Random Acts of Trust (21 page)

OK,
I texted back,
Where are you?

She typed back an address, one that I knew. I could walk there in ten minutes, but...this time of night? I guess I’d be all right.

I wrote back,
Anything I need to bring?

Her reply was quite simple: N
o.

I looked at my jeans and collected tee shirts, thinking. All the advice we’d received from the career counselors at UMass said that you went to a job interview dressed in business clothes with a fresh haircut, clean and sharp. I didn’t have any of that. In fact—I ran a hand across my jaw—I hadn’t even shaved today. A job interview is a job interview, but a spur of the moment 4AM interview request made me doubt “Louise” was a particularly particular HR manager. And even if she were, for some reason, expecting a suit, all I had here were jeans, and t-shirts, and a few winter things.

I went into the bathroom to clean up at least a little. My hair was caked with sweat along the scalp line, and yet, I had never seen my face so alive. She did that to me. Amy. I smelled like sex and beer. At least I could wash the sex off.

A quick face wash, then I pulled out the electric razor and buzzed through quickly, scrubbing the sweat away ruefully. Some deodorant to make sure I wasn’t too stinky, and I figured whatever came next was whatever was fated for me.

I regretted not grabbing a jacket when the cold air hit me outside, but I shoved my hands in my pockets and walked. Living in the city had taught me not to make too much eye contact, which was my tendency, but to keep my head down instead—looking people in the eye all the time was kind of a pain. I found that at least some of every single person’s emotions were reflected in their eyes and after a while, and I too easily became too full, full of everybody else’s feelings.

Struggling with my own was hard enough – I didn’t need to have anyone else’s suffering ping back and forth inside me. Maybe that was why it had been so hard to do anything but shut Amy out four and a half years ago. Thank God she was the forgiving type.

As I crossed the street and took a left, headed toward the address, I thought about that one for a minute. Thank God—God? I hadn’t thought about God for four and a half years. That wasn’t quite right...it’s more that I hadn’t wanted to think about God. Dad’s entire career was built around Our Heavenly Father, and he expected us to worship
him
the same way that he expected his congregants to worship The Almighty.

If God had a hand in my interview right now, then it was a pretty fucking random one. And if God had a hand in my life, then he had some really twisted ways of trying to lead me to salvation. You know where I found The Divine? In Amy’s kiss – that’s where.

I found the address quickly. I looked at the door; it listed a lawyer and a CPA on official, businesslike placards. The third listing read L. Erhardt Entertainment. That must be it. I pushed the doorbell and shoved my hands deeper in my pockets, my arms covered in gooseflesh until the door opened with a
buzz-click!

I got an immediate creepy feeling despite the welcome warmth; my muscles tensed and my arms instinctively readying to grab, hit, or run.

Why had it taken me this long to realize that maybe I was being set up for something? Liam would never do that in a million years, but…I had only assumed.

Those texts hadn’t mentioned Liam.

Looking around, I forced myself to calm down. Whatever this was
might
be a little on the sketchy side, but this was an office building, respectable looking. The office directory on the lobby wall said L. Entertainment was on the second floor. I took the steps, not wanting to get caught in an elevator with anyone hinky. Just opposite the second floor landing was a door with a black painted window in its center. Above the window, in a boring and businesslike font, gold and black lettering read L. Entertainment Industries.

A light shone under the door, so I knocked, and someone shouted, “Come in!”

An older woman with short, curly, gray and black hair sat behind a desk; two guys about my age, lounging on a couch. They wore jeans and t-shirts, and one of them was counting cash out in a roll. I looked around. I didn’t see any bags of grass or white powder, this wasn’t some kind of drug operation, but what the fuck had Liam gotten me into?

She stood, blue eyes behind gold-rimmed spectacles. Her face was a bit plump; she could have been anybody’s mother. She held her hand out and I crossed the room, remembering my manners. As we clasped hands she looked me straight in the eye, narrowed her own, and combed over my entire body as if I were a rack of ribs. “Louise Erhardt,” she said.

“Sam Hinton,” I nodded. I looked around and our hands let go.

She thumbed toward the guys. “That’s Aaron and Jack.” They both nodded, one of them grunting. I did the same. “Did Liam explain to you what we do here?” she asked, looking at me with a cagey expression.

I just shrugged. “He just said that this might be a good gig for me.”

“You comfortable with undressing?” she asked.

That made me stop cold. “
Undressing?
” I asked.

“Yeah. I’ll bet, in the right uniform, and under the right circumstances, you’ve got what it takes.”

“What it takes?” I was regretting those beers. The room was a little too...something. Maybe my life really was turning into something like Charlie Kelly’s. Minus the glue huffing.

“What it takes to make three hundred a night for about...five hours work.”

“If you’ve got a gig that pays three hundred a night for five hours work, I’ll make sure I’ve got what it takes,” I said.
Holy shit!
Three hundred bucks a night? I could work two nights a week and be fine, and the rest of my time would be saved for music. “But...what is this?” I asked, wary and looking around.

Suddenly, two guys walked around the corner, both dressed in cop uniforms. In one fluid motion, one of the guys reached up to his collar and pulled down viciously, the entire outfit separating into two parts, neck to ankle, along velcroed seams. He stepped nimbly, almost delicately, out of the fabric and stood there in a shining blue g-string and the hat on his head.

Louise pointed. “
That’s
what the gig does.”

“Stripping?” I choked out.

The two pseudo-cops and the guys on the couch started laughing, a low gravelly sound. They weren’t making fun of me. This was why I was here for a job interview at four in the morning – these were the hours. I got an extra good look at the cop who hadn’t stripped down, the rim of his hat bent over his face, and realized I knew him.

“Goddammit, Liam! Why didn’t you just tell me what this was?”

He threw the hat on the couch and burst out laughing, golden hair more caked with sweat than mine had been. He crossed his arms over his chest, the fake gold badge on his shirt brushing against his forearm, and he said, “’Cuz in a million years I never imagined you’d actually come and try this out.”

“For three hundred bucks a night? I’ll try out damn near anything.” And then I frowned. “Wait a minute,” I mumbled. I looked at Louise. “It’s
just
stripping, right?”

The guy standing there in the shining g-string, looking like a very hot version of Borat, said, “That part is up to you. Some of us,” he mulled over his answer, “let opportunity dictate how much we make.”

“He means that some guys will take the extras that women offer,” Liam said bluntly.

Louise pretended not to notice the conversation and started shuffling some folders. I was starting to get the point. “How does this work?” I asked.

She said, “Well, I need you to do an audition.”

“An audition?” I choked out.

Liam mugged, his blue eyes sparkling. “We all have to do it,” he said.

“Do I get a chance to practice?”

“If you want. Most guys don’t.” She paused, then added, “We need to record it, though.”

My jaw clenched involuntarily. “It doesn’t end up on YouTube, or TMZ, or Reddit, does it?”

“It doesn’t end up anywhere, Sam. I just have a couple of test women who will watch it and tell me what they think. If you’re good enough, though, your two minute audition here may get you the job.”

I took a long, deep breath in, then let it out slowly. I looked around the room and thought about how life could change so quickly. It was the fact that I took a giant leap and didn’t let my past dictate my future that got me Amy tonight. What else could I break free from if I just acted?

I clapped my hands together once, looked at Louise, and said, “All right. Where do we start?”

I waved Liam over and huddled with him. I wanted to wipe the smirk off his face with a cup of battery acid, but that wasn’t going to help the situation.
“She wants me to do a strip tease
right now?
”

Liam’s grin spread across his face as if it were contagious. “That’s how Louise works.”

“You gotta be shittin’ me,” I whispered. “Is this for real or is this some kind of elaborate practical joke? Is there a camera here?”

“The only camera here is the one that’s going to video tape you so she can test you in front of a group of women. Unless you do so well that she doesn’t even have to do that.”

My eyes bored into his. “Let me guess, you did so well in your audition that you didn’t have to go through the video thing.”

Liam pounded his chest like a silverback gorilla. “That’s right,” he said. “See, even you knew that.”

“
Fuck
. How do you do a strip tease?” I asked, confused and overwhelmed. But the idea of making three- or four-hundred bucks a night, a couple nights a week, meant that I could put a lot of things aside, including my dignity.

“Just do what they do in those Chippendale shows, or that movie that came out awhile ago,
Magic Mike
.”

“I’m not exactly Channing Tatum.”

Liam stood to his full height and squared his shoulders. “Hell no we’re not. We’re better.”

That made me laugh. “So the people that you do this for…”

His eyes went hard. “Be prepared to dance for your mom.”

“What? WHAT?” I shouted. Everyone in the room turned and looked at me.

“Keep your voice down,” he said. “Most of these things are chicks about five years older than us and a bunch of their moms. Be prepared for these women to just want to touch you, and stick money down your pants.”

“
You get tips?
”

“Hell yeah, you get tips, that’s where all the money comes from.”

“You don’t have to do anything with anyone, do you?”

“No. No.” He held his palm out in a firm gesture of a boundary. “Some of these guys might, but I don’t do any of that shit.”

“And you still make good money?”

“I’m making about seven hundred bucks a week, just for two nights work. Fridays and Saturdays are it, after our band gigs.”

“Why do
you
need to do that kind of work?” I asked him. “Your parents paid for college and did all of that for you.”

He rolled his eyes. “Dad cut me off when I graduated.”

“Your dad cut you off?”

“Since I wouldn’t go to law school, or med school, or any of the other visions that they had for me.” Eyeroll.

I snickered. I couldn’t help it, and then put my hand over my mouth. “So, do your parents know you do this?”

“
Fuck, no
, they don’t know that I do this,” he said, irritated. Funny how Liam changed when he didn’t have all the power. “But, I can live pretty well on this and whatever we make from our band gigs, so…” He shrugged. “Get ready to take your clothes off, dude.”

“How far down do I have to go?”

He pointed to the guy’s dayglow blue g-string. “Are you okay with that?”

It was about as bad as wearing a Speedo on the swim team. I mulled it over. Would I do that for seven hundred bucks a week? Would I let women touch me and tuck money into that thing, their hands sliding over my hips, probably grabbing my ass here and there? Seven hundred a week. …versus…ass grabbing. Seven hundred a week. Ass grabbing. For seven hundred a week.

Seven hundred a week won.

“What do I need to do?” I said, in a louder voice, turning to Louise.

She docked her iPod into some speakers and ran her fingers over it, looking for a song. “Get started when you hear the music, honey.”

Think of it as drumming and
just
follow the beat
, I told myself, trying not to get tense while I waited. If I just followed the beat, I could do damn near anything. My mind tried to occupy itself with anything other than the thought that I was now going to go down to my boxer briefs for a group of people I’d never met, very possibly for free, all before five in the morning.