Offensive Behavior

“There’s food,” said Therese. “We’ll have to throw it out if we don’t eat it.”

Melinda was a mediocre pole dancer but a great nurse. She took care of Vi, made them all sit and eat, told them what happens when someone has a heart attack. Zarley felt dazed. She ate the pasta Therese dished up and drank a single glass of wine in a toast to Lou. He was sixty-three years old. Long divorced. Lived alone. He was a big man with a beer gut and a loud voice. He had a black beard and a gray ponytail and liked his Jack. He didn’t like men touching his dancers. He was the leaseholder of Lucky’s and had run the bar as long as Vi had worked here. And that’s all they knew about him.

“He wasn’t a bad boss,” said Lizabeth. “Had worse.”

“There is nowhere in the city like Lucky’s,” said Melinda.

Part bar, part club, too wholesome to be a regular strip joint, not sophisticated enough to be a popular night spot, not rundown enough to be outright skanky, or aimed at pulling in men who fancied themselves high rollers.

“He was good to me,” said Vi.

“Did he have any family?” Kathryn asked.

He’d had two daughters. One was killed in a car accident when only a toddler and the other died of a drug overdose while still in school.

Too sad, they agreed.

“What happens now?” Therese asked.

“We’re out of work,” said Kathryn.

“Out of money,” said Melinda.

Out of luck.

They parted with plans to stay in touch. Vi promised to let them know whether Lucky’s could reopen, but she was as much in the dark as the rest of them. Zarley walked back to Reid’s, she wanted time to think.

She was homeless and jobless, but she had a rich boyfriend who wanted to take her to Paris. Reid shocked her with the idea of trying out at Madame Amour. It’d never crossed her mind as anything more than a pipe dream, but now it made her wonder. What if she could get an invitation to perform? What if she won? The scholarship would pay her student loans.

If Lucky’s didn’t reopen she had to find another job. In every other club in the city, the dancers had to pay a fee for their turn on the stage and were expected to give private sessions, dancing for up to an hour at a time for any customer who paid for the privilege. That was in addition to lap dances.

She’d be expected to work topless and drop the artistry of her pole routines for the more regular bump and grind. She could be cute and sassy at Lucky’s, but anywhere else sexy was more narrowly defined. She’d be expected to make friends with the customers and use social media to encourage them to come back.

It was so far from gymnastics it might as well have been cooking.

There really was nowhere else like Lucky’s.

But there was Madame Amour, where the feature performers included Vegas-style acts and the dancers were ballerinas and acrobats, where maybe a gymnast had as good a chance as anyone to take the prize money.

What was the reason not to try?

There was that pesky airfare for one, and the sense of obligation that went with it. Had Reid genuinely thought she was staying with him because she pitied him?

She could always try waitressing or retail, though with no experience to trade on, it could prove difficult to get a job there.

She rang Cara and filled her in on Lou, told her about Reid’s offer. “What would you do?”

“Can you win?” They’d both watched the artists on the Madame Amour website when Zarley was first putting her routines together for Lucky’s.

“Maybe.” A strong maybe, but it depended on what the judging team was looking for. They gave points for skill, thrill, appeal and entertainment value; a criteria far more rubbery than for an Olympic competition.

“Remind me how it works.”

“It’s a twenty-five thousand dollar cash prize. And there’s a month left in the competition.” She had to check that from the poster in the dressing room. “But you have to be selected from an audition tape to get an invitation to perform and I haven’t applied.”

“How much do you like this guy?”

“More than I should.” More than any man. A dangerous thought. She had memory loss when he was around.