The white door opened onto a small anteroom emblazoned by floodlights. The sudden brightness and blast of music hit DeMarco like a punch and made his bad eye water. He stood there blinking, staring at the yellow wall in front of him. From his left came a man’s voice, sounding like rocks falling through a pipe. “Fifteen dollars, please.”
The man was seated on a low chair behind dirty glass, a thin, smallish man with a thin smile on a pale, thin mouth. Somewhere between fifty and sixty-five, half mummified by alcohol and smoke. A stray-dog kind of look in his eyes, wizened and tough, alert and wary.
DeMarco pushed a twenty through the opening in the glass. He was handed five ones in return. “I need your left hand, sir,” the man said and showed him the rubber stamp he held.
DeMarco stuck his hand through the opening, then pulled it back and squinted at the blotch of black ink. “What is this, a squirrel?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” the man said. Then, “Enjoy.”
When DeMarco faced the yellow wall again, he could make out a yellow knob and the seam of a door. The door rattled with the boom of music from the other side. He steeled himself for the punch of even louder music, then pulled the door open.
Again, he squinted and blinked. This room was as dark as the one at his back was bright. He kept his hand on the yellow door, held it open by a few inches until he had surveyed the room and allowed his eyes to readjust.
On the wall directly opposite him, across a plank floor maybe thirty feet wide, a dim red Exit sign hung above a closed door. To its left was a Coke machine and beside it a large trash barrel, then another doorway, this one open, with a sign above it that read Restroom. Most of the illumination in the room came from the two signs and the vending machine and from the light in two doorways on the wall to his left, one open doorway at each end of the wall. Both doors led, he surmised, to the stage area where the young girls danced.
Two of the five tables were occupied, one by three dancers in skimpy costumes, the other by a small, bald, and bespectacled man who sat staring at his can of Diet Coke while a dark-haired woman in leopard panties and a matching halter top rubbed his leg.
This woman and the three others all turned to regard DeMarco when he stepped inside. Everybody smiled at him. They sized him up as if they could see straight through to his bank account, could see how high his twenties were stacked. He had dressed for the evening in khaki slacks and brown loafers and a white poplin jacket over a black knit shirt—his idea of casual. He hoped that, tonight at least, he looked like a businessman of some kind, maybe a sales rep. The dancers kept smiling at him, and he interpreted this as a good sign. His face, he knew, might give him away. People sometimes told him he looked like Tommy Lee Jones, but he considered this an insult to a good actor.
Then one of the dancers stood and came toward him, and for a moment, he felt again like a sixteen-year-old at his first high school dance, like he wanted to bolt for the door before he could make a fool of himself. His stomach fluttered.
In her high heels she was maybe five foot eight. She had long red hair that looked chestnut brown in the dimness, and a nose like Julia Roberts’s, one that widened with her smile. But he doubted that her face garnered much attention from the customers. Her only clothing was a short, white coat held together by one button and trimmed in rabbit fur at the neck and hips. A quick glance informed him that there was no other fur in the vicinity. He felt his body warm, felt the heat and movement of blood.
She took hold of his arm and leaned close so as to be heard above the music, spoke into his ear so that her hair fell across his arm, so that her scent washed over him. His stomach quivered at her touch.
“You look like a virgin,” she said.
He said nothing in reply, only raised his eyebrows a little when he looked at her.
“Your first time here,” she said.
“It is,” he told her.
“Don’t worry. Virgins are my specialty.”
She led him to a table. After he sat, she put her hands on his knees and swung his legs around, away from the table, then sat sidesaddle atop them. Now her coat fell open below the waist and he could clearly see the smooth paleness of skin from her knees to her belly button. “So what’s your name, sweetie?” she asked.
“Thomas,” he told her, the first name to come to mind.
“We get a lot of Thomases in here,” she teased.
He smiled. Her hair smelled like Obsession, the scent his wife used to prefer. “And what’s your name?” he asked.
“I’m Ariel. Like in The Little Mermaid. You know, the Disney movie?” She put her mouth against his ear now and made a sound that both startled and disarmed him, drained him of all awareness for a moment. It was a low purring sound made by simultaneously moaning and rolling her tongue, and the warmth of her breath in his ear dizzied him.
Now she slid a hand along the inside of his thigh. Things were happening to him over which he had no control. His bodily response to her touch frightened and enlivened him.