The Glamorous Life 2: All That Glitters Isn't Gold

by Nikki Turner

  “Girl, I get over there and know, I’m going to be able to come up in a big way. As soon as I get there, he only wanted me to get in touch with you for him. He said you weren’t answering. I called, no answer. And then I called Compton. He said when he left you were asleep, and that’s when I came over. He broke me off to get you to call him. He said he gotta go home to Texas and it’s a must to see you before he leaves.”

  Calliope smiled and that’s when Mocha pulled out her phone and called Mr. Big Spender for her and just like that sleep was no longer a priority. Getting to Big Spender was on the top of her list.

  21

  Calliope and Big Spender’s timing wasn’t hitting on nothing. By the time she called him, he was already on the way to the airport. She was able to convince him to take a later flight. He would’ve changed the day altogether but it was a family emergency that required him to be at his mother’s bedside for a surgery the next morning. Calliope understood and respected that. Hell, she wished that she had a mother who was worth her dropping everything and running to.

  Happy that they were able to squeeze a quick dinner filled with great conversation, at the end of the night he wrote on a small piece of paper a promissory letter, promising her that he’d make it up to her.

  She felt that Lou was definitely different from any of the other guys that she had encountered but, hell, she really hadn’t taken the time to get to know any of her other customers.

  Now she was at work, thinking of Lou, couldn’t seem to get him off of her mind. Cinnamon was in her zone and was about to turn it up a few more notches when one of Jiggilo’s bouncer goons crowded her space.

  “Jiggilo wanna see you,” he bluntly said. She sucked her teeth, because what she heard was that he definitely was one person who could sure mess up a wet dream. Jiggilo was the owner of the club and she heard he was narcissistic, sarcastic, egotistical, and he ran that place like it was the army. “In his office,” said the bouncer goon. She knew that he most likely wanted to talk to her about the episode from last night about Jean. She was pretty sure that he was going to try to smack her with a big fine, but she was willing to bet that he wasn’t going to stress the foolery about her locker getting broken into or her workbag getting stolen.

  “Not now.” Cinnamon asked, “Can it wait?” Not bothering to hide her instant irritation, she was trying to make money, why wouldn’t he wait until after her shift?

  Julio, a tall, muscle-bound Spanish Rico Suave–looking guy, whom she was currently dancing for, must’ve felt her tension, locked eyes with the bouncer goons, and echoed, “It can wait until I’m done, right?”

  The two men, Julio and the bouncer goon, were at a Mexican standoff.

  The flunky bouncer goon wasn’t a sucker at all, and Julio had plenty of heart and could definitely hold his own even a long way from home. Holding up a finger, the bouncer goon said, “One song. On the house.” Then using the same pointer, he pointed toward another big-booty dancer standing a few feet away. “Let me introduce you to Toxic.”

  Toxic, with smooth midnight skin, a banging body, and pretty face, though not as half pretty as hers, stood with her hands on her hips. In the business it was called a ho stance.

  A close second, Toxic was Cinnamon’s nearest competition in the club. Cinnamon wasn’t a hater by a long shot. And there was no denying Toxic was one lethal bitch, yet Julio hesitated at first, he wanted who he wanted and didn’t feel nobody should give him what he wasn’t interested in. Cinnamon wasn’t mad; she respected loyalty.

  Bouncer goon prodded by reminding him, “She’s on the house, my man.” He gave Toxic the eye and since she had his attention, she spun around in a circle, giving Julio a better gander at the goods.

  Papi Chulo was slowly turning into Toxic’s Papi Chulo, in front of Cinnamon’s very eyes. She fumed, not sure who gave in first: his big head or the little head, threatening to tear the zipper from the seam of his jeans.

  Papi Chulo compromised, palms up. “What the hell,” he said.

  Lust, as it does in most relationships, had TKO’d over loyalty.

  “You will come back, right?” he asked Cinnamon, and she nodded.

  Stepping into Papi Chulo’s space, with a little something extra in the provocative sway of her hips, Toxic rubbed Cinnamon’s nose in her small victory.

  Though she and Toxic were each other’s competition, it was still all love between the two outside of the club. She rolled eyes playfully. “Petty bitch.” She smiled, fully understanding that as much as she wished it was, there was no loyalty in the strip club.

  They’d gotten no more than a few feet away when Cinnamon stopped cold in her tracks and turned to the bouncer goon.

  “Nigga, is you fucking crazy?”

  Bouncer goon watched her attitude. He said, “Jiggilo needs you—I get you. End of story. That’s it. That’s all. Now let’s go.”

  “What let’s go? What the hell he want that couldn’t wait and warranted to giving a free dance to my client—shit, ain’t we trying to make money around here?” she asked.

  “Don’t matter, Jiggilo’s the boss,” bouncer goon said, not really caring about her attitude at all.

  Cinnamon had been working in clubs, off and on, since she was seventeen years old doing what she had to do to take care of herself and Compton. But when she first started working at the Sugar Shack some years ago, Jiggilo noticed her. Even though he ran the bigger and better clubs, he always seemed to roam into the smaller holes-in-the-wall to see what hidden treasures he could find, and there was no doubt Cinnamon was definitely one of them.

  Though he’d never admit it to her face, even as an inexperienced dancer she was always one of Jiggilo’s favorites; he loved the way that the manager Mookie from the Sugar Shack always featured her on certain nights, and it never failed, how the high piles of dough rolled in for her. All the bigger and better clubs tried to approach her, but she remained loyal to the Shack.

  Jiggilo knew he had something extraordinary on his hands and he had to put insurance on his investment. A year into her working the club, he too couldn’t resist her. He so badly wanted to make her his woman.

  Though she was young, she was a long ways from being dumb. She learned a lot from ear hustling in the dressing rooms, while the older dancers poured their hearts out to each other. The dressing room was how she decided what role she would play in the game and what things she wouldn’t let play her. It was there she came to the conclusion that her existence in that club was for one reason and one reason only—to provide for her and her brother. Not for the drugs, not for the alcohol, not to marry any of the patrons, not to make friends (though she was glad that she picked up a couple on the way), not for the tri-sexual acts that went on freely in the clubs but for the money and the money only! With that being said, she herself needed insurance just as well.

  Two years of him propositioning her, and she would never even take him serious, only becoming his friend and making him one of her allies. But she knew that he wanted her bad so at times she may have taken a little advantage of it. Especially when she needed a job, she called him up and he skipped protocol with her, no audition, no nothing. She just showed up and there was a gig waiting for her.

  “He’s your boss, not mine,” Cinnamon shouted over the music in protest.

  “You work at Imagination, don’t you?” Bouncer goon gave her that “this is a rhetorical question” voice and a stupid look. “And Jiggilo’s your boss then. Just go see what the man wants,” he added. “You know how y’all do anyway”—he gave her a dirty smirk—“you know you and the boss man.” She hated that the bouncer thought that her and Jiggilo had something going on.

  Relenting, Cinnamon made her way through the club to Jiggilo’s office. On the way she spotted her brother and his boys making it rain.

  Three years ago, she’d given him five bills to go shopping. He was now not even legal and though he loved his sister, he still had his own thoughts of how things should be done. He was the man
of the house and should be taking care of his sister. Instead of buying sneakers and clothes the boy purchased a zone of crack. Partnered up with a friend, and now they had half of his part of town on smash.

  Bro, out with a few of his boys enjoying the fruits of their labor, saw her looking at him and he saluted her with two fingers and a lopsided smile.

  He funny, she thought to herself, and then shook her attitude because he always seems to put a smile on her face.

  Mental note: Tell the bartender to cut back on his drinks. The boy was already tight, never been one to really control his liquor anyway. And he didn’t make great decisions when he was drunk. She shook her head, shot him a smile back, and kept it moving to Jiggilo’s office.

  Outside the office door, Cinnamon took a deep breath, gathering her composure. There was no need to exasperate things by waltzing in the place with a shitty attitude.

  She knocked on the metal door.

  “It’s open.” Jiggilo’s voice was muffled by the thickness of the security door.

  Cinnamon pushed her way inside, the office reeked of endo and cherry incense. Jiggilo sat at his desk with a neat pile of coke in front of him. To Jiggilo’s left, sitting in an overstuffed chair tastefully arranged in the corner, was a cat Cinnamon had never met before.

  She took one look at him and she knew what time it was with him. His watch was the first thing that stood out. The diamonds were bouncing off the mirrors that laced the walls of the office. His dark chocolate complexion complimented the pink polo-style high-end shirt and white linen fitted slacks he was rocking. The dude was fine as fuck but in a metrosexual sort of way.

  Jiggilo made the intros. “Cinnamon meet Peter, Peter meet Cinn.” Then he went on to cut to the chase. “It’s simple. I need for you to take care of me and my friend, Peter.”

  Take care of … she thought for a second and then tried to keep her composure. No he didn’t go there. I know good and well he didn’t go there.

  “Lap dance?”

  Jiggilo started laughing. “You know better.”

  Hands on hips and as much as she tried, she couldn’t control it. Some of that stank attitude she’d been suppressing returned. Cinnamon made it clear. “Look, I don’t think I’m his type. Nor yours anymore, for that matter.” It was obvious Peter and Jiggilo were more than just friends. More like fuck buddies, if not an outright couple.

  That was the secret, although there were a few whispers. Nobody really knew for sure but the truth of the matter was that Jiggilo was as gay as a pink French poodle.

  An ass bandit … a chicken hawk … a fudge packer—a straight-up bitch.

  In Cinnamon’s mind, there wasn’t much lower you could drop on the totem pole than that (cum intended). She had no problem with people being gay, but she had a major issue when men would engage in relations with women and yet men were their preference. And that’s exactly what Jiggilo did. He toyed with the dancers in the club using his power and position to make them make fools of themselves. But she knew better and that wasn’t her.

  One night, she and Mocha were out on a night on the town, hanging out. She had spoken to Jiggilo on the phone earlier that day and he was trying to convince her to come over to his house and spend some “quality time” with him. Like always she’d declined him, but since her and Mocha were lollygagging around town, with a little time to kill, they decided to go around to Jiggilo’s house. While Mocha sat in the car talking on the phone Cinnamon found the shock of her life. Some pretty-looking guy much like Peter had about a dozen inches of meat packed up Jiggilo’s butt. If there could really be any ass left after being reamed with a thing the size of a small baseball bat, she thought.

  “I’m freaky,” Cinnamon said. “But not that freaky. You know I don’t rock with that.…” Her voice trailed off. She wanted to say what she really felt: that he was a disgusting motherfucker, well father-fucka, but chose to stay civil. “… Stuff,” she finished instead.

  Jiggilo hovered over a line of coke from the desktop. “What type of stuff is that,” he asked, attitude unchecked.

  Ignoring the question, Cinnamon said, still remaining calm, “How about I go get Shimmer or Toxic for you? Not only will she be happy to please … she’s a lot freakier than me, so you two should have bunches of fun together.”

  Jiggilo snapped, “Bitch, you don’t tell me who the fuck you gonna send in my office. I do the telling around this here bitch.”

  Since she had caught him in the act, the two of them pretty much stayed out of each other’s way, and respected each other’s boundaries and were always cordial friends. But recently, since she’d been working at Imagination, she had noticed that he seemed a little reckless, drinking in excess and now the coke.

  He got up in her face. “You feel me?”

  This nigga bold, huh? Cinnamon wasn’t sure if it was the coke making him act a fool, or if he was showing off for his undercover lover. Either way, she didn’t flinch an inch.

  “Nigga…” Cinnamon stared Jiggilo straight in his dilated, coked-up eyes. “I said I don’t do that shit. Never have and never will,” she spat, and rolled her neck around.

  Another sniff of the coke, Jiggilo was flying high.

  “Oh—you will,” he snared. “Shit is about to change around here anyway. Tired of you walking around here, like you own the place and your shit don’t stink.”

  Cinnamon had never prostituted her body to a man nor woman and wouldn’t start now. This is what made her so exotic and in demand even after years of dancing. Men always wanted and chased what they couldn’t have. If and when she fucked, it was because she wanted to, not for money, and damn sure not because a nigga threatened her.

  She pointed to her lips. “Read my mother-fucking lips: I will … not!”

  Acting like a bully he stood up and in her face. Then Jiggilo offered and ultimatum. “Do what I tell you, or get the fuck out of my club.”

  “Cool.” Her nonchalant response threw him for a loop, temporarily.

  “Neko been checking for me to come work at his club anyhow,” she added.

  That remark pissed Jiggilo off, prompting him to run off a slew of threats. “I’ll throw you out the club, I’ll see to it you don’t work in another spot in Miami.”

  “Blah, blah, blah,” she said over top of his words, not even caring if she pissed him off.

  “I’ll blackball you,” he spit out like he was shooting bullets—as if those words could kill her, and they could definitely murder her career as a dancer.

  Strip club owners in Miami were predominately male and a close-knit society for the most part. Blackballing a chick, for any reason, wasn’t uncommon since dancers seemed to come a dime a dozen, but usually it was for constantly fighting or forcing the owner to pay fines, but in this case it was just because of personal reasons.

  “You would try to do some shiesty-ass trick shit like that, wouldn’t ya?” But Cinnamon had her own ace-in-the-hole, Neko. He had another club in the city, not as big as Imagination but the clientele was still star-studded as well, and Neko despised Jiggilo’s bitch ass. For that reason alone, he would hire her and welcome her into his establishment with open arms. And the best part about it was Jiggilo knew that she knew.

  But he wasn’t dropping his bluff. “Try me,” he said, “as good as blackballed. You can sell hamburgers, standing up; or fur burgers, on your back, bitch. Make me no never mind. Me being the gentleman that I am, I may even turn you on to a few good johns.”

  Done with his bullshit, fearless Cinnamon shot back. “Being that you and your sissy over there are the only two people in this room that probably enjoy slurping cum, how about I turn your bitch-ass on to a trim.”

  Jiggilo pimp-smacked her so hard she heard ringing in her ears.

  Tasted blood in her mouth.

  As much as they used to argue and go back and forth, he had never hit her before. So she was shocked. From the mirror on the wall behind Jiggilo’s desk she saw a small trickle of blood from a busted lip crawl down
her chin. She couldn’t help but stare at it.

  “What the fuck you looking at, you disrespectful bitch?” Jiggilo wasn’t finished. “One more chance,” he taunted. “You gonna service my man or get the fuck out of my club?”

  Cinnamon, feigning like she was considering the ultimatum, took a deep breath, coughed up a thick ball of phlegm in the process, and spit a loogie in Jiggilo’s face. Bull’s-eye.

  “Is that a good enough answer for you?” she asked, and before he could shake the shock from the hog spit, she picked up a chair and tossed it into the antique mirror to make her point. “Now suck on that!” Before storming out of his office and heading to the ladies’ dressing room, she screamed at the top of her lungs, “Cock sucker!”

  * * *

  Back in the ladies’ dressing room, bouncer goon stood over her while Cinnamon emptied her locker. “Look, I don’t need no babysitter to get my shit outta this raggedy-ass motherfucker.”

  “I feel ya, but just doing my job.”

  “Yeah, doing your job caused this shit,” she said, trying to shift the blame to him. She was minding her own business dancing for Papi Chulo and out of the blue he comes disturbing her and taking her down to the office of the bullshit. Now she was out of a job.

  He did feel a little bad that it had gotten to this point.

  “And where the hell were you when this nigga hit her?” Toxic came to her defense. “Talking about you here to protect us.”

  Toxic hugged her. “Call me later, but gotta go because now my regular looking for me.”

  “Girl, what happened?” A few nosey chicks tried to get in her Kool-Aid, but she tuned them out. Put on her Chanel “hater shades” aka “Bitch Blockers” and bounced. The little temporary phone rung and it was Lou, Big Spender, now back in Texas, and she took the call. She told him she’d fill him in and would call him back as soon as she got in the car.