You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory

SAPPHYRE'S P.O.V. (Dec. 15, 2006)

"WOOH!"

I yelled at the crowd that was looking up at me. My colleagues and I had just finished one of our choreographed dances, the one that we do to The Devil Went Down To Georgia. The crowd screamed and applauded our performance as we finished, and pounded their beer bottles or other drinks of choice on the counter top near our feet as we made to climb of the finished wood bar-top.

Confused? Let me clear some things up for you.

My two best friends and I work at the Coyote Ugly bar in Las Vegas. I've been working here since a year after they opened. I came out here on a gambling trip back in 2002, and I was one of the crowd people who got to dance on the bar. Before the end of the song Boots, I had learned some of the choreography and was dancing along with the Coyote's that already worked there. They were looking for a new part-time girl at that point in time...and the rest is history. I love my job, and I wouldn't give it up for anything in the world.

"Charlie just cleared the $1000 in sales so far tonight!"

I laughed at Charlie who was standing next to me as she high-fived the air. She started working with me back in 2003 when she came in for one of our monthly auditions, and we've been best friends ever since, when she got hired. She was a quick study, and is one of the best Coyote's I've seen come through this bar since I've been working here.

"Coming through, coming through! Make way for the ice bucket!" Aaliyah yelled from somewhere behind me.

Aaliyah started working here in June of 2006. She's decent, but she's still learning stuff. She's a killer dancer, but she couldn't bartend worth shit when she started working here. She's still learning, but she's awesome at what she does. I scooted closer to the counter-top to make room for her as I started making an order.

Tonight was a particularly busy night. We're always busy, but there seemed to be extra bodies in the bar.

A random song had started playing on the Jukebox as Aaliyah went go to clean and stock glasses, and Charlie and I took over bartending duties for the other two girls so that they could stock some of the drinks that we were running low on.

After about 10 minutes, Charlie and I had gotten caught up as far as making drinks. I went to wipe off the bar, and no sooner than I had put down the towel, than did five guys, clad in jeans and t-shirts, and completely covered in tattoos and piercings, came up to the bar and ordered a ton of drinks.

"We need a lot of liquor," said the one with the septum piercing.

"Well then you came to the right place," I said with a smile. "Charlie's busy, and I don't know where the fuck the other girls got to, so I'm gonna have to take your orders one by one."

"I'm done now," said Charlie as she walked over to me from the other side of the bar. "What can we get for you guys?"

"We need five shots of Vodka, a Jack and Coke, a Rum and Coke, a Long Island Iced Tea, two Budweiser's, two Bud Lights, and a chilled shot of Stoley."

I tossed six shot glasses onto the bar as Charlie quickly grabbed the beers, and popped off the caps then set them on the counter. I then poured the Vodka into five of the shot glasses as Charlie scooped some ice into a shaker glass with some Stoley to chill, then set to work on the Long Island Iced Tea. I went to make the Rum and Coke, and the Jack and Coke, and set them on the counter right after Charlie had finished the Tea and set it on the counter, then she poured the Stoley into the remaining shot glass.

"That'll be $50 even," I said when we had finished.

"That was fucking awesome," said the guy with more muscles than was natural for any single human being as he handed over a $50 bill.

"That was fast as hell," said the short one. He was kinda hott.

"Of course it was fast," said Charlie. "We're good like that."

"When are we gonna get to see your asses on the bar?" said the guy with the septum piercing, winking slightly at Charlie.

"We actually just got off the bar about 15 minutes ago. What do you say, Charlie?" I said as I turned to her and returned the muscular man's change. "You wanna do Boots with me?"

"Hell yeah," she said.

We volunteered Aaliyah to dance the song with us, but had to wait until the other two girls were back so that we wouldn't be left without bartenders. When the two of them had gotten back, they started Boots on the Jukebox, then Charlie, Aaliyah, and myself hopped onto the bar amidst a slew of hoots and hollers.

"You keep saying you got something for me," started the song.

We started the movements to the song. They went in a fluid motion; we almost made them look too easy, even though they kinda weren't. We've all been working here for while, so we've had plenty of practice at them.

I noticed that all of the five guys from before were staring at us and smiling the whole time we were up there. Charlie blushed slightly as she caught a glimpse of the guy with the septum piercing staring at her.

It was almost 1:30 in the morning as we got off the bar and I looked at the clock for the first time. The five of us that were here have been here since we opened today, and that was at 6.

"The next 2 1/2 hours are gonna go by so fucking slow," Charlie said as we climbed down. "It feels like we've been here for fucking ever."

Before we knew it, the number of customers in the bar had thinned to a mere few by three, so we got to work on closing early. Charlie and I were the strongest girls so we were stuck with stocking the several cases of beer and all those fucking bottles of hard liquor. It took us almost a full half hour to bring all the liquor up to the parlor, then another full fifteen minutes to put it all away. When we were done, we helped clean what few glasses were left to clean, stocked ice, wiped down the bar area, then we all went to throw away the empty bottles, wipe the tables, and clean the floors.

By the time we left the bar at 4:30 in the morning, we were all ready to sleep until we had class the next day. Well, me and Charlie had class the next day. Aaliyah just got to sleep all the time when she wasn't working. Our lives and schedules are kinda crazy but we wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world.

When we got outside and Aaliyah had locked the doors, we noticed that there was a small group of people in the parking lot. They seemed to be too inebriated for their own good. They were being obnoxious and extremely loud.

"Hey!" one of them yelled when they spotted us walking to our cars.

"I thought you guys left an hour ago?" I said as I unlocked my car, recognizing the guys from earlier in the night.

"We couldn't remember where we were staying," said the guy who was using Charlie as eye candy.

"Zacky, you're a dumbass," said the shortest guy.

"Fuck you, Christ," Zacky said back.

Okay...'Christ' can't be his real name.

"You guys have room key cards or something?" I asked after throwing my purse into the passenger seat of my car.

"Here's my wallet," said the tallest one with a smile, slurring. "It has lots of cards in it."

I couldn't help but laugh as he clumsily removed his wallet and dropped it on the ground. I bent over to retrieve the dropped wallet, and someone slapped my ass.

"Ouch!"

"Looks like Johnny got himself a hand-full, Matt," said Zacky to the muscular guy.

Okay...so his real name is Johnny.

Wait a minute...why do I even care what his real name is?

Everyone laughed at Zacky's comment as I flipped through all the credit cards and other assorted things made of plastic in the wallet. I assumed the guys name to be James, as that was the name on all his cards.

I finally found a room key to the Palms. Astonishingly enough, it was the only Room Key in the wallet.

"You guys are staying at The Palms," I said as I showed them all the Room Key I had found, then proceeded to put all the cards back in their places and handed the wallet back to James. "You guys need rides or something?"

They all started talking at the same time, so I took the as an answer to my question. Since Charlie and Aaliyah were riding with me, they each took one of the two cars that the five guys and two girls had come to the bar in.

We said goodbye to the other two girls that were working with us, Reegan and Sabriel, then we made to take the group of people we didn't know back to their hotel.

Charlie took Zacky, Matt, and some girl that had her arm wrapped around his waist, her head not even meeting his chin, in the black BMW that some of the guys were sitting on. Aaliyah took James, some girl with black hair, and the guy that was wearing the Fedora, who I haven't heard speak the entire time, in a white Escalade that was parked next to the BMW. That left me to ride to the Palms with the no one other than the hot, short, drunk guy as my company. I've had many drunk conversations with Charlie and Aaliyah back at our house, but at least there was someone I actually knew to drunkenly converse with.

Everyone parted to their separate cars. Johnny somewhat drunkenly and very awkwardly stumbled over to my black SUV and opened the passenger door. He pulled the seatbelt out and buckled it, then got into the passenger seat, sitting in front of the seatbelt, and then shut the door.

I couldn't help but laugh at him, and spent almost five whole minutes trying to get him to get the seatbelt the right way, finally succeeding as the other honked the car horns at me.

As I lead the way towards the hotel and casino, Johnny started touching everything in the car, and then started going through my glove box.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I asked as I tried to keep an eye on him and the road at the same time.

"Being nosy," he said as he flashed me a drunken smile, then went back to snooping through the documents in my glove box.

"Registration....boring," he said as he threw my car registration papers back into the compartment. "Insurance papers...boring as hell. And now I think I've finally found something of mild interest."

He pulled a single piece of loose notebook paper out of the pile he pulled from the glove box, then shoved the rest of the papers back into the compartment with my insurance and registration papers.

"It's a poem," he said. I couldn't tell if he was amused, or if it was the alcohol talking.

I caught a quick glimpse of the title as I went through an intersection, and it was titled 'I Walk Alone'. I vividly remembered writing that poem. I wrote it a few weeks ago for my Creative Writing course at UNLV.

It took him a full five minutes to read the poem. The poem wasn't that long, and I couldn't figure out why he was still staring at the piece of paper.

"We're...umm...we're here," I stuttered as I came to a stop in a parking space in front of The Palms Hotel.

"I walk alone, I walk alone," he muttered, reading the ending of the poem aloud. "This is some sad shit."

"Well, my Professor told us to write about sad and depressing subjects. Staying away from the good stuff, like sex and alcohol. He said that exact phrase."

He laughed unnecessarily loud. It was one of those over-exuberant laughs that only come from drunk people.

The other cars pulled up beside mine as Johnny attempted to get out of my car. He pushed the door open but didn't let go of the handle, which caused him to fall flat on his front on the wet ground. James and the guy who's name I didn't know came over to help them up, almost falling on the ground themselves in the process.

"Maybe we should take them up to their rooms?" Aaliyah suggested. The guys and their girls could hardly walk on their own.

"Yeah, I don't think they can find them on their own," I said as Charlie, Aaliyah, and I walked behind the others. "They'll either get security called on them, or they'll pass out on their attempt to find their rooms."

They ended up being in five rooms that were connected on the very top floor by a huge kitchen and living area. Kinda like college dorms.

We got them all into the kitchen/living area, then left as quickly as possible.

"I think that was the weirdest thing I've done in a very long time," I said as we walked out of the hotel and into the parking lot.

"Come on, Derrik," Charlie said, using my surname for an unknown reason. "You've taken strange men home before."

"Fuck you, Garbuck," I said back to her. "I'm not like that, and you know it. What I meant was that...well...it was just weird, that's all."

Charlie and Aaliyah made fun of me the entire way back to our house. I could stand it until they started making jokes that I was in love with Johnny.

"How could I be in love with him?" I asked. "I don't even know him. I don't believe in that love at first sight bullshit."

I walked into the house and went straight to the kitchen for a bottle of water, Aaliyah and Charlie following me.

The cracks that they were throwing at me started to get to the point where they were beyond irritating within the next five minutes. I grabbed my stuff from the countertop, then walked back to my room and slammed the door shut. Irritated as I was, I couldn't understand exactly why I was angry. I threw my stuff into a random corner, then walked over to my stereo, turned it on, then pushed play. I had no idea what was in there at the time, so I was kinda surprised when Atreyu started blaring through the speakers.

I walked over to my closet to grab some pajamas when Charlie opened my door and walked over to my bed without my noticing.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" she asked me. "Since when did it bother you when we gave you shit?"

"I don't know," I said honestly, somewhat startled that she had managed to get into my room and onto my bed without my noticing. "It just did."

I walked into the bathroom to change, leaving the door slightly cracked so that I could still listen to Charlie.

"If I didn't know better, I would say that something happened in your car on the way to the hotel."

"Nothing happened with Johnny while I was in my car with him on the way to his hotel," I said.

And nothing did happen. He found some poetry of mine, read it, and that was it.

I walked out of the bathroom with my dirty clothes and saw Charlie absentmindedly flipping through my Cd's.

"Well, you better get the stick out of your ass before we go to class tomorrow," she said, noticing me and putting my Cd's back on my desk.

She stopped for a second, and smiled. She always gets this goofy smile on her face every time she rhymes a sentence without meaning to.

"We have Mrs. Daughtery tomorrow, and you know how much of a bitch she is. I don't need to listen to your bitching too."

And with that, Charlie walked out of my bedroom, and shut the door behind her.

"What am I freaking out about?" I said to myself as I got into bed and turned off the only source of light in my room at the time, which was my lamp.

"Ok, I'll admit," I muttered out loud as I made myself comfortable in my bed. "He was cute. But I'll probably never see him again."

"I knew it!" I heard Charlie exclaim through the wall from her room, which was right next to mine.

Leave it to her to embarrass the hell out of me and listen to the conversations I have with myself through the walls.

"But it's not like no one was looking at you," I mocked to myself, rolling my eyes.

"Shut the fuck up, lover girl!" Charlie screamed again and I had to chuckle.

"Get me some toast and I'll think about it!" I screamed back.

"Get your own Goddamn toast! Do I look like your maid?" She now burst through my door, Aaliyah right behind her.

"Well you do clean up the place," I chimed in, and she rolled her eyes and slammed my door laughing.

"Here's your toast, bitch." Aaliyah threw a paper napkin at me, toast wrapped inside to the perfection of which I liked. "And the damn honey." And just as I caught the toast she threw a bottle of honey at me, hitting me square in the mouth.

"What the fuck! Ouch!" I rubbed at my mouth and Aaliyah was now on the floor in tears.

"I," she was trying to catch her breath. "Am so sorry Sapphyre!" Aaliyah was trying so hard to catch her breath.

I laughed at her laughing. "Don't worry about it Ally."

I unwrapped my toast and put the honey on it, taking a big and savored bite.

"Okay." She crawled out of my doorway, I saw Charlie giggling at the sight of Aaliyah and trying to help her up just as she closed the door behind her.

I finished my piece of toast and set the honey on my nightstand. I was too lazy to take it back into the kitchen, and I threw the napkin in the trashcan next to the nightstand. I put my cell phone next to the honey because it was starting to hurt my ass from sitting on it all of this time.

"HOW DO I LIVE WITHOUT YOU, I WANT TO KNOW!" I heard Charlie start to "sing" down the hallway and it only continued. "HOW DO I BREATHE FUCK!" and I started to laugh really hard. "That totally wasn't fair Ally." I heard Charlie say in her normal voice from outside of the bathroom door down the hall.

"Oh, it was totally fair." Aaliyah retorted. "You were singing loudly and obnoxiously, and I was saving the neighbors from having to call the cops, thinking that someone was being murdered." I heard her chuckle while she said this. "OW!"

"That's what you get." Charlie laughed and slammed, I would suppose, the bathroom door. Aaliyah burst in moments later

"So why do we live with her again?" she came and sat down on my bed, bouncing slightly from the mattress springs.

"We need to pay rent. And she's not so bad, some days." I leaned back on my pillow and put my arms behind my head.

"No seriously." Ally looked at me. I just laughed and shook my head.

"Why do I live with you, is the real question." And I let out a deep breath.

"That actually is a really good question." Aaliyah pondered the answer herself.

I let out a harsh laugh.

"Get out. I'm going to bed."

And I kicked her off of the bed and grabbed the folded quilt that sat on the foot of my bed, just where Aaliyah was sitting.

"Night Sappy." Aaliyah liked to tease me with the spelling of my name.

I swear I'll stab her the next time she calls me that.

I smiled to myself, comfortable in my quilt, at the thought of getting revenge on the one who likes to poke fun at my name. I should definitely find a way to fuck up her name.

BRIAN'S POV

"And that is always a great bar to go to." I pushed the hotel room door open and stepped inside, Cassidy hanging off of my arm. I led her to the bed before going back to entertaining the fellow guests.

Okay it was just Zacky and Jimmy, but what the hell.

"Beer?" I opened the complimentary alcohol filled mini fridge and pulled out the first thing I saw. I think it was a Heineken. Zacky smiled and asked for the small bottle of Skyy to put into the cup of Sprite he was going to pour. Jimmy was just looking around in a daze.

"Dude how much coke did you take." I poked his shoulder and almost knocked him down.

"None. That's the problem." And all of us laughed, quietly though. Cassidy just got her drunk ass to sleep.

"We definitely should go back tomorrow night. We're not touring." Zacky took a swig of the cold Skyy bottle before dumping the rest into his Sprite.

"Dude, we've got to go into the studio."

"Not for another week." Jimmy plopped down on the couch and started to rap against the cheap cloth couch.

"Whatever, you just want to go see that little slut who was dancing on the bar."

"I don't think she was a slut." Jimmy answered for Zacky, and possibly himself.

Zacky smiled and went to high-five Jimmy.

"You should go to bed 'Syn'." Zacky pushed me in the direction of the bed. I didn't budge, but pushed back on Zacky with the hand that didn't hold a beer.

"Fuck you man." I smiled.

"Dude you're girlfriend is in bed and Jimmy is awake and on the couch. It'll have to be later." And we both burst out laughing. Jimmy's face showed an amused disgust.

"I don't want to be in here when you two do decide to unleash the fury." Jimmy stood up, and made for the door.

"Okay, we'll talk to Matt and Johnny, and the girls tomorrow and we'll try to go back." I gave in as I took a swig to set my beer slightly more than half done. "Why do I think that we'll not leave this place for weeks on end just for going back one night?"

"Because you're paranoid and think we actually have a chance with these girls." Zacky laughed and followed Jimmy out of my room back to their own to go to bed.

Now I was just bored and took another swig of the Heineken before setting it down on the nightstand on my side of the bed and I stripped down before getting into bed with Cassidy.