Fifteen
After hiding a dead body and finding myself in the sights of a loaded crossbow, I was as wired as a tween after her first
Frappuccino. So when Layna said Zhang Xiu had texted to see if we wanted to meet her and the other Pole Virgins for a drink
in Garden City, I agreed. Shade had been no help, and Salma Hayek was MIA, but maybe Gucci or Zhang Xiu had seen something
at Huckleberry’s, and it would be easy enough to ask over a beer.
When I was a kid, locals called it Garden Shitty, but now people dressed for a night out thronged the riverfront area. I groaned
when I saw who was working the door at Barbarian Brewing. Landry Arnold. We’d bagged groceries together at Albertsons when
I was a sophomore in high school and once had a regrettable make-out session at a keg party.
“If it isn’t Tilly Turner!” he said warmly. “Back from Hollywood.”
“Hey, Landry.” It was unsettling to see glimmers of the skinny teenaged boy inside this hairy middle-aged man with bulky forearms.
“What was it like? Opening for Mickey Larynx? I love that guy so much.”
“Still?” I said.
“Of course. He’s not afraid of his urges.” He lifted his eyebrows suggestively.
I rolled my eyes.
“Cover’s ten bucks each,” he said. “Feminazi fundraiser.”
I started to protest, but Layna handed Landry a twenty and hurried me into the warehouse-style building.
A Tribe Called Quest blared from the speakers.
A metal second-floor balcony dangled a massive, hand-painted sign that said SMASH THE PATRIARCHY (with the first S in SMASH fully crossed out).
In the middle of the room, hipsters dumped pots of clumpy white stuff into a huge kiddie pool. Artsy weirdos
drank, chatted, and watched the proceedings. The whole scene was cooler than anything I’d expected to find.
Zhang Xiu waved from a long tall table where the Pole Virgins sipped craft beer.
“What’s up with the kiddie pool?” I asked.
“It’s this mashed-potato wrestling competition called Mash the Patriarchy,” Zhang Xiu said.
“Ah, those are mashed potatoes! I get it now,” Layna said.
“Why does everything in Idaho have to be about potatoes?” Shade mused. “You just missed the Potatohole competition. It’s like
cornhole, but the bean bags were hand-sewn to look like Yukon Golds. I took third.” He blew on his nails and rubbed them on
his shirt.
“Dammit!” I said. “I’m actually really good at cornhole. My twins are obsessed.”
As Layna headed to the beer line, Zhang Xiu explained the event was being put on by a feminist performance art collective
called She Burns Bright. “I’m on the board,” she said. “We’re raising money for the National Sexual Assault Hotline.”
“Feminist performance art!” I said. “I’ve never felt so at home in my own hometown. How’d you get involved?” I always told
myself once my life calmed down, I’d do more to give back. But right now my life was calm as a Category 5 hurricane.
“Worst thing that can happen to a mother is to not be able to protect her own child,” Zhang Xiu said. The tears in her eyes
surprised me.
“You have a grown daughter, right?” I said.
As Zhang Xiu nodded a tear slipped out. “She’s better now.”
“Is there a creep I need to hunt down?” I said.
She gave a sad laugh. “Guys like that get theirs. Eventually. That’s what I have to tell myself. Anyway.” She batted at the air. “How do you like Pole Kisses so far?”
“I wasn’t expecting it to be so . . . life-changing.” I leaned in. “Weird question. Last Sunday, after I left Huckleberry’s
with Shade. Did you see me again?”
“Nope,” Zhang Xiu said.
“What about that asshole who got chucked out of the bar?”
Zhang Xiu took a long gulp of beer before responding. “Salma Hayek went for a quick smoke out front and that same guy grabbed
her butt. She hit him in the head with an old beer bottle that was lying in the parking lot. Least that’s what she said.”
Zhang Xiu shrugged. “I was inside.”
That would explain the giant goose egg on Connor’s forehead. Could Salma have then stabbed him to death and hidden his body
in my trunk? “Where is she?” I tried to sound casual, but my heart was about to burst out of my chest.
Zhang Xiu shrugged. “No idea.”
Before I could figure out how to continue this line of questioning, Gucci appeared, eyes red and face streaked with tears.
“What’s wrong?” Zhang Xiu asked.
“I just got an email that my grad school funding has been cut—in half,” Gucci wailed. “I know it’s because my skeevy advisor
only funds students who stroke his ego. I suspect he makes the female students stroke other things too.”
“Ugh! Can’t you file a Title IX complaint?” I said.
A bitter laugh burbled out through Gucci’s tears. “Please. That guy has racked up more complaints than Beyoncé has Grammys.
The Title IX office means well, but they have no teeth.”
“She’s right,” Zhang Xiu said. “Tenured male faculty in this town still think #MeToo meant: ‘You sleep with your students
and suffer no consequences? Hashtag me tooooo!’”
I felt the old anger boiling against men who didn’t care whose lives they ruined as long as they could get their saggy rocks off. Men like Mickey Larynx.
“I can’t quit grad school, no matter how bad my advisor sucks,” Gucci said. “I’m that weirdo that loves DNA phenotyping more
than anything. But I am gonna have to quit pole.” She sniffled. “I can’t afford it now.”
“DNA say what?” Shade said.
“DNA phenotyping. It’s a forensics technique,” Gucci said.
“Forensics?” I said. “You’re studying forensics?”
“Yeah,” Gucci said. She gave me a meaningful look. “Remember what I told you, about my uncle?” She’d donated his body to rot
in a field where forensics experts could check the progress of his decomp on the hour. A win for science—and righteous revenge.
I nodded slowly. “Well, meeting those experts—hearing about how they use their research to solve crimes. That’s how I got
into forensics. It’s all I’ve wanted to do since.”
Gucci’s skills might come in handy, if I got desperate enough. Though I couldn’t assume everyone in my pole class would be
as eager to try to help me solve a murder as Layna.
“But you already paid for the Pole Virgins series, right?” Shade said.
Gucci shook her head. “The owner’s letting me pay by the class because I’m a broke grad student.”
The music stopped and a microphone-wielding emcee stepped into the spotlight.
They were an adorable enby with high cheekbones and a bowtie.
“In ten minutes, we’ll start our Mash the Patriarchy wrestling match,” the emcee said.
“It’s a performance-art event exploring the dangers of domesticity, performance as living sculpture, and how hard it is for women to act with agency while being objectified.
Winners of each round will receive four hundred dollars.
First up is the women’s match.” A gazelle in a tight silver dress hurried up to the emcee and whispered in their ear.
The emcee frowned and looked worried. “We have an unfortunate development,” they said.
“One of our women’s teams is out due to a bad breakup coupled with a bad batch of finger steaks.
Would any pair who identifies as female like to volunteer to wrestle in their place? ”
“Four hundred bucks would pay for the rest of your pole classes,” Zhang Xiu told Gucci.
Gucci’s eyes lit up. “Two hundred would cover it. My teammate could have the other half of the prize money. Who’s with me?
I wrestled in high school.”
“Sorry. I’m one hundred percent, grade-A gay man,” Shade said. “You need a gal.”
“Wrestling would mess up my back again. Guaranteed,” Zhang Xiu said.
Layna rocked up with two beers. I couldn’t wait to tell her all I’d learned.
Gucci grabbed Layna by the arm. “You know how now that you’re getting divorced, you want to go wild and try everything life
has to offer?”
“That’s right!” Layna said.
“Will you wrestle with me?” Gucci gestured toward the massive kiddie pool.
“I seized the day today by getting keratin-fusion hair extensions that took five hours,” Layna said. “The one person in this
world I’m actually afraid of? My extensionist. I show up tomorrow with half my extensions pulled out and the rest caked with
mashed potato? She might lit-er-ally kill me.”
Four pairs of searching eyes turned to me, the last possible option.
“Nikita, you’ve got a rage inside,” Shade said. “We’ve seen it.”
“Is wrestling really about rage?” I asked.
“Absolutely not. It’s about technique,” Gucci said. “Still, I need this.” She dropped to one knee as if proposing marriage.
“Won’t you please go out there with me and mash the patriarchy?”
I liked Gucci and didn’t want her pole dreams crushed by a skeeve. Still, more than anything, I wanted to say no. But Gucci had forensics expertise. I couldn’t pass up having her owe me a favor. Just in case. And also, I’d never been proposed to. I gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
“We’re in!” Gucci yelled, leaping to her feet. She grabbed my hand and raised it high in the air. “We’re in!”
“It’s now time for the wrestling to begin!” the emcee cried. Gucci and I had stripped down to our pole clothes, which we
still had on under our sweats. I felt exposed in my exercise bra and running shorts, though I looked positively matronly next
to Gucci’s velour pole undies. “The winning team takes home bragging rights and four hundred big ones! Now remember the rules:
no eye poking, no choking, no drowning your opponent in the taters. Each team has to pin their opponents for five seconds.
Now let’s see what these women have to dish out!”
An excited energy hummed through the gathered crowd. Across the way, the two women on the opposing team prepared to enter
the pool. One of them had short, bleached-blond hair and a build like a WWE wrestler. She sported bikini bottoms and the kind
of jog bra built to lock down even the largest ta-tas. Our other opponent was more petite, but still intimidating. She’d donned
a skintight catsuit leotard ending in booty shorts, her black hair wrapped in a tight bun. Out of context, it took me a beat
to place her.
“Principal Cruz!” I gasped.