Chapter Twelve

When Nicole arrived at Body Language on Friday night Paulina was already there, sitting at a table on the far side of the stage. Paulina had on tight black jeans, thigh-high boots, and a jade green blouse that brought out the green in her eyes. Her short black hair was slicked back, emphasizing her impossibly high cheekbones. She looked like an exotic jungle cat.

“Hi,” Nicole said. “How long have you been here?”

“About ten minutes.”

She slid into the chair next to her. “Are you the first one here?”

Paulina didn’t answer. She was staring hypnotically at the stage, watching a blonde hook her leg around the pole and swing. The girl was arching so far back that the ends of her hair touched the floor.

“She’s very bendy,” Nicole marveled.

Paulina laughed. “Yeah.”

Nicole’s eyes roamed around the room, taking in the décor. Thick velvet drapes the color of maraschino cherries hung from the doors and walls. All wall space was occupied by paintings. Some were artistic and tame, and others were raunchy and explicit. Sort of like Penthouse meets Georgia O’Keefe.

There was only one other table of women. The rest of the patrons were men, mostly upscale in business suits, ties removed, shirts open at the collar. A few of them wore wedding bands.

Nicole saw Wanda come in and waved her over. Her hair was freshly dyed red and her long nails were done in a French manicure.

“Well, don’t you look nice,” Nicole told her.

“Thanks. I’ve felt so crappy lately I had to do something to make myself feel better.”

Wanda sat down on the other side of Paulina. “This place looks like a bordello. Where’s Annie?”

“Not here yet,” Paulina said.

“I need a drink,” Wanda declared, as a girl in a corset the same color and fabric as the drapes came over to take their order.

“Hello, I’m Camille. Can I get you ladies something to drink?”

Wanda rummaged around in her purse, pulled out her wallet and removed one of her credit cards. “Can we start a tab? One Screwdriver, please.”

“I’m sorry,” Camille said, “but we’re all-nude, so we don’t serve alcohol here. We have tea and coffee, bottled water, sodas, and pineapple or orange juice.”

“Ain’t that a bitch,” Wanda said with a snort. “Horny men have to ruin it for all of us. I guess I’ll have a soda. Whatever you have that’s diet.”

“Black tea for me, with cream,” Nicole said.

“Green tea,” Paulina said. “Here comes Annie.”

“Thanks a lot for waiting for me, Nicole,” Annie said when she reached the table.

“What are you talking about?” Nicole asked, twisting around to face Annie. She was in work attire: skirt, jacket, button-down blouse, sensible pumps. Definitely not strip-club attire.

“I thought we were supposed to meet at your place and come here together.”

“When did we decide that?”

“Earlier in the week, on the phone. Don’t you remember?”

Nicole shook her head. “Sorry. It’s been a rough week.”

“Tell me about it,” she said, plopping into the remaining empty chair. “I’m so desperate to sell a house I bought a statue of St. Joseph and buried it in the backyard of my most expensive listing.”

“What’s that supposed to do?” Paulina asked.

Annie had taken off her suit jacket and was now removing her blouse to reveal a formfitting sleeveless top. “Beats me. I read this interview with a successful Realtor who swears that burying a statue of St. Joseph on the property will make it sell. I figured I had nothing to lose.” She shimmied out of her stockings and replaced her pumps with stilettos. One snap of her barrette let loose her hair from a twist, and Annie was now in more appropriate attire for a strip club.

Camille returned with their non-alcoholic beverages. Annie looked at them strangely. “Is it Lent?”

“No clothes equals no alcohol,” Wanda said.

Annie grunted. “Club soda, then. Thanks.”

“Hey, is that Ricky Z over there?” Wanda was squinting at a table full of conservative-looking men on the other side of the stage.

“I think so,” Nicole said.

“I’ve never seen him in a suit before,” Annie said. “He looks…respectable.”

“Figures he’d be here,” Paulina said.

Ricky’s gaze wandered in their direction. When he caught them all staring at him, he looked more than a little embarrassed. He excused himself from his party and made his way over to their table.

“Ladies,” he said by way of greeting.

“Well, well. Fancy you being in a place like this,” Wanda said.

Ricky’s expression was sheepish. “I actually don’t like strip clubs. I’m here for business.” He kept both hands in the pants pockets of his dark gray suit.

This was not the fun-loving full-of-bad-pick-up lines loud-shirt-wearing Ricky Z that Nicole had met a few weeks before.

“What kind of business?” Paulina asked him, the expression on her face expecting him to answer pimp.

He hesitated, shifting from one foot to the other. “I’m a, uh, financial planner. Those men are clients of mine and they’re the ones who wanted to come here.”

Annie’s mouth fell open, clearly impressed. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Who wants to tell anyone? It makes me sound so boring. All week I work with a bunch of straitlaced suits. When I go out, I just want to have fun, so please don’t tell anyone what I do for a living or you’ll blow my image.”

There was that image-consciousness thing again. Like Wil wanting to appear as a single guy, when actually he was engaged.

Ugh! Nicole hadn’t thought about him all night. Thinking about him now made her realize how much she missed talking to him.

“Your secret is safe with us.” Annie smiled, looking at Ricky with a mixture of wonder and appreciation.

Uh-oh. Nicole had seen that look in Annie’s eyes before when she was attracted to a man.

“I’d better get back to my group. Next time I run into you, one of you can tell me why you’re all at a female strip club,” Ricky said with a sly wink.

After he left, Annie burst out, “A financial planner! Did you hear that? Who would have thought Ricky would have such a responsible, well-paying job?”

The voice of the male emcee came over the P.A. system. “That was the lovely and sexy Samantha, everyone. Open up your wallets for Samantha.”

Samantha crawled around the stage on her hands and knees, gathering the bills that had been thrown at her.

Wanda cocked her head to one side. “Will you look at her breasts? No sagging, no stretch marks—”

“They’re as fake as her lips, Wanda,” Nicole said.

“Really? Huh.”

“I won’t mention the fact that there isn’t a dancer here over the age of twenty-five,” Paulina said.

Camille brought Annie her club soda. After she had paid, she said, “How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Twenty-two. Why?”

“Just curious.”

Camille licked her lips seductively. “Anybody need anything else?”

“I think we’re good,” Paulina said, giving her a smile. Nicole had never seen Paulina smile as much as she had tonight.

All four of them watched Camille’s tight rear end and long slender legs sashay away. Nicole turned to Annie. “How was your date with Mr. Home Depot?”

Annie’s face contorted. “A disaster. He looked so good on paper. He graduated magna cum laude from Stanford, owns an exquisite home in an area where the property values will never depreciate.”

Nicole took a sip of her now lukewarm tea. “He sounds perfect for you. What happened?”

“He was a complete gentleman at first. We went out three nights this week, which goes against my rule. You all know my rule.”

“No more than two dates in one week,” Paulina recited.

“Exactly. So by the end of the third date, I liked him enough to go home with him.”

“Great!” Wanda said.

“No, not great. He was a freak.”

“A good freak or a bad freak?” Wanda asked, leaning in closer to Annie. “Because everyone has a little freak in them, especially in bed.”

Annie’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not prim and proper when it comes to sex, Wanda. He was just a little too freaky for me.”

“Sooooo?” Nicole prodded.

“So, we were having this very intense make-out session. You know, the kind you used to have in high school?”

They all nodded. They remembered what it was like when long, deep kisses during make-out sessions were all you did.

“I’m still fully clothed, mind you, but he’d somehow managed to slide down his khakis, along with his underwear, without my knowledge—which, don’t get me wrong, was fine by me. I assumed he wanted me to touch him.”

Wanda was becoming impatient. “Yeah, and?”

“But he stops my hand from touching him and he whispers instead, ‘Take your earring off.’ I thought, Wow, how considerate of him. He’s concerned about me losing my earrings in the heat of things.” She gestured to her ears. “I had on the gold ones with the two diamonds.”

They all nodded. They knew them.

“Anyway,” Annie continued, “he says, ‘Just take one off, so I can put my penis against your ear.’”

“He wanted to fuck your ear?” Wanda said.

“I didn’t stay to find out,” Annie said. “I told him I really didn’t want to hear what his penis had to say, and then I got the hell out of there.”

“My ex-husband wanted me to meow, instead of moan in bed while he woofed,” Paulina said.

Nicole laughed. “Seriously?”

Wanda said, “Larry likes it when I step on potato chips in high heels on our tiled kitchen floor.”

“Aren’t there any normal men around?” Nicole asked.

“People get bored,” Wanda said. “They like variety. I know I do, especially when you’ve been married as long as I have. It’s hard not to get stuck in a rut.”

“I’d love to have the chance to get stuck in a rut with someone,” Annie said.

Wanda let out a gurgle of disgust. “Yeah, well, when he still clips his toenails in bed after you’ve repeatedly told him not to, and then you wake up with a sliver of one stuck in your ass, don’t come crying to me.”

A brunette dressed in full nurse’s garb approached their table. “Hi. I’m April,” she said. “Would anyone here like a private dance?”

Nicole looked at Annie, Annie looked to Paulina, and all three of them looked at Wanda. Wanda shrugged and stood up. “Sure. Why the hell not?”

Wanda and April went off to a room in the back of the club. “You don’t think Wanda’s marriage is in trouble, do you?” Annie asked.

“She’s probably just going through a rough patch,” Paulina said, draining the last of her tea.

“I’m sure it’ll pass. It’s normal when you’ve been married for a long time.” Nicole hoped her voice didn’t convey the lack of conviction she felt. She may not have had much faith anymore in the institution of marriage, but unmarried Annie hadn’t been disillusioned yet.

Annie seemed a bit more reassured. “I hope so.”

They watched the dancer on stage who reminded Nicole a lot of Sienna from work. She wore a black lace bra and panties, had short, spiky black hair, and a colorful snake tattoo crawling up the side of her pale upper thigh.

When she ventured over to their side of the stage, she gave Paulina a flirty smile and blew her a kiss.

“I think Elvira likes you,” Annie told Paulina.

“She’s…a client,” Paulina said. “Her name’s Drew.”

Drew fully stripped, and Nicole had to agree with Annie. Paulina was a helluva waxer.

Nicole’s cell phone went off. When she saw it was Wil, her stomach did a double flip. It was pretty sad that the sight of his name could elicit such a reaction in her.

“What do you want, Wil?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“So talk.”

Wil said nothing.

“I’m kind of busy right now,” Nicole told him, “and besides, there isn’t anything you can say to explain away the fact that you’re engaged.”

Annie and Paulina raised their eyebrows at her.

“Listen to me, Nic. It’s complicated—”

“It always is—”

“—and you don’t understand the kind of family Sonia is from. They’re very old-school Catholic, very conservative…”

“Wil, is she or is she not your fiancée?”

“We’ve known each other since high school—”

“She either is or she isn’t, Wil.”

Wanda came back to the table and plopped down. “Whew, she was hot!” she exclaimed, fanning herself.

Annie shushed her. “Nic’s talking to Wil.”

“Is Sonia your fiancée?” Nicole asked again.

“Technically, she is, but—”

Nicole didn’t wait to hear the rest of what he had to say. She’d heard enough. Click. She disconnected the phone.

It rang again almost immediately.

As soon as she picked up, Wil said, “Dude, don’t hang up!”

“Did you just call me ‘dude’?” Click. Nicole hung up on him again and turned her phone off.

“He called me dude,” she said, plunking the cell back into her purse. “The guy can recite poetry, yet he calls me dude.”

Wanda, up until this point, had been staring intensely at her. She came over and pushed Nicole’s hair away from her neck. “Nicole Woods, is that a hickey I see?”

Nicole’s hand flew up to cover it. “Damn! How did you see it? I packed on a ton of concealer and foundation.”

“What’s this about a fiancée?” Paulina asked.

Nicole held her head in her hands. “Wil and I slept together on Tuesday night and on Wednesday, I found out he’s engaged to be married.”

Annie gasped. “How did you find out?”

Wanda waved both hands in front of Nicole’s face. “Forget all that, honey. Was he a great time, or what?”

“I could have told you he was a player,” Annie said.

“What are you talking about? You encouraged me!”

“I never thought you’d listen!”

Nicole threw up her hands. “What about you, Paulina?” she asked. “Do you have anything to say about it?”

“When are they getting married?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Just curious,” was all she said.

“Can we please change the subject?” Nicole pleaded.

“I don’t think so, honey,” Wanda said, her eyes drifting past Nicole’s shoulder. “Your boyfriend’s headed this way.”