As Hat-ma and I drove south we both dug out all the customer phone numbers we had from down here and called to let them know we were on our way. Hat-ma and Tara are coming back! One night only! It sounded like there’d only been one dancer for a few weeks, so we were hoping to bring back the customers that had fallen away from boredom.
There’s only so long you can talk on the phone though, and only so many miles of cell reception. After three hours I was getting tired and Hat-ma was reading to me about the importance of nose breathing and sleep. Hearing about sleep when I was already tired and driving down a long highway into the hypnotic continuous swirl of falling snow was making me even more sleepy. That’s when I looked up and saw a ghost step into the highway. After blinking a couple times I realized it was actually a lynx, the only one I have ever seen on a road and one of a very few that I’ve seen alive. I stopped and looked at the tracks to double check, that’s how weird it was seeing a lynx in the road.
By then we were almost to the little bitty town, which actually is a little bitty town now that all the tourists have left. We stopped at my friends house to dispense hugs. She had a houseful of drunk young people, all her kids and the people they’re dating and their friends. “Y’all got fifteen more minutes,” she bellowed, “and then you’re all cut off. We got a military ceremony in six hours.” This is how they grieve.
A couple more miles down the road we stop at the strip club. One stripper and one manager and they are thrilled to see us. The manager tells us that one of our customers is having a big birthday party in town the next day. Hat-ma squeals: he’s one of her best customers in this town. I can’t quite place him. Of course we’ll go before work and try to tempt the after party to the club. “Tell him I didn’t know what to get for his birthday so I brought you two up here,” the manager jokes. Then, “you two behave yourselves now. There’s gonna be a bunch of oil company guys and they’re gonna have their wives. I don’t want any nastiness.”
Of course. Stripper-slut-whore-Goddesses must always behave themselves around the normal women.
The one dancer who’s still in town invites Hat-ma to stay with her, and we unload Hat-ma’s luggage from the van so that Bro can get back to the food. Then we head into town to do a little promoting. We go to the 24 hour diner, first, thinking that’s where everyone will be. It’s pretty empty, but we make our stripperness obvious and Hat-ma explains loudly to the waitress that we’re strippers and we’re back in town for one night only. Then we hit the bars. I’ve been to a couple of them once, but Hat-ma has long, carefully cultivated relationships with all the bartenders in town. She knows their customers, their cousins, and what they drink. Hat-ma is a marketing queen.
By the time I take her back to the club to go home with our friend it seems like anyone who goes to any bar will hear about the two hot new strippers in town for one night and one night only. When I leave her I go to one of my favorite spots by the river. It’s warmer here, but it feels colder because of the humidity. It’s been so long since I’ve seen this river, and I have an urge to chop through the ice and jump in. I don’t. It would be stupid. Instead I lay on the ice and listen to the sound of running water and creaking ice under me.
Back in the van I strip out of all my wet snowy clothes before I do my levitate-and-wedge routine to get in bed. I fall asleep full of visions of lynx and the lullabye of running water and creaking ice.
ahhhh life is good.