the asshole name, is a total jerk, and he’s high on something. Not light stuff either – probably something more like coke. Penny’s enemy, Rebecca, is a well-dressed slut, but a bitch all the same. She looks older than her years – I’d take her for at least thirty. She doesn’t seem as high as her dwarf boyfriend, but she’s taken something too. As soon as they see me, they react just like everyone else. He feels threatened, she’s turned on. I’m used to it. Nothing new there.
Then I intertwine my fingers with Penny’s and the show begins. I’ve never held hands with anyone for this long. Francisca doesn’t give a damn about all that crap, and also we usually needed to keep our hands free, ready to kick someone’s ass or hold a knife. For a moment, just one, not even so long as the blink of an eye, I have the strangest feeling, which makes me think of the first time I drank alcohol when I was ten. That first gulp of beer. The coolness of it, the thrill and the dizziness. But then it passes, and now it’s gone.
One thing is certain: Rebecca hates Penny and that guy with the curly hair wants to do her. He doesn’t stop staring for a moment, and gives me a nasty look when he thinks I’m not looking.
I notice Penny’s seen him and is blushing and this pisses me off.
But why does it piss me off?
It makes no sense.
I’m only here to earn two hundred and fifty dollars, not to spin theories about who wants to be with who and who blushes when she sees who else, right?
Maybe she was the one he liked in high school, but he never went for it. Maybe, in addition to infuriating Rebecca, Penny hoped to get revenge on this idiot who snubbed her back then. Why he would have snubbed her at school, I don’t know, but the fact is that now he wants her and he hates me.
Dancing with Penny is strange. I’ve never actually danced with anyone before, except once as a kid with my mother. I have a lightning-quick and totally unexpected flashback to me aged eight or nine, already taller than she was, offering her my hand and performing a ridiculous imitation of a bow. I’d forgotten that, but now the memory’s returned, and I can even remember her words. She said to me, ‘One day you’ll invite your girlfriend to dance a waltz.’ It’s crazy how romantic she was, in spite of everything. She thought my future was full of heart-pounding waltzes and red roses for some unique and perfect woman who would suddenly appear, like a barefoot Cinderella on the steps of a crystal palace. My mother believed that love existed somewhere in the world – beyond her room, her body and her life. She tried hard to convince me, but she never succeeded. I liked to listen to those stories of hers, like a hopeless patient wants to believe the pitiful lies of some quack, but even then I knew they were only fairy tales told by a wannabe princess disappointed by life. The love that I saw as a kid was always a stack of bills left behind on a bedside table, a slew of curses, the mingled odours of sweat and blood.
I’m dancing with Penny, and her hair smells of wild strawberries. I hold her close and her body is rigid and hesitant against me. I wonder if it’s me or just the whole situation that’s bothering her. Maybe she’d rather dance with that loser with the golden curls, and the sheer thought of it pisses me off all over again.
So we’re playing spin the bottle like idiot kids when it lands on her, and that’s the end of it. The moron approaches, and suddenly I’m drowning in rage. Don’t you dare touch her, you prick! I kiss her and my mind goes blank. All I can think about is her mouth, her tongue, her breath and her strawberry-scented hair. If we were alone right now, I’d lift up her skirt and take her with all my might. But we’re not alone here, and all too soon the background sounds rush back in, and I feel confused and terrible and really mad at her.
When I feel this way, I insult people; and I don’t know why, but somehow I feel easier with myself when I treat Penny like shit. The truth is that I