Another Failed Contestant

Charly leaned forward with her elbows on the counter and cupped her chin in her slender hands. She had paused to notice a quick flash through the closed glass door, a reflected reminder that a world continued spinning by outside the coffee shop without her.

She’d been so busy polishing the shiny formica bar, trying with all her strength to rub out some of the more obvious nicks and cigarette burns, that she almost forgot where she had been and what she had been through. But there she felt it again. The dim hum and jetting glimmer of morning hustle on the street stirred a memory which refused to leave her alone.

Shadowy eyes still on the door, she leaned forward, propping her gaunt waist against the counter and reaching her long arms back behind her head to pull and smooth her thin brown pony tail, giving her hair band another tightening twist and letting it jump back into place with an echoing snap.

She raised stiletto fingers to her face and lightly rubbed away whatever trace of powder she had applied earlier in the morning then brushed her right thumb against her hardened lips to clear away the last hint of color. She let her long arms dangle to her sides, recalling the painful bite of a dance teacher who once remarked that she looked like a damp weeping willow tree after a stiff rain.

“I’m ugly and I’m skinny and I’m too tall,” she thought, “and now everyone will see it.”

She turned her back to the rush outside the glass door and waved two wispy fingers over the ON buttons of the double Bunn-o-matic. Before her fingers made the plunge she caught a glimpse of stubby dull fingernails which were once long and glossy and which had once belonged to hands which held so much promise years ago.

“Charly!” her boss called from behind the shop. “Can you come in my office for a minute?”

Her fingers pressed the buttons glowing bright red and she lurched back to the office, head down and thinking, this is it, here’s where she’d find out that he knows what happened.

She curled silently inside the open office door and slid to a stop against the narrow frame.

“Yeah?” she said.

The boss turned in his chair to see a tall young girl in a pink waitress dress, knobby knees and bony ankles all pressed together in an attempt to hide behind the doorway.

“Oh, Charly, I just wanted you to know what a great job you’re doing,” he said smiling.

Charly’s jaw dropped slightly, her mouth barely open as she nodded her thin face.

The boss stood up from his chair and grasped the girl by her upper arms. With a nervous strain to his voice he told her, “Honestly, Charly, whatever happened, I mean, eh, whatever happens, you’ve got a job here.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

The boss arched his lip into a grin and put his hands back down to his side.

“Hey, I, uh, it’s almost 6,” he stammered, “I need to go open the door.”

The boss left her alone and cold from his assurance and as she folded her arms over her slim breast she looked down at the bare wooden floor of the cramped office. She saw the dirty slats in the floor magnify in her eyes and the heat of the lights and the sounds of the band all suddenly came rushing back to her memory.

She saw herself tripping and falling with a thud on the stage. She felt blood pumping in her ears as she listened to the chorus of catcalls and laughs from the audience. She saw the director’s eyes, round criticizing black owl eyes behind oversized glasses telling her she only had one shot, honey. And she thought if she hadn’t tried so hard her failure wouldn’t be so complete, if she hadn’t excitedly told everyone to watch that afternoon TV show then her shame wouldn’t be so thorough. And she remembered scrambling to stand up, that split second when her eyes were too shocked to cry and her legs refused to respond. Inches from her face she saw the ugly lacquered wooden slats of the stage just like these in the office, edges worn thin by the dancing feet of faultlessly graceful performers in the lights, and she thought her dream now, as close and short as it seemed, wasn’t nearly as perfect as she once thought it was.

Cheers,
Mb