Quarry in the Middle - Max Allan Collins [33]
“He’s been here before,” she said. “He’s persistent. He puts his hand down in my front. I don’t do that. I’m not that kind of dancer.”
This was interesting to hear, since the Lucky Devil’s strip club was raunchy indeed—the girls took off their pasties and g-strings at the end of their first song. And they danced to three songs…
“How can I help?”
“We have a V.I.P. room. We can go in there and stay for a while, and maybe he’ll go away or settle for some-body else or something.”
“I do want to help, but what’s the V.I.P. room cost?”
“I’m not going to charge you anything! You’re helping me.”
So I helped her.
She took me into the back room, which was a bunch of easy chairs in open cubicles. No fucking was going on or anything overt; this was not about blow jobs or even hand jobs. This was good, clean, all-American fun, like the so-called dry humps healthy teens used to have under the bleachers at ball games. And I presume they still do, if they have a lick of sense.
The girls kept their pasties on and their g-strings, in the V.I.P. room, but otherwise were naked, and danced for a guy for a song (ten bucks for one, I gathered, twenty-five for three), most of it grinding in his lap or shoving her fake titties in his face and rubbing and rubbing and rubbing some more.
My little blonde did rub her cupcakes in my face a couple times, but mostly she just danced, or straddled my lap and didn’t really grind. We just talked. Here’s some of it, shouted over loud piped-in music:
“What’s your name?”
“Candy.”
Bow Wow Wow was doing “I Want Candy.” I swear.
“Stage name?”
“Real. Candace.”
“You go to school, Candace?”
“I wish. I wanna go to beauty college, but it’s expensive.”
“You local or on the road?”
“Local. Can’t travel. I got a kid.”
“Really?”
“Uh huh. Little boy.”
“What’s his name?”
“Sam. He’s five. He goes to kindergarten next year.”
“His daddy looking after him?”
“He doesn’t have one. A girl who works days, at the grain elevator? She sits with Sam till she goes to work.”
“You don’t look old enough to have a five-year-old.”
“I was fifteen.”
“Makes you twenty?”
“I’m twenty. You’re nice.”
“You’re nice, too, Candace.”
There was quite a bit more, but that’s as interesting as it got, and anyway you get the drift.
She smelled good—most of the dancers were doused in what used to be called dimestore perfume, but she had on Giorgio, or a reasonable facsimile. She had the usual heavy makeup, clownish cheeks, blue eyeshadow, pink lip gloss, but that was par for the course these days even for non-stripper girls. Even though she didn’t grind, I had a raging hard-on. My shorts were in ruins.
Another stripper, a skinny brunette with big but real breasts, came over and whispered in Candace’s ear, then went away.
Candace beamed at me. “Lover boy’s picked somebody else out! He’s on his second table dance already. I think I’m in the clear. You’re very sweet, Jack.”
I had told her my name was Jack.
Then she gave me a kiss.
Long and kind of real.
After that, she gave me a more legit V.I.P. room treatment for the rest of the song (“Hit Me with Your Best Shot”), and then led me back into the strip club. I tried to give her a twenty but I swear (unbelievable, but it happened) she wouldn’t take it.
I probably could have bought a legit table dance from her at that point, but I’d had all I could take. I went and sat in the rear of the smoky, mirrored room, focused on fake tits and disco lights until my erection went down, then wandered back into the middle bar. No more beer for me. I asked for and got a Diet Coke.
It was almost one, and I had a game to play.
Chapter Seven
About the same square footage as the strip club’s V.I.P. lounge, the private poker room was tucked behind the Lucky Devil’s main bar, though with no access from there. And of course the way in from the casino was guarded by one of those ubiquitous bouncers on boxes.
You’ve heard of wall-to-wall carpeting—well, this room had carpeting on the walls, plush, cream-color stuff, much thicker than the more normal-pile (but same color) carpet