Brad Parks - Faces of the Gone

I went to introduce Tommy, but he had vanished. He was probably off in a back room, swapping skin-care regimens with one of the dancers.

The hour went quickly enough and Tynesha shrank my stack of singles with professional efficiency. As soon as she was relieved of her duties, she cruised up behind me and let her hand get familiar with my tush.

“Mmmm,” she said. “You got yourself one firm behind. I’m going to have fun with you.”

Tynesha was only about five seven. But I was betting if she did try to “have fun” with me, I’d end up in traction. I’m delicate that way.

“Where can we go talk?” I asked in a low voice.

“I’ve got a private room upstairs,” she whispered, giving my butt a final squeeze.

“Sounds great,” I said. She led me behind a curtain then up a narrow flight of stairs, opening the first door and turning into a small cubbyhole of a room. It contained a bed, a dresser, and more clutter than my eyes could begin to focus on.

“Okay, baby, so what it’s going to be?” she said, expertly ditching her top and pushing her breasts on my forearm in one motion. “You want the full two hours?”

“Uh, actually, I’m not here for that,” I said as I pulled out my notebook, and she froze.

“Dammit, I told Lucious not to send me no cops! Come on, baby, give me a break and I’ll-”

“Relax, I’m not a cop,” I said. “I’m a newspaper reporter. I work for the Eagle-Examiner. I’m writing a story about Wanda Bass. I saw the flowers you sent her. I wanted to talk to you about her.”

She crossed her arms over her bare chest and shot me a look from behind those amber contacts that said an ass-kicking might be forthcoming.

“Why, so you can write that an exotic dancer got herself killed?” she spat. “You know, you newspaper guys really piss me off. All your stories are like, ‘Oh, well, a dancer got smoked, but who cares, she was just a ho.’ Why you always got to write that it’s a dancer?”

This was uncomfortable. I had a personal policy about not getting into journalism ethics arguments with topless women in bordellos. Especially not when I needed them as sources.

“Well, we write it because it’s true,” I said. “If a car mechanic gets killed, we write it was a car mechanic. We can’t control what the profession is.”

“Oh, come on, you know it ain’t the same. You write that some banker gets killed and everyone goes, ‘Poor little white boy.’ You write that an exotic dancer gets killed, and everyone is, like, ‘Well, she was probably a hooker. She had it coming.’ And Wanda sold drugs on the side. So people will think, ‘a hooker and a drug dealer, she deserved to die twice.’ But let me tell you, Wanda had a family . She had kids . She was a person. Why don’t you write that for a change?”

“I’d like to, that’s why I’m here,” I said, trying to turn the conversation to something more productive. “I want you to tell me about who Wanda was as a person.”

Tynesha eyed me.

“Look, if I wanted to write another hooker got killed, I could have done that from the office, without bothering to talk to her friend,” I pressed. “Why would I have come out here and let you grope my ass if I didn’t truly care about who Wanda was?”

Finally, a break. “You know you liked it when I groped your ass,” Tynesha said, not smiling but at least not frowning anymore.

“Every second of it,” I said, allowing just the slightest bit of a grin.

“What you say your name was?”

“I didn’t. It’s Carter Ross.”

“Damn, that’s a white boy name all right.”

“Is your real name Tynesha?”

“Tynesha Dales. I dance under my real name. I know I ain’t supposed to. But I’m too damn tired half the time to keep up with fake names.”

“Okay.” I paused. This was a little awkward: “I’d like to shake your hand, but maybe you should put your top on first.”

“What, this embarrass you?” she said, shaking her breasts at me. Then, thankfully, she pulled a T-shirt out of the dresser.

“You’re a prude,” she said.

“No, just Protestant,” I said, opening my notebook. “So how long did you and Wanda know each other?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Since she came here. I was already here. Three years, maybe?”

“What kind of family did she have?”

“No dad, of course. Her mom is a decent woman but she’s disabled and can’t work. So she watches Wanda’s kids and Wanda supported all of them.”

“How many kids?”

“Four.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah, it was kind of a, what do you call it? When bad stuff just keeps happening over and over and over?”

“A vicious cycle?”

“Yeah, that’s it. A vicious circle. She was a real pretty girl. Long legs. Beautiful hair. Beautiful eyes. She was too pretty. She got pregnant the first time when she was fifteen, sixteen. Then the dad took off. As soon as he did, she was out trying to find herself a man to take care of her and the baby. That got her another baby, then that guy took off, so she started trying to find another guy. And it just kept going like that. A vicious circle.”

“How old are the kids?”

“The oldest is maybe eight? Nine? The youngest was born about six months ago.”

“Damn. That’s a handful.”

“Yeah. An expensive handful. She didn’t want to do what I do-she couldn’t when she was popping out all them kids-so she started selling drugs to my clients. We was kind of a one-stop shop: I’d give them love, she’d get them high, and the men would leave real happy.”

“And a couple hundred bucks poorer,” I said.

“Damn straight,” she said. “Speaking of which, this is costing me money, sitting here talking to you and not doing my thang. I got, you know, customers to serve.”

“When can we talk again?”

“I don’t know if I got much more to say.”

“Come on. Let me buy you lunch tomorrow.”

An eyebrow arched. “You’d buy me lunch?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“What kind of lunch?”

“Any kind you wanted, I suppose.”

“Yeah? Even a nice place? Like. . Red Lobster?”

“We could even do better than that,” I ventured.

“Yeah?” she said. “You mean, like, we could go to that, um, Australian place?”

Australian place? Then it clicked.

“You mean an Outback Steakhouse?”

“That’s right!” she said. “An Outback Steakhouse! I always wanted a white boy to take me to an Outback Steakhouse.”

“Well, then, be here tomorrow at noon,” I said. “Your white boy will be awaiting you.”

I had half a mind to bolt the Stop-In Go-Go and leave Tommy inside. But for as funny as that struck me-ditching a gay guy at a titty bar-it also met the constitutional threshold for cruel and unusual punishment. I found him at the bar, by himself, sulking.

“Can we get out of here?” he said. “It’s too hetero.”

I led him outside, where the night air smelled crisp, like snow-a nice change from the dankness of the Stop-In Go-Go.

“So, did you conquer the Sure Thing?” Tommy asked as we neared my car.

“Yeah, we had mad, wild sex.”

“Oh, so that’s why you were out so quickly,” Tommy shot back. “Anyway, she tell you anything useful?”

“Told me Wanda Bass was selling drugs to her clients.”

“Let me guess: she sold heroin, too.”

“I don’t know. She broke it off before I got any further. But we have a lunch date tomorrow. She insisted we go to a fancy foreign restaurant.”

“The International House of Pancakes?”

“Close. The Outback Steakhouse.”

“Well, just try not to get her pregnant when you end up going for a little afternoon delight.”