20

“The loser mom literally opened the car door and ran off while the car was still moving,” Mom said over the phone. “Why do women like that have kids?” My brother, Alan, was living out of a van with his two-year-old daughter. He’d been crashing at her place, but, unless he could come up with some cash to buy a trailer that he found, he was about to be homeless again. “He’s selling pot,” Mom sighed. “At thirty-eight years old.”

“Put him on the phone, Mom.” I heard her call him from the kitchen and then his voice on the line, “Can you help me out with a few hundred bucks, sis?”

“Yeah, I’ll send it to Mom in a couple days,” I said. The last thing I wanted to do was work an extra shift at the MSC. I was sick of dancing. I was bored, stuck, and lonely. Alan talked fast. He yammered on about a trailer he’d found that he could park in Mom’s driveway until he secured a room to rent. He’d been out of jail almost a year. I was proud of him. The last time he went to jail, a guy died on the property where he was building a fence so he was considered a suspect, and at the time, he’d had a bench warrant. “My life’s going to shit,” he kept talking about his single-dadhood troubles buying diapers and milk. Even though he had applied for GA, the paperwork took a while to process.

“It will get better,” I lied.

At work, I sat in a black chair in the audience waiting for customers to walk through the door. I watched Diana, a sad pinup with red tattoos and a Marilyn Monroe smile, pose to a Sugarcubes song. While she danced, I fantasized about going someplace as far away as possible, a place where I could think. I needed a time-out. I wanted to meditate on a new job, on the possibility of a new job—of a change, of something other than extracting money from men who didn’t give a shit about me outside of our two-for-one lap dance. I wanted to sip espresso and keep my bra on. I wanted to jump out of a plane or trek through a jungle—go shopping for a God instead of cha-cha heels. I felt dirty and tired and depleted from the inside out. Strippers expired after a few years. How long could I keep this up? Did I want to? Would I have to?

I walked up to a man who smelled expensive. I detected expensive cologne like Tom Ford’s Amber and admired his crisp light blue dress shirt. He looked about forty-five with a strong jaw and toned arms. Three hundred for my brother, I thought and sat down. He told me about his dot com gig in Silicone Valley and his ex-wife who he still loved and who lived three houses away from him. They even went to bikram yoga together. He told me of his plans to travel to Romania. “Why Romania?” I asked him.

“I’m going to install cell phone towers,” he said. We talked some more about motorcycles, relationships, and books. He loved Flannery O’Connor and James A. Michener. He listened to Leonard Cohen and Robert Johnson. I’d found a kindred spirit in the snake pit. He grew cuter by the second.

“I need a change,” he said.

“I like you,” I said.

“You say that to everyone.”

“You haven’t paid me enough to lie to you yet,” I said. He reached for his glass of coke and chewed on the red straw. He smiled with his whole face.

“My name’s Peter,” he said.

“Stevie.”

“Let’s go upstairs to those VIP rooms, Stevie.” I felt my head nod like a circus monkey and took his hand in a loose grip. I walked up the carpeted stairs and led him through a beaded curtain.

“Put your weapons on that table,” I said. He chuckled.

He removed his phone, lighter, keys, and wallet next to a Venus de Milo lamp. The room had white fluffy clouds painted on the blue walls. Then he plopped down on the sticky, black vinyl couch.

“Before we begin, I want a promise,” he said and handed me eighty bucks.

“Sounds serious.” I slid my sparkling bikini bottoms to the floor.

“You’re going to let me take you on a motorcycle ride to Santa Cruz to my favorite Italian restaurant.”

“Tonight?”

“No. Tomorrow.” I took his arms and slid his smooth hands over the surface of my chest, belly, and inner thighs. His hands were smoother than I expected. I unbuttoned his shirt and slid my hands inside and over his whole back. My thick hair fell onto his neck.

“Maybe,” I said and propped myself onto his lap so my face and boobs eclipsed everything else. My hands reached behind him and swiped the wallet from the table and the next second—I wished I hadn’t done that. I had to hurry. I counted his money behind his back as he buried his face in my chest.

“You feel really good,” Peter said. He was hard. I was disgusted with myself. I took three crisp twenties from his wallet and swiftly put the wallet back. He was hard.

“You feel good, too.” I unzipped his pants and reached inside his boxers to tickle his balls. I put my hand around his cock and squeezed. I undulated with my hips and kept rubbing his cock.

“Do you want to do another song?” I asked.

“How long have you worked here?” Peter removed my hand and held it, then zipped up his pants.

“Too long,” I said. I wanted to slip into the red black crack between the vinyl couch and the wall and hide there for the rest of the night.

“Dinner. Tomorrow.” He wrote down his number on a book of matches and handed it to me.

“You’re sweet,” I said.

“We’ll leave early, about five,” he said. I pictured myself on the back of his Ducati, with my arms clasped around him tight. My defenses melted for a moment and I felt my ribcage swell. I wanted to stop stealing, but not tonight. Not now. I stiffened as soon as he stood up to leave. I hoped Peter would walk out into the wet night and not forget about me in about ten seconds, like the others.

“I’ll call you at noon,” I said. I pictured him reaching for his wallet to pay the cab driver and noticing that he was missing sixty bucks. He would probably think he spent more on drinks than he’d planned, or that he left some money at home on his desk. He’d think about my tattoos and wide smile and wonder what my real name was. He would wonder if I meant it when I said I would definitely call him because I genuinely liked him. And, although hundreds of men would be wrong to think those things after having a lap dance with me in the VIP area at the MSC, Peter was right.

I called him. I got his answering machine. The man’s voice said I’d reached Brian.