Candace, Who Completely Disintegrated*                                                                             by Bernice Mullins                                                                                                  *From SlushPile 4. Buy it! Candace is the best dancer at the Litehouse. She taught me how to dance. She didn’t know she was teaching me. She thought she was just dancing for me. But that was how I learned; getting dances from Candace. Fran and I still go to the Litehouse together on my nights off. We decide to go in one Wednesday in January. Candace is there, sitting in the corner, shouting at Grace. I nudge Fran. “I told you.” I told him that Candace stopped dancing. She still shows up. She still puts on an outfit and six-inch heels. She does her hair and makeup. Then she sits in the corner and talks to Grace; shouts at Grace. She shouts everything. She is disintegrating. “Let’s sit by her,” he says. I stare at him. He doesn’t sense the danger. He did not see her demonstration on locking the door. “I am fucking tired of locking the fucking door every night!” she screamed. This was last week. “All you motherfuckers are going to learn how to lock this bitch right now!” There is a door at the back of the bar room that separates the hallway where the bathrooms are from the rest of the bar. It must be locked at night in order to set the alarm. Most of the girls are new. We didn’t know how to lock the door. “This is what you have to do. Are you listening?” We had no choice. We had to listen. She was screaming. She stood in front of the door. “You take hold of it by the lock and you swing it shut!” As she screamed, she demonstrated with a sweeping arm motion. She was very serious about it. No one else seemed to realize the gravity of the situation. I decided I would take it very seriously by way of appeasement. I listened intently. “You must shut it very hard! Slam the motherfucker!” I nodded my head. “Then you have to turn the lock!” She mimed again, holding her arm out and flicking her wrist to the left. “It has to click! Do you hear me? You have to make sure it clicks!” I’ve heard people say that cocaine intensifies your personality. I’m a behaviorist, so I think a human’s personality is his/her behavior. So cocaine intensifies behavior. Candace sniffed coke, a lot of it. The door getting locked would have been on a level 5 seriousness quotient. The coke sky-rocketed it to the top of the list. Assuring herself that we all knew how to lock the door had become more important to her in that moment than anything else that existed. The door being locked was no fucking joke. So I tried to take it just as seriously. When in doubt, turn pro. “After it clicks, you have to look up at the key pad on the wall. Grace! Show them the keypad!” Grace obliged. She knew it was no fucking joke. “You have to look at the keypad for the green light! The green light must be on! If the green light is not on, you have to do it again! Do you understand?” She looked at me. Her eyes fidgeted in her skull. I bobbed my head. “I understand.” I said it loudly, but I didn’t shout. I said it earnestly. It was no fucking joke. That seemed to satisfy her. “All right!” She pointed at the keypad. “Does everyone fucking get me? About the green light? It has to be on, or the fucking alarm will not set!” A few of the other girls nodded. No one was turning pro except me. “I’m not going to show you this again! And I will be god damned if I lock this door one more time. I’m fucking tired of locking this fucking door every night!” Grace started to pick up on the urgency of the situation. “You shouldn’t have to do it every night.” Candace seemed ecstatic to have more support. She nodded her head. Cocaine intensifies gestures as well. She tilted her head all the way back and then down to her chest a few times. “I know. I know I shouldn’t have to. But I end up doing it every fucking night!” She looked around. “Sarah, get over here and lock this bitch!” Sarah walked over to the door. She gave Candace a wide berth. “You have to shut it hard!” She performed her demonstration a second time. Sweeping her arm out eloquently then bringing it back fast against her body. “Now turn the lock!” Her voice was getting scratchy now. She sounded like a tent revival Pentecost. “Is the green light on? The green light has got to be on!” Sarah looked over her shoulder at the keypad. She nodded. A calm nod. “All right! Let’s get the fuck out of here!” I told Fran. I told him all about it. He laughed and I think he assumed I was exaggerating for humor’s sake. I was not. “What?” he asks. He is already walking toward her. “Francis!” She sees him. Fuck. Now we have to sit by her. We are doomed. “Get your ass over here! Sit down next to me!” Fran just grins. He loves being around women who are insane. He was raised by one. He has fucked at least a dozen. He can’t get enough of the crazy. He runs to it. He eggs it on. He savors it. He walks faster. “Where’s Tessa? Did you bring Tessa with you?” Everything is a shout. He’s standing right next to her though. Fran nods, smiling. He loves this. “Tessa’s here.” “I am so proud of her, Fran. I am so proud of Tessa. She is wonderful. She is wonderful here. And she’s not a whore! She’s not a whore! I’m not a whore either! Tessa and I are not whores! Not like some of these other bitches! She can dance too.” I stand behind Fran. He laughs and nods his head. “She’s good. Yeah.” “No. No, man. You don’t fucking understand me. You don’t understand what I’m saying! Tessa is a fucking lady! Isn’t she, Grace? Tessa is a lady. Right, Grace?” Grace nods complacently from the throne. “She absolutely is. We love her here.” Grace does not seem to fuck with Candace. She just lets her sit there and scream all night. Candace leans over in her chair and puts her arm around me. She holds her arm out straight in front of her, showing off a gold watch with diamonds surrounding the face. “Look at my jewels!” She shoves her wrist in my face, then into Fran’s. “Look at my fucking jewels! I have jewels just like a fucking queen!” Fran nods. “That’s nice. Where’d you get it?” I could kill him. He beckons the crazy. “I didn’t get it. No. One of my customers brought this to me. A customer gave me this. And Tessa will get things like this one day. As long as she doesn’t become a whore. Whores get nothing!” Grace leans over the bar. “Rob’s here, Candace. Why don’t you go dance for him?” Candace stares at Grace like she doesn’t know why she would say that. Finally, she gets off her stool and walks slowly to the other end of the bar where Rob sits. Fran and I sit down and get our beers. Another song starts. I nudge Fran and move my head in Candace’s direction. “Watch,” I only mouth the word. Candace stands between Rob’s legs. She raises her right arm straight above her and then leans her head against her shoulder. She sways slightly. The movement is perceivable only if you stare. Fran watches for a minute and then shakes his head. He was there the first night Candace worked danced. He tells me she was happy then. Fran and I sit together at the bar. He gets a dance from Angie. Candace is now sitting on the opposite side of the horseshoe bar, shouting at Grace from her right. Grace nods occasionally. We don’t listen, until it’s out of control, so neither of us knows what led up to the outburst. “I have beaten down all the hateful fuckheads!” she screams. It’s a battle cry. She is standing now, on the ledge that goes around the base of the bar. She has one hand on the bar, and the other above her head in a fist. I have no idea who she’s talking to. “And I am not a whore!” She grabs a nearby ashtray and throws it against the wall. Grace gives her a dirty look. “Hey!” “No! No! I am not a whore! I have risen above the filth in this place! I have beaten down all the hateful fuckheads!” Shot glass. Against the wall. Glass, so of course it breaks. Candace is sitting next to the glasses; all of them. Setting bottom-up on a towel right in front of her. She grabs two more, juice glasses Grace serves mixed drinks in. Against the wall. Grace is on her feet at last. She leaves the throne. “I don’t know what the fuck your problem is, but you need to calm the fuck down right now.” “Fuck you, Grace! Fuck you!” She stomps away to the bathroom. Comes out a few minutes later, fully dressed and goes out the door without a word. Candace was the best dancer in the Litehouse. She was graceful. She moved like a ballerina. Now, she is completely insane. The last we heard of Candace was from Saint. He seems to keep tabs on us. He told Fran that he saw her walking down Market Street at six o’clock one morning. He picked her up, bought her a carton of cigarettes and a motel room. She told him that’ s all she wanted; some cigarettes and a place to sleep and take a shower.