“Why do they always shake them?” she asked, only to be provocative. She was bored and the guys were ignoring her. 

“Gotta shake those money-makers!” Roscoe cackled, brown juice from chewing tobacco dripping from the corners of his crooked and disgusting mouth. Roscoe made her squirm. She didn’t want to say that she hated him but, well, yeah. She hated him. 

“Hmmmmm,” she sneered at him. “Leave it to you to impart such mind-blowing wisdom, Roscoe,” she said, leaning back in her chair, watching the young woman’s mammaries bounce and bobble and swing. To her, it looked more painful than sensual and made her wonder if gay men liked to watch testicles swing – even though they were well aware of the discomfort involved.  

“You know me,” Roscoe yelled over the clichéd raunchy music track. “A real road scholar!” 

On cue, she glanced sideways at her boyfriend, Carl. It was what they did whenever Roscoe said something stupid. By now my neck should be permanently turned to the side, she thought. But Carl was otherwise occupied – his eyes following the path of the woman’s nipples like some white trash backwoods eye exam. 

She glanced back over at Roscoe. He possessed a certain kind of confidence that life was nothing more than a cosmic joke – which in his case was true. Still, she had to admit that he was happy most of the time while she more often than not felt irritated, bored, and restless. Especially since the plant closed.  

“I’m tired, you guys,” she said, twisting the straw in her drink. “Let’s get outta here.”

“Stop your bitchin’,” said Jeb, Carl’s brother. She gave him the evil eye and his mouth swung shut. It was a playful exchange though and he smiled at her and winked. She’d always liked Jeb; wondered if maybe she was supposed to be with him. It wasn’t that he was better looking than Carl. Nor was he particularly aspirational. There was just something about him that left her questioning.

She’d been doing a lot of questioning lately though; increasingly haunted by a compulsion to cast off the white trash badge (of which she’d always been proud) and try on a new persona for a while. 

“And leave all this?” her best friend Maggie had jokingly asked her when they met up at Caster’s Bar last year and she suggested they skip town and get an apartment in Louisville. “And anyways, what about Carl?” 

What about him? she’d wanted to respond. But it was no time to be flippant. She’d learned the hard way how conversations could be taken out of context and then spread like wildfire through Harken Falls. All it would take to strike that match would have been for mealy-mouthed Martha Comston (rather unaffectionately referred to as ‘cum stain’) to overhear their conversation. And that chick was never far from earshot. So the three phantom words floated above the two square feet of vacant, dingy-carpeted land surrounding their table before vanishing into thin air. 

Maggie got knocked up just a month after that conversation and was too busy with a newborn now to meet up at Caster’s anymore – any dream of her moving to Louisville (or anywhere else) dead in the water. 

The strip joint was crowded for a weekday afternoon. More crowded than usual. She leaned forward in her chair and tried to imagine what it would be like to be up on that stage. There was no judgment. She knew a lot of the girls that danced there. Had known a few of them since kindergarten. We all do what we have to do, she thought. 

The young woman who’d dazzled the mostly male crowd sauntered off stage to be replaced by an older woman. Gravity had done some work on her breasts and they didn’t possess the perkiness of her predecessor’s. Some of the men, and even a drunk woman in the corner, made no secret of their disapproval of the replacement. Wondering how they would ‘measure up,’ she reached under her jacket and cupped her breasts in her hands. She was surprised by the surge of anger she felt for even entertaining this thought and knew she had to leave.

“I’m gonna take off,” she said defiantly, getting up from her chair and hoping that Carl, or at the very least Jeb, would follow her. Neither did though. They sank deeper into their seats, nudging each other and laughing while throwing back their fourth PBR of the afternoon.

She moved swiftly through the club, tripping on a beer bottle and nearly falling. A few people laughed and she felt like crying. She pushed open the door and stepped out into the blazing June sunlight. She stopped to get her bearings and noticed a sequin pasty stuck to the top of her shoe. Peeling it off and looking at it glimmering in the sun like a rare treasure, she stared straight up Front Street and sighed. 

“What about him?” she finally said aloud. 

*(Modified excerpts from The Book Thief by Mark Zusak)