Unhinged

by Barbra Leslie

  “Well, here I am, phoning you,” I said, “surprising even myself.” I explained again that I lived close by, and while I wasn’t interested in working full-time – family commitments – I’d be happy to do a few shifts a week. He tried to get me to agree to five days, but we wound up agreeing to a few trial hours. I agreed to meet him at the club that night to go over protocols and responsibilities, and to talk money. He warned me it wasn’t much, but there were, he said, great benefits – dental and a gym membership – after a three-month trial period.

  When I hung up, it occurred to me with some shame that I’d never actually had a real, grown-up job with benefits. When I was a trainer, back in my early twenties, I’d been self-employed. Then I married Jack, and since then, I’d been living off him. And as his sole beneficiary, I’d inherited a large amount of money, larger than I had ever considered. I had burned through a tidy sum buying and renovating the bakery, including all the security, and I’d given a large amount to a charity for street kids, in Jack’s name. I wanted to keep a good-sized nest egg for the boys’ future, the latter being particularly important because Fred was tight-lipped about the state of his finances since Smith’s cult had drained him a couple of years ago.

  Having a paying job would make me feel better, I decided. It wouldn’t be much money, but it was, in truth, the only kind of work I could see myself doing. Even if I had any kind of office skills, I knew I’d go stark raving mad sitting at a desk all day, and at my age and with no skills other than a certain amount of physical fearlessness and an apparent craving to put myself into high-risk situations, working for Dave’s crew or working security at a strip joint seemed pretty much right up my alley.

  After what had happened in New York a few months earlier, my working for Dave again seemed about as likely as me developing a fondness for high heels. At Helen of Troy, I could ingratiate myself with Zuzi, and get a sense of whether she was an outright liar, a fake, milking Fred, or whether Fred was just conjuring all of this out of thin air. He hadn’t made up getting beaten up, and if it had anything to do with the club, I was going to find out.

  * * *

  I arrived for my first shift on a Monday night, which Garrett assured me was their second-quietest night of the week, after Sunday.

  “But we still have to be on our guard,” he said, as we settled into his office to chat. “As you experienced yourself first-hand, you never know when a customer will decide to take liberties.”

  Take liberties, I thought. Is that what you call it? I remembered being dragged back by my neck while some guy grabbed my boobs, and wanted to tell him that maybe he’d been reading too much Anne of Green Gables with his daughter. But I had been given a lecture by Darren about keeping my big trap shut, that not everyone finds my, as he put it with air quotes, “wit”, amusing.

  I smiled and concentrated on appearing both tough (I was the new bouncer, after all) and non-threatening (I was a new employee, and at my advanced age, it was a new experience for me).

  “There are always at least three of us on duty who can fulfill a security role, if necessary,” Garrett was saying. “Obviously, the door staff – you, or Sheldon, who you met, and there’s also Martin, who works a couple of shifts a week.” I smiled. My facial muscles weren’t used to smiling so much. I probably had spinach in my teeth, with my luck. “The on-duty manager, which is very often me. If not there’s Glen, my assistant manager, and Jimbo, who sort of does odd jobs for us.”

  I wanted to ask if any of Jimbo’s odd jobs included beating up customers in the alley, but I just kept smiling. Darren would have been proud. Mama Estela would have been cackling her head off.

  “So between the three of us – meaning Glen, Jimbo, and me – usually there are two people on duty at any given time. Plus the door person.”

  “And the bartender,” I said. “Patrick was really helpful last week when I had my… altercation. Once he saw what was going on, I mean.”

  “Oh, Patrick,” Garrett said. He exhaled loudly, as though he simply didn’t know where to begin. “I don’t know how we’d get by without Patrick. He’s been here since before we took over this place. He knows where all the bodies are buried.”

  Note to self: Get to know Patrick.

  Garrett continued with a simple explanation of what was expected of me, which did not seem to involve much past checking IDs at the door if patrons looked underage, bouncing customers who seemed drunk and/or belligerent, and, when the door itself wasn’t busy, keeping an eye on the girls on the floor to make sure that none of the customers were taking, as he put it again, unwanted liberties.

  After we discussed my hourly rate – which shocked me by how low it was; I had to ask Darren how much we paid Rosen and Marta, and give them a raise – and the benefits, I asked about when I would get paid.

  “Hey there,” Garrett said. “Look who’s eager!” He leaned forward and spoke quietly. “If you’re a bit short at the moment, I could probably advance you a bit against your first paycheck,” he said. “Don’t tell anybody else, though, or it would be chaos.”

  “No, no, I’m fine. Sorry, just curious about whether it’s a payroll check from you, or whether the company that owns Helen of Troy has a centralized payroll, or whatever. You know, how do I account for my hours, punching in and out, that type of thing.” I was winging it, and embarrassed at how little I knew about how all this worked.

  And I really wanted to know how big the company was that bought this place. Zuzi had told Fred that the pressure for the girls to fuck the customers came when the new management started. I had a very difficult time imagining Garrett Jones strong-arming anybody, but I knew enough to not necessarily trust my instincts these days. I hoped that if Zuzi’s stories were in fact true, that it was someone higher up in the food chain who had implemented the new regime.

  “Oh, I see what you mean,” Garrett said. “Well, I work – and you do too, now – for a company called the Kinder Group, so your bi-weekly checks will be issued from them.”

  “Kinder? Like the chocolate eggs with the little toys inside?”

  “First thing I thought when I interviewed with them. And no – no relation. The founder of the company is Paul Kinder. The company owns pubs and, uh, establishments like this up and down the eastern seaboard and the Midwest.” He fiddled with his tie, and adjusted the photograph he had on his desk. It was of his red-haired daughter, the Anne of Green Gables lookalike. Probably no wife, then, or there would be a family picture. “It’s a fast-rising company, which is pretty phenomenal in this economy. With the Internet and what have you, people don’t tend to go out as much as they used to.”

  “Was this place independently owned before Kinder took over?” I hoped he would see my questions as the normal curiosity of a new hire, and not simply nosy poking around.

  “I believe so, yes,” he said. “In any event, there’s no punching in and out here. If an employee is consistently late or what have you, we have a talk with them.” I wanted to ask if these chats took place in the alley, but I refrained. “But for the most part we really do have a great bunch of guys and gals here at HOT.”

  “Hot?” I said, then I got it. “Oh! Helen of Troy. HOT. That’s clever.” I thought it was about as clever as a heart attack, but hey, it was my first day. This man had just used the words “guys and gals” with no discernible trace of irony, and for once I was going to heed Darren’s advice about keeping my skewed sense of humor to myself. As much as possible, anyway.

  “The name was already in place, but the acronym occurred to somebody at head office early on, so that’s what most people tend to call it.”

  “Well, it’s fitting,” I said. “There are a lot of beautiful women working here.”

  “Danny, I am not legally allowed to ask you this, and let me preface what I am about to say by making clear that whatever your sexual orientation is, it won’t affect—”

  I cut him off. “Please don’t worry,” I said. I tried to blush, to show Nice Girl color in my
face. “I’m not gay. I was just making an observation. I mean, I haven’t frequented these kinds of places much in my life, but the girls here seem very sort of clean-cut.”

  Garrett beamed. “I’m so glad you noticed,” he said. “That is exactly what we pride ourselves on here.” I was very glad he didn’t say, “here at HOT.” “If a gentlemen’s club can be said to have a family atmosphere, then that’s what we strive for.”

  I was really starting to think that Zuzi was playing Fred. Maybe she got a couple of her friends to beat him up in the alley, to get him feeling sorry for her, in the hope he would perhaps set her up in an apartment somewhere so she wouldn’t have to shake her can for toonies tossed onto a stage anymore.

  Garrett took me around and introduced me to the DJ and to the bartender on duty, a stunning woman with curls down to her waist named Cassie, to the kitchen staff and the waitresses.

  “I won’t take you back to the dressing room,” Garrett said. “I have the right to go in, and once in a while I do have to. But I don’t think it’s appropriate. It’s a very female zone back there.” He cleared his throat, and I could tell he was picturing tampons and tubes of lipstick being chucked willy-nilly across the room by girls in scanty underwear. And for Garrett, that was not a pleasant image. Bless. “Perhaps one of the waitresses will take you back on your break and introduce you around.” He went over a few more quick instructions, and told me he was going to leave me on my own for a bit. “I’ll be around,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll be by the bar, sometimes on the floor, in the kitchen, or in my office. If you get in any kind of trouble – and I know you won’t – signal to Cassie and she’ll ring through to me.” He apologized for not having working communications devices, but promised they would be coming in a few days. Before he left me at the door, he quietly praised me for my choice of outfit – simple black pants and a black shirt. Of course, that’s what he had instructed me on the phone to wear, but whatever. “You don’t want to be mistaken for one of the dancers,” he said seriously. “We’ll have a couple of Helen of Troy shirts for you tomorrow.” In the meantime, he presented me with a white armband emblazoned with the word SECURITY in black letters.

  When he left me at the door, feeling like a bit of a knob with my armband, I wondered what in the hell I was doing there. I was like a teenager on my first shift at McDonald’s, left handling the drive-thru window on my own. I pictured myself admitting hordes of sixteen-year-olds because I couldn’t compute the birthdates on their fake IDs fast enough, or being unable to control my smart mouth and scaring away all the legitimate paying customers.

  But it was a quiet night. When I started my shift at five o’clock, the club was maybe a quarter full. There was a small rush around eight and then again at about eleven, but I didn’t have to so much as card anyone. There was a stool to sit on, but I stood. If any action was going to be necessary, starting from a standing position would be safer.

  The worst thing about those hours was the smiling. Smiling at men – some of them, not all – who walked in with, shall we say, lascivious intentions.

  And as soon as I thought that phrase, I started to understand why, perhaps, Garrett’s speech seemed so old-fashioned and stilted when it came to this place. If I did too many more shifts watching men with glazed eyes and suspicious bulges in their pockets look me up and down before heading into the belly of the beast to feast themselves on semi-naked women, I might wind up clutching my pearls and having fainting fits, or something.

  The bartender Cassie waved at me a couple of times and I trotted over, but she was just being friendly.

  “How you doing, honey?” she asked me. “Having the time of your life yet?”

  “It’s my first shift, everybody has been well-behaved, and I’m already starting to hate men,” I said. “Otherwise, yeah, the time of my life.”

  “I hear you. That wears off though.” She gave me a cranberry and soda in a pint glass. “I’ll take a break when Garrett gives you yours,” she said. “One of the waitresses will cover the bar for me for a bit. We are so fucking short-staffed, man. Anyway, then I’ll take you backstage to meet some of the girls.”

  Excellent. This was what I was here for.

  At nine-thirty on the dot, Garrett came to take my spot at the door, after assuring me that I was doing a great job. “Cameras,” he said, motioning to them. “Been keeping half an eye out in case you need help. But you’re a natural, Danny.” I hadn’t done a thing, but he seemed very pleased nonetheless.

  “What a relief,” I said, and hoped I didn’t sound as sarcastic as I felt.

  Before we went backstage, Cassie showed me the menu and made me choose something for my staff meal. I picked fish and chips, and she phoned into the kitchen and ordered for both of us.

  That, I could get used to.

  I followed Cassie past the DJ booth and backstage, into the dancers’ dressing room.

  It smelled like twenty perfume bottles had exploded. There were about ten dressing tables along one wall, and a row of lockers on the other. Some of the lockers, I noticed, were closed and locked with padlocks, while at least half seemed to be wide open, bags of clothing open and rifled through. I saw two feather boas.

  “Dominique and Fifi,” somebody said behind us. “They’re French. Not from France though, they’re from Quebec City or somewhere, I think. They do a kind of can-can number together. Sort of burlesque.”

  “That’s Brandi,” Cassie said, waving at the girl who had just spoken, who had come in behind us from her stage set. She was standing at a mirror, carefully blotting sweat from her face and obviously trying not to wreck her makeup.

  “Hey, Cass,” Brandi said. She looked me up and down. I was getting used to that. “Hey, new girl.”

  “Hey,” I said. I’m no prude, but it’s a bit disconcerting trying to talk to a nearly naked stranger.

  “Did Garrett tell you that you’ve got to escort some of us to our cars at the end of the night? I’m only bringing it up because I saw that one of my creepy stalker dudes is here and, oh man, I am so not in the mood to put up with him tonight.”

  “Uh, okay,” I said. “Of course.” I was still thrown, being back here. A couple of women were having an intense whispered conversation and sharing a spliff, and somebody in the bathroom seemed to be crying.

  It was like being in a foreign land, this land of women. I’d been living with men and boys for so long. Perhaps Darren was right, and I was starting to turn into one.

  Note to self: Get some female friends. Then I thought of Kelly and her note, which I had forgotten about altogether until that moment. I felt like an idiot. After the events of that night, Kelly slipping me a Post-it didn’t register much past the minute it happened.

  “Danny’s the one who beat the crap out of those fuckers at the bar when they tried to grope her. Two of them wound up in hospital,” Cassie said to Brandi.

  “No way! Righteous!” She kicked her shoes off and came over to hug me. “I so wish I’d been here that night. Everybody’s been talking about it. We’re trying to get Garrett to let us watch the security camera tape.”

  I snapped my fingers. “Oh, that reminds me. Kelly was working that night. She’s the one who patched up my hand. You know, the med student? Used to be a vet? Is she around tonight?”

  “Kelly?” Cassie said. She looked at Brandi. “I don’t think I know her.”

  “Really petite girl. Early thirties but she looks way younger,” I said.

  “Oh, her,” Brandi said. “I haven’t seen her in a while, and I’ve worked every night for the past four nights. But you know how it is – girls come and go. I don’t think she was here long.” She was carefully applying lipstick and tucking her boobs into a clothing item that could probably be called a bikini, if your idea of a bikini was three or four pieces of string woven together. And this was how she was going to circulate on the floor, soliciting lap dances. No wonder they kept this place so warm.

  Cassie shrugged and tapped the Bluetooth in he
r ear. “Awesome,” she said. “Come on. Our meal is ready.”

  We started out, and Brandi called after us. “You guys are so lucky,” she said. “You get to eat and not worry about cellulite.”

  As Cassie and I made our way to the kitchen to pick up our meals, I thought of Kelly. I had to find that note.

  As we finished our meals in the downstairs staff kitchen where Kelly had attended to my hand, I realized that I hadn’t thought of Fuckface Smith in hours. In the last sixteen months, I was pretty sure that was a record.

  “What are you smiling about?” Cassie said as we put our plates in the sink. I hadn’t realized I was smiling.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I just really think I’m going to like it here.”

  “Cool,” she said. “Places like this go through staff like water. I’ve only been here a few months myself and I can’t tell you how many staff and dancers have come and gone.”

  “Yikes,” I said. I meant it. That wasn’t a good sign, of anything.

  Cassie slapped my ass. “Come on,” she said. “We gotta go back on the floor and be the backdrop for the dancers. Smile!” She pulled a fake cheesy grin.

  “I don’t really have to smile,” I said, grinning at her. “I’m the muscle.”

  “That you are, girl,” she said. “Let’s just hope you don’t have to prove it again anytime soon.”

  “Your lips to God’s ears,” I said.

  I had to find Kelly. I had to find Zuzi. And then we’d see what I had to prove.

  SIXTEEN

  I spent half an hour the next day looking for the note that Kelly had passed to me after she’d patched me up. I remembered crumpling it up and dropping it in the bag I was wearing that night, but it wasn’t there. Nor was it under my bed, or in the drawer of my nightstand, any of my pockets, or the wastebasket in my bedroom.