The Garden of Last Days (8 page)

The night was in full swing now, a big smoky machine. It was the time in the shift when whoever danced onstage was no longer the main attraction; there were other things happening, pockets opening and closing all over the floor, no trouble, just men rising one at a time
for their trips to the VIP. It was almost full and Lonnie stayed at the half wall and watched both rooms till Paco came back. Little Andy had his eye on the VIP too, though he was slow to see anything. With his flat-top haircut and sloping bulk, his chest hard and bulbous and just a bit larger than his gut, Little Andy used to play football at FSU and told everyone who’d listen how he was heading for the NFL. Then he got hurt, jumping drunk off the second-story balcony of a motel, smashing both ankles on the concrete surrounding the pool he’d missed. Now he watched over the Champagne Room. He stared at the dancers more than he should, and he never saw a pocket till it’d opened all the way and other floor hosts were already there. But because he was unhappy, he was mean and a good closer, liked to be the one to take it to the parking lot and toss the customer face-first into the broken shells under the neon light of the Puma sign.

Spring seemed to be back on her game. Walking tall, her long hair brushing against her blouse and skirt, she led a tanned businessman back to his table and only had to tap his partner’s shoulder to get him to follow her. On her way back to the VIP, she smiled through the crowd, careful to aim it at each man who happened to look up at her, and she was relaxed, her hoop earrings swaying, her makeup a little heavy but just right for this place. Whatever Lonnie had seen in her earlier seemed to be put away for now. She was back to being the pro she was, and at the end of the shift she’d look him in the eye and give him a genuine smile of gratitude, none of the hurried cash-toss and barely restrained tone of resentment he sometimes got from the others.

Paco was at the bar now. He nodded and winked at Lonnie, who turned and made his way through the noise of the main floor to the Amazon. He glanced back, saw Spring sit her customer down. He could see only her hair, ass, and legs, her hips swaying as she reached up and started to unbutton her blouse. Lonnie turned away and headed for his perch. Didn’t know why—it was just always hard to watch her then. No one else. Only her. Undressing for just one. Her twenty-dollar one and only.

SOME NIGHTS IT
was like reaching into a bin full of apples. She didn’t have to act like she loved them, just smile and curl her finger at them to follow and they did. One or two always needed encouragement so she took their money, then guided them through the tables to the VIP, where all the easy chairs might be taken and she’d have to wait till the number was through and somebody’s customer got up to leave. The whole time she’d talk to him, smiling. It’d be hard to hear anything so she’d have to let him put his wet mouth close to her ear, let him get that close just so he could piss her off by asking her real name. Like his twenty bucks entitled him to that. Like he was the first to ever have the balls and the heart, he thought, to ask that.

Most nights April used the music and shook her head as if she hadn’t heard. Other nights she’d talk right through his question, ask if he wanted his private there in the private darkness at the blue-lit
entry to the VIP. Just her and him in the shadows. Some nodded yes, their eyes already on her body she’d never stopped moving because you should never stop moving; if you did, you were just standing there talking, your body getting cold, the beat and rhythm leaving your muscles, but worse than that, it was harder to stay Spring if she stopped; if she stopped moving and started talking it was too easy for April to come out. To be her. Just April standing there in a smoky club in a skirt and blouse talking when she wasn’t here to talk and hated it whenever that’s what a man wanted in the VIP. Why not stay home and talk to his
wife
?

But if she just smiled and took their money and danced off her clothes, then she was Spring. Breasts and flat belly, ass and thighs and long swinging hair and big smile. Every one of them could look and look at
those
and she, April, could stay inside in that dark, quiet part of herself that wasn’t here at all, had never been, was back home with her daughter, though tonight her Franny was in Tina’s office, and as April danced now in the VIP for a fat man in a loosened tie, she was really with her baby on Tina’s couch, the two of them eating ice cream and watching Ariel fall in love with a prince on land who would love her forever if only she’d come join him.

April could feel how close Franny was, knew she had to go there soon before climbing back onstage for her second act. When she was Spring and not April it was always easier to harden herself to everything—the
bend over
s and
come sit on this
, some of the men’s faces so drunk and lonely, their eyes mean and dead-looking. But here in the smoky haze of the VIP under the dimmed light over the easy chair, this one kept smiling at her. He’d left his drink back at his table and he kept smiling and smiling. A big wide face with glasses and square teeth, his cheeks flushed. Her skirt and blouse were off, draped over the chair arms and his lap where she liked to put them. Make them feel they were special so they sometimes tipped a five on top of the twenty. And now her T-back. Other girls ripped free the Velcro all at once, letting themselves pop out sexy as toast from a toaster, saving their drama for their stage act, but not Spring; Spring had style all night long and now
she rocked her hips from side to side, let him watch her do it slowly till her T-back was loose and she held it there with her fingers, watched him look hungrily from them to her still-covered breasts to her face, then back to her fingers, and that’s when she lifted her left hand and let that cup fall and dangle, her right breast still covered, and it was funny how they always looked at the naked one only a second or two, their eyes on her hand now over her loosened cup over the other. This music was good. A man’s voice singing high and hurt, guitar strings whining. And why didn’t they ever look longer at the naked one? Why was the covered one more interesting now? It sometimes made her wonder why they came here at all.

Now the music changed, got harder and faster, the man’s voice full of so much longing he was almost angry. She dropped her hand and let her bra fall open. Pulling one arm out of it, then the other, she dropped it onto his knee—silk pants she noticed just now, some money here, a banker or lawyer or bank’s lawyer.

The song was almost over and it was time to give him bottoms too. She let her body move to the song whichever way it wanted. She put both hands behind her neck, lifting her hair, bringing her elbows in slightly, swaying in time, though there wasn’t much time left. His eyes were on her belly, flat as it’d always been; she could eat anything and never worry because she was always moving and never staying still and this one was through with her breasts and had moved on to the next hidden thing, his eyes on her crotch. There were only a few seconds left in the song and when it ended she’d have her twenty already and didn’t have to do more now, but this one had some cash—she could feel it—and it wouldn’t take much, and she ran her fingers down along her ribs to her hips, hooking her thumbs into her G-string just as the number was ending, the singer’s voice still lonely and riding out the last ringing guitar chord, and she noticed her customer was hard, something that usually happened with the young ones but not the busy busy men in the middle of their lives, this one with a short tent in his pants, her crotch close to his face, the song over now, but she showed him anyway, pushed her G-string down till
her arms locked straight and she let him see the coarse hair there she didn’t trim as closely as the other girls because they didn’t have what she did, a scar from Franny. Her baby pulled out of the cut they made there, then sewed up badly, Glenn sitting stoned on a stool. He never touched her. Not a hand on her shoulder or forehead. Just sat there in the scrubs they made him put on, his eyes dark pools above his blue mask.

She pulled her G-string up and let it pop back into place. She smiled down at this fat banker with glasses, his shiny cheeks, though at this moment she didn’t really care if he lived a long happy life or died right there in that chair. She picked her T-back and skirt off his knee. The next number had started and she was late, liked to be dressed again before that. Getting the clothes back on even more important than stripping them off. She stepped into her skirt and pulled it up, his eyes on her breasts still. She laughed a nightlaugh and told him he was getting a freebie now and if he wanted she’d do this number for him, too. He didn’t answer her. And he wasn’t reaching for any extra to give her either. His pants still a tent. His silk pants full of cash he wasn’t going to do the right thing with.

She grabbed her blouse off the chair arm and put her back to him. She pulled on her T-back, snapped it closed, and walked fast out of the VIP, thinking, Fuck him.
Fuck
him. But it was wrong to get pulled into any kind of emotion at all. It would throw off the whole night.

“Everything cool?” Paco’s voice floated briefly through the music and bar noise as she walked by him. She nodded and kept going. In the blue darkness at the half wall she pulled on her blouse and buttoned it. Onstage a new girl was only a quarter into her song and had her top off too soon, the crowd calling out things, a lot of young men tonight, drunk and smoking house cigars. April buttoned her last button as Retro walked by and winked at her, leading one of her regulars by his hand. He was a long-faced man in an out-of-fashion tie, and he was looking hard not at Retro’s ass behind her red leather shorts but at the back of her head, like that’s where he wanted to be—in Retro’s
brain
. To see if she thought about him at all.

And now her fat banker was at the bar ordering a drink and looking straight ahead at his reflection in the mirror. His twenty was folded tightly into her garter with three others, and Renée was up after this new girl, this skinny redhead who had taken off everything way too fast so now the crowd was going to expect some floor action. Now they’d expect her to take them farther, to reach down and open her lips and show them some pink.

April was dressed again and ready to work, but her body wasn’t moving. She could feel Franny in Tina’s office somewhere behind her, her twenty-nine-pound daughter a wedge between being herself and being Spring. Tonight she was stuck somewhere between the two and right now she just wanted to walk through the dark crowded floor back to the dressing room to her baby. Maybe if she sat with her till she fell asleep, or at least till she had to do her act, it’d be better; she’d be able to see she was okay and finally let go completely into being Spring. Start dancing with no feelings about it either way.

It was too late for this song, but soon enough the second number began, a sugary hit by some country singer with high hair April’d seen on TV. The new girl was working the pole too much, hanging on it and snapping her hair out of time to the music. She had the whole song to work and nothing more to take off. Her legs were thin and white and she had a flat ass and made jerky movements that didn’t come from the song and April knew Louis had only hired her for her breasts. They were huge and real, but because she danced so badly they swung around heavy as cow udders. April didn’t have anything to do with these girls, but she’d have a talk with this one. Tell her to listen to the music. To work the apron of the stage more. Draw men up from their seats one at a time. And don’t give them so much so soon. Don’t do what the new girl began to do now, panic because she could see how much more they wanted before she was through and she was so new to this she thought she had to give it to them, lie down on her back and do a spread, then hump the air, her face pointed up at the lights, her eyes closed, probably praying for the DJ to speed up the song. A man in a white cap stood where he could see
everything. He held a bill out to her like bait for a porpoise to jump for in those shows down in Miami, and now the new girl was smiling at him between her knees, reaching down to open herself up. The man leaned right over her with the bill. April was surprised they were letting him get that close.

She pushed herself from the wall and moved back into the smoke and darkness of the crowded main floor. More than half the tables were occupied and set with electric candles in a Puma glass. Up above the stage lights, close to the ceiling in the far wall, was the red glow of Louis’s office window, him standing there, a black shadow watching them all make him money.

Men looked up at her as she passed, but more were watching the act than before. Watching this new girl raise the bar higher for all of them. Something she’d get talked to about by Tina. Or Marianne. If Wendy or Retro knew what this one was up to, they’d threaten her with a beating if she tried it again. Lonnie was coming down the steps from the Amazon Bar, his eyes on the man at the stage still waving his bill over the girl.

April’s legs felt heavy, her upper body stiff. She shouldn’t’ve stopped at all. Shouldn’t’ve brought Franny. Should’ve taken her chances and taken the loss and called in sick; now she was moving just to move, to move back into Spring, and there, a few tables ahead, was one of Wendy’s regulars smiling up at her. A tall man with big hands and a sweet face. Her nightsmile smiled and she brushed her hair back off her shoulder and sidestepped between two tables. There was still time to do this one and maybe even get him for a double before she had to change for her act. He looked back at the stage and craned his neck to see better. She’d have to work harder to hook him now and, because he was a regular, he knew he wouldn’t get any pink in the VIP.