Long before that, I lived a different sort of life. Temptations held sway. I’d done things I wanted to forget. You could say I felt shame. Certainly not because of anything illegal, though—at least not too illegal. Nothing worse than money changing hands on one or two occasions. Nothing other people haven’t done.
But I left those days behind me long ago, and I regarded myself as a better person. When Cody called to say he would finally settle down and that he wanted me to head up his bachelor party, I begged off, explaining that he had the wrong guy. I no longer even know how to plan such a thing.
But Cody wouldn’t accept any answer other than yes. Or maybe I just didn’t put up a strong resistance. “And we’re going on a road trip to Miami,” he said.
“Miami?”
He’d heard from a distant acquaintance that somewhere in the Kendall-Perrine area was a strip club that defied expectation. “It’s out of the way, never crowded, and the girls will do everything.”
“Everything? What do you mean by ‘everything’?” Of course, I already knew what that meant. I just didn’t want to say it. Remember, I lived an honest, respectable life. I disavowed anything else.
“I mean everything,” Cody said. “And I hear they’re sexy and gorgeous. Do this for me, Maddox, and I’ll never ask for anything ever again.”
And so we ended up taking the trip, four of us in all, a smaller number than Cody hoped for, but it turned out that I wasn’t the only one who had adopted more respectable ways. Derek turned down the opportunity to relive old times, citing a plan to run for the school board or the hospital board, I forget which. Glen never returned my messages, leading me to suspect that he no longer wanted anything to do with his old college friends.
“What about Erika?” I asked. Though Erika identified as a straight woman, I remembered her as someone who enjoyed watching women dance naked, and she always tipped generously, making the men in our group look more agreeable to the dancers we patronized.
“No women,” Cody said, a little too insistently.
“Okay, no women,” I said. I recalled sleeping with Erika on one or two occasions and felt a pang of regret. A momentary one, of course, as I had no intention of doing anything unfaithful. I wondered if Cody slept with her on occasion, too, and didn’t trust himself the way I trusted myself. In any case, the four of us made the three-hour trek to Miami that weekend after saying our farewells to others. I kissed Lisa goodbye, and then I kissed her swollen abdomen. Silently, I pledged to her and our unborn baby that I would behave, no matter what opportunities the universe threw my way.
As if reading my thoughts, Lisa smiled and said, “I trust you, you big idiot. Have fun, but be safe.”
Emboldened by that assurance, I set off with the others.
It turned out that Cody didn’t have an address for our destination. He didn’t even have a name we could look up on our navigation services. This fact came to light as we drove, eliciting groans and complaints from Austin and Earl in the back seat. Twins, they’d flown in from Mississippi for the occasion, leaving behind a boat dealership they shared. We picked them up at a nearby Howard Johnson where they’d booked a single room. You couldn’t tell the two apart, except that Earl was slightly more egg-shaped in physique.
“Relax,” I said as I drove. “Plenty of places to go down there. It’s a big city.”
“No,” Cody said. “We’re going to the place I told you about.”
“You don’t even know where it is,” Austin said from the back seat.
“I know where to look. And it’s worth it from what I hear.”
“What he hears,” Earl said, choking with laughter.
“You’ll see.”
“If we find it,” I said. I didn’t like the vagueness of Cody’s directions or the neighborhoods they took us through. We passed businesses with barred windows and more pawn shops than I could count. Several signs advertised bail bond services. None of us knew the area very well, though Cody occasionally came there to do business, and he kept insisting on patience. Up ahead I saw a stand selling Cuban coffee, and just as I started to suggest we stop there for some caffeine, Cody exclaimed and bolted upright in his seat. He pointed toward the other side of the street.
The name spelled out in the sign’s glowing letters certainly suggested a strip club: The Organ Grinder. I don’t recall what made him so sure we’d found our destination, but from the back seat came two simultaneous sighs of relief. “Get the party started already,” Austin said.
As I got out and stretched, I found myself wishing we’d stopped for coffee. A bouncer met us at the door, a large bald man wearing a sport coat and dark glasses who extended his hand for a cover charge. We paid him, and I watched him as he drew a wad of bills from his pocket to give us change. His expression remained inscrutable, and he kept his chin lifted, as if gazing at something in the distance. “Have yourselves a good time,” he said, reaching back to open the door for us. We stepped inside, finding an interior shrouded in purple light. Loud techno music pounded from speakers, and only a handful of patrons sat slouched on barstools, facing a tired-looking bartender and a stage where no one danced. They looked like props in a play.
“Maybe it’s early,” Cody said.
Earl tapped me on the shoulder. “You notice the bouncer?” He had to shout for me to hear his voice above the music. “He’s blind. Who the fuck hires a blind bouncer?”
That explained it. Though tough looking, he did act as though he had nothing but empty sockets behind those glasses. Still, it seemed unlikely. I started to argue with him, but Austin handed me a glass of something dark and full of ice. “At least the service is quick,” he said as he passed the other drinks around.
Cody pointed toward two leather sofas situated away from the bar. I followed him and nodded when he said, “Things will get going soon.”
I didn’t care. The scene depressed me. Austin and Earl lit cigarettes and offered the pack to me, but I waved them off. The music persisted, but the stage remained empty.
“You sure they have girls here?” Earl asked.
Cody smiled triumphantly and pointed.
A woman wearing blue lipstick along with a silver bikini top and G-string stepped into view. She took her time strolling toward us, and I noticed something odd about the way she walked, at first thinking it had something to do with the almost obscenely high heels she wore. But Austen noticed the same thing and whispered something about one of her legs appearing shorter than the other. He nudged me in the ribs. “Did Cody bring us to a leper colony?” I felt obligated to laugh at this question, but I worried that the woman had heard him. She regarded him as she squeezed in between Cody and Earl on the couch opposite ours, not waiting for an invitation. Her hands found their knees.
“You see me dance?” I noticed an odd inflection in her voice, possibly an accent, but not Cuban or South American. I couldn’t place it. Perhaps because of the lighting, her hair looked dark blue, accenting her blue lip gloss.
Cody answered for all of us. “We just got here.”
“You from Miami?”
“We came from out of town.”
Though Cody kept answering her questions, she never looked at him. Instead, her eyes remained fixed on Austin and me. Mostly me, I thought, and for some reason that made me nervous.
“You come looking for a good time?”
“We’re always looking for a good time,” Cody said. “Is that what we’re going to find here?”
She continued to look at me, her eyes unnaturally wide, her pupils dilated. Drugs, I thought, but something else about her stare bothered me. I waited for her to blink as we all sat there, no one speaking for a good two minutes, the techno music continuing to pulse through the speakers. Finally, she did blink, and I exhaled, not realizing I’d been holding my breath.
I pointed at Cody sitting next to her. She still had a hand on his knee. “He’s getting married pretty soon.”
For the first time, her face relaxed into a smile. “Bachelor party?”
“Yup,” Cody said, clearly not detecting anything at all odd about her. I started to suspect that I’d been imagining things, maybe the result of old guilt coming to the surface. Old ghosts. How many times I’d gone into a place such as this and carried on an inane conversation, just to see some naked flesh, and sometimes something more? “You want to help us celebrate?”
She looked at each one of us and said, “I’m Alexis,” the strange inflection still evident in her speech.
“Hi Alexis,” Austin said. “How about it?”
She pointed toward a set of curtains in the far corner of room. Though the music droned on, still no one danced. The slumped bodies sitting at the bar looked like tired clumps of rags. “Tell you what I’m going to do,” Alexis said, and she went on to propose that each one of us take turns going through those curtains with her into a VIP area, where she would show us the time of our lives. “You’ll never forget it,” she said.
“How much?” Earl asked.
She named a figure that sounded reasonable to me, but Austin haggled, suggesting a lower amount.
“It’ll be the time of your life,” Alexis said again. By that, she meant no negotiating. Not a penny less than the stated fee.
“What do I care?” Cody said. “You guys are paying.”
I reached into my wallet and said, “Okay, you first then.”
“No, no,” Cody said, holding up his hands. “The best is always last.”
“Sloppy seconds,” Austin said. “He means he wants sloppy seconds.”
Earl reached across the gap between the couches and high-fived his brother. They looked like brainless college students. Alexis paid them no attention, watching me instead. I wondered if the contempt for the twins showed in my face.
“Well, I guess that means I’m going first,” Earl said. As Alexis ushered him toward the curtains, he leered back at us over his shoulder and wagged his tongue.
“Wait,” Austin said. He hopped to his feet and caught up with them. “We do everything together. How much for the two of us?”
Alexis turned toward me as if hoping I could broker a deal. When no one spoke, Austin made an offer, and she agreed to it. Then the three disappeared through the curtain.
Cody came over and sat next to me. He sighed like a man who had just finished an exhausting day at work.
“Ironic after that sloppy seconds remark,” he said.
“I’m not surprised. I thought they matured out of that ‘we do everything together’ schtick.”
“They’re cheap,” Cody said. “That’s all.”
We listened to the repetitive music and sipped our drinks. I stifled a yawn.
“Look, thanks for doing this for me,” he said.
I held my drink up to his. “To your upcoming nuptials.” We clinked our glasses together.
“I just don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
“If I can do what you did. If I even want to. Sustain a marriage, I mean. You’re even going to have a kid. That’s impossible to believe, you know? I don’t know if I could ever be that ... good. That worthy. You’ve changed a lot.”
I laughed. “That’s why we’re here. To get all the other stuff out of your system.”
“That’s just it. I don’t know if I can. How do you do it? How does it even work? Is that all you have to do? Get it out of your system?”
I had no answer for him, so I tried changing the subject to our surroundings. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by bringing up how I felt about this place, how dour and even depressing I found it. Instead, I asked him if he thought the Organ Grinder really had a blind bouncer, and was about to suggest that we go talk to him and find out the real story when Austin and Earl returned, their faces glistening with sweat, their eyes ecstatic.
“Holy shit,” Austin said. “You need to go back there.”
Earl nodded. “I didn’t want to come out. She wasn’t kidding. You’ll never forget it.” He offered a fist bump to Austin, and Austin accepted it.
“What happened?” Cody asked.
“You need to go in there and see for yourself,” Austin said.
I looked around for Alexis. “Where is she?”
“She’ll be back soon. Once she gets herself back together,” Earl said. He shared a laugh with Austin.
Sure enough, Alexis soon appeared from the other side of the curtain, adjusting her silver G-string. She walked over to us, and this time she sat between Cody and me, her hands resting on our knees.
“Who’s next?” she asked.
“He is,” I said, thumbing to Cody.
“No, no. I’m last,” Cody said.
I hesitated, but I pulled myself to my feet, trying to convince myself that what Austin and Earl said didn’t arouse my curiosity, that I didn’t very badly want to go through those curtains with Alexis. From behind me, Austin said something that I couldn’t clearly hear, but it elicited laughter from the others. Shamelessly, I watched Alexis’s buttocks as she led the way, until she stopped to hold the curtains for me. She pointed toward the end of a small corridor and an open door leading to a small chamber with large, cushioned chairs. Though darker than outside, at least the music didn’t blare too loudly in there. I sat down and waited for the rules about what I could and couldn’t touch. In the past, I would have correctly considered those rules as subject to negotiation, but this time, I planned to abide by them to the letter.
Instead, she methodically removed her garments—first, the bikini top, followed by her G-string. Her nipples were small and her pubis smooth and hairless. I saw no tattoos, a rarity. Finally, she removed her massive heels. Naked, she stood before me and began speaking. Something about her attitude and bearing conjured unpleasant flashbacks to a time when I was a teenager and my mother came into my bedroom, her purpose to provide me with some “unpleasant information” she thought I ought to know about the female body: how men expected it to be clean and pure, even though it wasn’t. She described how it bled once a month as well as how it shat, pissed, and farted just like that of a man. That conversation had left me ashamed, embarrassed, even a little confused. Then, she announced that she and my father planned to divorce soon, but not to worry, as they’d decided I would live with my father. Though she made no direct correlation, the timing of our conversation led me to believe that all the things she just told me were connected in some inscrutable way. I almost felt an irrational sense of relief when she moved out of the house not long after.
As Alexis spoke, I once more noticed what sounded like an accent. Now, I wonder if she simply spoke too precisely, as if she had rehearsed everything she said, right down to the placement of consonants. “Before the next song begins,” she said, “you should look at my body. Examine it closely. See what makes you happy. Then, name one part of it. That is the part that I will remove and let you hold for the duration of the next song. You may touch it as much as you’d like, but only that part. You can do anything you like to it, as long as your hands touch nothing else.”
I thought I misheard. Maybe the music distracted me. Clearly, she had not just said she would remove that body part. I might have chuckled.
I said, “Okay. How about your leg?”
“My leg? My whole leg?”
“Yes.” Thinking of how she walked, I took a chance and added, “The shorter one.”
She nodded and sat down beside me. She reminded me of the cost, so I handed her the money, and she tucked bills under her pile of clothes. Then we sat quietly as we waited for the song to end and another to begin.
When it did, she nodded and began kneading her thigh with her fingers, like a masseuse trying to relieve someone of a muscle knot.
Within seconds, she removed it. Her whole leg. It happened bloodlessly and cleanly. I saw no knife or tool of any kind. It simply came off.
“It’s the shorter one,” she said, “but still heavy.” She gripped it with two hands. “Be careful with it.”
I froze momentarily, but I accepted it, laying it across my knees. It did feel heavy, but it felt like skin—the real thing, not a prosthetic of any kind. I ran my fingers along it, nearly jumping out of my seat when I felt the rise of gooseflesh.
She misinterpreted my action and thought I meant to lunge at her. Her hands went up defensively. “Remember, you can’t touch anything else,” she said.
“I wasn’t,” I said, trying to relax and study the leg. It felt authentic in every way imaginable. I even noticed tiny hairs on the skin where she forgot to shave completely. I twisted my neck to look at the part that connected to the trunk of her body. It bore the appearance of raw meat, sliced by an expert butcher. In the middle I saw the round white tip of bone.
“Watch this,” she said. She held up her other leg, the longer one still attached to her body. “See my toes?” She wiggled them for me. Each one bore blue nail polish. “Now, look at the other one.” She pointed to the other end of the leg I held.
The toes there wiggled just like the others. I nearly dropped the leg.
“You like that?” she asked.
I didn’t know what to say.
“Keep touching it,” she said. “Time is running out. Unless you want to pay me more.”
I looked again at the raw side. I touched it, and it felt warm and pliant.
“Do something I can feel,” she said. “I can’t feel that.”
I stroked the inside of the thigh, and she leaned back and moaned, her eyes closing.
“This is completely legal,” she said, the words formed by her glistening lips, even though no one had brought up that issue.
Then, all too soon, the song ended.
She sat upright, all signs of her ecstasy leaving her face, everything back to business.
“You need to return it,” she said. “And while I’m putting it back on, you need to leave. You can’t watch.”
Still wanting to attribute it all to some masterful magic trick, I protested, hoping to see how she put herself back together. But she shook her head. “No one sees this.”
Obeying, I stood up, becoming aware for the first time that I had an erection. I did my best to adjust myself so no one else could see when I returned to the others.
I found them where I left them, the stage behind the bar still empty.
“How was it?” Cody asked. “These guys won’t tell me anything.”
“Don’t say a word,” Austin and Cody said at once.
I sat down, finding that someone had refreshed my drink in my absence. I gulped it down gratefully. Alexis appeared through the curtain, now looking whole and complete, though appearing to wobble a little more. She pointed to Cody. “Your turn.”
Cody sighed and looked in my direction. Remembering, I reached into my wallet and handed him the necessary cash, along with a generous tip for both of us. Accepting it, he asked, “Will I remember it forever?”
“I think you will,” I said.
Alexis led him away while the rest of us watched. Sitting side by side, Austin and Earl beamed at me.
“What did she take off for you?” asked Earl.
“Her leg.”
“Can you believe this guy?” said Austin. “He asked for her leg.”
They both laughed and waited for me to ask them the same question. Instead, I said, “It was a magic trick of some kind. It had to be, but I can’t tell how she did it. Like the thing people do with their thumb.”
Their expressions told me that they didn’t know what I meant, so I demonstrated, using my thumb to pretend like I could remove my index finger. A trick you learned in the eighth grade.
Austin shrugged. “It looked real to us. We each held something different.”
“And she let us trade,” said Earl. “Know what those parts were?”
I didn’t get a chance to answer. Cody came running out from behind the curtain, nearly falling, one of his hands awkwardly holding onto his abdomen. At first, I thought he might be trying to hide erection, much like I did. Only later, when he finally showed me what he was keeping hidden beneath his shirt, did I learn the actual reason his awkwardness.
“We have to go,” he said. “Now!”
I asked why, a question echoed by Earl and Austin.
“Now!” he repeated.
“You heard the man,” said Earl. He tried to sound casual, but he and Austin bounded to their feet and began marching toward the door.
I stood. “What happened, Cody?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
He pushed me toward the exit, and out the door we went, past the bouncer, whose blindness no longer seemed in doubt. “Have yourselves a good time,” he said, just as he did when we walked in, apparently not taking into account whether we were coming or going. He no longer wore the glasses, and as I rushed past him, I saw milky white eyes standing in contrast to his dark skin. “A good time,” he added for emphasis as we stumbled past him into the parking lot, where Earl and Austin waited next to the car.
I fumbled for the keys and managed to unlock the car on the second try. “Drive!” Cody said as he climbed into the passenger seat, and away we went—quickly.
I stole a glance in the rearview mirror and saw the bouncer still sitting on his stool near the door, waving his hand in farewell.
~~~
The car remained silent as we pulled onto the highway that would take us out of Miami and toward home. For the duration of the three-hour drive, we exchanged few words.
“I left my tab open,” Austin said at one point.
Earl whispered something to him, keeping his voice outside my range of hearing.
“But I can report the credit card stolen. No big deal,” Austin followed.
Next to me, Cody stared through the window, the evidence of something hidden beneath his shirt difficult to ignore. I wonder if Austin and Earl noticed it. If they did, they kept their impressions to themselves. I asked if they wanted me to take them directly to their hotel.
“Sure,” Earl said. “You want me to drive for a while, Maddox? You never got your coffee.”
“I’m fine.” But I had to stifle a yawn. Somehow, I managed to stay awake as the hours and minutes ticked by. The journey seemed to last twice as long this time, but eventually we made it back to our sleepy town. I pulled into the parking lot of the Howard Johnson and kept the engine running while Earl and Austin got out of the car. Any other time, I would have gotten out too, for a formal goodbye, like old friends should. Not this time. In hindsight, I think I sat there so it wouldn’t seem strange that Cody remained in the car. He couldn’t have stood up without calling attention to what he kept hidden beneath his shirt. Then we would be forced to talk about it.
“Fun times,” Earl said.
He leaned into the driver’s side window with an outstretched hand. I shook it. “Fun times,” I said.
“We should keep in better touch. Get together more often,” Austin said from over his brother’s shoulder. I couldn’t tell if he intended any irony. He didn’t offer his hand to shake, nor did I offer mine.
“Cody, good luck with your wedding,” Earl said. He waved, but Cody didn’t wave back.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Austin said. At last, they turned and walked into the Howard Johnson, and I never saw them again.
We drove home in silence.
When I parked in Cody’s driveway, we sat quietly for a moment. Eventually, he started talking.
“I want to be like you. I always have, from the very first moment I met you. Nothing ever bothers you. Nothing agitates you. You handle everything in such a calm, collected way—even in college. And now, you’re married, responsible, and you have a kid on the way. I want that. I really do.” He started to cry. “I want to be good and faithful. I want to be worthy. I really do.”
I didn’t know what to say. I never knew he harbored such feelings, such envy, and I couldn’t think of an appropriate response. I only wanted to know what he kept hidden beneath his shirt. Thinking of how I held Alexis’ leg, my body tingled. I should have held something else.
I don’t know why I said what I finally did say. “It was only a magic trick.” Even if true, that had nothing to do with his confession. And I didn’t even believe it was a trick. Not anymore.
Cody wiped his nose. “I have something here, but I can’t keep it. You have to take it for me. Please.”
A swell of anticipation filled me as he lifted his shirt to reveal what he kept hidden there.
Then I finally saw it: the dark folds of the labia, the sections of shaved skin around it, the lower part curving to a portion of Alexis’ perineum.
Somehow, I suspected—knew—that he’d chosen this part of Alexis to hold. Still, the mechanics eluded me. Did she have to take off her legs first? Had Cody left her behind in an immobile state, unable to reassemble her parts, rendered handicapped forever?
“I can’t keep it,” he said again.
He lifted it toward me, and I didn’t refuse. I accepted it, marveling once more at the texture of the skin, the undeniable realness of it. A faint scent of urine became apparent, and one of my fingers came away damp. I couldn’t tell if it came from Cody, or if Alexis pissed herself—whether out of fear or to perform a trick, it was difficult to say. Did she call for help as we ran away? Did the blind bouncer come to her aid? In what condition did we leave her? Would she even survive and for how long?
I turned it around and saw no blood, no sign of trauma. Just striations of muscle, slick and erotic to the touch, barely concealing the other side of that fascinating opening. My own arousal revolted me, as contradictory as it sounds. It felt like gazing upon a secret.
Cody said, “Keep it. I don’t want it. Not anymore.”
Then, like someone running from the imminent ruin of his life, he left me in the car, abandoning me with what he’d stolen.
I didn’t call him back. I didn’t chase him down. I put the car into gear and drove home. After backing into the garage, I found an empty cardboard box with the right dimensions. Not knowing what kind of deterioration to anticipate, I laid a towel inside it. Once I safely placed that piece of Alexis inside, I used package tape to seal up the box before storing it away in a place where only I could ever locate it. This task complete, I tiptoed inside the house to shower before finally crawling into bed next to my wife, who murmured in her sleep and snuggled against me.
I never heard from Cody again, and I didn’t reach out to him either. I don’t know if he stayed married or even got married in the first place. The box remains in its hiding spot. Often, I lay awake at night, fighting the urge to take the box from its hiding place so I can open it and touch it. Sometimes, when I finally manage to fall asleep, I wake up with my body coated in sweat, certain that it has decayed into a lump of rotting meat, and I wonder if I will ever summon the courage to look inside. Time will tell.