present. You’ve been very helpful. Can you send Jeanna over?”
“Sure.” Barney brightened. “I’ll escort her here myself.”
“That won’t necessary,” Maggie told him with a tight smile. “She looks like she can make it on her own.”
Jeanna had obviously just finished her shift on the bar. She was covered with sweat, breathing hard and counting a wad of dollar bills as she sat down in front of Maggie. Up close, she wasn’t as quite a pretty as I—and everyone else, no doubt—had hoped. Her jittery movements, pinpoint eyes, and the strange, disjointed energy she gave off told me why. I had seen enough meth heads in my career to know one when I saw one. She might be the best thing standing at the Double Deuce right now, but it wouldn’t be long before she, too, was old before her time and the grayish cast to her skin grew worse. It made me sad. I was wit nessing her last few months of glory, the final days of her beauty, and they would pass all too quickly before she became just another worn-out, washed-up woman sitting at the bar of the Double Deuce, hoping some man would be drunk enough to see her as beautiful.
I think she could see her future, too. She did not look Maggie in the eye the whole time she was interviewed.
“Here,” Maggie said, sliding two twenties over the table to her. “These are for you.” She slid another twenty toward her. “This is for Roger.”
“Thanks,” she mumbled, quickly pocketing the money in a slit in her low-slung jeans. She stuffed the wad of ones in a back pocket. She glanced at Maggie quickly before looking away. “I’ve got a kid and I need this gig.”
“I understand,” Maggie said and I think she truly did. “You make your money while you can.”
“Damn straight. I still got a few good years left in me.” Jeanna pulled out a box of Marlboros. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Go ahead,” Maggie said, noting the woman’s trembling hands.
Jeanna saw her looking. “It’s not what you think,” she explained, holding one hand out in front of her. “It’s what I saw tonight that’s scaring me.”
“What did you see?” Maggie asked quietly.
Jeanna took a deep breath and picked a fleck of tobacco from one corner of her mouth. Her fingernails had been bitten to the quick. “You’re just going to think I’m crazy,” she said. “Or drunk. Or both.”
“Try me.”
Jeanna fixed her eyes on the neon signs blinking out their promises. “I’ve been dancing here for about a month. The money’s real good and Roger keeps the creeps off. I mean, we pretend to be college girls who just got the urge to dance on the bar and take their clothes off for the marks, but the regulars know we’re here all the time. I’m a professional, just like you.”
Maggie didn’t argue and Jeanna looked encouraged. “I dance maybe five, six times a night. Just for the tips. And all I do is dance. You know what I’m saying? I’m not one of the girls who starts working the minute she steps down from the bar.”
“I know that,” Maggie said, but then her voice grew surprisingly harsh. “But they all started out like you. You do understand that?”
Jeanna looked up at the sky. “Course I do. I’m not stupid.”
“And there’s no going back once you start,” Maggie added.
Jeanna stared down at her hands before taking a deep drag on her cigarette, ignoring both Maggie’s comments and the possibilities for her future. “I’ve seen a lot of creeps come in the Double D. I mean, face it, it’s not the classiest of joints.” Her laugh was bitter. “We get a lot of guys right out of the pen down the road, like that one.” She nodded toward Bobby Daniels, asleep with his head against the bar wall. “I pegged him as soon as he walked in the door, even if he is nicer-looking than most. It’s the bad haircuts that give them away, but it’s also this look they have. Like the world’s too much for them but they’re not able to keep themselves from walking right into the middle of it anyway.”
“What did you see tonight that scared you?” Maggie asked gently.
“There was this guy standing toward the back of the crowd. You know how it is. You start dancing and a bunch of guys gather and they’re drinking, and then they want you to take something off so they start handing you bills, and