Buckskin Cocaine by Erika T. Wurth

Author:Erika T. Wurth [Wurth, Erika T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-9980199-0-1
Publisher: Astrophil Press
Published: 2017-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

Olivia James

ADAGIO, ADAGIO, ADAGIO, slowly my arms pull across the blue New Mexican sky. I’m so careful with my arabesque, it’s so long and slow, adagio, adagio, adagio, this is dangerous. We bourrée across the stage towards the finish, all of us like a wave of tall, ocean plants, our roots undone, skittering across the bottom of the sea. As we finish, and the crowd stands and applauds, I keep my balance, and then we bow. I love it here, but there are too many ghosts. But then again, there are ghosts everywhere.

HE PASSED ME THE BOTTLE OF CHAMPAGNE and I drank, the pink stuff I insisted on, the good stuff, pouring down the sides of my mouth, even though I’d tried to make sure that wouldn’t happen. To him, I’m just another thin, beautiful, ubiquitous dancer. Maria Tall Chief, he called me. When he asked me if I was Italian, I had laughed.

“Come here,” he said, and I scooted closer towards him in the back of the long white limo. We were on our way to a party, and it was moving down the streets quickly, the lights from the street reflecting eerily inside the limo as we passed the street lamps, like we were on the surface of Mars. I looked up. I’d always wanted to visit Mars.

I leaned against David, his tongue on my neck. “So much trash in New York,” I said.

“You love the trash,” David said and I ran my long, thin fingers through his thick grey hair. I could feel his excitement as I did.

“Sure I do,” I said.

“You love me,” he said.

“Sure I do,” I said.

He sighed. “Olivia, Olivia, my tough little Indian.”

“I’m 5’10. I’m hardly little,” I said, rolling my eyes. He couldn’t see them. He was kissing my neck. I let him go on for a while before I asked the question I’d been burning to ask since we left the auditorium. “Was I good tonight?”

“There was no one more beautiful.”

“But was I good.”

“The best,” he said, but I couldn’t see his eyes.

I REMEMBERED GOING TO POWWOW AS A CHILD. Daddy had started me dancing when I was two at the Indian Center downtown. When I started as a Tiny Tot, first at Fancy Shawl, then at Jingle, I won often. Won at Denver March. At Gathering of Nations. But I didn’t care. I had begged my father for ballet lessons since I’d first seen it on TV, the women swimming across the screen, so beautiful I thought my heart would burst. Those women could do anything, go anywhere, they were magical, they were magic. I lived in a shitty apartment on Colfax in Denver with my dad. He worked at the Presbyterian hospital as a janitor. But he found the money for lessons, because I wanted it. And daddy was so sweet, he always gave me what I wanted.

The only thing I loved more than ballet was our Saturday mornings. Daddy would wake me with coffee and cereal, whichever kind I wanted.

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