Roadshow

Annie bought a fifth of whiskey from the liquor store beside the Starbucks because money was imminent, and because Vera’s addendum had knocked something loose that needed fixing, the image of her lips against Tom Selleck’s mustache, again and again, over and over.

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She prepared to call Maria about her dad but couldn’t bring herself to do it. And there was a wickedness creeping inside her, just as it crept inside Vera. Actors, dancers, the entertainer. All imprudent and something worse, mercenary.

After a few nips from the bottle, she picked through the racks at a Salvation Army. She must have worn an extra degenerate, hungry look because the cashier hawked her from the counter. She found a tank top printed with a busty cartoon moose with long, spidery lashes, holding a beer stein. Get Wild in Hope, Alaska, it read. The cashier softened after she took the money from Annie’s hand.

She parked the LeSabre in front of a Chinese takeout place with blackened windows and fell asleep for an hour; when she woke, the sun was low, as was her mood, the whiskey worn off and a sludgy guilt moving through her, toward what or whom she couldn’t place.

The day manager greeted her at the club, still in his shiny vest but now well lubricated and nearly slurring his words. It turned out he was also the night manager and a self-proclaimed workaholic. He’d become aggressively chatty, being of the overfamiliar type even in sobriety.

He escorted Annie to the dressing room with one hand on the small of her back. She politely told him she knew the way, but he insisted on introducing her to the girls of Girls, Girls, Girls. She walked fast to outpace his hand, but he was Velcroed.

She eluded him briefly in the restroom where she drank deeply from the bottle, but when she exited he was waiting outside the door to reprise the journey. The dressing room was now populated by brightly dressed women, all of whom looked up from applying makeup to stare tightly at her in the doorframe.

This is Annie. She’s our dancing dog tonight, said the manager.

The women said hi flatly and didn’t even make any dog jokes or ask what the fuck he was talking about, which meant they didn’t much like the manager and wanted him to leave as quickly as possible.

Let’s show her a warm welcome and let’s keep our stage time tight tonight, okay ladies?

A few terse thumbs-ups were given.

Annie was pretty buzzed at that point. Everyone had their own robe, a stake, and a place in the domestic glow of the dressing room, and here she was, poised to throw off the balance of things.

She settled into a metal chair between a woman with a riot of perfect, almost plasticine curls and a woman in a long, pink wig. She brought out the bottle to make friends but when offered, the woman with the curls took a serious tone and said, you’d better put that away before the manager sees.

No drinking, house rules, said the woman in the pink wig.

As Annie was apologizing, the woman with the curls took the bottle from her hand and threw it back anyway. The woman in the pink wig closed the door to the dressing room and shot the whiskey, too, then passed it to the woman beside her and so on.

So, you’re down from Edmonton? asked Curly-hair, with wariness in her eyes. When Annie told her she was just passing through, the woman appeared pleased and returned to lining her lips a dark mauve and sharpening the points of her elaborate, winged eyeliner.

You’re very Tina Turner today, said Pink-wig, which Curly-hair ignored. Annie knew to keep quiet at first. Better to make a slow impression than a strong one in sacred places.

The stage schedule was taped near the door. Annie was penciled smack in the middle of the order between Star and Sage: DOG GIRL in ragged handwriting, probably the manager’s.

She got to work on her face, happy to occupy herself. After a time, the normal chitchat and easiness of the room returned like a wound closing, the girls forgetting her intrusion. She painted her lips a violent red and set her eye shadow darker than usual, feeling in need of further protection, but the liner settled around her eyes in a displeasing way, making her appear witchy and desperate.

Bass began to thump from the other side of the wall, and, as if in a dream, the girls left one by one and returned sweating in the old familiar alchemy.

The woman in the pink wig introduced herself as Star. Annie was to follow her in the lineup. Freckles constellated the bridge of her nose and the span of her shoulders. She was coltish, long-limbed and slightly hunched.

Star said Annie didn’t seem like a DOG GIRL, so she showed the mask. Star was young indeed, twenty-two, putting herself through vet school.

Maybe it’s a sign, Annie said.

What’s a sign?

The dog thing. You being a vet.

A sign of what? That I’ll take care of you?

Not like that! Just, like, an omen that you’re on the right path.

Well, are you a good omen? Am I on the right path?

Yes, you are, Annie said because she was finally floating and safe, coddled by the whiskey, and the girls were so beautiful in their costumes. Rhinestones, spandex in hazy, gossamer colors unknown to nature, hair sprayed into place, all primed to be seen, to entertain. Not such a gross proposition after all now that she was here among the entertainers.

All of these girls, all of them, so beautiful, dancing to the same song every night, skin against the cold security of the pole, the stage, accepting the proffered bills graciously. And again, and once more, again, Vera pressing her lips to Tom Selleck’s lips. And again, once more, imprinted onto film, imprinted for a moment, maybe forever, onto the minds of the men who came and went, who paid their cover fee, price of entry, and who paid to see Star whip her hair, bend backward off the pole, perfectly attenuated, a suspension bridge.

Star hissed at her to stash the bottle. In the doorframe was the manager, sniffing around, suspicions aroused.

Has anyone seen Penny? he asked. Saying Penny, Penny, Penny, as if he might conjure her.

Nope. No. Try the back room. Nobody looked up from the mirror. Cold shoulders, a unified front until he left.

What’s the money like here? Annie asked Star, who was moving toward the door, adjusting the elastic on her G-string, running her finger beneath.

Uh, well, it’s good, usually. But mostly for private dances. They say no touching, but . . .

No touching, no touching. None of it mattered. Everything was exhilarating and new but familiar, too. They were anointed by this ritual of getting ready. So much concentration in the mirror, painting and painting and buffing and spraying. Who else prepared so meticulously for their work? Who else had to be as aesthetically pleasing as they were athletic? Such gorgeous, dangerous instruments, the sharp, sharp beat of heels, not just cogs but the machine itself, a mechanism of desire. Without the girls, the boys would simply mill around, bumping into one another.

And it wasn’t some rah-rah girl power kind of thing, no, it was deeper than that. There were certainly desperate nights, compromised nights, but for all the girls showed, revealed, there was more withheld. Consummate performers. The audience, the boys, saw as much as they were allowed and nothing more, not even a real name.

Annie should stretch, get ready. She wasn’t in dangerous drinking territory, not yet. Perfectly lucid, aware of the smell of Simple Green overtaken by perfumes, the talcum stink of baby powder.

She left her suit jacket draped over the back of her chair and stretched in just the bedazzled bra, touching her toes, breasts defying gravity. She explored the contours of her joints, moving her ankles, her elbows, rolling her neck and wrists.

Star’s song was ending. Go, go, said another girl, pushing Annie by the butt toward the door. She donned the jacket and ran to side stage where the smoke machine pumped and hissed and she could see Star, her legs spidered out, pressing herself to the floor, arching her back.

Something was wrong. Annie’s face was too cold, right up against the air. The mask. She scrambled back to the room for it. All was quiet, too quiet. They had been talking about her, but who cared.

Done already?

No, no, she said, scrabbling with the box.

Mask on, the girls laughing and oohing, not unfriendly. She shimmied for them, and they clapped.

Back out the door, back to the stage, passing Star as she was leaving—Jesus Christ, you scared me!—a hand on Annie’s shoulder, the first guitar refrains of “Legs” heating up, propelled forward onto the stage, the audience, the men, silhouetted, shapes on the banquettes, tattered upholstery, then splashed with light, faces yellow, green, blue, lit up like neon. God did they ever clean the furniture? What lived inside? The men tittering among themselves, leaning over, whispering behind their hands into the ears of their brethren, a smirk or two.

Annie danced for them, and the dancing felt good, correct, and the men watched. They watched and they drank and, though the music was loud, they were quiet, secretive. They didn’t yell or hoot or holler like the audience at Club X; they were conservative, prim with their enthusiasm.

The manager was propped by his elbow on the bar, drink in hand. Annie danced and danced. The room was much hotter than it had been that day. She rolled her ankle a little but no matter, adrenaline voided the pain. She put extra pop into her spine, extra sinuousness. When she removed her jacket, there was a collective exhalation. A man wearing a baseball cap low over his eyes sipped his drink and shifted in his seat. After she removed her trousers, puddling them on the stage, he reached into his wallet and approached. Annie knelt and he placed the bill, colorful, Canadian, into the elastic of her G-string. She cupped his cheek in her hand, and his eyes were wet, wide.

The manager approached the stage, one hand up. She rose and kept dancing, no touching, no touching, of course.

When the bra dropped more men shifted. Annie was incandescent, feeling good and right, heels lashing the air, legs long and longer and lengthening still, supernatural even, shooting out toward space, then once again a dog on the stage floor, pumping her hips, the scrape of the stage against her knees a distant pain, happening to someone else, nothing to do with her; she was gone! Released! More bills in the G-string, like winning, like a casino, chance but something deeper, more contrived. The song came to an end, more bills, a smattering of laughter bandied among the men, perhaps for her, at her, at themselves.

Well awoooooo then, tittering again, old biddies, really, as she gathered herself, the money; they nudged and elbowed one another. Some bitch, ha ha, the only words she could discern. Who cared, admiration beneath, they never said what they meant, did they.

How was it? Back in the dressing room, Star with half a protein bar between her teeth.

Annie told her it was good, good, it went well. Yeah, good.

She drank more and offered the bottle to Star who declined, ushering Annie out to mingle, how we make the real money, she said.

Annie didn’t like mingling. She did not enjoy soliciting, tray passing canapes at private events, groveling, please, would you, please, it’s caviar, yes, Osetra of course.

But the whiskey worked. It did its job. Prince pumped through the sound system and vibrated the air. The fake smoke really was sexy, soft, violet light, the girls, girls, girls, writhing, sitting, laughing, stroking an arm surreptitiously, faces resetting when they turned away from the men who sat immobilized like boulders.

And there, a young man, leaning back, farthest out, an outlier, an easy target? Something shy, suggestible in the smooth plane of his cheek, baseball cap pulled low, self-consciously. Work jacket, duck cloth, worn at the cuff. Very sensible shoes, like her father used to wear, pull-on Merrell’s, black leather, heavy tread; old man shoes for such a young man.

Letting herself be carried along by instinct, the irresistible heartbeat of the music. Nothing was serious. None of it really mattered, yeah? Gesturing to the youngish man with the close shave, a simple come hither. So silly, the whole performance, but guess what? He got to his feet, brushed his pants, and followed. His friend giggling. Watch your dick! She’s got teeth!

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From Roadshow by Nikki Ervice. Published by Astra House. Copyright © Nikki Ervice 2026. All rights reserved.