WIDOW by Billie Sue Mosiman

clothed onto the sofa.
    After whining for a full five minutes to no avail, then sniffing at Mitchell's face before backing off at the scent of alcohol, Pavlov climbed onto the sofa and curled over his master's legs like a rumpled blanket.
    He'd just have to hold on till morning.
     
     

    Seven
     
     
     
    She thought of herself as Shadow now. Kay? Katherine? That was another person in another life. Light years in the past. Buried in the graves of her children.
    So when the manager, Bertram, called her back from the private exit door leading to the alley where her parked Toyota waited, she corrected him. “Call me Shadow,” she said. “That's my name.” She liked and adopted the name because Charlene had given it to her. It fit her like no other could.
    “Yeah, that's what I meant to say, sure you're Shadow, sure, baby. That was some performance tonight! Had them with their tongues hanging out. Now you could do a little more shaking and stroking, you know what I mean, but essentially, you got what it takes. I knew that the first time I saw you. I can spot ‘em, don't think I can't. I ain't seen a crowd like this in years.”
    “Let me do it my way or I don't do it,” she said, pushing open the door. “And since the boys liked me so well, I expect another fifty dollars a week.”
    “Now hold on one goddamn minute, I never said . . .”
    “Fifty. Or I walk.” She sucked in the night air, smiling to herself, glad to be out of the smoke-filled atmosphere of the club. Cheap perfume. Sweat. Stink.
    Bottom of the barrel stink. Some people said they loved humanity. What was there to love, but the stink of them? Pawing, fawning sons of bitches, the whole lot. Men. They brought misery and pain and left behind bad tastes in the mouth and memories that broke your heart.
    She was glad they hadn't known, though, how scared she was out on the stage. It was her second performance and she'd had to psyche herself but good to go out on that garishly lighted stage wearing what she wouldn't be caught dead wearing at home. In her real life. It was nothing like the dancing she had done before in the elegant atmosphere at Babe's. That was a class place that attracted the class clientele. The Hot Spot was about a hundred levels below Babe's, down there in the stink, floating like scum in the swill. She had tried the better places, but despite her workouts and muscle tone, despite her new stylish cut that let her black glistening hair swing free around her face and shoulders, they thought they just couldn't use her, sorry. She was one helluva nice looking woman, though, they'd say that for her.
    Well fuck them and their backhanded compliments. She never really believed she could dance the better clubs anyway. She might not look thirty, but she didn't look eighteen either. She'd had a choice to make—continue working for Severenson Maid Service and running into families with children where she had to control her wild urges to attack the fathers, or take a job dancing. Wherever they would let her. There was no choice. Not unless she wanted to go to prison for murdering an absolute stranger just because he might accidentally drop his son or knock him aside when rushing out the door for work.
    Charlene told her she could do it. Charlene believed in her when no one else did. “You've gotten yourself all dolled up,” she said. “I don't think I've ever seen anyone so pretty.”
    Before Charlene came from Marion, Kay was able to buy the Toyota, and move from the boarding house. A girl she met at the exercise gym told her about a place that needed a house-sitter. The girl worked as an apartment-locating representative, and this place had come up, but no one wanted to take it because of the house's reputation. Kay asked what reputation was that, maybe she'd be interested. She needed something cheap.
    “How's free sound? That cheap enough?” The girl brushed streaked-blonde hair from her eyes, reached over and gripped a couple of weights, her