Didn’t take too long to figure out that some addicts’ compulsions were driven by sheer stupidity, boredom, or an utter lack of will power. Parental funds never hurt either. But as far as he could tell, Michelle was too sharp for boredom, didn’t come from money, and the deliberation, resolve, and focus that her illness demanded actually struck him as a feat of the will, albeit pretty fucked up. At least before he ended up with his head in a toilet, he experienced a fleeting tickle. Some buzz or release, the nightlong vacation of an altered state of mind. Michelle, on the other hand, only got the sear of bile, the convulsions, retches, and gagging, as if streamlining the process, plowing a shortcut directly to the porcelain bowl.

She was efficient, his machete Michelle, and efficiency required intelligence, which she possessed in her own spit-shine way. Like her dad, she was a contradiction in motion. Gentle in tone yet cruel in humor, her simple prairie drawl dunking insults in marmalade. Timid with her hands swallowed in shirtsleeves, yet bold with her rod-straight, balance beam posture. Listen to her, barely eighteen but still holding her own, ping-ponging witty banter with Charlotte who, out on the patio, had introduced herself as Claudine.

“So that’s it, the recipe for a sucker,” Michelle said. “Testicles and a disposable income?”

“About sums it up, yeah,” Claudine said. She had red hair and buck teeth and sat with her thighs wide, reclined in a pose much more masculine than Henry’s.

“Lucky me—ha,” Michelle said. “Hen here ain’t got neither.”

“Lucky you.” Claudine eyed him, helped herself to the last of his beer. “It’s a grind, girl. Not just shaking ass, staying in shape, moaning daddy into every man-child’s ear like you mean it. This shit is psychology. Tell you one thing, some customers? Dudes that shell out for VIP rooms? They don’t come just for ass, but ears. They’ll drop hundreds just to be heard, listened to, noticed. Not as easy as it sounds. You try sympathizing with middle-age, self-sorry chumps for hours on end. And in heels.”

Claudine paused, withdrew one of Michelle’s cigarettes. When Henry lit it for her, he felt like he was on the right team, able to align himself with a worker taking a well-earned break. Although he wasn’t on the clock and shared more biologically with the men, he refused to be seen as another customer, another sucker who had to pay not only for another human being’s touch, but worse, her attention.

“I’m a therapist in a G-string,” Claudine said. “But try putting that on a résumé.”

“Could be worse,” Michelle said, then fluffed her hair with a faux-sultry sway. “Ain’t that right, daddy?”