Page 65 of Dirty Ink

On the other side of me, Conor gave me a raised eyebrow.

“Is that so, Mason?” he asked in that gravel voice of his. “Because I wouldn’t have guessed myself.”

I slouched down even further in my seat and gave the two of them the middle finger, one each.

“We’re in Vegas,” Rian said as the announcement to silence all phones came over the speakers. “It would be a waste if we didn’t experience the local culture while we’re here.”

I crossed my arms moodily over my chest.

“I’d let a stripper tell me all about the history of the West while she shook her titties in my face,” I said. “Would that count?”

“Didn’t you fuck that flight attendant on the way over?” Conor asked as the lights went down.

“Yeah,” I said, looking over at him. “So what?”

Conor shrugged. “Just thought that would keep you happy for a bit longer than it has.”

I caught sight of his eyes before the theatre went dark. He wasn’t joking. He’d meant it. “Keep me happy.”

I should have been offended. That wasn’t all my life was. Fucking around.

But I couldn’t be offended, because a part of me knew he was right. That was all my life was. All I’d allowed my life to be. Fucking around. Woman to woman, day to day. Living the dream.

The irony was, I wasn’t happy. Something was missing. It was times like these that I knew it. Saw it. Was forced to face it. The times when I didn’t have the immediacy of hips in my hands, a nipple between my teeth, or an ass smushed against my cheeks. The times between saying goodbye and saying hello. The empty times.

I stared out across the pitch black of the theatre and saw my life. There was no pain. No, I hadn’t been hurt. I’d made sure of that.

But there had to be more than that, right? Something more than a lack of pain? Something more than an absence of hurt? Something to fill me up. Something to overflow between my fingers. Something bright and lovely.

The lights along the stage flared up suddenly. They rose to the heights of the velvety curtains. They cascaded down over the audience like torrents of water. They flashed in my eyes. Brighter than the sun. People around me blocked their eyes momentarily, but I stared at them. I stared through them. I blinked and there she was.

Alone on the stage. I saw her before everyone else. I was sure of that. Everyone else had their eyes closed. Had their eyes turned away. But I was looking right at her.

And she was looking right at me.

The theatre had to have had five hundred people in it, but I looked right at her and she looked right at me through that impossible light.

I saw surprise in her eyes. I’m sure she was used to staring out at the audience like a splatter painting, not picking out anyone in particular amongst the crowd. Maybe she saw surprise in my eyes as well. I expected the dancers to be far away. To smile blandly, generally. To move like puppets on strings and then get dragged away to the sides of the stage. I didn’t expect to catch her eyes like we were across a bar. Like she could walk right over to me. Like she was about to whisper into my ear, “How about a drink?”

We looked at each other, looked at each other in surprise, and then the blinding lights were rising again, sweeping toward the ceiling, falling backwards to illuminate the stage. To illuminate her.

She stood there on stage in the ensuing silence, one heel up on a single chair. She wore fishnet stockings that ended mid-thigh. Her bustier was gold. Her honey-coloured hair fell around her bare shoulders in big curls.

The silence stretched on as she stood there. A few people in the audience cleared their throats. There was a cough or two. Some scuffling, some shifting in chairs.

The woman on stage looked picture perfect. Nothing out of place. She was exactly as she was supposed to be. But the silence extended too long. The show should have started. Why was she still not moving? Still frozen there with her heel on that chair, top hat hanging loose at her side.

Only I knew, I thought with a shiver that trailed down my spine.

She was looking for me. Blinking through the lights that blinded her there on that big stage. She was looking for me.

The single spotlight shifted around her like it, too, was growing impatient. Eager for something. Eager for her to perform. Just like the audience who had come, paid for their tickets, waited in line.

I understood: she wasn’t going to perform for them. For the audience. For the spotlight that circled her the way I wanted my tongue to circle her. She was going to perform for me. For me alone.

The girl stared into the blinding floor lights and a hiss came from the side of the theatre. We were careening toward a breaking point. She’d strained the audience too thin. People were going to start complaining. Walking out. Demanding refunds. The manager of the show was seconds away from storming the stage and animating the girl’s frozen limbs like a puppeteer. “Look, everyone, no, look! She’s performing! She’s performing for all of you!”

Only I would know it was bullshite. She was here for me. And I was here for her.

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