Chapter 29
Benji
Iwalked into Barbacks on Tuesday afternoon to find a nearly naked man standing on the bar.
This requires context.
I had been gone for two days, two glorious days of Peter’s bed and Peter’s kitchen and Peter’s hands and a stuffed manatee named Biscuit who now lived on the nightstand beside Peter’s glasses.
This was a placement I had not suggested and that Peter had not acknowledged but that I had photographed and sent to Mia with the caption, “He put Biscuit on his nightstand.”
Mia responded with seventeen exclamation points and a GIF of a woman fainting.
I’d enjoyed two whole days of my new normal, which was basically the old normal plus kissing and foreplay and wild sex and sleeping in the same bed. Those days were also filled with a quiet, ongoing revelation that Peter Loupier was also a man who reached for me in his sleep and didn’t let go.
But now it was Tuesday, and Tuesday was my early shift. Yay me.
I arrived at the bar expecting the usual inventory and prep, the comfortable rhythm of a workplace that operated on systems I understood.
Instead, there was an almost-naked man on the bar.
He looked to be in his mid-twenties and was muscular in the specific way that suggested he’d won a gym membership and a protein powder sponsorship. His blond hair flapped about as he danced.
Or attempted to dance.
His hips were moving in a pattern that bore a passing resemblance to rhythm the way a photocopy bears a passing resemblance to the original document. The general shape was there, but the resolution was catastrophic.
Finn was sitting at a booth with a clipboard.
Yes, a clipboard.
Finn was watching the blond man with the focused, analytical expression he wore when evaluating vendor proposals, which was the same expression he wore when evaluating everything, because Finn did not have a casual mode of assessment unless it was beer.
In the case of beer, he went “full Irish” (his words, not mine), which took his serious evaluation thing to a whole other level.
“What in the name of the goddess of thongs and string cheese is happening?” I asked.
Jacks was behind the bar, ostensibly polishing glasses. His hands had stopped moving and his eyes were fixed on the man’s rear end with the dazed focus of someone who had been caught off guard by the sudden appearance of finely honed glutes in his workplace.
“Auditions,” Jacks said without looking away from the delicious-looking peach.
“Auditions?”
“For the go-go dancer position for the theme nights. Finn posted the listing last week.”
“Finn posted a listing for a go-go dancer and didn’t tell me?”
“He told you. On Thursday. You were texting Peter about the manatee. You said, ‘Sounds great,’ without looking up.”
This was, I realized with some dismay, entirely plausible.
Thursday had been the day after the zoo.
My attention span for anything that wasn’t Peter-related had been less than two seconds.
I had almost certainly responded to Finn’s announcement with an autopilot affirmative while composing a text about whether Biscuit the manatee preferred the left or right side of the nightstand.
“How many candidates?” I asked.
“You’re looking at number three.”
The blond man on the bar executed a body roll that began promisingly at his shoulders and then lost structural integrity somewhere around his rib cage, producing a ripple effect that looked less like a controlled wave and more like a man experiencing a minor epileptic seizure while standing.
His face, however, maintained an expression of intense confidence.
It was the face of a guy who believed in the quality of what his body was producing and who was, based on the evidence, very wrong.
“Thank you,” Finn called from the booth. “We’ll be in touch.”
The man stopped dancing, picked up his shirt and pants from the stool where he’d left them, and walked out with the unshaken self-assurance of a person who had no idea he’d just failed.
“Did he just walk out in his underwear?” I asked.
“Speedo.” Finn was scribbling notes. “He walked out in a Speedo.”
“Same difference,” I said.
“Nope.” Jacks snapped out of his butt-induced haze. “One’s beach legal. The other will get you a misdemeanor for indecent exposure. Been there.”
My mouth opened to respond, but my brain couldn’t connect the dots of Jacks getting arrested in his underwear. So I decided to stick to safer ground. “If that was number three, how was number one?”
Jacks shrugged. “He’s a retired firefighter, fifty-three, with the body of a Greek god and the dance moves of a Greek column.”
“Huh,” I grunted. “And number two?”
Jacks paused and set down the glass he’d been not-polishing to look at me directly.
“Number two,” he said carefully, “was an experience.”
“Define experience,” I said.
“Number two arrived in a trench coat. Without introduction, he removed said trench coat. Underneath, he wore only a thong with the word SPICY bedazzled across the front. Mr. Spicy climbed the bar, knocked over three bottles of well vodka, and performed what he described as ‘a fusion of contemporary and burlesque’ that was neither contemporary nor burlesque. His dance did, however, include a move where he licked a beer tap.”
“Wait, what?” My eyes flicked to the beer taps. Oh, shit. The handles did look kind of phallic. I’d never noticed that before. “He licked a beer tap?”
“The Modelo tap, specifically, with his tongue. I’m going to have to sanitize it, possibly burn it. Should we hold a ceremony for the burning?”
I shook my head and laughed. “Was it at least a good lick?”
“There is no such thing as a good lick of a beer tap, Benji.” Finn finally joined the conversation.
“There is no context in which a human tongue on a beer tap is acceptable unless the licker is a leprechaun. And no, I’m not being metaphorical.
It would have to be a real, live, actual leprechaun with a fucking pot of gold and everything. ”
I looked at Jacks.
He looked at me.
We both shrugged.
“Finn,” I called. “How many more?”
“Three. Next one’s at 3:30.”
“They’re auditioning on my bar top while I’m prepping. I have limes to cut and garnishes to organize and a speed rail to stock. You’re running a strip club audition on my workspace. I need HR’s number right now, please.”
“It’s not a strip club audition. It’s a performance evaluation for a themed entertainment position. The bar surface is the stage for the themed nights, so the audition should replicate the performance conditions. Besides, you’d normally pay for this kind of workplace disruption, and you know it.”
Okay, he had a fair point. Getting paid to watch mostly naked men shake their mostly naked parts wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever done to feed myself.
Still, I had to at least feign some level of professional standard.
“These performance conditions include me trying to make a Rescue Sour while a man in bedazzled underwear licks the taps?”
“That was an anomaly. The listing specifies professional go-go experience. We’re looking for someone who can engage the crowd, maintain appropriate energy levels, and enhance the atmosphere of the themed events without disrupting bar operations.”
“Finn. A man licked my Modelo. I feel violated. And a little excited. Though more violated.”
“Which is why we’re continuing auditions. The right candidate is out there. We just have to find him.”
I tied my apron, assumed my position behind the bar, and began cutting limes. I would get my damn station ready regardless of whatever was about to happen on the counter above me, damn it.
Candidate number four arrived at 3:30 and was, in fairness, a significant improvement over number three.
He was in his early thirties, dark-haired, with the lean build of someone who had actual dance training and who understood that go-go dancing was a skill rather than a personality trait.
He removed his shirt with professional efficiency, revealing a torso that was well maintained and tastefully tattooed.
He kicked off his flip-flops, shimmied out of his shorts, and climbed onto the bar with a grace of an elf gliding across a field in Lord of the Rings.
He danced.
And he was good.
His body moved with the kind of trained fluidity that I recognized from my own years in dance, a controlled articulation of someone who understood rhythm as a physical language rather than a suggestion.
His hips knew what they were doing.
His arms knew what they were doing.
Everything was technically proficient and aesthetically sound and entirely, completely, devastatingly boring.
He danced the way a textbook reads.
Every movement correct, every beat hit, and every transition executed with mechanical precision. The result was a performance that communicated, “I have completed my dance training and am now demonstrating competency,” rather than, “I am a person you want to watch.”
I knew this feeling.
I’d seen it in auditions during my dance years, the technically perfect performer who had everything except that unnamable spark that made you unable to look away.
It was the thing that couldn’t be taught.
Finn, to his credit, watched the entire performance before saying, “Thank you, we’ll be in touch,” in the gentle, professional tone of a man who respected the guy’s effort but was not going to waste anyone’s time pretending the answer might be yes.
Candidate number five was fifteen minutes late, which in Finn’s operational framework was approximately fourteen minutes past the point of disqualification.
Still, Finn waited, because the candidate pool was small and the Modelo tap incident had recalibrated his standards below those of a professional limbo dancer.
The door opened at 3:47.
A man walked in, assessed the room in a single sweep, and said, “Sorry. My abuela called. You don’t hang up on your abuela.”