The Fix (9 page)

Vincent leaned across to Mister Kim and said, ‘Please don't translate non-premium,' as if the subtleties might suddenly matter. ‘We should just order whatever we like.'

‘I am sure Scotch will be fine for Mister Park,' Mister Kim said, without checking. ‘On the rocks. And water will be fine for me.'

Bianca took our drink vouchers and left us with a pile of lap-dance raffle tickets on our barrel top. Mister Kim clarified their purpose to Mister Park who swept
them all up with his large hand and pocketed them. Mister Kim adjusted his glasses, and looked at the floor.

The muzak fired up, and heart-shaped lights fell upon the catwalk and started swirling.

An announcer's voice cut in over the fading murmur of conversation. ‘And now, gentlemen, start your engines and please make welcome . . . Jett.'

A jet-engine sound effect swooped in and, just as it lifted away, Wings' song Jet opened up and a spotlight swept to a back corner of the stage, catching the next performer striking a pose in black leather – a jacket, thigh-high boots, tiny spray-on shorts. She pulled off her leather cap, and long straight black hair fell down past her shoulders. She had dark eyes and even in the shifting stagy light I could see they were made up like Cleopatra's. She bit her lip and unzipped her jacket, as if a very sexual thought had just crossed her mind and she was powerless to fight it.

She made her way down the catwalk in time to the music and, in the spill of the light, I could see the pale faces of men opposite gazing up at her. She slid the jacket from her shoulders, grabbed the pole and the song hit the word ‘suffragette'. Half a world away, around the grave of Mrs Pankhurst, visitors paying their respects swore to each other that the noise they had just heard couldn't be a body turning over, no matter how much it sounded like it.

Jett moved from the Wings song into Fever. The boots came off, and the tight, tight shorts. She swung up onto the pole, and spun slowly around. She unrolled her fishnets.

Ben nudged me, and I nearly spilled my beer. ‘You're going to catch flies with that mouth,' he said.

‘It's for the blog,' I told him without turning his way. ‘I've got nothing if I don't pick up the details.'

Jett started rubbing her body, the music turned into Mazzy Star's Fade Into You. The lights dipped to blue and her moves became more trance-like. She had her hands under her top, stroking herself, exposing more skin as her hands moved to her breasts. She lifted the top off over her head and undid her bra, holding it in place at the front with one arm before letting it fall away. She hooked her fingers into the sides of her black G-string and started to draw it lower, her head tipped back, her eyes closed, her mouth open.

And then it was over. The song was over and the stage went to black and, when the house lights lifted, Jett was gone. A few dozen men stood looking awkwardly at the empty space in front of them, as if they had just been caught out farting in a meeting. Blood was pounding in my head and my mouth was dry. She had suckered me, just like the rest of them. Sold it as if she'd gone from something raunchy to some kind of intimacy. I wanted to shake it out of my head, loosen the hold it had.

I turned to my right and saw Max Visser, gripping his beer with both hands and looking like a hostage about to plead for his life in a video.

‘I really thought this'd be karaoke,' he said when he noticed me. ‘This stuff creeps me out. My oldest daughter's not much younger than that girl, and it was only a few years ago that she was wearing my horsehair wig for dress-ups and calling it the sheep hat.' He took a deep breath and then let it out. He looked around the room.
‘God, you can tell you're old when the first thing you want to say to them is, “Do your parents know you're doing this?”'

It was the most unsexual thought imaginable, and it had me right back in the world of the un-suckered, turned off. I took a mouthful of lukewarm non-premium domestic beer. Mister Park was talking animatedly. Mister Kim was not translating.

The next act began a few minutes later. She was introduced as Elektra, and she strode out to Motley Crue's Girls, Girls, Girls, looking very eighties with her big blonde hair, bad eye make-up and temporary lace. She worked the pole hard, but like a construction worker or someone on an oil rig. The song switched to the J Geils Band's Centrefold, which brought on some strutting and posing. A garter was flicked into the crowd. The eighties motif carried through to the bitter end, with bursts of strobe lighting and Duran Duran's Girls on Film as Elektra let loose her large solid breasts and Mister Park punched the air in delight. Mister Kim picked up a spring roll, inspected it closely in the flickering light and put it back down on the platter. He wiped his hand on a serviette.

There was a final twitch of the strobe as the G-string came away, then darkness.

As the house lights came up, with Elektra's act done and the stage empty, I saw a patron being led off towards the private rooms, stuffing his credit card receipt into his pocket. As he passed through a gap in the curtains, a cowgirl near the bar caught me looking. She had a low-cut denim top, denim miniskirt, boots and a cowboy hat, and she wore a toy gun loosely on one hip.
As she started to walk our way, I realised it was Jett.

Ben, all set to pay out on me again for staring, turned to watch her too. She stopped in front of us. She smiled, as if she had it all worked out.

‘I'm guessing you two aren't the personal dance kind of crowd,' she said. ‘You're here for work, right?' She was looking at me, still smiling. She had gone from leather chick to near naked to cowgirl, and the costume changes had put me off balance. Her voice sounded completely and pleasantly normal. I had imagined her talking like someone in a movie.

‘Good guess,' I said, when the words eventually came. ‘Some of us were promised karaoke, but . . . What's a personal dance?'

She laughed, then stopped herself. ‘Sorry, you're serious. Okay. A personal is just you and the dancer. And a comfy seat. Starting at a bargain fifty-five dollars for ten minutes, but you don't get a whole lot for that. And neither does the dancer, obviously. It's what we do after the show. You might know it as a lap dance, though legislation came in a while back that means we can't actually sit on you. So, sorry if you wanted me to sit on you.'

‘So the lap's out of play now?'

She was flirting, professionally. She had dangled her flirting in front of me like bait on a hook, and all I could do was bite at it.

‘It is, plenty isn't.' She rolled her eyes. Perhaps we were just two people having a conversation after all. And perhaps I was even more taken with the prospect of that. ‘Hey, is that Max Visser?' She was looking past me. ‘He's one of my lecturers at uni . . . Poor guy. This is so not his kind of place.'

‘You're doing law, then?' Ben said.

And Jett the cowgirl said, ‘Yeah, fourth year. Nearly finished.' She pulled her pistol from its holster and gave it a spin on her finger. She pointed it at me, lined me up in her sights and said, ‘Bang. I totally don't feel like working the room tonight. If you think I'm using you, you could be right. Just pretend you're interested.' She tilted the brim of her hat up with the end of her gun barrel, and whatever light there was fell on her face. All my energy was going into pretending
not
to be interested. ‘You've never been to one of these places before, have you? What do you think?'

‘Well, it's probably less sleazy than I was expecting . . .' I said, in lieu of the brilliant answer I'd been looking for.

‘Seriously? I'd hate to think what you were expecting. Don't you think the themeing's hilarious? We're themed to within an inch of our lives. These spurs can take chunks out of the carpet.' I wasn't sure it was true, but it was a good line. I couldn't even see the spurs, down there in the dark. ‘The girls who are stacked up top mostly go for the bordello look for the personals, those of us who aren't default to cowgirl.'

‘Yeah, but . . .' There was no good response, but my mouth had got started anyway. She had been talking about her breasts, which we both knew I had seen. And which were neat and compact and . . . ‘You know, if they've had work done the seams show from here, where they . . .'

My index fingers were drawing semicircles on my chest, two smiley faces under my nipples, quite without my consent, swinging like windscreen-wipers
and marking out the arcs of cosmetic surgery. I meant Elektra. Elektra had had work done, had had gourds attached to the front of her chest, and not subtly. Ben was laughing, and hardly trying to suppress it at all. There was a burst of music from the PA system, and an announcement.

‘But that's not you, of course,' I said, struck by an insanity that I was hoping was temporary.

‘Dig, Josh, dig. Take it deeper,' Ben said, and slapped me on the shoulder.

Jett laughed. ‘How nice of you to . . .' She stopped. She was looking past me again. She holstered her pistol. ‘I'd better keep moving. Looks like your friend might have the lucky ticket.'

Behind us, Mister Park was excitedly waving one of his tickets in the air, and Bianca was closing in to do the business. The unflappable Mister Kim was bracing for negotiations and Max looked close to throwing up. I glanced back over my shoulder, but Jett was already gone somewhere in the dark, finding new ways to avoid the paying customers, some other safe conversation that might look enough like work from a distance.

‘You are so fucking suave,' Ben said to me. ‘I'm glad you haven't lost that. She was totally eating out of your hand.'

She had been killing time, hiding with us in the middle of the crowd. She was cool and I had taken about a minute to draw breasts on myself, and then correct it by talking about hers.

‘Well, congratulations, sir,' Bianca was saying to Mister Park as we stepped closer. ‘Now, here's the deal. You've won five free minutes topless, one-on-one, no
touching between the legs, no mouth contact, and you can upgrade if you want to fifteen minutes fully nude and including open leg work, for half price.'

‘Bring her over and rub her with butter,' Mister Park said proudly and about no one in particular. He took Bianca's hand and shook it firmly.

Bianca hardly blinked. ‘We've probably got some margarine out the back. We could work with margarine. But the girl would have to do herself. Nothing funny.'

Mister Kim stepped in. ‘It's just a phrase he picked up in his travels. It means he is very happy. I will now translate your earlier offer. The margarine is not necessary. Probably not necessary.'

He recounted the deal to Mister Park, who listened and nodded. And then said something, just a few words, that made Mister Kim flinch. Mister Kim pushed his glasses back to the bridge of his nose, and tried to find the exact right words.

‘Mister Park wants to enquire about a particular entertainment he has heard of from some Australian businessmen friends in Manila,' he said, with all the care of someone negotiating a missile stand-off. ‘He was told it was very famous. He was told he should ask for it whenever he was in Australia. That it was a special Australian treat. He would like to know how much it would cost to watch a lady move her bowel. He would like to appreciate this spectacle. He would prefer large volume, and a table with a glass top.'

Was it real? Had it ever happened? Max stared at Vincent. Vincent stared at Max. Neither of them moved. As special Australian treats went, it certainly
put Vegemite in its place. Max, a long long way from karaoke, cracked first.

He pulled his mobile from his pocket. ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck, I think my phone's ringing.' The words rattled out of him, as quickly as he could manage them. ‘One of my children has a fever.' He lurched away, his lie hot on his tail. ‘Yes, yes, I'm coming,' he said to the phone, a finger in his other ear.

‘I'm sorry, sir,' Bianca said, matching every bit of Mister Kim's sense of calm. ‘When I checked before, all our girls had just moved their bowels. But if Mister Park's interested we have plenty of other options. We can do a nude shower show, duo show, dildo show, toy show or fruit and veg. Dildoes, toys and fruit and veg can go Greek for an extra fifty. Dildoes and toys stay here, fruit and veg vary seasonally, are fresh every night and Mister Park's to keep as a souvenir if he wishes. He could also go for a massage – Mister Park does the lady, she does Mister Park or both. And after the massage there's a shower where Mister Park can wash the oil off, and he can feel free to give himself relief in there if he wishes.'

Mister Kim smiled, for perhaps the first time. He took a platinum credit card from his wallet. ‘I am sure there is something there that will make Mister Park very happy.'

* * *

WHEN BEN AND I
left the club, a new stripper was grinding out some moves to Alannah Myles's Black Velvet and Mister Park was down the back, playing pool with Elektra, each of them wearing only a cowboy hat,
boots and spurs. Mister Park had requested fully nude, but had been told that safety regs required footwear, as drink spillage was liable to make the floor hazardous.

Ben began to explain his exit to Vincent, saying something about making an early start on some documents for him, and Vincent said, ‘Go. Save yourself while you still can.' He was still on his first Crownie, still in his suit, with his tie rolled up in his pocket. ‘Just make sure I make a lot of money out of this.'

We were almost at the door when something poked me in the ribs. It was a revolver, and on the other end of it was Jett.

‘Okay,' she said, ‘there's this rumour going out the back that the big guy asked for the poo-on-the-table routine. Please, please tell me it's true.'

The security guard had opened the curtain for us, and a triangle of foyer light fell in and mostly on Jett. Her lipstick looked redder, her skin paler, her eyes a darker brown. I could see fine freckles on her cheeks, not quite obliterated by make-up, by the cowgirl cartoon that had overtaken her. For one clear moment, I knew I had nothing to lose.