What Stays in Vegas (23 page)

“What the heck is wrong with her?” I asked.   She leaned back against the pole to slide down to the floor, but got derailed and fell over backwards.  “I thought you had to be fairly decent to get a job here?"

“She’s terrible,” agreed Chris, watching her with the face of somebody watching open heart surgery on the Discovery Channel.  “She should be stripped of her kitten ears.”

A man with terrible taste in women eagerly approached the stage and dragged his tinsel stick back and forth.  Then he tossed a couple of bills on the floor.  The girl knelt down to collect her money and stood back up in the least sexy way possible.

“Can we pay her to
not
take her top off?” I asked. 

"Too late," said Chris.  “Holy - those things almost hit the floor!  Did you see that?”

“I’m trying hard not to,” I said, turning my head away and staring at the television over the bar.  I always feel sorry for strippers and the fact that they have to pretend to enjoy dancing for creepy and disgusting old men.  This particular girl obviously did not belong in the profession, which led me to believe she must be in a pretty dire straits to have ended up here.  She walked across the stage to where Chris and I were seated, got down on all fours, and began wagging her finger back and forth in Chris’s face.  The closer she came the further back he leaned in his chair.  If he was wearing a neck tie she might have used it to reel him in.  

“Help me,” Chris squeaked out of the corner of his mouth.

“Oh man, you're on your own,” I said.  I pretended to be engrossed in a flyer that was on our table.  It had the same information and typos as the sign outside:  Dusty Bottom on Tuesday.  Beasts & Thighs Chicken Dinner on Wednesday.  Amateur night on Thursday. 
Thursday.
 

“Wow, Chris.  Look.”  I pointed at the flyer.  “It’s amateur night!  That’s why this girl sucks!”  The stripper gave me a dirty look and retreated to the other side of the stage. 
Amateur night.  Amateur
-
Shit! 
I put one hand over my mouth and grabbed Chris by the arm with the other. 

“She wouldn’t,” he said, eyes wide, reading my mind.

Before I could answer, the worst stripper in the world finished lapping up her bowl of milk and left the stage.  The music changed.  An announcer’s voice came over the loudspeaker.

"Gentlemen!  We have a very special young lady for you tonight.  She helped to build The Jiggly Kitty from the bottom up...and now it's our turn to see how she's built from the bottom up!"

“Oh no!” I said, peeking through my fingers.  An amused snort escaped from Chris.

"Put your hands together for our naughty engineer - Kendra!"

- 25 -

Oh fuck.

The pink curtain at the end of the stage flew open and there she was, wearing nothing but a red lace bra and panties, kitten ears, and a smile that told me instantly she was not in her right mind.  Her long blonde hair was twisted into unkempt waves and she strutted down the runway in perfect time to the music, looking every bit the stripper.  If she wasn’t my boss, and I wasn’t completely humiliated, I would have been somewhat impressed. 

“She doesn’t look half bad up there,” said Chris, cocking his head to the side. “But why the heck would she want us to come see this?”

“Oh my God, she must be drunk.  Something bad must have happened with Todd!”  I stood up to go yank her off the stage, but Chris pulled me back down.

“You can’t just climb up there!  They’ll throw you out of here.” 

“Well I can’t let her take her clothes off!”  Why was he so calm?  I was in a panic - waving my arms back and forth trying to get her attention and hissing her name.

“Kendra!”  Nothing. 

“Kendra!” Louder.  Finally she came close enough to make eye contact. 

“What the hell are you doing?” I shouted up to her.  She did a seductive little wiggle down to the floor so that she was now on her knees in front of Chris, who had an obnoxiously goofy grin on his face.  Was I seriously dating this guy?

“Hey,” I snapped my fingers. “Over here, look at me.”  I was less comfortable with Chris looking at Kendra in her underwear than I was with him looking at the last disaster. “What the
hell are you doing?”

“I do my little turn on the catwalk!  Yeah on the catwalk yeah!”  She shouted the words into my face and let out the weirdest laugh I’ve ever heard.  Here I was trying to have a serious conversation and she was singing me a goddamned Right Said Fred song.  True to the lyrics she did a little turn at the end of the stage, tossed her hair over her shoulder, and took a couple of graceful spins around the stripper pole.  What the
hell happened to the MTV-imitating klutz I once knew?

“You think she could teach you this stuff?” asked Chris. 

I shot him a dirty look just as the genius in charge of Jiggly Kitty lighting operations decided to turn on the strobes, so that when Kendra unhooked her bra it seemed to be happening in slow motion.  I watched in horror as she shrugged off each strap, one frame at a time, and the red lace came sailing through the air, twisting and turning, until coming to rest smack dab on my boyfriend's forehead.  I snatched it off of his head and was about to get up on stage whether he liked it or not, when a sight from across the room made me freeze, and then sink slowly back into my seat. 

A group of three women and five men, all dressed in business attire, had entered the club and were making their way towards us.  The leader of the pack motioned to the walls and the tables, seeming to give some kind of guided tour, though by the body language of two of the women they were not particularly enjoying themselves. 

They stepped gingerly and whispered to each other, reeling back at the sight of scantily clad waitresses as if they had walked in on the scene of a bloody massacre.  The third woman though, she was in her mid-seventies, wearing a cardigan sweater and a pearl necklace.  And she seemed to be enjoying herself immensely.  She removed the hostess’s kitten ears and tried them on her head - two triangles poked up from between puffs of vibrant orange hair. 

I watched this group through the dim lights of the club, unable to make out faces and unable  to place the feeling of dread that was quickly growing in the pit of my stomach.  They gathered around the opposite side of the stage where I could read their pink V.I.P. badges.  They were now close enough for me to see Rob Dorfman's rosy cheeked face harden into a look of shock and anger as it focused squarely on a very topless Kendra.  His icy blue eyes met mine as he peeled them off my boss and noticed me there on the opposite side of the stage, looking every bit the idiot assistant.  For all he knew, Kendra and I had planned this night together and I was planning to get up there next. 

Oh my God oh my God oh my God!
 

My jaw dropped as the rest of the group fell into place - there was Jasper Quick to his right, the elderly Beatrice Miller in her cardigan and kitty ears to his left, and the rest of the entire Riverlin Zoning Commission lined up behind him, all peering inquisitively up at the stage.  They looked up at Kendra who was still oblivious to the fact that the end of the world was happening.  She moved to the edge of the stage, bent forward directly in front of Rob, and whipped her hair around in wide circles.  I couldn’t watch for a second longer.

I hoisted myself up onto the stage and grabbed Kendra around the shoulders.  Chris did not try to stop me.  He had entered his own state of shock when he realized what was going on and had slid down about twelve inches in his chair.  I tried to drag Kendra back toward the curtain, or at least face her away from the crowd, but she seemed to think I had gone up there to dance. 

“Whoooo!”  she yelled.  “Yeah, Tessa!  Take it off!”  She pulled the left side of my shirt down my shoulder, nearly ripping it.  I jerked my arm away. 

“No, you idiot!”  I screamed into her ear.  “Rob is here!”  But she wasn’t listening.  “Rob
Dorfman
is
here
!”  I spun her around to face him, pointed, then spun her quickly around again.  Recognition finally registered on her face and she clapped one hand over her mouth and the other across her chest.  By this point the house lights had come up and security was swarming the stage.

“Ma'am, we need you to step away from the dancer,” said a security guard walking towards me slowly as if I were holding Kendra hostage.  God he was huge.  Another guard snuck up from behind and grabbed me around the neck.

“Hey!” shouted Chris, jumping onto the stage like Batman.  “Get your hands off of her!”  The first security guard pulled his gun from his holster and aimed it straight at Chris. 

Well, this is it Tessa.  You finally meet a nice guy and he’s about to be shot dead at a Vegas strip club.  Mom and Dad will be so proud.

“Sir, you need to step down from the stage immediately!”  shouted the guard.

“Whoa!”  Chris threw his hands up into the air and looked at me.

“It’s okay, just go!  I’ll be right behind you,” I said from the depths of the security guard’s armpit.  His uniform reeked of perfume and cigarettes, though his armpit smelled surprisingly pleasant
.
  Old Spice.
 
If my neck were to suddenly snap, at least the last thing I smelled wouldn't be body odor.  Not that I thought he was going to snap my neck on purpose or anything, but he definitely could have by accident because he was so big and my neck was suddenly feeling like a cheap Jiggly Kitty swizzle stick. 

Chris retreated back down the steps followed by the guard with the gun.  The guard, being three times Chris’s size, merely grabbed him by the wrist and removed him from the club like a child dragging a teddy bear.  I followed behind, bent forward and still in a headlock, as if my skull was about to be used as a battering ram.  I wasn't sure what happened to Kendra.

“Aren’t you going to do anything?”  yelled Chris as we passed by Rob.  “You’re the owner of this damn place!  Tell them who we are!” 

Rob did not reply.  He just watched both of us pass and then thanked the guards for their assistance.  The last thing I heard before being shoved out the door was Rob reassuring the Zoning Commission that this type of thing was not typical.  I glanced back to see six heads shaking in disapproval.  Jasper Quick just smiled.

***

Chris and I were literally thrown out the back door by the dumpsters, just like in the movies. 

“I can’t believe he let them do this to us!”  I said as the door slammed behind me.  The muffled sounds of techno music resumed almost immediately. 

“I can’t believe Kendra just stripped naked in front of one of our biggest clients,” said Chris.   “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.  You’re the one who just had a gun pulled on them!  Holy shit.”  I was half laughing, half in shock, as I straightened out my clothes.  It was slowly starting to sink in that this was probably one of those nights you remember forever. 

“Let’s get the
hell out of here,” said Chris.

“No, we can’t!  What about Kendra?  Did you see where she went?” I couldn’t just leave her there, especially if she was as drunk as I knew she was.

“She ran backstage while Goliath was getting you into that headlock,” said Chris, massaging my neck.  “You sure you’re okay?”

“Fine, I swear."  I ran my hand nervously through my hair and looked toward the street, as if I expected to see Kendra drive by topless and blasting I’m Too Sexy from the car stereo.  I shook the image from my head.  “I hope she didn’t try to drive.”   I tried her cell phone, but there was no answer.  “Come on, let’s go see if her car’s still here.” 

Chris and I had almost rounded the corner of the building when the back door to the club swung open again and out stepped Rob Dorfman.  I wanted to keep going.  I wanted to just get in the car and get the hell out of there as Chris had originally suggested, but this time it was Chris who stopped us in our tracks.  He turned and dragged me by the hand back towards Rob, as Rob walked slowly towards us.  Any second now Rob would pull a six shooter from his hip and shoot us both dead.  I could see it quite clearly, Chris and I being murdered and thrown into a dumpster.  I would not have put it past him.  But, scared and angry as I was, I knew that Kendra would need me to do damage control.  At least as much damage control as was possible under such circumstances. 

“Rob, Mr. Dorfman,” I said.  “what you just saw in there, Kendra’s not being herself tonight.  She’s going through a really tough time, and she,
we,
are horribly, terribly, embarrassed.  Please understand.”

I still had hope that he would take pity on us.  He had known Kendra for years, he would realize that there was obviously something wrong with her, beyond what he normally thought was wrong with her, I mean.  And me, the hapless assistant, he would realize that I had been summoned here, unaware, and had tried to stop this.  Yes, Rob Dorfman was a human being after all, and he would see everything for what it was. 

Boy was I delusional.

The muscles in Rob's jaw tightened as he looked from me to Chris and back again.  I could almost hear his teeth grinding.

“I
pay
you people,” said Rob, “to make my club look good.  To make it look
respectable
in a business that is not respectable in the least.”  He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one up, pacing.   “I spend thousands of dollars trying to convince assholes like the ones inside that The Jiggly Kitty is the kind of place that they should
want
to have in their town, that we’re
different
.”  He came around from behind and stood between us, breathing down our necks.  “I thought I could at least count on my engineering team to have a little bit of class.”