conscious thought, and when the music reached the point where she had taken off her top the last hundred times, her hands performed the practiced gesture, and that was done. She stripped without interest in the process, having thoroughly explored it for implications and possibilities so long ago that it could no longer hold her attention.
She already knew that it wasn’t a personal communication, or a step in a career, or a way to start a relationship with a man. The men didn’t know who she was, or have any curiosity about her. They looked at her breasts, her buttocks, the space between her legs, in that order, as she bared her body, but what they saw was not she. It was all female bodies, of which this happened to be the one example that was here at the moment, a symbol. What had been advertised as seduction had descended to the level of art.
The weekends were amateur nights. For the young women who competed, this had not yet worn down into a job that was a whole lot duller than checking out groceries at a cashier’s stand. They were still up there actually stripping in front of men—not a man, but a whole bunch of them at once—and they couldn’t get over it. This was wild, risky behavior, and they did it as though on a dare, took the money slipped into the waistbands of their G- strings like love notes from billionaires.
The customers on the weekend nights were perfectly suited to them. They were boys in their twenties who’d had too much liquor before the shows started, and subscribed to the same illusion that this was a form of communication between this woman and themselves about sex, and that the edge of the stage just might not be an impossible boundary—not for them.
Prescott spent his evenings here, becoming familiar. He always sat at the bar or at a table near it, and gave the bartender a five-dollar tip for each five-dollar drink. He always kept away from the customers who he could see were probably going to cause trouble. He spoke little, and when he’d had two drinks, he left. He kept this up for nine nights, then left town to search for the perfect piece of real estate.
He had a fairly clear idea of where such a place could be found, so he took a flight there. Once he had arrived in the right region, finding the exact spot and obtaining a lease took him only a few days. He spent three weeks getting the place ready, and then returned to St. Louis prepared to change his hours at the Paddock Club. He found that the effect he had anticipated had taken place. His presence, beginning over a month ago, had been noticed, and his absence for the past three weeks had been noticed too.
Prescott walked into the bar at eleven-thirty in the morning, as the proprietor was busy supervising the unloading of supplies. There were two men from a liquor distributor bringing cases into the building with two- wheeled carts, and two bartenders opening them to restock shelves behind the bar while the proprietor counted boxes and checked them off an invoice on a clipboard. Now and then the swinging door to the left of the bar would open, and Prescott would see waitresses hurrying back and forth to prepare the small round tables for the businessmen’s lunch.
The proprietor saw Prescott come in, smiled at him, and nodded. “How you been?”
“Fine,” said Prescott. He stepped closer as the proprietor signed the sheet and handed it to one of the deliverymen. “How about you?” He glanced at the pyramid of liquor cases. “Looks like you haven’t done too badly.”
“Nope,” said the proprietor. “Been pretty fair.” He went around the bar. “What are you drinking?”
“How about a beer and a shot?” said Prescott. He got out his wallet.
The proprietor put the draft beer and shot glass on the bar, and held his free hand up as he poured the whiskey from the silver spout on the bottle. “It’s on me,” he said.
“Well, thanks,” said Prescott. He held out his hand. “I’m Bob Greene, with an
The proprietor took his hand and shook it. “They call me that.” He smiled. “It’s because of the sign outside. Real name is Dick Hobart. When I bought this place twelve years ago, the sign said ‘Nolan’s Paddock Club.’ I wasn’t sure how it was going to work out, so I left the sign for whatever good will it was worth. Wasn’t much, I can tell you. Otherwise they wouldn’t have gone under. But by the time I knew things were going to work out for me, I was stuck with the name.”
Prescott nodded. “I’ve seen it happen that way before.”
“What about you? What business are you in?”
Prescott said, in an affable, confident tone, “I’m kind of between things right now. I’ve been out in California for a few years. Had a couple of car washes, and did pretty well. I sold out a few months back, and I’m looking around here for the right opportunity.”
He could tell that Hobart had instantly evaluated the story and taken it as Prescott had hoped. He knew Bob Greene was a liar. Greene had some money to spend, but he probably had not come into it a few dollars at a time operating car washes in California. Hobart said, “Well, I’m sure you’ll find something you like. This is a good place to do business.” His own words seemed to remind him that he had to keep an eye on his men. He turned toward them.
“It sure seems to be,” said Prescott. “Thanks for the drink.”
At one o’clock, when Prescott heard the distinctive change in the music, as though someone had turned the bass all the way up to vibrate so he could feel it, he left the bar and sat at a table. The noon crowd consisted of men who looked older and more settled than the evening crowd. About half of them were wearing coats and ties, having come from offices. Two of them had been reading newspapers in the dim light while they ate lunch, but when the music changed, they folded them and set them aside.
The woman who came from behind the curtain was announced only as “Jean.” She had her dark brown hair pinned up, and she was dressed in a business suit and wearing glasses to begin with. She looked very convincing. She took off the glasses and undid her hairpin so her dark hair came down in a cascade, shook it out, and went into her routine. The theatrical lacy garter belt and push-up bra she had beneath the suit were not what the female business executives Prescott had known well usually wore to work, but he judged it didn’t destroy the effect.
It was not until she was wearing only her tiny G-string that she did one of her turns, looked over her shoulder, and seemed to notice that Prescott had returned from his trip. She looked directly at him, let her fixed, professional smile relax for a second, then resumed the mask again. He stepped to the stage and slipped a fifty into her G-string, then returned to his table. He drank through the next two women’s performances to see whether Hobart had told them all to notice him. They were women he had not seen before, and they went through their tasks without enthusiasm, largely ignored by most of the customers and ignoring them in return.
When Prescott went out to the parking lot to get into his car, he realized that his experiment had made him drink more than he had intended. The sun was impossibly bright, bouncing off the chrome of the cars into his eyes in little semaphores. The red surface of his Corvette seemed to have an aura around it, and the gravel on the ground was like a photograph of the surface of Mars, each tiny pebble bright on top with its own black shadow behind it. But as he carefully steered the car across the lot toward the street, he looked into the rearview mirror and saw Jean and Hobart beside the delivery door outside the building, watching his departure.
Over the next few days, he confirmed his impression that noon was the time to go to Nolan’s. The nights in a strip club were businesslike and concentrated. The customers crowded in, and the men behind the bar were frantic, pushing glasses onto the bar and snatching money as quickly as they could move, working like fishermen in a tuna run, making the most of their catch in a three-hour period.
During daylight, the atmosphere was calm and sleepy. The volume of the recorded music was so low that people could speak in normal voices except when a dancer was on the stage. The bartenders had time to talk with customers. Prescott exchanged greetings with Dick Hobart when he came in for lunch each day, and sometimes when he left. He was always good-natured and friendly, always careful to give the impression that he had no desire for a longer conversation but had no reason to avoid one, either. There was an odd easiness to the atmosphere, and Prescott insinuated himself into it subtly and patiently, until he suspected that several of the employees were not sure just how long he had been around—maybe for years, coming in during some other shift. Hobart met with the couriers from Cincinnati once every three weeks, and met with other men more frequently, always during the day.
Prescott waited two more weeks before he decided he was ready to ease himself in further. He was in the bar before the businessmen’s lunch when Hobart came past him, checking the tables to see whether they had been positioned and set properly. When he came to Prescott’s, he said, “Hey, Bob. Didn’t anybody come to take your order yet?”
“Thanks for thinking about it, Dick, but I just sat down,” said Prescott. “While you’re here, though, there was something I wanted to talk to you about. Got a second?”
