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around the living room.
    As I had twirled, my father had called me Katrinka, but I’d never heard of the Powerful Katrinka. I kept dancing. I was the Graceful Katrinka, the Talented Katrinka, born of a woman so ethereal she’d simply floated away.
    After escaping to New York, crossing back over the border to New Jersey was like putting a plastic bag over my head. The longer I spent there, the less oxygen I had. I was running out of air, suffocated by the house itself and the music and the family portraits and the family in person and the boyfriend upstairs who had seen it all. Maybe that was why I made the decision to pull the card Taylor had given me out of my wallet. I was trying to poke a hole in the bag, trying to breathe. The Crown Club seemed like a pretty sharp tool and it was the best I could think of right then. The music was loud enough upstairs so that no one would hear me. I didn’t think anyone would really answer the Crown Club phone on the afternoon of Thanksgiving, but, of course, someone did.

chapter 4
     
     
     
     
    W hen I arrived for my interview at the Midtown brownstone, a petite, short-haired brunette in a sweat suit and bare feet answered the door with a smile.
    “Diane’s on the phone in the office. Come on in and wait a minute. I’m Julie.”
    I shook her hand and introduced myself. I assumed we were using real names for purposes of introductions. I’m not sure what made me think that. In strip clubs, I would use my stage name from the minute I walked in the door. Maybe it was the fact that the name Julie was so prosaic. Although you never know the logic behind another girl’s working persona. Maybe Julie was working a small-town-girl angle but her real name was Jezebel.
    I followed her down a short hallway to where Taylor and another girl sat in a living room decorated with a monochrome vanilla-ice-cream color scheme. The walls, carpets, couches, cushions, and Formica wall unit were all vanilla. The only splash of color was an orange Georgia O’Keeffe poppy poster that hung on the wall over the couch. My grandmother used to have a small, framed picture of the identical poppy in her hallway. Underneath the picture had been a quote from O’Keeffe: “Nobody sees a flower, really . . . to see takes time. Like to have a friend takes time.” Georgia’s poor poppies—rendered invisible yet again, mass-produced and hung on the walls of Midwestern doctor’s offices and Midtown escort agencies.
    Julie plopped down next to a lank-haired, model-thin girl with a vague Eastern European accent. The model introduced herself and then immediately returned to watching The Golden Girls . The room smelled like Chinese food, though none was in evidence. Taylor popped up from the chair she was sitting on, trotted over and embraced me.
    “I’m so glad you came,” she said, turning to the girls on the couch. “This is that girl I met on that movie I did.”
    They looked at her blankly. All three of the girls wore sweats, but their hair was coiffed and they wore makeup and jewelry. They reminded me of ice skaters waiting backstage.
    Beyond the living room was a formal dining room that was set up as an office. A long table lined with multiple Rolodexes and phones was pushed against one wall. Along the other stood four off-white filing cabinets. At the far end was a window overlooking the city, a square of twinkling black velvet in a sea of otherwise relentless cream. Two rolling desk chairs faced the table. In one sat a pink-cheeked, round-faced woman wearing a plaid headband with a bow. A stuffed Christmas reindeer already decorated her workstation. She looked over at Taylor and me and waved, giving us the five-minutes sign. Next to her, facing the window and talking on the phone in a loud, irritated voice was what looked like a beige pantsuit crowned with a mushroom cap of brassy hair. The pantsuit sounded like it was from Queens. Diane, I presumed.
    Taylor used the next few minutes to begin my