Further Out Than You Thought

by Michaela Carter

  She fed a second dollar to the box and lit a candle for her mother. Looking into the face of the Virgin she thought she could see her mother’s face, that slight smile on her lips. “I miss you, Mama,” she said, and she felt the abyss inside her yawn, felt the tears come, but this time, she could also feel the love. Something in her chest lightened, and she found she was listening to a song in her head. I’ll be loving you, always. With a love that’s true, always. It was her mother’s voice, singing her to sleep, and it was the song she would sing to her daughter.

  Thirty-five

  THE CENTURY LOUNGE was warm and red, like a womb. It was a dream of a palace of curtains, the girls appearing and disappearing in the shadows, flitting like moths toward those smaller chambers furnished only with light, chambers that could hold two people like a confidence, where girls danced for just one pair of eyes, for a song. Through the showroom, she moved among whispers. Hey, mister? Wanna see? Follow me. She moved, only she didn’t flit. She was slow and deliberate, like a snake, winding among them—the girls and the strangers—feeling the ground under her heels, the ground under the carpet, under the wood and the cement, feeling the pull, the ache of gravity, and happy to linger in the twilight, watching, one last time, Brett, flushed and trembling, on her knees as she arched her back, and her breasts, the curve of her neck held the red light, and glowed.

  Tony tapped her on the shoulder. “One last?”

  He had found her, found her out.

  Blushing, she took his hand and led him to the private dance booth, the one on the side, their booth, where he sat with his hands clasped atop the desk-like ledge, where she fed the token into the slot and the light hummed to life. Between them, there was a vague, remembered heat—her bare, hothouse orchid (now crowned with its new leaf of short brown hair) and his itch to touch. Only now she embodied mystery, the mystery. She felt it as a kind of power. She was electric, charged, having claimed the direction her life would take. She arched and twisted, contracted and splayed, but he didn’t dare risk—didn’t even consider—contact, now this aura of impenetrability shielded her like invisible armor.

  Nirvana was playing, which meant Devotion was dancing. And she was up next. Her final set.

  She looked at Tony, wan and sad. He was smaller, older, with deeper wrinkles than she’d realized.

  Their song was over and the light clicked off. She pulled on her G-string and her black slip and stepped out of the dark booth. They stood beside their table, arms hanging at their sides—the moment, their silence, too long and hard to break. She said nothing. She leaned toward him and kissed his cheek, and he pulled her in for a hug.

  “What’ll I do without you?”

  “Find the next good thing,” she said, and smiled to nip in the bud a real tear.

  “Here,” he said, pressing a roll of bills into her hand. “For expenses.” She opened it—the bills were hundreds, and the roll was thick. She gave him one more hug.

  “I have a poem,” she said. “It’s going to be published, in one of the really good journals. I’ll send you a copy if you give me your address.”

  He pulled a pen from his front shirt pocket and scribbled his address on a napkin. “I’m happy for you,” he said, but his eyes were moist. She watched his slow walk toward the front of the club, toward the door. Thin and a bit bent, he looked more alone than ever, and she wished she could take his arm in hers and walk him to his car.

  Lady Madonna, children at your feet, Richie Havens sang, and she hurried backstage, past Devotion and Love getting high, between the red curtains and into the light, just as Joe’s voice, smooth and low, advertised her finale, her farewell. “And on the main stage, it’s Stevie. This is the last night she’ll dance on this stage, guys, so treat her right.”

  She walked the stage like she owned it. With a swish of her hips, she let one strap and then the other slip from her shoulders. She felt the black silk slide down her body and pool at her ankles, and she stepped out of it and danced in just her G-string for a roomful of people—for one final set she danced. She spun around the pole. Gripping it with her thighs and her hand, she leaned back in a dip, and saw the showroom upside down. The faces that faced her seemed to be drowning—their mouths slack above their dull eyes. But then the Friday night crowd was always drunk and cheap.

  Just today the curfew had been lifted. L.A. on the mend meant business as usual. The city was rebuilding itself. Citizens were helping the shop owners fix things up. The politicians were talking. There’d be federal aid for more jobs—jobs for minorities, they were saying. The outlook was hopeful. But the thrill of being alive? All that energy the chaos had unleashed? Had it really been stilled by the rush-hour traffic already, swallowed up by mere routine? Or was being alive to that extent exhausting? We’re creatures of habit, of comfort. Routine is safe. The vacant eyes of the mouth-breathers—there was nothing Gwen in her birthday suit, no matter her soaring spirit, no matter her spunk, was going to do about that.

  She pulled herself upright. She was done with the dance, with this sort of dance. She’d moved beyond the desire for strange eyes on her, remaking her in the image of their fantasy. She didn’t want to be this man’s student or that one’s teacher. She didn’t want to be the secretary or the ex-wife or the girl next door. From this time on, her sexuality would be her own. She wanted off the stage, out of the light, where Brett might brush by, their bare arms grazing, where she might turn, take Gwen in her arms for a waltz, her laughter lavish, voluptuous as wind chimes bejeweling the air.

  Behind the curtains, she found herself alone backstage, and the quiet was strange. She thought of the dream of her mother bursting into petals of pastel light. She thought of the kiss and took her time. Maybe Brett would walk right through that door, she thought, and her heart beat so she could feel it. She slid off her G-string. Naked, she looked herself over in the mirror. Her face was already fuller, and her cheeks were pink. Really, her whole body looked fuller and pinker. Since she left San Clemente, she hadn’t stopped eating. Munching. She’d stocked up on snacks—soda crackers and peanut butter and sweet pickles. Her stomach growled. She wanted something now, to keep the nausea at bay.

  One more song, one last, as Tony had said. She licked the arches of her brows—Brett’s move. All the gang has gone home, Rickie Lee cried. She couldn’t wait any longer. In just her pearls, she strolled into the light.

  Say good night, America, Rickie Lee sang. The world still loves a dreamer.

  Good night, then. Good night to the red light, and the flushed curves of flesh. Good night to the hours past midnight and the hum of LAX, to the girl on her own in the city’s hub, its spokes whirring like the hands of a too-quick clock. Good night to Brett and Love and Devotion. And good night to Los Angeles, to the dreams she’d had and who she thought she’d be. Good night to Tony, and to Mr. Cooper. To the matches struck in the dark, the cigarettes glowing. Good night to Valiant and to Leo and to the Cornell.

  She’d packed up her things—her mother’s silk slips, her books of poetry, the Underwood, and the cigar box. She packed what was hers just today. It was all in her car. Leo hadn’t so much as called, and Valiant must still have been with his parents. Tonight she’d head up the coast. Sam and Loni were expecting her. She’d drive through the night and arrive by morning.

  The song was short. I’m standing on the corner, all alone, Rickie Lee sang, and she realized it was over. There hadn’t been time, time to take it all in, the room, the mirrors, the men. She should have picked something longer.

  She turned to these last bars of music around the pole, and froze—leaning out, her head down and in profile for the audience. She held the pose as the song gave way to silence, a brief lull. And then she picked up the dollars littering the edge of the stage like so many pale, crushed flowers.

  Backstage, she sat in her pearls between Love and Devotion. Love wore pink chiffon, and with the white boa draped around her neck she tickled Gwen’s back as Devotion packed the pipe and offered her a
hit. She shook her head.

  “You’re leaving?” Love said.

  “She’s pregnant,” Devotion said.

  “Lord, if I got pregnant,” Love said, and got to her feet. “And I guess I could. He has to wait a year before they’ll lop it off.”

  “You’ve said,” Devotion said, and lit the pipe.

  “Well, anyhow, if I got pregnant, honey, I don’t know what I’d do. I can’t imagine not dancing. It’s who I am.” Towering over them in her heels, she parted the curtains and walked onto the stage. Gwen could hear Streisand crooning “The Way We Were,” and she imagined Love moving in circles, her circles moving.

  “What will you do?” Devotion said.

  Gwen stood, brushed the filaments of carpet from her butt. “I’m moving. Up to Santa Cruz. I have an aunt who said I could stay awhile, until I figure things out.”

  Devotion exhaled smoke, and leaned back on an elbow. “Doesn’t sound half bad, getting out of this dump.”

  “Nice!” The voice was breathy, someone Gwen didn’t recognize. She turned to see a new girl, a young redhead, farm-truck fresh, in her white lacy bra and cutoffs frayed clear to the seams. “God, this stuff smells good!” she said and reached for Devotion’s pipe. She giggled and took a drag. “There’s this guy, over there in the corner. Mr. Cooper, I think he said. He’ll pay you just to talk.”

  “Tell him Stevie says good-bye, will you?”

  “Stevie? Sure. But he’ll pay you—”

  “I know. If you could tell him for me.”

  “Yeah, sure. Stevie.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  She visited Joe, who gave her back her music. “I can’t talk you into staying, can I?” he said.

  “Not a chance,” she said, and left him for the dressing room, where she changed into jeans and a T-shirt. She took her lock off her locker, pulled out her costumes, her white and black lace, her plaid gingham dress, the little-girl church socks. She stuffed them into her carpetbag of a purse and put her fake pearls in there, too. She found the Virgin of Guadalupe necklace and fastened it around her neck.

  She could smell spice and she turned. Brett stood in the doorway in her black bra and her G-string. How long had she been there, watching?

  She walked to the mirror and sat down, put her feet on the counter. She took a lipstick from her purse and applied it with her finger. Her lips shone berry-brown, the exact color, Gwen thought, of her nipples.

  Her own lips were dry.

  “Could I?” she said.

  Brett turned the lipstick up and Gwen touched her pinky to it, dotted the color onto her lips. She looked in the mirror to see, and Brett’s dark eyes held hers.

  “You could kiss me now,” Gwen heard herself say, “and no one would know.”

  Brett smiled and patted her lap. “I’m up next song.”

  Now or never, Gwen thought.

  Her hands went cold, her heart pounded in her throat. She sat on Brett’s thighs. Her breath was cinnamon and smoke. Her eyes, up close, were dark as a night sea and she—they—were floating, the two of them, in a canoe across a glassy surface. Brett ran her fingers through Gwen’s hair, not catching a single tangle. She tugged at the roots and tilted her head back, just a little, her face toward hers.

  Gwen closed her eyes. Her lips and the slip of tongue—it was soft, it was seamless and sweet and slow, as though they had all the time in the world. Their tongues were the rounded fruit flesh of her dream, plum and peach. Apricot. Brett bit her lower lip, and electricity shot through her. Gwen was dissolving right here in Brett’s strong arms. She felt small, and protected. She was a snail, and Brett was her frail shell. “You’re shaking,” Brett said, and held her tighter. She kissed her eyelids.

  Gwen opened her eyes. With her fingertips, she traced the faint Ouroboros around Brett’s smooth arm. She wanted to stay here for just another moment, another breath.

  Brett kissed her forehead. “I should go,” she said.

  Gwen nodded. She couldn’t speak. She’d been blessed—blessed by the goddess. Gwen climbed off her lap and Brett stood.

  She lifted the Virgin pendant from Gwen’s heart. “Guadalupe,” she said. “She watches over unborn children and their mothers. I’m glad you have her.” She set her back on Gwen’s skin.

  “I want you to have this, too,” she said. She took the black velvet choker with the silver moon she’d made from around her own neck and fastened it on Gwen. They faced the mirror. Brett’s moon hung between Gwen’s collarbones. Gwen took the crescent in her fingers, turned it so the stones caught the light.

  “Lapis lazuli,” Brett said.

  Gwen nodded. “To help you remember your dreams. And moonstone.”

  Brett grinned. “For new beginnings.”

  “I’m moving to Santa Cruz.”

  “Santa Cruz, hm? Good town.”

  Her music was playing—Leonard Cohen’s “I’m Your Man.” “Listen,” Brett said. “Here’s my number. I’m going home soon. I’ve got to get out of this city.” She laughed. “I need some time away from my fiancé.” She pressed a slip of paper into Gwen’s palm, closed her fingers around it. “Call me sometime.”

  In the doorway, she turned, glanced at her over her shoulder. “I’ll see you, Stevie.”

  “My real name’s Gwen,” she said, needing her to know.

  Brett’s eyes flared with mischief.

  “I’m Carmen,” she said, and Gwen watched her vanish into the red pulse.

  She laughed out loud in the empty room. She should have known. Brett, Carmen—maybe she was all fiction. She opened the piece of paper. There was her number. She ran her finger over the black ink, the small, slanted scrawl.

  It was real.

  She tucked the paper into her change purse, for safekeeping, and slung her bag over her shoulder. She walked the hallway without looking back. The red glow was inside her now.

  It took the weight of her whole body to push the back door open to the night, to the warm L.A. night, its low clouds glowing with the lights from the streets like a huge cocoon the whole city was inside, as if all of Los Angeles might turn, along with her, into some newly winged thing. She walked to her car, fit her key into the lock. The engine hummed to life. She turned onto Century Boulevard, turned north onto the 405.

  She rolled her window down and Billie Holiday sang her through the night.

  The clouds thinned and vanished and the sky was lapis lazuli. And, later, the waning gibbous moon rose—so fat and orange, and then blue-white. She followed the shining thread of road through the lit fields and thought of Stevie, the girl she was leaving behind. She wasn’t perfect, but she’d taught Gwen a thing or two, like how to walk with her shoulders back, her head high, her naked heart lighting her way through any dark room. She had shown her how to bare not only her body, but her beauty, and how to love herself—bruises, blemishes, worries and all.

  WHEN LIGHT SPREAD from behind the hills and filled her rearview mirror, she was off the freeway, heading west again, nearly there. The road was only two lanes, winding through the mountains. A bright wind blew through the redwoods and the air was sweet. She rubbed her swelling belly with the palm of her hand, ate a Saltine cracker. Rounding a corner, she saw, twinkling in the distance, the blue of the ocean—where her mother’s body, her ashes, lay, but didn’t rest. Rather they pulsed, they flowed, they traveled always on tides through the world. Dazzling against the pale curtain of sky, the ocean left its ghost of light dancing in her vision, shimmering in the road before her.

  At the side of the lane, along a creek, a woman had parked her car. She bent toward a spigot, where she filled a plastic jug with water. Gwen pulled over. She got out of her car and stretched. The woman was young, Gwen’s age maybe. She wore a prairie skirt and a peasant blouse and not a spot of makeup. Gwen watched her fill jug after jug. When she finished, the spigot was still running. There wasn’t any off switch. It just ran.

  “Can you really drink the water?” Gwen said.

  The
woman smiled an easy smile. “It’s the best water around.”

  Gwen filled her own empty bottle with the cold water and drank it down. The woman was right. It was the best water she’d tasted, ever. She filled her bottle again, twisted the lid on, and watched the water in a single silver stream fall to the ground.

  Acknowledgments

  I’D LIKE TO give thanks to:

  Melissa Berton, Laraine Herring, Mary Sojourner, and Mike McNally, for reading my various drafts. Your insight was invaluable.

  Susan Lang, for her Hassayampa Institute, whose community of writers gave me a sense of support and purpose at a time when I most needed it.

  My teachers, especially Stephen Yenser, Ellen Bryant Voigt, and Larry Levis, for feeding the fire.

  The Wonder Agents of 3 Arts—Richard Abate, whose faith in my writing proved both impetus and inspiration, and Melissa Kahn, who spun her magic and found such a fine home for my book.

  Editor extraordinaire Jessica Williams, for her hard work and keen eye, and all of the amazing people at HarperCollins who helped to bring this book into the world.

  My family, for your constant love. Hannah and Max, my song and my reason.

  And finally, I want to thank Ty Fitzmorris, who believes.

  About the Author

  © TY FITZMORRIS

  MICHAELA CARTER is an award-winning poet and writer. She studied theater at UCLA and holds an MFA in creative writing, and her poetry has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, won the Poetry Society of America Los Angeles New Poets Contest, and appeared in numerous journals. Recently she cofounded the Peregrine Book Company, an independent bookstore in Prescott, Arizona, where she works as a book buyer and storyteller. Carter lives in Prescott with her partner and two inscrutable children and teaches creative writing at Yavapai College. This is her first novel.