Read Online Tempted by Trouble by Eric Jerome Dickey - Free Book Online

mind drifted.
    My mind took me back to the night that I was near Ford Field and the MGM Grand Casino, ten minutes from the airport and less than two miles off I-96 at Michigan Avenue.
    It was a gentlemen’s club that had no gentlemen as patrons.
    While a dancer named Daisy Chain performed, looking like she was worth ten dollars for twenty minutes, I stood near the bathrooms and searched for a different dancer, one who was too beautiful to be in a place like this. I hid out in the rear of the den of lust, drink in hand and holding up the wall. It was Down and Dirty Thursdays at Club Pasha. The night customers were promised they’d be spoiled the moment they came inside. It was the night that three shots of overpriced Patrón cost twenty-five dollars. A fool’s bargain. There were over forty-five dancers in the room, most already topless. Women were imported from Atlanta, Miami, and California. Most were in heels so tall they looked like their fake hair could touch the ceiling.
    Men in sagging pants and shirts adorned with convoluted and outrageous hip-hop and thug-inspired designs competed with each other, moved to the front lines like warriors, and positioned themselves close to the dancers. Tonight men who were behind on alimony and child support were splurging, throwing money at women who were behind on their rent and had small children at home. The customers spanked the women and baptized topless dancers with money.
    I’d wanted to become invisible, but everyone noticed me. I was the only man in the club who wore a business suit and shoes by Johnston & Murphy. When I had walked across the room, some reacted like they thought I was an undercover cop; panic sprouted in the eyes of the men who were wanted or on parole. I carried a black fedora and wore a three-button dark gray suit that fit the way a suit should fit, not oversize like the suit of a ringmaster at a circus. That made me feel both out of place and out of time, an anachronism, because all of the other patrons wore outfits so large they hid all of their obesity. Women with cosmeticized faces were swinging from the bars in the ceiling. Others were working the poles at either end of the stage, stretch marks barely noticeable under the dim lights.
    Then the DJ announced that the dancer who called herself Trouble had arrived.
    I stared at Trouble as she took to the stage. Her beauty was uncommon and her unique appearance drew eyes. She was born in Brooklyn, but going back three generations, she was Dominican, Canadian, Jamaican, Chinese, and a few other exotic lands combined. Her heritage gave her a distinct look. Her hair was dark brown with golden highlights. She had an erotic face that, from some angles, reminded me of Maria de Medeiros Esteves Vitorino de Almeida. Soft, youthful features, round and doelike eyes, making her appear childlike and seductive all at once. Outside these walls the dancer was a conservative dresser, usually wore low heels and had an appearance as innocent and gamine as Natalie Portman, Norah Jones, Robin Meade, and Audrey Tautou.
    She was my wife.
    The heat in my heart and aching inside my chest confirmed that these were our hard times. The financial pressures we lived under felt like a mountain on our backs. But I was the man in the relationship, so inside I carried the onus of having to live up to being a husband and a provider for my wife.
    Society had conditioned me to feel the lion’s share of the shame when things fell apart, and standing in a room that provided entertainment for the lowest of the low put pain in my heart.
    Heat raced up my back and across my neck. I held a thin smile but I wanted to scream. Stress and anxiety did their best to break me down and drive me insane.
    My wife took to the silver pole with energy, every move reeking of confidence. In her sparkling thong and glittery bra, she went up the pole by spinning in circles, looked like she was defying gravity. In a flash she was upside down in a split, then she