Leather jams my zipper. Water fills the trunk, as I sink deeper and deeper. At least the screams ceased. No more slaps, either. I prefer the bass thumps of the club. This foreign place reeks of decay—cadavers and rust. I already miss the invisible plumes of vanilla body spray that’ll presumably never waft my way again, the cackling cadence of women connecting and the clicking of heels on concrete.
I long for the days when she stuffed me with spiked boots, nylons and corsets. Gooey thongs, pill bottles and wads of cash. Secrets, even—but this secret is too burdensome to bear. I hope it dies with me. James kills the engine on the middle of the Burnside Bridge.
"How long have you been fucking him?"
"He’s just a customer!"
Betty jerks her restrained arms, but fails in unbinding herself with the tug.
"You’re a lying whore!"
James slaps Betty across the face with the back of his hand. His knuckles split the skin. Blood mixes with red lipstick. Motionless, she stares at the Willamette River. He circles to the passenger side and pulls her out of the car by her hair. Cars zoom past. No one stops. He pushes her down and her tailbone slams on the concrete sidewalk. Cyclists roll by the violence.
Betty grinds her ass on Tyrone’s lap in the private dance area lit with red runner lights on the floor and ceiling. The song ends and he pulls out four $20 bills, for the four dances. James orders a whiskey neat with a beer back, at the bar across the room. He slams one after the next while eyeballing Betty. They lock eyes and she plops on Tyrone’s lap.
"Are you still painting?" Tyrone asks.
"I’ve got a showing this weekend at a coffee shop. You should come," she says.
"My buddy owns a gallery in the Pearl. I’ll see if he can come with me," Tyrone says. James stomps over. He snatches Betty by the arm.
"Time’s up," he says to Tyrone. "Get dressed," he says to Betty. "Now."
Betty blows a kiss to Tyrone and lips see you this weekend to him. Daggers shoot from her eyes to James, then she mosies her way to the dressing room.
Betty throws on yoga pants and a tank top. She’s alone in the dressing room until James busts in. He zip ties her hands, grabs her packed suitcase and drags her past the customers and coworkers in the strip club, out of the building through the parking lot, shoves her into his car and locks her suitcase in the trunk.
Everything inside of me is ruined. The leather, drenched. The shoes, waterlogged. I can’t roll out of here. My wheels are broken. The darkness engulfs me as I drown. The river enters every part of me. Every crevice. Every pore. Every pocket. It fills me up with its toxicity. It pollutes me as I hit rock bottom. All that’s untainted are the secrets she gave me. They guide my heart to the surface. The secrets give me buoyancy, but they don’t resurrect. I’m dead inside.
Pedestrians oogle the sidewalk drama but only whisper to each other and keep moving. James unlocks the trunk and extracts the valise.
"You skank! You’ll never work in this town again!"
James kicks Betty and chucks the dancer bag into the river.
Betty rises to her feet with hands free. She headbutts James and suspends him over the rail.
"Please, don’t! You’re my love. My life. I’ll never hurt you again."
Betty thrusts forward, pushing James over the edge even more. The river current picks up in synchronicity with the seemingly unrelated commotion on the bridge.
The suitcase floats to the water’s surface and catches her attention.
Tyrone crosses the bridge and recognizes the disgruntled couple from the strip club now escalated to a full-blown horrorshow in broad daylight. He slams on his brakes and jumps out of his car on the bridge. His approach is fierce, but gentle. Swift, but slow.
"You gotta help me, man. She’s crazy!"
Tyrone anchors his eyes into Betty’s. She releases James, but Tyrone has a grip on him and reels him back over the rail to safety. The switchblade Betty used to cut the zip tie clanks on the sidewalk and bounces over the edge into the river.
James cries on the concrete. The suitcase flows with the current, toward the shore.
"You’ll never break me," Betty says, then she hops in the car with Tyrone. They drive west to the hills to his boyfriend’s house.
Jaime Dunkle mixes the profound and the profane in her prose, with an altruism that stems from her tenure as an award-winning journalist. Her stories range from fiction to personal narrative and often blur between the two. "Stripped" is her forthcoming book that was chosen as a semifinalist on the YesYes- Books Open Reading For Fiction contest in 2019. For more info, go to JaimeDunkle.com. No creepers allowed.
