Peepshow (7 page)

Flame wrapped her legs around the pole and shimmied up until she reached the ceiling. She frisbeed her hat onto a chair then hung upside down and slid back until her palms rested flat against the podium. The handstand turned into a backflip and ended in a sexy kneeling position. I clapped politely like they do at the golf. Flame did another handstand and teetered over until her platform shoes clanked against the pole. She scissored her legs, gripped the metal with her calves, raised her body and climbed to the top again. For the finale she spun down fast and came to rest doing the splits. Ouch.

‘That’s amazing,’ I said, ‘but I just wanted to learn how to spin around.’

Flame snorted air out of her nose. ‘Take a run up, hook your ankle around the pole and extend your outside leg. The momentum will spin you around.’

I did what she suggested but spun slowly and awkwardly, my skin squeaking against metal and the pole hurting my hand. So much for the seamless, elegant spin I had imagined.

‘Or you can just hang on to the pole and dance,’

Flame smiled when she realised I wasn’t going to set the table-dancing world on fire.

‘I might just do that. Don’t your hands get sore?’

She shrugged. ‘You get used to it.’

‘Flame,’ I said, ‘I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about Frank. I heard you were going out and—’

‘People die.’ She stared off into the middle distance.

‘That’s life.’

Jim had been watching from the bar and sauntered over, hands in pockets, walkie-talkie hanging off his belt.

‘Flame showing you a few tricks, ay?’

I sat down on the edge of the podium, legs dangling.

‘It’s not as easy as it looks.’

‘Nothing ever is.’ He sniffed and rubbed his nose. ‘If you need to see me at all tonight, don’t hesitate, any time. Just get Vince or Brad to radio me first, OK?’

‘Sure.’

He headed back to his office.

‘Jim seems really nice,’ I said, trying to be friendly.

Flame gave me a look. ‘That’s why I’m going out with him.’

I knew what that look meant.

I paced myself for the rest of the night, drinking just enough to keep me going and alternating water with champagne. I didn’t touch any coke but saw most of the other girls duck into the office at regular intervals.

Hopefully Jim was so high he didn’t realise I hadn’t visited.

It was hard hustling for lap dances without being off your brain. Every guy I talked to said the same old shit: you’re too nice to be working in a place like this.

Maybe they meant it as a compliment but I couldn’t take it as one. It was like they were saying I’d made a poor career choice, possibly because of unfortunate personal circumstances, and they felt sorry for me. Give me a break. I made two hundred dollars but could see the other girls making more. And they were fast, talked to the guys for a couple of minutes then whisked them off to the lounges. Wham bam thank you sir and on to the next one. I wondered how they did it. I spent too much time talking to men who didn’t want to hand over money, telling the beauty school story over and over, and shouting above the music until I was hoarse.

Finally the crowds ebbed for the last time and the house lights came up. Flame was draped over Jim by the bar, both smoking furiously, and she tapped her fish heels to muted top forty hits. They didn’t look as good in the harsh lighting. Flame’s skin had a greyish cast and dissipation showed all over Jim’s face. He turned to me: ‘Hey, Vivien, good night?’

‘Yeah, great,’ I lied.

‘Wanna come back to my place for a drink with me and Flame? It’s only just around the corner.’ His pupils were huge and he chewed the inside of his mouth. Flame looked off into space.

‘I’m sooo tired,’ I begged off.

‘We can fix that,’ he said.

‘Maybe some other time.’

‘I’ll hold you to that.’

I walked to the staff room on aching legs. Aurora and Betty talked quietly while getting dressed. They seemed like good friends. Betty peeled off her leopard outfit and put on another fifties get-up: red pencil skirt, cap-sleeved blouse, bowling shoes and bobby socks. She dabbed makeup remover onto a cotton ball and rubbed her upper arm, revealing a dice tattoo.

Red lipstick and a ponytail completed the look. Rock around the clock.

Aurora pulled on a pair of hipsters so low they would have shown pubes if she’d had any and a midriff-baring Che Guevara T-shirt. Postmodern. Her twelve thousand dollar tits made Che’s beret go lumpy.

She examined her reflection in the mirror, caught me looking and smiled.

‘How was your night, Vivien?’

‘OK,’ I shrugged, ‘but I’m having a hard time getting any money out of them. I watched you girls. There’s an art to it, isn’t there?’

‘Yeah, but it’s hard to explain.’ She turned and sat on the dressing table. ‘When I first started I hardly made anything. After about a month, something seemed to click in and it became easy to make money. Is that how it happened to you?’ she asked the others.

‘Pretty much.’ Betty zipped up an old-fashioned crocodile skin case. All strippers need big bags. Chloe always trundled about with an air hostess suitcase, wheels and a pull-out handle.

‘You’ve got to tell them what they want,’ said Anais.

‘Don’t wait for them to ask you.’

Dakota said, ‘I just grab ’em by the hand and tell ’em it’s time for your lap dance now.’

‘Isn’t that a bit…’

‘Rude?’ said Betty. ‘Don’t you think they’re rude, the way one of them pays and the rest gather round for a free look? They act like you should be doing it for nothing and reckon twenty bucks ought to get them a head job. So fuck them.’

‘Hear hear,’ said Anais.

‘Point taken.’ I changed into jeans, black boots and my Doug Mansfield and the Dust Devils T-shirt. It was a versatile look that could take me from the boardroom, to dinner, to out on the town.

The door to the girls’ room burst open and Emma headed for her locker. ‘Thank Christ that’s over. What a bunch of creeps. Where we going, girls? Expansion?

They’ve got jugs of illusions.’

‘I want to go to the Gin Palace,’ said Betty.

‘It’s four in the morning, it’ll be closed.’ Aurora hoisted her bag over her shoulder. ‘Coming for a drink, Vivien?’

‘Why not,’ I said.

Expansion nightclub was half a block up King Street.

Aurora smiled at the doorman and we bypassed the line out front. Who wouldn’t let in a bunch of strippers, cashed up and wearing only marginally more than they did on stage? We dropped our bags at the coat-check and went upstairs to a room with lots of wood panelling and wall fans pushing smoky air around. People writhed to revamped disco hits under a paltry laser light show, and drunk young men packed together at the edge of the dance floor.

I followed the others to a lounge area at the back of the room where it was quieter and leaned into Aurora:

‘Nice place, classy.’

‘I thought you’d like it,’ she smirked. ‘Drink?’

‘Champagne?’

‘Don’t do it. The champers here is so cheap it’s poison. You’ll be sick as a dog for days. Can I get you anything else?’

‘Would they have Irish whisky?’

‘A girl after my own heart. I like her.’ She clapped me on the back.

‘Well buy a fucking bottle, sweetheart.’ Anais opened a Hello Kitty wallet and brandished a crumpled fifty.

Aurora waved her away.

‘Not whisky.’ Betty screwed up her face. ‘I hate that shit.’

‘Me too. I’ll get a shaker of illusions, eh?’ Emma bounced off to the bar and I was left sitting with Anais, Betty, Dakota and Carolina. Dakota and Carolina were talking, a coke-fuelled rave with too many words and too little time. They got up to dance. Jesus, who’d have the energy?

‘So, Vivien.’ Anais leaned back in her chair. ‘What’s your story?’

‘My story?’ I had a moment of panic. Were they on to me?

‘How’d you end up at the Red?’

‘Well, I’ve done bucks’ parties, pub shows and I used to work at the Shaft . . .’

‘Eeew, not the peepshows.’ Betty screwed up her face again.

‘Yeah, so?’

‘It’s just so . . .’

‘It’s so what, Betty?’ Aurora sat next to me on the couch. She had a bottle of Jameson’s and three glasses.

‘You know . . .’ she pouted.

Aurora twisted the cap off the bottle and poured.

‘I don’t think someone who works in the sex industry has the right to moralise about anyone else in the business. Strippers, prostitutes, massage girls, porn actors, phone sex operators, we’re all sex workers.’

‘Hear hear.’ Anais held up her glass and clinked it with mine and Aurora’s. ‘I don’t mind the peeps.’ She winked at me. ‘I like to pop a coin in myself from time to time. And not just for research purposes.’

‘Research?’

‘Anais is working on her Honours thesis,’ Aurora explained. ‘The Vagina as a Social Space.’ Betty had marched off to the ladies.

‘Don’t worry about her,’ Aurora said. ‘She can get a little narky after too much nose candy.’

‘Or too little,’ said Anais. Emma came back with two jugs of illusions. I didn’t know what was in them—something green. Betty returned from the toilets sniffing and in a much better mood.

‘Do you like the Dust Devils?’ She pointed at my T-shirt.

‘Yeah, you know them?’ I was surprised—they weren’t exactly hit parade stuff.

‘Saw them at the Greyhound once.’ She sniffed again,

‘If you like them you should come see my boyfriend’s band at the Espy Tuesday night.’

‘What are they called?’

‘Las Vegas Grind.’ She pulled a flyer out of her bowling bag. The name was spelled out in red and yellow flames and there was a picture of a hot rod, a pair of dice and a busty burlesque showgirl. ‘They’re kind of like a mix of rockabilly, swamp-country and western swing.

Aurora’s coming.’

‘Yeah, you should come, Vivien,’ Aurora said.

‘Where do you live?’

‘Elwood.’

‘No excuses then, it’s just up the road.’

Dakota came back from the dance floor and flopped herself onto Anais’s lap. ‘Illusions!’ She had a shot.

Anais bounced her up and down. ‘Still seeing that cop, babe?’

‘Nah.’ Dakota shook her head from side to side, sending her wavy blond hair flying. ‘His wife found out and cracked the shits.’

‘You were going out with a cop?’ I asked.

‘From the murder investigation.’ She seemed proud of the fact.

‘We all got interviewed,’ Anais said.

‘It wasn’t Detective Duval, was it?’ I took a big slug of whisky and it seared a path down my throat.

‘How do you know Duval?’ Aurora asked.

‘Read about him in the paper.’

‘It wasn’t Duval,’ said Dakota. ‘He’s, like, a hundred years old.’

‘Come on,’ said Aurora. ‘He’s no more than fifty.

He’s got really amazing eyes. I’d root him.’

The girls screamed with laughter.

‘I’d root Talbot,’ said Anais, ‘but she’d have to be wearing a motorbike cop outfit, full leathers with handcuffs and a . . . baton . . .’ She wiggled her eyebrows.

Emma stood up and did an impression of Harvey Keitel in
Bad Lieutenant
.

‘Show me your ass.’ She pulled at an imaginary dick.

‘Is that what Detective Perlman used to say? Show me your ass . . .’

‘No!’ squealed Dakota.

I had tears in my eyes and even Betty was laughing.

Guys looked over. They wanted to approach but seven cackling females were just too frightening.

‘Fucking hell.’ I wiped my eyes. ‘Must have been full on, middle of a murder investigation.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Dakota said. ‘They closed the club for a couple of days and when we opened there was so much heat around you couldn’t get a line to save your life.’

Aurora said, ‘Had to keep shutting early. No one could stay awake.’

‘Those undercover cops were so obvious,’ said Betty.

‘Pathetic.’

I had another sip of whisky. The more I drank the easier it went down. ‘You reckon it was a Mafia thing, like they’re saying in the papers?’

Anais snorted.

‘Those newspapers don’t know shit,’ Dakota slurred.

She was getting messy.

‘I’ve got my suspects,’ said Emma

‘Who?’ asked Aurora. ‘Come on, Miss Marple.’

‘Well . . .’ Emma leaned forward and almost fell out of her top. ‘You know that copper who used to get free drinks and dances, what’s his name? Dick something.’

‘Dick Farquhar,’ Aurora said. ‘Dick by name, dick by nature.’

‘Well, the night Frank . . . was killed . . . I got a call to bring them scotch in the office. Before I knocked on the door I heard arguing. They stopped when I went in, and started up again when I left.’

‘Did you tell the cops?’ I asked.

‘No way,’ said Emma. ‘That D, he’s fucking bent, right? And he’s a nasty piece of work. I always got a real bad feeling about him. I’m here on a working holiday, you know, have a few laughs, don’t want to be the next backpacker murder or nothing. I’m like one of them monkeys that don’t see, hear or smell evil.’

Betty lit a Lucky Strike. ‘I think Jim had the most to gain. He wanted Frank’s job, which he got, and, I don’t know, was secretly in love with Flame and had to kill Frank so they could be together.’

‘That’s sooo romantic,’ said Anais.

‘Did Frank and Flame used to be an item?’ I asked innocently.

‘Yeah,’ Aurora said, ‘but that didn’t stop him from rooting around, only Flame couldn’t fuck anyone else.’

‘Unless it was another chick and he watched,’ said Anais.

Dakota, who was passing out on Anais’s lap, suddenly came to. ‘He had his dick cut off.’

‘What?’ I said. Everybody stopped talking and looked at her.

‘That wasn’t in the news,’ said Aurora.

‘Whoops, that’s supposed to be a secret.’ Dakota covered her mouth with her hands like a little kid.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Anais. ‘Maybe it was Shane then.’

‘Who’s Shane?’ I asked. This drinking session was a goldmine.

‘Honey’s boyfriend,’ Anais said.

‘Who’s Honey?’

‘Honey’s a bit of a ditz. Starts rooting Frank and Shane finds out. Get this, he works in an abattoir and one night comes for Frank with one of the knives they use to slaughter the animals.’