Chapter 2

Adolf was sitting in a puddle of his own vomit when Bob left the club. Rather than let Adolf mess up his classic ‘66 Chevelle, Bob called an Uber, who promptly declined the ride when he saw what state Adolf was in. In the end, Bob paid a patron with a pickup truck to haul Adolf’s half conscious body in the bed of the truck, to the hotel. On the way he decided to take pictures with his phone. He wanted this to be the last time Adolf showed up at his store.

The hotel staff helped Bob get him to his room and into the bathroom. Bob got him naked and hosed him off in the shower.

“Wanna smell that pussy,” mumbled Adolf.

“When hell freezes over,” said Bob.

He got the man in bed and covered him up. He lifted the phone and asked for a six o’clock wakeup call. It was only ten-thirty, so Adolf should be able to sleep it off by then.

He thought about going back to the club, but he had to work the next day, too, and there was no way of telling if she’d still be there or not. Based on the attitude of the bouncers, nobody was going to cooperate with him. It occurred to him that men probably tried to get to the dancers all the time, and who knew what stories they told, in their efforts.

No, he needed to handle this in a way that might lead to success of the mission, without hitting any ambushes or IEDs.

He’d gotten to see her this night when she danced.

She would probably dance again.

And he’d be there when she did.

It wasn’t as simple as it first looked.

He went back the next night, and she never showed up on stage. It occurred to him that they opened at four in the afternoon, and stayed open until two in the morning. He wasn’t there the whole time. How long was the “shift” for a dancer? Did she only dance once a night, or did she rotate in for a certain time set and then leave? Was she always the rodeo queen, or did she change outfits? If they were open ten hours, were there two five hour shifts? Five two hour shifts? He had no idea.

Based on the fact that the rodeo queen had performed around nine o’clock that night, he went back at seven and stayed until eleven, three nights in a row.

Nothing.

On the fifth night, he was there when they opened, and talked to the hostess, who was a different girl, with the same southern drawl.

“My daughter works here,” he said. “I need to talk to her. Can you get her a message for me?”

“Who’s your daughter, sugah?” asked the bikini clad beauty.

“Chastity,” he said.

“Chastity what?”

“That’s the problem,” he admitted. “My wife divorced me while I was deployed overseas, and changed their last name. That record was sealed, so I don’t know what last name she’s going by.”

“There’s no Chastity working here,” said the girl, whose accent had suddenly evaporated.

“Maybe she’s not using her real name,” said Bob.

“That’s not helpful,” said the girl. “These girls don’t need trouble. They have troubles enough of their own. They dance for money, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If you don’t even know your daughter’s name, it’s safe to say she doesn’t want to see you. I think you need to leave.”

Bob backed off.

“I’m not trying to cause trouble. I just want to talk to her.”

“Like I said, maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

Again, the threat of being blacklisted caused Bob to back off.

His next idea was to find where the girls parked and hang around there, hoping he’d see her coming or going.

It turned out the bouncers patrolled the employee parking lot, too, and enforced the “Employees Only” sign at the entrance.

In the end, it was just like Afghanistan, where you went on patrols where nothing happened, and sat in the green zone, where you were bored to tears. But you had to do it, because sooner or later, there was going to be action.

For Bob, the action happened three weeks after Adolf had gotten him into the club.

By now, he was a Friday night regular. He’d stopped asking about his daughter, and just sat at the bar, ordering Scotch and Drambuie. The bartender didn’t know his name, but he knew what he always ordered. When he came to tend to Bob, he didn’t ask what Bob wanted. He just slid the glass in front of Bob and said, “One Rusty Nail.”

Bob sipped, and could make a drink last half an hour. He looked at each new dancer, but didn’t really watch them strip. Instead, he watched the crowd. By the end of week one, he could see what the bouncers saw, in terms of trouble building, and the difference between a raucous fan and a problem.

He started smoking again. He’d kicked the habit on his last tour, and been clean for a long time. He was amazed at how normal it felt to suck smoke into his lungs. He didn’t cough at all. Maybe all that stuff about how fast your lungs healed after you quit was a load of hooey.

He almost missed her. She came out as a red head, doing a Pippi Longstockings routine. It was her nipples that caught his attention, with their almost flesh-colored, difficult-to-see coloration. He looked at the structure of the chin and cheeks, and got off his bar stool. Thirty seconds later he was standing at the stage, money in hand.

“Chastity!” he called.

Pippi’s head twisted away from a man who was holding out money. She hadn’t yet removed her G string, and she tucked the man’s offering into the string.

“Come on,” yelled the man. “That was to get you to show me your pussy!”

She danced closer to him, pushing her hips out, and pulled the front of the G string aside. The man whooped and reached, but she batted his hand, shaking one finger at him and restoring her “modesty”.

Then she danced over to Bob.

She leaned down, letting her breasts hang, and bared her teeth.

“Put it in my mouth,” she said, loud enough that three men nearby yelled and jumped up and down.

Bob had no idea what to do.

“Do it!” she hissed, softer.

He reached and she bit the bill, plucking it from his fingers. She stood, tossed the bill negligently on the stage behind her, and then slowly took her G string off for him. It was obvious she was performing for him, rewarding him for playing her game. Men crowded up against him to see and throw money. She moved to one side and reached to pull her pussy lips apart. A roar went up and the crowd of men in front of her doubled. Money flew at her.

“I love you!” wailed a fat, perspiring man.

“I love you, too, Sweetie,” she called out, grinning.

Then she was whirling away, making her red pigtails fly out away from her head. It was obvious her time was almost over, and men began to drift back to their chairs.

At the last minute, as she was scooping up her take, she darted toward Bob.

“Tell your waitress you want a private dance,” she said.

Then she was off, running toward the stage’s entry point, her butt cheeks jiggling like Jell-O just out of a mold.

“Which dancer?” asked his waitress. Her name was Rebecca, and she liked Bob. She didn’t dance, which meant all she got was her cut of the combined tips that the serving staff accumulated. That included the jars on the bar, and she knew Bob tipped generously.

“Pippi Longstockings,” he replied.

“Her name is Trudy,” said Rebecca. “She’s sweet. She doesn’t usually do private dances, but I’ll ask.”

She was back ten minutes later.

“You’re in luck. That’ll be sixty bucks.”

Bob paid her and was led to the curtain. The same man was there, but he didn’t recognize Bob as the man who had asked about his daughter three weeks earlier.

“Trudy’s expecting him,” said Rebecca.

The curtain was pulled aside and there was another bare-breasted woman waiting for him.

“Have you done this before?” she asked.

“No,” said Bob.

“Follow me. You can’t touch the dancer, but she may touch you. There won’t be any sex, so don’t expect or ask for that. Your session will be recorded, so don’t break any rules and everybody will be happy.”

“Can I talk?” asked Bob.

“You can say anything you want, but she’ll decide how long the dance goes, so don’t be an ass about it, okay?”

“Got it.”

She led him to a wooden door and opened it.

“Pippi” was already inside, dressed in her jumper again. She was standing. The only thing in the room was a straight-backed chair about three feet from one wall.

Bob sat, and stared, as the half naked woman closed the door. He glanced up at the camera in one corner, and wondered how many hours of porn had been taped of his daughter stripping for strangers.

“I have to dance,” she said. “You can’t just pay to be with me. It’s against the rules. There’s somebody watching the monitor, and if I don’t dance, that means I want them to come help me.”

“Can they hear us?”

“They say no, but who knows,” she said, moving to a button on the wall. She pushed it and music came from hidden speakers.

She began to sway.

“Is it really you?” he sighed. “I can’t believe I’m actually talking to you.”

“When Mom took me away from our old house we lived with Nana Perkins, and she put me in another school. She said you didn’t want to see us anymore. She said you kicked us out of our house.”

That figured. Trudy wanted to be all independent of his “control” but all she did was move across town and mooch off her mother. Chastity was undoing the closures of her jumper, revealing lacy undies.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t talk to you last time. I was freaked out and I had to clear the stage. When I could think clearly enough to look for you, you were gone. I was afraid you’d never come back ... afraid Mom was telling the truth.”

“She wasn’t telling the truth,” said Bob. “I wanted to find you, but I had no idea where to look.”

Her perfect breasts appeared in front of his eyes.

“You don’t have to actually strip,” said Bob, as he felt his penis begin to misbehave.

“Yes, I do,” she said. “The session is over when I stop dancing.”

“Just meet me outside after your shift,” he said.

“The cops watch for that,” she said. “Buster doesn’t care, but if a dancer gets in a customer’s car, they get pulled over and arrested for prostitution.”

“I’ll tell them you’re my daughter.”

“My driver’s license doesn’t have the same last name as you. When she got the divorce, she changed our last name to Peters. And anyway, I’d get busted, regardless. I had a fake ID, but it expired. I’m only seventeen.”

“Yes, you are,” said Bob. “You won’t be eighteen for a month and a half. How did you get a job doing this anyway?”

She shrugged. It made her breasts wobble enticingly.

“I lied. Lots of girls do it. That’s what the fake ID was for. Buster makes a copy of it and puts it in your file, so if anybody ever asks questions, he’s covered.”

“Why are you doing this?” he asked.

“I want to go to college, Daddy,” she said. “My mother is overseas digging wells. Or making solar panels out of empty cans and black paint. She’s said both. They don’t even pay her. At least that’s what she says. I don’t get to talk to her very often and I’m not sure how much of what she says to believe. About three years after she left, Nana started forgetting things, and now, sometimes, she asks me who I am. Mom says it’s my imagination, or accuses me of lying, being selfish and trying to get her to stop doing the important work she loves and come home. I’m afraid Nana is getting Alzheimer’s or something, but I don’t know what to do about it. She still gets her social security, and I’ve been doing the shopping and paying the bills.”

The wig came off and she shook her short, black pageboy. The hair made a curtain over her face and then settled to hang. Her face had an impish, pixie-like look to it that had nothing to do with makeup. Now all she had on were high-rise, pale blue panties.

“I went back to our old house a bunch of times, but you were never there. Then, one day, somebody else lived there.”

“I sold it when I got back. There were too many memories, there. I tried to find you, but she had all the records sealed. She said I abused both of you and would hurt her if I found her again.”

“That’s bull shit,” said the mostly naked woman in front of him.

“I know that, and you know that, but the law doesn’t know that,” he said.

“Where have you been all this time.?”

“I got out. I run the Cokeley’s Emporium, over on Halston,” he said.

“You’re kidding! How long?”

“I got out four and a half years ago. I’ve been at Cokeley’s for four.”

“You mean we’ve lived in the same town for all that time and never saw each other?”

“I pretty much work and sleep, and that’s it,” he said.

“Did you ... get married again?” There was something in her voice that sounded like more than mere curiosity.

“Trudy was enough to last me a lifetime,” he said. “Speaking of which, they’re calling you Trudy.”

“That’s the name I had on the fake ID. I knew everything about her, so that’s the information I had them put on the ID. Other than the date of birth, of course.”

“Your mother never looked like this,” he said, watching her sway.

She cupped her breasts and pinched her nipples.

“Thank you,” she purred. She came closer, so close he could smell something like body wash.

“This is ... awkward,” he said, feeling his prick arrive at full hard.

“Not for me,” she said, actually brushing his cheek with the tip of one breast.

“I don’t get that,” he said. “You were never like this.”

“No, what I meant is that, ever since I started dancing, whenever I’m on stage, I imagine that every man I dance for is you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. I loved you. When Mom took me away I missed you horribly. I cried for months. She insisted you hated us, but I knew better. I knew she was a flake, even back then, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Who listens to a twelve-year-old? So, if I liked one of my male teachers, I pretended he was you. And when I screwed up enough courage to actually dance, thinking about each man as secretly being you made it okay. And then one night, it really was you!”

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Dancing For Daddy

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