Stripper Lessons

by John O'Brien

  Here comes a red Ferrari—that’s a car you can tell what it is—and he remembers seeing it before, parked in the lot a few times this last week when he was coming and going. It’ll be interesting to see which jerk drives a car like that. But as it turns into a space near the back door Carroll sees in a flash of blond hair that the driver isn’t a jerk; it’s a woman. Wait . . . it isn’t just a woman; it’s Her. Well he shouldn’t be surprised. Maybe he even knew it a second before he saw it. It’s not important. What matters now is, what does he do?

  Not much of a question, that, as Stevie rises out of the car and into his focus. This chick’s a magnet, and there’s nothing holding him back. He jumps out of the Vega, slamming the door behind him, a smack shot across the lot like a bullet, which makes her start but not look up. Small threat, whatever it is, with the back door of the club so nearby and what the hell. For her, you could say, anything goes. And Carroll is over that gravel before her key leaves the Ferrari door.

  “Hi,” he ventures carefully, standing offishly, say seven feet from her rear bumper.

  Now this does make her jump, and the fact is it’s what her boyfriend would call an unacceptable situation. Best plan here would be to call for one of the guys inside, just scream a name (one thing you get here is response time). On the other hand she recognizes Carroll, and while that should be even more cause for alarm in this line of work, she figures a scream is a scream, and maybe she owes this poor guy a . . . moment (and man, she almost thought a shot at redemption, and that’s one motherfuckin’ icy way of thinking there).

  “Oh, hi,” she says and she shivers. “You startled me. . . . It’s Carroll, right? (on his eager nod: use it) You startled me, Carroll.” No one around. “We’re kind of pushing the rules out here. Why don’t we talk inside? I imagine you’re going in?”

  Netless, I presume. She doesn’t know. “I can’t,” he says, and not without some remorse.

  Which remorse she does not fail to detect. This may be an interesting story after all. She grins, accepting, quick nods, like: okay, let’s go ahead and talk for a second. Remember, a scream away (silly). “Oh, so you’re just leaving. Sorry I missed you. Are you sure you don’t want to stay for a while?” Sometimes she feels like a whore. Is she? (Not that again.)

  “I (looking down, shuffling of feet) sort of made a scene last night. I had a bad day, and I lost my temper about something stupid, and they asked me to leave.” He looks up; she’s still there and that’s encouraging. “I don’t think I’d be very welcome in there now.”

  Boy, this could be good, though it looks like she’ll have to wait. As much as she’s beginning to loathe this place, she’s now anxious to go inside and get the whole story from one of the other girls. This stuff gets bandied about for days. Still, she can’t believe he would’ve been violent, and really, the best she can do right now is to stay and talk with him for a minute. For sure, it would give him more than it would cost her. “Oh,” she says simply, solemnly, making gravity for his sake. Make sure you stick with their up-down thing.

  “Stevie,” he begins hopefully, and rather directly, in consideration of what even he can see will be, by necessity, a short conversation, “I had to talk to you one more time. We won’t be seeing each other anymore, and I didn’t want things to end with my stupid behavior Saturday night.” So much, but what next? He shuffles in the gravel. “To you this is silly, but to me you’re important. I never . . . saw somebody that I liked so much. Right away, I mean.” No, what does he mean? His thoughts, never very clear on this, are a mess right now. Helplessly he points to his own car. “I didn’t even know I was gonna talk to you here, but when I saw you in person I was next to you in a second. Just like that. I didn’t even know I would do it.” He looks up expectantly, waiting for her to speak, like this last bit of information should be the last piece of the puzzle for her, like she has all the clues she needs with which she might formulate a response.

  And she does. “It’s not Stevie,” she says. Then impatient with herself for being so condescending: “Of course you know that. My name’s not really Stevie, it’s Jennifer—Jenny.”

  He is stunned. It never occurred to him that her name wasn’t Stevie. In fact he assumed that all the dancers really had those names. They seemed to fit so well—girls like that should be called by names like that—but maybe not. Maybe that’s the point. “Jenny,” he says. “I thought it was really Stevie. I’m such a dummy, I can’t believe it. Do all the other girls have real names too?”

  She finds this disarming and smiles as much as she dares: on his side. “Yeah. (laugh) At least as far as I know. What’s the matter? Don’t you like Jennifer?” What really could have happened last night? It’s just as she thought: he’s just a nice guy. Nothing more or less, a plain nice guy. Probably walked into the ladies’ room purely by mistake and got tossed out so fast that he didn’t have time to explain.

  Not that they’d believe him, she thinks. Not that they’d even notice him in there, in the club, except just in time to throw him out. And this after giving her the rundown on whom to let slide. Hypocritical fucks. First night, Manager told her about the clipboard: “. . . now these guys, sometimes they get a little fucked-up and get outta line. We look the other way. You handle it however you want, but remember money is money, and if you’re bugged by them touching you, you can always go and wash in the bathroom.” This and the whole time she’s thinking how she’ll want to shower after just talking to that guy. Oh, fat Manager. Worse is that she knows not only would her boyfriend qualify for the clipboard, he’d insist on it.

  “It’s better, I think. I mean I like Stevie fine, but Jennifer is better. . . . It’s beautiful.” He feels the blush. Oddly, it comes as a welcome addition. “It’s more like you. I like you.”

  “I like you too, Carroll,” she laughs, and maybe she does. Enough, anyway, to say, “Hey, I gotta go to work, but if you want to meet me for coffee at Magpie’s down there on the corner (she gestures with her arm) after work, well we could talk some more. I stopped there last week once on my way home; it’s nice and tacky. I would probably be there tonight about . . . well, say between two-fifteen and two-thirty.” What the hell, she can always bail if it turns out he mauled one of the girls last night.

  First he can’t believe it, then it seems too easy. After all this, it still seems too easy. He wonders if this ever happens to the other guys, or do they get better? Maybe coffee after work is the booby prize. Maybe all the girls all the time are going out with all the customers. They go out and laugh about him, about how he never went out with any of the girls. Stevie—Jennifer—is probably still too new to know that having coffee with Carroll is strictly taboo. Of course he knows better, but why would she want to have coffee with him? Truth be told, he never expected anything like this to ever happen. Watch Melissa some night, now there’s a girl who’ll set you straight about things. Thinks Melissa would rather take a bullet for the president than spend time with any of the jerks in this place, much less him. Coffee after work. Why would Stev—Jennifer—want to do that? What should he do?

  “After work?” he says, hesitantly.

  She laughs, too cute. “What’s the matter?” she wants to know, but it’s friendly, kidding-like. Whatever he wants, it’s all a joke. This guy really is okay, and she’s really got to get to work. “Don’t you want me?”

  Her words float over the gravel like feathers after a pillow fight. Don’t you want me?

  Does he?

  * * *

  Dark, but not really, he thinks, watching her walk into the club through the back door. In fact when you’re back here and that door swings open, well if one of those spots is on the dancer then you really can see almost everything, for a second anyway. Could’ve saved a lot of money and just watched from out here every night. But then what would be the point in that?

  Sour song grinds from crepitant gravel. Dust teased airborne by a parking car gets into his eyes, and when he rubs them they tear up. God’s window wash,
like those black guys who ask for quarters at stoplights after rubbing water and wadded newspaper around on your windshield: it’s not about seeing better.

  Carroll turns back toward his car. Two men walking to the club entrance pass him. They nudge each other, stop and turn around.

  “Seen enough?” stupidly, one of them asks, over the giggles of the other.

  Seen enough? thinks Carroll, slipping on the phrase, standing there in the dust with these men.

  The words sound strange to him, like speaking in tongues, delirious, in the grip of some miscreant or pagan. Think about what you are, what there is to see. Not so hard anymore, you could walk away, like an intrepid buck, only smarter, on the highway, caught in a headlight. Seen enough?

  “Seen enough?” says Carroll. “Is that the best you can do, I mean questionwise?”

  The men laugh him off, suck into door. In—side.