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—Fuck me!

T laughs. He grabs the bill, neatly whiffs half of the other line into his right nostril, half into the left, and hands the bill back to me.

—Clean your plate.

The burn has crept up behind my right eyeball. I look down at the half line left on the toilet tank. I do the remainder into my left nostril and it feels like scrubbing ground glass into an acid burn.

—Jesus! Jesus fuck!

T runs his finger over the specks of crank left on the tank, licks it clean, and does the same with the residue on the inside of his twenty.

—C’mon. Let’s go see my friend.

He leads me out of the bathroom, and I’m already starting to think he was right about the crank because things are really starting to fall into place and make sense to me, who I am, why I’m here, what I’m doing, how, in an amazing way the shit I’m in has given my life purpose and meaning; I mean, here I am, a man with a mission, a real mission, how many people can say the same, I mean, for the first time I can remember, I know exactly who I am, where I am, and what I’m doing.

I’m Henry Thompson.

I’m in a strip club.

And I’m trying to save my parents’ lives.

SHE’S A big girl, probably five ten in her bare feet, but well over that with her fuck-me stripper heels on. She’s all tits and ass and pale white skin, her black hair clipped in a Betty Page. There are Vargas-style pinups tattooed on both of her shoulders and a row of emerald-green, quarter-sized stars trace the edge of her collarbone above the bustline of her black vinyl minidress.

—This is Sandy Candy. Give her three hundred dollars.

The Champagne Lounge is a small, very dark room set off from the main club. I’m half-blind in here, what with the sunglasses still on my face, but I make out big padded chairs, small cocktail tables, and a handful of cowboys getting some serious full-contact lap dances from their strippers.

—Why?

—Because it costs three hundred dollars to be in the Champagne Lounge.

I peel three bills off my depleted bankroll and hand them to Sandy.

—Sandy, what do I get for three hundred?

She tucks the bills into a miniature Hello Kitty! lunch box she’s carrying.

—Tonight, you get to talk to me while I get off my feet.

—That’s some expensive talk.

—I’m known for my conversation.

T takes the little plastic pot box from his pocket and puts it on the table.

—We’re looking for a guy.

She picks up the box and shakes her head.

—Fucking Timmy.

I lean forward.

—Yeah, fucking Timmy, that’s the guy.

SHE WORKS for the same guy as Timmy.

—What the hell is your name anyway?

My name? I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.

—Wade.

I look at T. He keeps his eyes on Sandy.

—His name is Wade.

Sandy nods.

—OK, Wade, here’s the deal. Like I told you, I work for the same guy as Timmy, guy named Terry. What we do, the delivery guys, we show up at work, which is this small warehouse over in Paradise. We don’t all come in together, we have different times. Staggered. Like, I used to see this therapist because I used to be bulimic because I had all these food issues because when I was a baby my mom didn’t want to mess with feeding me so she tied my bottle to the side of the crib like a hamster bottle so I could feed myself, so because of that I saw this therapist and she would stagger the patients so you didn’t have to run into anyone if you didn’t want anyone to know that you were coming to see her. I didn’t care myself, but some of them were freaky about it. Like, I came in early once and this lady was coming out of the office and saw me in the waiting room and the therapist had to come out and ask me to turn my back while this woman left. Weird. So, Terry, the boss, he does the same thing so that not all the delivery guys know each other, which is the way some of them want it in case someone gets busted. But me, I’m pretty mellow, and so is Tim. So we run into each other over there a couple times and find out that we’re both cool. So sometimes if I came up short on my stash, I might call Timmy and he’d front me