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By Root 952 0

anybody’d want to take home with ’em.” She lit a cigarette and gave me a look of pure malevolence. I wondered if she had seen Billy’s hand on my ass. I leaned back into Cass’s embrace and tried to look happily innocent of any interest in Roxanne’s woman. That wasn’t too hard. Cass was just about the sexiest woman in the crowd, big and rough-looking in her worn denim jacket with her black hair cut close around her ears, but with soft brown eyes and a quick smile. She was a good-natured woman who liked me more than she was sure she wanted to. More important, she didn’t seem to feel the need to push her girlfriends around that Billy did. I loved having a woman in my life who prowled like a big old tiger, yet cuddled me close like a kitten licking mama’s ears. Billy talked about Roxanne as if the woman was a not quite bright child, and clearly had decided I had to have some special hidden sexual talent if Cass was so ready to put up with my sass. Part of what kept me seeing Cass was her casual acceptance of my temper and habits, and her grinning dismissal of Billy’s half-serious flirting with me. Cass was also nearly as tall as Billy and had told me frankly that they had become friends only after everybody they knew kept pushing them to fight each other.

“We was supposed to do the fight of the week or something, and let everybody know who was butcher than who, you know. But providing that kind of free entertainment just an’t my style. Billy and I put them all through some changes when we took up with each other, I’ll tell you.”

Two women I had met at the Women’s Center wiggled past us. One of them looked me in the eye and then up over my head into Cass’s face. I could feel Cass’s grin in the way her hands wiggled on me. The woman looked away quickly.

“Did you hear about Angie?” her friend asked.

“Yeah, I heard.” The woman pushed away from us hurriedly. “Don’t talk about her here.”

“Did you see her face?” Roxanne spoke with her cigarette held between her teeth. “That woman needs to reconsider going without makeup.”

I felt the heat come up in my face and didn’t know for a moment if I was angry or ashamed. I watched the expressions on the faces of the women who filed past us, then felt the skin at the back of my neck pull tight. We could have been animals in a cage from the way they looked at us. I kept going from indignant anger to shame with no pause between. The anger felt healthy but wouldn’t stay with me, while the shame was continuous and crippling. I wanted to be proud of Cass’s hands on my hips, to glare back coldly at the women who frowned at her. I was proud of her, but my pride wasn’t holding any better than my anger. I wished I didn’t care what anybody thought, but I did. Beside me Roxanne kept getting her mirror out and pulling a few curls forward down over her eyes. Her hands were shaking, her makeup streaking on her neck where sweat was trailing down. For a moment, she looked like my little sister looking up at me, wanting my help but unable to ask. I could have cried. Instead, I took deep breaths trying to calm myself and finally just gave it up and took a couple of pulls from Cass’s bottle.

Cass hugged me again, her eyes watching me closely. “We can always leave.” She didn’t look as if the idea bothered her at all.

“The music hasn’t even started.” I drank again, concentrating on feeling angry rather than self-conscious or ashamed. The last of the audience was milling past us while a piano chord sounded from the front of the hall. A little group of men and women passed us, the women defiant in silky skirts and the men holding the women close to them. One of the women stared at Billy and giggled when Billy grinned at her. The man with her looked nervous and impatient, but the woman didn’t seem to want to head for her seat. Like a pigeon transfixed by a snake, she was pinned to the far wall by Billy’s green-eyed stare. I almost laughed out loud.

“I don’t care who they sleep with,” I whispered to Cass, “I just wish they wouldn’t tell so many lies about it.”

“Mean bitch,” Cass quipped, not meaning it at all.