Let Me Go Read Free Page A

still reeked of stale cigarette smoke, and no one had bothered to collect the black plastic ashtrays that were still stationed on every surface. Candles flickered, Italian-restaurant-style, in red glass jars on the tables. Colored Christmas lights festooned the ceiling, some blinking, some not, every string a different style from the last, seemingly hung at random, as if the whole mess had been left behind by a rowdy bachelor party of drunken elves. Rope lights outlined the bar and the stages, the PVC tubing affixed with a staple gun. All that gaudy lighting, and the place was still too dark to see properly. Leo knew where he was going, though. He led Susan around the line to play Keno, past the first stage, toward the main stage at the center of the room. The club was bustling with the usual suspects. A dozen testosterone-fueled frat boys gathered around two tables and chanted encouragement to a poor asshole wearing a candy bra over his shirt and pounding a beer. Men in suits hunched over cocktails, ties loosened, wedding rings in their pockets. A few couples leaned close, giggling. Some Portland Timbers fans were so drunk that one of them nearly tripped over his scarf. And then there were the creepy guys, the ones who sat along the stage racks, their caps pulled low, nursing beers and clutching cash in their hands.
    Susan could tell that Leo was looking for someone. He wasn’t obvious about it, but she noticed his eyes scanning the room. He must have settled on someone, because he beelined for a table at the far side of the main stage. A birthday boy, apparently—Susan could see the dorky paper birthday hat he was wearing. As Leo and she sidled past the stage, behind the creepy guys, Leo nodded at the stripper who was performing. She had dark hair and melon-sized breasts and a star tattooed over the pelvic bone she was swiveling. The stripper mouthed the words Hi, Leo . She was wearing a red headband with devil horns on it. Susan wondered if she always wore it, or if it was supposed to be some sort of Halloween costume. Maybe she’d started out in a full Satan ensemble and had slowly stripped it all away.
    They got to the table and Leo put his hand on the birthday boy’s back. The birthday boy turned and looked up.
    â€œArchie?” Susan said, the sound of his name swallowed by the music.
    Henry appeared then, with two beers in plastic cups, and he set the cups on the table and sat down in the chair next to Archie.
    Susan looked from Henry to Archie, expecting some sort of explanation, but she didn’t get one. Henry avoided her eyes.
    Archie took one of the cups and lifted it in a toasting motion in her direction, and some of the beer slopped out of the cup onto the table.
    Was he drunk? Was Archie Sheridan drunk in a strip club wearing a child’s birthday hat?
    Susan wasn’t sure what to say. It was like the time she went to get her eyebrows waxed and one of her editors from back when she’d worked at the Herald was there making an appointment for an anal wax. She couldn’t get through an editorial meeting after that without picturing his smooth, hairless sphincter. There were things about people you just weren’t supposed to know.
    Her face must have communicated her bafflement, because Archie pointed to the birthday hat. And then at Henry. “His idea,” Archie yelled over the music.
    Susan tightened her fingers around Leo’s arm. She wanted out of here. She had fled the brow wax and never gone back to that salon again. Archie could get drunk and go to strip clubs. That didn’t mean she had to watch it.
    Archie motioned for Leo to lean in close and then Archie said something to him.
    Leo stood up and laughed and clapped Archie on the shoulder. “Let’s get you a birthday present,” he said loudly. He looked up at the busty brunette humping the stripper pole and beckoned her with his finger and she smiled and slid off the stage. Archie picked up his