Chapter 53
“The test on Acts 1 and 2 will consist of twenty significant quotes from the play. You will receive one point for accurately identifying the speaker. One point for explaining any literary devices that are in the quote and you will earn three points for explaining its significance to the story and setting the context in which it was said.”
The groans were loud. Two of the girls flipped their books closed like they were giving up. “How are we supposed to remember every word of the play?” said Barbara. “We aren’t like you. We don’t have it all memorized.”
Ron smiled his best dimpled grin but they weren’t buying it. “Listen,” he said gently, would I ask you to do something that you couldn’t do?”
“Yes,” they responded in a responsorial that Ron thought was too spontaneous to not be heartfelt.
“OK, what impossible things have I asked you do?”
“You want us to memorize this stupid play,” said Connie.
“You make me write until my hand is cramped into a claw, “said Sonia. She accented her compliant by twisting her hand into a claw and holding it up for the class. Everyone, including Ron, laughed.
“Every time I think that I have finally figured out what you want, you announce that you are raising the bar. Sometimes I want to pick up the bar and beat you over the head with it, Mr. Tuck,” said Julie.
There was dead silence. Everyone thought that she had gone over the line. They had never seen Mr. Tuck write a discipline referral but half of them were sure that this was gonna be the first one. The story was that he had never written one and all the girls so wanted that to be the truth.
“Learning is hard,” he said gently. “But you girls are better than you think that you are. Let me show you.” He turned and walked to the book. He seemed to open it at random and said. Who said, “Why do you dress me in borrowed robes?”
“That’s easy,” said Barbara. “Mac said it to the witches when they called him the Thane of Cawdor.”
Ron smiled. He was gonna get them. “And what is the literary device?”
“It’s imagery,” said Rose. “And that other thing.”
Connie said, “Mo’ teef” she said in the funny and exaggerated way that he had taught them to remember it and they all laughed.
“And what is a motif?”
“Repeating something until it gets more important,” said Connie quickly.
Ron closed the book and smiled at them. ”See you know more than you think that you do. This isn’t gonna be hard.”
“Let’s do more,” said Julie, whose plan was to write all of them down.
“Good,” said Ron. “Everyone’s notebook out.”
They sped through the next 10 quotes almost flawlessly. They didn’t really know it but Ron was taking them directly from the test. They knew the stuff cold.
Ron was used to the wall of noise and light that slapped him when he entered The French Maid. He made his way to the best available seat and put a $20 on the bar.
“Welcome back, honey,” said the gum cracking bartender.
He grinned. “White wine, please.”
She smiled and gave her hips a little strutting wiggle when she went to get it. He had been there enough times to be clocked by the bartenders. This one wasn’t married and the dancers hadn’t said anything about him trying to tweak a nipple or saying anything really perverse to them when they danced for him.
When he saw Emerald, he felt his heart begin to pound. He had been half looking for her since the day that he had skipped out of The Hitching Post without another word. He was wondering if she would act annoyed with him or whether she would recognize him at all. After all, how many guys had slipped her dollar bills since Ron last saw her? How many guys had come to the next club where she was dancing? How many guys had just left her working without a good-bye or another word?
He didn’t want the answers to any of these questions. He wanted the fantasy of her. He wanted to watch her bend over for him and smile at him from between her legs. He wanted to watch her crawl for him and squint and tell himself that it was Robin crawling and that he was punishing her by making her do this until he was ready to take her back.
She was wearing an outfit that he hadn’t seen before. It was thin and white and he could see the outline of her nipples and the swell of her labial lips and the whisper of the crevice between her cheeks. He sat back and gazed at her. He was pretty sure that she hadn’t noticed or recognized him until she stood right in front of him on the stage and using her hands like blinders on the sides of a horse’s head displayed the entirety of her breasts for him and smiled.
Ron extended his dollar, creased lengthwise and sticking out straight. She grinned and came down from the stage to get it. She opened herself again and pressed the backs of his fingers against her chest as she took it.
“Thank you for coming to see me the other day.”
“I’m sorry that I couldn’t stay longer,” said Ron.
“It’s a crappy place,” she answered. “I don’t think I’ll be dancing there anymore.”
Then still holding the dollar, she climbed back up onto the stage. She turned and spread her legs wide. She took the dollar and scratched it up the back of her left thigh and then the back of her right thigh and then sliding the end of it up and down right along the thinly clad slit of her pussy. Then she stood and turned to face him and folded it in half and slipped it down the front of her sheer G-string. She gave it a pat and moved away. For the rest of the set, Ron could see the outline of it pressed against her. It made him very hard.
When she worked the bar, he gave her another two dollars and said, “That was a very sexy thing that you did before.”
He expected her t say something smart-assed or maybe nothing at all, but instead she said, “I did that just for you.”
When she came out of the dressing room she came over to his chair and said, “I promised a guy over there that I would sit with him, so if you are still here, I’ll see you after my next set.”
Ron’s face registered disappointment and she smiled. He felt a jealous rush and then told himself that he was being ridiculous. He sat back against the bar chair and watched and sipped wine and thought about Zoe. There was something about her that he missed. It was the way that she made him feel handsome.
He had always been told that he was a good-looking guy, but he had never really believed it. Where he had grown up, the standard for “good looking” had been a short thin guy with dark hair and an olive skinned complexion. Ron was none of that. He stood just under six feet tall and was broad shouldered. He had light brown hair that turned shades of blonde in the summertime. He had a round face. Instead of full, sensual lips, his lips were thin. When he wasn’t running he tended to develop a bit of a gut. He didn’t have one now, but that was because he hardly ate two meals a day. He wondered if all self-concepts were formed in childhood.
The girl dancing in front of him was doing pole work. He watched as she held herself upside down on the pole and opened her legs very wide. Ron stared at her pussy. He loved the sight of a woman’s vagina. He loved to touch it, to kiss it, and to fuck it. The way that it closed around him when he entered it was almost indescribable. And then Emerald was standing at his shoulder again.
“I’ve got a few minutes before I have to go back up,” she said.
“Could I see you sometime?” said Ron. “I mean not here, really see just you.”
He felt her stiffen and she looked into his hazel eyes. “Do you really think that would be a good idea?”
“Yes,” said Ron. “I really do. I’ve thought about you a lot. It would be great to be able to sit at a table with you and just talk and eat or drink or something.”
“And then what would you think when you saw me here, bent over for some other guy who was waving money at me?”
“I don’t know.”
“I do. You’d hate it and you’d hate me for doing it even though it’s my job.”
“I don’t think that I would.”
“I know that you would. I do much better as a fantasy than I do as a girlfriend.”
“I’ve had people say that about me too,” said Ron. “That I’m not real and that I can’t be a real person.”
“You’re real. You’re too real.” She slid off the stool that was next to Ron. “I’ve got to dance. “I think that you should just see me here and be nice to me and then I can be nice to you too and nothing will get complicated.”
When she walked away Ron could not help but stare at her ass and way that the bottom parts of her cheeks jiggled. “Maybe I like things complicated,” he said to himself.