by Thomas Perry
“After the divorce, you had to go back to work, right?”
“Already was working, remember?” she said. “I paid off the debts, sold the house, sold the new car and bought a used one. I was a little better than broke. I worked nights for another year, saved every penny, and went back to school. I go to class at night, and work the business lunch now. As you know. The crowd then is a nice, quiet bunch, mostly older men, and no rowdy drunks. They tip at least as well, though, because they have more. I’m not going to be able to make a living forever going on a stage and shaking my bare ass, but I’m hoping I’ll get away with it long enough to be a licensed CPA.” She paused and looked at him with a calm smile. “See? It wasn’t very sad.”
“Borderline,” he said.
“Come on.”
“All right. You’re only twenty-eight or twenty-nine, right?”
“I wish. I’m thirty-six.”
“You look younger. You could do this for a long time yet.”
“Maybe,” she admitted. “But I’m not the only one getting older. The business is getting older too.”
“It is?”
“Sure. It’s an old-fashioned thing. Like magic shows, or circuses. It made a lot more sense when you hardly ever saw a woman’s legs, or something. But the world is different, and what we do at Nolan’s is pretty tame. When I’m done with my act, you’ve seen maybe ten square inches that I couldn’t show you on the beach. Hobart can tell you. He knows. If you turn on your TV, you can see attractive people having sex.” She amended it. “Some are attractive, anyway. On the Internet there are sites with girls living in a house where there are cameras on in every room, even the bathroom. You can e-mail them and ask them to do things.”
“So you think the clubs will go out of business?”
“I think they’ll last a little longer than I do, but not the way they are.”
“I’m not sure I follow that,” said Prescott.
“A place like Nolan’s will either be girls doing the same acts that made your grandma upset—just kind of quaint, making fun of what used to shock people—or it will be stuff that would make you barf.”
“Which way is Nolan’s going?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Hobart thinks like you. He’s a businessman. He got the place cheap and thought of a way to make it pay. While it pays, he’ll keep it. But he has no emotional investment in owning a club. He’s into money. If it brought in more money to replace us with men demonstrating power tools, he’d do it.” She considered. “I think he won’t go the next step to keep up with the times. He hates legal troubles, so he keeps things pretty conservative. I think he’ll just sell out at a profit someday.”
“Do you like him?”
She shrugged. “He’s okay, I guess. He works hard at keeping the place up and running it. He’s good about protecting the dancers: nobody ever gets pawed twice. I guess what I’d have to say is that I understand him, and that makes me comfortable.”
“You understand him?”
“Yeah. He’s the greediest man I ever met—no, the second greediest. I just told you about the first. But you only have to know one thing about Hobart: he’s there to make money. He uses the bar as an office for all kinds of side deals, people coming and going all the time. He looks at the acts, but only to see if they’re good enough to keep customers there buying drinks. If we all offered him a choice—our bodies or our purses—he’d take the purses.”
“And that makes you comfortable?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It does.”
He could see her watching him out of the corner of her eye the rest of the way to Cavender’s. When they pulled up in front of the restaurant Prescott had to stop and inch forward behind two big black cars, as the parking attendants opened doors to let passengers out. Only then did she look away from Prescott to study the fashionably dressed people stepping from their cars to the big wooden doors. In a moment, the attendant was opening her door, and she stood, catching a glimpse of the big crystal chandelier, giant old-fashioned rugs, and heavy antique furniture.
When the valet had taken the Corvette and Prescott and Jeanie were inside, she was like a cat studying her surroundings intensely, but through half-lidded eyes, without appearing to notice them at all. Cavender’s was one of the best restaurants in St. Louis, but it had been since the 1920s: the antiques had aged in place. Prescott ordered them both a glass of wine, which they sipped while they looked at the menu under the watchful eyes of the waiter. She closed hers, set it on the table and said, “I’ll just have a small salad, no dressing.”
The waiter looked expectantly at Prescott, but Prescott said, “Can you come back in a few minutes, please?”
As soon as he was away from the table, Prescott said, “You’re making me feel bad.”
“I have to watch what I eat. It’s not my fault,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “I have to make a living.”
“Do you like fish?”
“I love fish.”
He beckoned and the waiter returned. “The lady and I will have a salad with no dressing, and we’ll both have broiled swordfish and another glass of wine.”
The waiter went off, and she looked at Prescott, puzzled.
“It’s only a few more calories. We’ll have martinis sometime, and you can skip the olive.”
She met his eyes this time. “It’s much more expensive than I thought,” she whispered.
“At a bad restaurant, the food is worth less than they charge—sometimes it’s worth nothing. At this place, the food is going to be worth more than they charge, so it’s a bargain.” He smiled again. “I can’t make you eat it, and I can’t make you have a good time. All I can do is put them both in front of you.”
She said, “You’re not like Hobart at all, are you?”
He shook his head. “I like money because it buys things like nice dinners. When I run out of money I get more.”
“You’re so sure?”
“Yes,” he said. “I am. And given the choice of the purse or the body, I don’t hesitate, either. If a man even looks at the purse, he loses her, because she knows he doesn’t deserve her.” He smiled again. “A man looks ridiculous with a purse anyway.”
In the middle of the entrée, she said, “You were absolutely right. I would have been stupid not to have this.”
“I knew the chef would convince you,” said Prescott.
She ate a few more bites, then stopped. “I can’t eat any more. I’m just not used to it. I don’t want to make you think I’m not doing what you asked, not having a good time. I love this restaurant. I love being here.”
“I’m very glad,” Prescott said. “It was the right place to take you, then. Being with the most attractive woman in the place is a special treat for me, and the food is the only reward for you.”
She looked around the room—a little nervously, he thought—as she compared herself to the other women. Then she looked down at her plate. “You say things that I should think are insulting, because no woman would believe you. But I don’t. It’s nice.”
They lingered for a long time over coffee. He had a small pastry for dessert, but she could not be induced to touch it. When they were outside and the valet brought the Corvette, she turned back toward the restaurant and stared into it. He said, “What’s wrong? Did we forget something?”
“No.”
“Is there somebody I forgot to tip?”
She got into the car, shook her head, and giggled. “No, I think you tipped everybody—even a couple of customers. I was just taking a last look.”
“If you like it, let’s come back. When are you going to have a night without classes again?”
“Not right away,” she said. “We can talk about it sometime, if you still want to.”
He drove along the Mississippi, looking at the lights on the water, glancing now and then at the huge concrete arch that dominated this side of the river. She said, “What do you think of it?”
“I’m not sure,” he said
. “It’s pretty remarkable. I’m not sure yet what it’s for.”
“I’ve lived around here all my life, and neither am I.”
They drove on for a time, not speaking. Finally, she said, “I’d invite you to my place for a drink, but I’m afraid I don’t usually drink, so there’s nothing there. Besides, the place is sort of a mess, and—”
“Then let’s go to mine.”
She hesitated for a few seconds, then said, “All right.”
When they entered his apartment and he turned on the light, he could see her looking around with extreme care, like a small animal sniffing for danger. He directed her attention where he wanted it. “The apartment is still kind of tentative. I’m not really unpacked, so try to ignore that stuff.” He pointed, and watched her eyes settle on the boxes and open bags of cameras, binoculars, expensive small furnishings, and the smaller, open boxes of wristwatches, women’s jewelry, and gold coins.
While he went to the kitchen to make the drinks, he could tell by the sound of her high heels on the bare hardwood floor that she was looking more closely. He returned carrying two martinis, and handed her one. “I remember you said you don’t drink very often, so you might want to take that in little sips over time.”
She looked at him guardedly. “Are you married?”
He jerked his head back in surprise. “Me? Don’t you remember? I’m one of the sad, lonely men you were talking about on the way to dinner. I think I might be their president.”
“I said they were sad and lonely. That doesn’t mean they’re not married.”
“Not me,” he said. “Never been married. I guess the ones I liked well enough all liked somebody else better. I’m hoping it was the car washes—that they weren’t glamorous enough—because that’s solved.”
She didn’t appear amused. “Then why do you have all this jewelry?”
“What jewelry?”
She pointed at the top tray, which was full of rings and bracelets and necklaces in little compartments. “Duh?”
“Oh, that stuff. It’s a small speculation. The company that bought one of my car washes is owned by a Malaysian family that has been buying up stuff in Hawaii and California. First they wanted to negotiate the sale in their currency instead of dollars. I said, ‘Forget it.’ A week later, the son comes back with another deal: half in dollars, and the rest in stock from a pawnshop they just bought in Phoenix. They wanted to close it and turn it into an office building. They had the permits and everything ready to demolish and build, so they were willing to give me an incredible discount. Look at this stuff: cameras, watches, all kinds of things. I figured I could write down the value a bit for tax purposes. Okay, write it down a lot. Come to think of it, I forgot to mention this stuff on my tax return at all. That’s why I took a loss on my car wash.” He grinned. “This is only part of it, too.”
Jeanie took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, shaking her head in amusement. “You’re worse than Hobart. If I were your accountant, I’d have told you to stick with cash. Besides violating tax laws, you probably got screwed.”
“Oh?” he said. “Come take a look.” He pulled her to the side of the room, knelt, reached into an open box, rummaged around carelessly. He stood up behind her and pulled something around her neck.
“What are you doing?” she said. “That’s cold.”
He clasped the chain of the necklace and said, “That’s probably true. Do you suppose that’s why they call it ice? No, I guess it looks sort of like ice.” He picked up an antique oval wall mirror with an ornate gold frame and a convex surface. “Here. Take a look.”
She stared at herself in the mirror and saw the sparkle of diamonds against the black of her dress. The gold chain held a pear-shaped stone set as a pendant with a pea-sized round stone on either side of it. Prescott could see her chest rise and fall as she looked at herself. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “These can’t be real.”
“Of course they’re real,” he said. “I’m not the one who just got off the boat ready to buy everything in sight. I had all the stones appraised before I went into this thing. It’s not the most up-to-date setting, but they can be reset. Maybe the two side stones as earrings or something. That’s not important. I got them for a tenth of what you could get them for at Tiffany’s.” He laid the mirror on the floor beside the wall, picked up his drink again, and walked into the living room toward the couch.
Jeanie stopped beside the row of boxes, her hands behind her neck fiddling with the clasp. “Wait. Help me get this off.”
He stopped and looked back at her for a moment, studying her critically. “No, I don’t think so. It doesn’t look anywhere near as good as that in a box. You’d better keep it.”
Her eyes widened, and she froze, her hands still behind her neck. “You can’t be serious. You hardly know me.”
He smirked and waved a hand at her. “I don’t know anybody else any better, and what I know about them isn’t all good.”
She shook her head. “I can’t take something like this.” She undid the clasp, carefully lifted the necklace off her neck, and fastened the clasp again.
“I’m not trying to insult you or pay you for going out with me or something,” he said. “It’s an impulse present. If you’ll look in the other boxes, you can see I got more women’s jewelry on that deal than I know what to do with. I picked out that one because it looked like something you could use. If you can, good for you. If you can’t, pawn it and take a vacation sometime. That’s probably what the last owner did.”
She came to the couch, watching him as she let it dangle from the end of a finger. She sat down, unclasped it again, and turned away from him, holding the ends over the back of her neck. “Can you fasten it again?”
He clasped it. She stood and walked across the room with her drink, and sipped it. She turned on his radio and fiddled with the dials. Finally, she found a song with a beat. She turned it up and began to nod her head with the rhythm. She set her drink on the shelf beside the radio and began to dance, swaying her hips to the music. Her eyes were closed and her features assumed an expression that was transported. She turned away from him, tugged the zipper at the back of her dress down a few inches, then in a writhing motion reached up her back from below to pull it down farther. Her left hand rested on her thigh and began to slide up beside her haunch, bringing the dress with it.
“Wait,” said Prescott. “Hold it.”
She half-turned to look over her shoulder expectantly as she let the dress slide down to bare it, still moving with the music. “Something wrong?”
“Yes,” said Prescott. He stood, stepped beside her, and turned off the music. “Don’t do this,” he said.
She turned the rest of the way to face him, holding the front of her dress up at the neck. “Don’t?” she repeated, looking alarmed. “You don’t want me to?”
“No,” he said. “Please.”
Her eyes were worried, almost frightened. “Why not?”
“I asked you to go out to dinner with me, and try to have a good time. Not to work another shift.”
She shook her head like a person shivering, her eyes now earnest, pleading. “No,” she said. “I want to. This isn’t working, it’s just for you.” She seemed to search for an explanation. “It’s an impulse present too, not something I agreed to do or planned ahead.” She looked into his eyes again. “You have money, jewels. All I have . . .” She shrugged, and the dress slipped a little lower, the diamonds now sliding off the fabric to rest on the smooth skin between her breasts. She felt them and looked down, then quickly back up into his eyes, expecting that she had made the only argument she needed to. She saw something unexpected, his eyes delivering his accusation that her accidental gesture had been premeditated. She recognized it too, and he could tell she was fighting the sensation that nothing she did was, or could be, uncalculated. “Don’t you like me?”
He said, “Thank you. I like you very much. I want you to be my friend. But this . . . this isn’t the w
ay for me to be yours. It wouldn’t be good for you. It’s my fault. I wanted to take you out, have a nice time, take you home, have you give me a good-night kiss, and leave. I still want to do that. The diamonds are nothing to me, just a little token like flowers. I didn’t even buy the necklace in advance, just picked it, like a flower in my garden, and handed it to you.”
Her eyes were beginning to look wet now. “You didn’t find me in some art museum or something,” she said. “This is what you like. You came to watch me all those times.”
He gave her a rueful smile. “You’re right. You don’t know how hard this is to resist. But tomorrow when you get up, what I want you to remember is that you had a nice date with a man who isn’t so bad, and went home without having to do anything but be pleasant. I don’t want you to remember that a man gave you a necklace in return for a private strip show.”