-happy men and not blow up and kill them all. This pretty little cowboy was the wrong kind. The right kind would have been proud, would have had contempt for all the other men who did not have a beautiful woman — the right man would have enjoyed parading his wildly sexual woman in front of the needy and deprived. Seese had seen men who gloated over how badly the leering, shouting crowd wanted what was theirs, what the crowd could look at but never touch. But Cherie’s blond cowboy did not appear confident that the others were only going to look.