I’d enjoyed two whole days of my new normal, which was basically the old normal plus kissing and foreplay and wild sex and sleeping in the same bed. Those days were also filled with a quiet, ongoing revelation that Peter Loupier was also a man whoreached for me in his sleep and didn’t let go.
But now it was Tuesday, and Tuesday was my early shift. Yay me.
I arrived at the bar expecting the usual inventory and prep, the comfortable rhythm of a workplace that operated on systems I understood.
Instead, there was an almost-naked man on the bar.
He looked to be in his mid-twenties and was muscular in the specific way that suggested he’d won a gym membership and a protein powder sponsorship. His blond hair flapped about as he danced.
Or attempted to dance.
His hips were moving in a pattern that bore a passing resemblance to rhythm the way a photocopy bears a passing resemblance to the original document. The general shape was there, but the resolution was catastrophic.
Finn was sitting at a booth with a clipboard.
Yes, a clipboard.
Finn was watching the blond man with the focused, analytical expression he wore when evaluating vendor proposals, which was the same expression he wore when evaluating everything, because Finn did not have a casual mode of assessment unless it was beer. In the case of beer, he went “full Irish” (his words, not mine), which took his seriousevaluation thing to a whole other level.
“What in the name of the goddess of thongs and string cheese is happening?” I asked.
Jacks was behind the bar, ostensibly polishing glasses. His hands had stopped moving and his eyes were fixed on the man’s rear end with the dazed focus of someone who had been caught off guard by the sudden appearance of finely honed glutes in his workplace.
“Auditions,” Jacks said without looking away from the delicious-looking peach.
“Auditions?”
“For the go-go dancer position for the theme nights. Finn posted the listing last week.”
“Finn posted a listing for a go-go dancer and didn’t tell me?”
“He told you. On Thursday. You were texting Peter about the manatee. You said, ‘Sounds great,’ without looking up.”
This was, I realized with some dismay, entirely plausible.
Thursday had been the day after the zoo. My attention span for anything that wasn’t Peter-related had been less than two seconds. I had almost certainly responded to Finn’s announcement with an autopilot affirmative while composing a text about whether Biscuit the manatee preferred the left orright side of the nightstand.
“How many candidates?” I asked.
“You’re looking at number three.”
The blond man on the bar executed a body roll that began promisingly at his shoulders and then lost structural integrity somewhere around his rib cage, producing a ripple effect that looked less like a controlled wave and more like a man experiencing a minor epileptic seizure while standing. His face, however, maintained an expression of intense confidence. It was the face of a guy who believed in the quality of what his body was producing and who was, based on the evidence, very wrong.
“Thank you,” Finn called from the booth. “We’ll be in touch.”
The man stopped dancing, picked up his shirt and pants from the stool where he’d left them, and walked out with the unshaken self-assurance of a person who had no idea he’d just failed.
“Did he just walk out in his underwear?” I asked.
“Speedo.” Finn was scribbling notes. “He walked out in a Speedo.”
“Same difference,” I said.
“Nope.” Jacks snapped out of his butt-induced haze. “One’s beach legal. The other will get you a misdemeanor for indecent exposure. Been there.”
My mouth opened to respond, but my braincouldn’t connect the dots of Jacks getting arrested in his underwear. So I decided to stick to safer ground. “If that was number three, how was number one?”
Jacks shrugged. “He’s a retired firefighter, fifty-three, with the body of a Greek god and the dance moves of a Greek column.”
