Free Night of the Living Deb by Susan McBride

she’d been no help at all.
    “Hey, miss . . . um, hostess person.” Allie shouldered her way up to the podium. “You know if Lu’s working?”
    she asked the Guardian of the Cover Charge, something I probably should’ve checked on before we’d driven all the way down to this mangy spot on the map.
    “Lu McCarthy?” The made-up mask of a face appeared skeptical. “You a friend of hers? Don’t believe I’ve seen you around before.”
    “Yeah, we’re friends,” Allie said, faking it like the professional liar she was. “Though I don’t come here much, sorry. Not really into eyeballing the home team.”
    “Ah, well, your loss.” The Hostess with the Mostest grinned. “Lu’s around. Her shift’s till closing. Go hang by the bar and you’ll find her fast enough,” she offered, before she ignored us entirely and bestowed a wide grin on a tribe of already inebriated fellows noisily stumbling into the foyer.
    “Hop to, Nancy Drew.” Allie took my arm and tugged me toward the double doors, and I felt my heart beating hard enough to jump through my rib cage.
    Only the thudding wasn’t all my heart, I realized, as Allie pried open the portal to Stripper World and shoved me in.
     
    Chapter 8
    Music assailed my ears, the bass thumping palpably through the air, and I felt its pounding
    in my chest, keeping pace with my frantic pulse.
    I stood stock-still for a long moment, drinking in the place: the blue lights punctuated by green flashes of laser; the sight of a lone female, working a boa on a brightly lit but tiny stage, completely ignoring the pole. There was a bar to my right, and a raised area to my left where people moved in shadow.
    Barmaids in tiny corsets and skimpy skirts sashayed back and forth between the bar and the sea of tables, and ladies (should I call them “ladies”?) with pasties over nipples or flat-out bare-breasted, sauntered this way and that, clearly looking to make a few extra bucks by various and
    sundry means.
    Across the room, a pale rump raised itself from a tabletop, and a man pantomimed spanking. There were any number of lap dances in progress, and I found myself watching, like a rubbernecker would a car wreck.
    Good God, was this really playing out right in front of my eyes?
    Could it get any more surreal?
    If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve sworn I was on a movie set. Real life— my real life—seemed so far removed from this.
    So this is what a purportedly high-class strip club looks like, I reasoned, my brain assimilating what my gaze took in, wishing I could see the fun in it; but the sole description that came to mind was, Ick .
    No, Double ick .
    No wonder Gloria Steinem looked so tired. If this was part of what she was fighting, she had no time to sleep.
    “Hey.”
    I don’t think I blinked until Allie toed me with a pointed pump.
    “Yo, Kendricks, let’s make this quick, okay? You’re looking pretty green, and I don’t think it’s the lighting.”
    I did feel a bit queasy.
    Normally, I’d be the one barging into a situation, using any means necessary to find the answers I was seeking.
    Only something was different this time. It was as if a part of me was afraid that the answers might be ones I didn’t want to hear. What if I was in denial and this was the beginning of the end for me and Brian?
    I couldn’t bear to consider it.
    Thankfully, Allie didn’t wait for me to take the initiative.
    Instead, she took the reins and headed straight for the bar. I tagged along behind her, not moving quite so quickly, disconcerted by my anxiety as much as by the barrage of ZZ Top’s “Pearl Necklace” on my eardrums while a redhead—literally, red as the stripes on the flag—shook her booty on the stage. I wondered if her mother had a clue where she was working or what shade of Miss Clairol she was using.
    By the time I caught up with her, Allie’s attention had homed in on a brunette in a red bustier, approaching with a tray of empties. As the bartender had