Strip Tease

by Carl Hiaasen

  “Now that you mention it.” She sounded worried. “Are you going to fire me?”

  “Oh, worse than that,” said Mordecai. “Please sit down.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Something that will give me great pleasure. I’m going to tell you exactly what you ate.”

  Visitation day. Erin waited under cloudy skies at Holiday Park. She chose a bench near the public tennis courts where Chris Evert had learned to play. Today it was a doubles match among French Canadian tourists. They had the whitest skin and the bluest veins that Erin had ever seen.

  Darrell Grant always kept Erin waiting because it gave him a feeling of power, knowing how she lived for these afternoons. Today he arrived forty-five minutes late, pushing Angela in a wheelchair.

  “Momma, look what we got at the hospital!”

  Erin lifted her daughter to the sidewalk and told Darrell Grant to get lost.

  “How’s your butt-ugly boyfriend?” he said.

  “Momma’s got a boyfriend?” asked Angela.

  “No, baby, I don’t.”

  Erin was furious that Darrell was using Angie in his wheelchair heists. If he were caught, the consequences would be terrible—the state authorities would take the little girl for good. Erin felt perfectly entitled to scream at Darrell and tell him what a reckless idiot he was, but she didn’t want to spoil her brief time with Angela.

  Darrell Grant said, “I see you got new tires.”

  Erin ignored him. She checked her daughter’s dress and socks and underpants, to make sure they were clean. For a sociopath, Darrell was good about doing the laundry.

  “Take care of my pretty little partner,” he said, and pushed the empty wheelchair back to his van, where he waited. On visitation days, he never let Erin and Angela out of his sight. Given an opportunity, Erin surely would try to run away with the girl. Darrell knew it for a fact.

  Erin held her daughter’s hand and they began to walk.

  “How are you, baby?”

  “Just OK.”

  “Are you making new friends?”

  “I spent Friday at Aunt Rita’s. She’s got a real wolf!”

  Terrific, thought Erin. Crazy Rita and her cuddly carnivores. “Stay away from the wolf, Angela. They can be mean sometimes.”

  “She said I can have one of the babies, Momma.”

  “No, we’ll get you a real puppy—”

  “But Daddy said no. He said maybe a bird.”

  “A bird?” Erin said. Just what every four-year-old wants.

  “A talking one,” Angie said. “Like Big Bird, only littler.”

  “Would you like that?”

  “He said we can call it Humpy. Is that a good name?”

  “No,” said Erin. “Not really.”

  They walked the perimeter of the park. Darrell Grant followed slowly in his van. Erin fixed a picnic under the trees. She and Angela ate peanut butter sandwiches and sang songs from “The Electric Company.” A gray squirrel appeared and they fed it Cheez Doodles.

  At ten minutes to three, Darrell began honking the horn. When Erin didn’t react, he leaned on it annoyingly. The blare drowned the gentle sounds of the park. The Canadians stopped playing tennis and began cursing at Darrell Grant in French.

  “For God’s sake,” said Erin.

  “Is Daddy making that noise?”

  “Im afraid so.” Erin gave her daughter a hug and a kiss. She smelled Darrell’s goddamn cigarettes in the girl’s hair.

  “Momma, I forgot to tell you.”

  “What, honey?”

  “I lost all my dolls.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “When we moved. Daddy said he couldn’t find them.”

  “I’ll get you some new ones,” Erin promised. She would never reveal to Angela what her father had done. Such a thing could not be explained.

  “I love you, Angie.”

  “Love you, too, Momma. Can I tell Daddy about the new dolls?”

  “Let’s keep it a surprise.”

  From Agent Cleary, Erin had learned the following basic information about Jerry Killian: he was five-foot-nine, 140 pounds, 48 years old and divorced. He worked as a videotape editor at the local CBS affiliate. He was a registered Democrat. He drove a 1988 Chevrolet Caprice. He purchased his eyeglasses from a discount optician. He subscribed to Newsweek, Harper’s, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Consumer Reports and Hustler. His ex-wife recently opened a macrame shop in a suburb of Atlanta, and he co-signed the loan. They had two daughters at Georgia State University. He owned season tickets to the Miami Dolphins. He rented every movie that Debra Winger ever made. He carried a $3,000 credit limit on his Visa card. In the fall he went trout fishing in western Montana, and always rented a compact car. In his entire life he had never been arrested for anything.

  And he lived in Apartment 317 at 4560 Green Duck Parkway, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

  Erin phoned ahead. Killian was flabbergasted to hear her voice. He put on a coat and a tie to meet her at the door.

  “In my purse,” said Erin, “is a loaded gun.”

  “So be it.”

  “I’m here on business only.”

  “Understood,” Killian said.

  She had expected his apartment to be tidy, and it was. The place smelled of Lemon Pledge. They sat in opposing chairs at an oval-shaped dining table.

  “I just wanted to thank you,” she said. “That music you suggested is great for stage dancing.”

  Killian glowed. “You tried it? I’m so pleased.”

  “You should come by the club to see. I told Shad it’s fine if you do.”

  “Really?” He looked wistful. “Maybe later down the road.”

  “Why later? Why not now?”

  “The deal is cooking. Part of the agreement is for me to steer clear of the Eager Beaver.” Killian paused. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I miss you so much.”

  Here we go, Erin thought. Get the hose.

  She said, “May I call you Jerry?”

  “I’d be in heaven if you did—”

  “Jerry, look. I need to know more about this so-called deal. It’s my life we’re talking about. My little girl.”

  “Naturally you don’t trust me.”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “Erin,” he said, “I would do nothing to put you or your daughter in jeopardy. My devotion is complete and enduring and pure. I am consumed by it, day and night. I am lost in love.”

  Erin’s heart didn’t flutter even slightly. She said, “Jerry, who is this congressman?”

  “His district is elsewhere. You wouldn’t know his name.”

  “Try me. I read the newspapers.”

  “The name is unimportant,” Killian said. “The key fact is, he’s got a serious problem with the ladies. I’d feel uncomfortable going into details.”

  “Oh please.”

  “I’m a gentleman. That’s how I was raised.”

  “And I’m a stripper, Jerry. Once I had a customer eat the G-string off the crack of my ass—chew it up, swallow it, wash it down with Southern Comfort. Then he burped the elastic.”

  Killian’s ears turned red.

  “The point is,” Erin said, “nothing a man does can shock me. I have an ex-husband who carves his initials into other people’s scalps. Is your congressman that much fun?”

  “I’m not protecting him,” Jerry Killian said. “I’m protecting you.”

  “In case there’s trouble?”

  Killian got up and said, “Come with me.”

  Erin followed him through the apartment. The purse was tucked tightly under her left arm, so she could feel the gun through the fabric. Killian opened the door to a small guest bedroom, which he had converted to a private hall of fame. The walls were decorated with publicity pictures of local nude dancers. Interestingly, the photographs were all standard head-and-shoulder shots; one could have shown them to a kindergarten without fear of corruption. Erin’s publicity photo was framed in wood
and centered prominently in the pantheon. It was illuminated by its own brass lamp.

  Scanning his collection, Killian said, “Nothing is more beautiful than a woman’s smile.”

  “Oh really,” said Erin. “That’s why you come to the Eager Beaver—for our smiles?”

  “It’s the portal to true love and serenity. Without a smile, what’s the rest of it? Just boobs and a patch of hair.”

  “Jerry?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re giving me the creeps.”

  “Well, Erin, I’m lost. I admit it.”

  “You know all these girls?”

  “I knew them. Befriended them. And whenever I could, I helped them.” He pointed to a platinum blonde with a sharp nose and spiky greased eyelashes. “Allison had a substance problem. I got her into a very fine program, and today she’s clean.”

  Erin asked if she was still dancing.

  “No, she’s not.” Killian stepped close to the photograph, contemplating each detail as if it were a Monet. “A week after she got out of treatment, she married a tree surgeon and moved to Tallahassee. I never even got a postcard.” He turned to Erin and brightened. “But that’s all right! I ask for nothing.”

  “Except a smile.”

  “When it’s from the heart.”

  Erin turned off the light and directed Killian back to the living room. She sat beside him on a deacon’s bench, and spoke to him as if he were a small boy.

  “This is not a game,” she said.

  “I heard they call me Mr. Peepers.”

  “We all like you, Jerry. It’s an affectionate nickname.”

  “I do have a frail and bookish appearance.”

  “Scholarly is the way I’d describe it.”

  “Don’t be fooled, Erin. I can play hardball.”

  She took both his hands—a standard move, to keep them from wandering. “Exactly what’ve you got on the congressman?

  Killian said he couldn’t tell her. He pulled one hand free and made a zipping motion across his lips.

  “It must be good,” Erin coaxed, “to make him lean on a judge.”

  “I can’t discuss it,” Killian repeated. “It’s man’s work.”

  Erin sighed and relaxed her grip. “Here’s my problem, Jerry. Do I believe your story? Do I get my hopes up for nothing? The whole thing with Angie and Darrell has been a nightmare.”

  “I understand,” he said. “I read through the files at the courthouse. That’s how I got the judge’s name.”

  “If I knew more, maybe I could help set this up.”

  “It’s set up just fine,” said Killian.

  He wouldn’t budge. Usually a soft hand-holding would do the trick, but not this time. Erin rose and said, “All right, Jerry. How long will it take?”

  “I’m expecting a phone call this afternoon.”

  “Congressmen work on Sundays?”

  “They do when their careers are at stake.”

  Erin stood at the door, searching for a humane way to say what had to be said. “If this works out, if I get Angela back … well, I can’t give you anything, Jerry. You should know that.”

  “By anything, you mean—”

  “You know what I mean,” Erin said. “I’ll be eternally grateful for your kindness. That’s the most I can promise.”

  “Do I look crushed?”

  “Slightly.”

  “Well, who wouldn’t be?” He chuckled softly. “I bet you’ll quit the club, too.”

  “Absolutely. Once I get Angie back, I’m gone.”

  “Then there’s one thing you can do for me.” He went to the stereo and picked through a stack of CDs. “Just a second,” he called to Erin. “Please!”

  Soon the apartment filled with heavy rock—“She’s Got Legs,” by ZZ Top. Erin gave Killian a look of mock disapproval.

  “Let me guess,” she said.

  “Do you mind?”

  “Just one dance,” Erin said. Urbana would’ve wrung her neck.

  The first time she went on stage at the club, Erin vomited before and after the performance. Urbana Sprawl took her aside: “It’s like wing-walking, OK? You’re fine, long as you don’t look down.” Monique Jr. hugged her and whispered: “It’s a slumber party, hon. That’s how come we’re in our nighties.” And Monique Sr. said: “Quit crying, for God’s sake. Bobby Knight is at table nine!”

  It had taken Erin a week to find a method that worked. Whenever she froze and found herself asking why—why am I doing this!—she thought of Angie. Once on stage, the trick was to dream herself away with the music. That’s why she was so picky about the selections: the songs had to mean something. If things felt right, the awful anxiety would melt away and Erin would become wondrously detached from the surroundings. She’d forget she was jumping around in her birthday suit before a roomful of drunks. In Erin’s fantasy, the men in the audience were cheering the high kicks and fluid turns, and not the shape of her ass.

  Smiling was a struggle at first, because Erin wasn’t particularly ecstatic about the work. Morever, she’d noticed that many of the customers didn’t smile, either. Instead they watched with studious and impassive expressions, like judges at a cattle auction. Again, Urbana had offered valuable counsel: “A nice smile beats forty-inch jugs any day!”

  So Erin made herself smile, and the money got better. The men came forward and folded ten-dollar bills into her garters or the elastic of her G-string. Many customers were nervous about standing so close, and plainly terrified of touching a foreign thigh. Erin was constantly reminded of the ridiculous power of sex; routine female nakedness reduced some men to stammering, clammy-fingered fools. For the bolder clientele, Shad’s spooky presence discouraged groping and crude solicitation.

  Erin had conquered her shyness in about a month. Unlike some of the dancers, she would never be totally comfortable on stage. There was a small thrill to the tease, but no hot rush from the cheers and whistles of strangers. By contrast, the two Moniques loved the boisterous attention, because it made them feel like glamorous stars. The wilder the audience, the wilder their performance. Erin didn’t play to the crowd. The music was her master, and also her escape. When Van Morrison sang, Erin was dancing in the moonlight.

  But that was in the club, not in a customer’s apartment.

  Still, she wasn’t afraid. Mr. Peepers obviously was helpless in her presence; he would have inserted his tongue in a light socket if she’d told him to. Erin further neutralized the man by asking about the sepia portrait of a curly-haired woman, gazing up at them from the credenza. It was, as Erin had surmised, Jerry’s dear departed mother. Erin felt safer under the late Mrs. Killian’s watchful eye.

  Killian cleared the oval table and helped Erin climb up. She handed him her sandals and her purse. By then Killian had already forgotten about the gun, the congressman, the blackmail, what day it was …

  The wood was slick and cool under Erin’s feet. She danced for four minutes and never even removed her sweater. Killian was dazzled. “Splendid,” he said over and over, to himself.

  As the song ended, he tucked something into the back pocket of Erin’s jeans. It wasn’t a tip.

  At the door she gave him a sisterly peck on the cheek. Killian jumped at the moment of contact. He said, “If I have good news, you’ll see me outside the club.”

  “Be careful,” said Erin, although she wasn’t seriously concerned. The worst that could happen was that the congressman would tell Killian to blow off.

  He waved fondly from the doorstep as Erin walked to her car. She waved back and gave him one of her best smiles. She had decided that he was basically a good person.

  When Erin got home, she took the note from her pocket and unfolded it on the kitchen counter. It said:

  THANK YOU FOR SAVING MY SOUL.

  That night, Erin worked a double shift at the Eager Beaver in the hopes that Jerry Killian would show up. He didn’t. The following morning, she phoned his apartment and got no answer. When she tried the TV station, t
he news director told her that Mr. Killian had gone on vacation. He was expected back in two weeks.

  At the club, Erin switched back to her familiar dancing routines—Clapton, Creedence Clearwater, the Allman Brothers. Soon she got lost in the blues guitar, and the world seemed like a better place, even though it wasn’t.

  She never saw Jerry Killian again.

  9

  On the evening of September sixteenth, at a tavern called the Lozeau Lounge in western Montana, the Skyler brothers drank six beers apiece, threw darts at a stuffed elk and argued over the cosmic meaning of a Randy Travis song.

  Then they headed for home, which was a valley in the Bitterroot Mountains. Johnny Skyler drove because brother Faron’s license had been suspended four times and revoked twice permanently. That was no small achievement in the great and free state of Montana, where driving and drinking are regarded as inalienable rights.

  Johnny Skyler followed the dirt road toward the Clark Fork River and the one-lane steel bridge that would carry them to their respective wives and children, waiting in identical doublewide trailers that had been purchased for twenty percent off at a spring trade show in Spokane. The money that the Skyler brothers saved on the mobile homes had been put to good use: a large satellite dish was wired to the earth on a flat clearing between the two doublewides. A parabolic eyesore among the regal vectors of Douglas firs and Ponderosa pines, the TV dish was still the finest investment that Johnny and Faron had ever made: Wrestlemania! Japanese game shows! One night, flipping channels, they’d stumbled onto a guy talking with real Playboy bunnies! The interviewer was so tan that the Skylers speculated he might be an Indian, except he talked too fast and laughed too loud. Around the man’s neck hung a gold medallion as thick as a goose turd. Johnny and Faron couldn’t get over it.

  No doubt about it: satellite TV preserved the Skyler family units. In the long bleak stretch of winter, it was all that kept the men from going mad with boredom. In the summer, it entertained the wives and kids so that Faron and Johnny could stay out extra late: crack open another Rolling Rock, kick back, watch the sun drop down over the mountain-tops.

  On this night, though, a storm was rolling in hard from Idaho. There would be no sunset, just an ominous and sudden darkening. Bruised clouds stacked up over the Bitterroots, and a cool wind chased down the river. It rattled the tin price sign that hung over the gas pump outside the Lozeau Lounge. Inside, Johnny Skyler reared back and heaved one more dart at the taxi-dermied elk, yanked his brother off the bar stool and said they’d better get on home, while they could still see the way.