“Oh, he’ll hit me in the eye,” the brunette said.

“The time?” Raf asked me.

“Um, central, subtract an hour, it’s nearly five.”

“O.K., come on. A performance thing to show you,” he said. “Although walking into this abstemious will be weird.”

He drove us to an upscale community where on either side of a four-lane highway ran a mile of mall and villages of condos. Everything around was elaborately planted. There were vines and snaking ropes of ivy.

The mall offered a boxcar line of retail stores—Roy’s Jewelers, Ann Taylor, Video Rentals and Sales, Pattie Pauley’s Academy of Dance. We parked midway, before an unmarked building painted steel blue.

“Is this gonna be more lowlife, Raphael?”

“Well, yes. Or no. You’ll see.”

Now I noticed the establishment’s framed poster. It was unillustrated, with simple printing: SWEETNESS—ADULT ENTERTAINMENT.

“I can’t go in there,” I said.

“You can, in fact. In fact, this’s a white-collar couples’ place.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means men and women go in.”

A fellow who looked like banking or middle management—young, cautious—approved our clothes and said, “Welcome, take any table. Waitress’ll be with you.”

Behind us, the slow-swinging door shut and we were caught in a dark aisle. Raf guided me to a table on a stairstep row.

The table had a linen drape, a generous ashtray, a lamp with a small shade. Tethered to the chairs were silver helium balloons.

Pink and white paper streamers dangled from the ceiling. Mirrors hung: wherever a mirror would fit.

A disk jockey was babbling into a microphone from a Vegas-style stage. On a runway that jutted from the stage posed a girl in white boots and a G-string with loopy elastic suspenders.

Big heavily amped music pounded.

“See?” Raf said. “Lots of couples here.”

There were couples seated at the various tables, men and women wearing business suits.

“Raf!” I said. “That dancer just waved at you.”

“I know her slightly. Her name’s Pru.”

Pru did a handstand, and while upside down, stamped her white boots on the mirror behind.

“How about that?” asked the d.j.

Pru scissored out of the handstand. She cartwheeled, landed in a gymnast’s leg split with her bottom flush to the floor.

“Yipes,” I said.

“She claims you gotta do stuff like that these days,” Raf said.

“Is it sexy?” I asked him. “I honestly would like to know.”

“Yeah, Paige, it’s considered sexy.”

We ordered Cokes. “That’s four-fifty for each,” the waitress said.

I said, “No, can’t be right.”

“We understand,” Raf told her.

“I know you. Hey,” the pretty waitress said, bending low to study Raf.

All the waitresses were pretty; more like beauty-pageant contestants than drink slingers in a stripper place.

“Your hair may be different but I know I remember you.”

“Never been here,” Raf said.

“Yeah, you have. Remember? There was a fight or something?”