“Are you crazy?” Bloom screeches at her. “You fucking slut, you want to get us closed down?”
The girls all look at her as if she were insane.
“Goddam limey. She’s deranged, a freak, you must be sick to get your rocks off this way.”
“Get her outta here. I don’t want to see this woman again. She’s downright crazy. Out.”
They bundle her into her day clothes.
Back on Times Square, a thin rain falling, likely to mess up her perm, Katherine unclenches her fist and extracts the bank note. It’s a hundred.
Certainly worth a few more miles on the clock, on the road to nowhere.
In Miami, she discovered some men had long, thin cocks and all-over tans.
On alternate days, Katherine cruised the clubs and discos in the art deco district of Miami Beach, window shopping like any other tourist, quenching the ambient heat with a steady diet of cold sodas and ice-creams, while on others she worked a few continuous shifts in a shady strip joint – here, they no longer called them burlesques – all the way up the less fashionable area in the Northern reaches of Collins Avenue, beyond the Adventura Mall, where the highway to the Everglades began. Now, she’d perfected her act. Kept it simple, cleanly sexy, beyond the temporary madness, the excesses of Times Square. She grew accustomed to shaking her gangly body, grinding her crotch with a grimace feigning ecstasy against the metal of the central pole, thrusting her white, square butt toward the punters, teasing the vociferous crowd, keeping her legs together, letting her hands do the roving, a mechanical spectacle tailored to the unsatisfactory pop songs she had thread together to punctuate her movements.
The nights were long and empty in her room at the beachside inn. The paint on the wall flaked in places creating ever-changing Rorschach tests in the humid penumbra. Six in the morning was always the worst time, and time and again she had to control herself and not pick up the pink telephone and call London. But which one? Which past man? And then always remembered the time difference. And anyway what would she say? Sorry? I’m really sorry, but I don’t want to come back. She read a lot. At Bookstar they deep discounted and the other day, even though she couldn’t really afford a hardcover – she’s not getting very good tips – she had indulged and bought the new Anne Tyler novel, which she read in small doses, to stretch the pleasure.
Sunday is her day off and like a good working girl she goes to the beach, with a basket of fruit and a cold box full of drink cans. She’s got this new rather daring outfit, with a thong cutting deep into her crotch, separating the two globes of her backside like a piece of meat. But she always keeps her top on. Her husband would approve. Her skin burns easily, so she has to shield carefully under a parasol. The sand gets everywhere, as she ritually turns onto her stomach, then her back and again her stomach, and tried to concentrate on her reading. She knows that later she would have to use the shower nozzle against her cavities to excavate the millions of small grains stuck to her perspiring skin, nestled between her bum cheeks and even inside her vagina.
This rugged-looking man walked by her parasol, briefly obscuring the sun. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw his feet in the sand just a few inches away from her town.
“Guapa muchacha,” he said with a strong Hispanic accent.
Katherine looked up.
“Hi,” she said.
“You’re not from here,” he remarked.
“No, I’m not.”
He sat himself down next to her; he wore a silk shirt with exotic rainbow patterns and baggy trousers cinched at the waist.
“Let me have a guess,” he smiled.
Katherine smiled back.
“I know, you’re Australian. I saw that movie, you know.”
She burst out laughing, her hand flying up, lost her page as the book fell into the sand and closed.
“You look like Nicole Kidman, the chick who married Tom Cruise.”
“So I’m told. It’s all the curls, you see. But no, I’m not from down under. I’m English, you see,” she explained.
“No kidding,” the man said. “I’d never have guessed. You look more Swedish, or Dutch, you know.”
“Actually Irish a generation or two back,” she said.
“Very beautiful,” he flashed ivory white teeth that must have cost a small fortune in dental care.
“Thank you.”
He took her hand in his, shook it and introduced himself:
“My name is Steve Gregory,” he revealed.
“That’s a very American name,” she pointed out.
“Well, not really, it’s Gregorio. Esteban Gregorio. But I changed it. Came over from Cuba. What about you?” he asked her.
“Eddie,” she said.
English Eddie was her stage name. Her damn mother had insisted on making her second name Edwina.
“That’s wonderful,” he exclaimed and offered her a cigarette.
A hundred meters away, the sea murmured and the waves of the Caribbean lapped the warm shore.
Katherine sighed.
Steve had brown eyes. Dangerous eyes. The sort she’d seen before, the type of eyes that could make her do things she shouldn’t. The top buttons of his shirt were open to reveal an abundant growth on his brown chest. She surprised herself by looking down at his trousers and the strong bulge there, and thinking what sort of shape his cock must be.
Later, he took her for a light but spicy salad lunch to this hut further down the beach. It was delicious but she drank too much wine. He seemed genuinely surprised when he found out where she worked, but he kept his hands to himself. He told her about Cuba, spoke of politics and food and, gazing at her, of things of beauty. And fast sports cars.
And was dumbfounded when he learned that she did not drive.
“You mean you haven’t got a car?” he asked her.
“No, I’ve never even taken driving lessons.”
“Amazing,” he said.
“Well, I’m just an old-fashioned girl, I suppose,” she answered.
When they parted in late afternoon, he had a business appointment he just couldn’t put off any longer, he gently kissed her on the cheek. Gallant to a tee. She had expected more. He promised to come and see her at the club very soon.
“You must be a fantastic dancer,” he said. “I can’t wait.”
In fact, Katherine wasn’t very good at the dancing thing, really. The other girls working at the joint were all so much better, they had more natural rhythm, the blacks and the Latinas. So, to capture the attention of the men in the audience, she knows she has to offer something different. Not just her amazon build and fair skin and heavy hips. She has shaved her sex, banned the dark curls from between her strong thighs and only kept a thin line of pubic thatch rising straight above the gash, like a small arrow pointing toward her navel. Maria, who helped her do it one evening, had suggested she trim it in the shape of a heart, but Katherine felt that would be quite vulgar and inappropriate. Before every shift, she carefully places a cube of ice over her nipples to render them erect, hard, more prominent, then dries the aroused tips and rouges them with shocking red lipstick. Then, she dips the stick toward her outer labia and colours them beautiful, a fine line on either side delineating the lips, gently separating the geometric poles of her nether opening. She has to remember during her act not to smudge the war paint too much. The other dancers don’t like her too much. They think she’s a snob, can’t really gossip or indulge in silly small talk like they do between sets. She’s the first stripper they’ve come across who spends her time in the dressing room when not on duty actually reading books. By people they’ve never even heard of. Not your usual Stephen Kings or John Grishams. Thinks she’s clever and better than us, does English Eddie, they grumble between themselves.
It’s the little extras, Katherine knows, that keep the tips coming. She pouts like other dancers, smiles hypocritically as she sheds the thin items of exotic clothing, sticks out her tongue in pre-orgasmic languor, licks her fingers as she wo
uld a penis, bumps and grinds like the best of all sluts, teases the invisible males out there carelessly, quickly opening her thighs wide and obscuring the forbidden vista with the palm of her hand, bends over unchastely to reveal the darker band of skin dividing her arse, dances the night and day away, while her mind remains on cruise control, empty of thoughts. She senses the clients in the outlying audience, the smell of man, a quick thrust of her lower stomach forward and there must be one there, no, there, who’s jerking off to the sight of her, his hand buried deep inside the trouser pocket, holding his cock in a tight noose as he moves the envelope of his palm and fingers up and down the trunk and comes all over his underwear. She rubs her damp crotch against the small Afghan carpet she now dances on, to avoid splinters in her feet, grinds her lower stomach against the hard floor and a few artificial moans escape as the music quietens momentarily, and somewhere in the back row must be a guy with his dick actually out, rubbing away furiously under a newspaper or a magazine while he drinks in the sheer erotic vision of her and imagines her spread-eagled on some filthy bed while he fucks her like there was no tomorrow. Likely story. Yes, they masturbate, they dream, they drool, and this way, she rationalizes, she has power over them.
Control.
Of men.
Like the two left far behind.
The house lights come on, the stage lights dim and the dancers stream out and tour the front rows. They are fully nude. Some of the guys in the audience leave then, while others hurriedly move to the edge of the stage if there is still free space. With their back to the men, the women move from seat to seat, up to a couple of minutes next to each respective guy, words are exchanged, greenbacks change hand and the transaction completed, the stripper either sits on the guy’s lap while he paws her breasts until his time is up or alternately stands in close proximity to the punter and allows his hands to wander all over her body. The first two customers say nothing and Katherine moves on to the next seat. The man remains silent, but nods positively. He slips her a couple of crumpled notes. He’s old. He rises, he’s short, but then most men are compared to her. She moves closer to him, her bust rising gently. He peers at her eyes. His own are watery and vacant. He lowers his hand to her cunt, and swiftly inserts a finger inside her, stretching her dryness.
“Hey!” she exclaims. “Off limits.”
But the elderly customer fails to respond. They can mangle the dancers’ breasts, guessing which are real or silicone-assisted, they can slime over their skin to their heart’s content, they can touch, caress, tiptoe like piano-players over the soft bodies, but not down there. His finger moves deeper and Katherine is obliged to open her thighs more to facilitate his intrusion. His nails are scratching her insides. His breath stinks to high heaven. She’s about to seize his errant hand to pull it away when the next dancer in line jostles up to her for her turn and the man withdraws and sits down again. Katherine moves on down the flesh parade. It only took a minute or so, or was it more? None of the other men want her, they’ve had their fill of skin elsewhere already.
It itches like hell inside. She just hopes it’s not bleeding from his nails, that he has not infected her. She’s an illegal alien, enjoys no medical protection.
Back in the communal dressing room, she grabs a small pocket mirror from her bag and rushes to the toilets. Spreads her thighs open and examines the inside of her vagina. Yes, there’s a bad scratch there, but it’s not bleeding. She forces herself to pee, to evacuate any foreign elements. She washes herself out thoroughly. When she returns to the backstage area, all the women from her shift have already gone. A couple of dancers from the six p.m. batch have arrived and are already undressing. Katherine sits herself by one of the make-up mirrors and cleans the lipstick away from her body and slips on a cotton shirt and a pair of loose, baggy shorts. She replaces the mirror in her bag and pulls out her purse to safely put away the meagre notes from the parade. Jesus. Her heart misses a beat. There’s no money at all in there. She swears mightily under her breath. A Latina dancer she’s never seen here before gives her a strange look. One of the girls must have taken it. Could have been any of the women. None of them really liked her. Shit. She had all her cash in there. She can’t open a bank account because of her status. Nearly two hundred and twenty dollars, she remembers. How the fuck is she going to settle her bill at the inn tomorrow? Buy groceries. She’d never raise that much in tips in such a short time. Even if she were sheer sex on a stick. Complaining to the elusive club gaffer would be quite useless, she knows.
At the stage door stands Steve. He’s now wearing a sharp pale grey suit and she’s never seen shoes so shiny. The Miami dusk feels sultry. He smiles at her as she walks out of the joint.
“Hey, you were incredible, Eddie. Are all English girls like you, tell me?”
She answers with a feeble smile and explains what happened.
“Ah, pretty woman, don’t worry, it’s only money,” he says.
He leads her to his car, parked just outside, a big convertible with shiny metal hubs and metallic green paintwork. He opens a door for her, and she gets in.
“Yeah, but I needed that money, you just don’t understand.”
As he settles into the black leather driver’s seat and switches on the ignition and the air conditioning starts up with a vengeance, Steve says:
“I know how you can earn a lot of money.”
“When?” Katherine asks.
“Right now, if you wish,” he answers and picks up a cellular phone. The car glides away from the kerb as he begins a long conversation in Spanish. She can’t understand a word of course. She’d taken French as her foreign language at the Epsom grammar school. Wasn’t even very good at it.
A mile or two down the road, he completes his transaction on the phone.
“All set, honey. For a girl like you, no problem. You see, you’re exotic. Good money. Indeed,” he flashes her a broad grin, slips a cassette into the car’s system and a raucous beat fills the car, drums and all sorts of wondrous percussion punctuating a joyful Latin tune.
She says nothing but looks at him enquiringly.
“Relax, Eddie, relax, it’ll be good. Really good,” he says.
She doesn’t like the “honey”, the “exotic” or the “relax”. But what are the choices?
A penthouse suite at the Fontainebleau Hotel. A valet has taken the car to be parked. Katherine feels out of place in her shabby casual wear, but Steve reassures her. “It’s not important, Eddie, don’t worry.” The lift alone, shiny mirrors and gold-plated knobs everywhere must have cost a million. A long corridor with expensive prints all the way down the walls like a museum or an art gallery. They reach the door. Steve knocks three times. They open.
“This is Eddie,” he introduces her.
There are half a dozen dusky middle-aged businessmen in expensive silk suits that put Steve’s garb to shame. This is real money, she recognizes. Further back, there is another man, sipping a glass at the huge bar overlooking the balcony. He’s black, a giant, must be all of seven feet.
“Meet Orlando. You’re from England, aren’t you? You won’t know him, of course, he’s with the ’Gators. One of our local heroes.”
The black guy mumbles something as he weakly shakes her hand.
“A drink, Eddie?” one of the businessmen offers unctuously. “Absolutely anything you want. A bit of food, we can call room service, if you feel like a snack.” All the guys are watching her attentively. Katherine feels uncomfortable. Never liked hotel rooms since that first time, that Tuesday at the Heathrow hotel when she had for the first time gone over the edge and jettisoned part of her life.
She declines the offer of food, has an ice-cold beer. Dos Equis.
The black guy still stands silently at the bar, looking her over. Most of the businessmen have settled onto chairs and a couple of massive couches. Waiting.
Steve sets his own glass down and comes over to her.
“See, it’s like this, Eddie. One thousand dollars. Yes, a who
le thousand bucks. My commission is twenty per cent. Fair? No?”
She feels her stomach sinking. What’s worth all that cash?
“What do I have to do?” she asks.
“A live show. These gentlemen are important business contacts of mine, all the way from South America and down there, they don’t have the entertainment we have here in America, so they want to enjoy a real special show.”
A private show. Katherine breathes a sigh of relief. It could have been worse, much worse, she supposes.
“But I left my stage gear at the club,” she points out. “You should have told me; it’s not really sexy with these things I’m wearing now.”
A frown crosses Steve’s face.
“Oh, come on, don’t be coy, we’re not paying this sort of money for just a strip turn. A live show. Sex. Real sex. Fucking. Here on the bloody carpet, girl, where they can all see it all up close.”
“What . . .?” she protests.
“With Orlando here,” Steve adds, pointing at the towering sportsman. Absurdly, in her utter confusion, she vainly tries to guess which sport: basket ball, football, baseball? He continues: “Orlando is a legend. They call him the black stud and my friends wish to see him in action, with a blonde, with very white skin. You. Comprende?”
She looks at the black athlete. He is impassive.
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can, bitch, and you will. You’re not going to disappoint my friends, are you? Or you’ll damn well feel my mighty wrath, woman. Don’t disappoint me,” he threatens her. She swallows hard, gulps down the end of her beer. Steve takes her right arm and leads her to the geographical centre of the room, all the businessmen sitting in a circle of sorts around the spot, none of them more than ten or at most twelve feet away. Yes, they would have a good view. Full cinerama widescreen gynaecology in close-up. Better than IMAX.
The Mammoth Book of Erotica presents The Best of Maxim Jakubowski Page 7