Fannie thought she might be hallucinating as she watched Skinner stroll on into Vienna’s Place, craning his neck and turning about with delight as he studied the inside of the titty bar. He seemed downright amused by the stages, the brass poles, the bar, and the crow’s nest high in the rafters by her glass office. Skinner kept on his Stetson hat, dressed today in his uniform of short-sleeved plaid shirt, pocket laden with pencils and pens, and old man khakis with farm-and-ranch boots to show he was truly a man of the people. One of his most often repeated turns of phrase at those horrendous supervisor meetings was I’m not no better than no one else. But everyone knew Skinner believed he was better than everyone. Always talking about his close and personal connection with Jesus Christ as if he had the Man from Galilee on speed dial.

“Skinner,” Fannie said. She’d been checking on the liquor supply behind the bar and in the storeroom, and they were running low on cheap champagne and good whiskey. She’d need Midnight Man to make a run over to Tupelo sometime later tonight.

“This is quite a place,” Skinner said. “Sometimes I forget what a marvel we have in Tibbehah County. Just what do the women do up there, up there in that crow’s nest?”

“That’s my office,” Fannie said.

“What about those platforms?” Skinner said. “Is that where your girls take the customers? Just like hens fluttering their wings, finding a place to roost.”

“No,” Fannie said, dressed down today in black slacks and a pink velvet top. “It’s where I watch out for my dancers and all the desperate suckers down on the floor.”

“Now, that’s something,” Skinner said, taking his eyes off the walkway and back down to Fannie behind the bar. “Y’all sure have it planned out. Yes, ma’am. Let me ask something, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure,” Fannie said. “Ask away, Supervisor.”

“What does a young woman get for getting nekkid here,” Skinner said. “I mean, is it really worth a young lady’s dignity to expose herself like that?”

“Depends on how many private dances she gives.”

“And what’s entailed in a private dance?”

“You know the answer,” Fannie said. “Or do you just like to hear the details? You want to know how those young ladies crawl up in a man’s lap and grind his pecker until he shoots the moon or just can’t take it anymore?”

“That’s some direct talk.”

“I’m a direct woman,” Fannie said. “Now, what in the fuck do you want?”

“Do you always have to be so profane, Miss Hathcock?”

Fannie didn’t answer, letting the silence speak for itself, reaching for her cigarillos, that bald-headed dickbrain always making her smoke. She lit one up with her gold Dunhill lighter.