Alligator - Lisa Moore [75]
It’s kind of humiliating, Sherry had shouted over the noise, her hand cupped near her mouth.
What? Colleen shouted back.
Humiliating, Sherry shouted.
What? Sherry just rolled her eyes.
Colleen would take the wet T-shirt money and get on a plane in the morning, or the morning after that. She wanted to go to Louisiana and meet the alligator guy from Madeleine’s video. She wanted to see the operation he ran. Saving alligators: that would be something to see. She could go for a long time with the prize money for beautiful breasts.
She smiled at the bouncer with her lovely teeth, recently liberated from years of braces and elastic bands and night guards and gathered everything she had ever seen on television sitcoms about looking sultry and she did it as a sort of joke, half serious. The bouncer jerked his head toward the bar and Colleen and her friends slid through the door.
A waitress worked the crowd with a tray of neon shooters; she had a tattoo near her collarbone that said Kyle.
A one-thousand-dollar prize goes to the winner, says the bartender, who stands in the centre of a small empty stage with a mike and he slithers the cord over the dirty floor.
Let’s warm up with the wet boxers, he says. Colleen hears his spittle in the mike and it makes her feel like he’s all over her with his wetness. He promises buckets of beer and a city-wide ride in a limousine. He gets the girls to clap, a slowly building beat that breaks into whoops and catcalls and laments about the absence of guys willing to have water squirted at their rods.
It’s hotter in the bar than even a half an hour ago and Colleen’s sweat smells like beer and she wants more beer. The girls have glitter in their hair, are wearing black eyeliner, push-up bras, fishnet stockings, and tongue studs that glint like a secret when they laugh. They look rumpled, unfocused, and full of lust.
Three guys lope around the stage, affecting a sort of good-humoured machismo. They look around the empty space as if they have to stake a claim. The one in the middle flexes his muscles, curling one arm and then curling the other.
Come on, Bell Island, says the bartender. Come on, Harbour Grace. Step right up. I want you to meet my lovely assistant.
The bartender’s lovely assistant is chubby and acne-faced, but she works a gigantic, pump-action water gun and it’s all over for the guys pretty quick. One of them strips off and his dick wags and swings as he does a triumphant trot around the stage. The bartender shakes his head and looks away.
Then the mood shifts. The floor is suddenly packed tight, maybe a hundred and fifty young men. Where did they all come from?
Get on with the nipple show, someone shouts.
The bartender calls on the bouncer and hands him the water gun. And there is Colleen standing on a plastic milk carton in an ultraviolet light with a white T-shirt that is phosphorescent blue and her teeth flash and the bouncer circles her and nods his head appreciatively, playing the crowd.
Boléro bursts from the overhead speakers and laughter goes up and the bouncer takes a camouflage hat from his back pocket and fits it on his head, and this makes everybody laugh too, he gets down on one knee in front of Colleen and pretends to squint through crosshairs on the plastic Uzi.
Then he sprays her face and the water is cool and she turns her head. Her mouth is open and the water sprays into her mouth and she looks like a kid with her face all scrunched up and blinking hard to get the water out of her eyes and then he drills her breasts with steely ropes of water.
The crowd presses closer and Colleen writhes under the