by Lexie Ray
“Be careful,” Blue said, handing me the beer. “I don’t like the looks of that one.”
“He’s just a return customer,” I scoffed, placing the glass on a new tray. “He’s had a little too much to drink, is all.”
“Those are the worst.”
I gave Mike the O’Doul’s with a flourish, making a show of setting down the coaster with a spin from my finger.
“Your beer, darling,” I announced, placing it on the coaster with a twist of my wrist.
“Finally,” he said, chugging it down to halfway.
“I’ll be back soon to check on you,” I said, starting to walk away.
“You’ll check on me now,” Mike barked. He was becoming more entertainment for his fellow customers than the pianist on stage, I noticed, which was bad. What was I doing wrong in this situation? I had been here longer than any of the other girls. I could defuse the explosive ones like nobody’s business.
Something wasn’t quite right with Mike, but I hadn’t figured it out yet.
“Of course, honey,” I said, leaning down right next to him. “I’ll bring you everything you need.
“Well, we’re going to fuck again, obviously,” he said.
I forced a laugh. “Well, obviously,” I answered, slapping my knees. “I like your style, sweetie.”
“You were free for me last time, and I paid a price,” Mike said, looking at me. For the first time, I noticed just how bloodshot his eyes were. There were barely any whites in them anymore. Had he been crying?
“The only price you pay with me is in the orgasms I take from you,” I whispered into his ear.
“This time, you’ll be paying me for the pleasure, and I demand cash,” he said, his mouth twisting into a horrible imitation of a smile.
Every single customer at the surrounding tables was watching the drama unfold now. I didn’t like that at all. The situation was getting out of control.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” I said. “The only one who can negotiate a price is Mama. Let me go get her.”
I got a few paces away before I froze in my tracks at Mike’s holler.
“Don’t you walk away from me, bitch!”
A solid fourth of the club craned their necks around to see what was going on. I was by Mike’s side again, trying to placate him.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” I said. “I thought you wanted to sleep with me. I was just setting the wheels in motion. Nothing unless it goes through Mama. That’s the rule, I’m afraid.”
“No,” he said. “The rule is that I get to do whatever I want now.”
He snagged my wrist and yanked me down to sit next to him, his fingers bruising me. I went down gracefully, trying to make it look like I’d chosen to sit down. I had to make an attempt to get this situation under control. If I couldn’t, I at least had to fake control.
“The customer’s always right, sweetie,” I soothed. “Of course you get whatever you want. You just let Cocoa know what you want, and I’ll get it for you.”
“I want my wife back,” he slurred.
I frowned. “Is she here?” I asked. “Where can I find her for you?”
“She’s gone!” Mike shouted. “She’s gone because of you!”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand. I’ve never met your wife before.”
My mind and heart racing, I tried to figure out where this was going. Had I met this woman before? Was there a chance that I was somehow at fault?
“She found out about the night I spent with you,” Mike said. “She divorced me. She took everything from me.” He was silent for several long moments before sneering at me. “You took everything from me.”
I shook my head. “What happens here, stays here,” I argued. “Your wife didn’t find out from me. Maybe one of your friends —”
Mike cut me off with the fist he brought down on the table, rattling the cutlery. I tried not to look at the customers around me even though I was hyperaware of their eyes on us. I focused on maintaining control in this situation — even if it was only an illusion for their benefit.
“It was you, in a roundabout way,” he said. “I was fucking pissed when I figured out that it was you who deleted my photos.”
“You were told no photos,” I put in, “twice.”
Mike shrugged away this annoyance of a fact. “You didn’t delete the photos from the cloud.”
“The cloud?” I repeated, puzzled. It sounded almost mythical. “I have no idea what that is.” Once the photos were deleted from the phone, they were gone forever, weren’t they?
“That’s because you’re a stupid whore,” Mike said. “The cloud is an online storage system. My phone’s defaults send all my data there so I can retrieve it if my phone crashes. If you delete the photos, they’re gone from the phone. But they stay in the cloud otherwise, and my wife likes to look at them via her own phone to see what I’m doing.”
I thought I understood the concept of the cloud, but I was still having trouble understanding why this was my fault. I hadn’t forced Mike to take the pictures. I’d even deleted them — or tried to, anyway. However, I didn’t want to be combative. I had to defuse this situation.
“I’m sorry your wife saw us together,” I whispered.
“Not as sorry as you can be,” he said. “I’ve been living in a shitty apartment, barely able to scrape the rent together in this fucking city with my paycheck alone. My wife took our kids, my car — everything — and kicked me out of the house. She had the photos. She had the proof. And now I have nothing.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said again. “I know this must be a tough time for you.”
“Save your sympathies for the bedroom,” Mike said. “I’m going to fuck you until I think we’re even.”
“If that’s what you feel like you need to do,” I purred. Maybe all he did need was a good lay. Many of my customers were like that, coming in here to blow off some steam — or to have someone blow it off for them. “I’ll get Mama and she’ll give you the best price. We’ll make this happen right now.”
“Yes, we will,” Mike said. He lunged at me and tore at my shirt, popping buttons off of it as I scrambled back to get out of his reach. Everyone around us gasped at this new development of violence.
“Please stop,” I said. This situation was reminding me too much of Tito. I wasn’t going to be able to play it cool for much longer. “Let me go get Mama so we can go upstairs.”
“Upstairs?” Mike echoed. “No. I’m going to have you right here and now. If it doesn’t bring my wife back, I’ll try again. Still nothing? Again. And again.”
I didn’t like the crazed tone in his voice. It told me that I was in danger. How could I get away?
I stood up and tried to dart away. I was well aware that everyone knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had lost control of the situation. Now all I cared about was escape. I didn’t give a shit who knew about it.
With stunning quickness, Mike punched me on the jaw, sending me to the floor. I saw stars as I tried to crawl away, people shouting all around. My vision cleared just as Mike fell on top of me, his weight making me feel like I was suffocating. He grabbed at my breasts with bruising force, pushing my legs apart with his knees.
It was Tito all over again, this time with an audience, even though I’d promised myself it would never happen again.
“Get off me, motherfucker!” I screamed, punching him in the face. “Get the fuck off me!”
He bit one of my breasts before the two bouncers at the door could pull him off me. Mama was right there behind them, her eyes blazing with a cold fire I’d seen once before — the night my old roommate Jazz was attacked. I felt chilled to the bone even though I knew she was there to help me.
“Get out,” Mama hissed, her teeth gritted as she glared at Mike. “You’re blacklisted.”
“I never want to come back anyway!” he shouted as the bouncers hauled him away. “Fuck this place and all you whores! You took everything from me! Everything!”
>
The nightclub had fallen into a hush, even the pianist stopping his playing. Mama turned to the stage and swirled her finger in a circle, indicating he should be playing right now. The music started back up, but I had a feeling that he wouldn’t be hired again. Mama was like that — anyone who contributed to a problem she cut loose.
“Meet me in my office,” she muttered before pasting on her smile. I took a deep breath and gathered my ruined shirt around myself, going quickly so I wouldn’t become even more of a spectacle.
As I left, I heard Mama schmoozing with the customers. “Please let me buy you all a round of drinks because you had to see that nasty little incident,” she was saying. “Oh, just a lovers’ quarrel. Jealousy’s a hell of a thing. No, totally under control.”
I winced as I went. The punch Mike had landed on my jaw had jarred me, all right, and the place where he’d bit me was tender, a nasty, mouth-shaped bruise already making itself known. What was even worse was that we were losing money on the incident with Mama buying drinks to smooth feathers. She was treating this as an investment she had to make. Invest now, keep them coming later.
When I got to the office, I had a little cry, allowing myself just a few minutes of tears. The situation with Mike had been scary — downright terrifying. It had been just like Tito, when I hadn’t been able to defend myself. I dabbed at my eyes and blew my nose. Not much harm done, I told myself, looking in the mirror. I could borrow needle and thread from one of the girls and sew some buttons right back on my uniform. The buttons were the only damage to the shirt, which was lucky.
I examined my jaw, which was swelling up. I cursed Mike, but figured it could’ve been worse. I’d seen kids back in the old neighborhood knocked out cold with similar punches.
My makeup was running, I realized, wiping the eyeliner off with another tissue. I tucked some of the strands of my hair back into some semblance of order and reapplied my red lipstick out of habit. I put on more every spare moment I got.
There were two beads of blood on my breast, I noticed, on the bite mark. They made me feel sick, like I’d been attacked by an animal. Taking a shuddering breath, I cleaned the blood up and found the first aid kit Mama always kept in here. The antiseptic burned the tiny cuts on the blackening bruise, but it gave me comfort that I was getting any germs out. I could even go to the nearby clinic and get it looked at tomorrow, I told myself, for even more peace of mind. Yes, that’s what I would do.
I jumped as the door burst open.
“Cocoa, what the hell was that?” Mama demanded. “I’m dropping about four-hundred bucks on alcohol right now to smooth over that incident. That’s the worst thing that’s ever happened on the floor! What did that motherfucker want?”
I tried not to cringe in the face of Mama’s withering anger. She wanted the best for the nightclub, I knew, and this incident wasn’t best for it.
“He was a repeat customer,” I said. “But I caught him taking pictures on his phone up in the room last time.”
Mama inhaled sharply. “There are to be no photos,” she hissed.
“And that’s what I said,” I told her. “So when he went to the bathroom afterwards, I deleted everything from his phone.”
“Smart girl,” Mama congratulated me. “Now tell me why his sloppy ass was back here, making trouble.”
I hesitated, knowing I’d likely face Mama’s full wrath, my fault or no.
“The photos were also stored on this thing called the cloud,” I said. “Meaning I didn’t delete them totally. Just from his phone.”
Mama covered her eyes, silent, so I pressed forward.
“He said his wife saw them and divorced him. She took everything, and he was back to try to regain what he’d lost. He was going to fuck me right there in front of everyone.”
Mama still wasn’t looking at me, still wasn’t talking.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice breaking. “I was trying to control the situation, but when he got on top of me, I lost it. I — I’ve been raped before.”
I hated saying that word, but it was said. I had to tell Mama the whole situation. I don’t know how much more control I could’ve exerted after Mike had punched me onto the floor, but I had lost my shit when he’d climbed on top of me.
“This is very bad, Cocoa,” Mama said. “Very bad.”
“I didn’t ask for this,” I said, shaking my head. “I know it’s very bad. But I didn’t ask for this. I did everything I could think of to keep control of the situation, but he made a scene every time I tried to leave to get you.”
Mama shook her head. “You didn’t think of everything,” she said. “You should have hauled his ass upstairs and dealt with him up there, away from the eyes of everyone trying to enjoy their night in my club.”
“Dealt with him?” I asked, dumbfounded. “It would’ve been worse if he’d lost his shit upstairs like he lost it on the nightclub floor. Did you even see this?”
I pulled my shirt apart and pointed at the mouth mark on my breast. Despite the antiseptic, it was bleeding again, the iron-red liquid coating my skin like some kind of vicious war paint.
Mama stared at the wound, shaking her head. There was a knock on the door.
“Come in!” Mama barked, back to all business.
The door pushed open. It was Blue. “The cops are here, Mama,” she said, her face ashen. “They’re asking to talk to you.”
“Motherfuckers,” Mama growled. She eyed me balefully. “Blue, take Cocoa upstairs and out of sight. I’ll distract the cops. She’s not to be seen.”
“Okay, Mama,” Blue said.
I knew this was bad. Mama’s tenuous agreement with the cops was that she could operate happily as long as she stayed off the radar. That was the deal with the higher ups that we often serviced ourselves. But when street-level patrolmen came calling, it attracted too much attention. The media would perk up when they heard something like this on a scanner. The nightclub — Mama and all the girls included — could find themselves in the center of a huge firestorm if the wrong details came out. She would have to pull all of the strings she grasped in her hand to get out of this, likely padding pockets along the way.
This incident was going to cost the club, but the price wasn’t clear yet. I regretted it a lot, but I hated that Mama was blaming me for it. I had done everything to avoid the scene that had taken place, and I disagreed with Mama’s view that I should’ve “dealt” with Mike out of the sight of other customers. What did she want me to do? Let him rape me?
“That’s it,” Blue said. “Their backs are turned. Let’s go, baby.”
We left the office, skirting along the wall as Mama laughed and patted a patrolman’s arm. Both of us dashed up the stairs, me grunting at a pain in my ribs. Had Mike bruised or broken one of them when he fell on top of me? Another thing to get checked out at the clinic tomorrow, I decided. They never asked questions, particularly in this neighborhood.
“Are you okay?” Blue asked once we got to the hallway. Her eyebrows were knitted together in concern.
“I’m fine,” I said, laughing. “I’ll just go to my room and wait till this all blows over. You can go on back downstairs. Make some money.”
That was always our rallying cry: “Make some money.”
Blue walked me to my room anyway, taking the key from my quaking hand to open the door.
“Thanks, Blue,” I said. I started to walk in the dark room, the only light coming from the orange street lamp that did a poor job of illuminating the alley.
“Cocoa, wait.” I turned, and she enveloped me in a hug, crushing me to her chest. I didn’t care that it hurt my ribs and the bite on my breast. I clung onto Blue like she was a life preserver floating in the middle of a stormy sea.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” she said. “I know it is.”
“It is,” I agreed. “It’ll be fine.”
Reluctantly, I pulled away, smiling for Blue’s benefit.
“Now, get back down there and make some money,�
�� I urged.
“I’ll be back up to check on you,” she promised.
“Don’t bother,” I laughed, shaking my head. “I’m not going anywhere. You’re going to be busy, anyway.”
As soon as Blue left, the full magnitude of the situation hit me. Mama was furious with me; the cops were here, asking questions, and there were photos proving that prostitution was taking place in the nightclub. The situation was very bad, indeed.