Doc in the Box (2 page)

“I try to enforce the rules,” he said, batting his mascaraed eyelashes sincerely. “The women give me a tip on the hip and then I give them a kiss on the hand or something. I try to keep it as clean as possible, but sometimes you have to say, watch that. That’s all part of the fun.”

“So what did you do the night this place was raided?” I thought it was time to remind Leo he stripped for a living. The Heart’s Desire had been
raided last December. Four dancers were arrested for lewd and indecent conduct, and a lot of women customers were mighty embarrassed. All charges were dropped later.

“During the raid, I was able to escape out the back door,” he said, looking me straight in the eye like a good liar. I saw the cash Leo had pulled in last night. I wondered how many cops he’d had to pay off.

“Does your mother know you do this?”

He looked hurt, and I felt like a rat for asking. But I was supposed to be a reporter, not an adoring fan. “She didn’t for a long time, but I finally had to tell her after the raid. She seemed to take it pretty positively.”

“So what are you going to be when you grow up, Leo? Are you going to college?”

“I’m not really college material,” he said. Right. He looked like he was solid Kryptonite. “I flunked out of Forest Park.”

That took some work. The local community college wasn’t exactly Harvard.

“I don’t want to do this forever,” he said. “It’s a business. I know I have a shelf life, and it’s coming to an end soon. I’m thirty years old. I’m finding gray hairs and fighting a gut already. I’d like to find some nice woman who’d take care of me. We could settle down, maybe have a family if she wants. I’m not really interested in a business career.”

“Are you kidding? You could do sales. You’d be a huge success.” I wished my eyes didn’t slide downward at the word huge. I wished he’d put on his sailor pants. He did.

“Wrong,” he said. “I tried it. I was bad. I couldn’t stand the rejection. Office work bores me. I can’t sit at a desk all day.”

I couldn’t imagine Leo keeping his clothes on for eight hours at a stretch, either.

“But I wouldn’t mind if she had a career. I wouldn’t feel threatened by her success or anything,” he said earnestly. “I’d enjoy taking care of her house while she went to work. I could cook dinner for her and clean and run errands. You know, pick up the dry cleaning and grocery shop for her.” Amazing. Inside this stud muffin was a perfect 1950s wife, waiting to get out.

But instead of tying on his June Cleaver apron, he slipped on his flexible dancing shoes, then slipped them off several times. “Testing,” the Titanic Lover said, with that iceberg-melting smile. “Sometimes the shoes are a little too tight and you can’t get them off.”

The first notes of the
Titanic
theme drifted through the door. Leo took one more look in the mirror and liked what he saw. “Time to go to work.” Pumped and primped, Leo grabbed his glittering life preserver and ran out onstage. I followed, hanging back in the wings to watch. That’s what I do as a newspaper columnist. I watch, while other people live their lives. The world was a show put on for my benefit, and most of the time, I was entertained. Now I was fascinated by how the women started screaming the minute he stepped onstage. It reminded me of those old videos of Beatles concerts. They were screaming so loud I could hardly hear the souped-up version of “My Heart Will Go On.” If he looked good in the dressing room, he looked even better onstage. Stage was too grand a word for where Leo performed. It was a raised black plywood platform that in daylight showed every nick and scuff. But now it looked like a
pedestal for a bronze god. The strobe lights on his white uniform were dazzling.

Sturdy chrome railings kept the fans at bay, and burly bare-chested guys wearing tight shorts and black bow ties kept the more athletic women from climbing over. But there was plenty of room for their hands to stretch out and wave those bills. Women are supposed to be poor tippers, but I saw fives, tens, and even twenty-dollar bills flapping in the breeze. But Leo knew how to play hard to get. He didn’t go for the money right away. First he displayed the goods, that bronze body in the form-fitting sailor suit. Then, the music switched to one of those fast, thumpy songs with about seven words (I wanna, shake your booty, sex, body) that you hear in aerobics classes, and Leo ripped off his shirt with two hands. He made the gesture look powerful, like he was ripping a phone book in half. A nimble, dark-haired woman grabbed for the shirt. Leo artfully yanked it out of her hands—he’d told me he’d lost more than one custom-tailored costume that way—and flung it over his shoulder into the backstage safety zone. Then he gyrated, naked from the waist up. The women yowled like love-struck alley cats.

Their enthusiasm was touching. I’d seen female strippers at work, and the primary emotion for the women dancers and their male patrons was boredom. As the female strippers danced, you could almost feel their contempt for any man dumb enough to watch them. The men seemed equally contemptuous of any woman who would take off her clothes for them. The men nursed their watered drinks and stared blankly at the women, who went through the motions like badly made robots. This club had a split
personality. Its Ladies’ Nights with Leo and the other male dancers were high-energy events. The rest of the time, it had listless female strippers.

There was a kind of innocence to Leo and these women. He seemed so eager to please, and they … well, they were definitely pleased. If they were screaming over his looks, think what they’d do if they knew he wanted to cook and keep house for a working woman. I supposed that was his delicate way of saying he’d stay home and she’d be the breadwinner. Plenty of women my mother’s age made that bargain in reverse with a man, and I knew lots of overworked women now who’d be happy to have their own deal with a hunky homemaker. I considered it myself. What would it be like to have the little man waiting for you at the door with your slippers and a dry martini, when you got home from the corporate wars? “How was your day, dear?” he’d say. “Dinner will be ready in five minutes.”

Leo could put the sailor act in dry dock—being waited on by a handsome man was every woman’s real fantasy. The Poplar Street Bridge would be jammed with women heading to the Heart’s Desire to propose to Leo. I wondered if I could be happy with him. He was easy on the eyes. He’d never tax my brain, either. What would we talk about, once we exhausted the subject of makeup brands and hair spray? The only book Leo had opened since he flunked out of school was the Yellow Pages. I liked my men smart. Like Lyle. We could talk about anything—books, politics, music, even offbeat topics like how Michael Mann shot part of
Manhunter
at the St. Louis airport, and the gory details of Elvis’s autopsy. Lyle could quote romantic poetry and Shakespeare by
the yard, which wasn’t a surprise, since he was an English professor. If we discussed
Hairspray
, it would be the movie, not the product.

We didn’t just talk, either. Oh, no. I remembered our nights and long afternoons together. Lyle made Leo look like a prancing kid. But I pushed those scenes out of my mind. I couldn’t think about that. There was no point in going on about it. We were through. We’d broken up at the end of last summer, and it was April now. We were finished. It was over.

I hadn’t dated anyone since the breakup. What choices did I have at age thirty-seven? The good ones were either married or gay. Where would I meet men, anyway? At the
Gazette
, I could choose from a limited number of bitter divorced men who griped about their ex-wives and wanted me to watch their kids on custody weekends. The
Gazette
single men were a discouraging collection who lived with their mothers or in dingy bachelor apartments. One guy used his lampshade as an emergency sock drier. The man knew nothing about laundry. If you needed your socks dried in a hurry, you nuked them.

My other choices were Clayton lawyers who worked eighty-hour weeks, and corporate types whose idea of a casual evening was to loosen their tie. No thanks. I was through with men. Watching Leo was all the action I wanted.

Look at that guy whip those hips. The man had lost his pants and shoes, and was now moving those long, strong legs and taut buns. The women in the audience were either swooning, screaming, or stuffing money in his Titanic G-string.

They were a cross section of respectable women.
That group there, the thirty-somethings in the matronly flowered dresses and pantsuits, could be seen at any PTA meeting. Those gray-haired women with the sweet faces and soft, spreading figures looked like they belonged to a women’s sodality. Except I don’t think they ever yelled “Take it off. Take it all off!” in the church basement.

There were four professional women in power suits and wedge cuts, who’d probably come here straight from the office. And that group of ten over there, toasting a young woman seated at a table overflowing with balloons, champagne bottles, and unwrapped presents, was obviously a bachelorette party. A slim, laughing redhead detached herself from the group and ran down to the front row. Was that a ten-dollar bill she was waving? Leo’s G-string was already bulging with so much money, I feared a major cash flow problem. Sure enough, when an older woman with hair the color of tarnished brass slipped a fiver in at his shaking hip, some bills fluttered to the floor. Leo ignored them and kept dancing. A couple of thrifty types picked up the money and recycled it as their tips. Talk about cheap behavior. The redhead elbowed her way through the cheapskates, and stuffed a ten down Leo’s Titanic front. There was something familiar about her manicure.

Wait a minute. I knew that woman. I’d seen her earlier today. She was a nurse. In the chemo ward at Moorton Hospital.

“Valerie!” I yelled over the noise and the music. “Valerie Cannata!”

“Francesca!” she yelled back. “How the heck are you? And what are you doing here?”

We ducked into the lounge off the main entrance
to talk for a minute. “I’m doing a story for the
Gazette,”
I said. “What’s your excuse?”

“You get paid for covering this?” she said.

“Covering doesn’t quite describe what’s going on here. Yes, I get paid. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.”

She giggled. “We’re here for Laura. She’s an ER nurse who’s getting married Saturday. This is her last night to howl.”

“Why would an emergency room nurse who sees naked people all day want to see naked men at night?”

“She wants to see a healthy body, babe. One that’s not shot, burned, or broken. Now I’ve got a question for you. It’s plain nosy, so you can answer it or not. Are you related to that woman you came with to the chemo ward?”

“No,” I said. “Georgia doesn’t have any family here. She’s a friend. More than a friend, actually. She’s my mentor at the
Gazette
, the only decent editor I have. She was diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctor did a partial mastectomy, and now that she’s recovered from the operation, she starts chemo and radiation. I don’t want her to go alone for treatment. She’s not herself right now. She’s scared. I’ve never seen her like that before.”

Valerie patted my arm. “You hang in there, sweetie,” she said. “You’ll get through it. She will, too. It’s good that she doesn’t have to go alone. You’re doing the right thing.”

Valerie had the gift of making people feel better, just by talking to them. She didn’t ooze useless sympathy. I was glad she was working with Georgia. She also knew the right time to end things. “Hey, we’re
missing that heavenly body,” she said. “Why don’t you get back to work, and I’ll get back to ogling Leo. Do you think if I ran my ATM card down the crack in his butt I could get some money?”

“Shame on you, repeating that old joke. Besides, I think the church ladies have already tried that.” I told her about the recycled tips as we rejoined the crowd. By that time, the women were wild with lust, clapping their hands and shrieking “harder, harder, harder!” while Leo danced what we used to call the Dirty Dog with Laura, the bride-to-be. One of her friends videotaped them. At least I hoped the video taper was a friend. Otherwise, most of the bride’s salary would be going for blackmail. Dollars were falling around Leo like green rain. Then, suddenly, the dancing was over. The music stopped and the strobe shut down. Leo made a graceful bow, scooped up the dropped dollars, and ran off stage.

I met him in the dressing room. Two big guys in shorts and black bow ties were barricading the dressing room door from enthusiastic fans, but the men had orders to let me in.

Sweat poured down Leo’s back, and his damp hair clung to his neck. But he ignored it. He was taking bills out of his G-string—fives, tens, twenties.

“Hey, is that a fifty?” I said.

“You bet. Got that from the big blonde in the corner.”

“The heavyset one in the green pantsuit?”

“That’s her. The bigger they are, the better they tip.

Love those big, beautiful women,” he said, kissing President Grant full on the lips.

The sink was now overflowing with tip money. “I
haven’t counted it all,” he said, “but the take looks like about six hundred dollars.”

“For one show?” I said, awestruck.

“Yep. I’ll do another one at eleven. The ladies don’t stay late. They’re usually heading home by midnight.”

“You make twelve hundred dollars a night?” I said.

“More when I do the rush-hour show,” he said, stuffing the money into a blue nylon gym bag. “But, hey, I work for it.”

Then he turned around. There were long, red scratches from his navel down into parts unknown, made by long, sharp fingernails cramming money into his G-string.

“My god, that looks painful,” I said.

He shrugged and shoved the last of the money into the gym bag, then zipped it shut. He picked up his costume from the floor, smoothed the wrinkles, and carefully hung it back under the plastic bag.

I stayed in the dressing room with him until the eleven o’clock show. Officer Friendly came back with a bag from McDonald’s, and ate Big Macs and fries. Neither one said much I could use in the story. Both were exhausted. Leo drank bottled water (“soda makes you fat”), ate a PowerBar, and showered. I didn’t go with him for that. Then he and Officer Friendly went through the oiling and dressing routine again, with one extra step for Leo. He covered the bloody scratches on his hips and stomach with an aloe vera salve, and then hid them with makeup. “If you look close, you’ll see some permanent scars,” he said, but that was the last thing I wanted to do. I stuck around for the second show and picked up a couple of funny quotes from the women in the audience. One grandmother insisted that I
not
use her
name. Her friend insisted that I
should. “
Time the grandkids learn there’s still some life in Grandma,” she said.