One

“Twenty dollars, cash first,” she said to the short Mexican man who had called her over. A broad smile came across his face as he held the twenty out, only to pull it back away from her as she reached for it. Seeing the disgusted look on her face pleased him, and he handed over the money for real this time.
She hated the Mexicans. Not the entire race, just the kind that wound up at the club. They either stunk to high heaven or they bathed in cologne in order to cover up the smell; whatever it was. And they always got so possessive, to the point where they wouldn’t let her leave their sides even if they were out of money. She wasn’t there to be some guy’s arm candy all night, only to give the illusion of it long enough that she could get paid, then find some other sucker. She could tell that he would be just like every other Jose who walked into the bar, jealous and overprotective of her for the rest of the night, but tips were coming in slow for her stage dances, so she had to make up for it on the laps of men who craved attention and affection from girls who appeared to be perfect and goddess-like in the dim stage lights.
Shimmer put on her very best come hither smile as she swayed back and fourth in front of him, before putting one leg up on the seat next to him. She swiveled her hips slow and seductively, before bending her head back so far that it almost touched the floor and her pelvis was almost right in his face. Then she felt his fingers trying to pull the strap of her g-string to move it aside, and she put her hands on the ground and flipped over the rest of the way, and stood up before him. “Don’t touch,” she said, and motioned with her hand. The man just smiled.
The question was, would he listen, or would he try again?
Continuing on with her dance, she stood up on the couch, straddling his lap. She put her hands on his shoulders and made a slow hip thrust toward his face, before lifting herself up into a full handstand, using his shoulders for support. She let her legs fall to either side of her, and she continued to hold the position, her head just above his. Just as she was bringing her legs back together, he turned his head upward and kissed her right on the lips. She lost her balance and tumbled down the front of him, landing on his knees.
“You fucking asshole!” she yelled. “I told you before, NO TOUCHING! What the fuck is the matter with you? You made me fall!”
The man laughed at her anger and clumsiness. Gordon, the bouncer, saw the commotion and came over to see what was going on.
“I already gave him a warning and he did it again!” she explained hastily to Gordon. “Throw his ass out of here!”
“Okay man, it’s time for you to go, come on.”
The man scoffed, and would have probably stayed put if it weren’t for Gordon’s size, or more particularly, the size of his bulging muscular arms. As he stood up, he looked Shimmer up and down. “Punta,” he whispered. Marina’s eyes flashed with hatred, being insulted by this nothing of a man. She was not just some dumb stripper, she was a dancer, a gymnast, an artist, and she wasn’t going to be clomping around on the black stage forever, especially after the way that these jerks had pissed her off so much, motivating her to get her badge and get out of the strip club life for good. Working at the club only gave her more of a reason to hate the general public, and men in particular. The kind of men who came to strip clubs, anyway. She was not about to let him get away with insulting her like he did, so she picked up a nearby metal napkin holder box and clocked him in the head with it. For good measure, she grabbed a handful of napkins off the table and threw those at him too.
The man was yelling at her in Spanish as Gordon pulled him outside by the shoulder, and as soon as he was out, Gordon shut the door and walked back toward her; the heat of purpose in his step.
“Shimmer, I think it’s time that you call it a night too.”
“He touched me! And made me fall! Gordon, it was all him!”
“But what have I told you about assaulting the customers? I had him under control, and you just had to step in.”
She looked down at the ground and grumbled.
“You’re lucky some of these guys don’t call the cops on you. The owner keeps getting complaints about you though, about stuff that I don’t see, and you’re lucky I don’t see it because I’ll toss you out just like I do to guys like that. Understand me?”
“Fine!” she yelled, and grabbed her lowball of Goldschlagger and finished the last of it in one gulp and slammed it back down on the cocktail table, then marched off toward the dressing room.
Silver was sitting at the mirror when she burst through the door.
“Rough night?” Silver asked.
“Going home,” she answered sourly. “Fucking Gordon needs to watch these guys closer. And we shouldn’t have to give them a warning. It should be a ‘you touch and you’re out’ policy.”
“Did you stomp on someone’s nuts with your stripper shoes again Shimmer?”
“No,” she sighed. “I hit him in the face with a napkin holder.”
Silver threw her head back and laughed. Great long locks of her brunette hair poured around her neck and shoulders like a waterfall. “I bet the guy deserved it!” She looked at herself in the mirror and loosely gathered her hair as if to put it into a ponytail, but let it drop silkily down her back again. “So Gordon’s sending you home, huh?”
“Yeah, and damn I needed to make some money tonight, too,” Shimmer answered as she wiped her armpits with a baby wipe.
Silver put her hand on Marina’s shoulder. “Don’t worry Shimmer, you can try again tomorrow night. And I bet that guy won’t be here ever again. Let him go back to Skin where he belongs. We don’t need guys like that in our club.”
“Thanks Silver,” she said, realizing that she didn’t know the girl’s real name, nor did Silver know hers. It’s best not to have personal friendships with the other dancers, most of them end up being crack addicts or prostitutes, and then you end up losing them. Or they let the dancing thing go to their head, and they become little starlets, divas. And those girls like to call the other dancers by their stage names because it just affirms where they are. It’s like meeting Julia Roberts and calling her Julia Roberts over and over again. Silver seemed like a sweet girl, and she had been at the club for a little over a month without showing signs that maybe she was a drug addict or wacko or something, so Marina felt comfortable talking to her, well, more comfortable than with the other girls. Most of them were either coke whores or stripper starlets. Marina was just there for the money, business was business to her.
Silver tossed a strand of hair from one side of her face to the other, and waved to Marina as she went out onto the stage, where the DJ was announcing her name. Marina got her phone out of her bag and called Matt.
“Hi baby,” he answered. “What’s up?”
“Can you come pick me up?”
Matt looked at his clock. “Babe, it’s only 11:30, what happened?”
“I’ll tell you later, just come pick me up.”
“Aw, baby! What did you do now?”
‘Why’s it always gotta be that I did something? Maybe I'm just drunk or the club is dead or something.”
“What did you do to him?” he pressed.
She groaned. “The guy touched me once, and I warned him. But then he kissed me and I fell, so I beat him upside the head with a napkin holder. Gordon threw him out, but the guy called me a punta, I wasn’t going to let him get away with that!”
“Rina! What have I told you! You need to just walk away from this shit, don’t get into it with these guys! All you need is a bunch of assault charges and getting arrested at a strip club to show up when they run your background check, then your career will be over before it even starts, and you’ll be doing lap dances forever.”
“I know!” she shouted. “My temper just got the best of me, like it always does.”
“You still have to work on it, babe. Even harder now.”
“I am working on it. Just come pick me up, all right?”








Two
Whispers is not a club where your dreams will come true. Unless you happen to have very reasonable dreams and seeing a pair of bare breasts is good enough, that is. Whispers is strictly a topless bar, and the owner prides himself in the fact that his club is the cleanest in town. Marina had worked at every club in San Bernardino at some point or another, and she found her home at Whispers when she got tired of not making enough money at the other clubs due to the fact that she was not a prostitute.
La Infidel was a nice club before it closed, she started out working there. On Thursday nights they gave Super Soaker guns to the guys in the front row to squirt at the girls, and they even had Jell-O wrestling. She rolled around in big kiddy pools of Jell-O and baby oil with the other girls, and it was more fun than it looked. At that club she never went home with anything less than $300, but when the ownership changed, and the name changed to Skin, she was out of there pretty quickly. A group of new dancers showed up who had been hired specifically by the owner. They were all hookers, every one of them, and any girl who was left at the club who refused to give blow jobs was ran out of the place by lack of tips. When Marina would ask one of her old regulars if he wanted a lap dance, he would ask her if she did what that other girl did, referring to sex acts. And when she said no, she was brushed off.
Temptress Club was just plain creepy, and she hated working there from the start. Maybe there wasn’t any prostitution going on, but there was something going on that she couldn’t quite place her finger on, so she only worked there long enough so that she was able to make a few dollars until she found her way into Whispers. Armando didn’t want to hire her at first because of where she had worked in the past, worried that she might be a hooker too. But then she showed him her stage dance, which was breathtaking and intriguing to say the least.
Marina had spent her whole life in gymnastics, which played a big part in her dance. And because of her very small size (just under five feet) she was able to do moves on the pole that Armando had never seen before. He watched in amazement as she climbed the pole backwards, using only her limber arm muscles to push herself up while her legs fell completely open to either side of her. She seemed to defy gravity as she did what she called “The Flag,” in where she held onto the top of the pole with her hands, and her body stuck straight out, parallel to the ground like a flag. He let her stay for the first week, but had second thoughts when he realized that she didn’t bring as many men to the rail as the other girls, but then her loyal fans found her.
“Where’s the girl who can slide down the pole with one leg?” they asked.
“Does the little blond dance here? The one who can lay completely flat with her legs up over her head?”
She found herself a permanent stage to dance on as far as Armando was concerned.
But Marina knew that Armando wouldn’t be pleased with this latest customer assault. It was her fault that they canceled the birthday special, which made good money and publicity for the club. For $200, all of the dancers would come out into the audience and pull the birthday boy up on stage. They would sit him in a chair and do wickedly seductive dances for him, and Shimmer would take the opportunity to abuse the poor fellow. She would stand on his thighs and dig her heels into him, and grab him by the hair on the back of his head and make it look like she was ramming his head into her crotch, only it was really hitting the pole. It wasn’t anything personal; she just liked to take her anger and frustration out of the whole of mankind on the poor guy.
Then they would stand him up, pull down his pants, turn him around, and give him a hard wedgie. The guy who complained was the one with the skid marks in his boxers. He was embarrassed in front of his boss and several co workers because of what the girls did. He said that it was too much, and that the little blond was aggressive. He had bruises on his thighs to prove it.
She lit a cigarette as she stood outside and waited for Matt to pull up, worried that she was going to get a talking to. She was getting tired of his lectures, he wasn’t a very good boyfriend when it came to the supportive and “I'm on your side” stuff, he just assumed the worst in her. And he didn’t even stand up for her when it came to his family for the most part, who was none too happy about her job. He explained to them that it was just until she could get hired on with the Sheriff’s, but to them she was a Jezebel. A Mary Magdolin. The only good thing about Matt was that he kept her on track, and helped her see the light at the end of the tunnel. When she got tired and was willing to give up, he was standing there pushing her forward. Unfortunately that also came with a lot of lectures when she was getting off track, or doing something stupid, like bashing a guy upside the head with a napkin holder.
She saw his Jeep pull up in the parking lot, the Papa John’s light still on top of the car. Through the windshield she could see the look on his face, which clearly conveyed that he wasn’t too pleased. His eyes were the same color of grey that they painted prisons. His round chubby face matched the rest of his round chubby body, with a hint of a tough guy posture like a bull dog. His buzzed haircut needed a closer trim to really make him bull dogish.
“I was supposed to close tonight,” he started as soon as he rolled down the window. “That’s twice this week I've had to come get you.”
“I already told you, the guy had it coming to him. What, do you expect me to do nothing when someone talks to me that way?”
“Yes Marina! I expect you to just walk away, go outside and have a cigarette! Stop hitting people!”
She stomped her lit butt out on the pavement before hopping in. “I liked it better when you were the bouncer,” she said.
“Yeah I know, but Armando didn’t like us working together, said it created a conflict of interest or something. Besides, I'm making more in tips doing pizza than I ever did as a bouncer.”
“It just felt safer when you were there to protect me, Matt.”
“But Marina, I can’t always be there! What about when you’re a cop?”
“That’s different. I won’t need you when I am a cop because I’ll have a gun and more clothes on.”
He was quiet as he drove down the darkened streets. She hated it when he got quiet all of the sudden, it meant that he was waiting for her to spill everything and get all emotional and girly so that he could prove his point, which was that she should always assume that he was right.
“You know, if you would just sell some of your coins I wouldn’t have to work like this to put myself through school.”
“I told you, I won’t sell my coins until my parents die. They would kill me if they knew that I was liquidating my collection to pay for something for you. You remember how outraged they were about the ring, especially when they found out that you don’t wear it at work.”
“Matthew, you’re 34 years old! You shouldn’t be doing things just to please your parents anymore! It’s not about them at this point, it’s our life now, and I want to quit working at the club! I am getting so sick of these guys!”
“Well you just cool your jets and quit hitting people before you lose that job and I have to sell that ring of yours to pay for your books.”
Marina was hurt and angry; he was really good at making her feel that way. It was shocking how deep his words could cut her. She looked at him in repulsion and yelled “Believe me, I’ve already considered it.”
“Oh you were going to sell my ring?” he shouted back.
“Only every time you’ve chosen your parents over me or treated me like a child!”
He was silent, but she could tell that he wasn’t looking for her to speak. She turned and faced the window and stewed in her anger until he pulled up in front of her house. She opened the door and climbed out, and slammed it shut without so much as saying goodbye.





Three
She hated coming home when her parents were still awake. Not yet zonked out in front of the television or wound in bed sheets they peered at her through the darkness as she walked quietly through the door, closing it ever so gently.
“You’re home early, did you start up another fight?” her mother asked.
“Don’t worry about it mom,” she answered as she walked toward her bedroom.
Like Matt’s parents, her parents didn’t approve of her job. They said that she could do better. Better where? Some fast food joint? The grocery store? There was nowhere else that she could make the amount of money that she did at the club.
It wasn’t that they were religious or high class folk; in fact they were poor and living in the slums of San Bernardino in a run down apartment building that had been remodeled for Section 8 families. They mostly discouraged her because she was doing the job to pay for school and take classes for the career that they really didn’t want her to have: starting off as a Sheriff’s Deputy and working her way up to the bomb squad. The last thing the Hudson’s needed was a cop in the family. Cops were no good, and if she became one she would be no better than the rest of them. She would change. She would rat them out.
Her dad would tell her that she’s too short to be a cop and that if they do let her in that she would be out of the family, and that she had better change her name. No Hudson would carry a badge.
And her mom, well, she was pretty strung out on pain meds most of the time, but when she was sober enough to say something it would usually be negative. She hated that her little girl had used all of those years of gymnastics to get such a sleazy job, and furthermore that she didn’t use the money that she made at that job to help them pay for things, like the $4,000 fine that they had to pay to the electric company after they were caught stealing power. That boyfriend of hers wasn’t paying for it either, even though he had been known to use their power when he was there, back when they used to let him stay anyway.
It is very difficult when your parents hate your boyfriend and you still live with them. Marina couldn’t move out though, all of her money was going toward school. And Matt’s parents wouldn’t let her move in, nor would they let him move out. His mother Dinah had such a hold on him, and such a bad case of the Empty Nest Syndrome that she offered to let him stay at home free of charge, and take care of him just like when he was a little kid. She did his laundry, paid for his food, and asked for nothing in return. On his days off he would either hang out at Cooper’s Coins and dig through the junk coins to find overlooked treasures, or take his metal detector up to the mountains to search for gold. He only worked the pizza job so that he would always have cash on hand in case he came across a coin that he needed, and also so that he could inspect all of the bills that he got to see if they were worth anything. He was an expert, and he had an eagle eye for rare coins and misprinted dollars.
In the bathroom, Marina washed the thick mascara off of her eyelashes. She pulled her long, wavy, whitish-blond hair into a ponytail and kicked off her nine inch heels. The shoes hit the bathroom door with a thud. The water was cold on her face, and it felt good to wash away the layers of caked on makeup that she had slathered on throughout the night.
Without makeup, Marina was just a girl, a short girl with brilliant green eyes and crooked teeth that she learned to hide behind her lip-only smiles. It took years of practice to master not showing her teeth enough that you could see her orthodontic imperfection, but eventually she trained herself to never let them show when she was at the club.
She looked down at the wash cloth that she had used on her face and saw the glitter from her eye shadow and lip gloss. She used bath and body products that contained hints of glitter, and all of her makeup had sparkle. That’s how she got the name Shimmer, though some of the girls back at La Infidel jokingly called her Gumby because of her flexibility. Not that being glittery and sparkly made her much different than the other dancers. It’s a well known fact that strippers are usually coated in a layer of glitter and something akin to sweat. But the name suited her, better than Gumby did anyway.
Standing in the mirror looking at herself, she contemplated calling Matt, but she couldn’t let him get the better of her. He always did this; every time they fought she was always the first to call. She wondered if she even still loved him at times. If she did love him, then why didn’t she feel it? And if she didn’t love him, then why was she still striving to swallow his bullshit after all this time?
When she first met him, he was the bouncer at Whispers, and she thought he was cute. The strong silent type with a shaved head and large frame. He was working there at the time because he was living on his own and he needed money to cover his rent for his studio apartment. Things were slow before Shimmer got there, and he found himself selling a few of his coins just to cover groceries. There was no way that he would have asked his folks for money, not after how his mother reacted to him leaving the church. In fact, he worked at the club to spite his parents even. But then came the Christian forgiveness and unconditional love, and Dinah invited him to move back in. By that time he had met Marina, who was beautiful, intelligent, and hard working. Not to mention quite bendable. He didn’t tell them about her for a long time, but eventually she started wanting to come around and go out with him so she wouldn’t have to be stuck at home or possibly worse, in the club. Then they found out that she was a dancer at that sinful club that he worked at, and they almost threw him out again. He convinced them that she wasn’t a prostitute, only a dancer, which only partially sufficed them.
Dinah and Gerald were very suspicious of the girl, and the fact that she did not perform oral or vaginal sex acts for money still did not account for the dances that she gave to strange men. They couldn’t understand how Matt could take in a woman who did such vile things, and even though they had been dating for two years his parents still weren’t over it.
“Why doesn’t she start her career?” they asked. And he would tell them that she was into drugs as a teenager, and she needed to wait until she was clean for seven years before she could apply. But her seven years were up, and her application had been in for two months as she vigorously took as many classes as she could that would help her get into the bomb squad. Engineering. Welding. Robotics. Chemistry. She had no idea what she needed to take, but she was a smart girl, and she could learn whatever it was that she needed to learn if it meant that she would never have to wiggle on another lap again.
Once he left the club, he realized how gloomy the stripper life was, and he wanted to bail her out. Sell all of his coins and pay for her schooling, send her to a university so that she wouldn’t just end up with an associate’s degree. But his parents weren’t too fond of that idea, since Gerald had gotten him interested in the coin collecting as a boy anyway, and they felt that he would be blowing his investment on someone like her.
So he decided to wait. And Marina kept on dancing.
But he did present her with a ring, even though she could only wear it when she wasn’t working. Matt knew that she was faithful, and that she only collected men’s phone numbers so that she could call them when the club was slow and invite them to come down. It was business, not personal.
It’s true; Marina was a businesswoman and nothing more. The fame and attention of being among the top three girls at the club, besides Barbie and Asia, never went to her head like it did for some girls. She would see it every few weeks when a new girl would come in, shy of taking off her clothes, but the hoots and hollers of encouragement from the men in the crowd would pump the new girl up and make her feel like maybe she was hot. The want of being desired would be what would drive the girl to thinking that these guys even remotely cared who the fuck she was when they left the club. The girl would bask in the glory of the black lights as men tossed crumpled up dollar bills on the stage, cheering her on, telling her how gorgeous she was.
Then the girl would do something stupid, like do a line of coke on the balcony of the club with some guy, or tell one of the bastards where she lived and end up getting raped. These girls forget that the caliber of men who hang out in strip clubs, particularly in San Bernardino, were not the kind of guys that you would want to date or have any kind of interaction with outside of the club. But when there’s a guy there telling you that you’re beautiful, and you look just like Brittney Spears only prettier, what little judgment is there can get easily pushed aside, or disregarded entirely.
That’s where Marina outshined the other girls. She made her small talk with the customers, and flirted back. But when they asked where she lived, she always told them that she lived in Grand Terrace and that her real name was Janine. She only gave out her cell phone number to guys who gave her their number so that she could program them into her phone and see when they were calling, and she would only answer those calls when she was at the club. She never answered a restricted number, or any number that she didn’t recognize off the bat, she would just wait for the voicemail, which was occasionally obscene.
But the little girls who would come to dance at the club and who got blinded by the stardom and spotlights, they didn’t think that way. All they wanted was for someone to tell them that they were beautiful, desirable. The more tips they got, the more they believed that they were getting real attention. Like the kind from a boyfriend. Or a father figure.
But even Skeletor got tips! Skeletor, well, Jayna as she called herself, made a few bucks every night from the guys who didn’t care what she looked like, they just wanted a warm body to half way acknowledge them. Marina and Silver started calling her Skeletor because of how lanky and skinny she was. It was clear that she was on meth or something, the way her cheeks inverted and her chin bone stuck out like a metal rod. One night, Skeletor got so drunk that she just walked around in circles holding onto the pole. She tried to do some kind of trick and she fell flat on her ass, boom! She laid there passed out for a few minutes, and everyone in the club got up to look and see if she was conscious. Not out of concern, but just because it’s funny that the stripper fell on her ass and passed out drunk. After a few minutes she pulled herself up and continued to stagger around the pole, occasionally losing her balance on her high heels and teetering a bit.
It was Marina’s work ethic and sense of professionalism that really attracted Matt to her, and that’s why he got so upset whenever she did something stupid, like splash a cupful of vodka in someone’s face because he called her a midget, or whack a dude in the face with a napkin holder. He had to take away her money box that she carried around and buy her a cute fuzzy purse to use instead after she upper-cutted a guy straight in the jaw with it one night. She was out of control, and he knew that any arrests for it would look really bad on her record to her background investigators, so he had to react to her like the child that she was behaving like in order to teach her a lesson, to get her to change.
And Marina was through with his lessons. Period.







Four
Marina recognized her right away. It was Annie Stone, her ex best friend from high school. She came walking into the club wearing a floor length black sequined gown, her arm wrapped around the arm of her husband, who was the owner of some chain restaurant franchise out in Calimesa. There were a few men with them, no doubt managers of his restaurant who he had taken out for drinks and lap dances. Annie already looked half drunk.
Shimmer was working the floor, walking through the crowd and sitting at random tables making chit chat, hoping to interest someone in a dance. She tried to slink past Annie’s table, but Annie noticed her, and gently grabbed her arm.
“Rina? Is that really you?” Marina rolled her eyes, and turned toward the hand that held her arm.
“Actually my name is Shimmer; it’s a pleasure to see you here at the club.”
“Oh, Shimmer,” Annie snorted behind her hand. “I didn’t realize that you had a stripper name. Actually I didn’t realize that you were a stripper!”
“At your service,” Marina said snidely.
“Oh my god! Can I get a lap dance? How much are lap dances? Oh oh, and can you get the DJ to play that song More Human than Human? I want a lap dance from you, but not now, later, when I'm more drunker.”
“Sure Annie, just let me know when you’d like me to come back,” Shimmer said and walked out onto the balcony, rolling her eyes to the sky. She didn’t have time to waste on letting Annie gawk at her unless she was going to pay. After she was handed the cash, the girl could gawk all she wanted, it didn’t matter. She looked to the side and saw that Silver was sitting out on the balcony bench having a cigarette.
“Hey,” Silver said when she saw her come out. She chuckled, “I spilled a bit of my drink, can you get me a napkin?”
Shimmer got the joke right away, as corny as it was, and laughed along with her. “Ugh, my boyfriend was pissed that I got sent home early and didn’t finish my shift,” she said as she sat down.
“What’s he got to be pissed about? Doesn’t he work?”
“Yeah, for Papa Johns.”
“Well those guys make good in tips, why is he worried about how much you make? He doesn’t even live with you.”
“Yeah, I know. But he spends his tip money on coins mostly. He’s a coin collector.”
“Wow, uber nerdy,” Silver teased.
“Yeah, but the guy is sitting on over $700,000 in rare coins. He’s a rich nerd.”
“Damn girl!” she said as she leaned into Shimmer playfully with her shoulder. “What’s a girl with a rich boyfriend doing in a place like this?”
“He won’t sell any of them, his mommy won’t let him,” she said mockingly.
“It’s too bad,” Silver said as she put out her cigarette in the nearby ashtray. “I used to work out at that club Incense and Peppermints, and I was making a shit load of money there. But then this guy came in, Atom Smash he calls himself, and he bought the club and renamed it The Rhinestone. That’s when he moved in a bunch of prostitutes so he could make more money, and if you weren’t willing to give at least a hand job, you were out of a job.”
“Oh my god! Atom Smash is the guy who bought La Infidel and turned it into Skin! Oh I knew that guy was a creep!”
“He sure is. He’s trying to get as many clubs as he can to run as cat houses, hardly any of them left that aren't owned by him. But then I met Asia, and she told me about this place. So, I came and applied, and Armando hired me right away.”
Shimmer was glad to hear that Silver was a good girl, and that her gut feeling about her was right in that she was not a hooker. She could tell that she and Silver would become fast friends.
Just then, the guy who she hit in the face with the napkin holder appeared in the doorway. He didn’t come out, but he stood shyly and partially inside. He whistled a sharp and high pitched whistle call between his teeth, like a person does to call a dog, in Shimmer and Silver’s direction.
“Shit…that’s the guy,” Shimmer muttered.
“You mean napkin face?” Silver whispered back.
“Yes!”
Again, he chirped at her, beckoning her to come to him.
“Ignore him,” said Silver.
“How did he get in? Gordon wouldn’t have let him back in the club!”
“Gordon isn't here tonight, it’s Jeremy.”
“That little pip squeak? Oh god I am so screwed.”
“Okay, just act like you don’t see him. Until he comes up to you and talks to you or whatever, just stay out here with me. Hopefully the DJ will call you up soon and you can blow right past him.”
Shimmer thought it was a good plan, so they just kept talking about stripper things. Shoes, bra sizes, piercings. Tattoos; of which Marina had none. Finally, the DJ called for Shimmer to “stand by,” meaning that she would be dancing at the next song. The Mexican guy was still standing in the doorway, and she walked past him as fast as she could, only for him to follow after her. She walked quickly through the bar past the tables, and she felt him grab the back of her bra. She turned and grabbed his arm.
“Let go of me!” she yelled. Hearing this, Jeremy hustled over.
“What’s the problem here?” Jeremy asked.
“Gordon threw this creep out of the club last night, and now he’s over here grabbing me!”
“Okay, come on essay, let’s go.”
Only this time, the guy was staying put. He wasn’t intimidated by Jeremy at all, which is precisely why none of the girls liked him as a bouncer because they knew that he couldn’t protect them.
“I said let’s go,” he repeated, and the guy spit in his face. Jeremy swiped with one leg and knocked the guy to the ground, then twisted his arm against his neck until he cried out in pain.
“Are you ready to go now?” Jeremy asked as he picked the guy up by the twisted arm and a belt loop. “You leave my girls alone now, understand?” and he carried the man outside and tossed him down the stairs. He crashed into the security gate with a loud bang, and Jeremy opened the gate and kicked him through to the other side of it. The guy rolled down a few stairs before getting up and running toward his car. Shimmer and everyone on the balcony cheered for Jeremy, who had finally shown why Armando must have hired him as a bouncer! None of them had ever seen Big Gordon do anything like that before, it was awesome!
Without having time to check her makeup, she stepped up onto the stage, just as the beginning notes to Hollaback Girl were starting. She enthusiastically threw her leg around the pole and spun around before reaching down on the pole with one arm and kicking her legs upward along the pole so that she was upside down, supporting herself with her one ropy arm. She clutched the pole with her other hand and made her way up the pole backwards, spreading her legs wider as she got closer to the ceiling, until her butt was touching the black tiles of it. Then she spun down the pole with her legs out, a move that she called The Helicopter, until she got close enough to the ground to put her palms down flat on the floor carefully and one at a time. She let her upright legs slowly bend down backward over her body, what she called The Wilting Flower, then carefully laid her head and back down on the floor, her knees up and her feet touching the floor.
The show that she did on the floor was just as impressive as the one that she did on the pole. She spread her legs so that the audience could see her crotch, which was covered with a lime green pair of panties that matched her lime green bra, and slowly she pulled one leg up close to her head, the tip of her toe and her thigh touching the stage, as the back of her other thigh and ankle touched the stage out in front of her. She ran a hand daintily from her crotch to the back of the calf by her head, then pulled both of her legs together and snapped her heels in a fast motion. The snap was so loud, a real attention getter, and it scared the shit out of anyone who wasn’t paying attention to her dance.
She continued her stage show with the regular moves: the back flips, handsprings, The Fireman, Razzle Dazzle, and the like. In the beginning of her second song, she untied the front of her bra, and her tiny yet round and muscular breasts were only partially distracting from her amazing gymnastics. By the end of the song, she was a little tired, and she could tell because she knew that her Flag was a little droopy, and her legs weren’t sticking out as straight as she would have liked them to be.
After the song changed to the next, the DJ announced her name once again, and she tied her bra back on and walked over to pick up her tips off of the stage by the rail. Some were tossed onto the ground, and some were tucked into the garter on her leg by patrons as she walked by them. A few of them rubbed her smooth skin and smiled in delight as they tipped her.
As she walked off the stage, she saw Armando standing in the back corner by the bar wearing a suit. He was looking right at her, and he curled his finger to let her know to come to him. She gulped. She began walking toward him but Annie grabbed her garter and stretched it out to tuck a few ones into it.
“Hey, I still want a dance,” she said, a little more sloshed than before.
“Okay, just tell the DJ what song you want and when it comes on I’ll be over, okay?”
Annie laughed in excitement and also because she was rather liquored up as Shimmer walked back toward Armando.
“Hi Armando,” she said, trying to be cheerful.
“Marina, I has to has a word with you again, darling.”
“Okay…”
“Do you know what this is already about yes?”
“About the napkin holder…”
“Yes, about the napkin holder,” he said in his thick accent, which sounded something between Middle Eastern and Spanish. “I tolded you before about the hitting customers, it is not allowed!”
“I know Armando, I'm really sorry.”
“You’re one of my top girls. What is gotten into you?”
“I just lost my temper.”
“Well losing temper is not allowed, okay?”
“Okay,” she said as she began to turn away, thinking the talk was over.
“No, I is not through with you yet,” he said. “The man had he’s brother come here, big man. Big big man. And he is upset! I don’t have Gordon here tonight, and Jeremy cannot handle these man, I am in trouble here, trying to talk to the man but he is not listen. I got it under control but you need to know that you cause too much trouble for me. One more outburst and I sorry but I has to let you go.”
“Armando, please,”
“Please nothing! The guy is outside in the parking lot waiting to talk to me, and I am scared to go down there!”
“Just call the cops!”
“The cops? What the cops going to do, eh? You just get back into dressing room and stay there until you are called onto stage. No lap dances tonight for you, you only dance on stage, then you wait in the dressing room. That is final!”
She was angry, but she had no choice. Her job was on the line, and maybe it was best that she stay away from the customers. She stormed off to the dressing room, and considered for a few minutes just calling it a night and going home, but even if she wasn’t giving lap dances she was at least going to make a few tips on the stage, so it was better that she stayed.
She listened to the music, and the DJ telling the different girls to stand by. Autumn. Candy. Misty. Then she heard More Human than Human start to play. Oh crap! she thought, and Silver came running into the dressing room all out of breath.
“This drunk girl out here is looking for you!”
“I know! Look, just tell her I can’t do any more dances tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Armando told me I couldn’t.”
Silver grabbed her hand and pulled her up out of her chair. “Armando is down in the parking lot hashing it out with some guy, he won’t see if you come out and just do one dance, you need the money don’t you?”
“Well…yeah…”
“Then hurry!”
The girls scuttled through the hall back out into the bar, and there was Annie, shitfaced and ready for her dance.
“Did you try to get away from me Sparkles?” Annie slurred.
“No, lets just get this done really quick.”
“I WANT MY FUCKING DANCE!” Annie yelled, and Shimmer tried to hush her.
“Psst…” she looked in the direction of the sound and saw Annie’s husband. He looked a little embarrassed at his wife’s behavior, but he held out two twenty dollar bills between his fingers for her to take. She nodded slightly toward him, and he turned back to his friends and continued to chat.
“Okay, Annie? Just sit down in this chair right here,” Shimmer said as she pulled a chair over for her. Annie slumped into it and laughed as her head rolled around on the back of the chair. Shimmer straddled her legs with her feet on the floor and slowly shimmied her breasts at Annie. Annie coughed and then hiked up her dress, revealing that she was wearing even less than Shimmer.
“I want you to fuck me, Glitter, fuck me right here in front of everyone,” Annie yelled. Shimmer tried to pull her skirt down, and hoped that Armando wouldn’t come in and see her socializing with this drunken wench. Annie’s husband held out another twenty without even looking.
“Oh Glitters,” she moaned and put her hands on Shimmer’s ass. Just then, Jeremy walked up and warned her about the no touching rule before Shimmer had a chance to.
“All right, all right,” Annie hissed, and flopped back into her chair, lying motionless as a doll with her arms hanging down at her sides as Shimmer bounced on her lap gently. Suddenly she sprang to life again and hoisted herself up. She started dancing with Shimmer, with her arm up in the air, slowly rolling thrusts of her hips at her.
Jeremy walked back over and touched Annie’s arm. “No dancing with the girls either ma’am, please stay seated.”
“Don’t fucking tell me what to do!” Annie shouted, and sloppily shoved Jeremy.
“All right, that’s it, you’re outta here!” Jeremy said, holding her by the arm pits. She twisted and struggled.
“Let go of me! Jesse! Help, he’s going to take me!”
Her husband stood up and tried to reason with the bouncer, but Jeremy politely told him that she was too hammered, and that they would have to leave the club. Jesse decided that it wasn’t worth the fight, she was pretty drunk, and he should probably get her home before she embarrassed him any further.
“Fuck you!” Annie yelled at nobody and everybody, and pulled her dress down to reveal her tits. Several hoots and hollers came from the crowd of men, along with encouragement from a few for her to get on the stage. Jeremy wasn’t about to manhandle her like he did with the Mexican guy, especially since she had her high beams on and her husband was right there. Though he didn’t try to control or console his wife at all, and that irritated Jeremy. He ended up carrying her with one arm wrapped around her rib cage, her legs flailing behind him and her bare breasts facing the floor. Her hands tried to push him away from her, but to no avail.
Meanwhile, Armando had come back into the club, and had seen the tail end of what went on between Shimmer and the drunken girl.
“What did I got done telling you?” he reprimanded. “No dancing on the floor and you did it anyway. I want you out of my club!” he shouted, but before she could say any words of protest, the brother of the napkin holder guy, who Armando had sparred with briefly in the parking lot, had pushed his way through the door. Since Jeremy was dealing with Annie, he wasn’t there to stop him from coming in and running toward Armando, who knocked over several tables as he ran out to the balcony.
The big dude was pissed, and mean looking. Shimmer backed up to the stage as the guy angrily and hastily made his way after Armando, who had not quite made it outside before the guy grabbed him and charged out onto the balcony and pushed him violently up against the railing, which unexpectedly gave way, and the two of them fell straight down onto the asphalt below.
“Oh my god! Somebody call 911!” a girl called, and everyone in the club ran out to see what happened. Shimmer was among the group, and there she saw Armando and the big guy lying side by side on the pavement with blood coming from their heads.
“Oh god,” she said as she tried to choke back tears. Everybody stood in silence, staring down at the bodies of the fallen men, Armando with his obviously broken neck.
“Should we go down there and see if they’re still alive?” a man asked.
“No,” said Jeremy, “Nobody could have survived a fall like that. And if they did, the paramedics will be able to do more than any of us could.” Suddenly he realized that in the commotion of the fall, he had somehow lost hold his topless maiden, and he looked around to see where she had gone. Then he spotted the drunken woman as she staggered around in the parking lot a few feet away from the bodies.
“I gotta piss like a race horse,” she snarled, and everyone watched in horror and amusement as she hoisted her skirt up to her midsection, where the top had already been pulled down to, and she squatted and shot a hot stream of golden piss right onto the ground. The first ambulance arrived as her river met the puddle of blood by the big man’s head.





Five
Nobody was permitted to leave the club until the initial investigation was completed. The place was covered in cops, and everyone present at the time of the incident was questioned.
Everyone told basically the same story, “The big dude came running at the little dude, and they ran out onto the balcony, then the big dude pushed the little dude into the railing and it came loose or something and they fell.”
It was an accident, there was no doubt about it. Had the big guy intended to kill Armando, he would have just thrown him over the railing and not into it. There was no way that he could have known that the railing wouldn’t hold; his own death was proof of it.
“It’s all my fault,” Marina told Silver. “Armando was fighting with that guy because of me. Because I hit his brother with a napkin holder.”
“Shimmer, Armando is dead because he made some bad decisions tonight. He shouldn’t have gotten into it with that guy, he should have just called the cops and had them deal with him. And he should have had more than one bouncer on duty, it’s a Saturday night!”
“Yeah, but the whole thing happened because of me,” she said lowly.
“Don’t blame yourself for this, it really isn't your fault.”
Silver put an arm around her to comfort her, and Shimmer reluctantly accepted it. Deep down she knew that she was probably still in shock over what happened, and when something like that happens, people tend to think about what went wrong, and what led up to the accident. What could have been prevented? What did I do that caused this?
A rather handsome officer from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department walked by the girls, and then stopped.
“You look familiar,” he said to Shimmer. “Didn’t you just drop in an application the other day? I was at the station when you were in there.”
“Yeah, I did,” she said, perking up momentarily. “But it wasn’t the other day, it was like two months ago.”
“Seriously? Wow, time sure is flying. Well don’t worry, you’ll probably hear back in another four months or so, or maybe before then.” The officer then realized that he was talking to one of the club’s dancers. “You work here?” he asked as his eyes scanned the room, then stopped back on her.
She was a little bit embarrassed. “Yes, I do actually.”
“How long have you been working here?” he asked.
“Two years,” she answered.
“Well,” he shrugged, “it’s not the most glamorous job to be working if you want to become a cop, but at least it shows job stability that you’ve been here for that long. Do you have another job?”
“No, I go to school during the week.”
“Really? That’s good! What for?”
“Mostly science classes. I want to be on the bomb squad.”
“The bomb squad,” he said with enthusiastic pomp.
“Yeah,” she said shyly.
“Well good luck with that, and stay in school. I gotta get back to work here,” he said as he walked off, bidding the girls farewell.
“Oh my god, Shimmer, bomb squad? I had no idea you were so cool!” The girls laughed. Marina went on to tell her about the classes she was taking, and her hopes and aspirations of someday being the one to disarm the bomb set by some unruly teenager at one of the local high schools. Or fighting a terrorist attack, and wearing a t-shirt in her off time that says “I am with the bomb squad. If you see me running, try to keep up” on the back of it.
Asia, who seemed scarce all night, even before the accident (which was normal for her) appeared out of nowhere.
“It’s been decided that the club will be closed for a week, and that all of the girls will be here to dance next weekend, does this sound all right to you girls?”
“Yeah, fine,” they agreed, and she walked off to the next group of forlorn and now fully clothed strippers sitting on the edge of the stage.
Asia was the unofficial leader of the girls, and the number one girl at the club. She was amazing looking for 40, with a young and supple body to compliment her breasts that she paid for in only a weeks worth of tips. She had glow in the dark barbell piercings through each nipple, which she revealed to the audience with her signature move; holding onto the pole with her muscular thighs and hanging upside down as she pulled off her tiny mid drift shirt. Asia easily had every man who was inside the club at her rail, and many of the people on the balcony would come back inside when they heard her name announced, followed by her signature song, which was a techno beat and the repeating of the words “me love you long time” every few seconds.
She definitely played on her nationality, and it worked. Who could blame her?
The only other girl at the club whom everyone looked up to was Barbie, but she had been out for a few weeks because of some injuries due to a car accident that she was in. Barbie didn’t look like a Barbie doll; she had dark brown hair and dark brown eyes that complimented her warm sugary skin. She had a tattoo on her back that read “Devious Doll, Traitorous Toy,” and a small c-section scar that was hidden in the glow of the red and blue stage lights. But Barbie was a bit of a big girl, the kind with curves in all of the right places, and just a few in the wrong. As much as men will openly go after the rail thin “Barbie Dolls” of the world, they still have a strange caveman attraction to the big breasted mamas. Barbie was out to be the new norm, and she gathered quite a following along the way.
And of course Shimmer had the moves and was curiously flexible, which shot her right up to the top at the club.
Silver on the other hand was just your run of the mill pretty twenty-something who didn’t want to work fast food. You can either work fast food or strip when you’re pretty and twenty-something in San Bernardino, but if you wanted to make real money, you’d strip. It was just a job for Silver; she didn’t really work the audience very much, or give many lap dances. On most nights she made just under $100, where as Shimmer usually made at least $150-$200. But Silver was okay with that, her heart wasn’t into it really. She didn’t love being a stripper like some of the girls.
On the nights that she did break $100 it was because her regular had come in and asked her to sit with him at his table for the night. He was an older man, obviously lonely. But he liked her better than all of the other girls for some reason, and bought her lots of drinks. He never asked for lap dances, just her company was good enough. He usually came in on Friday nights, and all of the regular bar patrons knew that when Silver was at his table that she was off limits for the night.
Mr. Doolittle never sat at her rail when she was on stage. He would just wait until she got back to the table to hand her $10 and buy her another drink. Ah but Silver didn’t drink alcohol, so she and Doolittle would split a cherry coke float and the occasional basket of fries or hot wings.
She never knew his first name because he introduced himself as Mr. Doolittle, just like she introduced herself as Silver. He showed her his driver’s license once, but he put his thumb over his first name. He was telling her about the spelling of Doolittle, and about how “back in the day it was spelled Dulittle, but somebody sneaky changed it up on us,” he said.
He was cute like a grandpa, and Silver enjoyed his company probably as much as he enjoyed hers. She would even slip up on occasion and go back to her old Tennessee accent, which she tried desperately to hide when she moved out to California just so that she wouldn’t stand out. Some would argue that as a stripper she would want to stand out, but not in San Bernardino, where people called you a hick, or asked you were you were from every five seconds. It was just easier to be a girl without a past than to have any sort of depth. Just a girl in a bar, that’s all she was.
Hi, I’m Silver, pleasure to meet you.
Some time around 4:00 AM the cops started letting people go home. Marina was glad that she had driven herself, but a little put out that Matt never even called to see if she made it home all right like he usually did. Actually, he would really call to see if she had driven drunk, which she never did, and ask how much money she made. Then he would tell her exactly what she needed to do with every dollar of it. “You owe $67 to the phone company and you can put $20 in for gas but the rest needs to be spent at school.”
In a way it annoyed her, but she also realized that she needed some kind of money management, and if anyone could manage money it was Matt, so she didn’t mind. Okay, so she did mind a little, but she knew that he was just looking out for what’s best for her. If Matt wasn’t there to help her put her money in the right places she might end up short on funds when it came time to pay a bill or buy something that she needed for school. And with the club being closed for a week, she wasn’t quite sure how she would make it until the weekend.
She could easily go work at The Temptress for the week just to have some kind of cash coming in. Then again, The Temptress had probably been Smashed as far as she knew. Atom Smash…what an obviously fake name. Armando probably wasn’t Armando’s real name, but at least it matched his accent.
Poor Armando. She still felt bad about what happened to him, even though she supposed that it wasn’t directly her fault, she still felt an involvement. He was such a good guy, trying hard to run a clean club when there’s so much pressure to just look the other way. But the man had religious beliefs, and he upheld them even when Smash presented him with $1.5 million for the club and every girl in it, but Armando couldn’t do that to his girls. Unlike most strip club owners, he cared about the girls. He sent flowers to Asia when she was having her breasts done, and even visited Barbie in the hospital after she rolled her Explorer.
The reason that he was down arguing in the parking lot with the brother of the guy that Shimmer hit was because he didn’t like his girls to see him “take care of business” so to speak. This is because the guys who usually complain have nasty things to say about whatever dancer he was offended by, and Armando didn’t feel that his girls should have to listen to that. On the rare occasion that someone was spitting mad over something a girl did (or didn’t do,) Armando handled it outside.
He did it for all of the girls, not just Shimmer. He had quarreled over the accidental lactation of Barbie’s breasts onto a man who was wearing a $3,000 suit at the time that he was getting a lap dance from her. Armando knew that she had come back to work too soon after Frydday was born, but it was her choice to be there. Armando defended her, and told that guy that if he didn’t want to be squirted with breast milk that he should go to a gay bar where that definitely wouldn’t happen. “It mother nature,” he later told the girls who had crowded around him, all upset as they worried whether Barbie would be asked to leave the club or not. “That guy was fucking a asshole,” he concluded.
As Marina drove home in her Buick, she winged a little prayer for the man whom she would like to have considered a loyal friend.