Sin City

6. edger allan no

I'd been up all night.

It wasn't an intentional all-nighter like most of them are. 

I'd laid on my old creeky mattress forever. My skin was too dry, my hair was too hairy, my necklace was too tight and my blanket wasn't warm enough. The moonlight shoving it's way through my blinds was brighter than a lighthouse. I tossed, turned, rolled, kicked, groaned. Couldn't sleep. 

So I opened up an old friend. A notebook from my younger days, particularly when I was in my awkward phase. I'd gone through an odd stage where I was convinced I was destined to be a gothic poet who wrote of morbid stories containing death, betrothal to vampire and werewolves, some more death, and of course, organs. 

For a very short period, my colorful wardrobe was reduced to neutrals and blacks and I'd morphed into Wednesday Adams. It had to have been something I'd seen on an edgy cartoon or a copying of a cousin. Maybe a fad at the time. I'd even joined a club for gothic kids at school where we all sat around and read our most grotesque poems, then complained about the world being too cheerful for us. One guy was convinced the sun followed him to ruin his darkness.

I carried a black notebook with me everywhere. The first page said 'don't read if squeamish'. I'd see things around me. Crows, cemeteries, a very pale guy, and immediately it went into the book of doom. My Mother eventually found a page about a 'very annoying woman who nagged her daughter to actual death and made her body clean dishes post-mortem'  based on her asking me once to scrub a pan and became concerned with the behavior. 

I'd grown out of this dark mindset, thank God, mostly because I'd missed wearing ol' Roy G Biv, but I'd kept the notebook around to look back on when I got older. I'd opened it tonight because I'd wanted a taste of the sweet nectar of being on a roll. A flow. When your pen just won't stop moving and your thoughts won't stop producing the most beautiful of adjectives, your filling pages, your hand isn't even cramping and for a minute you're soaking in the world at rapid speeds, and you can taste it all on your tongue like a Gobstopper. 

I'd left writing in the dust mostly when I'd become a stripper. There was merely no time for silly words on paper when dancing was to be done. I'd danced my feelings, contorted my body into my emotions, and conveyed them with my facial expressions, but all in all, words are the prettiest way a person can speak. 

When I couldn't sleep, all I could think about were all the words I couldn't say. 

My hands shook as I flipped open to the next empty page. I wrote the date. October 29th. Almost Halloween. Chanty was coming to Vegas and we were going as...well, we still didn't know. I sucked my lip as I pressed my pen down to the paper. 

I needed a topic. 

Nothing came to mind at first. Horizons of moutain ranges and distant oceans passed by in my head, but none of them came to life. My old job popped into my head and I scribbled down some words 

'i am exposed

they watch me pose

and no one cares when I wear clothes'

Okay, I had a haiku, but it was a scrap of what I really wanted to speak. My heard was still clogged with a back-up of words. 

Ezekiel walks by the open bedroom door. He's only just gotten home. He's soaking wet. It's pouring out. He sees me. 

"You're awake? It's 3:30."

"So are you."

"Well, yeah, but you know me. What's got you up?"

I shrug. No more words on the paper. He sits down beside me, wrapping his arms around my torso. My chest heaves in with guilt. I'm lying to him. He doesn't know. He doesn't know that I am a stripper. He doesn't know that I am dirty and I am rotten and I am jealous. He hugs me closer, pressing a kiss to my lips. The moonlight shines on us. A kiss. I need to write about a kiss. 

I immediately pick up the notebook once he's left the room. 

'It is naughty, It is a poisen, but it is ever so sweet, a poisonous berry. It contains lies, it withers under the truth, it is delicious. Tongues intertwining, desperate to consume all the love they can in a gluttonous filth, it is greedy, it is a delicacy. It is raindrops falling down a bus window on a humid summer day, mid-july. It is a butterfly sucking the sweetness from a flower in the dead of night. It is sugary sap dripping down the sides of a tree in the autumn. My mind is clouded with your cologne as it sends me off into an anesthetic sleep, you have killed me, and I will ask you to do it again' 

I feel out of breath by the time I finish writing, like I've just come up from being pushed underwater. I look up from the paper. It is just me in an empty room with a ticking clock and my old belongings, the only things that still reflect my old self. I look down at my phone. It was all I could do to turn it off. 

I lay down, feeling like something that needed to be done is done. I am asleep in minutes. I feel a soft kiss on my forehead. I hear my door click shut. 

-

Chanty showed up three days early. She'd appeared on the sidewalk Infront of the apartment building smiling wide and holding a smoothie. Her skin was glowing, her hair was in it's natural curly state. She's in doc martins, tights, a short black skirt and a blue blouse. She looks beautiful, she's changed in the three weeks I've been gone. 

Her smile hasn't and she pulls me against her. She's gotten a new perfume. "My cafe kicked off." She tells me before even saying hello. 

"I heard. I still get the Elko newsletter online. You're, like, the talk of the town."

She nodded, squealing. "I know, right? It's like a total dream come true. And I can't believe I'm in Vegas. Everything is so much cooler here. My hotel is so huge. Thanks again for putting me up."

"No problem." Ezekiel put her up. I'm close to flat broke and feeling like a leech but I don't dare tell either of them yet. I'm in a sweatshirt and pajama pants in the middle of the boulevard. It comes to my attention only as we're halfway to our destination. 

Chantelle's reasoning for showing up three days early was that one of her favorite smokeshow male actors was doing a reading of his new memoir at a coffee shop that was just at the end of the road from me. I've seen first hand how obsessed she was with the guy, and I'd never seen the hype, so I agreed to tag along to be proven wrong. Unfortunately, I hadn't had the livery of getting dressed, or even putting on deodorant, given Chantly spared the detail that the reading was at 7 in the morning. 

"I look like raggedy Ann, but even more raggedy." I groan, mortified to be out on the streets of Vegas looking like I live in a shack underneath a pizza shop and live off of their dumpster. Chanty just nudged me.

"You look fine. Trust me, you could dress as a potato and you'd still manage to steal everyone's thunder." 

The cafe was pretty simple. And abundance of long beaded curtiains was noticeable and a strong smell of ash clouded the purified air. Folding chairs were set up in rows on unpolished wood flooring and the tables were stood up against the wall to make room. There was a stool in the front, and a table with books for signing set up behind it. I felt like I was covered in a filth, my skin having a thin layer of sludge atop it's barrier. A long hot shower, the kind that makes your blood pressure skyrocket and your skin a strawberry red, would feel better than an ice water in Navada humidity.  

The crowd you'd expect started slowly filing in through the squeaky double doors. Husbands who enjoy war reenactments and learning about historicals dynasties and other things you don't care about were present and in their best ironed khakies. Some snooty young guys with thin glasses perched at the top of his nose. It was hard to believe Chanty, a 22 year old self-employed business owner in her prime, was into books like these. Uneccessarily long novels on historical figures from 10 decades ago. I was more into flashy romances so fast-paced that kisses came after funerals and babies were born before you knew the characters names. 

The author finally stumbled in. Heavy set, around 300 pounds with deep eye sockets and a stained wife beater topped with a red flannel. He wiped some chocolate off his face with his sleeve and opened up the book. Then looked out at us poor, sorry listeners. "Hey everyone, thanks for coming...um...I'm Dougeil Cooligan."

I leaned over and wispered to Chanty. "Is he doug or is he daniel? He needs to make up his mind."

She elbowed me harshly under the rib. "Ebony, shh. This is important to me."

So, for my best friend's sake, I settled in and tried desperately to keep myself awake  through an hour long reading that reminded me of one of the 8 college lectures I made it too. Prof Dougiel has belched 7 times within 7 minutes and I'm suddenly feeling far from the grossest one here. All I can think about is going out tonight and bailing on my goal to complete 'just stay home january', so I could treat myself with 'have fun february'. I'd love to feel the reward of saving money and protecting my liver for one whole month but I just thrifted a new cocktail dress and Vegas isn't the best place to get sober. 

I've already got two starers, a guy who could've easily been around to sign the Decloration of Independance, and a kid younger than the tube of mascara I use. By chapter 3 of A Revelutionary Revelation, I had yawned about 332 times. 

"Alright, and we'll end it off there," Dougiel shoves a sparkly bookmark into his book and slams it shut, then picks up a ballpoint pen and pops it open. "Who wants my signature?"

Chany jumped up like her favorite sports players was dangling his jersey infront of her. A line made it's way to the table. Shoes scuffed on flooring covered in slush from the murky winter day. It was that after-christmas period where winter isn't fun anymore, and all I wanted to do was bring some spice back into my life, which had dulled out since the rush of getting here. Interviews had come and went, but being an adult didn't fufill my sparkle-meter, which was something I'd had since I was little. If my week wasn't fun enough, my sparkle-meter hit a low and I'd feel lethargic until I went out again. 

"Chanty," I said as she juggled the book in her pencil thin arms. It had to be the size of the whole harry potter series. "I need to go to the club. I'm having withdrawals. Come with me?"

She groans loudly as we walk back out into the busy streets, doding puddles and muddy bootprints on the sidewalk. Chanty has been trying to tone me down since I started my party girl legacy in around 11th grade. She used to always have to be my right mind and convince me that no I should not follow those people into that alley, yes I should decline that offer from a 55 year old man trying to take me out on a date, no I absolutely should not mix strawberry and mint ice cream (that one is a 7 deadly sin). So when she heard I was trying to put down the bottle and temporarily retire my plunging necklines, she was escstatic. She was less so when I told her I was breaking my promise. 

"Ebony, come on, you need to start planning ahead. You got on a bus unnannounced to go to one of the most dangerous cities in the world, to meet a guy you'd never met, to do things you had no experience with, and didn't even tell your parents. Now you're spending your day's draining Zeke's money. Be a woman, Eb."