Chapter 3

Thursday, Aug 12, 2021

Tara

I’m in my little apartment. Robert doesn’t know it yet, well, maybe he does by now, but I left all my credit cards at home. I brought a hundred dollars, that’s all. I left my phone and my computer and brought the cheap phone I’d bought earlier. I was going to leave my driver’s license, but needed the ID to get on the plane. It’ll be stuffed away in a drawer until I go back to Kennewick to my real life. I almost said ‘home’, but this little apartment is my home now, I have to remember that. I am going to be Tara Reid, unemployed, broke single girl, desperate to find a job. My apartment’s paid until Monday, if the club doesn’t hire me, I don’t know...

This isn’t exactly how the studio intended this to play out, I’m pretty sure. This is my deal with myself, my determination to be independent, to own my life for the next month, just to prove to myself that I can do it. I am not calling my husband for help, not giving up, no lifeline. I don’t particularly want to sleep on the street or sit in front of some little café begging food, but one month, no matter what.

A big part of my logic is that I am petrified of the Pink Orchid, of what I would be doing there. But If I’m in a ‘have to’ situation, then...

This is the first time I set foot in my apartment. The only criteria I had when I rented it was that it be cheap, and Audrey told me the neighborhood was relatively safe, as far as Tampa goes. It’s not hard to understand why it was cheap, the kitchen, dining room, and living room are one room, maybe fifteen feet square, about the size of our dining room. The bathroom has an ancient washing machine and a bathtub, no shower, and a curtain for a door.

I looked around, it was advertised as furnished but didn’t elaborate. It’s not hard to see why, there’s a tiny old, two-person dining table and two wooden chairs, an old, stained stuffed chair in the living room that ... ugh, that I’m almost afraid to sit in, wondering what the stains were, and an old cabinet TV that looked to be from about the time I was born.

That’s the sum total. There’s no room for a couch, I had to laugh, if there was a foldout couch, there’d be room for a couple feet of walking space front and back.

‘My’ bedroom, oh my, the bed consists of a full-size mattress on a box spring with four steel legs, no headboard, no footboard. I felt it and yes, it’s lumpy, and I can imagine how it had been used, ‘semen’ stains everywhere, and I don’t even own a sheet to put on it.

I could say that I love my apartment, but perhaps that would be just a bit too generous. Maybe I shouldn’t have been quite so trusting of the ad which said, ‘Lovely, one-bedroom, furnished apartment’.

Maybe the price should have been a clue, three-hundred dollars a week where even a small apartment is in the thousands per month. Maybe the ‘per week’ should have been a clue, kind of like renting a motel room that has a per-hour rate. My rent’s paid up through Monday. After that...?

The only person in Tampa who has my number is Audrey, the police detective I spent two months with earlier, and I doubt she’ll be calling me. She’s also the only one who I have the number for. April’s is in my phone back home, but I don’t know her number. Not even Amanda or anyone at the studio has my number, the only way they can contact me is through Robert.

I didn’t dare waste any of my hundred dollars on overpriced airport food, and the taxi ride cost forty-six dollars plus a five-dollar tip. The driver wasn’t happy with the five dollars, but I’m already down to forty-nine dollars and have to buy clothes (Salvation Army, here I come) and food. Maybe even a frying pan and plate would be nice, not to mention something to cover that bed with.

Robert thinks I’ll have a rental car and go back to the Best Western that I stayed in before, but I don’t, and the nearest bus stop is two blocks away. Thankfully, Audrey filled me in on the bus routes and stops.

I unpacked my bag, which consisted of my toothbrush, makeup, soap, and not much else. Clothes, I left home. I told Robert that the reason I didn’t bring clothes was that they didn’t fit. That’s partly true but not the real reason. I want to be Tara and that means Tara’s clothes, not Daniella’s. I think that Tara might be a little sluttier than Daniella has ever been.

For now, until I have more than forty-nine dollars to live on, the Salvation Army is down Westshore Blvd, a couple dozen blocks.

Now that I’m here, I know I have to make that phone call, the one I’ve been dreading for so long, the Pink Orchid. Just the phone call sends shivers through me. The girls tried to drag me on the stage at Anna’s strip club after April’s wedding, and I wanted to do it, but when it was time to take something off, I just couldn’t, and this is going to be so much worse.

I stared at my phone, hoping that it was doubling as a Star Trek teleporter and take me away from this, what seemed like a nightmare, even if it was one of my own making. Big surprise, no teleporter.

I picked it up, it was one number I’d memorized, the only one besides my family back home. Home ... I looked around me at my apartment – this was home, the old cabinet TV, the broken-spring bed. Fuck, I didn’t even have covers!

I punched in the numbers, struggling with my shaking hands on every number. I looked at the string of numbers, the numbers that were going to change my life. How could a single string of numbers have such power? I took a breath, a deep breath, steeled myself to be able to speak ... and hit the little green button.

Two rings, the most agonizing rings I’d heard in my life, then, “Pink Orchid, may I help you?”

My mind went blank, I nearly blacked out, felt a panic attack coming, “Hello, anyone there?”

“Yes,” I finally squeaked out.

“Hi, can I help you?” She sounded friendly enough

“I’m ... I’m ... I need a job, I wondered...” Fuck, she’s going to probably hang up on me.

Instead, she let out a little laugh, “Don’t take that personal, Sweetheart, so many of our girls are nervous when they call. You think you want to be a dancer?”

“Uhuh, yes, that’s what I’m calling for.”

“How old are you, you twenty-one?”

“I’m, I’m...” I almost said fifty, “twenty-nine.”

“A little old but still a maybe, you pretty?”

“My...” I almost said ‘husband’, this single girl thing is going to take some getting used to, “boyfriend thought so ... but he dumped me for some nineteen-year-old floozy, left me without anything. My rent’s due Monday in my dumpy little apartment.”

She took a breath, like she was humoring me. I felt like I wasn’t even deserving that.

“Can you be here at eleven tomorrow, come in the front door, there’s a stairway on the left, upstairs, first door on the right, his name’s Stan, it’s on his door. He’ll interview you, and honey, be a little prepared because if he likes what he sees, he’ll ask you to take your clothes off, all of them. If he asks you that and you don’t have any surprises with your body, you’ll probably be hired. But that’s up to him. Oh, and my name’s Julie, I’ll be looking forward to meeting you.”

“Thank you,” I told her, meaning it, “you seem nice. I’ll be there.”

She clicked her phone off and I sat on the dusty couch and bawled. I couldn’t do it, I knew I couldn’t!

How had I gotten myself into this? I could be home in our comfortable house, in bed with my husband, kissing him goodbye when he leaves for work, then on my way to visit Jen. Either that or getting ready for another year with my math kids.

Instead, I’m just about to go to the Salvation Army, buy some clothes, a sheet and blanket, then some food if I have enough of my forty-nine dollars left over.

Thirty-eight dollars later, I was back ‘home’ looking through my treasures. I’d found a pair of shorts and a shirt that I could wear, not something I’d be caught dead in in my other life, but it’d be serviceable tomorrow. I wouldn’t call the shirt a blouse, that implies something at least a little bit feminine. Then hamburger, buns, milk, eggs, cereal, a frying pan and a few utensils. I had eleven dollars left over, not even enough for a short taxi ride.

I threw my one bottom sheet, one blanket, and a lumpy pillow on the bed for later, turned on the old TV, and ... not a single channel! It hadn’t been updated to digital. I should have bought a damned book at the Salvation Army! Instead, I remembered there’s a 7-11 a half-dozen blocks down Westshore.

I was down to seven dollars, two cents when I got back, but I had two Harlequin romance books. I’d never heard of the authors, but they were something to read.

I called my husband, to let him know I was alive and well. When he answered with ‘Dani’, I was silent. “This is Tara,” I told him, “Remember, here I’m Tara.”

“Tara ... that’s going to take some getting used to.”

“Me too, but please try, it’s what I’m telling people, so it’s who I need to be.” I didn’t mention to him that it’s the only way I’ll be able to do what I’m here to do, the Pink Orchid, to become Tara Reid, stripper-in-training.

“You forgot a few things,” he said, “like credit cards, your laptop, what are you doing for money?”