Skin Deep

'Holding on. You're looking good.'

'I'd better,' Saffron said, 'or I'll be sitting on the sidewalk. Tiny's got the rag on.'

Toby looked nervous. 'Does he?'

'And how. Nobody's tipping, and they're making their drinks last until their birthdays. What a bunch of stiffs.'

'You wish,' Toby said. 'Go make them rise to the occasion.'

Saffron picked up the ten quickly, as though she were afraid it might disappear, and danced away in a leisurely fashion, focusing her charms on an embarrassed-looking Chicano with two crumpled dollar bills on the counter in front of him.

'This must be someone's idea of fun,' I said.

'Loosen up, champ. You want to die before you even get tired? Here's the gorgeous Pepper.'

Pepper put a tall glass in front of each of us, her bracelets jangling. Toby gave her a tightly folded twenty and said, 'Keep the change. Not much happening, is there?'

'I've had a bigger time in a library,' Pepper said, slipping the twenty into the front of her G-string. 'Who's your sweet little friend?'

'This is Simeon,' Toby said. 'He's my baby-sitter.'

'He's a baby himself,' Pepper said. 'Jesus, what'd you do to Nana? Is she ever pissed off.'

'Not for long. I've got some pink, Pepper.'

'Darling,' Pepper said, brightening visibly. 'I think I have to go to the little girls' room.'

'It's in the twenty,' Toby said. 'Don't hog it. I see a lot of hungry noses.'

'My sisters will get theirs,' Pepper said, 'don't worry. Nice to meet you, Simeon.' Her beautiful bottom twinkled at us as she headed for nostril heaven in the ladies' room. I picked up my 7-Up and took a big swallow. Then I began to cough, and it felt as though several pounds of steam were billowing out of my ears.

'Careful, champ,' Toby said. 'That's straight vodka.'

'Thanks for the warning,' I said, my eyes watering. 'How come it's disguised as Seven-Up?'

'They can't serve liquor because the girls take their pants off. Go figure. Like I said, private stock for regular customers.'

I blinked back tears and became aware that the music had ended. There was a scattering of applause. Saffron climbed down from the stage. The girl who had been dancing on the other stage blew a sarcastic kiss at the customers and then walked across the club, elegantly and carelessly naked, to disappear behind the same crimson curtain that Saffron had lifted only moments before.

'If they made twenty each, they're lucky,' Toby said.

His voice sounded abnormally loud. We were the only ones in the place who were talking. All the other customers sat staring at their drinks or at the counter in front of them. I realized for the first time that there was an empty chair separating each customer from his neighbor. Chair, customer, chair, customer. Except for three Asian men, an obvious group, no two men were seated together. No one had looked at Toby for the simple reason that no one had looked at anyone.

'What do you care how much they make?' I took a careful swig of vodka. It tasted better this time.

'Who says I care?' he asked belligerently and altogether too loudly. 'They dance, they should get paid. You think I'd do what I do for free? Where's Pepper, anyway?'

The music drowned out my reply, whatever it was. Then I forgot what I'd been going to say and leaned forward to watch.

It took me a few bars to recognize the song, even though the Kinks had been my favorite band for years. I was too preoccupied. Then Ray Davies began to sing, and I placed it.

Look at that lady dancing round with no clothes,

She'll show you all her body, that's if you got the dough.

She'll let you see most anything, but there's one thing that she'll never show.

And that's a little bit of real emotion. …

Saffron came back onto the stage. She was wearing nothing at all, but I was watching the other stage. The girl on it was Nana.

'And on the small stage,' said a fat Tiny clone seated next to the entrance, 'is our bit of spice from the Far East. Let's bring both hands above the table and have a big round of soy sauce for the lovely Cinnamon.' Three men clapped.

A little bit of real emotion, Ray Davies sang. In case a bit of real emotion should give her away.

'Nana's first song,' Toby said. 'She always uses it. She thinks no one gets it.'

'Maybe nobody does,' I said, looking at the customers. Most of them had their mouths open.

Nana was almost fatally beautiful. Her T-shirt, slashed strategically here and there, ended a good ten inches above a pair of crimson hot pants that stopped just this side of the melting point of platinum. Her hair had been teased into a lioness's mane. She had sprayed her body with droplets of water. She looked like a feral animal mistakenly rereleased into polite society.

Saffron did whatever she did, but it was wasted effort. Even the men around our stage- her stage-were watching Nana, or Cinnamon, or whatever her name was. If Nana had been wearing a tuxedo, an overcoat, a scarf, and a pair of hip-high wading boots, eighty men out of a hundred would have been watching her, no matter how naked Saffron was.

'Maybe there is a God,' Toby said. He didn't sound like he was kidding. For a couple of minutes we sat there like everyone else, staring at Nana.

The song ended and Saffron picked up her tips, including another ten from Toby. Nana had already disappeared behind the crimson curtain that obviously led to the dressing room. Saffron worked her way clockwise, grabbing a dollar bill here and a five there. One customer, vaguely Middle Eastern-looking, tried to snatch back a few of the ones he had laid on the counter. Saffron kicked at the stage with her spike heels, and he gave up. She picked up the money and laughed.

'Golly,' she said. 'Thanks, Ahmed.'

'Toby,' said a gravelly voice. 'Let's you and me talk.'

It was Tiny, looming white and mountainous above us. Toby looked at me apologetically.

'Time to go,' Toby said. 'Have a good time, Simeon. Tip the girls with Norman's money.' He got up and patted Tiny on the arm. 'Lost some weight, Tiny? Six months from now you'll be wearing Yves St. Laurent.'

'Eve who?' Tiny rumbled.

'New girl,' Toby said. 'Dancing at the Kama Sutra, up on Sunset.'

'I don't need girls. I need customers.' He hauled Toby toward the back of the club.

The music started again, anonymous heavy metal from a band whose idea of a good time was probably rusty iron spikes on the inside of their underwear. The intellectual theme of the song seemed to be 'Get down and crawl.'

Crawling was exactly what Nana was doing on the other stage. Wearing nothing now but the hot pants, she moved on her hands and knees, arching her back, tossing her mane, and hissing like a cat. The lurid pink light caught her high cheekbones and defined the fine, straight gully of her spine. I realized that I was definitely interested.

In fact, I was so interested that I didn't notice the newcomer on my stage until she lifted a foot and whacked the counter in front of me to get my attention. Snatched away from the vision of Nana, I looked up and then tried, without much success, to turn a cringe into a smile.

At about five two, she couldn't have weighed more than eighty pounds. Her face was tight and drawn, every muscle standing out in aggrieved relief. She was wearing more eyeliner than all the Egyptian queens in the Metropolitan Museum of Art put together, but it couldn't mask the infinite weariness in her eyes, the eyes of an ancient lizard glutted on spiders and flies. She wore a silk camisole over her bones, leopard-spotted panties, and elbow-length formal gloves. Her dancing consisted of shifting from foot to foot listlessly in front of me, her ravaged eyes focused on something in another galaxy a trillion light-years away.

Pepper touched my arm and pressed a little packet into my hand. 'Tell Toby thanks,' she said, sniffing.