Everybody Knows Jackie Rose (pt 2)

Jackie can’t remember if it’s Friday or Saturday – she asks the dying women sitting next to her but the dying woman doesn’t answer, her fingers locked around her drink while clumps of hair land on the shoulders of her Christmas sweater. I think it’s Friday, Jackie says to the woman, who was Jackie’s third grade teacher, and while she isn’t looking Jackie searches the pockets of her coat hanging off the back of her chair, taking her money and pills; her teacher doesn’t notice.

Jackie goes for a stroll, drifting past the pool players, stepping over extended legs, batting her eyes at the men from the mill who wince and look away, drinking up their checks, necks red from haircuts, faces red from scrubbing off grease, looking to fuck and forget. My dad worked with these guys, she says in the ear of Bob Bobby, a truck driver who wears her wig when she sucks him. He got killed in an accident, Jackie says. Some machine dropped hot steel on him, burned him up in a snap. They say he didn’t feel anything, but I don’t believe it.

Bob Bobby’s looking straight ahead, the chords in his neck standing out; he’s waiting for her to take him outside, and until she does he will put up with her so she takes her time saying anything she wants, to him and the rest of the boys she knows from the old days of boy scouts and summer jobs. She tells Carl the cop about her cocoa butter, holding out her hand for him to smell; she tells Jim Celetti the foreman a joke about a nun; she tells Ed Ixer from the grocery she always wanted to be on Star Search. In the alley they get her back for it, jamming those dicks at her and using her old name, such tough guys until they cum and then they get weak as a kitten. That’s when Jackie gets them back.

I want to shoot on your tits, says Hank Smothers, a guy from the plant over in Orchard; he gave her a business card their first time, which Jackie thought was hilarious. He’s furiously jerking his cock, his voice grumbling. Let me shoot on your tits, faggot.

Jackie unbuttons her blouse, pulling it open, leaning back; the streetlight makes the plastic look ancient and yellow, and the straps bunch up the fat under her arms. Hank groans and lets go, three jets of white laid across her breastplate. She wipes it off with some Kleenex and gets up.

Hank jerks his zipper up. I thought your tits were real. That wasn’t cool at all.

Jackie laughs. You just pissed because you thought it was going to make you feel like a big man. She pokes a finger into his chest. And it didn’t because you ain’t.

He shoves her down and throws money at her. Remember that next week when you come looking, Jackie calls, cupping her hands around her mouth. Go find you some real titties, motherfucker.

It’s all that porno they watch, is what Mom says to her later, when Jackie has cleaned up and rebuilt herself and taken a seat at the bar. They give men stupid ideas.

I always wanted to be a blonde, Jackie says, changing the subject, holding a strand from her wig up under the Christmas lights. You think I’d look good as a blonde?

I want to know why you do it at all, Mom says, and then shouts over her shoulder at the drunks to wait five god damned seconds, she’s talking to somebody. How come you do all this crap at all? she repeats, making an X in the air over Jackie’s face.

The other way is so boring, Jackie tells her. Aren’t boys just so boring?

But you are a boy, Mom tells her, and the look Jackie gives her explains in an instant what Jackie would and could and will do if she ever says that again; the old woman stumbles back as if hit, her mouth twitching. I was just saying, Mom mutters, finding her vodka.

Just saying what, Jackie asks, turned into steel; Mom doesn’t reply, filling drinks, and Jackie gets out her little mirror, blowing it a kiss and powdering until she is perfect.

*