A Cloud of Suspects by Laurence Gough

Author:Laurence Gough [Gough, Laurence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2016-09-20T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Alone again, unnaturally

Sting was deep into “Every Breath You Take” when the pastel spots behind the bar flickered and dimmed. The music faltered, the beat slowing weirdly, to a lame-ass crawl. A moment later the glass-enclosed shower lost pressure. Water dribbled out of the shower head and splattered too loudly on the plastic floor, then stopped. Charlene glanced across the rows of mostly empty tables at Eddy. He was hard to see, because the stage lights were working fine, and she was half-blinded by the glare. She made a gesture, what’s up? Eddy spread his hairy arms wide, gave her an exaggerated shrug, went back to polishing lowball glasses.

The music picked up. The spots behind the bar brightened. Water spurted out of the shower. Charlene swung around the pole, shook her butt with calculated enthusiasm. A drunk in gynecology row waved his arms, trying to attract her attention. The guy had been soaking it up all day long. The first time he’d waved at her, she’d sauntered over with a great big show-me-the-money smile pasted across her face, and the cheapskate bastard had lurched to his feet and tried to shove a quarter down her g-string. What did he think, just because she was a stripper, she was stupid enough to forget what he’d done?

The music faltered again, as if it had stumbled off a curb, and then faded to an irritated silence. The shower dried up. The lights over the bar died too. Eddy flicked switches, opened up the electrical panel, and poked around in there like he knew what he was doing. The lights came back on, but not the music. The other stripper, a girl from Halifax that Charlene doubted was more than sixteen years old, sat down on the edge of the stage and started popping her gum, blowing shiny pink bubbles. The guys liked that, and gave her a good round of applause, pretty noisy considering there weren’t that many of them, a dozen at the most. Charlene circled the pole. Her lower back was bothering her again, and she didn’t want to cool off.

The girl from Halifax slid off the stage. She ruffled a pensioner’s thinning hair and walked away.

Charlene said, “Hey, where you going?”

The girl shrugged, and kept walking. Somebody outside the range of her vision booed loudly. It was hard to slur a boo, but he’d done it. Charlene told herself that if they started throwing stuff, she was out of there, and if they fired her, that was fine too, and she didn’t care what Anders said. Continuing that train of thought, she promised herself that if the sonofabitch hit her, she’d walk out on him. The world was jam-packed full of assholes, and she knew from a lifetime’s worth of slow learning that she could always find herself another one, when she was in the mood.

After a while, Eddy found a portable radio. He carried it over to the stage and plugged it in, fiddled with the dial until he found a local station that played hard-rock music.

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