by Lexie Ray
There hadn't been many days that Cocoa hadn't thought about what had happened to her former roommate. She eagerly turned back to the first page of writing.
"Dear Cocoa," it read. "I want to start off by saying how sorry I was to leave the nightclub the way I did. Tracy messed me up so bad and I was sure my only option was to escape. It wasn't fair to you to leave without saying goodbye or thank you for all that you did for me at the nightclub.
"I know that you had my best interests in mind and were always looking out for me. You're a real friend. The truth is that I was never really cut out for the life that you're leading. I just wasn't going to survive.
"Well, as this letter proves, I am surviving. In fact, I'm doing more than surviving. The year after I left Mama's was maybe the hardest year of my life. Long story short, I'm HIV positive."
Cocoa's hand fluttered at her throat, her heart pounding. Poor, poor Jasmine. What a terrible nightmare. How could that have happened? How was she dealing with it? Cocoa picked up the narrative hungrily.
"HIV isn't a death sentence. I have to be careful, of course, and always take my medicine on time. But I'll die a happy old woman, which is exactly how I want to go.
"I met this amazing guy, Nate King. He's a writer--and my boyfriend--and he's been so good for me, Cocoa. He's the only reason I'm doing as well as I am. I never knew love could be like this. I never had any reason to believe in it.
"Now, I'm focusing on giving back to the community. When I turned up at Mama's, I was desperately in need of help. When I left there, I was still desperately in need. I know that I can do more for people in similar situations as mine, and that's what I'm doing. I'm also CEO of a cancer research foundation, an issue that's pretty close to my heart.
"The reason I'm writing is because I never stopped thinking about you and everything you did for me. You deserve to know that through your intervention and that of others, I'm doing better than I ever have before. I don't know what would've happened to me without you. Thank you so much."
Cocoa wiped a tear from her eye before laughing at the next line.
"And, if you ever want to part with any of that money you're making, I know a couple of good charities that would benefit. Let me know.
"I miss you and hope you're doing well. You're good at what you do now, but I know you'd be good at anything. You have such a kind, giving nature. Don't ever feel like you're stuck in a situation you don't want to be in. Just keep moving forward.
"That's how I got out.
"You stay in my thoughts. Love, Jasmine."
Cocoa blinked a couple of times, surprised at how touched was. She never knew that Jasmine felt like that about her. It was also downright shocking that Jasmine had opened herself up to love after all that had happened to her.
Jasmine had found love--and success--outside the walls of Mama's nightclub. It almost didn't seem possible. Her former roommate had been beaten down, stomped on even, but now it sounded like she was riding high. It made Cocoa think that maybe anyone could do anything.
She flipped the TV off again and got up, walking back to the mirror. She stared at herself for several long minutes, studying her naked face. Maybe she didn't need all that war paint to face the world. Maybe she could even take on something entirely different. Something completely new.
Jasmine said anyone could do anything. It certainly made a girl think.
- END of STRONGER –
BRAVER
Chapter 1
Even the thickest walls couldn’t keep New York City out.
I woke up, as I usually did, to the sounds of traffic, both human and vehicular, outside of my wall. The small window of my room looked out onto the dingy alleyway behind the nightclub. It wasn’t the best view. The nightclub wasn’t located in the best neighborhood, but I could still envision the throb of the city just by looking out of it.
Stretching, I worked out the kinks in my neck and considered the dull throb between my legs.
That ache meant I was making money.
I looked at the small alarm clock on my desk. Eleven in the morning. I’d only gotten about five hours of sleep, but I never needed much — not even as a little girl.
I yawned widely as I climbed out of bed, my long legs popping. Did that mean I was getting old? Twenty-seven couldn’t possibly be that old, could it? I was beginning to suspect that it was, in my profession.
I flipped on the light, squinting in its bright, fluorescent glow, and looked at myself in the full-length mirror hanging on the back of the door. Whenever I didn’t share my room with anyone, I slept naked. I found it to be my most comfortable and natural state. Plus, I never woke up with weird marks on my skin from a tank top that got bunched up.
And I’d be damned if I was going to be picking wedgies in my sleep.
I smoothed my fuzzy hair and wiped the sleep from my eyes. My latest braids had lasted two days, but I was going to have to redo them today before work. These were getting downright nappy.
Running my hands down my torso and belly, I eyed myself critically. My breasts remained high and firm on my chest. When I was younger, I’d wished for them to be bigger. Now, I thought they were just right. Men had all kinds of tastes, I’d learned. Plus, if they were much bigger, they’d already be sagging. With the magic of bras these days, I could look any size I wanted to without the added weight on my chest.
I turned to the side and examined my silhouette, standing in a slant of sunlight that somehow found its way into my window each morning. My belly remained flat, my butt, high. I’d been blessed with good genes, that much was certain. I could eat whatever I wanted without gaining weight and busting ass at the nightclub was as good a workout as any.
I knew girls who scraped time together to work out for two hours every day and didn’t have as good a figure as I did. I pitied them. Sometimes, you just had to be lucky.
I slipped on my silky, slinky kimono and did my thing in the bathroom. It was silent, everyone still asleep but me.
It was my favorite time of day. It was like I had the whole place to myself.
The shuffling of my slippers were the only sound as I padded down the carpeted hallway. Even though the carpeting was thin, industrial quality, it helped muffle footsteps up and down the corridor. I tried to walk lightly even though I knew I didn’t have to bother. It would probably be hours before anyone else woke up.
I looked fondly at each door I passed. The girls loved to decorate them, many unaware of how truly revealing it was. Nearly all of them had their names posted — the names Mama had given them, of course. Cream and Shimmy, Daisy and Pumpkin, all presented proudly in varying forms of cursive or glitter or huge block letters. They identified with their names, wore them like a badge of honor.
Then the decorations began. Those were almost like a diary. Most of the images were posters or clippings from magazines. Cream and Shimmy, who were roommates, painstakingly cut out petal and leaf and stem shapes from regular magazine pages and formed them into celebrity-dotted flowers. I could pick out Ryan Gosling’s gorgeous mug from part of a swirling rose.
Daisy and Pumpkin, on the other hand, cut out photos of puppies and kittens. You had to smile at their sweet door every time you passed it. They added several new ones practically every other day, making it seem like the animals were constantly cavorting over the surface of the door.
Blue’s door was probably the most creative. In her free time, she sketched. She had pieces of paper taped up to her door with caricatures of all the girls in Mama’s employ. She’d emphasized all of the features that had earned them their nicknames — Pumpkin’s round bottom, Shimmy’s constant dancing, and so on. The drawing of me was legs all the way up, munching on a chocolate bar.
Eating too much chocolate wasn’t how I got the name Cocoa, but nobody had to know that.
My door was free from any decorations except for a poster board with my name on it. I always kept another fresh poster board inside my room to write names of my new roommates. I didn’t p
ost any magazines or pictures on purpose. I wanted my roommates not to feel intimidated by me taking up too much ownership of our shared space. I’d been here the longest out of anyone, and Mama liked to use me to help girls get used to life at the nightclub.
My roommates were always coming and going. If they didn’t work out at the nightclub, they moved on. If they did, they usually moved out and into another room to make way for the next new girl in mine.
I didn’t much mind. It was a great way to get to know everyone even though I wasn’t particularly close with anyone.
I smiled at the last door before the stairwell — Yo-Yo and Fantasy had attached an enormous poster of Charlie Hunnam along with a marker on a string. Girls who passed by had been adding saucy commentary to his sultry gaze.
“Look at Blue like that anytime, baby,” one of them read.
“PANTY DROPPER,” scrawled another.
I smirked and uncapped the marker. “Wish they all looked like this,” I added, drawing a smiley face.
All the girls were so different, as the decorations revealed, but we still came together in something resembling a sisterhood. It was difficult to understand, given the unique backgrounds everyone hailed from.
In fact, the only thing the door decorations had in common were that there were few — if any — photos of friends and family.
We were a family here. We were all the family we needed.
At the foot of the stairs, I paused for a moment. The nightclub was always so foreign in the morning, the light trying to get in, the chairs empty. I sometimes imagined I could still hear the music and chatter from the night before, ghostly echoes in the empty room.
Sometimes, it gave me chills.
Dust motes swirled in the light as I made my way to the kitchen, my mind still thinking about the night before and the customers I’d served. I had my regular customers, of course, the ones who couldn’t get enough of Cocoa, but every night was something new. I met new people, did new things, and never got bored.
I was good at what I did. The money I earned reflected that. Maybe the Cocoa I presented at the nightclub wasn’t the real me, but she did make me some cold, hard cash.
I pushed my way into the kitchen and jumped.
“What are you doing up so early, Mama?” I asked. Since Mama owned the nightclub, she was usually awake until well after the sunrise, looking at the books, counting up how well we’d done the night before, planning for future musical acts and dinner specials — running the joint.
She turned and smiled at me. All wrapped up in a terrycloth robe, her hair in curlers, and without the formidable amount of makeup she usually sported, Mama looked like anyone’s idea of a comforting mother figure. She could be that, when she wanted to be.
But I wasn’t the only one who knew Mama could be downright ruthless if she had to be. I’d seen her act as a bouncer, angrily evicting customers who tried to get away with things like not paying or abusing the girls.
Ruthless? During those times, Mama was terrifying.
“Hey girl,” she said, turning back to the grill. “Couldn’t sleep. Can I cook you up some breakfast?”
“Mama, if you’re cooking, I’m eating,” I said, holding my hands up and laughing. Mama was as good a cook as she was a businesswoman. It was a real treat if you got to eat her cooking. It felt like home.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” she said, grabbing a couple of plates. “I always make too much for just me.”
We sat right at the counter in the kitchen, where just the night before, chefs and assistants had dashed around, preparing and plating dinners for our customers. The room was empty and sterile. Soon, though, girls would start waking up and wandering down here for their own meals. And after that, the chefs would dash in to begin preparing for the customers again.
It was a never-ending cycle.
I hardly ate breakfast myself, preferring a cup of tea in the morning and something more substantial later in the day. However, I’d never refuse Mama’s food. She had to use some kind of kitchen magic to get her pancakes so fluffy, the bacon so crispy. The yolks never dared to break in her eggs over easy.
“You already do the books for last night?” I asked, popping in a forkful with a bit of everything on my plate, dipped in syrup. The flavors — buttery, creamy, salty, savory, sweet — melted in my mouth.
“Sure did,” Mama said, her mouth full. “We don’t know how to do a bad night, it looks like.”
“That’s great,” I said. When the nightclub did well, it meant all the girls did a good job.
“I wonder what we could be doing to get new customers in,” Mama said, taking a sip from a steaming mug of black coffee. “I know I can’t rightly advertise the place. Word of mouth is good — return customers bringing new customers — but I can’t help thinking we could be doing better.”
I looked at Mama askance. Her usually warm, brown eyes were in a faraway place I’d learned was where she was hunting money. I saw her this way a lot.
“Mama, you try to cram any more customers in this nightclub and we’re going to have to add extra tables and chairs,” I joked, even though it was true. There was a line outside every single night, and I knew that there were some times when not everyone got a chance to taste the wares of Mama’s nightclub.
If anything, it made them hungrier for it.
“More tables and chairs,” Mama said dreamily. “Maybe that’s just the thing.”
I got up and grabbed the chore list and section assignments for the nightclub. Every girl’s name was written on the whiteboard with red marker. It was my responsibility — delegated to me by Mama — to make up fresh assignments every day. I took special care to rotate everything evenly. No girl wanted to pull toilet-cleaning duty every night, nor did she want to serve the same section.
When we lived together in such close quarters, it was important to work together to keep it clean — a place you wanted to spend time in. I erased the names on the chore list with the sleeve of my kimono and uncapped the marker, wrinkle my nose at the sharp scent.
Mama huffed her breath out heavily. “You gotta do that while we eat?” she asked.
“I gotta do it before Blue wakes up, walks down here, and thinks she’s cleaning the showers two days in a row,” I said. “She hates cleaning showers. She’d kill me.”
Mama chuckled. “Anything to keep Blue happy,” she said. “Go on, then.”
Showers, toilets, sweeping, mopping, sinks and mirrors, vacuuming, trash, kitchen, grocery, were all categories on the list for boarding house chores. I made sure each girl had a task different from the day before.
Dusting, plates, silverware, glassware, tables, chairs, menus, rooms, and sight checks were all the chores for opening and closing the club. I assigned girls for these tasks, as well. Tables had to be wiped down, even though they’d been cleaned the night before. Chairs had to be, as well, then tables set for the customers. Menus had to be cleaned in case anything had been splashed on them. The rooms — where the real money was made each shift — needed to be checked, the bed linens changed, new towels put out, the various bottles of lubes and packages of condoms restocked, and everything. I had to put several girls on the chart for this chore.
Mama’s nightclub was a nightclub. It hosted live musical acts almost every night. Customers danced if they wanted to — sometimes with the girls, sometimes with each other. It wasn’t uncommon to see women come in with the men that we more often serviced. The food was amazing. We featured chef’s specials every night and had a regularly rotating menu of tapas — smaller dishes that were perfect to accompany a night out. The booze flowed, just as it did at every club.
There was just one difference.
If the money was right, any of Mama’s girls would sleep with the customers — myself included.
Mama’s nightclub doubled as a thriving brothel. Plenty of people knew about it, but Mama’s connections were such that we never got shut down. More than a handful of the regular customers were actu
ally cops. I’d even seen the chief of police in there one night.
As long as she kept it discreet and didn’t attract undue attention — or negative press — Mama’s nightclub operated comfortably. We had our own way of doing things, but they worked well. We had it nearly down to a science.
Mama usually preferred to sight check everything, making sure the nightclub and rooms were perfect before we opened, but I’d do it if she was too busy.
I was, more or less, her second in command at the nightclub. It was a big responsibility.
My last task for the whiteboards was making sure the girls rotated on which section they served in. Some sections were more exclusive, playing host to our more affluent and private customers. It wasn’t fair if girls didn’t get their chance to serve the customers who were more likely to shower them with money.