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“Or what, you’ll call the cops?” I asked. I actually leaned in toward the bar, but I was too short to lean over it. He was out of my physical reach, which was good, because his anger felt warm and good.
“If you really hate supernaturals, help us hunt this one down,” Newman said.
“Are you saying there’s a monster on the loose in our town?” His anger started seeping away to be replaced with fear. He was such a big, tough guy, I hadn’t expected him to scare so easily.
As the anger faded and the fear grew, I fought not to pout. I couldn’t eat fear. Fuck, this was a potential witness, not prey. I looked at him, so big and tough and scared, and wondered if that was why he hated preternatural citizens, because they were all stronger than he could ever be. No amount of weight lifting or gym work would give him what lycanthropy or vampirism could.
“No, nothing like that,” Newman said. “We just need some information to confirm a few things so we can go back and execute this one.”
“Help us out, and there’ll be one less monster in the world,” I said.
“Promise?” the bartender almost whispered, and for a moment, I wondered if he had a real reason to hate the monsters. I’d liked it better when I could just hate the bartender. I didn’t want to think about what bad thing had happened to put such fear into him. Disliking him for being a prejudiced asshole had been so much more fun.
“Promise,” Newman said.
“Who you looking for?” the bartender asked, and there was no fight left in him.
“She dances under the name Giselle.”
“She’s one of our headliners. She doesn’t work days.”
“Give us her name and address, and we’ll go to her,” Newman said.
The bartender shook his head. “I can’t give out the girls’ real names and addresses. I’m the head of security. I’d fire anyone else that did it. I can’t break my own rule.”
“Not even for the police?” I asked.
We tried to persuade him, but he stood firm. He felt responsible for the safety of the dancers at his club. I couldn’t help admiring his determination to protect them, but that didn’t change the fact that he was incredibly bigoted and sexist. His very desire to protect the women who worked at the club could even have been an outgrowth of sexism: Women are physically weaker than men, so men must protect them. I couldn’t argue the fact that most men could beat most women on upper-body strength. The problem was that some men drew the conclusion that lesser body strength meant lesser in all things. That was what pissed me off, and I’d met a lot of men who couldn’t seem to want to protect women without feeling they were lesser beings. It was one of the reasons I didn’t let most men step between me and a problem. I was not lesser, just smaller. I was not less just because you could outlift me in the weight room. We all had our strengths and weaknesses. Some people could do the math for astrophysics; other people could drive a stick shift—no one person could do it all.
We settled for Barry the bartender calling the dancer and persuading her to come down to the club to talk to us. “How do we know she’ll show up?” I asked.
“I take good care of the girls. They trust me. She’ll come. I can’t promise she’ll give you the answers you’re looking for, but she’ll show up. Find a table and order something to eat. She’ll be here.” He seemed so certain of himself that I let it go.
Newman and I took the menus and walked deeper into the dark interior of the club. The narrow entrance with the bar widened out until you could see the room was a lot bigger than it had looked from the doorway. We found a table far away from the stage. I had no inclination to watch the woman on the stage. I had my own breasts; I didn’t need to look at hers. Yes, I dated a few women, but that did not mean I wanted to see them all naked. The same went for men: Just because you like the gender doesn’t mean you want to see them all. It’s not Pokémon.
I sat so that Newman could watch if he wanted to, but he didn’t seem interested either. He concentrated on his menu like it was important. I wondered if he was uncomfortable. I wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, but I wasn’t comfortable either. It just felt awkward, like I wanted to go up onstage and tell the dancer to clap to the beat of the music until she found it. The few men drinking near the stage seemed not to notice her lack of rhythm, which bothered me, too.
“I know what I’m ordering. How about you?” I asked.
“I thought I’d get coffee. Seemed like the safest thing to get here.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“It’s a strip club. They aren’t known for their cuisine.”
If Edward or even Olaf had been there, I’d have explained that I’d thought about eating the bartender, so I really needed to eat food. Since I couldn’t say that to Newman, I just said I was hungry, which was true. It was bar food, which ran high to fried food, but I didn’t have to sweat my cholesterol, so that was fine. I liked fried food.
I got a burger, fries, and a Coke. Newman chose chicken fingers with fries, water, and a Coke. I added water to my order, and Newman took both the menus and our orders to tell Barry the bartender. Newman and I had both decided that I didn’t need to interact with Barry any more than necessary.
A blond woman wearing a very short black dress started walking through the room. Her hair was long, waving artfully over one shoulder so that it looked casual. I’d have had to touch the hair to know if it just lay that way or if hair-care product held it in place. She touched a shoulder here, a cheek there at some of the other tables. She stayed away from the stage area, where the other dancer was still doing her awkward wiggle. It would have been considered rude if she tried to poach one of the customers near the stage while someone else was dancing, but the tables where people were eating or ignoring the stage were fair game.
As the blonde got closer, I could see that she was wearing black satin stilettos. The black dress was satin and shiny, moving around her body as she walked until I was sure that there was no bra under the dress, just small, tight breasts. That hint of breast underneath the satin was so much more attractive than the nearly naked woman onstage. Maybe it was the confidence that the blonde had as she moved through the room or the grace of her walk in the heels, but whatever it was, she blew the woman onstage out of the water—at least for me. I dated mostly men, but every once in a while a woman would hit my radar, and this one did.
I looked for Newman, but he was still hidden around the corner, giving our order to the bartender. How long could that take? The blonde was laughing with her head back as if whatever the three men at the table had said was the funniest thing. They probably hadn’t been that amusing at all, and no one laughed like that for real. It was as if she practiced it in a mirror the way comedians practice facial expressions for their standup, but whatever the blonde had been practicing in the mirror was elegant, sexy, and— Where was Newman?
I pushed away from the table so I could
get up to check on him, and the blonde was suddenly standing in front of me. I was staring at the black satin of her dress and had to look up to see her face. It made her seem tall, but I’d seen the heels; they added at least five inches of extra height, which made her only a little taller than me. She smiled down at me. Her gray eyes looked huge, with thick lashes framing them. She’d done her eyes up in black, gray, and silver. It looked almost Goth or emo or whatever they’re calling it these days. It should have looked bad with the yellow of her hair, but it didn’t. Neither did the silver lipstick, or maybe it was just shiny lip gloss with little sparkles in it. Whatever it was, it matched everything else she was wearing just fine.
