Page 53 of Atmosphere

But she’d never seen this.

There were six or seven women all dancing on the stages. Some with bras on, some without. Some teasingly pulling on the string of their bikini bottoms.

At first, Joan had not known where to look. But now, whether it was the drinks or watching Donna and Lydia put dollars in the strippers’ G-strings, something in her was settling. Her body was becoming softer, her muscles liquid, her belly warm.

And she began to watch.

She watched the way they moved. The way they curved and flowed.

Just watching them, Joan liked her own body more. As she saw Duke tip a topless waitress, Joan made so much more sense to herself for one crystal-clear moment. Of course men were uninteresting to her. They were fundamentally uninteresting.

We are interesting.

Joan’s eye drifted onstage to a woman to her right, who called herself Raven, no doubt a reference to her dark curly hair.

Raven rolled her hips in front of Joan and Joan knew she was staring but could not stop. Joan watched Raven as she took her bikini top off. She felt a rush of something as she saw Raven topless. Joan kept watching as Raven smiled at her and began to play to her, writhing in front of her.

The world clicked into place for Joan then: why men were so obsessed with women’s bodies, why they made so many mistakes just to get closer to one.

“Here,” Donna said.

“What?”

Joan looked over to see that Donna was handing her a dollar bill. “Put it in her bikini to tip her!” Donna shouted. “It’s fun!”

“Oh.” Joan took the dollar bill and looked back at Raven. There was something so gentle about Raven’s smile. So peaceful it was dangerous.

“Hi,” Raven said as she turned her hip toward Joan. Joan leaned over and slipped the dollar into the string of her bikini. Her skin was so soft. How could Joan get her skin that soft? How could Joan move within her body the way Raven did? How could Joan be just like her? Had Joan ever held that much power in her whole life?

As Joan looked around, everyone was starting to leave. So she got up and nodded at Raven and waved goodbye. It took her a second to remember how to put one foot in front of the other. How to pretend to be normal.

How to act like she hadn’t just found something everyone else had discovered long ago.

When her eyes hit the neon signs of Bourbon Street, Joan could feel the lightness in her head that would feel heavy tomorrow. She knew she should call it a night. But instead, she said, “Where’s Vanessa?”

“She went back to the hotel after, like, two minutes in there,” Lydia said.

“Oh,” Joan said. “I should head back, too.”

“Do you want me to walk back with you?” Griff asked.

Joan looked at him. He was so handsome. And kind. And patient.

“You don’t have to,” she said.

“At least let me put you in a cab,” he said.

The next thing Joan knew, they were walking arm in arm away from the crowd.

When they were out of sight of the others, Griff took her hand for a moment. Joan loved the warmth of his skin on hers, the feeling of another hand entangled with her own. “It’s been a wild night,” he said.

“Yeah. Pretty crazy.”

Griff smiled at her. “You’re drunk.”

“Not really.” But even she didn’t buy it.

He looked at her. His eyes were light brown, so soft. Why couldn’t she love him? Maybe she could. She leaned toward him, giving in—to what she did not know.

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