3rd World Products, Inc. Book 7

by Ed Howdershelt

  The place had jet black walls. Hundreds of tiny Day-Glo stars painted on the walls glowed various colors. Overhead were several rows of ultraviolet lights. Mirrors behind and above the spotlighted stage made the room seem bigger.

  An average-looking brunette on stage was dancing around a brass pole to an old Rolling Stones tune. She met my gaze as I entered and smiled slightly, then aimed her tiny grin at some guy who was waving a dollar bill and swung her butt down so he could tuck the bill under her g-string.

  Nope. Nothing had changed.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  The big guy at the front door watched me go by and the big guy at the table watched me approach as Sandy spoke to him. He nodded and Sandy motioned me to follow her, then headed for a narrow curtain beyond the stage.

  The curtain led to a dimly-lit hallway, which led to an exit door flanked by a door labeled ‘office’ and another without a label. Sandy told me to set the suitcases down by the unlabeled door because she couldn't take me in the dressing room.

  I set the cases down and she thanked me, then told me to go see the guy she'd been talking to at the table.

  "That's Tommy,” she added, “He'll take care of you."

  Nodding, I headed for the curtain and stopped just before I reached it, feeling with certainty that someone was on the other side of it. When I swept it back a bit, I saw a guy as big as the one at the door standing with his back to the curtain a little to one side of the hallway entrance.

  Emerging into the main room, I looked around and saw Tommy raise a hand and point at the seat across from his. There was a white plastic bucket holding five beers in ice on the table. He pushed it toward me as I sat down.

  "I'm Tommy,” he said, extending his hand.

  I shook it and said, “I'm Ed,” then had to repeat it twice for him due to the music.

  "Izzat car gonna be a problem where it is?"

  His accent was as thick as Sandy's.

  "Not for me,” I said, “The county may get pissy about it if it's there long enough that they notice. They're even yanking up garage sale signs these days."

  Nodding, he said, “Yeah, I heard about that. Really sucks. Y'need some new people runnin’ things up there.” Shifting his rump, he said, “No sweat. Somebody'll be up to get it tonight or tomorrow. Thanks for helping Sandy out. You want some more beer, you just take that bucket up to the bar, okay?"

  "Okay, thanks."

  Nodding again as if all was now right with the world, he sat back and watched the brunette dance as he sipped his own beer from a regular-sized bottle. I couldn't read the label, but it wasn't the kind in my bucket.

  Oh, well. It's the thought that counts sometimes, and his thought was that an endless supply of house beer and no cover for a night should be reward enough for a ride to work.

  I opened one of the beers and sipped it. What the hell; it was cold and wet. Good enough. The brunette dancer swung around the pole and hoisted a well-formed leg to let a guy tuck a bill under a gold ankle bracelet below a tiny tattoo. I decided her show was worth a few minutes, since I really didn't have anywhere else to be.

  Maybe ten minutes after I sat down at Tommy's table, the lady on stage stopped dancing. She made a grinning curtsey with a finger to her cheek, gathered up some bills that had somehow escaped her g-string or had been tossed to her, then she gave the bar patrons a little ‘bye-bye’ wave and a grin and exited stage right with a rather bouncy stride.

  The lights surrounding the stage changed position and dimmed to nearly nothing. A muted drum roll began as a woman strode onto the stage through the darkness. The drum roll got louder and reached a crescendo, then began to fade.

  Spotlights mounted on the walls around the stage came on and focused on the feet of the woman on stage, then the dots of light separated, dashed around her feet in tight little patterns, and a few began to slowly climb her legs.

  Two dots of light seemed to squabble briefly about which dot would rise above her left knee. One dot seemed to win the battle and continued upward another few inches. Both of the battling dots expanded and contracted slightly as if pantingly recovering from their exhaustive efforts.

  By the time all the dots had distributed themselves below her neck, they created an interesting visual effect that was somewhat reminiscent of a movie scene in which Admiral Kirk got his first glimpse of his new starship in drydock.

  The audience cheered, hooted, clapped, and whistled. A few guys threw bills on stage, one guy faked a heart attack, and his buddy assumed a position of prayer above their tiny table, his hands clasped under his chin.

  Sometime while the spotlights had been positioning themselves, a deep bass thumping had begun faintly and built to what was now becoming something of a force in the room.

  Lights around the top and base of the stage came on and gradually became brighter, illuminating the woman from head to toe in a soft and shadowless manner.

  Yeah, it was Sandy, and I could now see what the knit pants suit had concealed. Damn! She was as trim and tight as a cheerleader.

  Sandy stood at a sort of casual attention, her feet together and her hands at her sides as she surveyed the audience with the haughtiness of a princess.

  Her eyes found mine and she gave me a slight, grinning nod, then she gave a similar nod to someone behind our table. The heavy beat permeating the room faded and Bob Seeger's tune ‘Her Strut’ began playing, merging seamlessly with the muted bass beat, and I quickly learned why the audience had been so enthusiastic.

  As clumsy as Sandy had seemed while traipsing across my patchy lawn in her high heels, I'll grant here and now that she's a lithe goddess of athletic grace on stage.

  Even when she suddenly grabbed the pole and smoothly hoisted her legs up to tap the ceiling with her toes, then let herself spiral down around the pole until she essentially did a slow, controlled backbend to softly place her feet back on the stage, she never missed a beat of the music and made the potentially awkward move look absolutely effortless.

  "Jeeezus!” I muttered, watching her gorgeous legs extend as she touched down and straightened into a swooping turn around the brass pole. “That move oughta require a helmet and pads!"

  Tommy chuckled and said, “Yeah, she's really somethin', ain't she? Best damn pole dancer I've ever seen in my life, and I've been in this business since I was sixteen."

  He sipped his beer and added, “She comes up with her own routines, too. The other girls are usually too scared to try ‘em."

  Sipping my own beer, I replied, “I don't doubt that."

  'Her Strut’ ended and Sandy mimed a sort of schoolgirl innocence as the next tune started. Gwen Stefani softly spoke the beginning of ‘What You Waiting For?', then the song launched into a two-beat-per-second tempo and Sandy exploded into motion.

  The beat pumped and the song's chorus chanted, ‘Tick-tock, tick-tock ... ’ as Sandy threw herself around the pole in a wild display of fine female flesh.

  Some of Sandy's moves were parts of fairly standard aerobic routines, but there were also sped-up versions of moves I'd seen in movies and in such productions as ‘Chicago'.

  The lights changed again and Sandy became a glowing golden dance machine on the little stage as the music pounded on. Her hair swept the guys in the first row as she took a quick spin around the pole and one guy nearly fell over backward as his pals laughed themselves sick at his reaction.

  Throughout the routine, Sandy's rather manic grin full of bright white teeth beamed like a beacon and her sweat-drenched body glistened like liquid gold.

  What really got me, though, was the way she closed the last sixteen beats of the song with what I recognized as a nearly-perfect Shotokan karate kata that returned her to the almost-at-attention stance she'd held at the beginning of her show.

  As she stood panting and grinning at the audience, many of the guys simply sat staring back at her as if in mild shock. Others hooted and hollered and there were whistles as men surged out of their seats to place money at her feet.<
br />
  Nobody tried to stuff money into her shoes or her bikini; I guessed that she'd long since made her post-dance stance a sort of trademark part of her act.

  Sandy took a final deep breath and looked at whomever was behind the bar. The lights changed again, dimming slightly as Sandy stepped to place her gorgeous legs on either side of the pole and sort of oozed around it. She came to rest with her back to the pole, sitting in a lotus position by the pile of money.

  Some wordless, unidentifiable piece of music played softly as Sandy used her towel to wipe her face and shoulders, then she picked up the bills with her right hand, arranging them in some fashion as she stacked them in her left hand. She made little expressions of happy surprise as she held up the bigger ones and grinningly nodded as if to say, ‘These are very nice!'

  Once she had them all arranged to her satisfaction, Sandy set them aside and again toweled her face and shoulders, ending that action by flipping the towel out to hold it between the fingertips of both hands and fanning herself as she stretched a bit and made an ‘Oh, that feels so good!’ face.

  Plucking at her bikini top, she lightly touched the pile of bills and nibbled her lip as she said wistfully, “I wish I could take this off! It's so hot up here, but...” Looking around the room, she finished, “Well, gee, I just don't know, y'know?"

  More hoots and hollers sounded, as well as some laughter. Money was waved at the tables around the stage, and a few of the bills were tossed to her. She examined each of them and still looked doubtful. A guy at one of the front tables pulled a bill out of his wallet and stood up to hand it to her.

  Sandy gave him and expression of happy surprise as she accepted it and added it to her pile. She stretched her legs out and rubbed them, plucking at her top and sighing wistfully again as she surveyed the audience, briefly making eye contact with most of them. A few more bills appeared and she accepted them as she had the others.

  Exhaling a deep sigh, she almost reluctantly moaned, “OhhhKaaayy, I guess so,” and pulled her legs in, putting her feet together between her thighs.

  With her money in one hand and her towel in the other, Sandy powered gracefully upright with a half-twist and ended up facing away from the audience.

  She strode to the back of the stage, bent at her hips and took her time about setting her towel and money down, then straightened to eye the audience's reflection in the mirrored wall as she stretched rather gloriously.

  When the music started, I didn't immediately recognize it and didn't really care what it was as I watched Sandy—still facing the mirror—begin doing what looked like a brief series stretching exercises.

  The music built softly and slowly with guitars, violins, and mandolins, and I suddenly recognized the piece as being the waltz theme from the movie ‘Heaven's Gate'.

  Sandy stretched and gently spun in a manner that turned her back toward the pole. She stepped closer to it, then she grabbed it and swung low around it as the music reached the end of its soft prelude and began to swell in earnest.

  I'd never seen a stripper dance to a waltz. Rock, usually, or even fast country, but never anything as slow as a waltz. Sandy's grace made it a fascinating performance.

  At some point Sandy's top came off, but I wasn't aware of when or how that had happened because I'd been focused on her legs. I noticed that she had very nice breasts, somewhat conical in a gentle, sloping fashion and apparently rather firm, since they bounced more than bobbled with her motions.

  But my eyes returned to her magnificent legs, of course. Can't help it; I just like legs and eyes more than boobs, and I was too far from the stage to see her eyes well.

  Sandy wrapped a leg around the pole and ended the waltz with a dramatic, arms- and legs-spread circuit of the pole that left her kneeling beside it.

  Another wave of bills splashed onto the stage by her knee as the guys again raised a bit of hell in homage to her. Sandy grinned at them and took a moment to dampen her thumb with her tongue, then rub away a bit of pretend debris from her left nipple as the guys again cheered her on.

  When Sandy again powered upright and again bent at the hips to pick up her towel and money at the back of the stage, she took a moment in that position to look back at the guys who were eyeing her butt and legs. I was one of them, of course, and she shot me a small grin and a shake of her head, then straightened up and waved goodbye as she left the stage.

  I started to sip my beer and realized the bottle was empty. Setting it aside, I debated whether to open another one. Tommy apparently noticed my thoughtfulness.

  "What'sa matter? Somethin’ wrong with th’ beer?"

  Shaking my head, I said, “No, I was just thinking that I haven't eaten since a late lunch and I'm driving."

  Grinning, he asked, “You can't handle a couplea beers?"

  I didn't feel like debating the matter with him as well as myself, so I said, “Handle a few beers, yes. Pass a breathalyzer, maybe not."

  "Read the label. They're only eight-ounce bottles. A guy your size can do maybe three and get away with it."

  What the hell; he was right and I wasn't starving. I opened another beer and leaned back in my seat.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  The next dancer on stage was also a tall blonde, but she was a bit too skinny for my taste. Her eyebrows were considerably darker than her hair, and I noticed at least three tattoos on her, particularly one at the base of her spine that seemed to be a pair of wings above her butt.

  When she swung low around the pole again and held still so a guy could stuff a bill in her thong, I saw that the wings were a Harley-Davidson emblem.

  "That's DeeDee,” said Tommy, “She's kind of popular, too."

  Most of the audience seemed not to mind her relative scrawniness; a number of guys made some noise and several prepared their bills for her.

  To me, tattoos and piercings are a real turnoff. While some tattoos may be unusual or unique in some manner, most seem to be ‘off the rack’ pictures chosen from catalogs in shops.

  As I see it, tattoos seem to reflect a need for just about any kind of attention; an attempt to say, “See? Now I'm special!"—but how truly special is something that even a part-time burger flipper can afford?

  After Sandy had left the stage, I mildly regretted having opened the second beer. Thinking about food had made me want some, and all that was available were bar snacks.

  I was considering a graceful departure when the hallway curtain parted and Sandy came out wearing a huge man's shirt over her bikini. The shirt was only fastened with a couple of the middle buttons, so it tended to billow open as she walked.

  Sandy ambled over to our table and took the chair between us, then lifted one of the beers out of the bucket with her fingertips and handed it to me as she mouthed, “Open?"

  Hm. She likes service. I wrapped a napkin around the damp bottle before I handed it back to her. She smiled at the extra bit of effort and mouthed, “Thanks,” before she sipped it.

  A stray drop of condensation landed on her bare knee and Sandy used her shirt tail to wipe it away, an action which left the shirt open to her belly.

  Great legs. Phenomenal, delicious-looking legs. She made no move to cover them as she grinned and sipped again.

  Leaning closer, she asked, “Well? Did you like my show?"

  "Like it? You looked like a regular goddess up there, ma'am."

  She chewed her lip and grinned. “A goddess? Really?"

  Nodding, I answered, “Oh, yeah. A golden goddess. What belt do you hold?"

  Her eyes got big and innocent. “Belt?"

  "Yeah. As in ‘Shotokan karate'. That belt."

  A big grin formed as she said, “You may be sharper than I thought. You caught the kata, huh?"

  "Yup. Did you forget move eleven or drop it for timing?"

  She snickered, “I dropped it. My sensei would kill me if she knew, but I couldn't make it fit the song.” Leaning as if to impart something in confidence, she almost whispered, “I got my brown belt t
wo years ago."

  Her nasal New York accent still grated on me, but she was half naked and had the fortitude to achieve a brown belt. That made me think there might be more to like about her, so I decided to fish a little.

  I glanced around the bar and asked, “So, which one's yours? The big guy by the door or the big guy behind the bar?"

  Sandy's eyes flicked toward the front of the bar and she smiled. “The one by the door. Kevin."

  Her expression as she said his name told me they were more than just friends.

  Nodding, I swilled the last of my beer and said, “Well, if I see him pick up your car and walk off with it, I won't call the cops.” Setting my empty bottle on the table, I added, “It's dinnertime. Thanks for the beer and the show, but I'm going to hit the road."

  Tommy looked surprised and asked, “You're leaving?"

  "Yeah, I need some food, Tommy. Thanks for the beer."

  He nodded and said, “Okay. Come in again some time,” as he extended a hand across the table. I shook it and stood up.

  Sandy stood up with me and gave me a quick kiss, then said, “That's for calling me a goddess."

  "Would that work more than once?"

  Grinning, she shook her head. “Probably not. Kevin wouldn't understand.” With a snicker and a shake of her head, she added, “He wouldn't even try to understand."

  I gave her my best look of vast disappointment and she chuckled as she walked with me to the door. Kevin eyed me as we passed, but said nothing. He kind of reminded me of a Rottweiler, which I suppose is a good thing for a bouncer.

  My gas gauge was low, so I decided to take advantage of another county's lower gas taxes and tank up before heading back into Hernando County.

  I pulled into a convenience store and gas station and parked by a bank of pumps. A rather hefty black woman stood by the counter inside the store and a white kid with a big plastic cup was sitting on the window's narrow ledge near the door and talking on a cell phone.

  As I got out of the car, the woman headed for the front door. The kid with the cell phone hoisted his ass off the window ledge and walked quickly toward the south side of the building.