I was sick of the blonde’s side-eye attitude from down the bar, and I wanted her fringed blue jacket, so I took it while she was in the bathroom. Frankie and I lit out, squealing from the parking lot and down the gravely backstreets before stopping. Frankie tried the jacket on first. It looked good on her, the fringe fluttering over her breasts.  Next, I wrapped myself in the jacket. The sexy smell of suede and another woman’s perfume rose around me, settled into my hair. I decided the jacket was mine.

“We can take turns,” Frankie said. I leaned over and kissed her, tasting whiskey and Chapstick.

Frankie’s car was a POS Malibu she’d got for high school graduation. Pretty much—here’s some transportation, don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out. She and I shared one of those beige apartments down by the highway. Our childhood dressers, a full-sized bed, and some umlauted sofa from Ikea. I liked to be really noisy when we fucked, to annoy the neighbors. Though she usually drove like an old lady, Frankie floored the Malibu back to El Camino, sober enough to stay in her lane and stop at the lights, but too drunk to swerve around potholes. Tonight Frankie was a lit firecracker. I hoped the explosion would take me too.

At the next bar, we walked past a bunch of guys vaping out front. They gave us the look over, but I grabbed Frankie’s hand and strutted. Let them chew on that. Any other night, Frankie would have told me off—too risky in this cow town—but tonight she leaned close, swaying on her kickass boots. One of the guys, a blue-eyed college type, muttered something too low for me to hear. Lucky for him.

Inside the dark bar, “Stop! in the Name of Love,” turned over to another Motown song, like the DJ picks at your grandmother’s third wedding. Frankie slid onto the only free bar stool, the one right next to the little gate where the waitresses picked up their drinks.

“Give me anything starting with ‘Glen,’” Frankie told the bartender.

“Lemon Drop,” I said, standing at her shoulder. Frankie was buying the fancy stuff because we were celebrating. Today she’d finally gotten the check from her discrimination suit against her last job. The out-of-court settlement had seemed like a lot when the lawyer talked about it, but after he took his hunk and the taxman took his, it didn’t seem like so much. So Frankie was happy but angry, angry that it wasn’t more, angry because that’s the type of money you can’t really feel happy about.

I kept the suede jacket on as I drank. This place wasn’t our usual. It was one big room with a rectangular bar in the middle, a sad pink-lit stage on one side, and an acoustic tile ceiling like the cheapest “ballroom” at your local Ramada. We could have sat down at a table, but we always liked the action at the bar.

The band came off break, two men and two women. The drummer was a bleached blond—the guns on her! Frankie caught me looking and elbowed me so hard my lemon drop sloshed. “Hey!” I said.

“Eyes on me, sweetie.”

I grinned. Frankie’s guns were the best, because she was a carpenter. Her lawyer said that bringing the suit for sexual orientation discrimination would be smarter, since some portion of the world believed women weren’t still discriminated against. So Frankie got a settlement, and I got men all day telling me to smile, and calling me honey, and touching me at any opportunity until I killed them with my death glare. Not in a million years, dickheads.

Based on the bar vibe, I expected nothing great from the band. But they slid into a kickass punk guitar thrash. I downed the rest of my drink. “Slam it, honey,” I told Frankie. “We’re dancing.”

Out on the dance floor, we were shaking it, with Frankie whipping her head so her curls sprang unleashed, when two of the college boys from outside came up. They started dancing next to us, hoping that we would naturally turn toward their masculine magnetism. Frankie and I moved closer together to shut them out.

“C’mon. Dance with me and my buddy,” the blue-eyed one said. It wasn’t a request. He had a square-jawed smile that straight women probably found cute, but I could tell was smug. He looked like a Chip or a Biff.

“No,” Frankie said.

“No fucking way,” I said.

The smile vanished, and his real face came out: cold-eyed, flushed, with hard lines around the mouth. He stepped closer, ape-looming. “I’m sure you don’t want to insult us. Just dance the rest of the song.”

Any other night, Frankie might have looked at me, urging me to give in to make it go away. To make him go away. Tonight she leaned forward. “What is this, scared straight?”

“Fuck off,” I added.

His friend had worn an apologetic smile, but when the chips were down he was with Chip. He loomed too.

Turning from them, Frankie started dancing again, though not with the freedom of before. The men made themselves unignorable by standing still on the dance floor. Others were watching. Other men. Shit.

Chip’s friend put his hand on Frankie’s arm. “Just dance with us.”

She stopped dead. I’d never seen Frankie like this. “Don’t touch me.

The guy half-stepped away, but Chip jumped in. “God, what a bitch. All we wanted was one dance.” As if they were the reasonable ones.

“Leave us alone, assholes,” I said louder.

Chip brushed his hand over my cheek, sending a quivery shock through me. “You’re wasting yourself,” he said.

Frankie’s fist smashed into his mouth, splitting his lip. He touched his face, looked at the blood on his fingers as if he couldn’t believe it. “Fucking bitch!” He swung at her. His friend grabbed me from behind and didn’t let go, even when I elbowed. Frankie ducked the punch and landed one in Chip’s gut. Around us, women screamed. The singer stopped, but the drummer kept banging. I stomped on the foot of the guy who held me and broke free. He pulled my hair, fighting like a girl, but I kicked backwards, aiming for the kneecap. He crumpled at my heels.

Chip and Frankie were both bleeding now, sweaty. Frankie blocked a punch with her forearm, gasping at the pain, but she kept going. Closing in, bare-knuckling his nose. The bouncer showed up, hauling Chip back. I caught Frankie by the shoulders, knowing better than to mess with a bouncer. She shook herself, like she could shed the fight like water.

“Ladies, I’ll escort you to your car,” the bouncer said, his voice big-man quiet. Don’t let the door hit your ass, again.

“Fuck that,” I said. “Just hold those assholes for ten minutes and we’re gone.”  The drummer, who’d stopped when the bouncer came over, blew me a kiss over Frankie’s head. I tried to act like I didn’t see, but I didn’t fool the drummer, who smiled. I put my arm around Frankie and hugged her to the sidewalk.

Outside, the night had gotten cold. Got a kickass jacket, though now I looked, blood stained the front. Easy come, easy go. Frankie was having trouble meeting my eyes. “Let’s just go home.”

“Are you kidding? The fun’s just started!” She shuffled towards the car.

“Just one more bar, Frankie.” When we got to the Malibu, she leaned against it. Under the streetlight, her eyes were shadowed. “I can’t do it anymore, Amber.”

“We’re celebrating!

She slumped more against the car. “Celebrating what? I can’t get another job. Word’s gone out. That’s why no one is hiring me, not some downturn like they all say. I’ll probably have to move somewhere else just to get work.”

It had been a long time since she’d even had an interview, but what did I know? Companies always needed cute girls like me to be a receptionist.  “C’mon. Those assholes won’t be at the next place.”

“There’s always another asshole.”

“That’s why you can’t let them get you down.” We’d won, hadn’t we? The settlement, the fight. The next fight too. If we went home, we’d be admitting we could win fight after fight, and still not win the war.

Frankie opened the driver’s-side door. “Come on.” She looked tired. I was tired too, tired of egging her on to stand up for herself, like I had with the lawsuit, tired of calming her fears.

“I’ll take an Uber home.”

“Fine,” she said, slamming the door and cranking the key. I saw at the last instant the Frankie I loved, the one who would stand her ground. But now she was standing against me.

“Fine,” I said. I didn’t know if she even heard me above the POS engine. I watched her drive away, my blood-stained jacket clenched tight. I told myself we would make up—tomorrow we’d walk to the park and buy ice cream from a handcart, watch a Netflix—but I knew better. That’s the thing about angry money: when the angry turns to sad, there’s nothing sexy left, just some money to throw at bills that keep coming due.

# # #

Ann Hillesland’s work has been published in many literary journals, including Fourth Genre, Sou’wester, Bayou, Corium, and SmokeLong Quarterly. It has been selected for the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and presented onstage by Stories On Stage in Davis and Denver. She is a graduate of the MFA program at Queen’s University of Charlotte. Her website is at annhillesland.com.

Photo: Matthew Brodeur