“How can I help?”
“We have a V.I.P. room. We can go in there and stay for a while, and maybe he’ll go away or settle for some-body else or something.”
“I do want to help, but what’s the V.I.P. room cost?”
“I’m not going to charge you anything! You’re helping me.”
So I helped her.
She took me into the back room, which was a bunch of easy chairs in open cubicles. No fucking was going on or anything overt; this was not about blow jobs or even hand jobs. This was good, clean, all-American fun, like the so-called dry humps healthy teens used to have under the bleachers at ball games. And I presume they still do, if they have a lick of sense.
The girls kept their pasties on and their g-strings, in the V.I.P. room, but otherwise were naked, and danced for a guy for a song (ten bucks for one, I gathered, twenty-five for three), most of it grinding in his lap or shoving her fake titties in his face and rubbing and rubbing and rubbing some more.
My little blonde did rub her cupcakes in my face a couple times, but mostly she just danced, or straddled my lap and didn’t really grind. We just talked. Here’s some of it, shouted over loud piped-in music:
“What’s your name?”
“Candy.”
Bow Wow Wow was doing “I Want Candy.” I swear.
“Stage name?”
“Real. Candace.”
“You go to school, Candace?”
“I wish. I wanna go to beauty college, but it’s expensive.”
“You local or on the road?”
“Local. Can’t travel. I got a kid.”
“Really?”
“Uh huh. Little boy.”
“What’s his name?”
“Sam. He’s five. He goes to kindergarten next year.”
“His daddy looking after him?”
“He doesn’t have one. A girl who works days, at the grain elevator? She sits with Sam till she goes to work.”
“You don’t look old enough to have a five-year-old.”
“I was fifteen.”
“Makes you twenty?”
“I’m twenty. You’re nice.”
“You’re nice, too, Candace.”
There was quite a bit more, but that’s as interesting as it got, and anyway you get the drift.
She smelled good-most of the dancers were doused in what used to be called dimestore perfume, but she had on Giorgio, or a reasonable facsimile. She had the usual heavy makeup, clownish cheeks, blue eyeshadow, pink lip gloss, but that was par for the course these days even for non-stripper girls. Even though she didn’t grind, I had a raging hard-on. My shorts were in ruins.
Another stripper, a skinny brunette with big but real breasts, came over and whispered in Candace’s ear, then went away.
Candace beamed at me. “Lover boy’s picked somebody else out! He’s on his second table dance already. I think I’m in the clear. You’re very sweet, Jack.”
I had told her my name was Jack.
Then she gave me a kiss.
Long and kind of real.
After that, she gave me a more legit V.I.P. room treatment for the rest of the song (“Hit Me with Your Best Shot”), and then led me back into the strip club. I tried to give her a twenty but I swear (unbelievable, but it happened) she wouldn’t take it.
I probably could have bought a legit table dance from her at that point, but I’d had all I could take. I went and sat in the rear of the smoky, mirrored room, focused on fake tits and disco lights until my erection went down, then wandered back into the middle bar. No more beer for me. I asked for and got a Diet Coke.
It was almost one, and I had a game to play.
Chapter Seven
About the same square footage as the strip club’s V.I.P. lounge, the private poker room was tucked behind the Lucky Devil’s main bar, though with no access from there. And of course the way in from the casino was guarded by one of those ubiquitous bouncers on boxes.
You’ve heard of wall-to-wall carpeting-well, this room had carpeting on the walls, plush, cream-color stuff, much thicker than the more normal-pile (but same color) carpet on the floor. Matching built-in couches ran along all the walls except the one adjacent the parking lot, which had an exit-only door and, more prominently, a big black padded Naugahyde wet bar with black shelving heavy with booze on one side and a stereo set-up on the other. A busty little platinum blonde in the standard Lucky Devil black spandex minidress was tending bar (and the stereo); right now she was filling bowls with chips and pretzels and such, her big brown eyes having no more expression than her raccoon mascara.
The decor was less eccentric than practical-sound-proofing was the order of the day, or night anyway, and the low-slung ceiling tile was part of how this chamber could be so quiet in the thick of a club where each room was noisier than the last. The track lighting was subdued, but the big hexagonal table was the target of a Tiffany-style hanging lamp. Though the billiard felt was new, the table appeared old, its maple handrails showing wear, and the chip wells and drink-holders (despite fresh cork) had the look of a craftsman who’d operated long ago.
I was the first player to arrive, other than my host, a tall, slender guy in a lightweight white suit over a gray shirt and skinny white tie, very hip and New Wave, only his well-oiled Frankie-Avalon-circa-1958 pompadour undercut it. His hands were free of rings, but that was because he’d removed them before starting to shuffle, putting them in his drink well-gold rings encrusted with just a few fewer precious gems than the Maltese Falcon.
Jerry Giovanni, suspiciously tan for a Midwesterner-Florida trips, maybe, or tanning bed access-was almost handsome, a slightly horsier-looking John Travolta.
Pausing in his shuffling, holding the deck in his left hand, he got to his feet, extended a palm and said, “Jerry Giovanni. My friends call me Jerry G.”
I shook the hand. Firm. “Jack Gibson, Mr. Giovanni.”
He sat, smiled wide, the whiteness of his teeth against the tanned flesh just as startling as the similar effect Richard Cornell achieved, and gestured to the seat opposite him.
“We only have five players tonight, Jack. And call me Jerry G.”
“Okay, Jerry G.”
“So I was pleased to hear you were joining us. I asked Mandy to have you come in a little early.”
“Mandy?”
“Little blackjack dealer. Redhead. She likes you, Jack. I could fix you up. Kid can suck the chrome off a ’71 Caddy.”
“No, that’s okay. I can make friends on my own.”
He laughed with a snort, liking that, or pretending to. His eyes were too large for his face and a little close together; guess I already said he had a horsey look. But his snorting laughter emphasized it.
“No offense meant,” Jerry G said. “Good-looking fella like you, I’m sure you get more tail than Sinatra.”
“Maybe Sinatra now.”
He shuffled, did some show-off stuff doing the accordion bit with the deck. Not that smart a move from a guy doing all the dealing.
“You know the house rules, don’t you?”
“The house usually does.”
He snort-laughed again. “No, no, Jack, I mean, the rules of the house. Of this room. It’s a thousand-dollar buy in. We don’t play table stakes-you can go to your pocket any time. Checks are fine, even items like watches or jewelry, if the players are agreed as to value. But no IOU’s.”
“Cool.”
“I’m the banker, and I’m the dealer. And I play.”
“I heard about that. I can live with it. What do we play?”
He grinned nice and wide, yards of white teeth and miles of tan skin-this must have been the last thing Custer saw. “Dealer’s choice.”
I had to laugh. No snorting, though. “I wouldn’t mind having that defined a little better.”
“Obviously, no wild cards. I’ll choose between draw, five-card stud, seven-card stud, and Texas Hold ’Em. I like to mix it up.”
“Okay. I appreciate you taking the time to bring me up to speed like this.”