“Yes.”
“What’s your name?” Shelly asked.
“Madeleine McKay.”
She picked the name because it sounded like Marilyn and besides, it was French and classy.
“Nice name.” He pretended to believe her. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.”
He pretended to believe that, too. She certainly looked twenty-one, like an adult, anyway. “Can you dance?”
“Yes.”
This he didn’t even pretend to believe. But for the starter jobs he had in mind for her, she didn’t really have to dance, all she had to do was walk and hold her head up. Which wasn’t as easy as it sounded, but the girl had a confidence about her that he liked.
“If I get you a job, I get ten percent of everything you make,” Shelly said. “I pick up your paycheck, I give you your money.”
“No,” Madeleine said. “I pick up my paycheck, I give you your money.”
Shelly laughed.
This girl was going to make it.
He got her a decent motel room and told her it was an advance against her first paycheck. The next morning he took her to an audition at one of the lesser shows in town, where the director, whom Shelly had known since Christ was a road guard, looked her over like a piece of meat and liked what he saw. “You’re a gazelle with boobs. What experience do you have?”
“None.”
“Good,” he said. “I won’t have to unteach. You come every night, you watch the show, first girl who gets sick or noticeably knocked up, you fill in.”
Richard Hardesty taught her a lot.
“Do you know why I am such a good director?” he asked her one night as she watched the show. “Because I have no interest at all in what’s between your legs. I only care that they move in perfect coordination.”
Another night he asked, “Do you know the difference between a stripper and a showgirl? And it has nothing to do with the relative amount of clothing or lack thereof. A stripper sells a visceral fantasy, a showgirl sells an ethereal dream.”
One night he asked her, “Do you know why men bring dates to these shows, often their wives? Because it titillates both of them. When they get back to the room, Mrs. Iowa becomes you.”
Two weeks into this Socratic tutorial, Madeleine got her chance, thanks to some bad shrimp at the buffet. She put on her costume—a sequined two-piece, a tall feathered headdress, and high heels—and appeared in Venus in Vegas.
A week after that, she got a regular slot and a raise when Richard fired a girl for gaining three pounds.
Madeleine worked steadily after that. She shared an apartment with two other girls from the show. When it closed, Shelly moved her to a bigger show at a better hotel and she was on her way.
While it’s an exaggeration to say that every guy in Vegas tried to fuck her, it wasn’t much of an exaggeration. She was a sensation, the beauty among beauties who really stood out, a fresh look, and just about every single guy—and a lot of married ones—who saw her made a move on her.
She was impervious.
Literally impenetrable.
Got a reputation as an ice queen.
Just about drove a high-stakes poker player out of his mind one night in his comped suite when she wouldn’t give it up.
“I don’t want to get pregnant,” Madeleine said.
“Jesus,” he said, “haven’t you ever heard of rubbers?”
“They’re only ninety percent effective.”
“I’ll stop before ninety times, how about that?” he asked.
“If you think that’s how odds work,” she said, “you should find another profession.”
“Okay, how about a blow job?”
She went down on him. It was okay, it was fine. He thought it was better than fine, and told her so, but Madeleine said, “I’m glad. Now you do me.”
“What?”
“Fair is fair,” she said. “I’m your lover, not your hooker.”
He was okay, not great. She didn’t stay with him for long. Being a gambler’s girlfriend was not in her plan. Neither was being a showgirl the rest of her life, or until she gained a few pounds or wrinkles and they kicked her to the curb.
There was no future in it.
What she wanted was security.
Which boiled down to money.
But how does a girl with no high school diploma make serious money, security money, the kind of money that makes her safe in this world? The answer was plain—if a woman can’t make money, she has to make a man who makes money.