It had been a rough week, so Craig knocked off early Friday afternoon. Actually, the whole engineering group knocked off early - there was a going-away happy hour for Patsy, the senior team leader. Patsy was a compact but plush little brunette who'd neatly been sidestepping Bud's passes for a year and a half, and he owed it to himself to make one more for old time's sake.
A couple of beers and one pleasantly cooperative hug later, Craig was on the road to Applebee's for dinner, decompressing from the week over chicken and mushrooms. He hoped the new team leader wouldn't be a hard-ass. He wished Patsy had been more interested in him, or that he'd been more assertive. Mostly he just wished he weren't living the life of an old and probably confirmed bachelor.
When he got into that mood, it was time for a visit to Marv's Place.
Marv's was a slightly run-down topless bar on the outskirts of downtown; one of the old-style places with aged wood and old beer signs where the girls (okay, the women) came from surrounding neighborhoods. Nowadays they had to come from farther away - downtown was going downhill - but the place still had that comfortable feel. Nobody had actually seen Marv for years; the representative of management was the bartender and bouncer, Big Red.
Craig liked the atmosphere. The dancers weren't stick figure Barbies but real women, peeling and posing for the tips and the thrill, not to make any kind of decent money from it. You wouldn't think there would be many women interested, but Marv's Place had four dancers covering every three-hour shift, twenty-one hours a day. Some of them danced in a bikini, most went down to panties or a g-string. A few would get adventurous sometimes and go all the way, but only if the crowd was down to just regulars.
You knew you were a regular if Big Red greeted you by name. Craig had been a regular at Marv's for a year and a half, showing up on an irregular basis when things at the office were rough, tipping the dancers without any particular favorites.
Craig waved from the door and got a gruff smile and a hello from Big Red. The place was crowded, and he had to twist between people first to get to the bar for a Heineken, then to find himself an empty chair along the back wall. The tables were a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar faces - off-shift dancers, friends, friends of friends, and what looked like a contingent of college students watching with wide eyes but generally behaving themselves. He didn't recognize the onstage dancer, a youngish brunette with marked tan lines. She was shaking energetically to something by Bon Jovi, and every so often one of the college boys would make their way up to the stage and slide a couple of dollar bills under the side of her g-string.
He made his own contributions to the dancers as the evening wore along, moving to a table closer to the stage when the college crowd left at eleven. It was a good time to move up; Marge was in the middle of her set, down to her dark blue panties, big pale breasts swaying as she hooked one arm to the pole and sang along with Cole Porter. Craig crossed one leg over the other and bobbed his foot along with the music. He liked Marge. Not just for her breasts, which had figured in more than one of his occasional erotic dreams, but because she was closer to his own generation and usually picked music that he enjoyed.
After Marge was Freda, whose husband always sat in front of the stage cracking his knuckles threateningly while she danced. Freda liked punk rock, and she thrust her body at the audience in a manner that never failed to make Craig hard. After her set, Freda made the rounds of the customers' tables and laps while her husband went outside. Craig often wondered what the deal was about him - but let Freda bypass his table just to be on the safe side.
Eleven o'clock came and went. Candy, the brunette who looked an awful lot like Craig's team leader, came on shift and Craig slipped two fives into her g-string. His groin twitched watching the front of her panty nestle itself under her sparse hair. Usually, he'd close out his tab and leave after having a drink with Candy, but this night Craig just hung around, occasionally trading his empty beer bottle for a full one. It was last shift, and he had no reason to get up early on Saturday morning.
Besides, he was a little curious to see what happened after last shift. It seemed odd that Marv's was so specific about dancing from 5am to 2am only. It would probably turn out that was the time they cleaned out the bathrooms or something equally mundane.
There were three other dancers closing out the night and he made sure each of them got a decent tip - Sylvia, the dark Latina; April, the chubby blonde who liked to wrap her breasts around the pole; and Hong Lan. Hong Lan was Vietnamese, stood only four foot nine in heels, had almost boyish flat breasts, and moved around the stage to some unintelligible Oriental noise - but when she moved you didn't hear the music or care about her physique. There wasn't anything overtly sexual about her dancing, but even the other women at Marv's would watch entranced and come up to the stage to take their time adjusting the bills under her g-string.
Craig jumped when Big Red clapped him on the shoulder. "Hey, Craig, you gonna be okay to drive?"
The place was empty - apparently he'd dozed off. Craig stood up and stretched, tugged at his chin and rubbed his temples. "Yeah, I think so. I've only had what, four or five beers?"
The sound of the vacuum cleaner almost drowned out Big Red's voice. "Hang out a while anyway, I'd like to talk with you some, and it doesn't look like you're in a hurry."
Craig kicked back and watched while Big Red moved around the club cleaning up. She was big all right - built like a linebacker and dressed in her usual wide jeans and plaid shirt. The gossip was that Big Red had been one of Marv's original dancers, or maybe an ex-wife, but nobody seemed to know for sure.
"Anything I can do to help?" Craig felt obliged to make the offer, though he had no idea what needed to be done. Big Red turned her head and gave him a broad toothy smile.
"No, but thanks - I'll be done in just a little bit."
Craig picked up the last of his Heineken and took his time finishing it. "Hey Red, I've got a question. How come the place stays open all night but doesn't have a dancer shift from 2 to 5?"
Big Red put the vacuum away and wiped down the bar. "Taxes, would you believe it? There's this law on the books that kicks in if you offer entertainment around the clock. So we can sell drinks, but we can't have dancers without paying through the nose. I don't know what the folks in the state legislature were trying to prevent with that." She tossed the washcloth into the sink, poured a glass of bourbon, and came to sit down next to Craig. "My turn. What keeps you coming here? You don't hit on any of the girls, you almost never ask for lap dances, you don't seem depressed, you just show up and hang. Not that I'm complaining - good customers are good customers. I'm just curious."
Craig had never noticed her freckles before. They really brightened Red's face.
"I'm on disability from a car accident; I have to work irregular hours - I can't pull a full eight-hour shift at a desk. Luckily Star Engineering is really flexible on work arrangements." Red's leg was pressing against Craig's. It felt nice, solid and warm. "Anyway, this is a good break from work and everything else. It makes for a nice place where I can decompress and relax."