Little Cat by Tamara Faith Berger

Author:Tamara Faith Berger
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Coach House Books
Published: 2013-11-02T23:00:00+00:00

Nadia worked at Carousel’s. She’d been there as a bartender since she’d turned eighteen and she always served all of her underage friends. Because of her dad, she said to me, the cops didn’t care. I still had no idea what he did. But I’d been hanging out at Carousel’s since I was sixteen and Nadia always fed me double rum and Cokes.

The very first time that I met Adi, it was the summer after I graduated from high school. I remember that night how I didn’t want to go home because I knew my parents were just going to ask me if I’d gotten a summer job and why didn’t I have a job yet. There were a few cute roadies wandering around with cigarettes and beers, a bunch of kids from our school too. When Nadia saw me come in, she flapped her hand sort of frantically at her nose like something stank. Nadia’s hair wasn’t braided like it usually was; it was full of static, down to her shoulders, not brushed. She wasn’t wearing her silvery lipstick either. She looked so rattled, I thought, because she was drinking too much Coke or something. I knew that my parents would be happy if I just got my old job back at the Second Cup to save money for university. They would never want me to work at Carousel’s.

‘Mira, fucking help me god,’ Nadia whispered, lighting up a cigarette. She grabbed my hand too tight, dug her nails in. ‘This girl my dad brought in today is fucking crazy. She’s in the bathroom right now. She’s here on one of those exotic things.’

‘What exotic thing?’

I was thinking about eight hours standing behind steaming coffee pots, the tuna-fish stink of grinding beans. John.

‘I mean exotic dancer, come on, the exotic dancer visa thing. What the fuck, I don’t need you to jew me out right now.’

‘I’m not jewing you out, you Rusky! Who is she, I’m just asking.’

Nadia motioned behind me. The roadies were watching. I turned around in my seat and watched too. The girl strutted out from the bathroom in these fat plastic shoes, Alice in Wonderland shoes, like a cartoon or something. Maybe it was her short white fur coat, too, which was shaggy like a goat. I started to laugh. Nadia hissed at to me to stop. The girl kind of shimmied onto a bar stool. She threw her short white fur coat on the floor.

‘Most of them are Romanians,’ Nadia whispered. ‘But that bitch over there, she’s this notorious Volgograd whore.’

I started to laugh again and Nadia couldn’t stop me. Volgograd whore. It sounded so comedy-ominous. I knew Volgograd was Nadia’s hometown and I shouldn’t laugh. But that Russian girl who was at the opposite end of Carousel’s leather-bumpered trough started laughing too.

‘Stop it, I’m serious.’ Nadia knifed me harder with her nails. ‘I don’t know why my dad left her here.’

That girl kind of reminded me of Nadia at twelve: the albino bunny hopping on our sidewalk.

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