Solitary Dancer Read Online Free

their breaks outside, standing in the doorway pulling on a Marlboro where the perverts going by on Laveche Street could see them, maybe with one long leg extended, red polish on the toenails, the guys knowing they had nothing on under their robes.
    â€œTake your breaks there, the front door,” Sugarman would say. “Brings the suckers in. Flash ’em a little thigh, casual like. Get ’em in for a beer, let ’em look at some pussy.”
    Billie opened the door on a gray early afternoon. She lit a Marlboro and French-inhaled, releasing the smoke in thick clouds from her mouth, pulling it up through her nostrils and deep into her lungs. She stood staring down the street toward Tremont. From inside the club, Mick Jagger’s voice thundered through the speakers over the dance floor where Terri was just beginning her act, reaching behind her, unfastening the gold lamé halter top.
    An electrician’s delivery van drove by, the young mustached driver lowering his window and making a sucking noise at her. When she gave him the finger, he smiled, honked his horn, accelerated away toward Tremont.
    â€œHow you doin’?”
    Billie turned to see a cool black dude who’d come up behind her. He was wearing one of those expensive raincoats made in England, nice pin-striped suit, tab-collar shirt, loafers with those little tassels on them.
    â€œI’m doing okay,” Billie said. She stepped aside. “You wanta go inside, see some good-looking girls?”
    He smiled. Nice white even teeth. Lots of them. “Not today. Looking for an old friend of mine.”
    Billie took a last drag on her cigarette. “What’s his name?”
    â€œMcGuire. Joe McGuire.”
    â€œNever hearda him.” She dropped the butt on the sidewalk, stretched a long leg out to crush it with a rhinestone-strapped stiletto-heeled shoe. The black guy was looking. She felt him watching her leg, admiring it.
    â€œGuy’s about fifty, dark hair gettin’ gray,” he said when she straightened again, her arms folded across her chest. “Got a scar here,” and he traced a line with his fingertip diagonally from the corner of his nose to his upper lip.
    â€œNever saw him either.” She looked up and down the street, avoiding his eyes. “Listen, I gotta go to work, okay?”
    The black guy reached out, grabbed her wrist, squeezed tightly. “How many times’ve you been busted?” he said, still smiling. Showing his teeth mostly, not smiling with his eyes.
    â€œFor what?” Jesus, if Dewey came out now . . .
    â€œFor anything. Hooking, snorting, public indecency, picking your nose, I don’t care.”
    â€œNone of your fucking business.” Hell, first the bearded asshole said he was a professor, now this.
    â€œYou want to add another one or you want to tell me where McGuire is? Your choice.”
    People going by were watching. Stuff like this could hurt business, guys don’t want to come into a place where there’s trouble. “He’s gone. Goes out in the morning, sometimes you don’t see him for days even.”
    â€œWhere’s his room?”
    â€œAround the back. Up the fire escape.”
    â€œYou see him go out this morning?” The cop relaxed his hold on her wrist.
    â€œOne of the girls did. I think she’s got a thing for him.”
    â€œWhere does he go?”
    Billie shrugged. “How the hell should I know?”
    â€œMilt Sugarman still own this place?” He released her wrist.
    â€œYeah, but he’s not here. Gone to Mexico with one of the girls. Acapulco, some place like that.”
    â€œWhen’s he back?”
    She rubbed her wrist where he had held her, gave him a sly grin. Good looking stud, wasn’t he? She wondered how seriously he took the gold wedding band on his finger. “Next Wednesday or when he’s tired a fuckin’ his eyes out, whichever happens first.” She took a