Slide by Jason Starr Ken Bruen

with the cigars hanging in their mouths like big-ass dicks would tell her she was too old, too fat, too this, too that. She’d want to say to them, Look who’s talking about fat, bunch of hairy, sweatin’, beer-gut assholes can’t even bend down to tie their own damn shoelaces. Then they’d be going on, telling her her tits were hangin’ too low and she needed more surgery. Yeah, like 44 double-E’s wasn’t enough. Shit. So then, after she went on, got all her surgery, lost the damn weight, she’d have to give ’em blow jobs, maybe fuck ’em too. Then maybe they’d say, “Sorry, baby, you ain’t what we lookin’ for.” Or, if she got lucky , they’d give her a role. Yeah, but not in the good movies, like the ones Jenna Jameson gets in. No, she’d have to bust her ass, doing the “mature” movies—you know, the ones with words like “old lady” and “granny” in the titles. She’d be lucky if she got five hundred a film and how was she supposed to pay her rent and all her damn bills with that bullshit?
    So this was where her mind was at when Max Fisher walked into the club and asked for a dance. She remembered Fisher—this practically bald-headed white-ass businessman in a suit, acted like he was all that and shit. Did something with computers, always talking about it like it was some hot shit she gave a damn about. Dropping big-ass computer words, like he thought he was Billionaire Gates or something. She used to play along, suck up to him, tell him how smart and cute he was, when really she thought he was as dumb and asshole-ugly as all the rest of ’em. Stuck-up motherfucker always talkin’ the way he did about his Porsche and his town house and how much money he had, all that trying-to-impress-her bullshit when the truth was all she cared about was the next twenty-dollar bill he was gonna stick in her panties.
    Another thing about Fisher—he was a titty man. When she was doing a dance he didn’t look at nothing else but her titties. It was like that was all she was—two titties, and it was like her nipples were made of metal and there were little round magnets in his eyeballs. Too bad he wasn’t making the porno movies because her tits were fine enough for him.
    Then, one day, she saw something about him in the paper, how he was mixed up in some shootings or whatever. The cops even came to talk to her, wanted to know where he was the night his wife or girlfriend or somebody got shot. She was surprised, never thought a man like that would ever get involved in something like shooting people. Thought he was all bullshit, no action. Finally the man’d done something impressed her.
    But after that, she didn’t hear nothing about him for a long time. He didn’t come into the club no more and she forgot all about him. Then, there he was, back in his seat, asking for a dance. While she was going at it, he asked her if she wanted to be his live-in ho, paying her double what she was making dancing. She thought maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. She get to rest her feet and it was better than regular hoin’, goin’ man to man. And shit, it was lot better than having to suck off some scumbag movie producer for a role in Horny Grandmas 11 . She’d get to live in a penthouse on the Upper Rich Side, eat as much sushi as she wanted. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that shit, right?
    What she didn’t know, she was getting in with a crazy damn crack dealer.
    Man was on the rock all the time. He said it was just balancing him out or some shit, cause of all the drinks he be having, but Felicia knew that was bullshit talking—the man was just a big stupid-ass crackhead who didn’t know how to keep his damn mouth shut. Talking like Al Pacino, thinking he knows shit about hip-hop, and calling her bee-atch all the time. Or how about he’s calling people nigger around her, dissing her race and shit? Motherfucka was lucky he was paying her or he woulda wound up with six in his back real quick.
    And how