Dancing with Rembrandt

ONE-2

Exactly sixty-two minutes later, Hannah emerged from the VIP room. Her tears competed with the sweat on her cheek and brow.

“Why are you out so soon?” bellowed Virginia.

“An hour,” stated Hannah. “They paid for an hour.”

Virginia Hamilton stalked toward the young woman. “They paid for two.” She pointed her pudgy finger toward the red door. “You get back in there and make me some money!”

“But, the storm…”

“Damn it!” shouted the mercurial owner of the club. “How many times do I have to tell you, honey, I don’t care about no damned storm. Mr. Ischii and his associates don’t care about no storm!”

Customers seated at the tables in the club turned toward the yelling, obese woman. Conversations ceased as the patrons focused their attention toward Virginia and Hannah.

“I told you, Hannah, that my customers have paid for you to entertain them. Now you take your t**s and your sweet ass in there and make me some money in that room that Mr. Ischii has paid for!”

“I can’t, Virginia,” pleaded the young woman, clutching her robe tight to her body.

“If you refuse me, Hannah Morgan, don’t bother coming to work tomorrow.”

Hannah pulled her robe more tight around her, steeling the nerve to respond. “So be it,” she stated as she brushed past the woman, making her way to the dressing room.

“Wait!” snapped Virginia, in a tone reserved for intemperate dancers who discounted her orders.

Hannah stopped abruptly in the narrow hallway. Her back faced her employer.

“Where’s my house fee, Hannah!” bellowed Virginia.

Hannah stopped in her tracks.

“You’re not leaving here until I get my cut!”

“I know, Virginia.” Hannah turned to face the older woman, wiping away sweat that concealed her tears.

“Give me my due now!” snarled the woman. “You’re not leaving here until you give me what’s mine!” she snapped.

Embarrassed as much by the one-sided conversation as she was at the means with which she had earned the money, Hannah pulled a wad of green bills from a purse she secreted within the pocket of her robe. She began counting the money as the other dancers milled about, watching with glee.

“Very good, Hannah,” replied the woman, as she showed the young dancer an emerging smile, rewarding her for a hefty commission. The smile soon turned sinister as Virginia snarled, “now you get the hell get out of my club!”

Hannah returned the purse to her robe. She trudged toward the dressing room, ignoring the commotion of ridicule as the other dancers formed a gauntlet along the narrow corridor. Each of the other dancers hurled insults at her. Toward the end of the line, a large dancer blocked her path, making an immovable obstacle to the dressing room. The jeering competitors presented a jealous front at the young woman who was never one of them. They resented her for her charm, her talent, her appearance, and especially her rejection of them and their lifestyle. The other dancers resented the respect paid to her by the men and women who patronized the club. Hannah jostled with the large dancer, under the taunts of the others in the gauntlet. Once inside the dingy room, Hannah steeled her composure, ignoring the continuing insults. She glanced at the clock mounted upon the cobwebbed wall. She was late. She recognized that a shower would just have to wait. Hannah chose instead to concentrate upon a minimum of dressing. She frantically gathered the rest of her clothing and personal items. She stuffed them deep into a bag she hefted over her shoulder. The competitor dancers jeered at her as she pushed her way out of the narrow hallway toward the front of the establishment.

As Hannah raced out into the club, Raymond beckoned her from his stool at the bar.

“I am really late, Raymond,” politely whispered Hannah. “I don’t have time to talk right now.”

“Just a moment,” returned Raymond.

Hannah yielded for the older man out of courtesy. “I really need to leave,” she said, placing her hand upon his shoulder.

Raymond Tigness reached inside his coat pocket, fumbling for something, before withdrawing an envelope and a tootsie pop. “One is for you, Hannah, and the other for Allie.”

Hannah smiled.

Raymond the Regular was a genuinely nice man who seemed to have a polite appreciation of her. “Someday, Hannah, I guarantee you, that you and Allie will live in a place worthy of your beauty and your spirit. This town and this job ain't for you.” He reached for her hand and brought it up to his lips.

Hannah blushed, feeling the warm lips of an innocent kiss from an admirer who appreciated her for more than what she did on the wooden stage.

Suddenly, she felt an anxious electricity that made her hair tingle on the back of her neck. She turned toward the tables to her right, and observed the mysterious man with the olive complexion peering through the dark eyeglasses at her. His riveting gaze made her feel uneasy.

Hannah bent toward Raymond. “Have you ever seen that guy with the eyeshades in here before?” she whispered.

Raymond peeked over the dancer’s shoulder toward the mysterious man.

“Can’t say as I have, Hannah.”

“Neither have I.”

Raymond took the hand of the young woman. “I can walk you out to your car, if you like.”

Hannah smiled. “No, thanks. I’m a big girl now.” She winked at the man as she started to walk away.

“Take care driving home, Hannah,” interrupted Raymond. “The storm of the century is pounding Astoria tonight.”

An immediate sense of dread entered Hannah as she remembered that she no longer had a home.

Raymond read her face, noticing that he had upset her. “Is something wrong?”

Hannah shrugged her shoulders. “My bank accounts were garnished this morning, and Mr. Coombs wouldn’t work with me while I cleared it all up.”

Raymond banged his empty pint on the bar in a fit of disagreement. “That bastard should have never evicted you and Allie,” continued Raymond.

Startled, Hannah emerged from her feeling of disappointment. “How did you know?”

“My little cousin couldn’t handle a man’s job like mine,” Raymond responded. “He had to get his jollies using paper instead of using his hands.”

Hannah nodded, clutching the envelope.

“Evictions are easier than working a real job.”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Hannah. She started to pull away.

“I wondered when that worthless piece of s**t would finally pull the trigger on you.” Raymond pointed at the envelope in her hand. “That’s a little something I’ve been saving for a rainy day.

“I can’t accept this, Raymond.”

The man gently took the soft, alluring hand grasping the envelope, and delicately wrapped her fingers around it with his calloused, worn hands. “I insist.” He winked at the young woman. “Just pay me back someday.”

Hannah opened the envelope to find a few green bills secreted within. She smiled at Raymond, as she carefully folded the envelope, and placed it inside her jeans pocket. “Thank-you for thinking about us.”

Raymond pulled her close. “Just get out of here now before Virginia takes her cut.” He winked at the young woman.

Hannah rushed out of the club, peering over her shoulder at the sinister man in dark eyeglasses at the table. As hurried as she was, she nevertheless sensed something evil in his presence.

The wind whipped her 1995 Tempo across Second Street, toward the hills on the south side of town. Rain fell like stones onto the windshield. The wipers furiously attempted to shove aside the remnant. Hannah plied Eighth Street, turning into the teeth of the wind on Franklin, destined for a house just on the corner of Skyline, high atop the hill. The car groaned as it climbed the hill, warring against the awesome wind and the unrelenting rain. At last she reached the house. She silently rejoiced that the porch light still illuminated safety from the storm.

Hannah sprinted across the soaked yard toward the door, hoping that Mrs. Nunez would be reasonable. Before she reached the porch, the door opened to a woman holding a small child by the hand. “You’re late, again, Hannah.”

“I’m really sorry, Mrs. Nunez. I was late at work.”

Mrs. Nunez frowned. “Your work is so demanding, isn’t it?” she asked arrogantly.

“I know I’m late,” pleaded the young woman. “It won’t happen again.”

Mrs. Nunez laughed. “How many times have I heard that line?”

Hannah shrugged her shoulders. “Please, Mrs. Nunez. Just another chance?”

“Don’t bring her back,” interjected the woman, cutting off any effort to reconcile.

The little child standing next to Mrs. Nunez wiped her eyes. Her sleepiness obscured any awareness of the situation.

Mrs. Nunez pushed the sleeping child to Hannah. “I really hope you get yourself together someday Hannah, if only for Allie’s sake.” She pulled a bag from the doorway and tossed it on the porch in front of the young mother before slamming the door and shutting off the porch light. The door closing in her face gave Hannah yet another reason with yet another person to reject her, all serving to make her feel as worthless and rotten as the salmon carcasses littering Young’s Bay with a smell of putrid failure. She clasped the little child tightly against her, and whispered in her ear, “we’re going be alright, Allie. It’s just me and you again.”

Alexandra Grace Morgan was almost five years of age. Tall, slender with auburn locks curling around her ears and brow, she had her mother’s delicate features, calm disposition, and prodigious intellectual attributes. She was extremely shy, talkative only when feeling a sense of comfort in her surroundings, or incipient hunger. She used language sprinkled with proper grammar and syntax, coaxed by her mother. She loved to draw and to make pictures, which Hannah had eagerly conveyed to Raymond, the child’s most ardent admirer.

“Come on, Allie, we have to make a run for it.” Hannah grabbed the bag in one hand, and pulled her coat over her daughter with the other, with the skill and dexterity that only a mother could muster. She raced through the pelting raindrops to her car that idled roughly in the driveway. With the raindrops soaking her skin as she placed her daughter in the car seat, Hannah ignored the howling wind whipping the trees along the roadway as she fastened the clips. She hastened into the driver seat.

“My bed is gonna be warm and comfy tonight.”

Hannah bit her lip, grateful that negotiating a turn produced a spontaneous distraction from responding to her child.

“Will you finish showing me A Ball for Daisy?”

Holding the Ford in the lane as the wind furiously buffeted it produced another spontaneous reason to not respond.

“I like the pictures in A Ball for Daisy.”

“Me, too.”

“Will you show me the pictures when we get home, mommy?”

“No, Allie,” she replied softly. Hannah decided that tonight was not the night to let her daughter know that they no longer had a home. “We’re not going home tonight.”

“Why?”

“We are going stay in a new place, out by the river, so we can watch the storm.”

“Good,” piped Allie. “I like storms.”

“Me, too, honey,” agreed Hannah. She pulled out the tootsie pop. “Raymond says hi.” She handed the tootsie pop into her daughter's eager hands.

As Hannah reached a narrow turn, she bit her lip anxiously, piloting the old Ford down the hill, toward the vast river stretching below. Buffeted by howling wind and blinding rain, Hannah drove slowly toward an old hotel she remembered near Tongue Point. She had stayed there for her first week in Astoria, sketching out a plan for how she would spend her new life caring for herself and another. She recalled that the hotel was old and dingy, but it now promised a comforting refuge that she and Allie needed to ride out the storm, as well as a repeat opportunity to sketch out another life plan. “Plus ça change,” she whispered.