THUGLIT Issue Four

by Patti Abbott

  “Are you sure you can be here by two on weekdays and ten on Saturdays?” Mr. Polifax asked at my interview, brushing the omnipresent yet non-existent hair from his face for the tenth time. “No personal phone calls, no boyfriends visiting?”

  Twice, he’d put a hand on my arm, the last time several inches above the elbow. I managed to hide my revulsion well enough to be hired on the spot, learning later I’d been the only one to apply. But Mr. Polifax employed me with the reluctance of a man who’d purchased a bobcat and we gave each other a wide berth as much as possible. He was on the road buying and selling coats much of time. As for me, working the counter at Allure Furs seemed like a better idea than hawking pizzas or filing library books—the sorts of employment my mother had suggested.

  My duties included manning the front counter, answering the phone, ringing up sales—mostly from storage fees and the occasional purchase of accessories—never for something as consequential as a coat. The sale of even a muff was reason for excitement.

  After the first few weeks, I brought a paperback along. Hours passed without a single customer coming into the shop. The storage fees must carry the business, I decided—or perhaps large sales took place on the frequent trips Mr. Polifax took. Once or twice, I spotted invoices for furs sold, but those were rare.

  “I bet he’s laundering money,” a friend suggested.

  I was too embarrassed to admit I didn’t know what that meant. Never again would I enjoy such innocence.

  “Iris.”

  It was Mr. Polifax, coming out of the backroom in a rush. I jumped, not knowing he was back there, and slid Flowers In The Attic under the counter. “Lisa’s down with the flu. I wondered if you might step in for her tomorrow.”

  Lisa was the older girl Allure Furs employed for customers who asked to see a fur modeled or for the runway show Polifax mounted twice a year. She was a skinny blonde who wore too much makeup, staggeringly high heels, and fancied herself the next Elle Macpherson. She seldom deigned to talk to me, preferring the petting she received at the hands of Mr. Polifax and Myrtle and already sported the world-weary look of a middle-aged woman.

  “A customer’s coming in late this afternoon. Lisa usually handles it but…” Mr. Polifax looked at me critically. “Can you do something with your hair, Iris? Maybe put it up? No, it’s probably too short for that,” he said, running a hand across the nape of my neck. Every hair stood on end as if commanded. “I’ve never understood why young girls cut off their hair. Well anyway, ask Myrtle for some advice.” He motioned with his head toward the backroom, and then paused, a hand on his hip. “Try to look like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. You might bring that off. Do you know who she is?”

  I nodded.

  “Good,” he said. “That’s the kind of look we strive for. Classy.”

  I tried not to glance at the dandruff on his lapels, the worn cuffs on his shirt, the scuffed tips of his burgundy Thom McAn loafers.

  “Go see what Myrtle can do with you.” His hand darted just to the left of my backside before he glided away. Even the air his movement produced was repulsive.

  Though Myrtle’s wildly permed hair and penchant for wearing jewelry made from shells, bird feathers, and fish skeletons was hardly a selling point for beauty advice, I walked into the back room, a place where Myrtle spent her days performing the miraculous bookkeeping tricks that kept Allure Furs afloat. She seemed clueless, suspicious, and ruthless all at once. We’d never had a conversation beyond a discussion of the weather, her cat Lamour, and how I should fill out various forms.

  “A wig would probably be the best way to go,” Myrtle said, spinning around in the desk chair. “Can’t do much with that pixie-cut you favor. Glamour needs more volume. Selling furs is easier if they’re modeled by a sexy girl. Men wanted to think their wives will look gorgeous if they buy them a fur. It’s your job to make them believe it. Now, what can we do with you?”

  This was by far the longest speech Myrtle had ever made to me. And here I was, within a scant two minutes, receiving fashion advice from a person who looked like an extra for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I held my tongue. Maybe there’d be more money in modeling because Lisa certainly seemed well-fed and dressed.

  Reaching over with a frown, Myrtle yanked open a file drawer, pulled out a ratty-looking auburn wig, and tossed it to me. In the split-second before I caught it, it appeared a ferret was headed my way. I could smell Aquanet hairspray, disturbed from its years of rest, and possibly something else.

  “Of course, you’ll have to play with it, tease it, plump it up. Give it a little flair. Why don’t you take it home? Practice on it. You might even throw it in some Woolite and let it soak for an hour or two. Woolite can do wonders.”

  Unconsciously, Myrtle’s right hand went to her own head. “I’ve been known to pull a wig on in a pinch. I may even have worn that one once or twice. Not so many years ago, it was me modeling furs for Mr. P.”

  I beat back the impulse to drop it on the floor. It was the faint but noxious scent of Myrtle’s favorite perfume that was coming through along with the Aquanet. Or perhaps the odor of the back office itself, pickled in Charlie after all of Myrtle’s years at Allure Furs. Mr. Polifax kept her as far from the furs as possible. And even farther from the customers.

  I returned later that day, wig in place, makeup on, the highest heels Payless sold jammed on my feet.

  “Well, that’s more like it,” Mr. Polifax said, coming out of the back room. “Who’d guess you’d clean up this good? Might sell a coat today after all.” He circled me. “The added height’s terrific. You must top six feet in those shoes.”

  He was flush with approval, and when the customer bought an expensive mink an hour later, Mr. Polifax was ecstatic. “Good work, Iris. You got the knack.” Actually I had gotten off a bit on the show I put on (to my surprise)—walking back and forth on the little ramp Mr. Polifax called his runway. And I did seem to have the knack for it. The guy had me model furs for almost a half-hour and then bought the second one I had worn. I listened to him with a smile pasted on my face when he told me he could get me a deal on a used Buick if I came down to his lot. I took the card he held out and smiled even wider. This might really work out.

  Lisa and I began sharing the modeling duties. “You know when to shut your trap,” Mr. Polifax said, in a rare attempt at a compliment. “Lisa likes to chat up the customers. Sometimes it works, but…”

  It was several weeks later that he asked me to come in on a Friday night. “This guy can only make it after eight,” he said, running a nervous hand through his non-existent hair. I wondered if the gesture looked less absurd when his hand had swept through hair rather than air, but I took the gesture itself for a worrisome sign. Just who was this guy coming in at night? And why was it freaking Mr. Polifax out?

  I was somewhat relieved when he added, “Could mean a big sale for us so I’m reluctant to turn it over to that big-mouthed Lisa. This customer’s the silent type.” He squinted as he licked his thumb and flipped through his Rolodex. “Your mother works Friday nights, right?” He was looking at the card with my name on it now. “Well, I can give you a ride home. It’s practically right on my way.”

  Ugh. Would the nastiness of Allure Furs never end? I imagined him cruising my house in the ancient VW bus he drove to cart furs around. “Nobody expects to find fur coats in a piece of junk like this,” he explained.

  Friday night, I tried on a lynx and a karakul lamb coat for a tiny man who never said a word. He looked at me or the coat—take your choice—from under barely opened eyelids. After the lynx, Mr. Polifax came hurrying into the back room.

  “Look, Iris—just the coat, never mind the rest.”

  I must have had my mouth open because he added, “Leave your clothing back here. You know.” He looked me up and down as if I’d already stripped. I could actually feel my clothes falling away in his eyes.

  “What would be the point of that?” I said, watching him in the mir
ror. It wasn’t like my skimpy dress was making the coat fall unevenly. It had no effect on the fur at all. I struggled to make sense of it.

  Mr. Polifax turned a bright pink. “This client—well, he’s a little odd—but he’ll probably buy something or make it worth our while if he gets a peek.”

  A peek? A peek at what?

  “Look, Lisa does it all the time. Well, not all the time maybe, but now and then. I would’ve thought she’d filled you in on it. I’m sure I told her to bring you up to speed. Or maybe it was Myrtle I told to talk to you.” He paused and when I didn’t say anything, continued, “Some men—well, some of then—they like a little show. It greases the wheels for a sale. Harmless stuff really.” He giggled.

  I shook my head and he sighed.

  “Look, there’ll be something extra in your paycheck next week. Be a good girl and show him the goods.”

  The goods. What were the goods?

  “What if I do it and he still doesn’t buy a coat? I’ll still get the extra pay?” I wasn’t the fool he took me for. “I’ll get something extra even if he doesn’t buy a fur? Right?” I repeated more firmly. Any girl in her right mind wouldn’t even be considering this stunt, so I might as well push any thoughts of virtue aside. I had “the goods” and he wanted “the goods.” I wasn’t sure what kind of money we were talking about but it had to be the price of a pair of jeans at the very least.

  Mr. Polifax paused again, and then nodded.

  “And no touching me, right? He has to keep his grubby little hands to himself!” I was hardly going to allow that nasty man in the other room to put his hands on me.

  “Okay, no touching. I’ll be right there, Iris. But if you take such a prissy, superior attitude out there, he won’t buy anything and our little arrangement will end. Lisa’s been trying to get me to give her more hours.” He blinked twice. “She’s very amenable to client requests. She’s a smart one, that Lisa.”

  His lips disappeared as he straightened his back, clearly annoyed, and he pushed open the door and left me alone.

  The little man was standing in the same spot when I walked out of the back room wearing a hugely expensive sable that only someone my height could pull off. He gave no indication that either it or me was anything special, remaining mostly mute and using his hands to indicate certain moves he wanted me to make. It looked like he was conducting an invisible orchestra. I followed his instructions almost like an automaton—never fully disrobing, but certainly modeling more than the coat.

  The show, or whatever it was, went on for about ten minutes, and it wasn’t an entirely dissatisfying experience. I enjoyed watching myself in the full-length mirrors circling the room. The fractured pieces of me, the swirling coat, the man’s face, all crisscrossing the room. A kaleidoscope of images. I was getting better at it all the time, and I can’t say the strange sort of power I wielded over this man didn’t have its reward. The way his features seem to slide off his face and turn to liquid. Desire. That was what it was.

  At the end of the show, the small man’s face quickly lost that waxy, liquidy texture and returned to an almost featureless look—stony and fixed. I might have never disrobed at all from his placid appearance. But Mr. Polifax was visibly panting, seemingly ill-equipped to show the customer to the door.

  When the door closed, Mr. Polifax sank into the nearest chair and fanned himself. “You did good, Iris,” he said. “You’re a born model. We’re gonna make some money—you and me.”

  My little ballet netted an extra $75 in my next check, almost doubling what I made most weeks. I now understood how Allure Furs stayed in business despite its poor sales. It was a strip club. A strip club for private customers. Seedier even than the ones I heard about across the Detroit River in Windsor. Places where desperate men sought relief from their loneliness and bad marriages.

  My check grew over the next weeks even if my self-respect did not. If virtue was its own reward, a lack of virtue paid well too. The performance became rote and my initial interest in the men and their faces waned. I felt like a prostitute and would’ve denied I did such a thing to even my closest friends. Various unpleasant circumstances arose too. Men whispering words like “slut” under their breath; men masturbating while they watched me; men taking photographs of me wearing a mask if they ponied up enough money, men panting, sighing, and in one case, crying.

  Gradually, Mr. Polifax treated me differently too. Although the men didn’t touch my body, they’d touched something deeper and it became harder and harder to live with it. By day I was a virginal seventeen-year-old; by night I was a stripper in the sleaziest club on earth.

  It ended in the way you might expect.

  One night, well after closing hour, a man I’d never seen before entered the shop for an appointment. I should have been suspicious because Mr. Polifax had been on pins and needles all day, opening and closing drawers, multiple trips to his private john, rearranging coats, mumbling, hushed conversations on the telephone. Another thing that should have tipped me off me was Lisa had backed out of the night’s job when she saw the client’s name in the appointment book. She covered it up by saying this fellow went to her church and she couldn’t risk him recognizing her. As soon as I saw him I knew this guy had never seen the inside of any church.

  “Iris—this guy, this guy,” Mr. Polifax stuttered, in the moments before the client entered the shop, “well, he likes a little contact. Nothing too fancy but—well he really pays well. I can probably pay you double the usual rate.”

  “But more or less the usual?”

  “More or less.”

  But Mr. Polifax didn’t look me in the eye.

  The man who entered the back room a few minutes later topped 6’4. But his width or girth was even more impressive than his height. He looked like Bluto in the Popeye comics. An acid wash began swirling in my stomach. Most of the guys I’d modeled for were either jokey or solemn in a creepy way. But this guy, this monster of a man, had a look of venom on his face—just like Bluto, in fact. He saw me for what I’d become and intended to take advantage of it.

  “Iris, if you need me, I’ll be in the next room.”

  Before I could protest Mr. Polifax’s quick exit, Bluto had slammed the door shut with his heel.

  “That’s not our arrangement,” I shouted. “You’re supposed to…”

  The client put his mammoth hand over my mouth. “You don’t need to say another word,” he whispered. “And don’t pretend to be an innocent kid either. Some guys like that kinda stuff—but not me.”

  A smile crept up his face as he pushed me up against a mirror and raised his knee, knocking my shaking knees apart. There was no way I was going anywhere. His mouth, lips large and livery, was on my neck, and his breath was both hot and fetid. His other hand, ham-fisted and awkward, searched for my breast. Finding it, he squeezed hard enough to make a scream leak out from behind his other hand. He was surprised, and I used that moment to raise my foot sharply. Using the heel, I broke the mirror behind me. The shattering glass brought Mr. Polifax back into the room within seconds.

  “Hey,” he said, looking Bluto in the face. “What do you think you’re doing in here? That glass cost good money.” Then he noticed me cowering in the corner. “You okay, Iris?” I was shaking too hard to answer.

  “Look,” Bluto said, and he was looking at me. “Don’t give me any of that stuff, girly. How’d you like it if a piece of the glass under my foot found its way to your face? That’d put an end to your little shell game. A few guys out there like scars, but not enough to make it worth hiring you.”

  But before his hand reached the floor, Mr. Polifax pulled a gun from his jacket pocket. He was far less awkward with the weapon than I’d have expected.

  “Time to go, friend. Ten seconds and I pull the trigger.”

  “What’re you trying to pull, you four-flushing fairy,” the man said “You know what I come here for. Same thing as always. What’s-her-name knows the score. Where’s she tonight?”

&nb
sp; But Mr. Polifax said nothing as the gun inched higher. I heard the sound of a hammer being pulled back. Bluto was out the door in seconds.

  “Sorry ‘bout that, Iris,” Mr. Polifax said once we heard the door close. “It’ll never happen again. I guarantee it.” He put the gun back in his pocket, wiped his sweating face. “Sometimes… unfortunate…things like this happen.” When I said nothing, he drove me home. “Lisa knows how to handle him,” he said at the curb. “I suppose you’re out of…things, after this.”

  I got out of the car without answering.

  A month or two later, the trio of stores anchored by Allure Furs burned to the ground in a spectacular blaze. You could smell the odor of an accelerant mixed with burning pastry, animal skins, and acetate along with other chemicals used in screening movies. The Fire Marshal couldn’t decide whether it was the faulty projector at the theater or the oven at the donut shop that caused it. Although the fire was at night, both Mr. Polifax and a client were on the premises and perished in what was called an extremely rapid-moving fire. Myrtle called to give me the news although she needn’t have bothered. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, neither man died—at least not right away.

  My mother threw the newspaper on the table at breakfast. “Looks like you got out of that place just in time, Iris.”

  I wondered if she could smell it on me. Not just the chemicals but all of it.

  Of Being Darker Than Light

  by Garrett Crowe

  Before he was blue-lighted, Rex sped by the road lines so fast they turned into one long surveyor-yellow tightrope that only he and his motorcycle were brave enough to balance across. The speed turned him into a blur, a transparent ghost flying down empty roads. He had just left Snow White’s Bar after knocking some Young Boy out.