The unquiet death of Danika Rose.

The stripper, she calls herself Danika, is bleeding all over me. I tell her, I can call her an ambulance. "I don't have health insurance," she croaks, "that son of a bitch."
"Who was it?" Her dark brown eyes roll back a little in her head. They look blood shot. One white hand grips at my arm. She's sort of in my lap, her head on my crossed legs. I smooth some dark brown hair off her forehead.
"It's a bad wound," I say, "stomach wounds are difficult to survive."

Someone walks in on us. Marissa, she calls herself Apple, standing tall in her black stilettos. Long arms that are striped with ribbons from her black gloves to her elbows. Her legs are like stilts for the tight body under the black corset, squeezing her breasts up. Marissa asks me what the fuck is going on. "I don't know," I reply, "she just stumbled in like this, from the alleyway I think."
"Jesus," she says, bending down to where I'm holding my shirt over Danika's stomach wound. I'm sitting here in my singlet. "That's fucked," she comments, "shit that's a lot of blood."
I nod in agreement. "That's a lot of blood."
"What are you going to do?" she screeches at me.
"I don't know," I reply, "why would I know what to do?"

I come here twice a week to watch the girls. I never get a lap dance. I just pay my cover charge and walk in, and sit quietly. The reason I get funny looks is, I'm a girl. I'm also an artist. I don't do portraits rather representations, full of colours and spots and slashes. I paint the feelings that I see.
"Shit," Marissa says, her tall knees up near my face because she's squatting, "she's not gonna die, is she?"
"She might," I say, "you should get her to a hospital."
"I bet it was him," she scowls, anger flashing in her cat green eyes. I wonder who he is. "Our manager," she says, "he's "strict."
"He hits you?"
"He hits all of us. Especially Danni."
"Danika?"
"Yeah."
"Why don't you leave?"
"Because this place pays really well. And because otherwise I'd be selling my ass on the street. I left school when I was thirteen. I've got no marketable skills."
"Never tried modelling? You've got the body for it."
"Naw," she says, "never got scouted."
"This is nice," I say, swallowing down a little fear that Danni might die in my lap. "But can we please take her to the hospital?"
Marissa shakes her head. "They'll ask questions. I don't want this place shut down."
"Maybe it won't be," I say.
"They'll call the cops."
"Maybe they should be called. If he stabbed Danni the psychopath should be in prison."
"He should be," Marissa agrees.

She takes one more long look at Danika, who's quiet now, with her eyes closed. "So will you help me?"
She doesn't answer. Marissa puts one long painted finger nail under Danni's white neck. "She's dead." It takes me a second to realise I'm not breathing. Marissa looks at me with those green cat eyes. "We're in trouble."
"We should have acted earlier," I growl.
"We wouldn't have gotten there on time. The cops don't care about strippers. They won't even arrest Rico. He'll deny the whole thing and no one will talk against him."
"Well we have to call them now, tell them what happened."
"Are you kidding? They could pin this on you, or me."
"I thought you said they didn't care about people killing strippers. Why would they try to pin it on you?"
"Because, they don't care. They just want to close the case."
"I don't think that would happen."
"Don't you?" she snarls, "do you know when I was nine my mother shot my step father. He was going to stab her, but the police said it was cold blooded murder. She went to jail for life."

"Judges aren't impartial," I reply, "the law is a human institution. Judges are often the most subjective, and sometimes immoral."
"I'd like to kill that son of a bitch." Her face gets tight with anger, the bright green marble eyes standing out.
At this point, Apple is starting to scare me a little.
"We'll call the police," I say, "but you don't have to get involved. I'll say I found Danika. You weren't even here, ok?"
"You think that'll work?"
"Sure," I reply. "Now where's Rico?"
"Upstairs," Marissa says, "but I'm not going up there."
"You're afraid of him. Don't you want to leave?"
"Yes, but I don't know if I can make it without this place." Her short black hair falls forward as her head droops.
"I could help you," I say, "I want to."
"Why do you come here? I've only seen you a few times, you come in on Thursdays I don't usually work then."
"To observe."
"What do you see? What do you see when you look at me?" It's hard to give her a straight, clear answer with Danika's dead head in my lap. I'm already imagining her decomposing, we're losing valuable time and Rico could be washing his hands of the blood, soaking his clothes in bleach right now. "Pain, a lot of pain, but also resilience. I'd paint you in dark blue and purple, bruise colours, with flashes of silver. You have a very brilliant aura."
"Thanks," she says. Her face is beautiful when it's soft like that. Her purple lips attempt to curve into a smile.

"Please, let me call the police."
Marissa stands. She hands me a cordless phone and says, "I'm getting out of here."
She runs out of the room. The thunderous clicks of her heels smack down, inside my head, on the ground. I dial for the police, my insides feeling light and almost gone.

The first thing that happens is, I get put on hold. Danika's head is limp in my lap. I keep expecting rigor mortis to occur. I feel sad, that she died like this. Even if she wasn't famous, or important, or even very smart. There's a painting on my lounge room wall of Danika. It's mostly a creamy orange. She was sweet, full of hope. Sometimes I paint something resembling a person. Other times not.
Years later when I'm getting a cramp, an operator asks me, what is my friggin emergency.
"Somebody's been murdered. Her name's Danika. Danika Rose, I think. I don't know if that's her real name. She's a stripper." I think about going upstairs to check on Rico. "Where are you located?"
"The Pink Lolly Pop. It's on Easton Avenue, down town."
"We'll send assistance to your location," she says in that curt, disgusted tone. And I want to tell her, it's a little late for assistance.

A man appears in the door way of the back room. I've seen him before. Short, stocky, the guy they call Rico. He sees me holding Danika and says, "She was a stupid bitch. How hard is it to get through an entire routine without dancing like she was a fucking ballerina? She was a whore."
"That's why you killed her. Because of her artistic routines?" I look at his hands and he's not holding a weapon.
"Because," he grins, as he starts walking over to me and Danni on the floor, "she was naïve. She couldn't accept that she was going to stay here with us. She kept talking about going back to school. Going to Vassar. It was getting annoying."
"That's a shitty reason to kill someone." Poor Danika with her lemon yellow hope.
"Why do you care?" he says. "It's weird, the way you hang around here. You a lesbo?"
I can smell his bad breath from here. Tobacco and ribs. His hair is dirty brown, and the features in his face are too close together. Five o'clock shadow. Looks like a hobo, wearing a red shirt stained with Danika's blood.

"I'm not a lesbian." I want to get up. He hasn't got the knife, but he's near standing over me now, and I've got a body weighing me down. If he wanted to, he could hurt me.
"You gonna stay there all day? You should get out of here, before someone calls the cops."
I look down, so he can't see my face. "Did you call the cops, bitch?"
I want to say no, but now there's a siren wailing in the background.

I push Danika's head off me and jump to my feet. His brown eyes are furious. "This is my club, bitch," he hisses. He grabs my hair and I scream. I kick out, I try to elbow him. He drags me out of the room, towards the stairs. "I'm going to kill you, I'm going to slice you up, cunt." The pain is incredible, worse than you'd think, being dragged along by the roots of your hair. I think of page 67 of the women's self defence handbook. I grab his hand and bring it close to my head, so he can't pull me any more. I punch him hard in the ribs with my free hand. He let's go and grunts. I kick him hard behind the knees before I run away. He falls down screaming, "You fucking…"

I run past a few drunk men ogling Princess Mia, who's doing her simulated sex routine and get outside the club. I expect the cops to be there but there's nothing. Just a few cars going by and I can't seem to wave any of them down.

I try to hide behind a tree. Rico comes out, eyes roving for me. He looks left and right. He's got his knife, and he brings it up to his face, then he licks Danika's blood off one side of the blade, slowly. I shudder. I think back to being numb and outside myself, and I want to back there instead of in this stupid, shaking body.
"Come here," he says, "come out, you slut. I'll make it quick if you come out."
I think about running, I try to calculate the time it would take for Rico to reach me and if I could get to my car before he caught up to me and put that blade through me. I think about tetanus. Blood borne illnesses. I hear the sirens getting closer. If I just stay still. Rico is walking over to me. I want to move but I'm frozen. I'm screaming at myself, move, you stupid bitch, move.

I stumble out from behind the tree. Rico grins. I don't want to turn my back on him to run. He walks right over. Two feet away from me, I can smell that breath again. He raises the knife. I ask him if he believes in god.
"No..."
I grab his wrist, he is trying to stab me through the stomach. I twist and twist and I finally get it done.
I get the blade pointing towards him.
"For Danika, ashes to fucking ashes."

He falls. Nothing dramatic. He just rolls around a little and lets out a deep, guttural moan. I think about hanging around until the cops get here. Then I remember what Marissa said, and Rico is lying there looking all slain and helpless. I'm holding the knife. So I get in my car and I drive off. The sirens I heard before, they aren't anywhere near us. They're silent now. They aren't even for our 911 call. And maybe Mariss was right, the cops just don't care about a stripper getting murdered. Or a stripper's boss.

Five years later, I'm in a shopping mall when I think I recognise Marissa. She's handing out free samples of hand lotion. She's wearing a white suit and her hair is a little longer. Her face has some fine lines. Her bright green eyes are duller. It's like someone has blurred her image. I go up to talk to her. "Would you like to try our boysenberry hand softening crème?"
"You used to be somebody else," I reply.
She looks at me, blank. I hold out my hand. She plonks some pink goo onto my palm.
"It's anti ageing," she tells me.
"You used to work at the Pink Lolly Pop. You were there the night Danika was murdered."
She swallows, her green eyes get concerned, dark.
"Her real name was Amanda Pearce."
I nod.
"The cops were looking for you, for ages. It wasn't in the news but word got around. You're a legend, you know, around that district. Everyone liked Danika, I mean, Amanda."
"So what do you do now?"
"I pretend to be a normal person. I got married. I think you saved me, you know." She smiles, a little tired laugh comes out.
"You're still beautiful. Different colours, but still beautiful."
She smiles for real now, her eyes getting damp.

The worst thing is, I don't think I saved her. I think I just made her tame. She is normal. She's not like me any more. I'm all alone in my strangeness. I buy some boysenberry anti ageing crème for thirty five dollars because I don't know what else to do. And Marissa smiles again.
"You'll be all right," she tells me. "I know it."