Free Spent by Antonia Crane Page A

water and shit sprayed behind him—raining all over his tarp. He reached into his luggage for a roll of paper towels and wiped his ass. He threw the garbage bags into the trash can and cleaned his hands and legs with antibacterial wipes. He zipped his slacks, buttoned his shirt, and put on his coat and hat. He opened the door and knocked on my window with his clean knuckles. Then he walked towards the pure and silent sunlight.

17
    A tiny red light glowed like a Jawa eyeball in the blackness of the one-way booth in the corner.
    â€œLook at that. What is that?” I asked Star.
    Dancing next to Star was like dancing next to an Amazonian Bond girl with magnificent natural boobs and a beautiful face. She had soft freckles and full lips, and ornate silver hoops twinkled from her earlobes. She was a belly dancing, fire eating, vegan, bisexual, world traveler. Star was one of many well-read, punk, bohemian dancers at The Lusty Lady, most of whom held college degrees and carried on non-monagamous relationships. Star walked over to the one-way booth towards the red light, where a special thick glass enabled customers the privacy of watching us while we couldn’t see them. “You’re being filmed,” she said to me. “Move over there.” She pointed to the other side of the stage. I drifted over to the other regular windows where two men in clown masks and noses bounced up and down wildly jerking off, oblivious to the confrontation happening onstage.
    The music mostly drowned out our voices so Star was practically yelling, “I see you.” She blocked the window with her whole body. “Turn your camera off. I see you.” She put her elbows on the window to block his view. “Turn it off or we will have you thrown out.” She spun around and stomped offstage. I bent over for the clown guys who laughed and jerked, their wiry, frizzy wig hair moving in sync, bouncing in the air above them. A door slammed shut. The clowns left. “What happened?” I asked Star. She stood with one six-inch platform heel in a window ledge and moved her pale hips side to side.
    â€œI told her guys are sneaking in cameras and filming us. They could do anything with that footage,” she said. Some girls who danced at The Lusty Lady peepshow had kids, teaching jobs, or partners who didn’t know they worked here.
    â€œWhat did she say?”
    â€œShe goes, Star, you need to understand if you’re uncomfortable, then you can go work somewhere else.”
    â€œFuck,” I said.
    â€œAnd I go: We are all uncomfortable with it. And, you need to know, I’m going to change things around here,” she says this to her reflection in the glass where a suit watched her long, strong legs spread for him. The stitches on my wrist had healed, but I still wore a black leather cuff to hide the angry red scar. I had removed the stitches myself with needle-nose pliers and rubbing alcohol the week before. I felt giddy, like something horrible and great was about to happen. I believed Star was going to change things, and I wanted to change things with her.
    Management called a staff meeting and it was during this meeting when I realized our labor war had begun. We brought up the problem with video cameras being snuck into the one-way booths, and our solution was to replace the one-way mirrors with regular glass. “It’s too expensive to replace and customers like the one-ways,” they’d countered. They also didn’t allow us to confiscate customers’ cameras—even though the Mohawk boy did it anyway. The only thing management agreed to do was print out flimsy paper signs from their shitty printer with an image of a video camera crossed out and post them. They wouldn’t make any waves, so we felt we had to.
    Onstage, we made plans. “All they care about is moving customers through these doors,” Star said. I knew it was the truth.
    â€œWhen I had bronchitis, I