by Damon Suede
Conscious of the landscape lighting, he clambered quickly into the thin cotton. A breeze chilled the water on his dark skin and finally his erection faltered.
On the nearest umbrella table, a half-empty matchbook and a mashed pack of cigarettes lay, four left inside. Thank you, Jesus.
He wasn’t a smoker, but he did love a smoke. And in the absence of healthy sex, it’d do him an unhealthy amount of good. He deserved some kind of treat for being a good boy. Peach’s voice in his head muttered permission, Halos can turn into nooses.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he popped the match with his thumbnail and lit one. He sucked the acrid fumes into his lungs; the forbidden rush of nicotine came sweet and swift. He only let himself smoke half before he doused it in the pool and threw the wet butt in the trash.
Squirt. Swim. Smoke. Sleep. “Sweet.”
Now at least he resembled a normal human being.
With a squeeze of guilt, he plucked the cigarette and matches from the table. Fair game. They’d be tossed by maintenance if he didn’t rescue them.
Shivering, he ducked back inside, scooping up a towel from the cabinet. He scraped his torso with it quickly and wrapped it around his waist. His faded skin stank of chlorine. He tucked the borrowed cigarettes on the top of the cabinet for the next time he took a dip. Just in case.
Climbing the staircase warmed his muscles and, back upstairs, the apartment seemed as sleepy and still as it had twenty minutes ago. The stubborn tent in his towel guaranteed another dream if he wasn’t careful. He needed a woman to take the pressure off. Time for his long-overdue night out or his laundry would start getting freaky.
Only when he passed through the living room did he see the lowball glass Andy must have left on the table. Spying on me.
No harm done, and no definite proof, but next time Ruben wanted to sneak down for a wee-hour dip, he needed to watch out for a witness.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“BUSINESS IS pleasure.”
Ruben snorted from the other side of the limousine. “That’s not how I heard it, boss.”
Sunday night, nine-ish, and they were headed over to some titty bar on East Sixtieth Street.
“C’mon, Rube. In my experience, if you don’t mix business with pleasure, you don’t get much of either.” Andy patted the limo seat. “I’m expected to entertain clients when they’re in town.”
“Like card tricks?” Ruben rolled his eyes.
“No. Well, not a lot.” Andy grinned. “Strip clubs mostly. Broadway. Big games sometimes, but strippers are an easy sell for men and women. They come to Manhattan and want to get naughty. Throw cash around. I thought you might wanna come along for the jollies.”
Ruben nodded. Steak and ladies sounded good to him.
He had never ridden in a stretch limo. Some kind of light-tube wrapped the ceiling, and one whole side of the car was taken up with an entertainment center: TV, stereo, and mini bar. Damn car was nicer than most houses he’d lived in and almost the size of his brother’s walkup apartment. Jesus. If it had a urinal he could live in it.
Andy caught him scanning the plush interior and blew his floppy bangs off his forehead. “I know, right? So fucking tacky.”
Ruben did not comment, and he kept his unsophisticated admiration to himself.
“Jaded has a contract with a car service and the stretch comes with their ‘lube-the-rubes’ package.” Andy leaned back and patted the leather upholstery. “The muggles love it.”
“Hell to parallel.”
“No kidding.” Andy winked. “But he never parks. We got him for the night. He’ll circle the block if need be. Somebody spiked my tires once, but now we have combat tires installed. Idiots.”
“Uh, great.” Ruben stared at the blank partition wondering if the kid could hear them still, if anyone had checked his papers, if anyone but him saw the risks.
“At Hobson/Goldberg, we kept entertainment accounts at three clubs—” Andy glanced at him and then explained, “H/G was the boiler room I worked out of college before I set up Apex on my own.” Andy glanced at him, up-down. “Mostly I go to Jaded now because it’s close and they have a grill. The girls are smart.”
“Oh.” Meaning he’d fucked some of them. Ruben looked out the window as they crawled down Park.
Andy grinned impishly. “Don’t tell me you never hit a strip joint.”
“I didn’t say that. I just wasn’t expecting to do it with my boss.”
The limo slowed in front of a big hotel with yellow bunting. A doorman opened the limo door, and a man and a woman climbed aboard the titty express. Swell.
“Ruben, meet the Lamptons. Elliot, Christy?” Andy shook his hand and bussed her cheek, then introduced Ruben as “My associate, Ruben Oso.” And it did sound better than “my hired greaseball.”
Fair enough. Hopefully no one would turn to him and talk about the stock market.
For a high roller, Elliot looked like a refrigerator in a conservative suit, bulldog head shaved bullet shiny and his knuckles scarred from some kind of manual labor. For all that, he acted shy. Like Ruben, he had resting thug face. He’d probably learned to aw-shucks his way through life to keep himself out of trouble.
Christy laughed loud. “He’s all bark, I promise.” She kissed her stocky husband with real affection. Even in her trim suit, she was a bombshell with a juicy bosom and a glossy tumble of mahogany hair. She wet her lips.
Elliot shrugged and nodded at Ruben, offering his hand to shake. Custom suit on a country boy. This guy knew what it felt like to have folks pick fights with your face.
The limo made a wide, unwieldy turn onto East Sixtieth and crept up the block, stopping in front of a glowing door and weather-beaten red carpet stripe lolling on the sidewalk like an old tongue. The driver helped Christy out and the men followed, Andy emerging last.
JADED, the sign said over the carpet and a pair of elaborate green doors about fifteen feet high. As they approached, Ruben could see that a single dragon was carved across both doors, scaly coils covering every square inch.
“Mr. Bauer!” The lanky bouncer at the front door obviously knew Andy and pumped his hand. His skin was black and his nose crooked and flattened by old fights. He stood seven feet tall easily.
Andy shook his hand. “Mamadou.”
“They with you?” He looked down at his clipboard.
Andy nodded and palmed him a folded twenty. “Dinner then drinks.”
Ruben stayed in place behind the Lamptons. He’d been a bouncer for long enough to read the signs. Andy came plenty and tipped even more.
“I gotcha.” The bouncer grabbed the door and hauled half of the dragon open. The sign said “Open every day from noon & four a.m.” And four?
Ruben had never made enough money to hang out in strip clubs. The girls paid attention to the big spenders, aka whales, who’d drop a couple grand in a night. Everything about Andy—the tips, the duds, the top-shelf liquor—identified him as a whale.
The hallway inside was dim, leading back to pulsing dance music, and a short run of stairs led up to a mezzanine restaurant called Raw. Again Andy tipped the hostess as she led them back to a private dining room. The menu seemed to be Pan-Asian.
Elliot laughed. “Tonight we get the tab, Bauer. That Dubai deal made us a helluva lot last quarter.” He flapped his lapels, and Ruben caught sight of the shoulder holster and a gleam of gunmetal.
Why was a tourist wearing a concealed weapon to a titty bar? Did his wife and Andy know he was carrying?
Andy turned to the Lamptons. “You two wanted sushi? I ordered nyotaimori.”
“Please.” Elliot nodded eagerly at his wife. For all his folksiness, the linebacker frame seemed menacing now.
“Not for me.” Ruben took a pass on the fish and ordered a rare Kobe steak the size of a futon. The blood would do him good.
Then a waiter rolled out a long platter with a naked girl spattered with colorful lumps. Her chestnut hair twisted in a shiny knot over a radiant g
irl-next-door mug.
Apparently, Andy had called ahead to order body sushi, which turned out to be raw fish served on a naked woman… as in, this poor chick was the actual serving tray. Ruben had a hard enough time eating raw seafood, but the thought of some desperate coed holding her breath while he jabbed her with chopsticks made him feel awful. His rare sirloin came about twenty minutes later.
Their naked platter’s name was Heather, and Andy had requested her, because they joked about past parties and one funny banker from Brazil. To her credit, she seemed happy and relaxed, but through the entire meal Ruben wondered if she had kids and what she told her parents about her paycheck as a living dish. She kept teasing Ruben about trying some spicy tuna. He laughed, but didn’t take the bait. “Does it get weird having people eat off you?”
“Hmm.” She tipped her head. “Ticklish, yeah.” Her tongue was pierced, and her lower lip was painted a hard brick red.
Andy toasted some contract, building a couple sky castles. Elliot beamed but waved off the promises, and Christy chimed in, “As long as the outcome is income, we’re good.”
After Andy and the Lamptons had eaten the rolls and strips from her shoulders and breasts, Heather propped herself up, proving herself knowledgeable about fish and food in general. Her boyfriend worked at a hedge fund that Andy knew. The money from this gig was putting her through dental school. She was so charming that Ruben forgot she was naked.
After dinner, Christy suggested they skip dessert and have drinks in the club with the dancers. Her eyes glittered with vodka and bravado. Elliot watched her with the predatory gleam he’d hidden before. Another shark, like Andy, and he hid it just as well.
They bid Heather farewell and made their way back downstairs toward the music.
The room was underlit with recessed teal neon, all the brightness focused on the brass pole and the black stage. The chairs were black leather with backs like deep horseshoes. As Andy led them across the chromed space, he tipped everyone, even before they’d had a chance to serve: doormen, maître d’, bartenders, waitresses. He slid folded twenties to each hand he passed. When he caught Ruben staring, he shrugged. “Deductible.”
Ruben raised his eyebrows and kept his yap shut. When you look like an idiot, your client looks like an idiot.
“Relax. It’s just money, Rube: paper printed with presidents on it so we can take the stuff we want.” He turned to the Lamptons. “Ruben is a fiscal conservative.”
Ha ha.
The crowd nodded in spastic unison, eyes glued to the two redheads on the pole. The girls danced expertly, but their expressionless faces and slick skin turned them into matched dolls. Seemed likely that at some point Andy would just take out his plutonium card and buy them both.
Titty bars were the same all over. Walk through the door and you swam back into the same tank. A pecking order, sure, and the frills, but they were a big, baited aquarium designed to filter money out of lonely suckers swimming in the same dark water. All business.
Dancers in bright, stretchy gowns floated around the room like lazy fighting fish. Andy nodded to several, slipping them twenties as they passed. Obviously he spent plenty of nights camped out here. That explained the social life at least. The chicks he dated probably came here and got lap dances too, hard-faced VH1 girlfriends who made out with each other while you fed bills into their slots.
In Miami, Ruben had always been invisible in strip clubs; now the ladies scrutinized his clothes, his build, his skin, probably trying to make sense of him. Andy had turned him into a whale too. These ladies saw all the outward flags of a big spender.
Sitting in their VIP booth, Ruben felt powerful, relaxed, content in a way he’d forgotten was possible. Presto! Suddenly Ruben was fifteen, flush, and could have any girl he wanted. Suddenly, his cock was a two by four and his wallet fat with hundreds. Change-O.
Andy probably felt like this every minute of every day.
Based on the tipping, Elliott looked to be a serious ass man. The gun under his armpit made no more appearances, but Ruben kept spotting the bulge every time he lifted a fifty toward the ladies.
If nothing else, Manhattan made for some serious competition in Stripperland. No daydreaming in here. These ladies knew their shit and worked like hell, which made for a slick, satisfying vibe.
On his right, Andy raised his arm to signal someone. She waved at Ruben and looked happy to see him. If Andy had a spotlight on him then Ruben caught the spill. This must be what a quarterback’s best friend feels like, so much pussy it splashes over the rim onto lecherous bystanders.
The Jaded girls were hot, for sure, but in that “grown in a lab” way that made Ruben feel ugly. All the hair was a weave, the eyes contacts, and their tits rock-hard implants with discreet dimpled scars. Most of the dancers were rocking stacked Lucite heels that hurt to look at. Even the makeup had evolved into an exaggerated uniform war paint that made them all look like cloned sisters in some satanic cock-mangling sorority.
Maybe the synthetic gear made them feel safer, armor that never came off, but sexy it wasn’t.
Ruben preferred natural tits and hair he could touch. His favorite thing about sex was the nudity. Not the naughty bits, but the vulnerability that kept anyone from hiding from each other… exposing desire to each other and then doing something about it.
Jerking off had never appealed to him because it had none of the crazy give-take that got him off. Getting his dick wet felt fine, but if that was the bottom line then why didn’t everyone just fuck prime rib? No. The best sex was more like picking a lock. You had to get right down in it together till the tumblers lined up. Snick-snick-snick. Make war and make peace.
The Lamptons made racy faces at each other. Christy seemed to dig the atmosphere even more than her husband, and they both knew how to spend cash. Maybe the gun was a Texas thing.
For some reason, the polished sleaze made Ruben feel superconscious of Andy’s contradictions more than anything else. He seemed so wholesome and polite, surrounded by all the synthetic sex appeal. No way could he cut loose like this in public, descending from his apple-pie throne to slide in the muck with the commoners. A pulse ticked in his throat. His brow pinked and damp. Something about seeing his basic lusts laid bare hypnotized Ruben.
Just a guy.
All the money and bling didn’t take away his humanity. He still needed to fuck and piss and sleep, even with his genius for numbers. He ate cereal and made bad jokes. He got lonely, scared, and stupid. For better and worse, he’d earned his life.
They were more alike than Ruben wanted to admit.
He signaled a cute waitress (real tits) for a sixteen-dollar Diet Coke. Maybe something was wrong with him after all. Here he was, pressed on all sides by some of the hottest tail on the East Coast, and all he wanted was to go for a jog and chat with his boss back at the Iris.
Ruben sighed. At least the music had a bass line. Frankly, most pop music sounded like it had been produced on a touch-tone phone. The DJ had mad skills, obviously. The transitions were seamless and the music veered clear of the generic humpa-thumpa he’d expected. Almost as good as some of the gay clubs in the Keys, and those mixes were off the hook. Coming from Miami, Ruben tended to be snobby about mixing. He had loved clubbing, back in the thirsty era when he had money and years to burn.
Ruben had expected Lampton to be the sort of flat-assed goober who got off on plastic titties while he looked down his nose. No reason, but the combination of his twang, wide-eyed enthusiasm, and the battered wedding band.
Zzzzzt. Wrong answer.
After the second round of Stoli Elit and a long, gross anecdote about the boarding school vice-principal he and Andy both hated, Lampton turned out to have a snappy sense of humor. They moved down to the stage so Christy could tuck bills into G-strings.
Ruben stared after them.
Bigshots in their own right, the pair of ’em, used to taking what they wanted. In the chair, Elliot’s build seemed more massive, but if the ladies
noticed, they didn’t seem to mind. Everyone ignored the obvious bulge of the weapon under his armpit, so maybe that was normal. His crisp fifties kept plenty of attention on his wife even after she sat with him.
Andy caught Ruben looking. “You got yourself all ready to disapprove of the Texans and they shocked the shit out of you.”
Did he mean the gun? “Guilty.”
Andy raised his eyebrows. “We’re not all uptight.”
“I never said uptight.” Just thought it.
“Relax, bud. You’re off duty.”
Andy sounded sincere, but Ruben knew he’d have a hard time relaxing in this kind of club. For once, the booze wasn’t tempting even a little.
“You having a good time?”
Ruben nodded automatically before he actually answered the question to himself. Was he having a good time? Yeah. “Better than I’d expected.” He could even admit to himself that the good time was Andy.
Andy smiled gently at him a beat longer than anyone should have. “You look tired, Señor Oso.”
“Long day.”
“Your boss works you too hard.” A smile played on his lips.
Ruben shook his head. “Nah. I live off my investments.”
“Wise man.”
“Work is my hobby, staying sober is my job.” He raised his drink at Andy.
A curvy girl with a mane of wavy auburn hair sauntered over to press her face against Andy’s. Her fingernails were gunmetal and matched her thong.
“Trish… Delish.” Andy grinned.
Trish was compact like a dancer, but her body was soft, even the obligatory boob job.
“Hey.” Ruben nodded some kind of permission.
Andy smiled at her like she was making a joke. She probably knew him plenty. “This is my buddy Ruben Oso. Ven-Cap badass from Colombia.”
The casual arrogance in Andy’s voice gave Ruben that same snaky feeling he’d had the day they met, on the street and in Charles’s office. This guy lied as easily as breathing. He was, at the end of the day, a salesman, slicker than spit on ice. Trouble was, the longer Ruben spent breathing his expensive air the more natural it all seemed. He was starting to want things he could never have.