Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

behind Claude. One of them was wearing a policeman’s uniform (if cops ever decided to put glitter on their pants), one was wearing a leather outfit, one was dressed as an angel—yes, with wings! And the last one in the row was …
    There was a sudden and total silence at our table. All of us sat with our eyes straight ahead, not daring to steal a look at Tara.
    The last stripper was her husband, JB du Rone. He was dressed as a construction worker. He wore a hard hat, a safety vest, fake blue jeans, and a heavy tool belt. Instead of wrenches and screwdrivers, the belt loops held handy items like a cocktail shaker, a pair of furry handcuffs, and a few things I simply couldn’t identify.
    It was painfully obvious that Tara had had no clue.
    Of all the “oh shit” moments in my life, this was OSM Number One.
    The whole party from Bon Temps sat frozen as Claude introduced the performers by their stripper names (JB was “Randy”). One of us had to break the silence. Suddenly, I saw a light at the end of the conversational tunnel.
    “Oh, Tara,” I said, as earnestly as anyone ever could speak. “This is so sweet .”
    The other women turned to me simultaneously, their faces desperate with hope that I might show them how to spackle over this awful moment. Though I could hear Tara thinking she would like to take JB to the deer processing plant and tell the butcher to make him into ground meat, I plunged in.
    “You know he’s doing this for you and the babies,” I said, injectingmy voice with every drop of sincerity I could muster. I leaned closer and took her hand. I wanted to be sure she heard me over the booming music. “You know he meant the extra money as a big surprise for you.”
    “Well,” she said through stiff lips, “I’m plenty surprised.”
    Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Kennedy closing her eyes in gratitude for the cue. I could feel the relief pouring from Holly’s mind. Michele relaxed visibly. Now that the other women had a path to follow, they all fell into step. Kennedy told a very credible story about JB’s last visit to Merlotte’s, a visit in which he’d told her how worried he was about paying the medical bills.
    “With twins coming, he was scared that might mean more time in the hospital,” Kennedy said. She was making up most of this, but it sounded good. During her career as a beauty queen (and before her career as a convicted felon), Kennedy had mastered sincerity.
    Tara finally seemed to relax just a smidgen, but I monitored her thoughts so we could stay on top of the situation. She didn’t want to draw any more attention to our table by demanding we all walk out, which had been her first impulse. When Holly hesitantly mentioned leaving if Tara was too uncomfortable to stay, Tara fixed us all in turn with a grim stare. “Hell, no,” she said.
    Thank God drink refills came then, and the baskets of food soon after. We all tried hard to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had happened, and we were doing pretty well by the time the music started pumping “Touch My Nightstick” to announce the arrival of the “policeman.”
    The performer was a full-blooded fairy; a little too thin for my taste, but he was real good-looking. You won’t find an ugly fairy. And he could actually dance, and he really enjoyed the exercise. Every inch of gradually revealed flesh was just as toned and tempting as it couldbe. “Dirk” had a fantastic sense of rhythm, and he seemed to be enjoying himself. He was basking in the lust, the excitement of being the focus of attention. Were all the fae as vain as Claude, as conscious of their own beauty?
    “Dirk” gyrated his sexy way around the stage, and a shocking number of dollar bills were stuffed into the little man-thong that had gradually become his only garment. It was clear that Dirk was generously endowed by nature and that he was enjoying the attention. Every now and then someone bold would give him a little rub, but Dirk would pull back and shake his finger at the miscreant.
    “Eww,” Kennedy said the first time that happened, and I had to echo her sentiment. But Dirk was tolerant if not encouraging. He gave an especially generous donor a quick kiss, which made the hollering rise to a crescendo. I’m good at estimating tips, but I could not even begin to guess how much Dirk had made by the time he left the stage—especially since he’d been handing off handfuls of bills to Dermot at intervals. The routine came to an end