Angel of Vengeance Read Free

mean the owners are either visionary about the cyclical nature of trends or just cheap. Maybe both. Small, intimate candlelit tables punctuate the room. On one side, a small thrust stage takes up the entire west wall. Big bare glowing light bulbs stand like soldiers at attention along the perimeter of the stage, as if protecting the six-piece swing band from the riff-raff. Aside from me, the members of the band are the only ones in the place dressed the part.
    I look around for the bar. I find it set back into the wall opposite the stage. The band plays me over the shoe-worn carpet to a tall stool. I order a Scotch on the rocks from a bartender with a thin moustache and watery eyes that remind me of two black pearls sunk deep in oysters. Judging from the gin-blossoms in his cheeks, slinging drinks isn’t the job for him. Kind of like a pill-head working the counter at a pharmacy. But that’s his problem, not mine.
    I swivel around on the stool, eyeing the people that take up the seats at the tables scattered about. Reesa draws an eclectic crowd. Mostly gay couples of both sexes, but thrown in among them are tie-loosened Hollywood types, horny college students, and a few leering Persians.
    All eyes are directed at the stage where the white-tuxedoed bandleader tempos the Cole Porter down and takes to the mike to introduce the delightful, delicious, de-lovely Reesa Van Cleef. Cheers, applause, whistles, and hoots follow the introduction, growing in volume and intensity as the lady herself, veiled behind a wall of red feathers, takes center stage.
    She’s gorgeous; stunning in that golden era Hollywood screen siren way, when women carried an alluring air of mystery about them. When they all seemed to know something you didn’t, and found the fact amusing. She might have walked right out of a frame of an old black-and-white Bogart flick. The only tip-off that she is not a product of my own bygone day is the fact that her hair, which she wears in a forties-style forward-curled pompadour, is brilliant Kool-Aid red. My favorite color. I’m not much for smiling, but I smile now. I didn’t think they were making them like her anymore. Glad to see I was wrong.
    Somewhere a bubble machine works its magic. The band dusts off an old tromboney ditty and Reesa glides into motion. Her bright eyes flirt as she teases the crowd, giving us titillating peek-a-boos of her moon-pale skin, racetrack curves, and full Jane Russell bosoms with small rosebud-pink nipples. Call me old-fashioned, but this is what a strip show should be. The term striptease suggests nudity with a sense of fun and playfulness. There’s none of that in the way the strippers of today ply their trade. It’s all just gyrating, g-string-in-your-face, mercenary flesh for hire. Ugly. A show like that leaves you feeling low, like you’re lesser for it, like you’ve been conned. Not that I don’t ever go. I do. Joints like that are open late and I’m a late-night kind of guy. But watching Reesa do her red-feather shimmy reminds me of something I’ve almost forgotten. It’s as if her seductive movements are capable of weaving a spell and casting me back in time. I feel transported. I feel like a kid again.
    I feel alive.
    The show goes by faster than summer vacation. When it’s over I blink and look around feeling like I’ve come out of a trance. My highball of McAllen, which was delivered unbeknownst to me, sits melted and untouched at my elbow. I shake my head to clear it. I need to get a hold on myself. I’m here on business. It won’t do to come across like some drooling schoolboy.
    To have something to do, I shake out a butt, light it. The bartender is instantly on the spot to play the ever-popular game of fuck with the smoker.
    “Sorry, you’ll have to put that out, sir. There’s no smoking allowed in the Tropicana,” he says.
    He doesn’t sound too sorry. In fact, he sounds like he enjoys spoiling my good time. I lock eyes with him, my hypnotic stare as