Pictures of Houses with Water Damage: Stories by Michael Hemmingson Page B

anthropologists.”
    “Really?”
    “We get people who come in here and study us from the school.”
    The father of her youngest is in jail. “I hope he stays there,” she says, “he’s bad news. He was on meth. Always stole money from me. He wanted to knock me up to keep me, so I could make money for him here. Then he got busted. It’s for the best.”
    I don’t ask her why she stayed with a man who took her money.
    Brianna yells at the group of blonde girls, “Hey, why don’t some of you cuties get up and show us what you got. C’mon, get on stage.”
    “Gross,” one of them says.
    They just stare at Brianna like they can’t believe she’s real.
    “Cunts,” she says, and to me: “Let’s go to the couches. I promise you it will be good, better than you expect. I want to give these bitches a real show.”
    Her couch dance is a world of difference than Angelfood’s. Brianna lets me touch her anywhere I want, lets me fondle and caress her small breasts. She kisses me on the lips. She puts her hand between her legs and tells me to rub. She stands on the couch and puts my face into her crotch. She gets on her knees, touches me between the legs. “No underwear!” she says.
    “Not tonight.”
    “Going commando,” she says. She has my penis in her hand; my khaki pants the only thing between our flesh. She puts it in her mouth, licking my pants. I have never had a dancer in the states do this; dancers in Tijuana do it all the time, but they all double as prostitutes as well.
    Another dancer sees Brianna do this and says, “Oh, you naughty thing!”
    “Hey,” says Brianna, “at least I don’t take it out and suck it like some do.”
    “Guilty!”
    “Really?” I say.
    “You can get a blowjob if you want,” she says quietly, and then in my ear: “Not here, but in the back, if you want.”
6.
     
    Her car is in back; a small, beat-up car. We sit in it. I hand Brianna two $20 bills.
7.
     
    You have to understand something—my wife used to give me great blowjobs when we were dating but has not put my penis in her mouth in four years. I forgot how wonderful blowjobs are until Brianna put my penis in her mouth and I realized what I had been missing these past four years.
8.
     
    Stay in the club and watch Brianna and the other women until it is closing time. Take some money out of the convenient on-site ATM machine. Brianna gives me two more couch dances. She asks what I am doing for the rest of the night—or morning. “Nothing.”
    “Wanna come to my place and…”
    I ask how much.
    “$200 an hour,” she says.
9.
     
    Follow Brianna’s car to her apartment, three miles away. She takes my hand as we go inside.
10.
     
    Her boyfriend is waiting inside. He smokes crack from a crack pipe.
    “It’s about time,” he says.
    “What are you doing,” she says, “you’re not supposed to be here.”
    “I’m home,” he says.
    “This is not your home,” she says.
    Start to back away. I want out.
    “Who is this?” he says, looking at me, exhaling crack. “No one,” she says; “a friend.”
    “A friendly friend,” he says; “more like a trick. A trick.”
    “None of your,” she starts to say.
    “You like fucking whores?” he asks me.
    She screams. She jumps toward him and attacks him. She scratches his face. He punches her in the stomach. There is blood.
    Start to leave and then they both attack me and hold me down on the floor. The boyfriend is on my back.
    “Where do you think you’re going, John?” the boyfriend says to me.
    Brianna smokes some crack. “Trick,” she says, “trick with a little dick.”
    “She’s spoiled,” the boyfriend goes, “I’m a thick 11 inches.”
11.
     
    They take all the money from my wallet, demand the PIN for my ATM. At first I am not going to give them that, until the boyfriend holds a knife to my neck. Give him the wrong PIN. Fuck these two.
12.
     
    There is something else I have to endure with a knife to my neck. The boyfriend goes, “So you