The Song of David(7)

“Huh.” I pushed my Coke away and stood, knowing I might as well go see what he was up to. Leave it to Morgan to dress up one of my Tag Team fighters and put him in the cage in a bikini. He loved a practical joke. But he was a damn good bartender . . . even if he drove me crazy with the pranks.

I called out to a few customers, shook some hands, kissed Stormy’s cheek as she delivered icy bottles of cold beer, and waved to Malcolm Short, who obviously hadn’t taken the time to change after work and looked slightly ridiculous in his three piece suit and his Utah Jazz ball cap. But the Jazz were playing, and he was getting in the spirit, happy as a clam sitting on his stool, eyes fixed on the screen. He was one of my Tag Team sponsors and it was good seeing him happy.

I was almost as good at working the room as I was at working the octagon, though I’d rather be fighting any day. But my thoughts were on business as I strode across the room and through the arch that separated the dancing girls from the sports bar. My eyes went straight to the cage, expecting the worst. But it was Justine at the pole, finishing her number with a swivel of her hips and a final turn around the cage. Justine strode off, hips swaying arms waving, as if she’d just announced the next round, and the lights went dark.

When they came up again, the new girl was at the center of the octagon, hands on the pole, head down. As the music began to swell, she immediately swung into her routine, and I scowled in consternation. The girl was slim and lithe, smooth muscles moving beneath taut skin. Her straight, dark brown hair was silky under the lights, her oiled limbs glistening, and her barely-there shorts and bikini top no different from the girl who danced before her. I watched her for a moment, waiting for the punch line. There had to be one.

She was beautiful—delicate-featured with a small nose, a rosebud mouth, and a heart-shaped face, and I felt a sudden flash of fear that she was only fifteen or something equally alarming. I dismissed the thought immediately. Morgan was a prankster, not an idiot. Something like that would ruin the bar. Something like that would cost Morgan his job. And Morgan loved his job, even if he didn’t always love me, even if I didn’t always appreciate his sense of humor.

Nah. She was at least twenty-one. That was my rule. I pursed my lips and tipped my head, studying her. She worked the pole as well as any of the other girls, maybe even better, but her dancing was more acrobatic, more athletic, than it was overtly sexy. Her eyes were closed and she had a soft smile on her lips, which could be interpreted as sultry, especially considering that she was dancing for an audience of mostly men. Scratch that. An audience of all men. But her smile wasn’t sultry. It was . . . dreamy, like she was imagining she was somewhere else, a tiny ballerina spinning in place inside a child’s snow globe, endlessly dancing alone. Her small smile didn’t change, and her eyes stayed closed, the heavy sweep of dark lashes creating half circles of shadow on her porcelain cheeks.

The lighting was strategic, hiding the viewers and displaying the dancer. Maybe the lights hurt her eyes. Or maybe she was a little shy. I chuckled. Um . . . no. The shy pole dancer was as big an oxymoron as the timid fighter. But someone should probably say something. The men in the audience loved to believe that the dancers were looking right at them, and though the dancers never mingled with the men, at least not in the bar, eye contact and subtle flirting were part of the job. I wondered if that was Morgan’s joke. If so, Morgan was losing his touch.

I turned away as the song ended and the cage lights went black, indicating the end of the set. Three girls danced a fifteen minute set each hour, with another fifteen minutes between sets from nine to midnight. It was Utah, after all, not Vegas. The dancers were off two, sometimes three, nights a week for fight nights and club nights, when the octagon was needed for bouts or disassembled to create a dance floor. With four dancers, now five, on my payroll, it wasn’t a full-time job by any means. Most of the girls had day jobs and grabbed extra hours and good pay announcing the rounds and bouts on fight nights.

“So whaddaya think, Boss?” Morgan grinned and slid a glass to a waiting patron as I rounded the bar and sat back on the same stool, my eyes shooting up to check the score, not giving Morgan the attention he wanted.

“‘Bout what?”

“About the new girl.”

“Pretty.” He didn’t need all the other adjectives that had run through my mind as I watched her dance.

“Yeah?” Morgan raised his eyebrows as if my one-word assessment was surprising.

“Yeah, Morg,” I sighed. “You got something you wanna tell me? ‘Cause I’m not gettin’ it.”