Waking up at Jackie's

23 June 1966, New Orleans
It's six o'clock Sunday morning. I'm still in Jackie's nightgown, and I'm sprinting barefoot down the trolley tracks with my suitcase banging against my thigh each time I pick up my leg to propel myself forward. Last night's eye lashes are still glued to my eyelids, but I can feel the edge of the left one coming loose. It's fluttering around my eye, making it water, but I'm not gonna touch it. Just got to keep moving forward.
The sun is coming up.
I can feel the vodka sloshing around in my gut. I promise myself I won't get sick. I have to keep moving, or I won't make it in time. Jimmy'll come home to an empty bed, and that'll be it for me.

I try not to think of Jackie, but she forces herself into my mind. That's the way Jackie is. Last night at the club, a man tried to feel her up. She got on top of his table and kicked his drink in his face with her gold platform go-go boots. Somehow that same man ended up spending eighty bucks a piece on the two of us. We had a good night. Me and Jackie make a lot of dough together down at the club; she says we make a good team.


Jimmy knows what I do, but I don't tell him how much I make, and I don't tell him about Jackie. Jimmy doesn't like to hear about work, anyway. He just wants me to be waiting for him in our bed when he gets home. I've never been late before. I know better than that. I don't know what Jimmy'll do, but I've seen his temper, and I know he won't take any excuse I can think up. Better just focus on on getting there.
His shift ends at six, and it's a twenty-minute trolley ride from the diner to our apartment. Add another ten minutes or so to walk to the trolley stop. Sometimes it's longer because he cooks himself a meal before he goes or fucks around with the other cooks or god knows what else Jimmy does. He's never home later than seven-thirty, though. Never.
An old man out watering his lawn gawks at me as I run by. I'm passing Jefferson Street and the next trolley stop is only thirty minutes away from our apartment.
This suitcase is gonna leave a bruise on my leg. It hurts already. I think there's something stuck in my foot, but I can't stop to check. Sweat is rolling down my face and pouring out from under my arms and my tits, and I really hope that Jackie's nightgown isn't ruined. I'll have to get it dry cleaned. She'll probably just tell me to keep it. She'll hope that I'll sleep in it and think of her, and I will. She'll be angry that I left so early and without waking her. She doesn't understand about Jimmy. Jackie's okay on her own; she doesn't understand that I'm not like that. She'd tell me that I'm stronger than that, that I am a tiger, that I am a fucking goddess. I can hear her saying it. "And besides, you got me," she's saying. She's leaning in to me, smiling. I can smell her perfume on me, and though I'm trying like mad to push her out, Jackie is clawing her way back into my mind.
I start to feel dizzy. I can't catch my breath. My heart's thumping against my chest so hard that each beat rattles in my throat.
The trolley comes chugging up behind me. The brakes screech, and I open up my suitcase, rummage through the wigs, tubes of lipstick, feather boas, and the silky, strappy, see-through numbers, and I pull out a crumpled dollar bill. I hand it to the conductor, a wrinkled little man who takes my money without looking me in the eye.
"Dangerous, runnin' out on them tracks like that. Somebody mightn'ta seen ya. Mighta got hit," he grumbles.
I nod and take a seat. I am his only passenger.
"Excuse me, but you don't happen to know the time do you, sir?" I ask.
The sun is all the way up, and the birds are chirping, and this is when it hits me that even if I do make it home before Jimmy now, I'm still in Jackie's night gown, smelling like Jackie, soaking in (mostly) my own sweat with yesterday's makeup running down my face, fake eyelashes come unglued, and so many questions that I can't even start thinking about, that I don't even know how to begin to answer because my mind is so stained with Jackie.