Offensive Behavior (Sidelined #1) (3 page)

How to
explain the switch in looks? “I’ll get more tips.”

Lizabeth
retied the lace in her boot. “You get plenty without showing so much skin.”

It was
a fuck you to every man who thought they could have anything they saw whenever
they wanted it. “I want them all to see what they can’t have.”

Lizabeth
laughed. “Now that I get.”

“I
don’t. Why?” said Kathryn. Tonight she was dressed in a white corset with red
lacing, red panties with ruffles and her flashing light platform Pleasers. “Is
this about what happened last night? Because that was stupid, Zarley, you
should’ve come back inside and called the cops on that guy.”

“We
should insist Lou lets us leave by the front door so we come straight out on
the street like the customers. The alley’s not safe,” said Melinda.

“For
real you brought a guy down?” said Kathryn.

It
wasn’t the first time. And tonight Zarley was going to bring every guy out
there to his knees without a single touch.

Because
she could.

“Is booth
dude out there?” She didn’t want to share the fact she knew his name, that he
was one of the dickheads she wanted to feel the pain of wanting what you
couldn’t have. They’d only tease her, try and make something more of it.

“He’s
out there,” said Melinda. “You’ve got a thing for him.”

“We all
have a thing for him,” said Lizabeth. “He’s ten thousand times better looking than
the average Lucky’s loser and he tips four times as much.”

“I
don’t have a thing for him,” said Melinda.

“Yeah,
yeah we know, Gerry, who respectfully supports your occasional trick turning,”
said Kathryn.

Melinda
gave a shriek of protest. “You shut your face. He doesn’t know about that. Sometimes
I just get, I just. Shit.” She stormed out, a vision of aggression in neon green
Lycra.

“The
devil made me do that,” said Kathryn with a mock contrite look on her face.

“Hope
she doesn’t fall on her head,” said Lizabeth, she leaned into the mirror to
touch up her eye makeup, “but that girl thinks she’s better than us.”

“Maybe
she is better than us. She has a profession that’s not dependent on a pole, and
a husband,” said Zarley.

“Yeah
well, if that’s what success looks like, call me patient zero of the zombie
apocalypse,” said Lizabeth.

Zarley
looked at her own reflection. There was a chance this dress wouldn’t stay in
place and she’d flash her tits. She still had time for a very quick change. “You
don’t mean that.”

“Tonight
I do.” Lizabeth gave a wolf call. “Tonight we ride so fuckheads in alleys don’t
get to win.”

“Clown,”
Kathryn snorted.

Lizabeth
howled again. Melinda’s song started up. Zarley adjusted the dress one more
time. She could secure it with magic tape or take the risk. Leaving work at
night shouldn’t have to be a risk. Kathryn was trying to out-howl Lizabeth. Lou
would send someone in any minute to see if they were killing each other.

Fuck
the risk. If she flashed her tits there wasn’t a soul here other than Lou who’d
think that was a bad thing. And Lou only cared because he didn’t want the extra
hassle that running a topless bar brought.

On her
way to the stage, she passed Melinda with a smile she hoped made the unpleasantness
in the dressing room feel less like terminal dislike and more like ordinary sisterhood.
There was a red wash over the stage tonight. It suited her mood. She stepped
into the light and heard the whoops that went up from those closest to the
stage. She was unaccountably nervous. They never whooped for her. They never
saw so much skin either.

Tonight
Jessie, Ariana and Nicki were her sisters too. She used the introduction to “Bang”
to bend over and pretend to fiddle with the buckle on her sky-high heels, but
it wasn’t about the buckle, it was about legs and ass. This was a move Cinnamon
and Lavinia, and Jasmina before them, had perfected. It was a direct provocation,
simple and devastating. She’d never done this on stage. She’d always been about
the strength and grace. Never gone out to sell sex. Never made eye contact and
she’d certainly never looked in Reid’s direction. But tonight he had a name and
tonight she was looking.

She
straightened, flicking hair her over her shoulder and arching her back, sending
her ass out and her chest high as she stalked around the pole, long loose
strides and rolling hips. Reid was in his regular booth and he was alone. She
blew a kiss in his direction and leaned her back against the pole, hands
gripping overhead.

Watch
me be unsafe, asshole
.

She lifted
her legs, opening them wide and rolling her back on the pole until she was
inverted. It was a shoulder V-mount variation all her own. It was a quick
glimpse of a heavenly destination no loser who’d accost a woman in alley would
ever get close to. And then she stopped thinking and let herself dance, at one
point looking down to see money littering the stage.

Why had
she bothered to try to be different? To pretend this was another way to be a
gymnast and get paid for it. She was such a fool, the music, the red light
washes, the beery smell and the masculine grunts were so far from the sprung
floor stadiums and the respectful silences, skills grading and moderate
applause she was used to. And if a little more skin and hair tossing, a little
more provocation captured more tips then what was the point in holding back?

Artistry
made no difference to the meathead in the alley, she might as well take all
their car payments and grocery money and get out debt free sooner rather than
later.

She
finished her first number of the set and went straight into her second, INXS’ “Need
You Tonight” with its glorious plunking guitar riff. An old song for a new
mood. She’d popped her sex act cherry tonight in a way that starting here two
years ago hadn’t done. Tonight she accepted that this was about the skin and
not the skill, knowing she could use that till she had what she needed, and
like Jasmina, move on to better times.

She got
more tips that night than the four nights before it combined. That sucked in a
good way.

She was
last to leave the dressing room again because she stopped to rearrange her
costumes, taking stock of the sexier ones, the ones more like fetish wear than
fun and games, and packing what needed washing to take home.

Lou had
agreed to letting the staff leave Lucky’s through the front door. She had a
feeling that rule wouldn’t stick, but it meant she didn’t spare a thought for meeting
trouble and she was mentally running a bath and adding the bubbles when she saw
him.

Reid. Sitting
on the pavement with his long legs out in front, head slumped forward, his back
against the window of the Liquor Barn next door.

Not her
problem.
Not
. She had sleep on her agenda, not drunk men.

He
looked utterly useless.
So don’t look
. Watch for a cab instead. There
was usually a good steady flow of them. She looked back, he’d lifted his head,
but his eyes were closed. He was pale and sweating. His shirt was wet and so
was the front of his jeans. Was he so drunk he’d pissed himself?

She
took half a dozen quick strides across the pavement and kicked the sole of his
boot. He grunted but didn’t stir. He smelled bad, but not of urine or spirits.

“Get
up, Reid. You can’t stay here.” He mumbled something she didn’t care to
interpret. The palm of one of his hands was torn and bleeding. He’d had a fall.
She looked at the sky. He wasn’t her problem, then she kicked him again. “Get
up.”

His
eyes opened but he had trouble fixing on her. “Not drunk.”

“That’s
what all the good drunks say. You need to get home.”

He
approximated a nod and she looked at him more carefully. He was sweating
profusely and it wasn’t a warm night.

“Dizzy.”

She
snorted. “You mean legless.”

“Sick.”

She
took a deep breath. That’s what she could smell, he’d barfed and tried to clean
himself up. “Did you eat from the menu tonight?” One of the kitchen hands had
been vomiting and got sent home.

He
rolled his head on the window. “Yeah.”

“Shit, you’ve
got food poisoning.”

He
grunted assent.

“Can
you get up? I’ll put you in a cab.”

She
left him trying to get his limbs organized and waved a cab down. The driver
looked at her, looked at Reid, shook his head and drove off.

“Hey!”
she yelled after him. But then another driver pulled over and Reid had made it
upright. She took his arm and led him to the curb and pushed him into the
backseat, where he seemed to pass out.

“You’re
coming too or he’s out,” said the driver.

“I’m only
the Good Samaritan. I don’t know him.”

“Well
I’m an Arab infidel, and my tea-leaf reader is in the shop for repairs. I don’t
know where he lives and he’s cramping my style.”

She
leaned in and shoved Reid till he rolled on one hip and she could get his
wallet out of his back pocket. On another occasion she might’ve noticed he had
a very nice ass.

“In or
you’re both out,” said the driver.

“Aarrgh.”
She wedged herself into the seat beside Reid and read out the address on his
driver’s license. He had a couple of fifties and hundred dollar bills in his
wallet, more than enough for this cab. She’d drop him off and continue on home,
call herself a superhero for saving someone’s butt after all.

His
place was only a five-minute ride away. Total swank job. A South Beach
warehouse conversion, all steel and glass and nothing like she expected from a
man who seemed as if he’d left good times behind. But for all its imposing
grandeur and probable view of the bay, dropping him at the hospital might’ve
been a better idea.

The
driver shifted eyes up in the mirror. “He your boyfriend?”

“Nope. Don’t
know him from Adam.”

The
driver sighed. “I’ll help you get him to his door.”

“You
are a Good Samaritan.”

“No, I
want my backseat available and there’s no way you, tiny person, can get him home
alone by yourself.”

“I’m
fine,” Reid said, and flung his door open, getting his feet to the ground but
not making it upright.

Zarley
gave the driver a fifty and there was no pretense there’d be any change, though
the fair wasn’t a quarter of that amount.

Together
they managed to get Reid out of the cab and moving to the security door, where he
mumbled a code that got them inside after much fumbling about.

“You
going to leave him like this?” the driver said while they rode the lift, Reid
propped between them, a mass of shakes, as though he was freezing cold.

“I’m
fine,” Reid said.

“And my
mother still loves me,” said the driver.

Yes,
she was going to leave him. Maybe he had a wife, though no ring, or a roommate.
There was a door buzzer and they pressed it and that roused Reid further. He placed
his hand on a sensor pad on the wall and the door opened.

The
driver backed off and he’d called the lift back and disappeared inside it before
Zarley had a chance to stop him.

Reid
staggered inside the apartment, an overhead light turning on automatically as
he moved passed it. She could’ve left him then, but there was obviously no one
else home so she followed him inside. She’d get the name of the guy who was
with him last night and call him to come around.

Holy
shit, this place
. She could see the moonlit bay and
the bridge out the huge floor-to-ceiling windows. Reid made it to an ugly sofa
in front of a truly enormous wall-mounted TV; that along with a games console
were the only things in the vast room.

Maybe
he’d just moved in.

Probably
she should get him a glass of water.

She
took a quick tour. The place was huge and echoey, barely furnished. Some kind
of stone floor. There was a single kitchen stool in the too clean to have ever
been cooked in kitchen, and a monster-sized bed in the master bedroom. Another
room was full of boxes, half of them sealed, and a glass-topped desk covered in
a mess of paper on which two different computers hummed. There was a home gym that
was seriously the bomb. All it lacked was a pole.

She
moved back into the living room, feeling like she should tiptoe for no good
reason. She’d forgotten the water.

He made
her jump when he spoke. “You can go. I’m fine.”

She
waited to see if that was all he’d say, and it was. “Normally that would be
followed by thank you.”

“Thank
you,” he mumbled, then he tried to stand and ended up on his knees on the
floor.

She
went to him as he struggled to get his feet back under him. “I need to call
your friend from last night.”

He
looked at her with unfocused eyes and recognition bloomed. “Lux.”