Norah and the Johns
by Halley McDonough
Eighty-two thousand goddamn dollars in the hole for fifteen days of tests and sharing—fuck. Norah stepped down into the street and fumbled in her purse for a cigarette. She was restless for nicotine. They gave her a patch every day with her meds, but it wasn’t the same. It had none of the ritual, none of the sensation. She pulled out a flattened pack and a pink BIC with red cartoon cherries on it. She flicked it again and again, but it was kicked.
Under her loud cursing, the automatic doors breezed open behind her.
“Ma’am, you were supposed to wait for the wheelchair,” someone called. “It’s a liability issue.”
Norah turned and saw the cutest little nurse pushing a death throne. The girl couldn’t have been much out of high school. Her face had a dewy look that was meant to make men think she was wet all over.
Norah’s eyes tracked down the girl’s shapeless scrubs to her feet covered in bloated blue plastic. Smirking, Norah met the nurse’s eyes and raised an eyebrow.
“Crocs?”
The girl’s eyebrows slammed together. Her eyes darted down to Norah’s spike heels, but Norah barreled on.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m not the litigious type.”
“You have someone coming to pick you up, ma’am?” the nurse said, her painted mouth pursed.
Norah nearly flinched at the title the nurse stabbed at her, but she had a lot of practice schooling her reactions.
“Don’t worry yourself over me, sweetie. I got someone coming.”
“A john, no doubt,” the nurse muttered as she turned her death throne around and back through the main doors.
This time, Norah couldn’t smother her flinch, but since no one was there to see it, maybe it didn’t even happen. If a memory feels a forest in your mind, but no one hears you scream, does it even matter?
She walked farther into the parking lot and scanned the rows for her ride: a 90s maroon sedan with an antenna permanently erect. She’d know that antenna anywhere.
Finally spotting it off to the side with the official vehicles, wedged in tight between an idle ambulance and a parked cop car, she clomped over to it. She never went anywhere without looking her best, but she would’ve worn the nurse’s ugly clothes if she’d been given a chance to burn this outfit. But no one asked what she preferred, as usual. They handed her a thin plastic bag with her personal effects when she was leaving, and here she was at noon in a fuck-me dress with fuck-me heels, no makeup, and hair in a topknot—on the world’s most fucked up walk of shame. She held her head high.
Her client John crouched in the driver’s seat, his knees hugging the wheel and his bald head a hair away from the fuzzy ceiling. Norah rapped her knuckles on the window to announce herself before she slid into the passenger seat and chucked her duffel in the back.
“You got a light?”
“Really, Sugar? I’m trying to quit, you know,” John grimaced, but depressed the electric lighter.
Norah waited until the lighter popped up and stuck the hollow cylinder around her cigarette. She inhaled. The relief was immediate.
“I’m in a quitting mood myself,” she said, exhaling.
John tried to slouch farther into his seat and nodded jerkily. He had played ball once, two decades ago, hoping it would save him from the sad life of a commercial fisherman that his father and brothers led. It hadn’t, but he still had the shoulders, even if his middle was rounded and soft now from all the JD Honey.
Norah was a good listener. It was part of her job.
The car pulled away from the curb, and Norah enjoyed the silence for a moment. Silence was rare, and a part of her craved it over anything else. She lit her next cigarette with the remains of the first and ignored John’s fidgeting beside her. His restless body mirrored his restless mind, but neither ever took him anywhere different.
“How was your vacation? Hook up with anyone while you were away?” he asked.
“Hilarious.”
“No, seriously. You feeling any better?”
“Never felt better, thanks. How’s the harpy?”
John’s face folded into a pucker. His left leg bounced up and down. The mention of his ex-wife invoked an impulse in him to run away.
“Only happy when I’m handing her a check. She’s threatened a bench warrant if I don’t get her five hundred dollars by next Friday.” His eyes cut over to her. “Think you can help me out there?”
“What, the fifty bucks I’m giving you for a five-mile drive isn’t enough?” she said.
John ducked his chin. Norah saw she had shamed him. Enough stick, now the carrot.
“I really appreciate you helping me out like this,” she said. “There’s no one else I can count on around here.”
She watched the streets scroll by. It didn’t feel real after her time away. She had shattered since the last time she rode through here. Driving in a car on the movie set of her life, she looked out the passenger window at the dirty, little houses in their tight yards. A screaming ambulance turned a corner up ahead and barreled toward them. It got louder and louder until it was even with their car, and in that moment, when everything else was suspended in the din, she lost all notion of past and present, body and mind. For once, she felt whole. She existed.
And then the ambulance passed, and she remembered she was still a body when she felt her heart beat. A new tremble in her hands and tightness in her breath that had nothing to do with her smoking came on. She stubbed her cigarette out in the car’s ashtray and reached into the back to pull her duffel into her lap. She riffled through it, past her wallet, toiletries, clothes, and magazines to a white paper bag. Ripping it open, she discarded plastic bottles until she found the right one. Norah dry-swallowed two of the tiny orange Klonopins, sat back, and panted.
John eyed all this without comment until he couldn’t help himself. “You really did go crazy, huh?”
She worked on her breathing like they taught her. In four beats, hold four beats, out four beats, hold four beats. Square breathing, they called it.
“Head to Cherry’s, will you?” she said. “I’ve got to take care of something.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?”
As she breathed, the medicine kicked in. A hazy, chemical peace descended that screened the world one level farther away. Turning her attention back out the window, she noticed that the houses had gotten older and more rundown as they’d neared her neighborhood. All she’d ever wanted was to own a place. She’d gotten that. Cherry’s had given her that. Even if it was the shittiest house on the shittiest block in a shitty, shitty state, it was hers. They took a right to get out onto the highway, away from her refuge and toward the club. She had one last thing to do there.
“So why’s the harpy giving you grief this time? Child support?”
He shrugged. “Out of work. What am I supposed to do?”
John was not a stand-up guy. His family couldn’t count on him, which was half the reason his wife had thrown him out in the first place. He couldn’t hold down a job. He spent any money quick as it came. But if anyone ever needed to find him, they always knew where to look: Cherry’s, one hand wrapped around a glass of Jack, the other out of sight under the table—that being the other reason his wife cut bait.
“How’s the kid?”
“Baby girl’s a genius. Just started the first grade and already knows how to read and shit. She’s going to make it out of here one day.”
“Someone should.”
A few more minutes on the highway, a jug-handle, and a sharp turn that John took too fast into the parking lot, and there was Cherry’s in all its windowless, boxy grandeur. The purple paint was peeling, but all the letters in the neon sign were lit. Someone had been making some improvements since she’d been away.
They sat in silence. Norah breathed.
“You know,” John said, “it won’t happen again.”
“Sure, it was just a bad night.”
She counted out a couple of bills and tossed them on his lap.
“Just wait for me, okay?”
Norah slammed the car door, smoothed her dress down over her hips where it had ridden up, and marched past the bouncer. It was a lot dimmer inside, and as her eyes adjusted, Norah moved a little slower, so she didn’t accidentally touch anyone. She didn’t want to touch anything in here.
The bartender nodded toward the back office when she made eye contact with her, so she headed that way. It was right off the public area, in case the manager John was ever needed quickly. She knocked briefly on his door before opening it without waiting for a reply.
He was in there alone, which made her pause. Usually he had one of his goons on him at all times. John was a short man, much shorter than her, and slight, but his pretty face convinced many women to overlook his stature. His hand was clenched around a glass of Johnnie Walker Blue. He didn’t drink anything else.
“Sugar, baby,” he said, looking up. “Out so soon. What do I owe this beautiful surprise to?”
Norah felt herself melting a bit—he was smooth—but she stiffened up and told herself it was just the benzo she’d taken in the car.
“I want the money you owe me.”
“Of course. You earned it.”
He consulted his books before reaching back and spinning the dial on his safe. He counted out a few hundred-dollar bills and slid them across the desk.
“There’s a little extra there. You know, for your trouble.”
She counted it real quick. There was an extra five hundred dollars. He was buying her silence. This was what her rape cost him.
“I’m not coming back. I wanted to tell you in person. I owe you that much.”
“I’m sure you need to take some time. We’ll be here when you’re ready, Sugar, baby.”
“Don’t call me Sugar,” she whispered.
“What’s that?”
“It’s Norah,” she said louder. “I’m Norah, not Sugar, not anymore.”
***
Dressed in a black suit that looked new, even though it spent time in another woman’s closet, Norah sat in the foyer of a temp agency and tried not to think about what she was doing. She’d never done anything like this before, and her first time being at thirty made her uncomfortable. She didn’t want anyone to spot the virgin. The last time she’d had a first, Kim Kardashian was only an amateur porn star. Now Kim’s kid sister was a billionaire, and here Norah was, interviewing for a job in the graceless, glamourless world of the corporate stooge.
Over the last few weeks, she’d spent most of her time alone, unwilling or unable to leave the boundaries of her house. When her client John had dropped her off at home, she’d walked up the slanted front steps and let herself into a cold living room rancid with the smell of unmoved air. Everything was just as she left it, but it was still worse than she remembered.
She threw her duffel on her unmade bed and grabbed the paper bag inside. She lined up the orange bottles on her bathroom vanity: Augmentin (to make her healthy), Zoloft (to make her happy), Klonopin (to make her calm), and Truvada (to—fingers crossed, knock on wood, don’t even say it—prevent the Bug).
Her heart stuttered at the memory, but she looked up at the fluorescents buzzing overhead and heard the phone at the reception desk continuously if discreetly ringing and tried to ground herself in the sensory. She tugged her jacket sleeve down.
She had deliberated on which shirt to wear underneath the blackout jacket. Some websites suggested a white button-down to emphasize a lack of personality and ability to perform functions robotically. Others suggested a pop of color to highlight a winning smile and an ability to grease the wheels of commerce. In the end, she decided to save her money, pulled the only button-down she had out of her closet and went with that. It happened to be a light blue, but she doubted that was what the interviewer would notice.
Norah didn’t realize until she checked her reflection in her rearview that her boobs were threatening to riot out of the front of her shirt. She must’ve bought it before she’d had them done. It was too late to turn around. And Norah had a hard time admitting it to herself, but there was a part of her that thought the shirt might be her nuclear option.
Her phone started vibrating in her pocket. She pulled it out, looked at the number, and pressed decline. A minute ticked by before there was another, solitary buzz for the voicemail. She knew what the manager John had to say without listening to it. He wanted her back at Cherry’s. That’s what he’d said in all of his other messages. She slid her phone back in her pocket.
“Norah Harris?”
A boyish man who looked fresh from the frat house looked around the mostly empty lobby. He was good-looking in a put-together, paid-for way with shiny hair to match his shiny watch and shoes. He would flirt with the waitress, but leave a bad tip with his phone number. He had the easy confidence of a man who never took the first no for an answer, undercut by an intense vulnerability when not surrounded by his bros.
She saw all this in a glance as she crossed the carpet slowly. The man’s eyes tripped down to her stilettos before crawling their way back up. When his eyes reached hers again, she stuck out her hand and introduced herself. They shook and his wedding ring winked at her when he brought up his left hand and completely covered her smaller one.
The recruiter John ushered her into a small conference room with a circular table large enough to seat four. He waited for her to sit. She put her hand on the chair in front of her, and he settled into the one across. She pulled the chair out, but the open door behind her felt like a threat. Anyone could come up behind her with her back to the door. She impulsively grabbed the chair on John’s left and sat quickly. He looked pleased, like she had moved to be closer to him. The constant itch in her veins for a cigarette deepened.
“So,” he began in a deeper voice now. “Tell me about yourself.”
Norah smiled a little too brightly. “I’m looking for an office job. I took a class in Microsoft Office at Brookdale Community College, and I did well.” She paused. “I know my résumé is a little spotty since high school. I’ve worked as a dancer for the past ten years.”
“A dancer,” John beamed at her. “Wow. Have you been in anything I would have seen?”
Norah laughed a little too loudly and felt that now-familiar tightness build in her chest as she breathed faster. She pictured her little orange pills and tried to re-create the foggy numbness they gave her.
“No, probably not. Moved around to different cities, some overseas.”
“It says here you’ve lived in New York City, Las Vegas, and Moscow.”
“Guilty.”
“What brought you back to the Wall area, if I may ask?”
“The big life isn’t everything they say. As much as I love performing, I’m a simple girl at heart. I grew up in Brick, and I moved back to get away from the lights of the city. I’m really just looking for something quiet and steady. Hopefully with health insurance.”
“Well, it’s great that you know the Office suite, but we really prefer our candidates to have a college degree, at least an associate’s. What sort of soft skills did dancing teach you that might transfer to administrative work?”
“I’m very good with people. A big part of dancing is giving the people what they want. I needed to be able to read the audience’s mood. After the performance, sometimes the dancers would have to mingle with our patrons, so I’m good at the one-on-one stuff too. They should give me an honorary degree in psychology. I’ve listened to so many people’s stories and problems. And I know the value of a return customer because I’ve had to develop my fan base from the bottom up.”
John glanced down at her résumé and then shuffled the papers he’d brought in.
“That all sounds very impressive, however I’m not sure if we’re going to have anything that meets your salary requirements.”
As he tried to let her down gently, Norah took a deep breath and noticed a sudden release of pressure. Maybe she wasn’t cut out for the straight life, after all. “I can give you a call if anything pops up, but it would probably be something entry-level, about minimum wage.”
He looked up from his papers. His eyes swelled in their sockets as they pasted themselves six inches below her chin. Norah glanced down. Two pivotal buttons had caved under pressure. Her boobs were out in all their mounded splendor. She felt a wave of uncertainty and then something like shame before she owned it.
Something clicked into place at the base of her spine. Sugar felt her shoulder blades draw together, her back arch without conscious command. She watched the sweat bead above John’s upper lip and felt her breath slow, deepen. There it was—that old warmth spreading through her chest, her limbs loosening into the pose. She’d forgotten how good this felt. How easy. His eyes couldn’t leave her, and she didn’t want them to.
Why did she ever give this up? She hadn’t felt like this in months.
“Shit,” Norah said, shifting out of his view, fingers fumbling with the buttons. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize.”
The words came out wrong—too fast, too high. She could hear herself performing embarrassment now, and the awareness made it worse. A minute ago she’d known exactly where her body was in space. Now she couldn’t get her hands to work right. It wasn’t the nudity that bothered her really, or even the audience. It was her own pleasure at being on display. She took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry. That wasn’t what I—I wasn’t…”
John couldn’t meet her eye.
“These things happen,” he chirped, gesturing to the door with her résumé. “We have your number. Candace will contact you if any of our clients request an interview. Good luck to you.”
He busied himself with swiping furiously through his phone and shifted his lower body deeper under the conference table, pointedly refusing to stand.
Norah left the room quickly, hot face parallel to the floor. She had thought nothing could embarrass her. Another fucking first.
***
Norah was reading All You’ve Ever Wanted to Know about Microsoft Office (And More!) when her phone drummed on the coffee table. She was so used to ignoring its incessant buzz that she didn’t check it immediately.
After finishing her chapter on The Cans and Cannots of Microsoft Powerpoint, she reached for her phone. She’d been on several interviews at temp agencies over the last couple of weeks in Red Bank, Freehold, and Eatontown, but nothing had come through. Now she listened to her voicemail as a man cleared his throat.
“Norah Harris? We spoke a few weeks ago regarding a possible placement for you with our agency? Something has come up.”
The recruiter John from the Wall office cleared his throat again. The man she’d given a peepshow. She debated calling him back. She had bills to pay, and maybe more importantly, she had to leave her house sometime. They said that interacting with normal, healthy people would be a step forward.
Norah called John back.
“Norah, hi.”
When she didn’t jump in to fill the silence, he rushed on.
“An opportunity has come up. One of our clients, a commercial fishery down in Point Pleasant—so convenient for you—needs a temporary office manager while theirs is on maternity leave.”
“I’m happy for the opportunity, but I thought you said the best I could get would be entry-level.”
“Frankly, I’ve sent other candidates over and none have lasted more than a week. The boss is pretty tough on her employees. But it would only be for a couple of months. They’re willing to overlook your lack of experience if you’re willing to work hard.”
Norah cringed about the prospect of a female boss. She didn’t get on well with other women when they were on equal footing, let alone when she had to answer to one. But a woman who sat atop a heap of male underlings might be different. She’d have to be tough on her goons. Maybe working for a woman was the best thing for her. Maybe she’d learn something, beyond the office shit.
“Alright,” Norah heard herself say over the rushing of her blood. “When do I start?”
“That’s great. I’ll email you the deets.”
He paused before continuing in that deeper voice he thought was sexy.
“Maybe we could celebrate with a drink at the Courtyard Marriott? I have the company card,” he went on. “I can expense it as a client meeting, so anything you want.”
She heard the email notification ding on her phone: the deets. She knew how to play this game; she’d done it often enough at Cherry’s. The trick was to keep his hope alive as she put him off indefinitely.
“That sounds like a good time, but I have to go shopping for my first day. Can’t wear that shirt from my interview, can I?”
She hung up on John’s indrawn breath.
***
Norah checked the clock on her chunky monitor: quarter to five. Almost time to go home. She arched her back and raised her hands above her head, stretching after hours spent organizing paper into piles. When she first started at Atlantic Viking Fishery a month ago, she’d been overwhelmed by the amount of paper the office went through in a week. Reams and reams of it in a day. Most of the older salesmen wrote orders out by hand and had her decipher their handwriting and type it up on the computer. Her job was two-parts secretary, one-part tech support, with a dash of mind reader.
Her intercom beeped twice.
“Norah, come in here for a minute.”
Minnie hung up before Norah could respond. Most of Atlantic Viking had a cock, but it was a woman-owned business. Minnie was the president of the company her husband built twenty years before, but instead of the tough girl boss Norah expected, she soon figured out that Minnie was just a figurehead. She came in from shopping once a week to stir shit up. In return, Atlantic Viking got tax incentives and lucrative contracts reserved for women-owned businesses.
It was fucked up, but kept shit running when a lot of other fisheries had floundered. The office thought that Minnie was a necessary evil—the cost of not starving— but Norah soon learned to dread the days Minnie was in.
Minnie sat behind her massive desk and smoothed her pink dress down her front self-consciously. Most days, if Norah wanted to come into the office in her pajamas with wild hair and no makeup, no one would bat an eye. No customers came to the office, so there was no one to impress. Many of the employees had told her when she first started to relax her business casual stance.
But when Minnie was there, Norah had to wear a dress and heels and carefully applied her face. It wasn’t just that she was the boss, it was that Minnie always looked her best. She was thirty years older than Norah with two kids and her first grandchild was on the way, but Minnie still had it. She wasn’t cute anymore, but she was hot in a way that most women in their sixties wouldn’t even attempt to sink their time or money into.
But Minnie had money, family, and power. And she never let Norah forget it.
Norah sat in front of Minnie’s desk and watched her boss’s eyes track over her made-up face, blown out hair, and form-fitting navy dress with a scooped neckline. She waited for the onslaught of Minnie’s coming diatribe. Always a diatribe with Minnie.
“I don’t have a lot of time, Norah. I have a salon appointment I’m already late for, so I’ll come straight out with it. My twat of an office manager decided she’s going to stay home with the baby after all. ‘Indefinite maternity leave,’ I think she called it.”
Minnie let her comment sit for a moment, waiting for Norah to scoff or roll her eyes, somehow signaling her disdain. But all Norah could think was—that lucky bitch.
Minnie’s mouth pursed, the lines on her lips scrunching tight. She was due for some filler soon.
“Anyway,” Minnie continued, “I have an opening and you’re gonna take it. You can take a joke from the guys—and that matters in a place like this. I can match her salary and get you on the health insurance.”
Minnie tilted her head, appraising.
“You’re not married, right? No kids?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Good. I mean—” Minnie waved a hand. “Not good, that’s your business. I just mean you’ll have the bandwidth. This job needs someone who can commit. I already had two kids when we started this business. It can be done, of course—but you have to want it, and most girls who come through here—”
Minnie stopped herself and flicked Norah a smile.
“What do you think?”
Norah thought about the hours, the dress code, the benefits. She thought about the work she did here: tedious, fucking stupid, but easy. She thought about how the goons she worked with complimented her when she dressed up for Minnie, how they held doors open for her, and chatted with her in the kitchenette. The male-dominated environment at Atlantic Viking was overwhelming and pervasive, even when Minnie was there, but Norah knew the rule of look but don’t touch was absolute here—the one truly good thing that came from Minnie being in charge. Here, she was no more than eye candy.
At Cherry’s, that hadn’t always been the case. But then she thought about the monotony and the routine here. The monotony and the routine and the politics and the endless paper scrolling relentlessly onward to retirement or death.
“Can I think about it?” Norah asked.
Minnie rolled her eyes and snorted.
“It’s Tuesday? Let me know by Friday.” She was already reaching for her bag. “And Norah? Don’t overthink it. Women do that—we get in our own way. Sometimes you just have to say yes.”
Norah opened the voicemail on her desk phone. She listened to each of the twenty voicemails the manager John had left her over the last two months.
“Sugar, sweetheart, I miss you. You were my best girl. I need you back. Anything I can do to make that happen, you let me know, baby.”
***
Thursday night, just after the dinner rush, she walked into Cherry’s. Tomorrow, Norah had to tell Minnie if she wanted to stay on permanently at Atlantic Viking, but tonight belonged to Sugar. She wore denim cutoffs short and soft enough to sleep in, a plaid flannel shirt that hung open over a white crop top, and her heeled brown suede boots that came up over her knees. Her hair was long and loose. Her face was painted. Her armor was rigidly in place.
“Sugar, that you?”
She barely heard the call from under Warrant’s “Cherry Pie,” the joint’s signature song that played exactly once an hour.
She looked toward the stage and saw her client John, the only one she could get to come pick her up from the hospital. He was squeezed under one of the little tables near the stage, his bald head gleaming in the colored light.
“How’s the kid?” she asked, smiling.
“Good, real good.” John gave her an appraising look, head to toe, and his left leg started to bounce up and down. “Come find me later. I’d love to get your first private dance now you’re back.”
Sugar smiled again, sat on John’s lap, and grabbed his ears to pull his head down. She placed a kiss on his forehead.
“Will do, sweetie. I never did thank you for what you did. I just have to go talk to the boss man about something, but I’ll be back.”
She moved on to the bar, where the bartender John pointed her to the manager John’s reserved booth. He always sat in the same spot in the back corner, watching the customers more than he watched the girls. A bouncer John stood nearby, ready to ground and pound anyone dumb enough to approach.
When she got too close, the goon moved to block her, but the manager John looked up from his phone and saw her standing there. He waved the guy off and gestured for her to sit across from him.
“My, my, I didn’t think I’d ever see you in here again, baby. How you been? Need a drink? You look a little shaky.”
He snapped his fingers, king of his little kingdom, and the bartender came right over.
He ordered for both of them. He knew what she liked.
The bartender John came back.
“We’re out of Blue Label up front,” he said. “I have to send somebody to the back. Anything I can get you while you wait?”
He didn’t glance her way, which made Sugar pout a little. The manager John waved him off.
“So you’re back. It’s good you’re here. This place ain’t been the same without you up there. I need my best girl back, doing it the only way she knows how: hot and heavy. What do you say, sweetness? How can I make that happen?”
Norah paused, just to make him sweat.
“You know, after what happened, I never wanted to come back here again. I thought if I came back, I was just asking for another rape or another breakdown, and I swore I wouldn’t let that happen. So I started over as boring as possible, got a cushy office job. I have a morning routine and a lunch hour and a bedtime. But then I realized something.”
“What’s that, baby?”
“I’m not ready to give up Sugar. And she’s pretty fucking angry. She wants the power back that she lost when you had her 5150’ed. When that asshole…So I’m not ready to make any promises. I’m not gonna tell you I’m here to stay. But I want one more night, one more dance. And you’re going to give it to me.”
“Alright, girl,” he said, nodding. “I can agree to that. You free on Tuesday?”
“Tonight.”
“What about Vixen? She’s supposed to headline tonight.”
“I don’t give a shit. Tonight or I walk, for good.”
John eyed her for a minute before he said, “I’m sorry, Sugar, baby. I can’t do that. Come in next Tuesday. We’ll get you up to snuff again.”
“I need to do this now.”
John just shook his head.
Sugar was crushed. She needed this. Why could she never get what she needed from John, from any of the Johns? Just once.
Norah got up from the booth and clicked toward the front door before she heard the saccharine sounds of Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” drip out of the speakers. Oh, fuck no. Sugar flew backstage. She grabbed Vixen by the arm before she could climb the steps into the light and swung her around.
“This is my song,” Sugar said.
Vixen squared up.
“You were gone,” she scoffed.
“And now I’m back.” Sugar took it down a notch. “I need this, Christie.”
Vixen softened, just a touch.
“I get half your tips.”
“Sixty/forty.”
“Welcome back, Sugar.”
Sugar ran up the steps and into the colored lights. The music was already moving through her—she didn’t have to think about what came next. Her hips knew. Her belly knew. Sugar felt her muscles contract and loosen, burn and strain. She caught the bald John’s eye first—easy, he was already watching. Then the kid John in the baseball cap pretending to check his phone. The older John at the bar nursing the same beer. One by one, she gathered them.
John put his phone down. John turned on his stool. John watched her. The room went quiet under the music.
This was the only place her mind ever shut up. No planning, no remembering, no bracing for what came next. Just the beat and the lights, her body and theirs. She rolled her hips and felt them lean in, synchronized, like she was pulling their strings. Her lips turned up in a sultry little smile.
Sugar ground and shimmied and gyrated all over that stage. When it was done, Norah collected her clothes and her tips. Vixen was waiting backstage, hand out. Norah doled out her cut.
“Sucks, what he did to you,” Vixen said.
“We’ve all been there.”
Vixen waved a hand dismissively. “Not what happened out back. The manager, John—he shouldn’t have told the cops you were crazy. The girls were all talking. It wasn’t right.”
Norah felt a wash of gratitude. She hadn’t known how much she needed to hear someone say that. She thanked Vixen, dressed, and left the club.
She could put it to bed now. Put Sugar to bed.
Minnie’s offer was sweet, but Atlantic Viking wasn’t the place for her, either. Vixen had clarified this for her. She needed her girls, and Minnie couldn’t fill that role. There would be other jobs, other offers.
Norah pulled out her pack and tapped a cigarette out before she grabbed her new lighter, a steel zippo she’d paid to have engraved with a naked woman twined around a pole. She lit her cigarette, took a long drag, and felt the nicotine kick. She stalked around the building to the alley behind. She stood over the exact spot and smoked.
Her thighs and abs ached from the dance. Her face itched under the layer of makeup as her sweat dried. Her eyes felt hot and tight. She smoked it down to the filter, which she dropped and ground out with the toe of her boot.
Halley McDonough cannot be found on social media, back at your place, or anywhere she doesn’t want to be. She holds an MFA from Columbia and is just focusing on herself right now, okay?
Image Credit: Cherry’s (2026) by Line Lizard
The Gotham Guillotine 
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