Skin Deep

'Where'd he go?'

'He's with Fatso.'

'Tiny,' she said severely. 'You want to be careful what you call Tiny, okay? He's touchy. Put out a little money, huh? She needs it.'

I reached into my pocket, and my fingers encountered the serrated edge of Norman Stillman's check. Ten thousand dollars seemed excessive somehow, so I fumbled around until I produced a crumpled five. Pepper thumped the stage and hissed, 'Amber.' The girl named Amber tore herself away from whatever deep-space supernova she had been watching and contorted her mouth into a smile that missed me by a yard. Her teeth were stained and broken. 'Shanksh,' she said to the chair next to me.

'Ahmed,' Pepper said to her, and I saw that the Middle Easterner had dropped a couple of ones on the counter in front of him. Amber trudged in his direction and then leaned over and swung her long, lifeless brown hair back and forth in a gesture that had probably been sexy ten years and a million dances earlier. Trying to straighten up, she lost her balance and fell on her tail. She didn't seem surprised, and Ahmed laughed. Nana looked over from the other stage.

'Wasted in excess,' Pepper said. 'She'll never make it until closing time.'

'Wasted on what?'

'Name it, sweetie,' Pepper said. 'Don't give her any of Toby's coke, okay? Ambulances are bad for business.'

I put the coke away and turned to watch Nana.

She was standing upright and toying with the top button of her hot pants, looking down at a hugely bearded customer who had put down a small mountain of money. With a smile that made me want to put on sunglasses, she undid the button and then swung her leg in a high arc over his head. He dropped a few more bills on the mountain and licked his lips, exaggerating the gesture to cartoon proportions. Nana gave him the classic 'shame on you' signal, rubbing one forefinger over the other, and moved on to the next customer.

The music came to a merciful halt, and Nana left her stage quickly. She threw me an appraising glance, helped Amber climb down the stairs, and then put a protective arm around her waist. They disappeared together behind the red curtain. Amber kept getting her feet mixed up.

I took a long gulp of the vodka and, feeling its glow inside me, surveyed the room. In addition to Pepper, there were four women working as waitresses, all of them dressed for the first two pages of a Penthouse centerfold. Lingerie was conspicuously in evidence. Most of the girls seemed to be on the shy side, if that's the proper figure of speech, of twenty. Bellies were flat, buttocks were firm. Gravity was still lurking offstage, preening its villain's mustache. Cellulite and stretch marks were as absent as an intellectual at a Ku Klux Klan meeting. Despair was a decade away. At the same time, I felt as though I were watching balloons of bright hope passing through a sewing machine. On the other side of the needle was Amber.

During the long pause between songs, nobody said a word.

Then a cash register clanged to introduce Pink Floyd's 'Money.' The crimson curtain parted, and Amber's skeletal figure wobbled toward the stage with Nana's hand poised supportively in the middle of her back. Amber had taken off the camisole but retained the leopard-skin panties and the elbow-length gloves. Nana wore nothing but a slender gold chain that swaggered its way around her hips, about halfway between her navel and real trouble. She got Amber onto the stage and then, after a moment of concerned surveillance, went to her own. Her black hair, rippling and knotting as though it had a life of its own, cascaded down her back and brushed the dimpled cleft of her buttocks. Nana presented a new standard of nudity, like a third and, as yet, undiscovered sex. If all women looked like that, I thought, there would be no fashion industry.

Amber teetered precariously in front of me and then, more to keep her balance than for any other reason, abruptly turned her back. I was staring at the backs of her knees, and their delicate tangle of wrinkles and blue veins reminded me of the sturdy, inviolate legs of my first love, who had helped me through the demanding mathematics of third grade. I thought of her name for the first time in twenty years, and for a moment Amber was a child named Lynn Russell.

And then she turned back to face me, keeping her balance in defiance of all the laws of physics. Perspiration trickled down her face, taking vertical lines of mascara with it. Her elegant gloves had slipped down her arms, and I could see the tracks, red and angry-looking sores, that began on the insides of her elbows and reached almost to her wrists. Junkies often search for veins in the wrong direction. Down instead of up, farther from the heart instead of closer. I was watching a dead woman dance.

A shrill yell from the other stage cut through the music, and I turned to see the bearded man grabbing at Nana's legs. She was flat on her back on the stage floor, and he was trying to pull her toward him by the ankles. I was out of my chair and halfway there before I realized I was redundant. An avalanche of white descended on the bearded man, and Tiny literally picked him up by the collar of his shirt. The man struck out awkwardly, and Tiny shook him two or three times, like a terrier killing a rat. The man went slack. Tiny flipped him over, slipped an arm under his knees, and, looking like a parody of Rhett carrying Scarlett upstairs, toted him to the front door and through it. Nana, still flat on her back, had managed somehow to move to the next customer. She didn't look particularly disturbed.

Toby slid into the chair next to me. 'Skip it,' he said. 'No one fools with the girls when Tiny's around. Anyway, Nana's used to it.' His voice was controlled, but the muscles around his mouth and eyes were tight. 'Having a good time?'

'I haven't had this much fun since I was circumcised.'

Pink Floyd petered out, and Nana went around the stage collecting her tips. It looked like quite a wad. Amber had collected from no one but Ahmed and me, and now she sat on the edge of her stage and waited for Nana, her eyes closed. Nana took her arm, helped her to stand, and got her into the dressing room.

Toby drained his glass and signaled for another, holding up two fingers. A different girl, a brunette with spiky hair who looked all of fifteen, took our glasses.

'Toby,' I said, 'don't you think this is kind of sad?'

'Come off it,' he said. 'It's a job for the girls, and it's a place for the guys to go. Jesus, look at them. Do you think there's anyone here who could ever see a girl like Nana naked without coming to a place like this? Who's getting hurt?'

The spike haircut showed up with our drinks. Toby reached into his pocket, but the girl waved him off. 'It's on Tiny,' she said.

'Whoa, Nellie,' Toby said. 'This is a first. Wait, darling, this is for you.' He gave her a ten and put a hand out to me. 'The envelope, please.'

I passed him the coke, and he palmed it and slipped it to the waitress. 'Have a blast,' he said. 'It's pink. Just save some for the other members of the commune.'

As she headed for the ladies' room, the Stones blared from the speakers. Pepper emerged from the dressing room and took the other stage, and Amber, anorexically naked, made the long climb onto ours. At the same time someone pulled out the chair next to me and sat down. I turned to look at Nana.

'Well, lookie who's here,' she twanged. 'The hero of Malibu.' She was carrying a waitress's tray and wearing a sort of spangled bikini that featured her navel. She had a navel an orange would have written home about.

'And I thought you were mad at me,' Toby said, grinning.

'Oh, hi, Toby,' Nana said. 'Are you here?' She turned away from him and looked down at the counter in front of me. 'You're tipping Amber twenty bucks? Good for you.'

'No one else looks very enthusiastic,' I said. 'It seemed like the thing to do.'

'A romantic,' Nana said. 'The vanishing American.'

'I'm not a romantic?' Toby asked. 'Remember Santa Barbara?'

'Santa Barbara was two months and a couple of punches ago. Oh, I forgot. I'm not talking to you.' She glanced up at Amber, who looked like someone who was trying to remember how to dance.

There was a silence, if you didn't count the music. Toby fooled around with his watch again and tossed back four ounces of vodka. His face was setting into sullen lines that made him look ten years older.

'Amber?' I said, just to say something. 'Why Amber? Amber's not a spice.'

Toby remained silent, taking another pull off his drink.

'Jeez,' Nana said. 'There are only so many spices. She didn't want to be called Garlic.'

'What about chamomile?' Toby said, trying to rejoin the conversation. 'Or tansy? I've always wondered what