Chapter 4 #2
I won the first several hands, then promptly lost all my winnings in the next few rounds, stopping when I broke even.
After sliding my last twenty-dollar chip across to the dealer as a tip, I ventured over to watch one of the roulette tables where a decent crowd had gathered around an older lady on a winning streak.
I got a beer from a passing cocktail server, then decided to check out the slot machines.
Spotting an opening at the end of the aisle, I sat down in front of the machine featuring dancing leprechauns and pots of gold and fed a one-hundred-dollar bill into it.
Mitch found me about twenty minutes later, right after I hit a small jackpot.
He glanced at the balance on the screen and asked, “How much did you pay in to get that nine hundred bucks?”
“Just under a hundred.” I shot him a satisfied grin, pleased with my eight hundred dollar profit. “How did the poker table treat you?”
His features morphed into a pained grimace. “Fuck, don’t ask.”
“That good, huh?” I snorted, hitting the button to cash out and grabbing the ticket as soon as the machine printed it.
“Let’s get out of here while I still have my shirt on my back,” Mitch grumbled, pointing toward the cashiers in the corner of the room.
“One of the guys I was playing with mentioned that there’s a place a couple of blocks over that has a pretty good Guns N’ Roses cover band tonight.
I thought we could go have a few drinks in honor of Grady. ”
My chest tightened at the sound of Grady’s name, the way it always did when I thought about the man who had been more like a brother than a best friend.
Grady and I had met in the seventh grade and had become fast friends.
Mitch moved into the school district our freshman year of high school, and the three of us were practically inseparable after that.
We’d even shared an off-campus apartment during our last three years of college.
Those days seemed like a lifetime ago. It was hard to believe that Grady had been gone for almost two years now.
“Guns N’ Roses, huh? Shit, he would have loved that.
” Grady had shared a startling resemblance to Axl Rose in his heyday and had even grown his hair out to capitalize on it for a while.
He also had a great singing voice, and he’d regularly put both assets to good use on karaoke nights at various bars around the city when we were in our early to mid-twenties.
He’d get up on stage and belt out their greatest hits, and it had invariably ended up with him getting laid every damned time.
Mitch had come back for a visit for Grady’s thirty-fifth birthday, and the three of us had hit up a karaoke bar for old times’ sake.
The long hair had been traded for a more traditional cut years before, but the voice was as good as ever, and the ladies in the bar had noticed.
It was actually how he’d met the woman he was planning to marry before a five-car pileup on an icy highway overpass had claimed his life three years later.
Mitch interrupted my thoughts when he said, “Cash in your ticket and we’ll head out, then.”
After a quick detour up to the suite to stash my winnings in the safe, we bypassed the casino floor and exited the hotel through the main lobby.
The night air had cooled considerably once the sun went down, and it was almost chilly as we walked down the still-crowded sidewalk, dodging the street performers and throngs of gawking tourists until we reached our destination.
We drew to a stop at the end of a short line to get in the door and I glanced up to read the neon sign on the building, proclaiming the name of the place as “The Sight and Sound Lounge”, with the tagline “Beautiful women and incredible music to stimulate all of your senses!” A sense of unease filled me as I took in the logo on the sign which featured the silhouette of a curvaceous woman wrapped around the neck of giant guitar as if it were a stripper pole.
“What the hell kind of place is this, Mitch? You know I don’t do strip clubs.”
He glanced at me and shrugged. “It’s not an actual strip club. It’s a live music venue that happens to have topless dancers because it’s Vegas, man. It’s not gonna kill you, just this once. It’s not like your wife will ever know. Besides, we’re here for Grady, remember?”
The faint beat of the music from inside the building grew louder momentarily as the club’s doorman, a heavily muscled man with a platinum blond mohawk, opened the door for the small group of people in front of us.
Before I could say anything more to Mitch, the man turned to us and gestured to his hand-held credit card reader.
“Cover charge is eighty dollars each, unless you want to upgrade to a VIP table or bottle service,” he recited in a bored tone, likely due to the fact that he had to repeat the line hundreds of times a night.
I winced as I pulled out my wallet, then tapped my credit card, still unsure about this whole thing.
“This had better be a damned good band,” I muttered under my breath, stepping aside for Mitch to pay, too.
“Enjoy your night,” the doorman said without looking at us, already holding out the card reader for the next people in line.
The music was almost deafening as we entered the club. The band on the stage were rocking out to “Paradise City”, and I had to admit that they sounded pretty good. Not eighty dollars good, but I had a feeling we were paying for the other attractions more than for the band.
I glanced around the large room as my eyes adjusted to the dim interior, lit only by the lights on the stage and a few strategic spotlights shining on the dozen or so raised platforms scattered throughout the room – each one with a safety rail around it, a stripper pole, and an almost nude woman grinding on said pole.
The crowd was a fair mix of both men and women, although the men were definitely there for the dancers rather than the music based on where their eyes were focused.
I spotted an empty table toward the back and nudged Mitch’s arm as I gestured my head toward it and started walking that way.
We took our seats and were greeted a couple of minutes later by our server, a pretty, young blonde who was wearing nothing more than glittering gold, star-shaped pasties to cover her nipples and a matching pair of gold booty shorts that rode high on her voluptuous hips and left the lower part of her ass cheeks exposed.
Mitch turned on the charm and flirted as he ordered a couple of beers for us.
He was all but drooling as he watched her walk away, and I resisted the urge to point out to him that we were both old enough to be her father, knowing it would do no good.
Mitch was a horndog, always had been and always would be.
As long as the woman was of legal age, pretty, and willing, he wasn’t too picky about the finer details.
The band came to the end of the song and announced they were taking a ten-minute break.
The lights on the stage dimmed as a lone spotlight lit up over the DJ booth in the corner, and the room filled with a sultry, pulsating beat with a Latin flavor that matched the sensuous moves the women on the platforms were now performing.
I glance up at the redhead dancing above us just a few feet away who was dressed in nothing more than stilettos and a purple lace thong. She dropped down into a low squat against the pole and spread her legs wide before aiming an enticing smile our way as she shimmied back up the pole.
Decidedly uncomfortable and feeling guilty for being somewhere I knew I shouldn’t be, I averted my gaze and leaned over the table to pitch my voice loud enough for Mitch to hear me over the music.
“One drink in honor of Grady, and then I’m out of here.
No matter what you call it, this is not somewhere I want to be.
” He rolled his eyes at me, then pointedly looked away and stared at the redheaded dancer before getting up and walking over to toss a twenty-dollar bill onto the platform.
She bent low to scoop it up, then made a show of tucking it into her thong and blowing him a kiss before continuing on with her routine.
He stood there watching, along with a couple of other men as she continued to gyrate and flirt with the crowd.