Happy Baby by Stephen Elliott

Bridge. Toine sleeps with her sometimes and tells me she doesn’t charge him.
    This is where I spend my evenings. A student is playing guitar on the bridge. The student’s friend dances on his heels, like something out of a children’s book, and waves a fedora around for change. The pickpockets are looking for customers. The Nigerian pushes herself up on her toes. I lean against the pylon as the streets swell. The owner of the bar on the far end of the district comes floating past with his dog at the wheel of his short barge.
    I should go but I stay here where it’s light and noisy, the air filled with reefer, urine, and perfume. Hypodermics and trash float against the canal walls. Toine’s friend Jessie is home alone, probably setting our apartment on fire. Behind us, a man painted green is stripped to the waist and juggling bowling balls as if they were balloons. Toine’s baritone hovers over all of it like an umbrella. “Step right up, young lovers. You’re not here for the architecture. Ladies and gentlemen, step right up.”
    Late, when the last show has already begun, I return to the theater. Yuen holds the door open for me, parting his gold teeth, holding his suitcase with his other hand. I climb the red carpets into the balcony where the bar is. Jessie stands with Toine. She’s changed into a flowered shirt and white slacks that hug her waist and she looks transformed from this morning and innocent among the salesmen here, all of whom wear dark suits. “I hope you got a discount,” I tell her and she laughs. She touches my shoulder.
    “Someone’s been drinking already,” Jessie says.
    Taco is bartending. A necklace of coconut halves is strung over the entrance to the dressing room. Miriam in her grass skirt is saying something quiet and urgent to Rynant the bouncer.
    “Where did you go?” Toine asks. “I thought you would keep Jessie company after you got off, but you never went home.”
    “He doesn’t like me,” Jessie says. “He’s afraid of girls.”
    “That’s ridiculous,” I say. “I tied one on.”
    “Allow yourself to be teased,” Jessie says. “You’ll enjoy life more.”
    “Don’t lecture people,” Toine tells her. “They don’t like it.”
    Jessie makes a pouty face and pinches Toine’s elbow.
    “She’s dangerous,” he jokes, leaning forward so the bar lights crawl under his chin. “Imagine, coming back to me after so many years. What could be more corrupt?”
    “Beer, Theo?” Taco asks.
    “Yes. And one for my friends.”
    Miriam emerges on the stage below us, wearing a cape, dancing to Surinamese drum rhythms, and Hank scrambles out behind the curtain in the gorilla outfit. She’s painted WAR in bright green letters across her stomach. She steps from her skirt and jumps into the crowd, her long red cape flashing behind her, her bare feet smacking the armrests. She climbs along the customers on the first floor. She wraps her cape around a woman’s head. When Miriam pulls the cape back, her underwear is gone, her pubic hair inches from the woman’s nose. She scoots closer, bringing the woman’s face between her legs. Hank looks puzzled, scratches his head, then begins to play with himself, spraying the crowd with water from the plastic gorilla penis. When it’s over Miriam pulls Hank from the stage by a chain.
    The lesbian show is starting. Victoria ambles forward in her police outfit with her thumbs tucked in her pockets and her hat cocked. Alexis waits for her in a shimmering metal dress, clutching the stage pole in her hands. Victoria told me one night that there are too many foreigners here. “No offense,” she said. “I mean the Arabs.” And the Arabs are in the front now for her show. Sheiks with magnificent turbans of all colors bundled over their heads. Yuen and Toine will always approach the Arabs and ask if they need women because the rich Arabs are too discreet to visit the girls who stand in the windows. Once a Pakistani general came dressed in