The dancer just finishing her last number was an Egyptian girl named Indihar. I’d known her for years. She used to work for Frenchy Benoit, but now she was wiggling her ass in Chiri’s club. She came up to me when she got offstage, wrapped now in a pale peach-colored shawl that had little success in concealing her voluptuous body. “Want to tip me for my dancing?” she asked.
“It would give me untold pleasure,” I said. I took a kiam bill from my change and stuffed it into her cleavage. If she was going to treat me like a mark, I was going to act like one. “Now,” I said, “I won’t feel guilty about going home and fantasizing about you all night.”
“That’ll cost you extra,” she said, moving down the bar toward the bare-chested guy in the vinyl pedal pushers.
I watched her walk away. “I like that girl,” I said to Chiriga.
“That’s our Indihar, one fine package of suntanned fun,” said Chiri.
Indihar was a real girl with a real personality, a rarity in that club. Chiri seemed to prefer in her employees the high-velocity prettiness of a sexchange. Chiri told me once that changes take better care of their appearance. Their prefab beauty is their whole life. Allah forbid that a single hair of their eyebrows should be out of place.
By her own standards, Indihar was a good Muslim woman too. She didn’t have the head wiring that most dancers had.