Pole Position

Louis Dumkowski and his friend Cleatus Washington had settled well into their new roles, helping the needy in their community make ends meet with low-interest loans instead of the previously usurious loan shark deals they'd made under the tutelage of their once boss and now partner, Vinnie "The Enforcer" Williams.

Vinnie, who was enjoying his new-found respectability, had once again taken to spending most of his day draped over the bar at McGinnty's Bar on the corner down from his uncle's pool hall where they maintained the offices of Community Development Corporation. When someone had pointed out that the initials of their new organization was the same as the Centers for Disease Control, Cleatus quickly said, "Well, we out to control the disease of poverty in our neighborhood, ain't we?" and that was the end of that.

With Vinnie communing with Mr. Jack Daniels and his friend, coke, day-to-day operations of their new lending institution was left to Louis and Cleatus, and they were enjoying it. They'd made small loans to local shopkeepers who needed money for new inventory; helped a local daycare center get renovation; and many a local resident who needed a few dollars near the end of the month to buy groceries had been thankful for their new generosity.

They were, therefore, somewhat smug and self-assured when D'Arcy Wintergreen and Lily Thyme walked into their small office.

D'Arcy Wintergreen was a tall, wide hipped blonde, whose left breast was noticeably larger than her right, especially in the skin-hugging blouse she wore; while Lily Thyme was an equally tall, even wider hipped, caramel colored beauty, who wore her hair in a bright red afro, and who was stuffed into gold lame pants and a white sleeveless blouse. Her pants were even tighter, if such a thing is possible, than the bright blue thigh-length pants Wintergreen wore.

When they walked through the door arm in arm, time froze. The only sound was a slight panting that escaped through Louis's lips as he stared goggle-eyed. Cleatus had stopped breathing as his head pivoted from side to side, looking first at one and then the other.

"Hello," the blonde said. "I'm D'Arcy Wintergreen." She pronounced her first name 'Deearcy.'

"And, I'm Lily Thyme," her companion said.

"We're Sugar and Spice," they said in unison. "Maybe you caught our act over at the Pussycat Club?"

Neither of them wanted to admit that they'd never heard of Sugar and Spice, or that because of the twenty buck cover charge they'd never been inside the Pussycat Club, so they just nodded dumbly.

"W-what can we do for you ladies?" Louis asked.

"We want to borrow ten thousand dollars," Wintergreen said.

Cleatus, the more rational of the two, perked up at the amount she'd asked for. "That's a lot of money," he said. "What you want that much for?"

"Well," Thyme said. "We been thinking about striking out on our own."

"So, we want the money to open up a place of our own," Wintergreen said.

"You talking about opening up a strip club?" Cleatus asked.

"No," Wintergreen said. "Ain't nothin' like that. We want to open a classy joint."

Louis, who up to this point had just sat there goggle-eyed and mouth agape, joined the conversation. "I hear the Pussycat Club a real classy place," he said. "How you gonna beat that?"

That he'd just betrayed that he'd never been in the place was lost on him; but, a lot of things got lost on Louis. Cleatus shot him a glare.

"What my partner meant to say," he said. "Is that, it takes a lot more than ten thousand dollars to open a club, don't it?"

"We already found a place that only need a little fixin' up," Wintergreen said.

"Yeah," Thyme said. "We figure with ten grand, we can get it up and runnin' in a coupla weeks."

"So," Cleatus asked. "What kind of club you plannin' to have?"

"We gonna have a club with pole dancers," they said in unison. "Only, it's gonna have a pole and a dancer at each table. Don't that sound out of sight?"

Actually, it sounded crazy, but neither Cleatus nor Louis was about to say so. "Wouldn't that be dangerous? I mean, having a dancer on the table could cause a fella to spill his drink, wouldn't it?" Cleatus asked.

The two women laughed. "You dudes never been to a club with pole dancers, have you?" Wintergreen asked. "Heck, the way we do it, and the way the girls we plan to hire do it, nobody gonna be payin' much attention to drinks." To illustrate her point, she did a little bump and grind, and then twirled around, bent over and shook her ample behind at them.

If they'd been holding drinks, they would have dropped them. Their eyes bugged out, and their mouths flew open. Their hands twitched.

"Besides," Thyme said. "The more drinks they spill, the more drinks they buy; so we make more money."

"Yeah," Wintergreen said. "We figure, between drinks and tips, we'd be able to pay you back in two months."

Louis was nodding, but Cleatus put a hand on his arm. "Yeah, I suppose you might," he said. "But, what kinda collateral you got for a loan that big. We don't usually get requests for more than a few hundred."

The two women put their heads together and began whispering. Wintergreen held her hand up so that Louis and Cleatus couldn't see their lips moving. After much whispering, and a lot of nodding, during which time their foreheads bumped and their breasts bounced in a disconcerting manner, they turned back to face Louis and Cleatus.

"We don't have much to offer," Wintergreen said.

"We live in an apartment," Thyme said.

"But, what if we offered you lifetime passes to our club when we open," they said in unison. "You get your own table, no cover charge, and you don't even have to tip the dancer."

"In fact," Thyme said. "I'll be willing to dance for you myself whenever you come in."

Now, Louis's head was bobbing up and down so hard, he threatened to dislocate the muscles in his neck. Cleatus looked up at them, trying to conceal the growing excitement he was feeling. "That ain't exactly normal collateral," he said. "What you think, Louis? Should we loan them the money."

Louis's head continued to bob up and down, and when he opened his mouth, the only sounds that came out were "Glub dub duh muddy" or something closely approximating that.

"I assume you agree," Cleatus said. "Okay, ladies, we gonna give you the money." He pulled a sheet of paper from the desk. "This is the loan agreement. I just need to fill in the amount, your names, and the collateral. Oh, we got a partner, Vinnie Williams, he included in the deal?"

The women nodded.

"Okay, you got the money. What you gonna call your club, by the way?" he asked.

"What else, honey," Thyme said. "Pole Position."