Don't Kill The Messenger (2 page)

My amazement continues as she contorts her body, placing her lower extremities on either side of the man’s head and displaying herself in a manner that would allow the customer to perform a Pap smear, if he were so inclined. Apparently disinclined, he simply stares at her as if he’s seeing a woman for the first time. His hands, curiously enough, stay almost glued to the edge of the stage.
House rules,
I think to myself,
looky but no touchy. Makes sense.

She then gets back on her knees and eases right up to him. In a moment that ranks up there with college in terms of completing my education, I watch as she presses the stranger’s face between her breasts, going so far as to brush his lips with each nipple. She then stands before him and holds her garter away from her thigh. I see that it is stuffed with money, and she invites him to add to the pile. He takes a single dollar, folds it in half, and tucks it in with the others. She smiles and says, “Thanks, hon,” competing with the music.

A dollar. Even with the economy in chaos, this man got … Holy shit, no wonder the terrorists want us all dead.

My thoughts are interrupted by a touch on my shoulder. Surprised, I turn around to see a waitress dressed in lingerie, seeking my attention. “What can I get ya?” she asks pleasantly.

“Oh, I’m fine, thanks,” I tell her.

“One-drink minimum,” she says with a gently apologetic look.

“Can I just get a Sprite?”

“Sure, that’s fine. I’ll be right back.”

She retreats to the bar and the current song ends. The dancer on stage gathers her costume, as an unseen DJ camps it up. “Give it up for Chantelle!” From the looks on some of the faces in the room, I suspect that a few men have done precisely that. Given the pervasiveness of the black light, I only hope they did so discreetly.

The DJ continues, “Isn’t she great, guys? Don’t forget, our girls work for your tips, so those of you at the tip rail, give generously and you shall receive. The bar is open and serving up all your favorites. Don’t forget to tip your waitress. Comin’ to the stage next, let’s make some noise for Fantasia.”

A few of the more intoxicated patrons do in fact make some noise … some
sort
of noise for Fantasia. Onto the stage sashays a young black woman in a bright red latex outfit. I had silently hoped she would come out in a sorcerer’s cap and robe, in homage to her namesake film, but alas. I watch as she begins her dance, and I smile noncommittally in her direction. At that moment, my waitress returns, carrying a plastic sixteen-ounce cup filled with Sprite-flavored ice and a little bubbly clear liquid. “Four dollars, hon,” she says.

I hand her a twenty. “Can I have the change in singles?”

“Of course,” she says pleasantly. She gives me sixteen one-dollar bills, and I give her back two of them.

“Thanks,” she says, genuinely grateful. “I’ll be back around if you need anything.”
Nicest girls in the Florida Keys.
Everyone’s polite, I’ll have to give them that.

Up on stage, Fantasia is making the rounds. Slowly, very deliberately, she finds the precise right moment to ease out of each article of clothing. Gradually she reveals her body for the crowd—an arm, a leg (well, two of each, actually, lest it sound like she is an amputee). When the moment is right, she pours herself out of the top of her costume, and her breasts emerge; small, dark, with the firmness of youth. She has a dancer’s body.

At this point, the dollar bills start to come out. Fantasia visits those who offer, teasing a bit, touching a bit. A minute more, and she sheds the last garment: a bright red latex thong. I do a double take worthy of 1930s slapstick comedy when I see that she is sporting jewelry in her genital region. A silver chain six inches in length dangles from a piercing that—despite my lack of that equipment—looks like it’s gotta hurt.

It’s time. I place a dollar bill conspicuously on the stage, and Fantasia pays me a visit. Despite years of being told that it’s rude to stare, I’m mesmerized by the chain. It looks like something that the family butler would pull to bring coal down the chute. She sees me staring, inasmuch as she isn’t legally blind.

“You like my voodoo kitty?” she purrs.

Desperately as the moment calls for a witty retort—something about voodoo or chains or butlers—all I can manage is, “It’s nice.”

She slinks over to me, squats down, and actually picks up the dollar bill with a body part I would never have considered capable until this moment. I resist the urge to applaud. Fantasia then spirits the dollar away and gets down on all fours before me, looking me right in the face. “So what’s your name?”

“Bill,” I say. It isn’t. I smile to myself. “Not much of a Tina Turner fan, are you?”

She is genuinely puzzled, the musical reference probably predating her birth. “Huh?”

“You know … ‘Private …’ Inside joke. My fault.”

She dismisses it quickly and proceeds to dispense the amount of performance that she will offer for a dollar. A few twists and turns, and the prehensile voodoo genitalia make another appearance in all their chained glory. I’m intrigued; I know my friend John would be in the throes of a mild seizure at the sight of this. He leans toward the exotic.

Contorting again, Fantasia brings her breasts forward toward my face. Rather than gently rubbing them on me, she thrusts them forward until my nose and mouth are wedged between them. I taste baby powder; it tastes like it smells. “Choke on them!” she says playfully, although I detect something in her tone that suggests that if I were to actually asphyxiate, she wouldn’t weep long. Curious customer service attitude. I’m glad the waitresses at Denny’s don’t adopt a similar one. Though it makes for an amusing mental image as I’m waiting for the oxygen supply to return.

She pulls away, offers a cryptic smile, and says, “See ya around …
Bill.
” I think she knows it’s not my name.

Before she can approach the next patron, I offer the question I came here to ask, the reason I placed the dollar bill on stage in the first place: “Is Rebecca dancing tonight?”

She looks surprised to hear it. We’ve clearly never met before, and she doesn’t recognize me as a regular, and here I am asking a question she would expect from a frequent patron. Deciding that I’m not visibly dangerous, she says, “She’s up next.”

“Thank you.”

I pause for a healthy swig of my Sprite-and-water cocktail, with its baby-powder chaser, and I watch Fantasia perform a nearly identical ritual on a Hispanic man in his fifties, right down to the choking comment.
At least it wasn’t personal,
I think.

Three or four more minutes pass; Fantasia’s
symphonie vaginique
ends, and she makes her way off the stage. “Isn’t she amazing?” the DJ asks rhetorically. A few audience members offer sounds to the affirmative. “Gulf Breezes is glad you’re here, and don’t forget, we’re having a special on private dances tonight. Normally forty dollars, for the next hour, you can get a dance all to yourself with the girl of your choice for just
t
wwwwwwenty
dollars.
Don’t be shy, guys. These girls want to perform for you. And comin’ to the stage right now—she’s too sexy for her shirt, so it won’t be on her for long. Please welcome Rebecca!”

Unsurprisingly, the tedium of “I’m Too Sexy” pours forth from the speakers, but before I can even roll my eyes, I see her. Rebecca. The reason I’m here. The reason I rented a car and drove 1,200 miles. And wouldn’t you know it, she’s a beauty.

But don’t fall in love …

“Like I have time for that anyway,” I say quietly to the warning lyric before it can become a full-fledged earworm.

Rebecca Traeger, all of twenty-one years old. She has light brown hair. I have no idea what color her eyes are. I would guess green, but thanks to the lighting, the same can be said of her teeth. She looks through me; we’ve never met, so there’s no reason for her to do anything else.

Part of me wants to look away as she begins to undress, feeling like I owe her the courtesy of averting my gaze. But I realize that I would draw too much attention to myself by doing that. And besides, I’d really like to see this girl naked.

The music doesn’t lie; she
is
too sexy for the oversized white shirt she discards on a corner of the stage. As time goes on, I realize that she is similarly too sexy for her shoes, stockings, and G-string. A few intricate dance moves later, I’ve seen about every side of her there is to see, short of having an MRI. I place a dollar bill on the stage. It’s time.

Seeing the dollar, she dances over to my direction. I briefly contemplate the potential intimacy that dollar could buy me, but before she can put anything of hers near anything of mine, I ask, “Can I have a private dance?”

She smiles, likely more at the revenue than the rendezvous. “Sure. I’ll come see you after my set is over.”

Before I can thank her, she is running her fingers through my hair and brushing my cheek with one breast. At the moment, I am grateful for the darkness that hits me at waist level.

Somewhere, thirty miles to the north, I sense that a deer is shaking its head in disappointment.

Chapter 2
 

Rebecca finishes her set and secures the dollar bills she has collected. It’s an impressive stack; she’s good and it pays. It pays very well, which means that she won’t like what I’m going to tell her; but I have to tell her if I hope to get any sleep. She approaches me. “Fantasia told me someone at the rail was asking for me. Was that you?”

“Yes.”

“Have I seen you before?”

“No,” I answer, “you haven’t.”

“Then how did you—”

I interrupt. “Can we talk where it’s quieter?”

She acknowledges the intrusiveness of the music and the bar ambiance, and motions for me to follow her to a back room. The sign over the door says “Enchantment,” but the décor inside fails to enchant on many levels. The dark gray carpeting looks like it hasn’t been changed since the Carter administration. The plush chairs are newer, obviously necessitated by frequent use. I am relieved not to see a bed in the room, nor anything else that might lead to an awkward discussion of what twenty dollars could buy. Though I suspect I would be very sad if that little money could secure anything of that nature.

I hold out twenty dollars, but she hesitates before accepting it. “How did you know to ask for me?” she says.

“I’m here because I have to talk to you,” I answer.

For a moment, she bristles. “If you’re a cop, you can leave now, because there’s nothing illegal going on.”

I offer a half-smile. It’s a reasonable assumption. “I’m not a cop, and I’m not here to ask you for anything illegal, immoral, or anything like that. I’m here because I have a message to give you.”

“In that case …” She takes the twenty from my hand, then pauses to ask, “Who’s the message from?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly.

“Well, who sent you here? How did they know where I’d be?”

“Nobody actually sent me.” By now, I should have this part of the explanation down cold, but every time I say it, it sounds as impossible to me as it does to the person hearing it. “Can we sit? This is easier if we sit.”

She sits in one of the plush chairs and I sit opposite her. “What I’m going to tell you will sound impossible but it’s true, and it’s important that you believe me when I tell you that I don’t want or need anything from you. I just have to give you this message, then I’ll leave and you never have to hear from me again.”

“Okay …” she says, looking unsure if she should be creeped out by this prologue.

“Rebecca, you need to leave here. You need to leave this job and go back to college the first chance you get. It’s not safe for you in Key West anymore.”

There is silence as she looks intently at me. Any woman in her right mind would be extremely wary of a strange man who walked into her place of business, called her aside, and made such a statement about her life. And Rebecca Traeger is most definitely in her right mind. She starts with the logical assumption.

“My father sent you here.”

“No. As far as I know, your father doesn’t even know where you are.”

“My mother, then.”

“No, not her either.”

She is getting agitated at my lack of answers. “Well,
who
then?”

“I don’t know,” I say sharply. “God, Fate, the universe. Call it what you want. All I know is that two days ago, I got information about you in my mind. In my memory, I guess you could call it. It’s like I remembered things about you, when I’d never met you, never heard of you, never even known your name. And I got that message, and the overpowering need to give it to you. If I didn’t give it to you, I would suffer from blinding headaches and insomnia and nausea so bad, I couldn’t keep food down. So I drove here, Rebecca. Twelve hundred miles, right to the place where you work, to tell you not to work here anymore. And because I did, I’ll be able to eat and sleep and live, until the next time I get a message about someone else I’ve never met. And then I’ll have to go and find them, and tell them something unbelievable about themselves, and get the same expression on their face that I see on yours. One I’ve seen about ninety-five times in the last two years since this all started.”

Many seconds pass and she just stares at me, trying to find the scheme in it, the scam in it. Trying to find a way this could hurt her. Her eyes say that she can’t find it, and she wants to believe what I’m saying, but there’s no earthly way. In the quiet of the room, she utters a single word: “How?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “There’s no science fiction explanation, no near-death experience or fire or car crash or anything to explain it. I just woke up one day and knew I had to warn a friend about something that was going to happen to him, so I did. And he did what I told him to do, and that thing didn’t happen.”

“Are you always right?”

“I don’t know that either. Most of the time, I deliver the message and don’t stick around to see what happens. But I think I’m right. Otherwise, what would be the point of doing all this?”