Disclaimer: I don't own 'em…
"What do you mean she can't dance?" Greg asked in disbelief.
"I mean she can't dance. What part of that don't you understand?" I shrugged as I poured another cup of coffee.
He closed the surfing magazine he was flipping through idly and sat it down, sitting forward in his seat in an effort to look serious.
"We're talking about the same Catherine here, right? Curves in all the right places. Blue lagoon eyes. Two mounds of flesh that I'd give me right arm to lay my head on."
I ripped open several packets of sugar and emptied the contents into the murky depths of my coffee cup before sitting down opposite him at the table.
"One and only," I said with the fakest smile I could muster.
"And you know this how? Because, it's not that I don't believe you. I mean, you're my friend, I believe almost anything you'll tell me. But I have heard the stories about her days as a dancer."
I felt a little twinge of guilt for what I was about to do. I mean, I was about to destroy the singular fantasy the kid had about the great Catherine Willows.
I moved to close the door to the break room and sat down in the chair next to him. It's not that I had any illusions that what I was about to tell him would stay between us. In fact, I knew that what I was about to reveal would find its way around the lab in a matter of hours—if not minutes, but I wanted to at least have the option of plausible deniability.
I scooted my chair a little bit closer to his and took one lingering look over my shoulder to make sure no one was standing behind me. Ever the vigilant paranoid, I jumped up and locked the door to be on the safe side before sitting back down by Greg.
"Okay, remember that B&E I caught a couple of nights ago?"
He nodded his head.
"Well, the only thing the homeowner was concerned about was his private video collection. It seems that in the early to mid 80s he was a talent scout of sorts for the porn industry. He went from strip club to strip club taping some of the local girls, hoping to find the next big porn star. Sometimes he got lucky, other times not."
I took a long sip from my coffee before sitting it back on the table before us.
"So? Who hasn't taped a few girls here and there? I know I have. I bet you have, too, Sar." Greg was nodding his head and had his 'I'm a perv' look plastered across his face.
"Don't let Nick hear you say that or he'll never agree to movie night at your house again. Anyway, back to my story. I dusted the place. Only prints other than his belonged to a neighbor. The homeowner said that the neighbor had never been in his house before. We get a warrant and we find the tapes at his place. You think the story would end there, right?"
Greg nodded once again.
"Oh no, my friend. It gets even better. No sooner I had logged the tapes than the neighbor confesses. The DA went ahead and cut a deal. So I'm taking the guy his tapes—we don't need 'em, right? And I go to give them back to him and he takes all but one. Insists that while it's his, he doesn't want it. Tells me I can toss it—that it was the biggest waste of film ever. So I toss it in the back of the Denali and call it a day. Later, I get home and pull my stuff out of the backseat –I needed to get caught up on my paperwork—and there's the tape. I know I shouldn't have, but curiosity got the best of me. I wanted to know what was on the tape and why it was such big waste for this guy."
I started chuckling.
"You didn't," Greg said as he sat on the edge of his seat, fully engaged in my little story.
"Oh, but I did. And let me tell you, it was not the sort of entertainment I was expecting. I've been to a few strip clubs—okay, more than a few. And I know how lithe and agile these women are supposed to be. They can dance to a beat even when there's no music playing. They can contort their bodies into positions that would make circus freaks envious. This, Greggo, was nothing like that."
"Awww, man. Sara, why ya gotta ruin this for me? I mean, first you're all 'dip me in honey and throw me to the lesbians.' Then I find out that you and Sofia are doing the horizontal mamba. Grapevine has it that you've said Cath is horrible in bed. And now, now you're telling me that the vixen in my dreams can't dance. You're wrong for this, ya know that, right?" His little puppy dog eyes and sheer disappointment did nothing but hasten me to continue my story.
"The music was horrible. She came out wearing heels that she had a hard time walking in. She stumbled a few times. She tried to do the naughty librarian look—and fell way short. I wish you could have seen it," I started to laugh in spite of myself. "She'd undo a button and shake her ass—she was so off the beat. Then when she had her shirt completely off, she tried doing this little twirling number over her head with it and ended up losing her balance and slipping on the stage. When she fell, her glasses ended up somewhere on the stage and the wig she was wearing, ending up totally askew—and she didn't even know it."
At this point, Greg is almost purple because he's putting in such an effort not to laugh.
"And then," I stand up, "then she stands up and reaches for the pole, but it's not where she thought it was because she wasn't where she thought she was on stage. So she stumbles again."
I had decided to add a little physical humor to my story and imitated the stumbling I had seen on the video.
"She recovers and adjusts her wig. Then she reaches for the pole and actually grabs it this time. Only instead of gracefully swinging herself around it, she jumps at the thing and wraps her legs around it—sliding down until she's sitting on the ground, her legs still wrapped around the damn thing."
I sat on the floor and made a circle with my arms and crossed my legs, like she had done in the video.
"So then, I guess she thought this was a sexy thing to do, she starts humping against the pole. She only did that a couple of times before she stood up again," I stood up. "And then she starts doing the whitest dance I've ever seen. You remember that movie Pulp Fiction?"
He nodded.
"Remember the dancing scene with John Travolta?"
He nodded again.
"She started doing that! I'm telling you, Greg, it was like watching Elaine dance on Seinfeld. Just like watching that. Cath thinks she can dance and she even tells people she can dance—but she can't."
Just then, the door started to rattle and we both turned around to see Catherine standing there. I jumped up quickly and unlocked the door, holding it open for her. Greg dashed out of the room as soon as it was open, leaving me there with Catherine.
"What was that all about?" She asked as she crossed the short distance to the coffee pot.
I smiled and sat back down to finish my cup of coffee.
"Oh, him? I think I scared him with a story about one of my cases this week."
She studied me over her cup of coffee, "So you've taken to locking people in rooms with you now in order to have conversations, Sidle?"
I opened my mouth to speak, but quickly closed it. I knew that before the shift was over with tonight, the entire lab and most of the LVPD would know that Catherine couldn't dance. I didn't need any stinging retorts or snappy comebacks. I would let the office grapevine do all the talking that needed to be talked.
As I finished my cup of coffee and stood to leave, Nick popped in. "So, ladies, either of you up for hitting that new dance club on the strip?"
"Yes." "No." We both said simultaneously.
Nick smirked at me and winked before turning to Catherine. "Come on, Cath. I thought you'd jump at a chance to dance and this one here would poop out on us."
She looked as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs as she carefully plotted her excuse, "I only dance when I have a pole and a stage."
At that, both Nick and I almost double over in laughter.
She shoots daggers at both of us as we make our way from the break room.
"Are we really going dancing?"
"Hell no," the Texan draws out. "Greg told me about the video and I just had to have some fun with it."
I was grinning ear to ear as I walked the halls of the lab that night—reveling in the knowledge that the myth of Catherine Willows—sex goddess and dancer delight--had been soundly destroyed by none other than Sara Sidle.