Edward Lee - Ghouls

“They figure they can charge so much on account of the ‘erotic dancing.’”

Sanders jerked around and comically craned his neck. The amorphous dancer was plodding narcoleptically across the stage, preparing to spin. She reminded Sanders of the Thorazine patients on the ward. Sweat glued her hair down as though she’d dunked her head in a tub of molasses.

“If that’s erotic dancing,” Sanders commented, “then my name’s Dick. She must have some zombie in her blood. Christ, I’ve seen better looking tractor seats.”

Kurt Morris chuckled smoke.

When the waitress reappeared, Sanders paid for his drink, frowning. He looked up then and saw a ruddy vandyked character coming toward the table. The guy’s face looked like a bombed airfield, and he had sagacious slits for eyes. A girl in a black tube top and G-string followed him up like an exotic mascot.

“Hey, Morris,” the guy said, sniggering. “How come you ain’t in uniform these days?”

“Short vacation, thanks to you,” Kurt told the guy. “But I can’t say it wasn’t worth it. By the way, Lenny, how’s your jaw?”

“My jaw’s fine. It’ll take more than one sucka punch ta hurt me, an’ if I was you I’d be watchin’ out fer my own jaw.”

“Sure, Lenny,” Kurt said, a dismissive drone. “Why don’t you go haunt a shit pit or something. You’re scaring the bubbles out of my beer.”

The guy guffawed, then shot Sanders a cold, funky look. He walked away, tugging his nearly nude girlfriend with him.

“Who’s the Rhodes scholar?” Sanders asked.

Kurt tapped out another cigarette, a mixture of disgust and amusement working on his face. “Lenny Stokes,” he answered. “Dirtball, dropout, town pain in the ass. The crab queen with him is Joanne Sulley, one of the dancers here. Certain parts of her are quite well known to the male population… I got five days’ suspension for punching Stokes in the mouth.”

“You’re a cop?”

Kurt nodded. “Local. Been on the force about five years.”

That was good. Sanders generally got along well with police, civilian or military. Even the worst police officers seemed more in touch with reality than the average sap.

Suddenly the Anvil’s din of harsh music and palaver gave way to a cannonade of hoots. “Class act, huh?” Kurt said. He pointed to the stage. “This is her grand finale before the next dancer.”

Sanders turned again. The dancer was now on her back, with her legs straight up in a wide V. She had a hand in her G-string, while the other hand rubbed her breasts alternately, bringing the nipples up like beads.

“Piss-poorest floor show I ever seen,” Sanders remarked. What a joke. This was nothing compared to some of the things he’d witnessed. Like the whore/waitresses in Nürnberg who could actually puff cigarettes with their vaginas, or pick up empty beer bottles off the floor for a couple of deutschemarks. During his TDY tour at Fort Hamilton, he’d often gone to clubs on 8th Avenue and seen strippers insert eggs or tomatoes into themselves and then splatter them out by contracting their pelvic muscles. And in Mexican border towns such as Acuna, dancers would routinely fellate and have intercourse with dogs and mules.

The juke tune faded out abruptly; the current dancer got up and, with not much eloquence, left the stage. The next song thumped on directly, filling the Anvil with waves of razor-edged guitar and percussives like pistol shots in an empty parking garage. The crowd flew into a tangled uproar as Joanne Sulley set foot on stage. She went into her number smooth as velvet, the gyrations of her trim physique almost too well done. She danced with a balletic ferocity, an easy intricacy of timing and motion. Sanders was impressed in spite of himself.

“At least she knows what she’s doing.”

Kurt conceded, a reluctant nod. “As much as she curdles my stomach, I have to admit she can dance. And wait’ll you see her floor show. She sticks matches on her nipples and lights them.” Kurt put his hands on the table and stood up. “Funny, though, every time I see her up there I get this sudden urge to go to the John. Be right back,” and then he weaved away toward the men’s room.

Sanders continued to watch, half fascinated and sipping his Coke. Then he glanced left; he saw Lenny Stokes conversing with the bouncer by the door. Sanders could smell trouble. They were both glaring at him.

Stokes parted and began walking toward the table.

“Hey, man. My buddy ova there tells me you were givin’ him a hard time.”

“That’s right,” Sanders said. He was looking at the dancer. His hands were in his lap.

“How come you wanna give my buddy ova there a hard time?”

“’Cause he’s an asshole.”

“That so?”

“Yeah, an asshole. Just like you.”

Stokes stood casually, arms akimbo. He grinned. “Hey, man. What happened ta yer face? Looks lak ya tried ta shave with a boat motor.” Then he reached over and took Kurt’s half-smoked cigarette out of the ashtray. He held it up, watched the smoke coil toward the rafters, and then flicked an inch of ash in Sanders’s lap.

Expressionless, Sanders stood up. “That was a mistake.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Stokes came back, sharpening his grin. “See, I thought ya were an ashtray, on account of the fact that it looks lak folks’ve been puttin’ out butts in yer face fer years.”

Sanders spat on Stokes’s right shoe. He must make Stokes throw the first punch.

“You must wanna wheelchair ta go along with that fucked-up face of yers, pal.”

“Outside, or right here,” Sanders said. “It’s your choice.”

“Okay, Frankenstein. Outside.”

The two men waded through tables and went out the front door.

Sanders had killed men with his bare hands before, he’d been trained to. The average person would be surprised at how easy it was. Less than thirty pounds of pressure on the proper vertebra could snap a neck. A palm-heel upthrust at a specific angle could shatter the pre-sphenoid bone table, behind the sinuses, and drive the fragments into the brain. A single, precise blow six inches under the armpit could penetrate a lung with broken pieces of ribs. Tracheas could be crushed with a modicum of physical force, and eighty percent of the blood supply to the brain could be occluded by two well-placed fingers. Sanders’s sole fear in a fight was maintaining the necessary level of restraint, which was harder than one might think, since he’d never been taught to fight halfway—he’d been taught to kill. He knew he’d have to be careful here. No man, Stokes included, deserved to spend a year in traction just for being a shithead.

“You are one ugly muthafucka,” Stokes reflected. “And I am personally gonna make you uglier.”

Outside, Sanders procured immediate tactical advantage; he stood with the light over the door behind him, and in Stokes’s face. He didn’t expect Stokes to fight fair—life had taught him to always keep an eye to the rear. He was ready when the bouncer slipped out and sneaked up from behind.

When Sanders felt the bouncer’s hand on his shoulder, he said, “Here’s one for your mother,” simultaneously driving the tip of his elbow into the bouncer’s solar plexus and then flattening his nose with a quick upward back fist to the face. Sanders did this without turning, without taking his eyes off Stokes.

The bouncer collapsed, one hand clutched at his gut, the other to his face. His nose dripped out blood like a leaking faucet.

Stokes sprang forward, the element of surprise ruined. He was very fast. He fired a fist, but Sanders’s forearm swerved up firm as a steel rod and blocked the punch. Flustered, Stokes shot out his other fist. Sanders caught it and held it in his palm, as if he’d just caught a line drive. He smiled traceably at Stokes, then shoved him backward.