CW 13: The Cabaret of Love

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Enjoy.

The Cabaret of Love

for Tommaso Fiacchino. Grazie per il tuo sostegno, e per l’avventura.

“Oh, come on,” Marty said. “It’ll be fun. Live a little before she ties you down.” He punched Joe in the arm the way men did: I’m only kidding, bro, ha ha! And Joe was once again grateful for Lola, who never needed force to speak of sadness. She would have simply said, I worry we won’t see each other as much. I worry you’ll leave me behind.

When he talked to her about his brother, she only said, “It’s your bachelor party. Go be a bachelor.”

“I’m not sure it’s a party if there’s only two of you.”

“Oh, yeah?” she said. “Come over here, big guy, I’ll show you a party of two.”

And of course he did, and of course it was. He remembered the first time she gave herself to him; not the first time they made love, although that was terrific even with the inevitable awkward moments of two people new to each other. But there had come a time weeks later when they were moving together and he suddenly felt her… melt against him and then into him, and then she was fire, she was cold clear water, she was flying in a hard blue summer sky and he was flying with her. He thought with absolute clarity, This isn’t her body I’m fucking anymore, this is her soul. And when they lay trembling in each other’s arms after, he knew that he would marry her.

This time after, she kissed him and said, “I hope Marty doesn’t have this kind of party in mind. Because I really don’t think he’s the right girl for you.”

He laughed. But…. “I don’t know,” he said. “This place is called the Cabaret of Love. It might get a little… extreme.”

She was silent for a moment, and then she shook her head with a small, tight smile and a raised eyebrow that said Of course it will get extreme, that’s what men do; and it reminded him so much of his mother that for a single, chilling instant the only coherent thought in his brain was Run, run! Because the point really, really was not to get hitched to his mother; the point with her, as it had been for years, was to be at least a thousand miles away and always carry a gun.

“Go,” Lola said again, and this time her smile was just Lola, a warm smile that showed a couple of crooked teeth and twenty-five years of the kind of life Joe thought of as a Good Trip. He’d had pretty much the other kind, until he met her.

#

“This is going to be so awesome,” Marty said for the thirty-fifth time. Joe smiled politely and waited while Marty paid the cover to a woman in a bikini and heels so high they should have come with a safety line.

The main room of the cabaret had a stage at one end fronted by small round tables. A wooden bar ran along the side wall; it looked old and well-maintained, not the sort of bar you’d let drunk men spill their Coors Light on while they shouted Give it to me, baby! at the pair of bare breasts onstage. There was no bartender. There were no other people at all except Marty and Joe.

In the center of the room stood a glass case topped with gears and rods pumping up and down, up and down. Behind the glass, small marionettes moved to the rhythms. Here was the cabaret in miniature, but this little world was full of people: here was the audience he had expected. Men and women at the bar and tables, raising and lowering their glasses, faces turning endlessly to one another. They were naked in all the human ways, nipples and wiry body hair, bellybuttons, flabby stomachs. Some of the men had strings at their groins, and when the gears turned overhead their penises went up and down, up and down. In one corner, a woman straddled a man and the gears moved them apart, together, apart. The mouths in their wooden faces were delicately carved into howls of laughter and pain, of bone-breaking rage and numb disregard. On the stage, a tiny blowsy woman with drooping breasts sang into a microphone: underneath the vulgar blue eyeshadow and the bright lipstick that was the perfect shade of contempt, her face wore that same expression as the little wooden woman forever fucking in the corner, as Lola, as his mother, and Oh no, Joe thought, what is this?

When he turned, Marty was gone, and Joe couldn’t see the door anymore, and then the room went cold and an old, cold voice filled him. A voice like the fire going out, like shit in the stream, like a bird dropping dead from the sky. The voice said, This is what you all are, underneath. Forever pulling each other’s strings.

And for a moment like a long-held breath, for a moment like the stopping of a heart, Joe knew it was true. The Cabaret of Love was just another layover stop on the Bad Trip, and Joe and Lola had a table waiting in the front row. Or maybe in the corner.

And then he reached for the memory of her melting. He reached for her smile. He reached for the hope of the Good Trip, tied together, not tied down.

And then he stood in a room that was crowded with men, warm from their sweat and their temporary unbound desire. On the stage, a pretty woman smiled and gave it to them, always out of reach. Marty stood next to him, holding two beers. “Here you go, bro,” he said, and handed one to Joe. “Here’s to one more night of freedom!”