Have Spacecat, Will Travel: And Other Tails by John Hartness (top ebook reader .TXT) 📕

had I seen a strip club in a mobile home before. This was something truly special, and not in a good way. The wheels were still on Ezmerelda’s, apparently just waiting for the inevitable crackdown by the police, or the CDC. There were a dozen or so cinderblocks plopped on the ground to make a rickety set of steps, and a blinking pink “OPEN” sign in the window.

The winner, at least from the outside, was the “Ezmerelda’s” sign. Alternating pink and blue neon, it wasn’t just a simple name sign. Oh no, this was redneck rare gas art at its finest. The capital “E” was blue, with a pair of pink breasts capping each hump of the letter, blinking on and off in pink neon. The apostrophe was the tip of a devil tail that curled up from the “s” at the end of the name and flicked on and off alternately with the e-boobs. It was neither funny, nor titillating, which summed up my prior experience with “gentlemen’s clubs” in just a few words.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said, gaping at Dawn.

“Nope.” She tried, I’ll give her credit for that, but the corner of her mouth just wouldn’t stay level. She was enjoying this all the way down to her black little heart.

I sighed. “Give me some cash.” I held out my hand.

“Are you broke?”

“I’m always broke. You know that. And even if I wasn’t, I’m not paying my own way into Jethro Clampett’s strip club. You want me chasing a demon in the world’s sleepiest sex club, you’re at least buying me enough alcohol to disinfect myself from the inside out.”

She handed me a folded wad of twenties and parked the SUV at the end of a row of bonds-colored pickups and battered Honda Civics. It didn’t surprise me that there weren’t a whole lot of station wagons and minivans in the gravel lot. It also didn’t surprise me that two of the trucks were rocking side to side as I walked past them to the door.

I pulled open the flimsy metal door and was assaulted by a wave of overdriven bass cabinets, flashing lights, and cigarette smoke. It was almost enough to make me turn around and bolt back to the safety of Dawn’s Escalade, but I knew I couldn’t do that. No matter how distasteful I found the place, and no matter how much I wanted to strangle the DJ, if there was a demon on the premises, I had to deal with it.

A giant of a man with a shaved head and skin the color of milk chocolate smiled down at me, one gold tooth gleaming in the disco lights. “Nah, sugar. You way to pretty too come in here. These hillbillies ain’t got enough money to get you naked, the dope is too harsh to get you mellow, and the boys is too ugly and old to get you interested. What you doing at Ezzie’s on a shit night like tonight?”

I smiled up at him and held out a hand. “I’m just looking for a little excitement. I heard this was the place to find a late-night party. You gonna stand there between me and my good time, sexy, or you gonna help me in the door?” I laid on a Southern accent that wouldn’t have been out of place on an episode of Designing Women, and the giant doorman shook his head at me again, taking my hand.

“No charge for you, beautiful. You make this whole place look better just walking in the door.”

I patted him on the cheek and slipped by him into the cramped room, making sure to give my butt a little extra wiggle as I walked over and leaned on the rickety bar. The bartender was a trim man with a sour expression, a brush cut, and a mustache that looked like it belonged on either a broom or a porn star, I couldn’t decide which. “What you want?” he growled at me, not meeting my eyes.

I cleared my throat. “You can’t even see my boobs through this shirt, jerk. So quit ogling my chest and get me a Bud Light.” I slapped a twenty on the bar, and he made it disappear. He came back a minute later with an opened bottle of cheap American lager and sixteen dollars in change. I picked up three fives and left him a buck. He never took his eyes off my shirt as he slipped the dollar into an empty pitcher sitting on the bar.

I turned to lean my back on the bar and take stock of the room. It didn’t take long. There wasn’t a whole lot of stock to take, and it certainly wasn’t on the rise. There were maybe a dozen round tables littered across the room, with armless chairs sporting cracked vinyl seats in dark red and green. Two skinny girls who looked like they should be home studying for Algebra danced in front of grinning men who could have been their fathers, or their creepy uncles, more like it.

One skinny tweaker in a stained white tank top leaned on the edge of the stage, fanning dollar bills onto the stage between the spread legs of a brunette with big boobs, a fluorescent yellow thong, and a disinterested look on her face. If you’d walked up and told me she was doing complex math equations in her head, I would have believed it. That’s how little attention she was paying to the panting meth head between her thighs.

Nobody in the room looked like they had much in the way of sex magic going on; it was more like they were all going through the motions. They had a part to play, and they went about their roles dutifully, but without much fervor. There was an overall pall to the room that lay over everything, like a wet blanket weighing down the place’s energy.

I twirled my fingers behind my back, reaching out to the strains