Strip Tease Page 31

  “Shit.” Orly had no choice but to back down. He didn’t want to piss off a congressman, and he definitely didn’t want more heat from that ballbuster Moldowsky.

  “I’ll work a double on Monday,” Erin promised.

  “Bet your ass.” Orly picked pensively at the cold sore. “I’m curious,” he said. “What’s he like?”

  “Nothing special.”

  “Big tipper?”

  “Fair,” Erin said. She knew where Mr. Orly was headed. “I didn’t sleep with him,” she said. “You can ask Shad.”

  “I already did.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said you just danced.”

  “Don’t act so surprised.”

  Orly shrugged one chubby shoulder. “He’s a bigshot. Those guys usually want the full treatment.”

  Erin’s arms began to itch. It happened whenever she sat too long in Orly’s office.

  He said: “Lorelei’s got phlebitis. She’s flying home to Dallas.”

  “I’m sorry,” Erin said.

  “It was that fucking snake, squeezing on her legs.”

  Bravely Erin sneaked a glance at Orly’s face. He looked downcast and subdued. Of course the canker didn’t help. She nearly felt sorry for him.

  “How was the yacht?” he asked.

  “Fine, except there’s no mirrors. I’m dancing blind.”

  Orly said, “I’ll need Shad here at the club. For the noodle wrestling—last night some guy nearly cacked.”

  “I’ll be fine by myself,” Erin said. “Look, I know it’s still early but why don’t I get started on my sets?”

  Orly said great, but no slow stuff. “Not to beat a dead horse, but I’m serious. You can’t strip to fucking Jackson Browne.”

  “Congressman Dilbeck would disagree.” Erin stood up and pushed the chair away. “Here’s the part he liked best.”

  Singing now: “‘Down on the boulevard, they take it hard.’” Dancing in baggy jeans and sneakers. A kick-boxing move—punch, punch, right leg out, then spin.” ‘They look at life with such disregard.’” Punch, kick, kick and split.

  When she finished, Orly whistled and said, “Damn.”

  “I told you.”

  “That’s Jackson Browne?”

  “The table dancers,” said Erin, “don’t know what they’re missing.”

  Urbana Sprawl said that there was a guy jerking his weenie in a green Pontiac. Shad went to the doorway and scanned the cars in the lot. The green Pontiac was parked far away, near the road; Shad could make out a silhouette behind the wheel. He went behind the bar to fetch his tire iron, but then Orly called him over to break up a fight between two men at the Foosball table. Men in suspenders! Orly bellowed. By the time Shad got out to the Pontiac, it was empty. He decided to prowl around.

  Darrell Grant already had broken into the club through the fire door. He was sitting in the dressing room when Monique Sr. arrived to freshen her makeup. She gave him a radiant smile and said, “Are you Kiefer Sutherland?”

  “That’s me.” Darrell was cooked on codeine and Halcions and some unidentified lemon-yellow capsules that he’d purchased from a newspaper vendor on Dixie Highway. Darrell’s eyelids hung half-mast and his tongue stuck to his teeth. He said, “I’m looking for Missus Erin Grant. She works here in a nude capacity.”

  Monique Sr. told him to put the knife away. Darrell Grant was unaware that he was holding it.

  “You lost some weight,” Monique Sr. said, “since your last movie. My name is Monique.” When she held out her hand, Darrell flicked it with the blade. The dancer cried out and pulled away. A stripe of blood appeared on her fingers.

  “Hush up,” Darrell said. He grabbed her arm and yanked her into his lap. Monique Sr. told him to stop and balled her fist, to stanch the bleeding.

  Darrell Grant rubbed the stubble of his beard on the nape of the dancer’s neck. He bounced her on his knees and said, “Here’s a news flash, sweetie. I ain’t Keith O’Sutherland.”

  “I kind of figured.”

  He cut the strap of her bra top, which dropped to the carpet. In the mirror, Monique Sr. studied the man’s slack leer and fogged eyes. She felt him getting hard beneath her.

  “Let me go,” she said. “I’ll find Erin.”

  “What’s the hurry.” He’d spotted the wad of bills in her black garter. “How much you got there?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a hundred.”

  “Excellent.” He slid the flat side of the knife down Monique Sr.’s leg, under the elastic of the garter. He twisted his wrist and the garter broke. The cash fell in a clump. It landed in one of her bra cups.

  Darrell Grant said, “Pick it up.”

  As she bent over, he said, “Those are some tits you got.”

  “Please let me go.”

  He propped the steak knife behind his right ear, like a pencil. Then he reached around Monique Sr. and slapped a hand on each breast. “I would estimate,” he said, “these are about three times bigger than my ex-wife’s.”

  Monique Sr. said, “Shit. Now I know who you are.”

  She threw an elbow that caught Darrell Grant flush in the right temple. No pain registered in the lifeless blue eyes. He locked both arms around the dancer’s rib cage and squeezed. He gave a grunt that started low in the throat, then rose to a musical hum.

  Monique Sr., who’d taken eight years of piano, recognized the note as a high C-sharp. She was equally startled by the man’s strength, and watched herself go pale in the mirror. The walls pulsed as the man’s eerie humming filled her head. Within moments she passed out.

  When she regained consciousness, Monique Sr. heard Darrell Grant say: “Wake up, Little Dorothy.” She felt the man’s kneecaps bouncing her bottom and realized that he still held her on his lap. She opened her eyes and saw, in the mirror, that he’d cut off her G-string.

  She said, “You want a screw, get it over with.”

  Darrell squirmed beneath her. “I’d like to, but I sorta lost momentum.”

  “Then let me go. I was due in the cage ten minutes ago.”

  “Just hold up,” he said. “Maybe if I squeeze them titties again.”

  “Nope,” said Monique Sr. “You’re done for the night. I can feel it.”

  “Shut up!”

  “It’s not your fault, sweetheart. It’s the drugs.”

  Darrell Grant fumbled one-handed at his fly. There was no point. “Look what you did,” he whined.

  “Wasn’t me.”

  He traced the point of the blade along her bikini lines. “How about a tattoo down there? Be the first on your block.”

  Monique Sr. said, “Please don’t cut on me again.” A dancer with scars didn’t get much work—not at the good clubs, anyway.

  When Darrell stung her with the knife, she promised to do whatever he wanted. “Thatta girlie,” he said.

  The door opened and Erin came in. It took a few seconds to absorb the scene: Her ex-husband sitting in the makeup chair, Monique Sr. trembling on his lap, the glint of steel against her tanned belly.

  Darrell Grant giggled. “This is perfect. Shut the damn door and pull up a seat.”

  Erin could see he was wrecked. She regretted leaving the pistol at home.

  He said, “I’m gonna give this lady the ride of her life, and you’re gonna watch.”

  “Hot damn,” said Erin. She sat down and winked at Monique Sr., who was not reassured. She raised her hand to show Erin the blood.

  Darrell Grant said. “We’re gonna give you a peep show.”

  “Anytime you’re ready,” Erin said, crossing her legs.

  Darrell’s tipsy smile disappeared and his lips pursed in childlike concentration. He commanded Monique Sr. to touch him. She said she was. He told her to grab him, then.

  “I am,” she said.

  “I don’t feel a damn thing.”

  “That makes two of us,” Monique Sr. said.

  Erin folded her arms. “Im waiting, Mr. Sex Machine.”

 
; Darrell Grant squinted and strained and bared his teeth.

  Erin said, “Maybe you need a laxative.”

  Monique Sr. caught herself laughing. Darrell’s muscles—legs, arms, neck—went limp in defeat. “Goddamn you,” he said to Erin.

  “Fine. Now let Monique go, and we’ll discuss the problem like grown-ups.”

  “Not until you take me to Angie.”

  Erin said, “You better talk to the judge.” She couldn’t resist: the exact line he’d used on her so many, many times.

  He touched the knife to Monique Sr.’s neck. Teardrops and runny mascara streaked the dancer’s checks. Erin knew it was important to keep her ex-husband confused and off guard. Any sign of weakness would embolden him.

  She said, “Monique, I apologize. Darrell makes a shitty first impression.”

  “He cut my goddamn hand!” the dancer cried, displaying the wound again. “It’s not funny, Erin. Give him what he wants.”

  “I want my daughter,” Darrell Grant snarled.

  “Well,” said Erin, “I don’t have her anymore.”

  Darrell took the news poorly. He shoved Monique Sr. to the floor and lunged wildly at Erin. The swiftness of his fury caught her by surprise. She tried to raise her legs to push him away, but he was already on top. The chair collapsed, and they went down simultaneously. Darrell Grant dug his knees into Erin’s chest. He screamed and cursed until he was breathless. She lost track of how many times he called her a dirty rotten cunt.

  She was worried about the knife: where was it? Darrell’s arms hung at his side. Pinned flat on the floor, Erin couldn’t see her ex-husband’s hands, couldn’t raise her head to try.

  Darreil Grant, panting: “I want Angie back tonight.”

  “You’re crushing me,” Erin said.

  Monique Sr. must have gotten out, because the door was ajar and the dressing room flooded with dance music from the lounge: something brassy by Gloria Estefan. Not an ideal tune to die by, Erin thought.

  “Who’s got her?” Darrell said.

  Erin, wheezing: “I’ll take you there.”

  His right arm came up with the rusty steak knife. He held it by the tip of the blade, between his thumb and forefinger. Darrell Grant, weepy, slurring: “I lost my baby girl.”

  “That’s not true,” Erin said. “All because of you.”

  “Darrell, it’s not too late.”

  He turned the knife in his fingers, closed his palm around the handle. “Don’t you understand? I escaped from jail. That means I got no future to speak of.”

  Erin said, “Everyone fucks up occasionally.”

  “My plan was me and Angie hittin’ the road. Not anymore. Is that a fair statement?”

  One of his eyelids had closed. Erin prayed that it would affect his accuracy with the knife. “If you kill me,” she said, “you’ll never see her again.”

  “And if I don’t kill you,” he said, “I’ll hate myself for not tryin’.”

  Erin had always believed that her ex-husband was incapable of homicide, except by accident. Now, watching Darrell Grant fondle the cheap cutlery, she realized she might’ve misjudged him. What if he stabbed her? Erin thought, ludicrously, of how disappointed her mother would be. When one’s only daughter is hacked to death wearing a sequined bra top and a G-string—well, there’s really no way to explain it to one’s friends at the orchid club.

  “Darrell,” Erin began.

  “Shut your eyes. I can’t manage if you’re lookin’ at me.” But Erin wouldn’t close her eyes. She scorched him with a glare. “I won’t let you do this to Angela.”

  “Hush up,” he cried. “Who’s got the knife, huh?”

  “I won’t let you.”

  “Shut your goddamn green eyes!”

  “Why?” Erin said. “They remind you of somebody?”

  “Oh, Lord Christ.” He raised the knife with both hands.

  Erin said, “Put it down, Darrell.” A breathless whisper.

  “No way.”

  “Darrell, please. For Angie’s sake.”

  “I said, shut your eyes.”

  “Drop the fucking knife!” A man’s voice at the door. Erin felt Darrell Grant go rigid. He cocked his head, waiting. He did not drop the fucking knife.

  “Junior,” said the voice, Shad’s voice. “I’m counting to three.”

  Erin watched her ex-husband mouthing to himself: One Mississippi, two Mississippi … and then a branch snapped. That’s what it sounded like.

  Darrell flew off Erin as if launched by a spring. A plangent wailing now accompanied the melodies of Gloria Estefan. Erin sat up, covering her breasts with her hands. There was Shad with his tire iron, Mr. Orly clutching a can of Dr. Pepper, and Darrell Grant screaming.

  Darrell—his arm hanging crooked and splintered at the elbow, a blond spike of a bone poking through the gray skin, dripping darkness down the front of his jeans.

  Shad said, “Junior, you count too slow.” He whipped off the beret and bowed his shiny dome in Darrell Grant’s direction. “You remember carving this punkin? I’ll bet you do.”

  “Take him outside,” Orly muttered, and disappeared down the hall.

  Erin got to her feet, wobbling. The faces in the mirror were a blur. She pointed at the reflection that most closely resembled her ex-husband. “Darrell,” she said. “I knew you couldn’t do it.” Then: “God, I don’t feel so good.”

  Shad caught her in one arm as she sagged. The whimpering Darrell Grant somehow lurched to his feet and stumbled from the dressing room. Shad placed Erin on a small divan and tucked a musty pillow under her head.

  “I’ll be right back,” he told her. “Junior forgot his knife.”

  27

  Shad searched the property but he couldn’t find Darrell. He stalked next door and checked the fried-chicken joint, and then the restrooms of the video arcade down the street. When he returned to the Tickled Pink, the Pontiac was gone. The asshole had escaped again.

  Erin was surprisingly calm. She borrowed Orly’s phone and dialed the Martin County Sheriff’s Office to report the sighting of her fugitive ex-husband. She described his gruesome injury, and hinted that Darrell might soon surface at a local emergency room. The cop on the other end was no Al García. He took the information haltingly, and asked numerous vague questions. Erin had to spell her name three times because he kept asking her if it was “Aaron—like the baseball player.”

  When she got off the phone, Orly said, “We got a policy against husbands and boyfriends at this club.”

  “Darrell is neither,” Erin said, “and I didn’t invite him.”

  “He crazy enough to come back?”

  “That’s hard to say, Mr. Orly. The police are after him.”

  “Lovely. Maybe we’ll have a shootout in the pasta pit.”

  Shad said, “The boy’s in no shape to fight. I busted his ulna to smithereens.”

  Orly frowned. “His what?”

  Erin announced that she was going home to take a hot shower. Shad got the .38 Special and followed in his car. There was no sign of a lurking green Pontiac. He parked by Erin’s apartment until the lights went out. Then he circled the complex four times and drove back to the club. Orly was waiting at the front bar.

  “Those fucking Lings,” he fumed, “they’re trying to steal Urbana. A thousand bucks they offered her!”

  Shad said nothing. He had a feeling there was more.

  Orly, dropping his voice: “Plus they ratted me to the Health Department.”

  “You mean Beverage.”

  “No, Health.” Orly unfolded a yellow paper and smoothed it violently with the heels of his hands. He pushed it down the bar toward Shad. “Read it,” he said.

  The complaint charged Orly with using “contaminated food products in a manner that poses a direct and compelling threat to the public safety.” Shad assumed it referred to the topless pasta wrestling.

  Orly said, “It’s a damn lie.”

  “I know,” Shad said. “The stuff is always fresh
. I check the packaging dates myself.”

  “That’s exactly what I told the little creep.”

  “And?”

  “He claims he got a sample of bad vermicelli from the wrestling pit—I forgot when, last Tuesday or something. It says right there on the paper. He put it in a jar and hauled it to some goddamn lab in Miami.”

  Three types of nasty-sounding bacteria—Escherichia coli, Shigella dysenteriae and Staphylococcus—were listed on the health inspector’s complaint. “This is bullshit,” Shad said. “We been set up.”

  “Keep reading,” Orly told him.

  “Hey, what’s this about orifices?”

  The report stated: “During the so-called wrestling matches, several male customers were observed attempting to insert said contaminated food product into the mouths and other body orifices of the female performers.”

  Shad pushed the paper back at Orly. “It doesn’t happen every night. Guys get drunk, you know how it goes.”

  Orly turned away from the bar. “They make it sound so disgusting. Bottom line, it’s just fucking noodles.”

  The two men sat wordlessly. Sabrina was on the main stage, Monique Jr. was in the cage and a new girl named Suzette was dancing tables in the front row. Suzette’s claim to fame was a cameo in a recent George Michael video. Orly said she had played a nun in bicycle pants.

  Every song Kevin put on was by Prince or Madonna or Marky Mark; the severity of Shad’s headache made him wonder if the music had caused his brain to swell. He removed the beret and balanced a bag of ice cubes on his twitching scalp.

  “Where’s Urbana?” he asked.

  Orly said she went to the Flesh Farm to negotiate with the Lings. “So much for loyalty.” He paused. “They got a wind machine over there? Because Urbana won’t dance near a wind machine.”

  “That’s right,” Shad said.

  “What’m I saying? A grand is a grand.”

  Shad told him not to worry. “She won’t do friction. Not for a million bucks.”

  “You ever think,” said Orly, “that maybe they don’t want her for friction?”

  Shad signaled the bartender to bring the boss a fresh Dr. Pepper. Orly continued: “The Ling brothers aren’t stupid. They know a liability potential when they see one. With those tits, she could kill a man easy.” He tongued the rim of the soda can. “Here’s my theory: They’re getting out of friction dancing and aiming upscale. They’re trying to buy some class, you know? Be respectable like us.”