Whenever they lost the rhythm, their bodies stopped moving, and they looked like marionettes—not still, but sort of hanging from invisible threads until they caught the beat again and let it animate them. Usually he fled the music and kept his eyes off the girls after their first day on the job. The girls were only his way of ensuring that customers came. The men paid the cover charge that didn’t even guarantee them a seat, let alone a table, and they were still forced to buy the minimum two watery drinks. They didn’t have to tip the dancers and the waitresses, but nearly every one did, because denying a partially clothed woman anything was beyond most men’s power of self-control. There really was no need for Kapak to personally screen every dancer who worked for him. There were more beautiful young women in Los Angeles than there were in heaven. They came from everywhere in the world looking for something to do that would put them in front of people’s eyes. Siren and Temptress had hundreds of applicants a year.
