“Right, you all got shit to do so we’ll make this fast,” he began. “The Revue has been very successful, much better than we’d forecast, and it doesn’t look like that’s gonna slow down,” he announced.
Well, then …
Shoo.
Also …
Yippee!
“So in two weeks, we’re gonna close,” he went on.
There were murmurings of surprise and discontent, swaying of bodies, shuffling of feet.
“For three weeks,” he continued.
Everyone shut up and stopped shifting.
“We’ve been covered in calls from people wanting VIP seating,” he shared. “And they’re willing to pay for it. So we’re constructing booths down each side of the catwalk and elevating the floor so the people behind these new booths can see the stage. The far wall will also be a closed-off VIP area that will serve as a place for larger parties, and when we have celebrity clientele, entourages. Further, we’ll be adding lighting embedded in the edges of the stage that can be programmed to a variety of colors, flashes, streams, etcetera.”
“Rad,” I breathed.
Ian wasn’t done.
“And installing apparatus so dancers can make an entrance from above the stage on hoops, in cages, on ropes and poles and most anything else they can dream up.”
How cool!
“Rad,” Pepper, Ryn and I whispered at the same time.
Dorian kept going.
“It’s going to be a tight turnaround, but we don’t want to lose momentum, so we’re hoping our contractors can hit the deadline. During that, the back rooms where the private dances took place will be repurposed into a kitchen. A questionnaire we sent to patrons strongly suggested that they like to stay for a while and they don’t only want to drink, they want to eat. To fill that need, we’ve hired Joy Anderson to take over the kitchen.”
“Joy Anderson, the woman who does the Joy of Food food trucks?” one of the waitresses asked.
“Her,” Ian confirmed. “It will be an extensive, gourmet appetizer menu.”
“This is so fucking cool,” Ryn said under her breath.
It totally was.
They were taking it from a classy strip joint to a straight-up class club.
And we were in on that. We got to watch it unfold. Help them.
On these thoughts, I studied Ian even more closely.
He seemed his usual.
Confident.
Sure.
But it couldn’t be denied.
He was reaching for something.
Working for it.
Risking it.
Going for his dream. And we got to be a part of that for him.
Yes, this week was totally awesome.
“New furniture will replace the old,” Ian carried on. “More comfortable and styled to match the booths, which will be red velvet.”
“I am loving this so much,” Pepper whispered.
“We’ve also begun booking talent,” Ian stated.
“Uh-oh,” Lottie muttered.
Yeah.
Uh-oh.
More dancers?
Like …
Better ones?
“We currently have three up-and-coming comedians who will be doing routines intermingled with guest MCing the program,” he shared. “We’re looking at more and we’re in search of a talent who can be the resident MC and provide filler so there will only be burlesque routines with the headline performances. No outright exotic dancing until two in the morning after the last headliner leaves the stage. But when we reopen, there’ll be no nudity. We’ll provide costumes, which will be attractive, sexy, and brief, but they will also provide coverage.”
“Wow,” I whispered.
Ian looked to us girls. “I need all the headliners here next Tuesday at eleven. I’ll tell you which of your dances I want you prepared to do. We’re having videographers come in to film your routines. We’re updating our website and we need content for that, as well as teasers and marketing promos to keep our clientele’s interest and get them to return when we reopen.”
I didn’t even know Smithie’s had a website.
“Down,” Lottie called. “So down,” Ryn said.
I just smiled hugely at Ian.
He took in my smile and his lips quirked.
He then uncrossed his arms and showed us the roll of paper.
“These are the plans. I’ll lay them out and you can have a look if you’re interested. Any questions?”
“Are we gonna get paid for that three weeks?” a bartender I didn’t know all that well, though he’d been around awhile (and he was kinda annoying, which was the reason I steered clear) named Craig asked.
“Yes,” Dorian answered. “Any other questions?”
There were more questions, a lot of them (hate to be judgy, but seriously, ugh) were kind of unnecessary (these mostly coming from Craig), seeming like folks just wanted to suck time or make people listen to them talk (again, mostly Craig).
Ian seemed to have all the patience in the world for them (though going on like that was keeping me from the studio), something Smithie would not have. On question two, Smithie would get ticked, ask if he’d ever left anyone hanging, wonder aloud why he got no respect (which, honestly, was a good question), and tell us he had better things to do before he took off and did those things.
Eventually, it seemed we were going over old ground and Ian ended it.