past my prime




I wipe the sweat from my upper lip and do my best to smile. My mind reels and tries to remember the steps to this dance, but it’s like falling down the stairs, nails scraping metaphorical walls to pull the moves off. Tap, tap, tap, left leg kick, kick, skirt flip, giggle on cue. I try to do my best and fail miserably for another night when the heel on my right shoe snaps. It skitters towards the edge of the stage. I stop dancing. The jaunty saloon music continues around me as rough jeers and boos fly from the dark, sweaty pit of a floor where the audience is seated. I stand there and finger the lace around my skirt, unsure of what to do. I look out at the drunken faces of my spectators, donned with damp moustaches and thinning hair, letting a feeling of disgust crawl through me. The music stops, making me give up once and for all. I sulk offstage, but not before their chorus of insults really gets to me.

The musty red curtains that I pull aside smell of dust and cheap perfume. My remaining heel - I never did get the broken one off the stage - clacks on the hard floor as I shuffle my way through shouting, giggling showgirls. All of them are younger and brighter than myself. The skin around their eyes has yet to give way to the weight of age, their breasts have yet to lose elasticity, their hands are still delicate and taut. They don’t yet know how hard it is to be cheery during the day when you have to dance here at night.

I do my best to get to my own vanity counter, but the taffeta of my skirt is getting caught on the sequins and clips of other girls’ outfits. Sitting down at this mirror of mine, I push things from the counter with an anguished sigh. Beads from necklaces and bracelets clatter to the ground along with lace baubles and jars of cream and makeup. Missy walks behind me - I can tell it’s her by the stomp of her combat boots - and puts a hand briefly on my shoulder, telling me that I ‘did good out there.’ Missy’s a tall, thin, wispy girl like the others, with long black hair and a dimpled smile. I’m close to telling her off because she couldn’t have possibly seen me dance, she’s just being nice. She didn’t see the frantic over-stepping and windmilling, she didn’t see that I’ve gotten too old for this. She didn’t need to see, she knows, and with that comes the sympathy.

I open my mouth to tell her just that when Ben blows his whistle in three short blasts and a long one: skit number five. I give a weary groan and stand up, kicking my shoes off, deciding to go at it barefoot. Missy’s retreating back disappears into a stream of girls: a mass of bare skin, curly hairstyles and feathers. I adjust my top hat and go to join them, but Ben, our manager and owner, stops me. Ben’s a thin, wiry man with curly hair and sweat stains under his arms. He’s well-meaning, but usually wrong. He gives me a sympathetic smile that I’ve gotten too used to.

“This might not be the best time to tell you this, but I can’t think of when would be a good time …” he tells me, voice stretched thin and nervous. I listen to what he has to say to me and it takes no longer than a minute for him to get his story out. I listen with a disinterested look pasted to my painted face. He doesn’t say the words I’ve been waiting for, but I know he means them deep down in his heart: I’m too old, I’m past my prime. He doesn’t say it because it’s rude, but he’s thinking it loud and clear. The message gets across. He barely needs to say it. I hear myself agree with whatever he has to say, but my voice sounds cheap even to my own ears.

Ben leaves and the music starts up again, far off on the stage. I don’t return my costume before I leave. The long skirt at the back of the dress trails behind me like feathers on a parrot and the heavy sleeves that hang around my shoulders bounce with each hit of my untied sneakers against the concrete. I live only a few blocks away from the cabaret that, up until today, I danced at. The walk is just as cold and lonely as if I’d walked for miles, anyway. My small, brick apartment borders the street that slopes steeply downhill just past my front door. I look at the unsealed windows that do little to keep the cold out on nights like this one and I dread going back inside. The rusty bronze key that I pull out of my purse nearly snaps off in the lock when I try to open the door, banging on it with my knee until it gives way and swings open. The scent of mold and dirty laundry rushes out to greet me so unlike the husband that I wished was there instead. I step inside.

My calico cat swaggers up to me on fat stubby feet before rubbing himself along my stocking-covered legs. I hook a finger in the back of each of my sneakers and pull them off, leaving them sprawled near the door that I slam shut. The cat meows and I scratch him behind the ear before he struts off, leading me along with him. He paws at the basement door until I open it for him, then he waddles down the rotting wooden steps. I follow.

Dim moonlight shines in through the high window in the cement-walled basement, casting a glow that falls on the small novelty cat door only two-feet tall, sitting at floor level in the back wall of the room. I bend over and open it for the cat, watching him step through it into the alley beyond. His tall, curly tail and fat legs hover just beyond the threshold until I see a pair of thin grey striped cat paws next to his own. The two cats leave and I sigh, watching them go with a sick sense of jealousy. I shut the door.



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