Crucifax (37 page)

The scuttling continued as he dressed, then he went to his bed, sat down, and picked up the phone. He dialed directory assistance and asked for J.R. Haskell's number. As he dialed the number, it seemed appropriate to pray for strength, for guidance. Instead, he muttered, "Never thought I'd say it, but if You're out there"—he lifted his eyes to the ceiling—"I don't need You anymore."

"Hello?"

"Yes, um, Mr. Haskell? This is Reverend Bainbridge. I'm calling because I…"

"Yes?"

"Well, I don't know if I'm worth much. In this condition, I mean. But I want to help you…."

Twenty-Six

Brad's sister Becky and her husband Neil lived in a small apartment with a leaky roof on Cartwright Avenue in North Hollywood. Becky was twenty, a slightly overweight brunette with crooked teeth and a bleeding heart tattoo on her left shoulder.

When Brad and Jeff entered the apartment, Becky hurried out of the kitchen grinning, arms open, ample breasts bouncing freely beneath her loose-fitting spaghetti-strap top, and hugged Brad warmly. "Happy seventeen, little brother," she said, kissing his cheek. "Who's your friend?"

Brad introduced Jeff, then Becky put an arm around each of them and quickly led them into the kitchen.

"Who else is coming?" she asked.

"Nick, Keith, Jason, and maybe Rob from Santa Monica, but probably not."

"Well, I hope they hurry," Becky said. The kitchen was dark except for the candles on Brad's birthday cake and the ember of a smoldering joint in an ashtray on the counter. The apartment smelled of marijuana and kitty litter. Becky opened the refrigerator and said, "Beers?"

Both boys nodded, and she handed each of them one.

The beer was ice-cold, and Jeff sighed quietly with pleasure as he took a swallow.

Jeff considered backing out of Brad's party that night, but after his mother left and he was alone in the apartment, he began to notice sounds he hadn't noticed during the day. His mind turned to thoughts of Mallory—

There's something wrong with me.

—and it became impossible to concentrate on his homework. When Brad arrived, Jeff went with him giadly.

"Plans have changed," Becky said. "Neil was gonna join us for a couple beers and some grass, then take you guys over to the bar, but he can't make it."

"What bar?" Jeff muttered.

"Radical!" Brad shouted simultaneously.

"C'mon, guys, let's go ogle the T and A."

"What? Where are we going?" Jeff asked.

"To watch women take their clothes off. At the Playpen…

Erin put her drink tray on the bar and shouted above the music, "Hey, Neil!"

He was mixing a drink and spun around to say, "Yo!" He was a big man with a round face and long black hair gathered in a ponytail.

"Am I up next?"

"Yep." He went back to his drink.

The Playpen was loud, smoky, and crowded. Pool balls clacked together and Robert Palmer pounded from the jukebox as Chaunte, the bustiest girl working that night, licked both index fingers and wet her nipples, grinding her hips at one end of the stage while Lori worked the other.

Erin gathered her tips from the tray and walked between two pool tables and down the dark, narrow corridor to the dressing room. It was really just a large bathroom with lockers against one wall and a couple bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling.

She'd danced one set already and had been serving drinks for the last hour. The dancing would be a relief from the lewd remarks, suggestions, and propositions sneered at her as she went from table to table taking orders. At least on the stage she had some distance from them and didn't have to concentrate on getting the right drink to the right customer. As long as she kept smiling and moving to the music, showing her tits and shaking her ass, she could let her mind wander.

Chaunte burst through the door dabbing her face with a hand towel and said, "The guy in the fishing cap sitting at runway two's a big tipper. He likes it when you shake your tits."

"Thanks."

Debbie hurried in, adjusting an earring. "I'm up with you next. I'll be right out."

Dressed in a black teddy with silver handprints over her breasts, Erin left the dressing room, crossed the bar, put a quarter in the jukebox, and punched in two selections.

A Tina Turner song began, and Erin hurried through the mirrored door by the jukebox, passed through the small room off the stage, and picked up the beat by slapping one black-stockinged thigh. She put on a big smile and strutted out to a chorus of whistles, catcalls, and stomping feet.

The stage had two runways with men seated around each one, a mirror along the back, and a copper-colored firepole at each end. When Debbie joined her, the shouting and clapping grew louder. Erin kicked up a leg, swung her hips as she went to the firepole, straddled it, and slid herself up and down suggestively, smiling over her shoulder, licking her lips.

At the other end of the stage, Debbie, a young woman with a svelte dancer's figure, turned her back to the audience, bent over, and smiled between her legs as she playfully wriggled two fingers under the elastic of her panties.

Erin spotted the man in the fishing cap sitting at the runway. He was fiftyish, with eyebrows that sprouted from his forehead like little gray bushes. He beckoned her with callused hands, flashing a silver-capped tooth when he grinned and called, "C'mon over here, babe, come to Poppa!"

She danced her way over, lowering part of her teddy just enough to reveal one breast, then covering it again.

"Yeah! That's what I like!" He slapped a five-dollar bill on the edge of the runway and tilted back the bill of his cap.

Erin flashed the other breast as she danced closer to him.

"Keep it comin'!" he bellowed, putting down another five.

You keep it comin', too,
she thought.

There were four other men with him, laughing, cheering her on, tossing singles onto the runway.

Erin pulled the top half of the teddy down to her waist, baring both breasts, and turned her back to the man, bending down until she could see him between her legs. She reached both arms through her legs and stroked the cheeks of her ass slowly, then lifted her arms at her sides and expertly shook her shoulders, making her upside-down breasts swing in a circular motion.

His lumpy hand smacked a ten onto the runway.

There was a flurry of movement behind him, and Erin stood and turned in time to see someone stand so quickly that a chair fell over and clattered across the floor. It was a young man who did not look at all familiar at first as she squinted against the bright lights shining on the stage, still moving to the music, running her fingers over her breasts, but he seemed to recognize her as he stood a yard away from the runway, arms at his sides, jaw slack.

When she recognized Jeff, all the noise in the bar seemed to fade away, as if someone had turned down the volume on a radio; hands clapped together silently, mouths moved without words.

Jeff began to walk backward clumsily, his mouth opening and closing.
Mom…
Mom…

Erin felt her knees weaken as she stood frozen in place, gaping at her son. Peripherally, she saw Brad and three other boys sitting at a table near Jeff, saw Brad lean toward them, his eyes staring at her in disbelief, and vaguely heard him say, from a great distance, "Jesus, it's his fuckin'
mother!
"

"Jeff," she said, but it was only a whisper. Her hands fumbled with the teddy until her breasts were covered.

As he backed away Jeff bumped a table and spilled drinks on two men who began to shout silently at him, and he turned, dodged another table, and hurried toward the rear exit.

The big tipper was pounding a fist on the runway shouting, "Hey, honey, what's yer problem?"

The music was pulsing again, and she could hear the whistling and hooting from the men who were waiting impatiently for her to go on dancing. She stepped off the runway onto an empty stool and hit the floor as Brad and his friends hurried away from their table to follow Jeff, who had tripped through the door and was gone.

The boys reached the exit before Erin because tears were filling her eyes, making everything around her run together in a sparkling blur of light and color. She wiped her eyes with numb hands, ignoring Neil as he called, "Hey, whattaya doing? Where you going?"

She thrust her arms out before her, locked her elbows, and slammed the door open, hurrying into the rain. A furious gust of wind made her stop and hug herself protectively as the rain soaked her teddy and made it cling to her body like a second skin.

Erin watched Jeff hurry across the rear parking lot, water splashing around his feet; Brad and his friends were close behind, their shoulders hunched against the rain. Jeff stopped and leaned heavily against the post of the single streetlight that glowed over the lot; he leaned forward, held his stomach, and vomited as the others gathered around him.

She called his name, but he did not respond. Brad patted him on the back and, when he was finished and standing straight again, put an arm around his shoulders and led him away from the light post.

"Wait, Jeff!" Erin shouted, running across the parking lot.

The boys went to an old white Mustang and began to get inside.

"Jeff, please wait!" Her voice had risen to a desperate shriek, and she waved an arm above her head to get his attention. The heel of her right shoe snapped off, and she tumbled to the pavement. A shattering pain ripped through her leg, and she cried out as she fell forward, scraping her palms on the wet pavement. "Please wait!" she shouted, but her words were lost in her sobs.
"Please!"

Her view of the Mustang was blocked by two other cars, but she heard the doors slam, the engine roar, and the tires whoosh through a puddle as the car drove away.

A jagged streak of lightning lit the sky for a heartbeat as Erin remained on her hands and knees, sobbing. She slowly stood, taking off her right shoe, and staggered back into the bar.

Inside it was just as loud and busy as it had been when she rushed out, as if nothing had happened and everything was the same. But Erin felt fifty years older, and the bar somehow felt different to her—ugly, filthy, darker than before.

Neil caught up with Erin as she headed for the dressing room.

"Jesus, look at you!" he blurted. "What happened?"

Clutching her shoe in a white-knuckled fist, Erin snapped, "Since when did you start letting minors in here?"

"What? Oh, them. That was my brother-in-law and his friends. It's his birthday, and I—"

"Well, one of those friends was my son!"

"Oh, Jeez," he sighed as she stalked down the corridor, still limping. "Hey, you wanna go after 'em?" he called.

Erin stopped.

"They're goin' to Fantazm tonight. Some band's playin'. You can take a couple hours off, if you want."

"A couple hours?" she replied over her shoulder. "I won't be back, Neil. I quit."

In the dressing room, she threw her shoe into the sink. She was soaked all over, her mascara was running, and her stocking was torn.

But if you keep hiding it from them…
J.R. had said.

Erin laughed bitterly through her tears, hating herself for not heeding J.R.'s advice, for taking a stripping job in the first place, for not finishing her education so she could get some decent work….

"You okay in there, honey?" Chaunte asked.

She thought of her mother's weekly phone calls and of how good it had always felt to assure her mother that she and the kids were okay. It would probably be a while before she could honestly say that again.

"No," Erin muttered. "No, I'm not okay…."

An hour before Crucifax was to play, Fantazm was so crowded that the teenagers on the dance floor could do little more than stand in place and move their shoulders to the music. J.R. and Reverend Bainbridge entered the club uncertainly, and J.R. winced at the noise level, guessing he would have a headache in thirty minutes, maybe less.

A burly young man with a crewcut and sunglasses stood behind a small window in the wall to the right of the entrance.

"Six dollar cover," he said, his mouth hardly moving.

"You're kidding," J.R. said.

The man pointed upward. A sign over the window read $6.00 COVER CHARGE—2-DRINK MIN.

"Six bucks for a headache," J.R. muttered as he took a twenty from his wallet. He waited for the change, then led the reverend past the window to the steps that led downward into the throng.

Bainbridge wore a wrinkled tan corduroy suit under his raincoat. He looked better than he had earlier but still appeared haggard. Despite the two showers he'd taken before leaving the house, he seemed in need of another. He looked around with wide, bewildered eyes, absently scratching his cheek with a trembling hand, glancing at J.R. and trying to smile.

"Loud," he said.

"Would you like a table?" asked a petite blond girl with a streak of magenta in her hair.

"We'd like to see the manager," J.R. said. "Or whoever's in charge this evening."

"Is Mr. Bascombe expecting you?" she asked.

"No. My name's J.R. Haskell. He doesn't know me, but please, tell him it's very important."

"Wait right here." The girl disappeared into the crowd.

The ceiling of the club was high, and strings hung from the bottoms of red and blue lights shaped like balloons that had floated up to the rafters.

"Look at them," the reverend said, leaning close to J.R.'s ear.

They crowded the dance floor, bunched together around tables, shouldered through the crowd laughing and shouting above the music, restless, energetic. Couples stood between tables kissing and fondling, and groups of girls moved to and from the ladies' room.

"Do you see?" Bainbridge asked.

On every third teenager—maybe more—J.R. spotted
^a
Crucifax. The dark crosses caught the light in brief glimmere of black-red.

"Yes," J.R. said. "I see."

The stage was at the other end of the club, black except for an occasional glint of reflected light on the band's instruments. And something else…