Re: [Strip club: Nel & Eames]
The strip club was likely used to entitlement, whether in expensive silk or yesterday's flannel, foreign cigarette smoke or a pack of Pall Malls bought from the 24 hour convenience store on the highway on the outskirts of town. It was in the lazy flex of the men's gaze over the stage, the flicker of interest in the girls at splayed dollar-bills, papery-dark in red and blue lights. Eames didn't question entitlement, but he observed it. For an angle, he might have stepped out of it, left it wasting and empty like a snake's cast under the bar-stools but he inhabited it presently.
"Neither have I," said Eames comfortably, which was probably inevitable. He didn't; self-belief was essential when you were ruthless about surviving and Eames didn't just survive, he made deliberate inroads into thriving, caged or uncaged. The burnished dregs of what had been in the glass gleamed in the strobing lights and the contents burned warmly and pleasantly tickled the insides of his ribs. It didn't have much of an effect otherwise.
But it was all small talk, and Eames said as such. "Do you care about the difference between artists and legends and performers? Because I don't, darling, and I've flown first class often enough to know that money can buy you an empty cabin even if you're fat, ugly and short. God knows that's how most of the Saudis I've ever seen on a plane fly. I'd like to see it," Eames said idly, his gaze back on the stage himself. "An airline that weighed, measured and found you wanting before you'd sat down for the flight. People would go mad for it."
He was watching the redhead, the one whose rug matched the curtains, "You've got more money than Midas and I doubt you've conformed often, maybe for a day to see what it's like." His grin was steel, glinting. "Which one will you take a picture of?" The girls, darling.