LITMIR.BIZ

       2

      Somewhere in Manhattan, 1993 March

      “WHAT’S YOUR POISON?” the bartender asked, and Kingsley answered, “Blonds.”

      The bartender, Duke, half laughed, half scoffed as he pointed to the stage.

      “Two bleach-blonde bottles of poison right there.”

      Kingsley eyed the two girls—Holly and Ivy—who now hung naked from their knees, which they’d wrapped around twin poles. Men sat belly up to the stage watching in silence, making eye contact with no one but the dancers. Dollar bills fluttered between their waving fingers.

      “Not what I’m in the mood for tonight.” Kingsley looked away from the stage.

      “What?” Duke asked. “How can you not be in the mood for that? Are they too hot? Too sexy?”

      Kingsley reached behind the bar and grabbed a bottle of bourbon.

      “Too female.”

      “Don’t look at me,” Duke said, raising both his hands.

      “I promise, I’m not.” And he wasn’t. Someone else had caught his eye. But where had he gone?

      “It’s too quiet tonight,” Kingsley said to Duke. Usually on a Friday night at the Möbius, the place would be standing room only. Half the usual crowd was in attendance tonight. “What’s going on?”

      “You came in the back way?” Duke asked as he uncorked Kingsley’s bourbon for him.

      “Of course.”

      “Some church is outside holding up signs.”

      “Signs?”

      “Yeah, you know. Protest signs. Sex Trade Fuels AIDS. Fornicators will burn. She’s somebody’s daughter.”

      “Are you serious?”

      “Go look for yourself.”

      Kingsley took his bottle of bourbon to the front door of the club and took a long drink but not long enough for the sight that greeted him. Duke hadn’t been exaggerating. A dozen people walked up and down the sidewalk carrying various white signs held aloft proclaiming the evils of strip clubs.

      “Told you so,” Duke said from behind Kingsley. “Can we call the cops on them or something? Shoot them?”

      “We don’t have to get rid of them,” Kingsley said. “God will.”

      “He will?” Duke asked. “You sure about that?”

      The sky broke open and rain began to fall. The protestors lasted about five seconds under the bite of the late-winter rain before running for cover.

      “See?” Kingsley said to Duke. He looked up at the sky, “Dieu, merci.”

      “God must be a tits and ass man.”

      “If He wasn’t,” Kingsley said, “He wouldn’t have invented them.”

      He shut the door and glanced around the club again.

      A psychiatrist—if Kingsley would let one near him—would have had a field day with his prodigious talent for finding the blond in every room he entered. If someone blindfolded him right now, he could, with picture-perfect recall, point out every last blond man in a fifty-yard radius. Five of them sat at various stations of the Möbius strip club—two at the bar (one real blond, the other a punk who’d bleached his hair), one working as a bouncer, one disappearing into the bathroom with a suspicious bulge in his trousers and a young one at table thirteen back in the corner. Kingsley had noticed the young blond when he’d first entered the Möbius half an hour ago. He’d been watching him, studying him, getting a read on him. Kingsley approached him.

      The blond at table thirteen sat alone. He didn’t look at any of the girls, but only at his hands, his drink, his table.

      Kingsley sat down across from him and placed the bourbon on the table between them. The amber liquid licked at the sides of the bottle. The blond glanced first at the bourbon, as if wondering where it came from and how it got there, before his eyes settled on to Kingsley’s.

      “I’m going to ask you a question, and it’s important you answer it correctly.” Kingsley did his best to temper his French accent without disposing of it entirely. The accent got him attention when he wanted it but in such a noisy room, he needed to speak as clearly as possible. “Luckily for you, I will tell you the correct answer before I ask the question. And that answer is twenty-one.”

      “Twenty-one?” The blond spoke in some sort of accent of his own—American, obviously, but this young man was far from home. “What’s the question?”

      “How old are you?”

      The blond’s eyes widened. In the dim light, Kingsley couldn’t make out the boy’s eye color. Steel-gray, he hoped, although tonight he wouldn’t be picky.

      “Twenty-one,” he repeated. “I’m definitely twenty-one.”

      “Blackjack,” Kingsley said, smiling. The blond boy might be twenty-one. In two years he might be twenty-one.

      “Do you work here?” the blond asked.

      “I wouldn’t call it work.”

      “I can go. I should go.” The blond started to stand, but Kingsley tapped the table.

      “Sit,” he ordered. The blond sat. A promising sign that he could and would take orders. “Tell me something—no right or wrong answer this time.”

      “Sure. What?”

      “Why are you here?”

      He shrugged, as if the question were obvious.

      “You know. Tits. Asses. Naked girls.”

      “You weren’t looking at the girls. Not even the one who took your drink order. Which I found interesting, as she was mostly naked.”

      Kingsley took another sip of his bourbon straight from the bottle. It burned his throat all the way to his stomach. The woody aftertaste stained the inside of his mouth.

      “Sir, I don’t know what your problem is with me being here, but I can—”

      “Do your parents know?”

      “Know what? That I’m here?”

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