Spare Change – Uma Bates
January 21, 2025
Nightclubs were dead. They’d been dead since last September. Beryl would be dead soon too, he thought. When Beryl began bouncing, he thought he would meet a celebrity and work in high-profile security. That’s what he’d wanted to do besides being an actor.
But he was old and gray. Gray like the hopeless, hollow sky and inconsistent moon. He wasn’t special like the sun. Cynthia! Was the sun. Cynthia didn’t work in the nightclub because her life was over. She worked there because her life was just beginning. Her legs didn’t hang like curtains over her knees. Her eyes didn’t droop at the thought of tomorrow. She carried around a miniature fan, and when her boyfriend touched her butt he touched a sculpture of God.
Cynthia wanted to be a dancer. Not the kind at the club. She wanted to dance for the Rockettes. Sometimes, when she and Beryl were in the back for a smoke break, Cynthia would show him her kick and say, How high did I go, Beryl? How high this time?
When Beryl went home those evenings, he opened his Bible and prayed that Cynthia would get all she wanted. He knew young people forgot to pray, that they just believed. But ever since Beryl lost the job with Kate Upton, he knew that having belief was just the same as seeing and living, as breathing and dying — you had to ask in order to receive.
***
The night before Beryl lost the job with Kate Upton was the best night of his life. A young man tried to touch Kate’s breast when Beryl punched the drink out of his hand and wrestled him to the door. A woman almost beautiful enough to escape his scrutiny began taking photos of Kate doing ketamine when he snatched the phone out of her hands and forced her to delete those now.
***
The next day, Beryl got a call from Kate’s assistant, asking if he would like to be upgraded to the World of Wonder. He said yes and that he could meet her at 6. He stayed late with the guys that night to have drinks. I can’t wait to get out of here and start my life! He cried.
They met at Starbucks on 29th. He repeated his previous experience, beginning with small acting roles in popular plays in the 90s, all on the brink of now expired cultural phenomena she was too young to care about, and ending with his current, no, previous job at the club he could not wait to forget the name of. He placed both of his hands on the table as if to say Mine.
Kate’s assistant thanked him very much. She noted she was impressed by his experience and work at the club, said she would be in touch, and he never heard from her again.
He didn’t get anything. Years ago he didn’t get movies. Then he didn’t get TV shows. Then he didn’t get commercials. Then he didn’t get voiceovers. So he drank. Submit headshots, submit tapes, rejection. Rejection. He was no longer fresh like an idea.
***
One time, Tom Brady came in, sitting still as a fan painted him with a portable watercolor set, lubricated with Red Bull and tonic water. Music blared, paint flew, and Tom signed the portrait and went home. Beryl looked at the young artist with stirrings of desperation, hate, and warmth, a sour lime wedged between each feeling.
***
Listening to Cynthia was easier than thinking about himself.
Beryl, she said with her syrupy voice — what did you want to be when you were young?
This, he said. All I ever wanted to do was take care of people.
She threw her arms around him and said, Aw Beryl, you’re too nice.
He looked at her longer than he was supposed to, drawing each freckle inside his memory like a true artist. He would remember this, feeling like he discovered her.
***
Years later, Cynthia would be a Rockette. She always believed that she would. She would dance for the world and forget about the club. She would break up with her boyfriend and get another. And break up with that boyfriend and get another. She would get grays and teach dance and move to Florida where it’s sunny and bubbly like Diet Coke. Beryl would rest in the city counting her freckles in his sleep. And she would think of him every once in a while, when she threw her spare change into somebody’s cup.