The place wasn’t particularly wicked as far as anything anyone actually did, but it was plenty wicked so far as intimations of what would be done or could be done or would like to be done were concerned.
I found a table back in a corner and ordered a drink. An entertainer was putting on an expurgated version of a chemically pure strip-tease. She had more clothes on when she’d finished than most of the performers had when they started, but it was the manner in which she took them off that appealed to the audience: a surreptitious, be-sure-the-doors-and-windows-are-closed-boys attitude that made the customers feel partners in something very, very naughty. When the applause started getting really loud, she looked questioningly at the manager and put up a hand to the clothes that were left as though asking him if she dared make a clean sweep. He came running forward shaking his head, grabbed her hand, started to jerk her off the stage, then apparently, getting his presence of mind, turned for two or three bows at the audience, and led her towards the dressing-room, walking hand in hand.
Shortly after that, the strip-tease dancer was back in circulation, and four noisy men at an adjoining table were very patiently trying to get enough liquor under her belt so that she wouldn’t look to the manager for that final signal when the next performance came along.
A woman in the late forties with coal black hair and eyes that were so avaricious I was reminded with each blink of the celluloid tags which shoot up when a sale is rung up in a cash register strolled past my table and said, “Good evening.”
“Hello,” I said.
“You look lonesome.”
“I am.”
“On the loose?” she asked.
“Loose as ashes,” I said.
She smiled. “I’ll see what I can do.”