I Don't Know Her Who: Wren Ohashi What: Working When: Present, night Where: Iris in Las Vegas Rating: PG
The Iris had a full house for its 12am show, the crowd a healthy mix of tourists, frequent ticket-holders, and a cadre of airmen from Nellis Air Force Base. They drank, they ogled, they ate high-priced tapas, they streamed content to social media. Above them, a dancer hung from an aerial hoop. She was petite and slender, a beautiful girl in lilac leggings and a lace bralette, with a mane of brown hair swinging as she twisted on the rig.
Her name was not Wren Ohashi.
No. Because this bitch had stolen her time slot.
Wren watched the performance from backstage, tongue in teeth, fingers drumming on the smooth skin of her upper arms.
A hoop. Wren closed her eyes and counted to ten. The hoop was nothing more than a stand-in for a swing, which made it the favorite choice of broken little girls who used dance as a way to process childhood trauma to the tune of Madonna’s This Used to Be My Playground, in public, without an ounce of irony. This one, Kayleigh, had once broken into tears over a run in her pantyhose and asked Wren to ‘hold space’ for her feelings.
There was a trickle of blood at the corner of her lip. It was hers. Wren had bitten clean through her tongue. She snatched a clean tissue from a box by the curtains and dabbed at her face. “I’m going to eat her,” she mumbled.
“Hot!” Brandon, from in-house catering, was standing nearby with a plate of fresh fruit and mini-pretzels.
“Ugh.” Annoyed, Wren smacked his forehead and he wandered off. The vampire turned back to what she could see of the stage. Kayleigh had dismounted the apparatus, her small hands clasped together in praise as she mouthed her gratitude above the applause. ’Thank you! Thank you! Hash-tag blessed!’
“Mm. We’ll see how you feel about that later,” Wren said, the sour face turning pleasant as the younger woman rushed into the wings, face aglow from a triumphant performance. “Hhiiii-eeee, good job. Really inspiring!” Wren sang after her before turning her attention to her costume and preparing for her turn on stage. “Blugh.”