“Oh, god,” I groaned, regarding the monster through half-lidded eyes, “I don’t know if I can…”
“Shhhh,” Charlie whispered, “just relax.” She guided its smooth round head to my wet hole, and I pushed toward it, starving for it. Moira pressed forward, and the dildo slipped inside me, slowly, as far as it would go. Charlie panted in my ear, matching me breath for breath.
I felt Moira’s fingertips pressing gently but firmly under my chin. I opened my eyes.
“Look at me, darling,” she said, “I want to see your face.”
It was very hard. She pulled back and the dildo slid nearly out. I bit my lip.
“Look at me,” she repeated, her thumb against the hollow of my jaw, throbbing with my pulse. Somebody squeezed cool lube down my pussy, and Moira pushed the slick dildo back in. My cunt seized it, pleasure running through my belly like a riptide. Then Charlie’s fingertip stroked along the shaft of my clit, and the voltage of her touch surged through me. I threw my head back, past caring about the noise that came echoing back from the tiled walls.
Charlie’s other arm tightened around my waist, and we were off. Moira guided the pumping dildo and gouged my thigh with her fingers; the effect of the toy pounding her pubic bone was evident on her face. Charlie drubbed my clit and ground her crotch against my tailbone, bucking and groaning. I rode the waves like a dory in heavy seas, coming hard enough to see stars.
We collapsed against each other in a sweaty tangle, letting our breaths slow, feeling more than listening to the deep thrumming bass from the distant dance floor through the porcelain and tile and empty pipes.
Charlie smacked her lips and worked her dry mouth free.
“What’s that,” she rasped.
“What?” I croaked.
“That.”
We all held our breath. A faint buzzing noise suddenly ratcheted into a grating chatter, and I craned my neck to watch the pager skitter away from my wadded-up jeans in spastic, razzing jerks.
“That,” Moira groaned, “is so rude.”
“No kidding,” I agreed.
I staggered out of the men’s room into the arms of the tall blonde. My nose collided painfully with her collarbone. She didn’t bat an eye. She held out a bubbly, ice-filled glass.
“Can I buy you a drink?”
I licked my sandpaper lips.
“I’m a Virgo,” she said. “What’s your sign?”
Halfway up the stairs, I stopped to gasp for breath and finally looked at the pager’s display. I turned around, cursing. It was from the bar, not the office. The pager went off again.
“Hold your horses,” I muttered. “Hold your goddamn horses.”
The blonde was waiting at the bottom. She pressed a slip of paper into my hand as I dove past her. “That’s my cell phone,” she shouted as I ducked into the bar. “Call anytime.”
Reaching out of the mass of bodies, Shiv grabbed my arm.
“You shirt is buttoned wrong,” she chortled.
I yanked the pendant over my head and thrust it at her.
“Here,” I told her, “undo whatever the hell you did before.”
“Say please,” she sang at my departing back. I flipped her the bird.
“Where the hell have you been?” Chris snapped at me.
“I’m down to nickels and I’m running tabs for women I’ve never seen before in my life.” She popped the caps off a row of Bud Lites and four hands snaked past me to grab them. “Can you get me some goddamn change?”
“Please,” I muttered, pivoting back the way I’d come. “Can you get me some goddamn change, please.”
I almost made it to the stairs.
“Sam!” An urgent voice called out behind me. “Can you give me a hand here?”
In front of her coat-check booth, Candy was staggering under the draped arm of a heavy-set woman. Something had soaked the front of the woman’s T-shirt, and she was pressing her hand to her mouth.
“I think she’s gonna do it again,” Candy said, grimacing.
“Oh, Christ,” I muttered, hurrying to get on her other side before she fell. “I don’t need this.”
By the time the ladies’ room door swung shut behind me, twenty minutes had gone by. I flapped my damp shirt in front of me. I hoped I’d gotten it all out. With three hours to go till closing time, it would have to do. What I needed more than anything was a Coke.
The blonde was blocking my path.
“Please,” I begged, “I can’t deal with you right now.”
She blinked at me. Her nose wrinkled as she sniffed the air around me. Her eyes cleared, as if she were coming out of hypnosis. “Well, excuse me!” She flounced off.
“Shit!” I gave myself a dope-slap and hurried to the bar. “Chris, I’m sorry, I forgot.”
“That’s all right, Sam,” she said sweetly, popping limes into a pair of vodka tonics, “Shiv got my change for me.”
“Whew, well, that’s good, then. I got sidetracked with a…” It hit me. “Who got your change?” I must have heard her wrong.
“Shiv.” She took a ten and deftly slid three ones across the bar to the woman beside me.
“Shiv? You sent Shiv up to Verlaine’s office?”
“Sam,” she shot me a hurt look as she fished a cherry out of the well for the whiskey sour she was building, “Shiv volunteered. She said it was all right.”
“All right?” I repeated. Last time Shiv made an appearance at the Bijou, Verlaine wanted me to have the cops haul her ass to jail. “What do you mean, all right?”
“I don’t know,” Chris said peevishly, “She said they’d patched it up. She said she brought Verlaine flowers.”
I took the stairs two at a time. As I waited outside the office door, trying to catch my breath, my ears picked up traces of a sound so alien to that place that I couldn’t identify it. I turned the knob as quietly as I could.
Strains of something Viennese lilted out from a portable CD player on top of the filing cabinet. As I eased the door open, Shiv and Verlaine waltzed across the room, Verlaine’s musical laughter tinkling out like little silver bells as they passed. Shiv’s scrawniness suddenly seemed to pass for spare elegance, and I watched her erect form glide gracefully around the tiny circle, with Verlaine in delighted thrall.
I closed the door. I pinched myself. I opened it again, tapping gently as I pushed it ajar. Strauss played softly as it had before, tinny on the miniscule speakers. The two dancers turned toward me, faces aglow.
“Sam!” Verlaine beamed. “Come in!”
Shiv winked. A bit of chain glinted from the neckline of her threadbare Henley shirt.
“Look,” Verlaine gushed, gesturing to a coffee mug full of tattered daisies and one wilted carnation. “Look what Shiv gave me. Wasn’t that sweet?”
“Just lovely,” I agreed. I turned to her companion.
“Shiv,” I said, fixing her with a gimlet eye, “can I see you?” I asked Verlaine, “You’ll excuse us, won’t you?” Her face fell, and I assured her, “This won’t take but a moment.”
The door clicked shut behind us. I got hold of the chain and hauled Weegee’s gadget over Shiv’s head.
“Ow,” she protested, “that’s my ear!”
In the weak light from the hallway’s overhead, I peered at the notched markings on the cylinder’s knurled midsection and swore. I couldn’t tell. I tried to turn it. I tried to pull it apart. Nothing moved.
“Here.” I grabbed her hand and pushed the thing into it. “Put it back the way it was.”
“Why should I?” Shiv smirked.
I glared. Her smile faltered.
“Oh, all right,” she grudgingly allowed. She pushed the ends together and twisted. “Childproof caps,” she said, and blew a raspberry.
I snatched it back and held it up to the light. The notches were different now.
“Whooo-weee.” I let out a long, shuddering breath and hung the thing back around my neck.
“Thank you, Shiv,” Shiv prompted.
I gave her a look. She tossed me a jaunty little wave and turned around to let herself back into the office.
“Are you sure you really want to do that?” I hooked my thumb around the chain and jingled it for her to see.
Her hand faltered on the knob.
“Here.” I fumbled out my wallet and peeled off a five.
“Why don’t you go back to the Cave and buy yourself a beer?” She could buy herself five plastic cups of beer from the club keg for that, as she well knew. She eyed the bill.
“I can’t,” she grumbled. “We’re having a goddamn meeting.”
“It’ll be good for you,” I assured her. “You can share your wisdom and experience with your fellow Gorgons. They will heap laurels on your venerable brow.”
“Huh?”
“Billy said they’re gonna talk about getting one of those video poker machines.” Instead of kicking him out, the Gorgons made Billy their mascot when he started his journey from F to M. He’s the only one who always knows what’s going on.
She brightened. “Really?” She released the doorknob and dusted off her paws. “Well, then. Say ciao to Verlaine for me.”
She plucked the fin from my hand as she passed.
Verlaine barely glanced up from her screen as I stepped through the door. Madonna was warbling from the boombox, “Like a virgin, ooh, ooh.”
“I almost forgot,” she said, “the Board of Health is coming to check out the new setup on the balcony tomorrow. Can you get here early? Around two?”
“Sure.”
“Great,” she said. She typed a few words into the letter she was composing and noticed that I was still standing there. “Thanks,” she said.
I was dismissed.
Moira and Charlie were gone from the men’s room. The crowd was finally starting to thin. When I spotted them at last by the coat check, Charlie was helping Moira into a fluffy white fake fur jacket.
“I don’t see nearly enough of you these days, darling,” Moira said, her arm around my waist.
I squeezed back. “You saw most of me tonight, I think.”
She swatted my arm. Charlie grabbed me for a bear hug, and I breathed in the smell of her bomber jacket.
“Come for our Samhain celebration,” Moira said as Charlie kissed me, our tongues playing tag. “You don’t work on Monday, do you?”
Charlie leaned back and winked at me. I shook my head. “That’d be great,” I said, more than a little breathless.
I waved them good-night through the glass doors of the theater’s old lobby, Jean-Louis Sol’s bas-relief sun smiling down at me from on high. I sighed. Chalk one up for Weegee’s new toy, anyway.
My pager went off.
I opened the office door expecting to find Verlaine’s back to me as usual, her hands flying over her keyboard, but her chair was empty. It took my eyes a moment to find her, utterly still, smiling at the woebegone flowers.
I closed the door behind me. She shook her head. “Shiv,” she sighed, as if that one word said it all. “I haven’t waltzed since I was a Rainbow Girl.” She noticed my expression and laughed. “I wonder where she learned to dance?”
I shrugged. Shiv might as well have sprung into the world full-grown, bandanna, biker jacket and all, for all anyone knew. Verlaine sighed again and shook her head to clear it, returning to the mundane present at last.
“Could you do me a favor? Candy didn’t want to ask, since it’s out of your way, but could you give her a ride to the El? Her car’s broken down, and I hate to see her walking at that time of night.”
“Sure,” I told her. “If she’ll wait till I take the deposit, I’ll drive her home.”
Verlaine’s face lit up.
“Thanks, Sam.” She hugged me. “I really do appreciate you. You know that, don’t you?” She smiled up at me and my heart skipped a beat. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Her brow wrinkled.
“What’s that smell?” Verlaine leaned back, sniffing. I looked down at the stain still faintly visible on my shirt.
My pager went off.
“I’ve got to get back downstairs.” I glanced at my watch; it was nearly closing. “I’ll tell you later.”
Verlaine started to give me a peck on the cheek. I couldn’t blame her when she drew away, but before I could head for the door, she pulled me back into her arms and kissed me full on the lips.
Downstairs, I made my rounds on shaky legs, turning up the lights. In the megawatt glare of the deserted dance floor, I pulled Weegee’s gadget out for one more look. It was just as Shiv had left it: off. At least, as far as I could tell.
I took it back to Weegee the next day.
“Well,” I told her, settling into her cushy executive armchair, “it certainly seems to work.”
“Work?” She spared a quick glance up at me from the floor of her office, where she was putting together what looked like pieces from an Erector Set. “What do you mean, work?”
“It certainly seemed to attract women’s attention.” I pushed and pulled it, trying to turn the switch. Nothing moved. I handed it to my small friend.
She peered at it, frowning. “I hadn’t thought it was that obtrusive. Didn’t you tuck it into your shirt?”
“Well, yeah,” I said, “but that didn’t seem to block it.”
“Block what?” Weegee asked, confused.
“The attraction vibes. You know. Whatever it was that made women fall at my feet.” I thought of Charlie on her knees in the men’s room and smiled.
Weegee regarded me curiously for a moment, then pulled a tiny tool out of a holster on her belt. In a flash, the cylinder was in two halves linked by an umbilicus of wire. She held it out.
“All it’s got right now is the receiver,” she said, “see? It was just supposed to be calibrating.”
I scowled at it. As if I could tell.
She wore a peculiar smile. “I was afraid if I included the transmitter, you might be tempted to try it out.”
“It wasn’t me,” I told her, my face burning, “Shiv…”
“I mean, knowing how you feel about Verlaine,” Weegee explained, apologetically.
“…twisted the thing and turned it on without me knowing it.” I finished as her words sank in. We stared at each other for a long moment. “Shit,” I spat, “if that’s what you thought, why didn’t you just calibrate the fucking thing yourself?”
I heard her calling after me as I slammed the door behind me, but I didn’t turn around.
I can’t stay mad at Weegee. The next Friday, she showed up at the Bijou herself, peace offerings in hand.
“Weeg, you didn’t have to do this,” I told her as I tore the wrapping off the larger of the two packages.
Chris stopped wiping down the bar to watch. She burst out laughing.
“How to Pick Up Girls,” I read from the book jacket. “Gee, thanks,” I told Weegee.
“Open the other one,” she prompted.
Out of crumpled tissue paper, I pulled a familiar-looking object on a chain.
“That’s the one you calibrated last week. It’s got a transmitter now,” she said, smiling sheepishly. She nodded at the book. “You’ll have to let me know which works better.”
I grinned and shook my head. “Nah. Take it yourself, Weegee. Shiv says you need it more than I do.”
She poked around under her turtleneck and hauled out a chain with an identical cylinder. “She’s probably right,” Weegee said seriously. “I wore this out to Kate Clinton’s show last night to calibrate it. It’s on now, but so far…”
Something nearly knocked me off my barstool.
“Hi,” said the small dark head that popped up just under my elbow, “I’m Polly.”
Another small head appeared beside the first. “And I’m Holly.”
“Haven’t we seen you somewhere before?”
They weren’t talking to me.
“Oh, god,” Chris groaned. “The Tiny Twins. They’re friends of Shiv’s.”
The two very short women,
exquisitely dressed in matching silk suits, had already cut Weegee out of the pack and were herding her like a brace of perfectly coordinated Border collies.
“The first time they came in here, I carded them,” Chris told me, watching the group recede into a dark corner beyond the dance floor. “Boy, was that a mistake.”
“I’ve never seen them before.” I stared after them. “How tall are they?”
“Not as tall as Weegee,” Chris observed.
I started to laugh. “Proximity!” I told Chris. “That’s what she meant.”
Someone pushed past me to get to the bar, and I turned to look. The tall blonde was looking down at me. She sniffed experimentally, then smiled.
“Well, hi there,” she said, “long time no see.”
Halfway across the dance floor, I turned back to see the blonde setting my barstool back on its feet. In the shadowy far corner, Weegee’s head turned from one twin to the other like a spectator at a tennis match. The speakers were pounding out something Latin. Around me, the space began to fill with gyrating bodies, and I felt a hand slide down my back.
“Hey, hey,” said a voice in my ear. Charlie caught me by the shoulder for a bone-crunching squeeze. Moira appeared out of the throng to hook a finger in the neckline of my shirt and pull me down for a kiss. She was wearing a leather corset and a leather thong, thigh-high boots with stiletto heels and elbow-length gloves of supple black kid.
“For Badb,” Charlie explained, smiling fondly at Moira, “the bitch goddess.”
I pointed my chin at the riding crop Moira was bouncing against her shoulder.
“She know how to use that thing?” I asked Charlie with a sidelong look.
Charlie regarded me over the top of her shades, as if to say, Are you kidding?
Someone tapped my arm and pointed toward the bar.
“Hey,” Chris called, “don’t you want these?” She was waving the book and dangling the chick magnet by its chain. The blonde was staring at her like a dog watching burgers being flipped.
“Nah,” I shouted back, “Hold on to them for me, will you?”
Charlie’s hip nudged mine to a salsa beat.
“You can take a little break,” Moira said, stroking my cheek lightly with the braided handle of the crop, “and dance with us, can’t you, Sam?”
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