Capture by Roger Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

taking up the space of a girl who will go with the customer into the rooms. You costing me big money.”
    “You firing me?”
    “No, not yet. I want you to think. Think nicely.”
    “I thought.”
    “You can earn maybe a thousand a night. Do it for a year, you can take your daughter and go somewhere.”
    “And what, Costa, start on the tik again, like those two, so I can fuck my brain up enough to allow those fat Boers to shove their filthy things into me?”
    He stands, sighing, drops his cigarette on the floor and grinds it dead with a thick-soled Nike. “You think, Dawn.” Tapping his temple. “You think nice.”
    He leaves and Dawn dresses herself again as one of the girls finishes her set, ending, like always, with a pedophile double whammy: R. Kelly’s “I Believe I can Fly” and Michael Jackson’s “Billy Jean,” to fractured applause. Dawn waits by the curtain, in the gloom, as the girl, naked and sweating chemicals, slinks her skinny ass out, dragging her costume, sequins winking in the red light.
    Dawn cracks the curtain and goes back out there, into the haze of smoke and booze and overheated men’s bodies, finding that place inside herself that keeps her safe and distant.
     
     
    Vernon leans against the bar, drinking a Coke. He doesn’t touch alcohol when he is on duty. Isn’t much of a drinker anyway, the stuff has a way of screwing with his nerves.
    It is close to 3 a.m. and the crowd has thinned, but a scrum of horny white men clog the ramp, staring up into Dawn’s thing like it’s the answer to their prayers. And the little tik -head, Boogie, still wanders around like a mongrel dog from the squatter camps. The kind that nips at your heels and when you kick out at it you see it’s rabid, froth like shaving foam hanging from its jaws.
    Boogie is dark and skinny, in the universal banger uniform: outsize T-shirt, his cargo pants hanging low and loose enough to reveal the elastic of his boxers when he lifts his arms above his head and does a little dance step. Even with the racket of the music Vernon can hear the fuckhead’s cartoon-sized sneakers squealing like baby mice on the tiles as he does his MTV thing.
    Boogie finishes his dance like he expects applause then he leans down to talk to one of the whores, his voice high pitched, spitting words from his bucktoothed mouth as he shouts over the music.
    Costa figures that since a place like Lips is going to attract the meth merchants, better to know who the supplier is, keep tabs on him, regulate things. So Costa tolerates Boogie, with his gang-talk and prison ink staining his pipecleaner arms, and a permanent brand on his lower lip from the hot tik pipes. Vernon lets him be, long as he don’t sell his shit to Dawn. But the little fuckhead is taking a liberty.
    Dawn finishes her set and walks her bare ass back out through the curtain, not even gracing the audience with a look. They’ll have to take their hard-ons out onto Voortrekker, now the bar is closing. The music ends and Vernon hits the overhead lights, industrial-strength fluorescents that hammer down hard and cold, revealing just how tacky and soulless the bar is. The punters blink, suddenly back in the real world, ashamed to look at one another. They grab their jackets and car keys and shuffle toward the door like condemned men.
    A drunken john and a girl are still falling in love at the bar, oblivious to the light. She is so tikked out that if the john didn’t have his hand up her skirt, anchoring her, she’d fall from the barstool. Vernon grabs the john by the back of his shirt and shoves him in the direction of the door. The man stumbles, manages to stay upright, then just carries on straight out onto Voortrekker, not even looking back. The girl follows, falling off her high heels.
    Costa is by the door, keys in his hand, ready to lock up. Vernon waits until Dawn comes out of the dressing room, wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, hair pulled back into a ponytail, a bag slung over