and winked with the knowledge of old.
“1698” declared the legend above the doorway, and the club towered over the street, expansive, hands on hips, smiling a welcome from her generous doorway, at once maternal and seductive.
Her name had changed thrice in a colourful lifetime; but no-one remembered the first two, as they came and went before the turn of the new millennium. A rather pointless snippet of trivia, but I thought of it every time, without fail, that I arrived at my only haunt.
This was due solely and entirely to the fact that the information had been imparted by a club dancer with the longest, most delicious legs and the firmest breasts and such spinal proficiency as to disillusion an asp.
As we had lain upon the cold, tiled floor of the shower off her dressing room, or undressing room as she liked to call it, both naked only from the waist down as the progression from the undressing room to the shower floor had been such a hasty one, Dolores Shaw had smiled wanly, licked her lips, and said: “D’you know this wasn’t always called Tuxedo Junction?”
Dolores wasn’t here any more. She had moved on to another club, another town, another time probably. One day she was here, the next she was gone. This was a considerable pity. Nevertheless, I made a point of visiting the club once a week, Fridays, 8.30pm-12.00pm.
Yet it was different tonight. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was somehow different. I climbed the stairs to my usual seat on the railed balcony above the dance floor.
Almost immediately, I was joined by a man I had never met before. A blonde, bronze man with cool blue eyes and one ear very noticeably set higher on his head than the other. He said: “I believe you’re looking for someone.”
“I may be,” I responded after a few moments.
“You are, and I can help. I want to go with you. I am qualified.”
I studied the dancers on the floor, twirling to the efforts of the live band. There was something wrong with the picture. Crooked ear spotted my furrowed brow and followed my line of sight, then said: “There’s two of each.”
“What?”
“I said there’s two of each,” he pointed at the dancers.
I looked again. It was true. That’s what was wrong… each dancer on the floor, each watcher at the table, each waitress gliding from patron to bar, was duplicated. An identical twin existed for every individual in the place.
“So there is,” I said.
Crooked ear stood abruptly, extended one sun-browned hand and remarked a little too casually: “My name is Russ Webber. I kill for pay.”
Then he turned on his heel and was gone… though on the dance floor he whirled and whirled an ordinary looking young woman in a maroon sequinned dress.
