Last Girl Dancing Read online

  They bought their required second round of drinks from a dancer working the room. And Hank watched Jess studying the dancer on the stage. “She sucks,” Jess said after a minute.

  “She might,” Hank said. “She sure as hell isn’t earning a living wage with her dancing.”

  Jess made a face at him. “Any idea how often this place gets raided?”

  “This is the fourth club in here in the last two years. The previous three were shut down for violations. They’re lovely neighbors.”

  “The ‘new owner, new name’ scam, huh?”

  Hank nodded.

  Like the majority of Atlanta’s strip clubs, Kat’s Place featured complete nudity. Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Were Made for Walking” blared out of the speakers, the girl on stage stopped wriggling and started walking, and Hank and Jess stared at each other in disbelief. “Theme music,” Hank muttered. “Notice the shiny latex boots. Notice the walking.”

  While Nancy sang, the wriggle queen stomped up and down the runway, stripping to the skin like she was undressing at the doctor’s office. She grabbed her breasts a few times and flipped her hair. Ground her ass against the pole. Walked some more.

  Jess muttered, “Pathetic,” at the same instant that some drunk up toward the stage bellowed, “Flash me the poop chute, baby.”

  And the dancer turned her back on the audience, spread her legs wide, gripped her ass cheeks, and bent over.

  Hank suffered a brief flashback to medical examinations in the army.

  “Jee-zus,” Jess muttered.

  “Like I said, I don’t do strip clubs. But I’m told this is the worst one that’s conveniently close. Jim suggested this place and three others as covering the gamut of what’s available in this town, and put them in order from worst to best. We’ll never have to leave Cheshire Bridge Road, and we’ll get to see the full range of what’s out there. From the wild days of my youth, however, I don’t think you’ll find that the best one is any classier overall.”

  “No?”

  “No. What you have here is a room full of testosterone with nowhere to go, being played for money by women who wouldn’t give one of these assholes the time of day outside of these doors. Doesn’t bring out the best behavior in anyone.”

  Nancy and the boots finished to almost no notice, to be replaced by a skinny girl with enormous fake tits and about as much enthusiasm as the first dancer. Better taste in music, though. Metallica’s “Memory Remains.” For that, at least, Hank could forgive her.

  And then Jess said, “Aw, shit.”

  He followed the direction of her gaze and saw that the girl who had been on stage was now strolling between tables, still wearing the boots, as well as a thong and a nearly see-through robe. The girl was flipping her hair at a customer, who said something completely drowned out by the pounding beat of the music. And the man shoved money into the thong, and the girl leaned close and pulled open the neck of her robe, and the man licked her nipple. The girl laughed and stood up, and the customer did, too, and she led him by the hand toward the very, very dark corner where Jess and Hank sat.

  Hank glanced over at Jess.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “If we stay, we’re going to watch laws being broken in a depressingly grimy fashion. I have no intention of breaking cover. This isn’t my gig anyway, and to be honest with you, I’d rather pass.”

  “Yeah,” Hank said, glancing over as the couple got situated. “Watching strangers having bad sex isn’t my idea of an evening’s fun, either. Let’s go.”

  Jess followed Hank through three different strip clubs after Kat’s Place. The clubs had a lot of surface differences — as they moved up Hank’s list they found places with better lighting, friendly waitresses hustling drinks with winks and flirty little laughs, and dancers who had real talent. The clubs that looked like they were staying legal and weren’t merely fronts for prostitution had more real dancers and fewer butt wrigglers, and Jess found herself studying the dancers’ styles and their moves, and being impressed by the best of them. The pole work, when done well, was as athletic as any of the things she’d done in ballet. One dancer flipped upside down on the pole and held her body in place, completely inverted, while she did a split in the air, and finished it off with a little leg swing that spun her around the pole upside down.

  The good dancers made eye contact with the customers. Smiled. Looked like they were having fun, whether they were or not. They spent as much time doing floor work as they did on the pole. Jess wondered how many of them were students paying their way through college, or single mothers supporting kids at home.

  Some of the dancers engaged in far more physical contact with the customers than any city permit would approve. And some were cheerful beauties who chatted with customers, and stopped to talk, and did no-touch lap dances, but managed to hold the line.

  The customers in the better places — the ones operating within the law — seemed to pay more attention to the rules, though Jess could see that it was basically the dancers who were left to enforce them. The customers looked and they yelled, they drank, they bought drinks for the dancers and lap dances from them; sometimes they applauded. They still called out crude suggestions to the dancers.

  Even in the fancier clubs, though, Jess caught glimpses of the occasional girl taking money to be touched. Or kissed. In one club, the floor managers walked the main room with laser pointers, flashing them on dancers and customers caught in compromising acts. The little red dots served as a warning to everyone: Yes, we’re watching; yes, we’re counting; three and you’re out. Occasionally a customer would go too far and get talked to by a floor manager in a bad suit who invariably looked like he worked for the mob.

  The last place Hank took Jess to was Gazelles, upscale and elegant on the surface, with gorgeous furniture inside, chandeliers, paintings on the walls, a painfully expensive cover charge, and a massive man in a tuxedo showing them into the entertainment lounge.

  They took seats away from the stages, and as best they could with the interruptions of loud music and nearly naked women dropping by to see if they needed anything, Jess and Hank followed Jim’s request that they get to know each other. They made small talk that avoided any discussion of Jess’s work or Hank’s reason for being asked to consult. They talked about the dojo instead, the last books they’d read, physical fitness. When Hank discovered that Jess shared his passion for staying in shape, they got into a discussion of martial arts, dance and its value to combat-type situations, and training techniques... and they forgot for a while that they didn’t want to like each other, and that they were sitting in a strip club getting background for undercover work.

  Finally, though, Jess remembered that the city was paying for her and Hank to experience sleaze Atlanta-style, and she returned her attention to the club. And Gazelles proved that Hank’s assertion about no strip club being classy was true. In Gazelles, the featured dancers came out in evening gowns that suggested Bob Mackie’s career direction after he quit designing for Cher, and took them off in surprising and creative ways. They put on a good show. In between sets, waitresses brought drinks and chatted with customers, and flirted and giggled and suggested to the men sitting with dancers that maybe they’d like to buy the girls drinks. Dancers, dressed in robes or partial costumes, also chatted up the customers, sat at tables with some of them, did table dances for some of them — dancing not on tables but on the floor in front of the chairs of the customers. However, Jess noted that from time to time a dancer would disappear with a patron into a private room.

  Even for those who stayed in the main room and followed the rules, it was the same old game. Booze to numb the customers and make them pliable, the illusion of sex to get them to loosen their wallets, and likely more than the illusion if the price was right and the girl was willing. A steady flow of cash in one direction, a pretense of interest and caring and the lure of sex in the other. No amount of lacquered furniture and oil painting
s could pretty that up.

  “You look miserable,” Hank said, taking her hand, and Jess nearly jumped out of her skin. Pulled her hand away. Because she had been thinking of Ginny. Because this had been Ginny’s life. Not for long. Just long enough for the damage to be done.

  “I hate this,” Jess said. “It’s all... pretense. And people using each other.”

  Hank gave her an unreadable look. “Some people only want pretense. Only want to use. Or be used. If you try to give them something real, they run away.” He was staring into her eyes. “That... that isn’t you, though.”

  “No,” she said. She yawned, and glanced at her watch. “Good God, Hank. It’s four in the morning. I’ve been up all day.”

  He said, “Me, too. I wasn’t watching the time.” He shook his head. “Company got too interesting.”

  “It did.” Jess smiled a little, realizing that Hank had been surrounded by enormous bare breasts all night and he’d given them cursory glances and then returned his attention to her. He had been interesting to talk to. He seemed like a good, solid man. Someone worthwhile, though neither he nor she had crept anywhere near a personal conversation. He gave off a good feel, though — and Jess couldn’t see anyone who’d been sharp enough to be a Ranger being a waste of skin.

  So what the hell was Hank doing shilling psychic crap at Jim?

  Hank watched Jess drive out of the parking lot. Watched until her taillights vanished from view. When he was sure she was gone, he let himself into the dojo, locked it back up, then trudged up the back stairs to his place. Alone. He was very conscious, for the first time in a long time, of being alone.

  Of getting undressed alone. Of getting into bed alone.

  Jess had been good company. Smart, funny, open, blunt, occasionally crude. She was gorgeous, but she was unconscious enough of her own beauty that he could forget about it too. Could treat her like a friend, a colleague, someone who wasn’t an object.

  And then he’d suddenly realize that he was swapping war stories with the most beautiful woman he’d ever spent time with, and all of a sudden he’d lose track of what he was saying, and catch himself watching her drink or laugh or smile.

  He wanted to take her to bed, of course. That was a given. He was male, she was female — and a particularly good example of the gender to his way of thinking — and they were both warm and breathing. He’d been celibate for a very long time. So of course he wanted to get her naked.

  But lying there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, he was mostly seeing her laughing, hearing her voice as she leaned over and murmured shocking comments about the dancers and the customers in his ear. He found himself smiling at her observations about the people around them. Loving the way she appreciated his own tales of life as a martial arts instructor, and later, when he felt more comfortable with her, about life as an army Ranger. She’d had her own good stories, too. She’d been tested by fire. She was tougher than she looked.

  And if, as he replayed the evening in his mind, her clothes kept mysteriously disappearing, if he found himself wishing she were in bed beside him — that he was holding her, kissing her, running his hands over her breasts and hips, feeling her legs wrapped tight around his waist, driving into her while she thrashed and screamed — that didn’t mean anything.

  Did not mean anything at all.

  He wasn’t going to get involved. Not now, not ever. It wasn’t worth it, he didn’t need it; he had his mission, and the mission was enough.

  Jess woke to the alarm going off at noon, sighed, and rolled out of bed. She had to be back at HSCU by three to get all the paperwork done for her cover identity, and to be fitted for her wire. And before she went in, she had a fair amount of uncomfortable, awkward shaving to do, a process she did not anticipate with any pleasure. The problem with the shaving was that all of it had to be done in places where sharp things didn’t belong, and she chanced surgically altering those places in the process.

  On Jim’s advice, she had a halter top and a pair of Daisy Dukes in a bag along with makeup, hair spray, and other things she’d need to transform herself from Jess into a credible exotic dancer. She threw in the stiletto heels she’d worn the night before because they helped her feel the part. Undercover work was all about being someone else, and good undercover cops could become someone else with little more than posture, movement, and attitude. Jess, knowing that her life could depend on how convincing she was, wanted to practice the stripper character for Jim and Charlie to make sure she would be able to carry it off.

  She wore as few clothes as possible, because Jim had told her Bill the Tech Guy was going to be in there to set her up with a wire. It wouldn’t be the wire she was going to use, though. It would be the wire that they would put together to keep Captain Booker happy and off everyone’s case — the one a waitress could wear under the skimpy Goldcastle waitstaff costume. Not the one a stripper could wear while dressed in nothing but a G-string and shoes. Jim promised her Bill already had that one finished.

  She dragged into HSCU on time, weary but game, carrying her goody bag.

  Charlie was dummying up her undercover ID — driver’s license blank, permit to serve drinks, permit to perform in a strip club, a couple of other goodies.

  Jim noted her bleariness, and said “Late night?”

  “Four A.M. We closed the place down. Guess I’ll have to get used to those hours.” She waved the brown paper bag in front of him and said, “I’ve got my stuff here. Didn’t want to drive to work dressed like this, though.”

  “Good plan. Go get changed. Do whatever you’re going to do to look the part. Charlie’s setting up for you over there.” He pointed to the southeast corner of the big room, behind one of the two lines of cubicles. “There’s a bathroom back there for you to change in, and we’ll keep the traffic down to Charlie, me, Bill — and you.”

  Jess sighed. “I appreciate it. I’m going to have to go public with this look — and less — but I’d rather not do it today.”

  “I understand.”

  In the bathroom, she shed her jacket, holster and gun, blouse, bra, work shoes, skirt, hose, and underwear. She put the badge on top of the pile of clothes and shivered. She felt more naked without the badge and the gun than she did without the clothes. She thought she could have strolled around in a thong with no problem if she had her badge clipped to one side of it and was wearing her shoulder holster.

  She sighed, and slipped into the shorts, the halter top, and the stiletto heels, put on heavy eye makeup and dark lipstick, and, after studying the sleek lines of her hair, teased it out into a fuller, wilder look and sprayed it in place. She probably ought to get extensions. Longer, tousled hair would better fit the part she intended to play.

  She finished, put her other clothes, sidearm, and badge into the bag, put the makeup on top, and then stood staring at the door that led out to HSCU.

  She swallowed, feeling her pulse pick up. God, she’d forgotten all about stage fright. She was about to be wearing a whole lot less than she was at that moment and strolling between tables full of drinking, rowdy men. She was going to be unarmed. She was going to be playing a part that was her deepest personal nightmare.

  And she had to look like she was having the time of her life.

  Best start trying on the act right then.

  She took a deep breath, pasted a bright smile on her face, and got ready to open the door. Stood there, frozen, willing herself to move forward. And sagged against the plaster wall, her hand suspended inches above the knob and the smile washing from her face into an expression of despair. With the cool plaster against her skin, she closed her eyes. This was too hard. She was thirty-four, for God’s sake, and pretending to be part of a business that would have preferred everyone to be twenty-one and look eighteen. She had a good body and it was in shape. She had a good enough face. But she wasn’t twenty-one, and no one was ever going to mistake her for eighteen.

  And then, with her eyes closed, she could feel Ginny inside her head. Con
fident. Certain. Ginny would have known what to do. Ginny had done this, and had succeeded at it. And in a way, Jess was doing this for Ginny.

  Senior talent show, three days before Halloween. Jess and Ginny holding their breath, ready to bound out onto the stage the moment they were announced.

  A blue spotlight illuminated the center of the dark stage.

  “And now, Ginny and Jess Brubaker, with ‘Ghost in the Mirror,’ ” the show’s producer, Mr. Hamblich, announced.

  The first dark notes from Mozart’s Requiem shivered and skittered through the air. The girls had choreographed the dance themselves. They would be telling, in three minutes, the story of a girl being haunted by her own ghost. Jess was the ghost, wearing a tattered, shroudlike version of Ginny’s white, diaphanous dress. Their mother had made the costumes — she’d been inspired.

  Jess and Ginny were doing pointe work simply because they could. They were in top form; they were ready.

  This dance, presented some months later, would win both girls openings in the dance schools of their choice.

  However, in the eyes of the teenage boys who made up half of the audience in their high school auditorium, identical twin sisters in skimpy costumes and tights who not only mirrored each other’s movements, but who at one point held hands and stared into each other’s eyes, looked a lot more like the lesbian porn of their fantasies than the horror of a young woman coming face-to-face with her own mortality. Jess and Ginny’s dance had been wildly popular. But for all the wrong reasons.

  For the rest of the year, an unending stream of wishful males would be offering them money to watch “the next time you do it.” Would be inviting the two of them to parties, but “only if you come together. Come. Get it?”