Bad Girls (6 page)

‘If those slobbery things come anywhere near me, so help me God . . .’ Jennifer muttered to Carmen.

‘I can’t take the dogs with me, can I?’ Joe asked Carmen, the hopelessness in his voice indicating that he knew the answer perfectly well already.

‘To rehab?’ Carmen’s perfectly threaded black eyebrows shot up. ‘Don’t you think that might just tell people you’re not taking this whole thing seriously?’

‘Ah, fuck,’ Joe said for the last time, rubbing Hengist’s huge head for comfort. ‘Do you know what shit I’m going to take for this? The rest of my life, they’re going to talk about the sex addiction every time my goddamn name comes up.’

He leaned down and hugged Hengist round his neck. Hengist was drooling on his hand. Yeah, Great Danes were slobbery, but who cared? Women were always bitching about the dogs, but they didn’t realize that Joe would choose over them a stinky big dog that couldn’t quit dribbling any day of the week. At least you knew where you stood with a dog.

He sighed deeply, thinking of the month he’d been planning for himself, and the one that was actually coming down the pike. Trapped in a rehab centre with a bunch of drunks and junkies whining about their miserable lives. Without even a beer now and then to take the edge off.

And then another thought struck him, such an awful one that he involuntarily tightened his arms too hard round Hengist’s neck, making the poor dog squeal and scrabble back in panic.

‘Oh,
no
,’ he groaned. ‘Clooney and Pitt are going to rip me a new one when they hear about this!’

I
f Tinkerbell were completely naked, and if she worked as an exotic dancer in a Manhattan strip club called the Midnight Lounge, she would look exactly like Skye Simmons did that Saturday night. Skye gleamed like she’d been brushed with gold. Her blonde hair was pinned back at the crown, falling down her back in an arrangement of carefully arranged curls. Her big blue eyes looked huge, thanks to her battery-operated eyelash curlers and three coats of lash-building mascara. Her lips were glossed, her cheekbones highlighted with a dewy gel stick. She smelled of peony and chypre, and if someone had licked her, they would have tasted strawberries.

Skye examined her nude body in the mirror as she affixed a pair of gold pasties to her nipples. Yup, she looked good enough to eat. It was the umpteenth confirmation of what Skye had known ever since she got her first training bra; her pretty angel face, combined with her tight, curvaceous body, had meant that she’d had guys chasing her ever since she could remember. At school it hadn’t been just the boys; teachers had hit on her too. She couldn’t walk down the street without hearing hoots and catcalls or, if she was in a Hispanic area, hisses of appreciation from between their teeth at every involuntary swing of her hips.

Skye’d grown up in Trenton, New Jersey, an ugly manufacturing town where more people were laid off than had jobs, and the prospects were only getting bleaker: huge clusters of concrete buildings, the factories that were still open spewing filthy smoke, tens of thousands of people crammed too close together. Always guys hanging around, like nobody ever went to work, or at least had the kind of job where the IRS took a cut of your paycheque. Men on every street corner, every doorway, every alley, whistling and yelling and hissing at Skye.

Not that it wasn’t good to know you were sexy. Whenever Skye had complained about it to her mom, all she’d heard was, ‘Honey, when the guys stop whistling, that’s when you should worry.’ Living a hardscrabble existence with five kids by two different guys, neither of whom had stuck around to help her raise them, had taken its toll on Leanne, and she had no sympathy to spare for a daughter whose problem was being so pretty and sexy she practically had to fight men off with a stick.

Well, Skye had learned that lesson. No point in getting mad, no point in asking for help. So she figured out how to roll with it instead. Guys were still staring at Skye – more than ever – but now they had to pay for it. She put on a damn good show, she worked it with everything she had, and all those years of hassles and catcalls and filthy propositions were turned on their head. It was Skye who had the power now. And she loved to use it.

She picked up the giant can of Elnett and misted her hair with it, the chemical tang of hairspray adding to all the other odours in the dressing room: nail-varnish remover, sweat, body spray, perfume, and traces of cigarette and dope smoke – it was illegal to smoke in here, but sometimes the girls just couldn’t wait to run down the back stairs to the side door to the alley. While the hair-spray was still fresh, Skye scooped a handful of gold glitter out of her jar, held her fist as high as she could over her head, and opened it, turning on her toes at the same time so the gold dust landed evenly on her hair, sticking to the hairspray: the final touch.

‘You
love
your glitter dust, baby doll,’ Maria, the house mom, said from her cosy nest in her battered old armchair. ‘How much do you blow on that stuff every week?’

‘Hey, better on my hair than up my nose!’ Skye retorted, which caused Jada, pulling on a leather bra at the other side of the dressing room, to crack up with laughter.

‘
Right
,’ she commented. ‘Like it’s one or the other.’

Skye grinned at Maria over her shoulder. Hired by the management to run the dressing room and keep a lid on trouble, Maria was always there, refereeing conflicts, pouring oil on the waters, eternally ready with a needle and thread for rips in costumes. Often house moms in strip clubs were ex-dancers themselves, but tiny, wizened Maria had never been that glamorous. She’d been a costume maker for years, till her eyes got too strained. Now she sat, every day from noon until closing, in her big armchair, a piece of knitting on her lap, and a big mug of coffee, laced with something stronger, on a table at her side, and though her eyesight wasn’t up to sewing on sequins for hours on end, she never missed a thing that went on in her dressing room.

‘It’s gonna be a good night,’ Jada said, lifting her surgically enhanced breasts one after the other and settling them into the bra cups. ‘There’s a real buzz out there. I can smell it.’

‘All you can smell right now is hairspray, honey,’ Maria cackled, as Skye pulled on a gold G-string and wriggled into two shiny gold stretch tubes, one barely covering her breasts, the other doing the same for her bottom. ‘Skye, honey, you wanna coffee before you start work?’

‘Sure,’ Skye said, taking a polystyrene cup from the wobbly stack on the table.

Maria reached for a Thermos and poured Skye a cup.

‘You wanna top-up?’ she asked, winking.

This was a special favour, and you couldn’t say no. Maria was already pulling a bottle from its hiding place down by the side of her chair. Skye perched on a battered chair, too ripped up to be used in the club any longer, as Maria laced the coffee with Kahlúa.

‘Hits the spot, huh?’ Maria said, as Skye took her first sip.

How many times had Skye heard Maria say that? Thousands, probably. How many nights had she sat here, drinking coffee, coming up or coming down, listening to the girls chatter and bitch and fight?

‘Hit me too, Maria,’ Jada said, a six-foot Amazon with pale mocha skin in her black leather bra and panties, and black spike heels, coming over with a cup of her own.

‘Girl, you look like a porn warrior,’ Skye giggled.

Jada threw her hip sideways and clenched a fist, posing hard. ‘I will lap dance the
fuck
out of you!’ she said menacingly.

Skye finished her coffee and stood up, whooping to get herself into the zone.

‘OK!’ she said, throwing her cup into the trash. ‘Let’s go and take those suckers out there for everything they’ve got!’

‘From your mouth to God’s ear,’ Jada said devoutly.

They looked at themselves for a moment in the mirror.

‘We are
so
going for different markets,’ Jada giggled, towering over her friend.

Skye was the archetypal American blonde, with rounded cheeks and a pouty pink mouth; she had the full, lush features of a teenager, or the baby doll for which Maria had nicknamed her. But her figure was pure Barbie, with implausible breasts and a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth, wide-eyed, innocent stare that had patrons of the club reaching for their wallets in reflex.

Jada was the opposite to Skye in every way: breathtaking, tall and imposing, with narrow hips and swimmer’s shoulders. Her cheekbones were a sculptural miracle, and her mouth was so wide and full she didn’t like to smile too much; she called it the grin that ate her face.

‘Better that way,’ Maria said drily. ‘You got a shot at staying friends.’

Skye grinned, acknowledging the truth of this.

‘Come on, girlfriend!’ she said, grabbing Jada’s hand, winking at Maria over her shoulder. ‘Time to empty out some wallets!’

The main floor of the Midnight Lounge was already half full at six in the evening. In a couple of hours, it would be packed. And Skye and Jada, striding in through the double doors at the back of the club, the bouncer stationed there nodding at them as they made their entrance, were the queens of the club. Even though there were girls gyrating on the poles, writhing on the lit-up stage, all the men’s heads turned at the sight of the dark Amazon and her blonde little baby-doll friend.

Skye wiggled up to the bar in her four-inch-high Lucite heels and flashed a smile at the bartender.

‘Set us up, honey,’ she said. And, turning to the guy on the stool beside her, who was goggling at the sight of her: ‘What’s
your
name, sexy?’

After a lot of throat-clearing, he managed to get out:‘Marvin,’ his eyes flickering between her boobs and her face as if he didn’t know which he wanted to focus on.

‘Well, Marvin honey, ever heard of buying two beautiful girls a drink or three?’ she said.

Marvin was already fumbling for his wallet. He looked like most guys who came into the Midnight Lounge: white, forty-something, in a suit, with an office drone haircut. Faceless, instantly forgettable.

‘You want some Kamikazes too?’ the bartender asked him, and although he was working on a beer, Marvin nodded enthusiastically, only too keen to join the girls.

Men, Skye thought, rolling her eyes. If I said, ‘Jump,’ he wouldn’t even wait to ask, ‘How high?’ He’d just do it first and ask questions later. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

Skye shot a quick, practised glance round the club. Plenty of fish here. And plenty of them were staring in her direction, at her small round arse covered, barely, in a narrow strip of gold stretch Lycra. She’d make thousands tonight. She could smell the money in the air. The Saturday night shift, six p.m. to four a.m.: ten hours’ work at maybe a grand an hour, if she worked everyone just right. God knew why men wanted to blow their paycheque on her when they could get laid for a fraction of the notes they so eagerly stuffed in her bra, but she certainly wasn’t complaining.

The Kamikazes were set up now: tequila, triple sec and lime, with a champagne float from a freshly opened bottle, the Midnight Lounge version of an old-school classic. The champagne, of course, made them way more expensive. And that was exactly the point.

‘One in each hand,’ Skye told Marvin, ‘you ready?’

He nodded, wide-eyed, unable to talk – unable, almost, to breathe with excitement.

This is why they spend the big bucks, Skye thought. They tell themselves we’re actually hanging out with them because we
want
to. Finally, the cheerleaders who snubbed them in high school are listening to their jokes and laughing like they’re funny. Right now, all over Manhattan, guys are buying girls twenty-dollar drinks and kidding themselves the girls are hanging out with them for their conversation, when the girls are in it for the free Cosmos and hitting on the bartender behind their date’s back. At least here we’re honest about it.

She smiled at the thought, a chipmunk-cute, cheek-dimpling, white-teeth-flashing smile that was so dazzling it nearly made Marvin drop his shot glasses.

‘One!’ Jada said, and they all sunk their first. ‘Two!’ she called, and the second set of empty glasses clinked down on the bar.

‘Whoo!’ Skye wiped her mouth.‘Now, we have a glass of champagne.’ She looked seductively at Marvin.‘And
then
, you and me go have some fun, what do you say? You up for that, Marvin? You man enough to have some fun with me?’

She picked up his tie and ran her fingers up and down it, slowly, mimicking what he’d like her to be doing to a part of his anatomy, her glossy mouth slightly open, her pink tongue sliding out to touch her upper lip briefly.

Just briefly. If he came in his pants right now, that would turn off the money tap, which was the last thing she wanted.

Marvin’s eyes were bugging out like a cartoon character’s.

‘You want a lap dance, don’t you, honey?’ she whispered to him.

He was so paralysed with excitement he could barely nod in assent.

Jada handed Skye two glasses of house champagne, and Marvin took one, staring, hypnotized, at Skye. He wore a wedding ring, natch. Pretty much every client at the Midnight Lounge was married. They came here to spend a fortune that they probably needed for the mortgage on their nice house in the suburbs on some fantasy girl with gold dust in her hair.

Sorry, Mrs Marvin, Skye thought ruefully. Bet he’s got a photo of you in that wallet. But hey, maybe this works for you. Maybe this way he doesn’t bother you so much for stuff you don’t want to do.

The bartender was swiping Marvin’s card for the drinks. Now, Skye, still caressing his tie, gave it a flirtatious little pull, enough to have him jumping off the bar stool and following her.

‘I think we want the private room, don’t we, Marvin honey?’ she cooed. ‘You’ve got a big –’ she winked – ‘
wallet
you’re just dying to show me, haven’t you?’

Fish in a barrel. Really.

Jada had already attracted a little guy whose eyes were on a level with her tits, one of her regulars, who was staring up at her as worshipfully as if she were a dominatrix. She glanced at Skye over his head and shrugged. Skye knew exactly what Jada was saying. You had to know your market. Jada would be lap dancing Mini-Mes all evening. Her signature move was slapping their faces when they were all worked up. They begged for it sometimes, Jada had told her.