Page 40 of Due South

She’s right that it’s not the same, but I want so badly to latch on to her version of me: Evans, the guy who’s competent and intelligent. Evans, who can make an amazing woman come like a bottle rocket and laugh. Evans, who is deserving of attention and affection, the guy who is…good enough for a woman like her.

“It means a lot, Lucy.” I lay my hand over hers and squeeze, trying to send all the feelings I have through my fingertips. All the gratitude, all the empathy, all the pleasure that courses through me when she tells me I’m good enough. Not even that. I’m plaingood. “Thank you.”

She smiles at me, shy and sweet, and suddenly I don’t feel so small and useless anymore. If I can make a girl like Lucy smile like that, well, that’s good enough for me.

Then a waitress plunks down four giant baskets of chicken wings in front of us, dripping with buffalo sauce and smelling so spicy it makes my sinuses burn. We yank our hands away from each other, even though we weren’t doing anything halfway scandalous, and I suspect we’re both flushing the same shade of red. Matching, fair-skinned blushes.

The waitress doesn’t seem to notice how flustered we are though, just tosses a pile of napkins and Wet-Naps amidst the baskets, asks if we want another beer, to which we both shake our heads. We have more work to go back to after this is over, and then hopefully we’ll get to grab a few hours of sleep before it’s time to go at it again. Work, I mean, not the other thing.

Chapter Fourteen

‡

December 23rd

Lucy

Evans was right.These are the best wings I’ve ever had. It may be one o’clock in the morning, but this is totally worth it. The wings are still crispy under the buffalo sauce coating them, and so sticky the unnaturally orange substance is getting all over his face and hands and I want to lick it off. Want to lick it off him until he feels a hundred feet tall, like the man he is. A good man, a smart man, one who works so hard and is genuinely kind. It makes me want to rip his family’s faces off that they can’t see that, that they don’t make him feel that way every single goddamn day. Evans deserves to feel good about who he is, because who he is is pretty great.

The mystery of where his money goes has been solved, but I don’t feel good about it. Will he ever be able to rid himself of the burden? I love that he wants to help his family, but it seems as though they don’t appreciate it at all and don’t understand the sacrifices he makes. And I wonder…is this why he doesn’t date? Because he doesn’t feel like he has anything to offer? The idea squeezes my heart so tight it might explode, the unfairness of it all overwhelming me.

Luckily, I have the wings to distract me. I devour an entire basket of them without hardly stopping to breathe. Then my mouth’s on fire, so I stop long enough to scarf down some celery and carrots smothered in the ranch dressing and hail the waitress to bring over a glass of water. When I’ve chugged it and asked for a second, I finally take a breath and can look around the shabby place again.

Evans was right, it’s not nice. I’d never come here certainly by myself and probably not with anyone else. I feel like with any of the guys I’ve dated, they’d bring me to a strip club to make me uncomfortable or because they’d be too selfish to realize I would be uncomfortable. But Evans brought me here because they have the best wings in town, somethingIwanted. Something he wanted to give me.

It’s then I see the neon pink papers posted around the room. On the walls, above the bar, at the sides of the stage.

Amateur Night, they say.Come dance for us. $100 prize to the best dancer.

The girls who’ve been on the stage so far are clearly pros, wearing costumes built for stripping and looking comfortable circling and caressing the poles as they work. They’re attractive but look bored. As if this isn’t fun for them at all. Which I suppose by definition it’s not; it’s their job. While I like my work and find satisfaction in it, I wouldn’t call it fun.

But to be one of those women with all that attention on you, all those men eyeing you hungrily, admiring your body and lusting after you for the way you move… I start to feel that familiar tightening in my pelvis and the growing wetness. Would they look at me like that? Is it wrong I want them to? Would Evans? God I’d love to have him drooling at one of the chairs below the stage, not being able to take his eyes off of me. It would feel so powerful. So exciting. So sexy.

Would he like it too? He’s never been anything but encouraging of anything I’ve wanted. Never made me feel anything but desired and sexy no matter what I’ve asked for, no matter what’s gotten me off. I can’t believe this would be any different.

So after I’ve eaten a few more wings and sucked the sauce from my fingers, and then daintily swiped my mouth with one of the Wet-Naps, I excuse myself. Evans probably thinks I’m going to the ladies’ but I’ve got something else up my sleeve. Not for long, though.

*

Lucy

A couple ofminutes later, I’m standing backstage, tugging at my pencil skirt, short of breath because this is a stupid idea. Not that any of the bleary-eyed men sitting close to the stage know me and could make trouble, but…what would Pastor Elijah say? What would my mother say? I know my daddy would about have a heart attack. And what if I’m wrong about Evans? What if he doesn’t think this is fun and sexy and instead thinks it’s slutty-in-a-bad-way?

The thing is, though…this is only supposed to be for the week. That’s what we’ve agreed to. A little fun to take the edge off and then it will be over. Because neither of us wants to be out of our jobs and especially not for something so stupid as sex. No matter how good that sex might be. And now that I know why Evans needs this job, I don’t want to be the harlot who gets him fired from his good job he supports his family with.

That’s one of those names that has stuck with me: harlot. Harlot, slut, siren, Jezebel. I’ve tried and tried to wipe them from my mind, but they still stick and it makes me mad. What on God’s green earth does how I have sex and who I do it with have to do with how good of a person I am? Lucky for me, Evans doesn’t seem to see the two as mutually exclusive. I can be nice Lucy and also Lucy who has sex in the office.

It’s going to be over in a couple of days, so what does it matter if he makes a face or walks out? It would curdle my stomach and make me want to sink into the floor, more than any time India’s yelled at me. But by the time I’m seriously thinking better of it, I hear a weak smattering of applause and a nearly nude woman hustles between the curtains, clutching her discarded costume to her chest and muttering, “Good luck with that crowd, honey. They’re like corpses tonight.”

Great. I’m going to take off my clothes and dance for a bunch of guys who might as well be dead.

But I’m braver than that, more confident. Right? Over the past several days, Evans has made me feel good about my body, about my sexuality. It’s only filthy in the most delicious, desirable way, and he’s always respected me in the morning. He likes it when I bring out that part of me that likes to play. Bolder, braver, sexier Lucy. The girl who got off by imagining people were watching her get debauched on a beach. I could be that same girl here, only to the nth degree. Even if I bomb, I hope this will make him smile, wipe that hopeless, crushed look off his handsome face.

When they say my stage name—Ginger Snap because I couldn’t think of anything better on the spot—I take a deep breath and walk out. I asked for a song that’s been on the radio lately, and as the first bars start to play, I let my hips sway to the beat, the tight skirt I have on emphasizing my curves. The drums and the guitar play straight into my bones. Maybe Pastor Elijah had been right about that, in his ownFootloose-inspired way. Music can be very sexual. And as the music thickens with the vocals and more instruments, it starts to take me over, making my movements bolder, more emphatically, aggressively sensual. This is what I was hoping for. To let something else take the weight of this responsibility off my shoulders for a while.

I reach for the pole and stroke it up and down in my closed fist, pretending I’m stroking off Evans, remembering how much he likes it when I touch him. How incoherent I can make him with something as simple as an awkward blowjob.

It’s bright up here on the stage and I can’t quite see him, but I know where he is in the space, so I look toward him, hoping he’s looking at me with desire as I run my index finger over the center of my lips and then take the tip into my mouth and suck before putting that hand on the pole and swinging around it. This is fun. And also hot. Like, I’m-going-to-start-sweating hot. I feel as if I’m a steak getting seared under these lights. No wonder the girls take their clothes off. I let go of the pole after my spin and press my back against it, sliding down while twisting my knees and untying the bow at my neck.

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