by Joel Travis
I turned to the girl on my right—a sexy brunette with a beautiful smile—but before I had a chance to get started with her the blond was tugging on my sleeve.
“I wanted to stay in school. I had to quit,” she said.
“Let me guess. Your school burned down and was never rebuilt.”
“No, silly. I was pregnant.”
“Pregnant!” I said, aghast. “In the sixth grade? How old were you?”
“I was thirteen. Almost thirteen.”
“That must have been tough,” I said. “Nice meeting you.”
I turned back to the brunette. She was busy gabbing with the attractive Hispanic girl seated across from me. The blond was yanking my sleeve again.
“Yeah?” I said.
“I’m going back to school when I save up the money.”
“How much does it cost to enroll in the sixth grade at your age?”
“I’m not going to enroll in the sixth grade, silly.”
“No?”
“I want to go to college. First I’m going for one of those fake high school diplomas some of the other dancers have.”
“A GED? I don’t know much about it, but I suspect you’ll have to know something to get one.”
“Maybe I can study from a book.”
“Whatever it takes. Nice talking to you.”
I turned back to my right to discover that the brunette with the perfect teeth and the Hispanic girl with the big brown eyes had disappeared. The blond was the only one left at my table. I would have to bring in another crew and start all over. I nearly threw my neck out gawking at the strippers performing on the eight stages scattered about the club until I decided that I should walk around and get a closer look at the prospects.
“Where did you go to school?” asked the dropout.
“Wallace Elementary. Before you were born. Please excuse me.” I stood up to begin my scouting expedition.
“Do you like to fuck?” she asked before I got away.
I sat right back down. Perhaps we had something in common after all.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“My stage name is Ecstasy. That’s not my real name.”
“No kidding. What’s your real name?”
“Lori. What’s your real name?”
“Brit,” I said, but I had tossed back enough shots to slur the vowel.
“What a cute name! I’ve never met anyone named Brat.”
“You still haven’t. My name is Brit—B-R-I-T.”
Lori giggled. “That rhymes with tit,” she said, adjusting her dress to expose her breasts. I lost eye contact for a moment and we shared a laugh over her witty remark. I felt a special bond forming since we had exchanged real names.
“Are you married, Lori?” If she was married, or if she had a live-in boyfriend, it was less likely she’d be leaving the country with me.
“Nope. Been there and done that. My ex still has custody of Tobias.”
“Tobias must be your son. How old is he now, about seven?” I asked, trying to feign interest in the kid and ascertain Lori’s age in one swoop.
She did some counting on her fingers. “I think he is seven.”
If Tobias was seven, that would make Lori nineteen—almost twenty.
“Does your boyfriend mind that you work here? I guess you don’t get home to him until about three in the morning.” This was a drunk guy’s clumsy attempt at tricking a stripper into revealing if she had a live-in boyfriend.
“I don’t care what Eric thinks,” she said.
“Why not?”
“He’s in jail again. This time they caught him driving a stolen car with loads of heroin in the trunk. I’m starting to think he’s no good.”
“Sounds like a frame-up to me,” I said to amuse myself.
“That’s what he says. Like the way those cops in L.A. framed O.J. Simpson.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Your boyfriend is every bit as innocent as O.J.”
“I don’t know,” Lori said. “This is the third time they’ve framed Eric like that.”
It sounded like the boyfriend was destined to be tangled up in the legal system for the foreseeable future. I decided to invest in more drinks on Lori’s behalf. She put them away like they were water. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe they were water. Some clubs serve virgin drinks to the strippers and real drinks to the customers so that only the customers get drunk—a conspiracy between waitress and stripper that ought to be illegal and probably is. I ordered two more ten dollar drinks to test my theory.
“The drinks are expensive here, aren’t they?” Lori said. “In a way that’s good. It keeps out the riffraff.”
I took another look at the clientele. Wall-to-wall riffraff. I made a mental note to leave well before closing time so I wouldn’t have to interact with any of them in the parking lot. Too bad. It’s fun to stay until the end when the bright lights come on and watch as all the strippers flee like roaches for the dressing room. As many times as I’ve seen them do it, it’s still hard to believe the girls can move that fast in six-inch heels.
When the drinks arrived I drank both of them to determine if there was any perceptible difference between hers and mine. They seemed to be of equal strength. I ran further tests. Eventually Lori insisted on drinking her own drinks instead of me drinking them, but by then I was hopelessly drunk from testing my theory. I decided to get straight to the point of my visit while I could still speak. I lowered my voice and in a conspiratorial tone I asked, “How would you like to take a trip, Lori?”
“I don’t do acid anymore,” she said, apparently taking me for a drug dealer. “I quit last weekend after a really bad trip.” Then her blue eyes lit up. “Do you have some on you?”
“No,” I said after absorbing the shock. “I meant the kind of trip where we start out on a plane and end up on a tropical island.”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed.
“It would be fun, wouldn’t it?”
“I’d have to think about it. Would I get money or just the trip?” She moved closer to me and rested her right hand on my lap.
I pondered her question while I listened to the rap song that was playing. Rap music is not ideal for clear thinking and I was heavily inebriated to boot. And although it was still on my lap, Lori’s hand was no longer at rest, which made it impossible to exercise the sound judgment I’m known for.
“How much?” I asked.
“Well, I’d have to miss work if I went on a trip with you. I usually make about three hundred dollars a night. You’re such a nice guy, though,” she said with a stripper’s sincerity. “I’ll do it for two-fifty a night. Paid in advance.”
I sobered up a bit. I scolded myself for considering her outrageous proposal for even one second. I could find a better traveling mate than an uneducated, drug-addicted, gold-digging nitwit.
But not in here I can’t. And I don’t have time to look for anyone better beyond tonight—I have to get out of town fast, before Cesar wraps his powerful hands around my neck. Or before the police drag me into a tiny, bleak interrogation room and shine a bright white light into my sensitive eyes until I divulge everything I know about Cesar’s operation and incriminate myself all over the place. Or before Joe’s friends from the gym beat me to an unrecognizable bloody pulp. Desperate men can’t be choosy. Lori’s willing to go. And she is a very sexy girl.
“I’m up on main stage next song,” Lori said. She pulled the top of her dress up to cover her breasts. “I have to run back to the dressing room and get the plastic bucket I put all my stage tips in. Come see me when I get to Stage 8. We’ll plan our trip.”
She kissed me briskly on the cheek and ran off to fetch her bucket.
#
I would have preferred to leave the country, but Lori talked me into booking a flight to Vegas. My most memorable trip to Vegas was the one I took two years ago. My ex-wife Sheila and I had been married for three weeks when we decided to take advantage of the reduced seasonal rates and
spend our first Christmas together in SinCity. A few minutes shy of midnight on Christmas Eve, I slipped out of our hotel room to buy Sheila's gift.
For regrettable reasons (the blackjack tables never close) my return to our room had been delayed until December 26th. I wish you had been there to see the look on my wife's face when I opened that door. Unfortunately, it was me and not you.
Sheila is an attractive woman, sporting what you might call the “sexy librarian” look—beautiful brown eyes peering out behind delicate round glasses, thin shapely lips, shoulder-length brunette hair, and a fine figure from any angle. When I entered our room, the sexy librarian glared at me as if I was a known arsonist she’d caught in the children’s wing of the library holding a flaming torch.
“It’s me,” I announced, as if that ought to clear up any problems. I tried to flash a charming smile, but with my wife staring right through me like she was, the best I could manage was a guilty grin.
Instead of being glad to see me safe and sound, my bride began to hurl hotel furnishings in my direction. First a fragile lamp, which I somehow caught. While I was setting the lamp down, an ash tray sailed over my head. Sheila throws like a girl, so the barrage did little but scare the hell out of me.
I already felt bad enough about losing the family savings at the blackjack tables. I did my best to explain the mathematics of blackjack—sometimes you win and every other time you lose more than you can afford—but my wife had worked herself into a frenzy. All of a sudden I was the bad guy. She said I didn't care about her. That I was all messed up. That I didn't deserve a wife like her.
I agree with her last point. No one deserves that. Still, I took my marriage vows as seriously as the next guy. I promised I would make it up to her with good deeds or whatever. She had to push it—telling her husband that if he really meant what he was saying, he would go out and find a “regular, legal job” like all the other husbands in our neighborhood.
#
Upon our return to Dallas, I had set about the task of finding gainful employment in the real world. As a first step, I decided to dust off the old résumé. After reading what was on it, I didn't bother to dust—I chunked it in the trash bin under my desk. Sometimes it's better to start from scratch.
Sheila kept popping into my study to offer tips on constructing the perfect résumé. On her third visit she recommended that I utilize action words and state all my achievements in quantifiable terms. I had no idea what she was talking about, so I told her I had already done that. She asked if she could see what I had so far. I told her a headache wasn't something you could see. She went away, but a few minutes later she was back again, handing me a Dixie cup of water and a couple of aspirins.
“Please, Sheila, let me concentrate without incessant interruption. I'm almost finished with page four. I'll be glad to show you the document when I'm done.”
“Page four? Brit, honey, a functional résumé is no more than one or two pages. Busy business executives don't have time to read.”
“They'll read this. I livened it up with action words that jump right off the page.”
“Just let me see what you're writing. I might be able to save you a lot of wasted effort.”
“If you wanted to save me wasted effort, you wouldn't have pushed me into the job market when I've already got the best job in Dallas.”
She left the room shaking her head.
#
To the casual observer, it might appear that my marriage was faltering. Of course, I was a novice to matrimony. If I made mistakes, I could hardly have known any better. Sheila was working on her second marriage. I’ll leave it to the casual observer to lay the blame where it belongs.
Was I the perfect husband? Does the perfect husband walk around the house all day long in his boxer shorts? I really wouldn’t know. Does the perfect husband tell his wife he’s too ill to attend church with her so he can stay home and practice tricks from his new magic kit? Don’t ask me. Can the perfect husband be seen hiding behind the bathroom door going through his wife’s handbag? If the door is slightly ajar and there’s a mirror involved, it turns out that he can.
Maybe the goal shouldn’t be to reconstruct your whole personality and belief system to be the perfect husband. Looking back on my marriage, I put far too much effort into it. There’s such a thing as trying too hard. And so it was that I began an exhaustive and exhausting job search just to pander to my wife’s idea of the perfect husband. I sent off close to a dozen résumés in the first month alone.
I did get one interview. At a funeral home. An opportunity to work among the dead for paltry pay. At least I could cut down on the office politics you sometimes run up against when working with the living. In hindsight, I believe I was subconsciously sabotaging my own job search by applying for positions even Sheila would find unacceptable. After a couple of months, my wife finally threw in the towel on my fruitless job search. I patiently awaited an apology for the wasted time and effort she had put me through. None was forthcoming.
I returned to the work I loved with a renewed vigor. Football season was over, so I began to take more basketball bets than ever before. I would meet a client at any time of the day or night at any strip joint in town, even if it was a long drive. This period of renewal carried me all the way into football season, when I committed a blunder that should have cost me my life.
Chapter 2
One of my best clients was an elderly gentleman with poor betting instincts. He had a consistent record of losing, dating back to when Cesar took all the bets himself. I could always count on him to improve my finances.
We were sitting in the strip club one Friday afternoon when my client said he wanted to bet on the Northwestern Louisiana Tech-East Carolina game. East Carolina was a fifteen-point favorite. Believe it or not, my client was more than willing to bet straight-up on Northwestern Whoever! I almost catapulted out of my chair when he implied that he wanted to bet the limit.
“If that’s what you want, I trust your judgment,” I said, opening my betbook. “I sincerely hope you win this one. That’s ten thousand dollars on NLTU.”
“I was hoping you could up the limit,” he said in his mousey voice, barely audible over the Aerosmith song blaring from the strip club’s superb sound system. I was delighted to hear what the mouse was proposing. At the same time, I smelled a rat.
“Let me make sure I understand this. You want to bet more than ten thousand dollars on NorthwesternLouisiana Tech, and you believe they will win the game outright, even though they’re fifteen-point underdogs?”
“That’s right,” he said. “I’m willing to give up the fifteen-point head start. But only if you let me bet the amount I have in mind.”
“I’d like to accommodate you, that’s why I’m here,” I said as I looked over to Stage 2 where a knockout blond was bouncing her knockers off a fat man’s face for a dollar tip. “You’re sure you want to go more than ten thousand?”
“Much more.”
“How much more?” I asked the codger.
“I wish to wager one hundred thousand dollars,” he said. “Win or lose, this will be my final bet.”
I always hate to lose a good client, meaning a bad bettor. But this was sheer lunacy! From past experience I didn’t doubt that my client had the money to make good on his exorbitant wager. I also knew that Cesar would never extend the limit to such a stratospheric level. After all, we were a local outfit. On the other hand, we were going to win and my client was going to lose, probably by two touchdowns or more. I couldn’t resist.
“Don’t place the bet anywhere else,” I said. “I’ll have to make a call or two, but I think we can do business. I’ll call you at six o’clock and let you know.”
He glanced at his Mickey Mouse watch. “I’ll hold off until I hear from you,” he said. “Thanks for working with me on this one, Brit.”
I raced home and locked myself in my study. It didn’t take long to reach the NLTU Athletic Department. I got the feeling they don’t get
many calls. They put me straight through to the training room and the team trainer.
“Hello, is this Rudy Blerm?” I asked.
“Yes, this is Trainer Blerm. Who are you?”
“My name is Brit Moran. I’m a sports agent based out of Dallas,” I told him. “I’m calling because I believe you have a pro prospect or two on your squad.”
“We do?”
“I want to contact these prospects, but I was hoping you could give me some information first. It’s been my experience that the team trainer is The Number One Authority on a team’s athletes. Even ahead of the coaches.”
“Really? Ahead of the coaches?”
“Absolutely. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to a high-profile sports agent.”
“That’s okay, Mr. Morance. I’ve heard of you. You’re lucky you caught me. I’m usually gone by now, but there’s a ton of towels on the floor.”
“I understand. Rudy, I wonder if you could tell me about your team’s personnel. Do you have anyone on the roster who is exceptionally talented?”
“Talented? You mean, like really good at football?”
“Exactly. How good at football is the quarterback?”
“Steve Myers? He’s a good runner, but he can’t throw worth a shit.”
“How good a runner, Rudy?”
“Well, you probably already know that Steve’s only a freshman. Last year he was a good enough runner at BedfordForrestHigh School to make Third Team All-District. Being an agent, you probably want to hear about our seniors.”
“Yes, that’s right,” I said. “But while we’re on the subject, how is your quarterback performing on the college level?”
“He can’t pass worth a shit.”
“That’s what I’ve heard. Is Myers a leader, Rudy? Does the team have confidence in his ability?”
“They did. Steve was improving every week until he pulled his groin last week against Midwestern Mississippi. He lost some mobility when his groin went out. We didn’t score another point. Steve had to fall back on his throwing arm and he can’t—”
