She pointed my mother toward the front of the line and nudged her ahead of us. “Out of the way! Bride coming through!” Vero and I ducked behind her and followed. The hostess opened the door for us with an impatient huff, and the three of us slipped past her into a dimly lit antechamber.
Strobe lights flashed across the floors and house music shook the walls. A red velvet rope blocked access to the larger room beyond it.
I jolted to a stop, pulling Vero up short in front of a flickering neon sign.
CHUBBIES, it read in hot blue script.
“What’s wrong?” my mother asked, stumbling into us. Brightly colored lights streaked across her veil as she tried and failed to bat it out of her eyes.
“It’sChubbies,” I said to Vero. “Plural, with anI-E. Not singular, with aY.”
“I can see that,” she said, her eyes wide with appreciation as a bare-bottomed server in leather chaps strode by. Men clad in little more than baby oil and G-strings carried trays of drinks and appetizers through the room, angling their hips toward tables of ogling women who tucked cash down the front of their scant thongs.
“I thought you said this was a diner!” I hissed in her ear.
“What’s going on?” my mother asked, swatting back her veil.
A man in a tuxedo swooped toward us. “There you are!” he said, opening the velvet rope and ushering us through it. “Your party has been waiting for you. Right this way,” he said, hurrying us past the barrier into a room of cheering women.
An announcer leaped onto the stage. The music faded as he tested the mic. “Our bride has finally arrived, everyone! Let’s show her aChubbiesgood time!” A few women let loose piercing whistles. The announcer’s face sobered. He tipped his head, one hand cupped dramatically around his ear. “Oh, no! Do you hear that?” A siren whooped loudly over the speakers. “Some of you have been very bad girls, and you know what that means.” The audience whooped, forcing him to raise his voice over the din. “That’s right, ladies! The long arm of the law has arrived on the scene. Let’s give it up for Officer Steele Johnson!”
The audience hollered and cheered as two men in fringed G-strings swooped in and took my mother by the elbows. Her hand slipped from mine as they whisked her toward the stage, carrying her up the short steps and setting her on the platform. Smoky mist poured from the floor, backlit by violet and fuchsia swirling lights as my mother stumbled this way and that, a sea of white gauze obscuring her face. Sirens whined as the curtain on the stage parted. A man stepped out wearing a skin-tight police uniform and mirrored shades. He tossed his sunglasses into the screaming crowd.
“Oh, no,” I said as my mother threw back her veil. Vero clapped a hand over her mouth.
My mother’s jaw dropped, her gaze glued to Steele Johnson’s hips as he strode slowly toward her and tipped up her chin. The microphone beside his mouth projected his deep voice over the crowd. “I’ve got a BOLO here for a very special lady.”
“You do?” my mother croaked as he pulled an arrest warrant slowly from his pants.
“Someone has been a very naughty bride.” The audience went wild as he tossed the warrant into the crowd. “And baby, I am here to take… you… down.”
The music began to pulse. Women screamed as Steele began swinging his hips. He locked a hand behind his neck, tensing his abs, his other arm extended in a choreographed dance move that reminded me of Mrs. Haggerty’s lawn sprinkler.
“Oh, god.” I covered my eyes as he unfastened his police belt and gyrated toward my mother. She gasped, her cheeks flushing hotter than the stage lights as bits of his police costume were plucked away and flung into the squealing pit of feral women below.
That’s it. I was going to kill Vero in front of a room full of strippers. I searched out the nearest server and flagged him down.
“Excuse me,” I said over the music, trying not to stare at his fringe. “This is all a very big misunderstanding. That’s my mother up there.” I cringed as I pointed at the stage. “See, we thought Chubby’s was a diner… you know. Chubby, singular. With aY. We had no idea it was referring to… Oh, wow,” I said as Officer Johnson bent low at the waist, grabbing two fistfuls of fabric around his ankles and tearing his pants clean off his body. I gestured to the large sock ball I could only assume was stuffed inside the strained piece of fabric that remained intact. “We had no idea it was referring to that.”
My mother stumbled backward, unable to tear her eyes from it. Steele caught her hand before she could trip backward off the stage.
“You’re not here for the bachelorette party?” the server asked me.
“Would you believe we came here looking for hamburgers?”
His grin was neon white against a canvas of glittering, spray-tanned skin. “Hate to break it to you, but we’re not really known for the food here.”
“I gathered that.” I ducked as Steele’s police hat flew over our heads. Two women in the audience lunged for it, collapsing in a fit of drunken giggles on the floor. The server held up his tray, sidestepping to avoid them.
“I’m actually looking for someone who works here,” I said over the music.
“Sorry. We’re not allowed to do house calls, if that’s what you’re into—”
“No,” I said quickly, “nothing like that. I just need to talk to him. His name is Francis Slocumb. Is he here?”
“Slow Poke? Yeah, he’s here.” He turned to search the room. “That’s him,” he said, pointing out a seminude cowboy in a wide-brimmed hat on the far side of the room.
Pokey leaned over an empty table, his tight bottom peeking out of a pair of leather chaps as he loaded empty beer bottles and shot glasses into a plastic bin.
