Sasha is a lady who comes to the bar every Saturday night about 9. She plays pool, and plays it well. She can best most of our male players. She loves 9 ball and almost never leaves herself with a difficult shot. The old men say she “plays shape.” She is hard to look at, because something about her suggests she might have been pretty, maybe even beautiful at some point, but that must have been long time ago. She is so thin that the shape of her bones is clear. She wears jeans that might once have been tight, and crop-tops always crop-tops. Her ribs and hip bones and collar bones protrude. Her skin is so dark that it is difficult to believe she is Caucasian. She looks as if she sleeps in a tanning bed. Her hair is some shade past platinum and seems to have been bleached so many times that it has stopped resisting. Her face is so sunken and dark that it is hard to even see her eyes, but in the right light they are still very blue. She is even hard to listen to, her voice like radio static. The only person she talks to is Mallory, one our young waitress whom she taught to play pool. Mallory knows all of Sasha’s stories. Sasha likes our place, because at the more redneck bar across the tracks, they make fun of her, or at least she believes they do. According to Mallory, Sasha was an exotic dancer who once traveled the eastern seaboard. She even had a fan club at one point. She even carried her infant son, a gift from one of her more ardent followers, with her on the road. Sasha’s son is in the Navy now and she rarely sees him Sasha is 46, but looks much much older. About 15 years ago, people stopped paying to gawk, at least in numbers that would feed her and her boy. She soon adapted by cohabiting with an older follower. He provided what her looks could no longer sustain. Sasha told Mallory that he grew tired of her after a few years and began to beat her. She left and took her teenage son to Savanna when she worked as a waitress. Soon after his graduation, her boy joined the Navy. Sash is dying. She has cancer, “the big C” in her lungs and throat, but she quickly disavows the notion that smoke and liquor are even partially causative. She claims that her malady is genetically predisposed. You see, her daddy died from the same thing when she was a girl. The doctors say that even with the best treatment the chances for even a modest recovery are very slim. She has opted to forego that treatment. She moved here to stay with her sister. She no longer works. She comes to the bar to shoot pool, and to smoke, and to drink, and when the song is just right, to dance. She still moves well when she dances, as if she has done it before. She generally dances for just one or two, or perhaps, three songs.

The other dancers grant her space.