The Night Girl
Sometimes you have to cut to the chase. Stomp out your used up cigarette or chain smoke in the backyard. Bite your tongue or spew out profanities. Middle grounds are for cowards who don’t know how to make things happen. So when Corrine bought a one way ticket to Gatestown she didn’t mull over whether it was the right choice. Instead, she left her old life behind as if it never happened.
Lipstick. Perfume. Whiskey. Parliaments. Slide on hose. Step into a slip of a dress. This was her routine. Run her hands over her curves. Imagine what could be. She took her time. Some men liked it slow and some liked it fast, but Corrine liked it all. She’d make her way to her first assignment. No names in this business, just numbers.
Corrine had an appointment with Number 11. Their meeting was becoming a regular thing, a few nights a week. He didn’t ask for her name. Just that she’d sit on his lap. He had thinning black hair. In bed, she’d cup her hands around his face and kiss the bare skin on the top of his head. The lamplight cast a glow over their naked bodies like they were a show. He liked her on top. When he finished inside of her he was all sleepy and sticky. She’d lie with her legs tangled with his until he fell asleep.
~
Men with wives who cooked and cleaned had drinks with other men and spoke of beautiful women who would suck their dicks and kiss them with smokey cherry lips. Sipping gin the men told of nights spent with women who didn’t ask twenty questions.
The wives sat in trios in well decorated houses sipping coffee spiked with rum. They talked about how tired they were, how there was always so much to do. That there were women in short dresses who drifted through their houses like ghosts. Someone might say quietly, as if the walls were paper-thin, that she had seen one of the Night Girls smoking a cigarette around 8 p.m. by the corner store. This girl had jet black chin-length hair and though she wore a fur coat, her legs were bare. The women would shake their heads in unison. Whore.
~
At twelve-thirty in the morning Corinne tapped at his door. Number 49. At first she just stared at him. He was tall with broad shoulders, salt and pepper hair that she imagined running her fingers through, ocean blue eyes. His eyes weren’t hungry with desire or blank with grief like the other men she’d seen that night. Corinne felt dizzy. She paused to smooth her dress. She walked towards him. Corrine gave up or rather gave in. They spent the rest of the night hours sipping whiskey and smoking cigarettes. Her listening to all of his stories.
When they fell into bed, he knew exactly where to kiss her. She went mad for it. When he was inside her she felt his presence everywhere — in her body, in her deepest, darkest corners and in the air she breathed. Lying in his bed the sun peeking in through the blinds and the smell of coffee brewing, Corinne didn’t want to leave.
~
Number 49 hadn’t expected Corrine to stand in the foyer of his flat that night. He had been a long time client of the Night Girls, but Corrine was different. Her emerald green eyes locked with his and didn’t let go. She had a coy smile that told him she wanted to have a good time. He loved how her nipples poked through her dress and how that same dress was short enough he could practically see her ass. She knew how to turn a man on just by the looks of her. Yet she didn’t act like she was just there for the sex. She was there for him. All of him.
Number 49 straightened the bookshelf for the tenth time that day. First, he had organized the books by author alphabetically but then decided that was too methodical. Then by theme, but he found that too scholarly. After he tried by color. Finally, he scattered them about and mixed in succulents sitting in clay pots and silver nick-nacks. He told himself this is what people do. They put their books on shelves so that it appears one was almost careless in their placement. But, you see, he was not a careless man. He brushed his teeth making three rounds of his entire mouth. He matched his socks with his tie. He never missed a beat.
He was a sensitive man. He loved music and art and often wondered about questions that were hard to answer. He kept only a few friends. He preferred the company of books and birds.
He was also the kind of man who needed to taste a woman to feel alive.
~
When Corrine would awake from a half day’s sleep, she’d have black coffee on her back porch. Hair still sticky with last night’s hairspray, she wore jeans and a sweater and smoked Parliaments.
Corrine wrote letters that she never sent. She’d sit at her rickety dinner table with a fountain pen and stationary. She’d write to her brother, Ben, asking if he was still attending school and if he had enough to eat. She’d write her friend Betsy who lived a few towns over and complain about the crappy heating system in her apartment and the price of cigarettes. She’d think about writing to her mother but then decide against it. These letters would pile up and when there was no more room on her kitchen table for a dinner plate, she’d burn them in a fire in the backyard. When you start a new life it can be a dangerous thing to hold onto your old one.
She’d think about why people did what they did. She wondered why the pansies blossomed in one pot and the marigolds died in the other. She searched for answers in the afternoon. Why had her mother left? Why did she herself run away? The flowers explained it all. Some things survived and others didn’t. You could try to pinpoint it to one thing, but it was probably a series of things and mostly, it came down to determination.
Corrine was determined to survive.
~
She was outside of Number 49’s building again. She thought he was different from the other men. She wondered, as she stood under the stars putting out her cigarette, was he really?
Corrine reached for his hand and painted his lips with a slow kiss. Before he could lean in for another, she turned and pulled him into his bedroom. She played Dean Martin on the turntable. She would do her job, she thought. He moved his body to the music and she followed. She raised her heels off the floor and met his lips this time lingering there. She could taste the tobacco on his tongue as she circled it with hers. She pressed herself against him, closing her eyes, and in that moment she felt herself let go.
When she arrived home, she scrubbed the lingering lipstick off of her mouth. Even the memory of dancing with Number 49 wasn’t enough to keep old thoughts from humming. Her foot anxiously tapped the floor. The tapping became a ticking like the second hand of a clock. She grabbed her Parliaments off of the bedside table and fell into a garden chair and lit a cigarette. The smoking slowed the tapping. She wore her clothes from the night before. There were several small tears in her tights. In between puffs of smoke she chewed her fingernails. She tried not to think. Inhale. Exhale. Bite. An old thought repeated itself, “She doesn’t want you.” She shook her head as if that could make the thought go away.
~
Dinner was usually something out of a can like soup. She’d pull up a wobbly wooden chair to her vanity and eat amongst a dozen lipsticks and a gold ashtray. Sometimes she’d eat with one of the other girls, but mostly she preferred to eat alone.
Living in Gatestown during the 1950’s Corinne was a bit of an enigma. People had their opinions about her. Pity. Unmarried. Selling her body for sex. She wasn’t just a whore she was a lonely whore. Envy. She was effortlessly beautiful. Bitch. The way she’d walk down the town streets without greeting passerbyers. The truth was she was lonely. She wasn’t lonely in a way that most people would think. She wasn’t lonely for a man or for a family. Or a baby even. She was lonely for a part of herself that she had left behind. A part she wasn’t sure she could ever get back.
When she ate dinner alone, staring in her vanity mirror, she’d wonder if she’d made the right decisions.
~
It was late. Her eyes were bloodshot and her lipstick had worn off. She knocked on Number 57’s door. It felt like hours had gone by when a short, plump man finally opened the door.
“Now is not a good time,” he said in a hushed voice.
“Sir. My boss gave me a note to come to this house,” Corrine said.
“I know. And I wanted you to come here. I really did… But like I said, now isn’t a good time.”
He glanced behind him as if he were hiding something.
“Okay, sir. If you want to reschedule…”
Corrine heard a woman’s voice.
“Please, just go,” he begged even more softly before closing the door.
Corrine lit a cigarette and took a long drag. She hoped Number 57 would fall into bed with the woman who was most likely his wife and smell her against him. In a way she was glad. Glad for tonight he chose this woman in his bed, even if only out of obligation. You see, men never really choose Corrine.
They needed her because they weren’t being chosen enough.
~
On Sunday evening, Corrine spritzed a little extra perfume in between her breasts. She threw on her coat and headed to the flat of Number 49. There have only been a few men, you could count them on one hand, who wanted to dance with her. She quite liked it. Dancing. The music brought them closer. The way her face was pressed in between his collar bones. The way his hands had migrated from her back to her bottom. He’d plant kisses on the top of her head and more passionately, behind her ears. Everything that was tight became soft. Had she forgotten she was working?
Dancing led to sitting on his balcony smoking. She found it was easy to open up to him — words poured out. Her childhood. Her anger. Her grief. Before they knew it, the sky had turned a pale blue and they ran out of cigarettes. She briefly wondered why he had asked her here. Why her? What did she matter to him? Was it the company he was after? Was he lonely? But after she let out a loud exhale, she decided it didn’t matter.
Being with him gave her a certain kind of peace. She felt a longing for him when she was alone. She didn’t know what she was to him. After all, he paid her for the time they spent together. Beyond everything, she was a Night Girl. Men paid her for her company. It was disastrous to imagine she’d be anything more to them.
~
Sitting on the train the meadows rolled by and Corrine thought of her mother. She believed she could overcome her mother’s leaving. That she could will herself to move on and not look back. What did it mean that she was going back to that house?
We arrive at junctions with more than one track ahead of us. Do we go this way or that? Or is there an alternate route? Life is a series of decisions. If we made a list of all the things that went into making a decision we’d need a lot of paper and our pen would run out of ink. But really, it comes down to one thing. We want to feel better.
Which way will heal our hearts?
The front door was painted the same ruby red as when she left but the paint had chipped at the corners. She stood there unable to bring herself to knock. To get answers. Sweat dripped off of her nose and her legs were wobbly. She lit a cigarette and walked around the house. Dandelions grew in patches and Corrine reached down to pluck a flower. She heard her mother’s voice telling her to take the dandelion and rub it under her chin for good luck. She almost did. She wondered if anyone was home. The cigarette and the walk had quieted her nerves. She knocked twice and stepped back bracing herself for what would come next.
The door creaked open and out poked a familiar face. She crossed the threshold and wrapped her arms around her brother. She could feel Ben’s body sink into hers. He was taller but had the same face.
“I can’t believe you’re here, “ he said.
Corrine thought to herself, we are a family that leaves.
Being in that house her skin was crawling with bugs. She wanted to swat them away but Ben had stolen her attention. He had set the table with two plates and gestured for her to sit. He served her scrambled eggs and toast with butter and coffee.
“I’m surprised you came back. I thought you were gone gone,” Ben said.
“I was always going to come back. I love you. You know that, right?” Corrine said.
When she settled on the sofa later that night she found she couldn’t sleep. She was so angry with her mother. She left two sleeping children. She didn’t even bother to lock the door.
Perhaps their mother left because she didn’t like the color of the sky that night. Maybe she ran away with a lover. Corinne’s best guess? The one closest to truth? Being a mother was like looking into a mirror and seeing all of the things she hated about herself. Every hour of every day she was reminded she wasn’t a very good person. She found it terribly painful to be alive.
Corrine lit a cigarette and tossed her feet over the coffee table with a thud. Her mind churned. She wouldn’t be sleeping tonight.
She washed her mother’s dishes with the flowers along the edges. Her pain felt fresh like an open wound. Corrine peered into the fridge. Tomorrow night she’d make dinner for the two of them, spaghetti and sauce. She’d talk to Ben. Find out how he was getting by.
She knew one thing — she couldn’t leave. Not yet.
~
As she poured red wine in goblets, she wondered if Number 49 would miss her. She thought about how they’d danced to Presley and how his eyes were warm when they fucked. And it wasn’t just the sex that made her want him — it was the companionship. Sitting cross legged on his balcony at four in the morning, smoking parliaments, talking about whether life was truly kind.
~
Ben piled large forkfills of pasta into his mouth. Corrine worried he wasn’t getting enough to eat. She sipped her wine and thought about how she was going to ask her youngest brother questions that she may no longer have the right to ask.
Ben interrupted her thoughts. “Do you ever think about her?”
“Not really,” Corrine lied.
“I think about her everyday. I hate her for leaving us, but I miss her, ya know,” he said.
Corrine stood, finding herself unable able to sit.
“She doesn’t deserve our fucking thoughts, Ben,” Corrine said her voice shaky.
“Did you leave because she left?” Ben asked. “Because I was angry with you like I was angry with her….but I still love you.”
Corrine knelt down in front of her brother and rested her face in his lap and wrapped her arms around his ankles and for the first time in a long time, wept.
Love, thought Corrine, was something reserved for other people. She felt like she lost the ability to love. Her mom took it from her when she left. Ben put his hands in her hair and Corrine thought he must have felt so awkward with his weeping sister who had appeared out of nowhere. Her love for Ben poured out alongside her bottomless grief. The grief that sat in the pit of her stomach and in her thigh bones waiting for a day like today to flow out.
She went to Greenwood to check on her brother. She realized, though, less consciously so, she needed this. All those nights and afternoons spent smoking out on her porch wondering. She bent down and looked at the dandelions. She picked one and rubbed it under her chin saying a little prayer.
~
Corrine was ready to get back to her life as a Night Girl, but if you’d ask her, she’d tell you she already missed Ben, the house, and the dandelions. She had traveled there on an impulse, one that had been building under her skin. She hadn’t known what she’d find just that she had to go. She thought of Ben’s sweet face and his empty eyes. How he had been angry with her for leaving. How he forgave her. She was humbled by her own loss. As the meadows rolled by, she found there was an ache in her chest.
Johnny Cash played on the radio. Spring air flowed in. Surprisingly she had work as soon as she arrived home. She had three men to see that night. She had their numbers written down on a small piece of paper. She pulled on a long black dress with thin straps and a slit up the side. Applied a thin line of black eyeliner. Swiped on mascara. Rubbed rouge on her cheeks and lips. Smoked another cigarette. Listened to the birds.
~
The other women Number 49 saw that week looked at him with blank eyes and touched him with lukewarm hands. He missed Corrine. Corrine who when she laughed, there would be a ring of smoke around her mouth. Corrine who listened to him like he was the only man in the world who had something to say.
~
Before Greensville, Corrine called the shots of her life. She ate dinner alone and spent her afternoons smoking on her back porch. She saw more men in a night than all of the other girls. Yet, beneath the surface of her life was a restless search for answers. It held her back. She was afraid. She hadn’t taken a deep breath in years. Being in that house with Ben something inside of her broke open. Maybe it was the tears or maybe it was the laughter, but she was lighter. Now arriving at Number 49’s flat, her choices were hers.
She didn’t linger outside of his building. Didn’t make for a quick smoke. Didn’t stare up at the stars. She didn’t worry about crossing a line. She knew she had already crossed it. And she was about to take one step further.
She took the stairs two at a time. She pushed the door open and found him waiting there a smile written across his face. It was the best thing she’d ever seen. He reached for her hand and pulled her to his chest. There by the open door they danced. Later, she’d walk the streets and enter houses as a Night Girl. But for this moment, she was just a girl who danced with a man she loved.
Tonight, she was Corrine.
And his name was William.
