On weekend evenings the place could be packed. Wednesday nights, though, were slower, and the five of them had gathered on chairs along the edge of the stage — Caswell, Rodriguez, and the Doc, plus TM1 Moone and MM2 Jakowiac. House rules said they had to have a drink in front of them at all times. Jak was driving and had ordered a Diet Coke, but the rest were nursing overpriced beers, making them last as the dancers performed one after another.
"Hi, there," a big-breasted redhead said, crouching at the edge of the stage with her head close enough to Caswell's that her breathy voice carried above the background thumping. "Welcome to BJ's! What's your name?"
"Rog— Roger," he managed to say. He was finding it tough to pull his eyes away from her breasts. Her nipples must have been a good inch long apiece and sported very little in the way of glitter that Caswell could see.
"Hey, Roger! I'm Crystal!" She lowered herself onto her back, spread her legs with her crotch a couple of feet from Caswell's face, and began writhing on the stage with urgent, copulatory movements of her pelvis.
"Man, oh, man!" Moone said from Caswell's side. "Lookit them Mark one mod-zero detonators on her torpedoes!"
"I'll give her a torpedo, man," Rodriguez said, gripping his crotch suggestively. "I'll give her my torpedo right up her number one tube!"
"Whatcha think, Cas?" Moone asked, clapping him on the shoulder. "Howdja like a little I-and-I with that?"
Kettering hoisted his half-empty bottle. "Intercourse and intoxication! Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead! Aye aye!"
"I'm not sure Nina would understand," Caswell said.
"Aw, Nina doesn't have to understand!" Moone said. He downed a swig from his bottle.
"What do you think, Roger?" the dancer asked him. It was a bit disconcerting; Caswell hadn't realized the dancers in places like this actually talked to the customers.
"Uh… very nice," he said. He held up his hands, palms out. "I'm being good. I'm not touching."
"He's drooling," Kettering added. "But he's not touching!"
"Drooling is okay," Crystal said, rubbing her breasts slowly. "You're allowed." Deftly, she moved her hand down to her crotch and tugged the black triangle of her G-string just far enough to the side to reveal a bit of clean-shaven pubic mound. As Caswell gaped, Crystal abruptly scissored her legs, sending her heavy right shoe inches above his head and past his right shoulder before rolling to the side and saucily sticking her tongue out at him.
"Awright!" Rodriguez called, clapping his hands. "Awright, baby!"
Crystal sat up, her right foot hovering a few inches in front of Caswell's face. A wad of folding money — mostly ones, but a few fives and tens — were tucked into the strap of her oversized shoe.
Caswell reached for his wallet, but Moone stopped him. "Uh-uh," he said. "The party's on us tonight. This boy is getting married on Saturday!" Moone snapped a dollar bill taut, then slipped it under the strap.
"Hey, congratulations!" Crystal said brightly.
"Thanks!" Caswell said. "Hey, can I ask you a question?"
"Sure." She looked as though she were bracing herself. Caswell imagined the girls in joints like this must get all kinds of propositions from the customers.
"How the hell do you walk in those damned shoes?"
Crystal rolled her eyes. "Carefully!" She scooted over and began writhing anew, this time in front of Rodriguez.
"Hey, Ohios!" someone yelled at them from the bar a few minutes later. "Listen up! It's hot poop!"
"Put the TV up, BJ!" someone else added.
Men around the stage began drifting away toward the bar, craning their necks to see the big-screen TV hanging overhead. A special news bulletin was coming over the channel that a few moments ago had been showing a baseball game. A TV news reporter faced the camera at his desk, his words lost beneath the boom of the dance music. The larger-than-life face of a bearded man in a turban making a televised address glared down over his right shoulder.
The words IRAN CRISIS were prominently displayed across the bottom of the screen.
Her audience gone, Crystal shrugged, stood up, and walked — carefully — to the steps leading down to the back room, as the man at the DJ control board lowered the music's volume.
"… and Iranian authorities claim the U.S. Navy vessel was well inside their territorial waters when the incident occurred. Iran's President Rafsanjani said from his office earlier today that the attack was deliberate and calculated, and a clear violation of international law… "
"What's going down?" Caswell asked.
"Navy ship got sunk in the Gulf yesterday," a burly sailor at the bar told him. "We sent in an air strike and took out a missile launcher and some radar sites."
"Which ship?"
"They haven't said. Shut your hole and let me hear this."
"… Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld held a press conference at the Pentagon today," the announcer continued. "He said that America 'remains committed to maintaining free passage through the international waters within the Straits of Hormuz, and to the security of our many allies in the region… ' "
"Meanin' fuckin' raghead oil!" someone in the audience yelled. He sounded drunk. "Get back to the fuckin' game!"
"Shaddap, Lou! Gulf championships're more important, know what I mean?"
There were several brief sound-bite interviews with various talking heads, but Caswell was no longer listening. Another crisis in the Gulf, so what else was new? There'd been saber-rattling over Iran since the invasion of Iraq, and a number of cries and confrontations that had made it to CNN. Actually, and for the most part, things had been pretty quiet out there for several years now, so maybe it was time for another one.
The chances were, it wouldn't affect him. The U.S. Fifth Fleet was in the Gulf, based at Qatar. Caswell and his buddies were crew members of the USGN Ohio, and therefore part of the Third Fleet and based in the eastern Pacific. Scuttlebutt had it that the Ohio would be spending the next year or so conducting training missions with the froggies — the Navy SEALs — in Hawaii and in San Diego.
As for him, well, he was getting married in another week and a half — Saturday, June 7. He already had it figured how he could take some leave time while Ohio was at Pearl. Nina would fly out to meet him, and they'd have a few days of honeymoon together on exotic and romantic Maui.
The news report ended with the inevitable promise of more to come at eleven. The music came back up… but something special was happening. There were five dancers on tonight, and all five were on the stage now.
"We have a soon-to-be ex-bachelor in the audience," the DJ announced over the sound system. "Let's get him up here and let him say farewell to the bachelor life! Roger Caswell? Get your tail up here, Roger! Someone get the man a chair!"
A chair was produced and put in the middle of the stage, just in front of the vertical pole, and a couple of lovely, mostly naked young women took him by the hands and led him up the steps. The others were waiting for him there. They sat him in the chair with his back to the pole, and as the music thumped and pounded, they began their energetic gyrations around him.
The whole routine was pretty much a blur for Caswell… very pleasant, but hard to take in. At one point he had a woman perched on each knee, another at his back reaching down and pinching his nipples through his shirt, and two more pressed up close, one to either side. One of them produced a pair of white panties, which she pulled down over his head, arranging it so it covered his mouth but left his eyes free.