Greg Baxter - A Preparation for Death

She had her hand on my leg. I cannot remember if it had been there from the beginning. We were sitting in an odd calm that seemed a great distance from everybody else. We were all alone in the room. I have a tendency — and this is an old cliché but what can you do when it’s the truth — to fall in love with strippers. I’ve never been to a club without leaving under a hazy, pathetic crush.

She tamped her cigarette in the ashtray. It was only half-smoked, but I understood. I did the same and leaned back and she put one leg over me and leaned forward. I put my hands on her waist and squeezed. I cannot even begin to express the sensation that contact with a woman’s waist, the curve from the hips up, the soft flat belly, drives through me. It is like taking off all my clothes, standing in the rain, and grabbing an electric fence.

Dutifully Jackie threw her head back. She undressed when the next song began. She did this with the slow expertise of all strippers — this holding of the top against the breasts while the straps are undone, then the bent-over slow unravelling of a G-string — and in a moment she was naked on top of me, completely, faced away, and pressing her ass in my lap like a cat trying to get comfortable in a pillow. I scratched her back. She leaned forward and soon her hands were on the ground and she was upside down on my lap and I was staring into the eloquence of her hairless cunt and asshole. And I became something of that unenviable man, frozen, shaken, bankrupt. If I had been spotted by anyone they would have pitied me. When I pulled her ass apart with my hands she slid off with feline agility and moved to straddle me again and said, This is nice. If I had not been in love with her before, I was then. And if not then, I was when she danced into the fifth and sixth songs and when at last I could not bear to have her tits so close to my mouth without sucking them and I licked and bit her nipple and she squeezed herself close and let out an almost silent whimper.

Then she stopped and asked, Do you want to go longer? We’ve gone way past three songs.

I don’t know, I said.

She remained very still.

Can I smoke a cigarette and think about it?

She got off my lap and put on her G-string and bikini top and lit a cigarette, reclining into the couch and crossing her legs. I’m probably going to get in trouble, she said. You’re not supposed to touch me.

Yeah, but it’s Christmas.

Exactly, it’s Christmas.

We began a conversation again. She said she was tired, but had to dance the morning shift at a place on the Strip. That shift started at six, so she’d have a couple of hours to kill. I told her she should come back and drink with me at the Horseshoe. She thought about it. Maybe, she said.

Why do you want to get fake tits? I asked. Yours are perfect.

Hardly anybody likes real tits anymore, she said. You make a lot more if they don’t move when you dance.

Well, I like them.

She put her cigarette in the ashtray. You want to see them again?

I want to fuck you.

She smiled. I’d definitely get in trouble.

Two hundred more for the rest of the hour?

She nodded. You should give Yuri something too.

Who’s Yuri?

Yuri was the guy just outside the curtain who made sure the girls were safe, and that they didn’t cross the line. I presumed Yuri was a fake name intended to intimidate clients, but he didn’t need it. He was the shape of Frankenstein’s monster. I gave Yuri fifty and he nodded without saying anything. I had no idea what value fifty bucks had in this economy, but when I told Jackie she raised her eyes and told me to move to the far corner of the couch.

I grabbed my cigarettes and slid to the far end of the L and she said, Okay, we’re off camera.

When my time was up, it was about three a.m. There was another guy and his dancer, an older woman with short hair and cellulite, going through a conventional routine. He’d been watching us. We hadn’t done anything too astonishing, but it had felt like sex. I felt like I’d been fucked. Jackie dressed and we went to the bar for a drink, and on the way out I gave Yuri another thirty dollars. I wanted to walk around the place giving everybody money.

At the bar, Martin was still experimenting with cocktails. We had a few shots — Jackie had shots and an energy drink — and my mouth began to fill with gobble and my tongue became chewing gum. I started lighting cigarettes and leaving them to burn in ashtrays. Jackie said she’d better try and make a little more money before her shift was finished. She had half an hour. I told her to come to the front bar of the Horseshoe — Po’s bar — when she was done, and she said she would. When she left, Martin and I spoke until I could make no more sense of his words or my own. I went to stand and nearly fell over.

In an instant I was at the Horseshoe, at Po’s bar, and the bartender said, Any luck, Irish? I said I was still losing, but was done for the night. I put twenty bucks in the quarter poker machine and pressed the button once. My free drink came. Beside me there was an old man who could speak only by pressing a bandaged-up hole in his throat, and even then you couldn’t understand a word. At the end of the bar was a frat guy in a tattered baseball cap, dozing. There was one Asian dude playing roulette — the table that had crucified me — and one or two others playing blackjack. The craps dealers were standing silently in position while the pit boss paced behind them. The slots jingled in rhythmic alarm but I didn’t see anyone playing them. It was four in the morning. I was drinking very slowly, and as the time passed and Jackie did not arrive, I grew sleepy. I closed my eyes a few times and may have dozed.

I was about to order some water and retire — I had to be up in a few hours to gamble with my father — when Jackie showed up. She was wearing jeans and red jumper with a low neckline, and flats. She sat down and said, I didn’t think you’d be here.

I didn’t think you’d come, I said.

So, do you really live in Ireland?

Yep.

Too bad, she said.

She began to play the poker machine at her seat. She had long fingernails and they cracked the buttons rapidly. She played with unconscious speed, and spoke at the same time.

She hit a big hand and won a few hundred dollars. The old guy started clapping and the frat guy woke up. The voice box spoke — it asked a question. I didn’t understand but Jackie said, I got a flush. The old man nodded. He began to tell us a story about something. I didn’t grasp a word of it. When he was finished he laughed very hard, and so did Jackie. The frat guy exploded momentarily about shit luck.

If you lived here, said Jackie to me, we could’ve given dating a shot.

I put my hand on her leg. The thought of dating someone who undressed and danced on top of other men filled me with lascivious curiosity. Dismissively, lightly scolding, she reminded me that I didn’t live there, so there wasn’t much point.

Did you think I was coming here to hook up with you?

Of course not, I said, instantly growing very tired.

The old man spoke again and Jackie responded. He’s a writer, she said. He’s going to write about us.

The old man turned and reached out to shake my hand. With his other hand he pushed his throat and said, Pleased to meet you.

We spoke, the three of us, Jackie translating, for another half-hour, suffering a few more explosions from the frat guy, who at one point began flexing his muscles and feeling them. He was totally oblivious to the moment. He could have been in a jungle hanging with apes. Finally Jackie said she had to go. She cashed out. She held my hand for a moment and kissed me. It was light but lingering — hard to say who did the lingering and who did the leaving. Then she walked out. The old man and I watched her. He said something. I didn’t understand, but I knew what he said. I have a second memory of that morning, purely imaginary, in which she and I went up to my room and fucked and dozed through the day, and this imaginary memory is as true to my mind as what really happened — I could retell it now with the same sincerity. As she disappeared into the blinking, illuminated morning, she took all my energy with her. When she had vanished totally, the room became pendulous and swampy. My eyes began to close at once. My nose started to run again. The frat guy was talking about hookers. I knew what he meant. I told him to fuck off. The bartender said, It’s Christmas, Irish, go get some rest.