Samantha Brittain

Fiction 1

Brenner

"Scenes from a Night Club"

9-17-06

The singer croons into the microphone, a punk rock song because of the hard guitar riffs, but the singer's voice has a child-like quality. Her voice would not have been out of place in a country song.

She looks nothing like she sounds, with raggedly clipped chocolate brown hair, kohl-lined eyes, and gauged ears. Tattoos ripple up her arms. She wears a tight spaghetti-string shirt, white in color, and jeans with graffiti painted on them. She moves sinuously, gracefully; swaying back and forth. She makes a come-hither gesture with her hand, slow and erotic.

She can hear the slight buzz of the amps and her band behind her, but she also attuned to the roaring din of her dancing audience. A beer bottle breaks, she watches the laughing drunk fall to the floor, his friends reaching out to help him to his feet. A waitress sweeps up the shattered glass.

In the crowd she can see a regular with a foolish gangster name like Snake or Spike dragging a really innocent-looking girl into a corner. She sneers and wishes the girl luck. Hit him, she thinks to herself, don't let

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him take away the shine in that young face. She was that way once, but she barely remembers. She wasn't always tattooed and singing in a punk band. She wishes there was something she could do for this girl, wishes they actually carded in this warehouse-turned-club. The man has his hands up the girl's shirt now, a firm grip on her. She struggles, but can't break free. Isn't anyone seeing this? Or don't they care?

Suddenly, there is a young woman standing between Snake/Spike and his dark corner. From his body language, you can tell he's going to…yes, he swings at her. Girl ducks expertly and in the same motion brings her knee into his groin. He releases his hold on the blond youngster, who almost falls. The girl who just stopped the gang banger, who the singer suddenly remembers is named Shade, catches her arm and pulls her away. Good on ya, the singer thinks, a slight smile coming over her normally expressionless face.

Shade pulls the girl along, and the chocolate-haired vocalist loses them in the crush of bodies. She remembers Shade isn't a bad sort, and knows that the girl will be safe. She turns her concentration back to her music. The song has changed, and this one is more gentle than the

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last. The moshing stops and lighters come out, waving back and forth. The singer is taken to another place entirely as the song flows from her vocal cords.

"I breathe you in, my little god; uncertainty is banished. Any pain I've ever felt, at seeing you, has vanished…" she sings breathily, and she thinks about the boy who wrote the song for her so long ago. She wonders if he's even still alive; if that big heart has stopped. If the person she loved more than anyone else is gone.

James, she thinks, are you still the way you were? Or is there nothing left of the boy I knew before the heroin? She can picture him smiling at her when she wrapped her arms around him; she recalls his tears when she took one prescription pill too many.

The song ends and the set is over. She helps the musicians lug their instruments and amps to the waiting van in the back alley. She hugs them goodbye, and they warn her to be careful, though Heaven knows after all these years alone in the ghetto she can handle herself. She walks back through the alley to the front of the building, knowing that if someone should attack her, she has a switchblade in her boot. No one hassles her, she is free to kick through the garbage and startle a thin alley cat into fleeing.

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She climbs into her old car and starts it, driving through streets she knows as well as the lacing of lines on her hands. At her apartment building, she parks her car in the lot and gets out, locking the doors. She walks toward the front door, only to see a figure silhouetted against the porch light. Calmly, she reaches into her boot and removes the switchblade, then flicks it open in a practiced gesture. The figure continues standing, arms out.

As she reaches the figure he says in a hoarse voice, "Leanne?" The switchblade drops to the pavement and tears well in Leanne's eyes.

"James?" she asks softly, reaching out to touch his face. "Is it really you?"

"Yeah." He catches her in a warm embrace, burying his face in her hair, taking in her scent. "It's been two years. Are you alright?"

"Yes." She says softly. "I thought you were dead. Your phone got disconnected, and when I went to your apartment it had been re-rented. You let it get that bad…"

"Leanne, I've been clean for six months. I got tired of being sick all the time, of always needing a fix. I wanted to wait til I was sure I had beaten it… And I know you're

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probably with someone else, but…I can't stop thinking about you and I still love you."

The singer smiled faintly. "You're home, that's all that matters. Come upstairs. I'll get us something to eat.
"