Marilyn

She sings breathily, as though she thinks she is Marilyn, or Jane Horrocks mimicking Marilyn.

“Happy Birthday. To You,” she sings, with all the pauses. She bends at the knee in her cheap pink satinette dress. There’s half-hearted applause as she comes off-stage and makes her way to the toilet to get changed.

He follows her in there and gives her a gram.

“Good girl,” he says.

“Throw me a fucking peanut. I might dance,” she says, ignoring the wrap as she starts to remove her heavy make-up. She’s freckled and fair underneath all the blusher and foundation. Her face is pretty in a natural way, an uncommon way.

He pushes the wrap towards her.

“You did well, though,” he says. “You deserve a treat.”

She unzips the dress and steps out of it. It has fallen to the floor around her feet, and she is semi-naked, with her back to him. He traces the curve of her spine with his eyes. He counts the notches of her vertebrae where they show through at the top of her back. He lingers over the hollow that forms in the small of her back. She’s reapplying mascara and lip gloss, and she watches him through the mirror. She says nothing; she doesn’t have to. It’s all there in her eyes.

He laughs.

“You’re safe, Princess,” he says. “You’re really not my type.” He walks over to where the wrap of cocaine still sits on the vanity unit.

“You sure you don’t want this?” he asks. “Finest Columbian.”

She pauses with the mascara brush in mid-air, and looks at him. He laughs again and pockets the wrap.

“Suit yourself,” he says, and turns to leave the room. “It takes more than dirty glances to get rid of me, though.” He looks at her from the doorway. “I’ll give you a call, yeah?”

She doesn’t even look at him, but carries on fixing her make-up, half naked and beautiful.

She pulls on a bra, pulls a t-shirt over it, pulls on jeans. She unpins her hair and lets it fall around her shoulders and face. She pushes the cheap blonde nylon wig that makes her scalp itch into a carrier bag with the pink dress and the heels. She puts on a pair of flats and tidies away her make-up.

In her new disguise, nobody recognises her as she leaves the club. He’s back at the bar, whiskey in hand, watching the next act on the stage.

She pushes her way through the double doors and out onto the street. The summer night is sultry, and she regrets her jeans. Winter will be here soon enough and she will be in her natural habitat once again.

The plastic bag holding her stage clothes rustles at her side as she walks and swings in time with her rhythm. She hums to herself as she makes her way through town and down the hill to the taxi rank. It’s not too late and she doesn’t expect that there will be much of a wait.

“You’ve finished early, love,” says the man on the phones behind the counter.

“Short one tonight,” she says.

“Usual address?”

“Yes,” she says, and sighs.

He smiles at her. “About ten minutes, okay?”

“Okay,” she replies, not quite managing to smile back. She turns and takes a seat on one of the benches. There’s a quiz machine in the corner, and a lanky youth is slumped over it, flicking buttons and feeding coins periodically into the slot. She crosses one leg over the other and twitches her foot back and forth, up and down, gazing out of the cab office window at the cars going past, on their way out of town. People going home, one or two drinks over the limit most of them, in all probability.

The ten minutes seem to take an hour to pass, but eventually the bloke at the desk calls out, “You’re next, love” and she goes outside to stand on the pavement. The cab pulls up at the kerb and she gets into the back seat.

“Alright, love?” the driver grins over his shoulder.

“Fine, thanks,” she says.

“Where to, then?”

She gives the address and the cab pulls away from the kerb.

When she gets into the house, she strips off again, leaving her clothes in a pile on the living room floor. She goes upstairs, enjoying the cool of the air against her skin. She goes into the bathroom and turns on the shower, setting it to cool. She pulls clean towels out of the airing cupboard and places them on top of the toilet lid. She cleans off her make-up again. Vanity is the only reason she puts it on for the journey home. She can’t be seen without mascara and lip gloss. Not even by people she doesn’t know.

She gets into the shower and lets the water run over her, washing away the grime of the day, the scum of the night. She tries not to think about the events of this evening. It has been one of the worst ones. She can’t remember how she got into this, how he found a way to – she can’t even bring herself to think what he has made her do.

Stepping out of the shower, she wraps the larger of the clean towels around her and the smaller one around her head. She rubs gently at her hair, squeezing out the moisture, then turns the towel into a turban.

She stays wrapped in her towels and goes back downstairs. In the kitchen, she pours herself a glass of wine. Cassis and vanilla, it says on the label. It tastes like wine to her. Good wine. She sips at it and walks through to the living room. The wine goes to her head, makes her feel sleepy. She sits on the sofa, wrapped in her towels, drying off, winding down.

Across town, the club is closing. He’s made a few phone calls. The mess in the gents has been cleaned up. She’s neat, but you can’t do this kind of thing without some mess.

Her phone rings and she ignores it. The wine in her glass is almost gone. Her eyes are closed. She isn’t sleeping, not yet. She sits and listens to the phone ring on. She knows it will be him. Smart in his suit, even in this heat. She has never seen him sweat once.

She has opened the living room window, and the breeze sweeps through the room, blowing soft against her shoulders. She has pulled the towel from her head, her hair almost dry. The breeze catches at the ends of her hair and pushes it gently against her skin.

She opens her eyes and looks down at her hands. They are stronger than they look. Her fingernails are clean and white against the creamy pinkness of her skin.

Her phone beeps to tell her there is a message. She longs for the time when her nights were her own. No messages on her voicemail. No phone calls in the morning with the where and the when for that night.

At times, she wishes she could disappear, but she knows that he would still find her. He’d track her down. There’s always a trail, always a path. Once you’re involved with a man like him, there is no escape.

She closes the window, switches off the lights, makes sure that the front door is locked. She makes her way upstairs to lie on her bed in the heat of the night. She refuses to think of the look on his face, that man she had never met before, when she meted out the other’s punishment. She tries not to wonder what his sin was, his crime. She tries not to think of them as people.

She lies, naked, in the darkness. She closes her eyes and tries not to see his face.

© J R Hargreaves July 2006