“Shit,” I said.
“Language, Mr. Quarry,” the reverend said. “Language!”
I got out of the limo on the street side and edged through the throng of now even more pissed-off women, who were yelling various things at that closed door — no organized chanting now, but plenty of overlapping “Bastard!”, “Fucker!”, “Son of a bitch!” and the ever-popular “Son of a fucking bitch!”
I made my way through this crowd, never having had less fun having college girls throw their bodies at me, and went inside. The guest artist, a redheaded porno actress in a little transparent green nightie, was doing her thing on stage and the males around the runaway were transfixed by this movie star image, the protesting outside drowned out entirely by a sound system blasting Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.”
Vernon was dragging the cute lead protestor through the club, obviously heading back to his office. They disappeared past the DJ booth into the hallway and, when I caught up, the door to his office was already closed; but arguing was coming from behind it.
I opened the door and said, “What the fuck is going on? Vernon, you can’t just—”
They both looked at me hatefully, though the hatred was left over from their face-to-face confrontation and had nothing at all to do with me, except possibly for some irritation over my interrupting.
Vernon said, “Mr. Quarry, I want you to wait until that crowd of baby harpies flies away, and then drive this young lady home. You do have a car, don’t you? She’ll tell you the way. Her name is Cordelia. My daughter.”
Eight
Vernon Climer’s little girl Cordelia went along quietly with me, as if I were the police. We found a table near the exit and she sat with her back to the dancer on stage, who happened to be her future aunt, Mavis Crosby, strutting to the Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker.”
The girl’s arms were folded over her perky breasts, making them squish up nicely, her legs crossed and showing plenty of pink flesh in the cutoffs. Her make-up-free prettiness, including big brown eyes, a button nose and a pouty mouth, made her a lot more attractive than Mavis or really any other stripper that her Uncle Max employed.
Sally, the good-looking redheaded waitress I’d got to know some (strictly platonic), came over, unbidden, and dropped the girl off a glass of Sprite and me a Coors. Sally threw me an amused look that said, What have you got yourself into now, Cowboy?
I gave her back a look that said, Who the fuck knows?
Here I sat, across from Cousin Vernon’s daughter, looking at her and not the beanpole with store-bought boobs working the runway. I was trying, frankly, to unsettle this child a little.
And, yes, I was fully aware that this child was only a few years younger than me.
We were well into the next song (“Maggie May”) when I said, “If you want to fly out that door and find your own way home, I won’t stop you.”
She frowned a little, more in confusion than anything else.
I went on: “I don’t work for your father. I’m just doing security consulting for Max Climer, working a few weeks to try to whip this dump into shape.”
Reluctantly, she met my eyes. “In shape how?”
“Well, right now it’s easier to break in this place than getting in one of these strippers’ pants. I’m fixing that. The former not the latter.”
She thought about whether to be offended or amused, and didn’t seem to be able to make her mind up, either way.
“I can use a ride,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Jack. Jack Quarry.”
She winced, trying to hear me over Rod Stewart. “What did you say your last name was?”
“Quarry.”
The sullen pout turned into a small but definite smile. “Funny. My name, nickname, is Corrie. That’s what I thought you said at first.”
“So, then, marriage is out.”
The big brown eyes popped. “What?”
“Corrie Quarry. That just doesn’t make it.”
She’d been sipping her Sprite and her laugh made her snort it out her nose.
I laughed at her, and she didn’t mind.
We were briefly between strippers, with only the DJ’s voice to compete with anything going on outside. But nothing seemed to be, and the lights of the TV mini-crews were no longer sneaking in and around the edges of the pink window curtains.
“I think it’s settled down out there,” I said. “You want to go?”
“You’re sure the demonstration’s over?”
“Why, does it matter?”
“I... I don’t want to have to answer certain questions.”
“Who from? The media’s gone.”
“From... from the friends I came with.”
“...Having to do with who your father is?”
She swallowed and nodded. “Nobody in the group knows.”
“The group?”
“The University of Memphis Liberated Women’s Collective.”
Catchy.
I asked, “Nobody associates Cordelia Climer with Max and Vernon Climer?”
Her pretty face hardened a little. “I don’t use ‘Climer.’ My mother remarried. It’s Cordelia Colman now.”
“Nice ring to it. But how does you going up against your father hurt your standing with the other girls?”
Her eyebrows went up. “Girls?”
“Why, was that a mixed group? I didn’t remember seeing any guys out there waving signs.”
She turned her head sideways and her tone became patronizing. “I haven’t been a ‘girl’ for a very long time.”
“Well, it doesn’t show.”
She glared at me. “Not since I was thirteen, I haven’t.”
“So what are you now?”
“What the fuck do you think? A young woman!”
“Ah. Got you. So. Why wouldn’t the other young women respect you all the more for taking on your own father?”
She shrugged. Her eyes were looking past me. That was all the answer I was going to get, at the moment anyway.
Then she said, “Maybe you could just drive me home now.”
I said sure and got to my feet. I thought about taking her arm as she rose, but thought better of it. She led the way, her shapely little bottom in the cutoffs pulling male eyes away from the current stripper on stage, the cheeks instinctively rising and falling piston-like to “Brown Sugar.”
Then we were out in an evening that had turned to night, and a night that had turned damn near chilly. The scene now was drastically different: no news vans, no protestors, not even a black Caddy limo parked at a curb.
She followed me across Highland to the side street where the pale-green ’69 Mustang convertible was parked, its top up.
Her smile suddenly took on a nicely childlike tinge.
“I like it,” she said, appraising the ride with her hands on her hips and all politics gone from her brain. The big brown eyes traveled from the Mustang to my face and back again. “Is it too cold, do you think, to put the top down?”
I said it wasn’t and did.
Gentleman that I was, I opened her door for her. Hypocrite that she was, she let me.
Behind the wheel, not starting the engine yet, I asked, “Would you like to get something to eat?”
She smirked. “What is this, a date?”
“No. It’s that I haven’t eaten and if you haven’t either, we could do that together, and I could probably get reimbursed by your father for it. What do you say? Shall we stick it to the man?”
We wound up ten minutes away in a beer-and-burger joint called Huey’s. The walls were cluttered with nostalgic junk and the tables had red-and-white checkered tablecloths as if it were an Italian joint. The clientele seemed to be mostly white, so I figured the Huey on the sign wasn’t Newton. Whoever was responsible, the burgers were thick and a perfect medium rare. We were at a side table in a corner with good privacy.