The Garden of Last Days Page 3

  Then she was inside, her door somehow behind her, the cordless phone she rarely used in her hand. Her plump, liver-spotted hand. She had a hard time breathing and a malevolent force was pressing a thousand pounds to her chest and it was terrible to die this way. To suffocate alone in the late-morning brightness, the lush and verdant brightness of her and poor Harry’s Sarasota home.

  TINA’S OFFICE DOOR was slid all the way open when April came around the corner naked and barefoot. She was hugging her stilettos and balled-up jeans, her underwear and halter. The clapping had stopped and Wendy’s number came on, Wendy brushing by her in her negligee and heels. April clutched a wad of bills that should be thicker but wasn’t because there was no garter belt for customers to slip their money into and she had to leave her panties on so they’d use that, but most of them didn’t. And there was Franny sitting on Tina’s brown couch watching the TV, her pink flip-flops barely reaching the edge of the cushion. Tina’s desk lamp was off and in the shifting colored light of the screen Franny’s lips were parted, her cheeks glistened, she needed to blow her nose, and who the hell was looking after her?

  April hurried to her locker and dropped her clothes and shoes on the floor. The dressing room was empty except for the makeup artist at her perch in the corner reading a book. “Where’s Tina?” She kept her voice down. Donna didn’t look up. She was a big woman, her kit laid out on the counter under the mirror. She knew her stuff, though April never used her.

  “Donna, where’s Tina? She’s supposed to be watching my kid.”

  “She went to get her something from the kitchen. I’m watching her.” Donna went back to her book, a novel about vampires, and April knew she’d expect at least a ten now before the night was over.

  At her locker she counted her bills: eighteen ones and a five. The act was never where the money was, but still, if Tina had called her she could’ve gotten in early enough to dress right and make more. She noticed she still had her watch on. She took it off, picked up her jeans, and stuck her watch into one of the front pockets. Through the plywood walls of the club, Michael Bolton was singing how he can’t live anymore and there was also the music of The Lion King, African drums and the high-throated wail of some talking, singing animal. April could hear the deep voice of the actor who played Mufasa, the sweet way he was talking to his son, Simba. And she wanted to get dressed quickly and go see Franny. Maybe she could sit with her a few minutes while her daughter ate.

  On the floor of her locker was a zippered vinyl pouch she bought at Walgreen’s in the school supplies section. It was supposed to hold pencils and pens but she liked that it was purple and she stuck her money into it and was zipping it shut when the door opened and Louis walked in, Zeke pulling the door shut behind him.

  Louis had wiry red hair and pink freckled skin and spent as much time on his boat as possible. Tonight he was wearing his aquamarine contacts that went with his Tommy Bahama silk shirt and pleated pants. On his freckled wrist was a turquoise and silver watchband and a silver bracelet, and any other man dressed like this would look elegant, but Louis was too petty to look that way, too convinced everybody’s actions were designed to rob him. He stood there staring at her. She dropped her money pouch into her locker and began stepping into her T-back.

  “What’s with the act tonight, Spring?”

  “Ask Tina.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  She could feel his stare as she pulled up her G-string, and it was always like being naked again when Louis looked at you. Out in the club Michael Bolton was really screaming now, the way he did, and the house was loud and happy for Wendy’s act. From Tina’s office came another Disney song, and April just hoped Louis wouldn’t notice and go back there.

  “Her rotation got changed. I don’t know, I guess she didn’t have time to call me.” She cupped herself into her T-back and snapped the front snaps. She picked her blouse up off the floor, turned it right side out, found the armholes. “I didn’t have time to get ready.”

  “Know how much I pay for liability, Spring? Do you?”

  April pulled her garter halfway up her thigh, then stepped into the other one, a frayed yellow floral she’d been meaning to replace for a while now, and she stayed quiet because with Louis any answer was the wrong answer if it didn’t come from him first, so you waited.

  “Will you look at me when I’m talking to you, please?”

  She turned to him, saw his watery, aquamarine eyes move from her bare ass to her face. Donna turned a page of her book lightly, quietly.

  “More than you make in a month, easy. I don’t care what your fucking problem is. Next time you leave the shoes on, all right? Just leave ’em on and shake your tits or I’ll find somebody else because there’s always somebody else. All right?”

  “Yes.” She stepped into her skirt, cinched it snugly over her hips. Louis was done now, though he wasn’t moving. She could hear The Lion King and so must he, her heart thumping against her ribs, not because Louis cared about Tina babysitting but because he was Louis and she couldn’t have him even seeing Franny, looking at her with his fake eyes, sizing her up.

  He started walking toward Tina’s office.

  “Louis, my kid’s in there and she finally calmed down.” She smiled at him. It was her nightworld smile and it knew when to come and maybe even Louis believed it; he didn’t smile back but his face changed; now he was a man in front of a woman, his insurance policies back in a drawer for now. He jiggled the change in his pocket.

  “Since when do you have a kid?”

  “Three years. She just turned three.” These were dayworld words and she couldn’t smile through them and had to look away. She grabbed her brush and makeup.

  “What, you think I’ll spook her?”

  “Not on purpose.” She moved past him to the makeup mirror, let her bare arm touch his, and she hoped he’d do what he did, turn to watch her lean over the counter toward her reflection because nobody touched Louis, especially after what happened with Denise, but that’s all it took.

  Wendy’s second number had started, a Celine Dion song she thought was classy though it ended with her on her hands and knees, and it was time for April to get out on the floor, Louis just standing there like a big pink reptile in the sun, his eyes on April’s ass in her skirt. The dressing room door opened. Tina walked in carrying a tray of food—hamburger and fries, a glass of watered-down milk from the bar. Franny wouldn’t eat the bun, and there was no knife and fork to cut up the burger.

  “Nice schedule tonight, Tina.”

  “Don’t give me any of your shit, Louis. You know what you did.”

  “You could’ve bumped Wendy in the rotation.”

  “Right.”

  Tina was already to her office, sliding the door shut, the only one who could talk to him like that because they lived together years ago after his divorce and he seemed to need her around like some men need their mothers or sisters. But he didn’t like her to talk like that in front of anyone, and now he called to her through the door. “I want you upstairs, Tina. You hear me? First chance you fucking get.”

  “She’s in a bad mood, Louis. It’s nobody’s fault.”

  He stood there studying April in the mirror. And her smile smiled back. He nodded once, his fake contacts looking pathetic, the only color in his face that wasn’t pink and sun-damaged and dried-out and mean. Then he smiled like he’d never really seen her before, a smile that harbored a secret he was convinced only he and April shared, and it was as if a fine invisible net had just blossomed from his flabby belly and shot out over her, his new prize.

  The dressing room door opened. Retro walked in in her red heels and red leather hot pants and red lace bra, her brown skin glowing. “Hi, Lou.” Retro pretended she was happy to see him in here, smiling as she headed straight for her locker. She unsnapped her bra in the front with two long fingers. Louis watched her only a second or two, then his attention was back on April as she brushed her hair. She knew she’d have to avoid him
now and she wanted him to leave; in The Lion King the part that scared Franny was coming soon, brother killing brother, Mufasa’s terrified lion’s face as he falls into the ravine below. April needed to tell Tina to fast-forward through that.

  Louis’s coins jingled in his pocket, but she was done smiling at him or talking to him. She leaned close to the mirror to apply her lipstick and it was always hard not to look at Retro, that brown skin, her long back and legs as she stepped out of her shorts. She reached inside her locker for her gown, one of the only girls to do a formal act, satin gloves and everything. Celine Dion was on her last breath now, her siren’s voice slicing through all the clapping and hollering.

  April hooked in her earring. “How’s the VIP?”

  “Not bad for September.”

  Retro stepped into her gown, real ivory satin that needed stitching at the hem, though it was nothing customers ever noticed. April hooked in her other hoop and started brushing on some blush, and Louis was still standing there like a boy who needed just one more sign to be sure. Tina’s door slid open. “Spring?”

  Franny was crying again, a sound that spilled into the room and hit April dully in the bones. The Lion King was muted or off.

  “I’ll be in the office, Tina. Don’t make me wait.”

  “I’ll get there when I get there, Louis. Spring?”

  Franny began shrieking, but she’d have to wait two more seconds, just two more, because once cash started to go into the purple bag, you could never leave your locker unlocked though April knew she was late in saving Franny from what scared her; she was late for that, and even later for the VIP.

  FROM THE AMAZON Bar three steps higher than the main floor, Lonnie Pike could see out over the crowd to the other side of the club where Paco sat at the VIP bar and Little Andy guarded the black curtains to the Champagne Room. Tiny purple lights were strung along the half wall between here and the VIP and in the orange light of the stage Spring danced in blue jeans, which was strange, and the DJ had the music cranked so loud Lonnie could feel the ice vibrate in his glass. It was September, the low season, but the place was filling up, and he leaned back against the bar with his ginger ale and scanned the club for pockets, those dark human spaces in the room where something has just changed: above the music a man lets out an appreciative yell when before he was quiet; one of the dancers out on the floor laughs a little too hard or steps back too fast; a chair leg scrapes the carpet—something Lonnie can’t hear, just feels, a shift of objects in the space there, this change in the air, a pocket of possible trouble.

  Two of the girls climbed the steps from the main floor, their hips swaying. They moved by him to work the men at the bar, only four of them, but they were in shirts and ties and one of them had on a gold Rolex. Spring danced and he didn’t watch. Let all the others watch because out on the floor were seventeen girls working it for their one-on-ones. He counted them and counted them again. Seventeen women in their floor costumes, none of them the same. Some moved from table to table in heels and short shorts and Puma T-shirts cut just below their breasts. Others wore business skirts and blouses and had their hair up because it was Thirsty Thursday and they knew the office boys would pay to see them take off the same clothes the women at work wore. Some of the real young ones came out in hardly anything, just a garter, G-string, and see-through negligee so you could see their breasts and ass, and sometimes this worked against them and nobody paid for what they were getting for free anyway. But on busy nights in the high season, when the drinks were selling and everybody was whooping it up and it was one big party, all they had to do was smile and shake what they had and they scored seven or eight privates in the VIP before they were due for their act back onstage.

  Lonnie glanced over there. Spring’s top was off, her back to him, her long hair swishing over her skin. She rocked her hips from side to side, both hands on her button and zipper. Between acts she’d work the floor in a cotton skirt and half-buttoned blouse, her hair shiny and brushed. She’d wear silver hoop earrings and smile at you like she was your best friend’s sister you’d always wanted and this was the night she was coming to tell you she’d always wanted you, too. And it was her smile the men liked because she was always smiling and it never looked phony.

  Except now. She was at the apron of the stage, her hair covering one of her nipples as she reached down to pull off her right high heel. She lost her balance and came down hard on her barefoot, both breasts bouncing out of time to the music. Two or three men laughed though it wasn’t a sound Lonnie heard, just saw and felt. Spring smiled at them, but it wasn’t a real smile, not her professional one anyway. Lonnie had never seen it before.

  Another pocket opened out on the floor. A tall regular stood to go back to the VIP with one of the short-shorts girls whose name started with an M, though Lonnie couldn’t remember the rest. Names didn’t matter. Just their bodies. Keep track of the bodies and make sure nobody touched them.

  The club was more than half full now, all four bartenders working fast and without a break. There was the thump of the bass guitar and drums, the woman singer’s backstreet voice; there was the clink and scrape of ice, the talk and laughter of men and a few women, and Spring was starting her night out badly, kicking her jeans off behind her now, dancing in a pair of panties, just panties, not a G-string or crotchless, and another pocket began to show itself off to the right, a big man in a Miami Dolphins cap sitting back and tossing a wadded bill at her. It hit Spring in a rib and she ignored it, turned and started pushing down her panties, letting them all glimpse her ass before she pulled them back up again. Other pockets kept opening at the entrance, new customers coming in in twos or threes, parting the curtains and letting in the pink light of the front hallway where Big Scaggs and Larry T sat on stools.

  Dolphins Cap tossed another one. Spring moved to the other side of the stage. She’d rolled the sides of her panties up high onto her hips and was dancing at the edge now, holding her hair up with her hands. Lonnie stood away from the bar, watched the man crumple another one in his fist. Behind the man’s ear was an unlit cigarette. In front of him was a scotch or bourbon on the rocks and he wore the mustache and goatee so many men did now, and you could bet if they had one, they were not near as tough as they wanted to look. Out on the floor another pocket opened up, then another and another, but they were just customers hooked on the line of the VIP, and Dolphins Cap tossed one that missed Spring and landed in the tables on the other side of the stage, just a few bills folded into her panties, her second number almost over, time to give them everything.

  And Dolphins Cap didn’t deserve it.

  Lonnie took the steps lightly, moving between the tables like a mist. He was aware he had a heartbeat, that his adrenal glands had just secreted some juice, but he wouldn’t need much of it; he was relaxed and clear of everything. Dolphins yelled out something ugly and Lonnie didn’t hear the actual words, just felt them rip the pocket open wider, and he stepped sideways between occupied chairs on his toes in his Nikes, and if he brushed up against someone’s shoulder or head, he didn’t feel that because all there was now was Dolphins Cap sitting back in the pocket he created, raising his arm to toss another wadded insult. Paco or Little Andy would grab that arm and twist it till he dropped whatever he held. But Lonnie preferred the soft touch, the quiet approach; they were always more surprised then.

  He stepped past the last table. Dolphins didn’t even look over, just snapped his wrist toward Spring, and Lonnie’s arm left his side and there were the soft corners of a crumpled dollar in his hand, the lip of the stage at his back. Dolphins Cap looked up at him with eyes small and dark and so deeply instinctual it appeared he’d bite his own flesh. Was he looking for it? Or surprised? And if he was surprised, was it a good surprise or a bad one? But what Lonnie saw in those small eyes above that clichéd goatee was a man used to having his amusement thwarted, a man trying to decide, at this very moment, just how much more he was going to take. And so Lonnie would make it easy for him;
he lifted his hand, wagged his finger at him, and shook his head. Behind him, in the air around him, the song was in its last measures, which meant Spring was naked and collecting folded bills from men who knew how to behave, but Dolphins Cap hadn’t moved, nor had he stopped looking into Lonnie’s eyes, and this, Lonnie knew, is where he came out ahead, because he was tall and lean with none of the beef Louis’s other boys had. All he had was what his hands had been able to do for a long time now.

  The music ended and there was clapping and a few hoots. Then the man broke his stare just long enough to watch Spring’s lovely ass disappear behind the curtain. He looked back at Lonnie, but it was clear it was over, and Lonnie placed the crumpled bill on the table and stepped sideways back into the darkness of the crowd. He looked behind him once but this pocket was now closed, Dolphins Cap sipping his drink and looking hard at the curtains, as if the dancers somewhere behind it, and not Lonnie Pike, had stopped his fun.

  Three-quarters of the tables were filled now, mainly with men, though there were a few women too, wives or girlfriends who maybe got turned on by the dancers or were lesbians or just women who liked to sit in the dark and drink themselves into a warm bed of the brain where seeing a woman dance for them put them somewhere they rarely went—on top, no longer the server but the served.

  But it was the men Lonnie watched. The quiet ones, the loud ones, those who traveled in packs, and those who came in alone. The loners were more dangerous; they were here because they couldn’t stay away. And right now in the club there were five of them: Dolphins Cap probably. And a thin man two tables over. On the other side of the stage were three more, including Gordon, a longtime regular with a neatly trimmed white mustache who wore silk ties and starched shirts. The girls said he sold his company and in the last six months alone had spent over fifty thousand dollars in the Champagne Room on Wendy. That was the trouble right there. A lone dog fell in love.