Redacted

by Alexandra Persad

 

The first thing Sarah noticed about the men was their sameness. Their artificial smiles and moussed hair above the neck, their unbuttoned polo shirts and severely white shoes below it.

Even their positioning—leaning back in their chairs and interlocking their fingers behind their heads—mirrored each other, as if they were more accustomed to being in close proximity than not. They shared a large stretch of life, potentially the turning points of adolescenthood. All of it brimmed with privilege — rectangled pools divided by volleyball nets, imprints of condom rings in the leather of wallets, blinkered romances with girlfriends that were tall and anorexic, not in an unattractive way. Were they nice to them? Erring on the side of generosity, Sarah decided that half were and half were not.

She could hear their conversation from across the room, all of it loud and inflated. They weren’t out of place. No one’s gaze jutted in their direction or made an effort to talk over them. Rich people antics overheard by other rich people  — comments about the last hole of their game, how one of them had left their driver on the green. It was a joke to them, the disposability of things.

How do you just lose a club?

Clubs aren’t even easy to lose. They’re not small, y’know.

How many is that? What’s the count?

Dunno. Maybe three? Four?

It’s definitely more than three.

That’s just this year, right?

So what if it is?

Christ.

Oh you’re one to talk.

Last I checked all my clubs are accounted for.

The man pointed to the leather bag resting against the wall, shiny rods stuck out from the top like trophies. Only one showed any indication of use, bits of sediment and blades of grass caked on the end.

So I’m not Tiger Woods, is that a crime?

One of the men in the center patted the other on the chest for comedic effect and they laughed, slapping their napkined knees.

Sarah shifted her gaze to the rest of the bodies in the room, scanning for some sort of female acknowledgement, a shared recognition of the boyhood that had spilled into grown up realities.

There was no one. It was unsurprising, and if she were to assign any weight to the moment, she would be struck with a crash of loneliness. She chose to ignore it.

 

The men at the table liked her. They would’ve liked any female server under the age of thirty. It didn’t require much effort on Sarah’s part to please them. She performed the motions that had become second nature, sucking in her stomach and smiling without her teeth. She introduced the drink menu before mentioning any of the specials.

Now you’re talking. The man who first accepted the sliver of paper had an artificially full head of hair shellacked against his scalp.

Whaddawe got on there? Their bodies all bent toward him, encircling the menu like crows to a carcass.

The drinks they ordered were topped with sprigs of greenery and dried fruit. Their appetizers were oysters resting on a bed of ice and lemons. They hardly touched them, requesting another order of drinks and a spontaneous plate of fries.

Oh just what I was hoping to see. Sarah unloaded the next round, a circle of glasses sweating on the white cloth. All my drinks.

Sarah laughed politely at their dialogue. She didn’t mind granting them the small gesture. There were no remarks expressed about her, nothing that would leave her feeling deflated now or even after they were gone.

The man on the perimeter picked up the tab. He was quieter, joining in on the winds of laughter, rather than causing them. His shirt was patterned with vertical lines, a glint of a gold chain resting beneath it.

When he handed Sarah his card, his fingers grazed hers, and she looked at him to murmur a polite apology but stopped suddenly. She expected his eyes to be swimmy and thoughtless. Instead, they were the opposite. A kaleidoscopic spiral of moments, shards of life refracting her own gaze.

She cleared her throat. I’ll be right back with this.

No rush. He smiled politely, also without his teeth.

What a class act.

A true gentlemen.

We should tell Shelly about this. Whaddayou think?

What are you doing? Seriously – who are you calling right now?

I gotta tell her what a standup guy she raised.

Could you just — ? No seriously, give me the phone. 

Sarah shuffled away, leaving the clammy dampness of the table and entering a cool pocket of air conditioning behind the counter. Still, she felt warm and hyperaware. The pull under the arms of her collared shirt, the calcium in the grooves of her teeth, the loudness of the laughter.

She tried to assign value to each variable, as if each fragmented thought could be quantified. She reconsidered her assessment of the group, of the man and his striped shirt. The possibility of her own incorrectness. How improbable it all seemed at first, but was somehow more likely now.

 

 

Sarah’s last job was starkly different. Almost everything about it was. The customers were worse — exclusively men, bitching about wives they did or didn’t have. The gravity of each conversation was cemented in anger. Some regulars neutered it with thinly veiled efforts — a lower voice, a softer expression. Each was as effective as spraying a gardening hose on a forest fire, the flames still ablaze and searing her skin, but the danger wasn’t as immediate.

They patted the buckled leather beside them, asking her to sit, which Sarah did. Complacency was key. It was Her against Them, even when it seemed like it wasn’t.

Her thighs stuck to the leather like glue, spreading out and looking much larger than they were when she stood. The spandex uniforms seemed to universally be a size too small, leaving mangled marks on her stomach when she removed it at the end of the night, wreaking of fried food and beer.

They bought her drinks every night. It was better for both of them if she accepted. She could tolerate listening to them, allowing the alcohol to cloud her thoughts as she stared silently at a plate of congealed, unnaturally orange wings as they spoke.

She’s just a fucking bitch when she wants to be. And I don’t mean that disrespectfully, I’m just telling you how it is. How it really is. I need to work seven days a week. Seven days? Even God rested on the seventh day, didn’t he? I grew up in church. Now, I’m not a church-going man anymore, but I’m still a man of God. You don’t have to go to church to know that. It’s a fact. A fact.

Mmm. Sarah nodded along, sometimes making passing eye contact with one of her own, their spandex shorts riding up their ass cheeks unavoidably as they passed by, shiny red baskets of food in tow.

They were unspokenly united. Their unique breed of intelligence wasn’t acknowledged by the outside world. More often than not, people seemed to think the lives they led were small and decided, as if their existence was so compact they could fit on the head of a pin.

Your eyes. The man breathed on her. He wreaked of whiskey. Bottom shelf, the only thing they poured shouts of. They’re such a pretty blue.

Thank you. Sarah took a tip of her own drink, a vodka soda. Water gone sick.

Why do you work here and not down the block, sweetheart?

Men coined different terms to avoid referring to the Purple Parrot by name, although Sarah never understood why. Disguising something so intentionally only drew more attention.

Sarah had never been inside, but imagined it drenched in darkness, only the shiver of stage lights through the haze of cigar smoke. Were the women even visible through it? Or were there just clouds of pollution and bare bodies behind?

Any man who went there first was off the Richtor scale. Sarah learned the term from Wray during her first week. Wray tattooed her forearms and thighs  and claimed to have only ever cried once in her adult life, which was at her mother’s funeral. And even then, it was only a single tear.

And I liked my mother, too. Wray pointed a finger of chipped polish at her. We actually got along. Even when I was sixteen and kind of a bitch. You know.

Sarah nodded, pretending to understand. There wasn’t a single part of her that did, but it was best to avoid the introduction of any differing perspectives before they knew each other. It was only their second conversation.

The first, Sarah had initiated. It had been unbearably beige. Something about the inserts they had to stuff inside their bra. She pointed to her chest, how cartoonishly large it looked, stretching her shirt to unbearable lengths. Wray shrugged.

At least we get to cover ‘em – would be worse if we were at a titty bar. Although, I might work in one of those. Wray gnawed on the inside of her cheek, exacerbating its concavity. Yeah, I think I would. Would you?

The question caught Sarah off guard. She considered what it would feel like to be that on display, that much of a spectacle. Once, she sat as a nude model for the local college’s drawing class. It paid fifty dollars an hour and lasted for two. The entire experience was cold and uncomfortable. Existing with her bare ass on a stool in an air conditioned room of people morphed into a scene Sarah couldn’t stomach.

She tried to imagine how she would retell it, watering down the intensity of so many sets of eyes following the exposed curvatures of her body and replicating their interpretation. The scratch of graphite against parchment, stodgy, amateur artist fingers smearing the markings and wiping the access onto a blackened cloth.

When it was over, Sarah was handed a scratchy robe that she threw over her body. A gangly man in open-toe sandals and a ponytail asked if she wanted to see the sketches. Sarah could only manage to shake her head, leaving her clothes behind and heading into the outside without shoes or underwear. The world was unaffected by the most recent moments of her life, everything around her just as mundane as she had left it. Nothing about her experience mattered in the scheme of anything. She was completely ordinary.

For the next month, she slept in flannel pajamas that covered her completely. She actively avoided any reflection of her bare body. She stopped having sex. She threw out her vibrator, which wrapped discreetly in a paper towel before tossing into the dumpster.

I don’t know? Maybe.

Wray nodded and fiddled with her vape, a lopsided arrow inked on the side of her wrist. She stored it inside the pocket of her shorts when she worked, its blockish shape jutted out from her thigh even when she was still.

So you’re saying no? Wray asked. ’The fuck are you? Rich or something?

Wray grinned, emphasizing that it was a joke. Even without her accompanying expression, Sarah understood. They were the same, testing the lengths they were willing to go, how much they were willing to give. Sarah realized that Wray would go much further, giving more of herself and feeling fine about it. As if the roles they fulfilled were all just droplets of existence that would eventually runoff and soak into the ground.

 

The man in the striped polo returned. This time, he was not in a polo at all, but a t-shirt made of a thick material that refused to wrinkle, regardless of how he sat. He was alone, but still at a table with multiple chairs, exacerbating his aloness. He seemed unbothered.

The negative space between Sarah’s body and his was much smaller this time than it was when she first saw him, not granting her the freedom to pause and absorb the scene as she had the urge to.

Hello again. His tone was jovial, smiling as if they were old friends who happened to run into each other.

Sarah ran her tongue along her teeth.

Hello. How’re you?

She spoke too quickly, presenting the words in an uncharacteristic slurry. Her neck splotched with redness and warmth. They expressed standard niceties, dialogue that would look bland on paper.

After he ordered, his face changed, the prescribed current of their conversation shifting.

Listen, I just wanted to make sure I came back here without the goon squad to let you know I’m sorry.

Sarah felt her head tilt. What?

I know we’re obnoxious, he said. We’ve just known each other too long.

Oh, that’s okay. She waved a hand in a no-nonsense way, as if she hadn’t given their presence a second thought.

We also had too much to drink before we even came in here.

Did you? Sarah raised her eyebrows. Could’ve fooled me.

Listen, I’m willing to admit my flaws. I have quite a few. I can’t swim in water over five feet deep, I don’t understand how to use a charcoal grill. Even with lighter fluid. I don’t get it. He looked around for dramatic effect, lowering his voice. I honestly think they just fill up those containers with water and sell ‘em.

I appreciate the tip.

He looked at her curiously. Would you like to admit any flaws?

She laughed genuinely. I’ll pass.

Because you don’t have any?

He smiled. His canines were sharp. As sharp as a dog who lurched excitedly when his owners returned home, but still hardwired with a biological evil if placed in the correct situation.

Sarah nodded. Exactly.

 

It was a trailer park that Sarah grew up in. She didn’t not enjoy it. There were neighbors next door that let her splash in their kiddie pool. It was a light blue color with a pattern of fish on the bottom, although the fish were barely visible, faded from sunlight and children’s grubby feet.

There were other girls Sarah’s age who lived next door. She didn’t remember any of their names, but she played with their Barbie dolls, brushing their hair and choosing between one of two outfits. None of them owned any Kens, forcing them to constantly reinvent what Barbie’s boyfriend looked like. They made clothes out of tissues and scotch tape, sometimes drawing patterns on them, trying to replicate the markings of lace on wedding days.

They lived with brothers who were smarter than them, books splayed out on the floor. Pages detailing the geography of Africa and the different types of clouds.

When they were hungry, they ate Eggos that were still frozen or overheated pizza rolls that burned the roofs of their mouths.

Fuck it’s hot. The girl spat into the sink and ran cold water over her tongue. Strands of her hair fell into the stream, darkening and clumping together like overcooked spaghetti.

Sarah didn’t curse. She still made an effort to avoid it, reserving it for private moments. When she was further away from home or writing  in the pages of her journal.

Her mother would slap her across the face when she heard her curse, a volcano of a wrinkle appearing between her eyebrows. Sarah had deserved it, but still wished someone else was there to protest. There was not.

Technically, it was just the two of them in their trailer, the small rectangle of the world they had laid claim to. The floor was littered with boxes of cheap hair dye and oversized trash bags of clothes that Sarah had outgrown. They never used real plates — only the disposable kind —  but still threw them in the sink, caked with sludge and inevitably swarmed with gnats.

Her mother never cleaned, not even for visitors, which were always men. Men with sideways cigarettes and long cargo pants and gruff voices and dirtied fingernails. Sarah only caught glimpses of them, her mother shutting the door of her bedroom as soon as they arrived, leaving Sarah with only a masculine odor that lingered after they had disappeared. A cheap body spray overlaying inklings of marijuana smoke. She pictured them as cumulonimbus.

Sarah collected what the men left behind. She often found them on kitchen counters or between couch cushions  — needles, change, cigarettes, foreign wads of lint. The objects felt like they had the potential to become important.

She scotched taped them to pages of her wide-ruled notebook, drawing inked arrows with question marks and timestamps, as if there was a case that needed to be solved. Truthfully, Sarah already knew what it all meant.

More frequently than not, she could hear muffled moans coming from behind her mother’s locked door or find a deflated condom bobbing along the still of the toilet water the next day. She stared at it for a moment, then shut the lid and flushed. A furious rush of water, and then, when the water resettled, nothing, as if there had never been anything there at all.

 

By the time Sarah’s shift ended, it was already dark. Her eyes didn’t have to adjust. They dimmed the lights inside to match the outside world. She reeked of oils and alcohol and a conglomeration of sauces.

There was a film that clung to every part of her exposed body, which was most of it. She could feel it goosebump when she stepped outside, wind billowing through the neighboring alleys.

The employee parking spots were placed in the back, beside the dumpster. There was a silhouette of a man pissing on the bricked wall. His hand was pressed against it, steadying himself. Sarah was surprised by how quickly she recognized him as one of her regulars. His large stature had never been part of the equation when he was seated. But now — even from afar — he was unnecessarily large in a way that was impossible not to notice.

From personal experience, Sarah knew he was overweight and underwhelming. He used to be in a band, he had told her all about it. Their lead singer dropped out right when they were about to make it big.

Sweetheart, you have no idea. We had a record deal and everything. Then this guy — this fucking guy — just decides to stop because his wife’s knocked up. I swear to you, I’m not makin’ this up. The whole thing was so fucked. Can you imagine? I started this whole band from the ground up. Just me, letting everyone get a slice of the pie. And whaddayou think I get? A big fuck-you-I’m-out. Does that make any goddamn sense? Does it? Does it?

On Saturdays, he went to the Purple Parrot. He wasn’t off the Richter Scale, always stopping in to see Sarah, telling her where he was headed next. His grubby fingers touched her thigh as soon as she sat down. A strip of cold from his wedding band. He asked her to join him, and she took a gulp of the watered down vodka, excusing herself. She scrubbed the touch of him off her leg in the bathroom until her skin was pink and raw.

Is this your car?

Sarah felt a crash of her femaleness. She gazed up at the sky. There was no moon. There were no stars. Only cirrus clouds, a slate of black behind them. The street light buzzed above her, a curl of gnats swarming it.

Her against Them.

Her throat was raw. If she were to say no, it left space for him to disagree, escalating the scene into a situation that felt more severe, difficult to compact.

The spandex of her shorts had already worked its way into her crotch. She could feel it dampening with sweat. All of her was sweating, a bead running down her chest and absorbing in the stretched fabric of her shirt.

Sarah thought about Wray, what she would do. Wray had started selling her underwear to customers. She carried used panties in her apron during her shift, then handed it off at the very end, wrapped in a brown bag. It was so indiscreet it almost drew attention.

Don’t you get worried? Sarah asked.

Worried? About what?

I don’t know, what if one of them starts stalking you?

For a couple hundred, they can stalk me all they want.

Wray would let this man get in the car with her, allow him to do anything he wanted. Wray could visualize the profit in the future, outweighed the pros with the cons. But she and Wray weren’t the same.

Sarah tried to play the scenario out in her head, but she couldn’t think clearly, flashes of fear muddying it. The feeling wasn’t unfamiliar, but she couldn’t place her finger on a time when she had experienced it before. There was a blockage that felt physical, as if parts of her mind were completely inaccessible.

She had edited parts of her journals, blacking out text in large stormclouds of ink. Sometimes small blocks, and sometimes entire pages. She had no memory of it. But who else could have done it? Only her.

The man walked closer to her, closer to the car that belonged to Sarah.

If she were to write down this moment, she would redact it too.

This your car? He asked again.

Her hand closed around the handle. She was careful to not break eye contact. In a single motion, Sarah jumped into the driver’s seat and peeled away. She could barely see, her headlights were off. Adrenaline filled her ears, burnt rubber stinging her nose.

Her hands shook even after he disappeared from view. She escaped from something that had never become anything. It felt silly to be so frightened. She went over the moment once more in her mind, a short conversation with a customer she recognized. That’s all it was.

Sarah felt instantly better about it. She wasn’t sure why she skipped her shift the next day. And then the day after that, and the day after that. She ignored her manager’s texts and calls until she eventually blocked the number. It felt illegal, how easy it was to avoid people if you put your mind to it.

The only thing Sarah awaited was a text from Wray, keeping her phone face up on different surfaces, checking it repeatedly after random spurts of time had passed. It never came. It was as if Wray had known all along that Sarah’s presence was temporary, aware of an inevitable ending before it began.

The only indication Sarah had ever worked there at all was the crumpled cup holder of receipts scrawled with unused phone numbers. She threw them away in a gas station trash along with the spare pair of spandex shorts thrown in her backseat.

She was at peace, everything was righted.

When she did see Wray’s name, it appeared in the paper, just below the fold. It was jarring seeing it inked out before her. Sarah had stopped thinking about her entirely. She even blocked her number to eliminate the possibility of any future contact. The action came with an instant sense of relief, transforming the situation into a decision that Sarah had made rather than something that just happened to happen.

Sarah devoured the article with hungry eyes, a swarm of sentences that she didn’t process until after it was over.

Wray had been arrested. Not for anything that she had done, but for her position around people who had done something. Two men, each with illegal firearms. They stormed a gas station, holding up a woman at the register. There was a grainy security camera photo next to the story, their stances mirroring each other almost exactly.

Wray wasn’t pictured. She had been in the car, which also held cocaine and heroin and a jumble of pills Sarah didn’t recognize the names of. Sarah had always assumed Wray was addicted to something, it seemed like a foundational part of her personhood, but she had never considered what it was she had been addicted to.

Wray had also started working at the Purple Parrot, where she met the men in the photograph. It was palpable even through the faded image of the paper, how off the Richter Scale they were. Had Wray always understood how it would end with these men? Visualizing their demise and still allowing it to play out?

They were questions Sarah would never receive answers to, only guessing blindly at the negative space between their lives, parts Sarah thought around. It was better this way, keeping a wedge of life between them until they had never been connected at all.

 

He returned for a third time. Sarah looked at the name on his card after his last visit, but she had forgotten what it was. It seemed like a detail she should know, but accepted that she did not as she stood under the gently tornadoed air of the fan above her.

I’m practically a regular now, he said.

You’d be my first.

He looked doubtful, squinting at her. The beginnings of wrinkles appeared in the corners of his eyes. No botox. I doubt that.

I’ve only worked here a week.

Oh. He paused. Then I’m honored to be your first.

Sarah swallowed and wrote down his order, a formality that they were both aware was arbitrary. Privately, she wondered if he could tell she didn’t belong in a place of this caliber, if he had seen her enough to know her existence was that of an outlier.

 

When Sarah gave him the check, she could tell he was gearing up to address her in a way he hadn’t before. His posture was straighter, the flyaways in his hair had been tamed, as if he splashed sink water in the bathroom during the intermission of Sarah tending to surrounding tables.

Here you go. Sarah slid it across the table, purposefully releasing the silver tray lined with the receipt just as he began to grasp it.

Oh, thanks. His voice was light, as if she was reminding him of something that had slipped his mind. He dropped his card in the center. Hey, before you go.

Sarah had already started turning away, but stopped. She raised her eyebrows, another polite smile on her face. It wasn’t unfriendly, but didn’t welcome any statement that he had planned.

I feel like this might sound weird, and if it does, you can tell me to fuck off.

Sarah stiffened, her tongue pressing to the roof of her mouth. She felt sorry for this man, this human who didn’t know the world like she did. He thought he could act in a certain way and achieve a desired result. It wasn’t a way the world worked outside of this bubble they happened to currently be in at the same moment. Him by belonging and her by chance.

If I gave you my number, would you use it? He laughed, running his hand along the beginnings of stubble. Like, if I wrote it down, that wouldn’t be presumptuous? I don’t want you to think I’m like that. You know.

Presumptuous. The word felt large in the small space between them.

Sarah never broke her polite smile, one hand tucked neatly into her front pocket. Presumptuous? She giggled.

That was all she did.

Yeah, like, he trailed off. There was no plan for this sentence, for their interaction at all. I would like to take you out, but I don’t know really know if that’s something you would be interested in.

When she looked at him — really let her eyes meet his — she could see the shards of life again. He was a stranger, someone she didn’t know and had no intention of knowing. But something had occurred in his own life, fragmenting it in a way that could unite them in a different lifetime if she were not herself.

I don’t really know you at all. Sarah gave him a forgiving smile, a polite exit to the conversation that never should have begun.

But you could, he looked overly enthusiastic now. His canines were hidden, his eyes puppy-like and eager to please.

Sarah purposefully looked out the windows, passed the squared shrubbery and onto the greenery of the golf course. The sun was too bright and overly exposed. She stared into it, letting it burn a hole into her vision that remained even when she closed her eyes.

A sodium flash of her mother. The curdled air of the trailer. The men that grabbed her thigh. The text from Wray that never came.

Without thinking, Sarah spoke. Depends if the price is right.

His reaction was visceral, his eyes suddenly distant and his smile erased as if it had never been there at all. She wasn’t serious. Was she? Sarah searched her mind, what was left of it.

Out of habit, she winked, trying to make a joke out of something they both knew she meant. Suddenly, she felt the urge to apologize. She was sorry, but for what?

Sarah wasn’t sure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alexandra Persad received a Bachelor’s degree in English from West Virginia University. She now lives happily in Michigan with her partner and her cat, Jasper. She has published work online journals including Flossy Lit Mag, Sad Girls Lit, Glint Literary Journal, Blaze Vox Journal, Barren Magazine, and Better than Starbucks, where her essay was nominated for the Best of 2020. In 2023, her fiction was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.