One Year of Ugly

by Caroline Mackenzie

  ‘I’ve worked in strip clubs before in Texas and London,’ he told me. ‘Same shit everywhere. Those bitches never want to pay up. They don’t know we have cameras in every inch of this place. All I have to do is look back at the night’s footage to shut ’em up. Every night they gonna test my patience, Yola, you wait and see.’

  ‘I have your back, Branson, don’t worry,’ I joked.

  He laughed. ‘I like you. We’re gonna get along just fine.’

  ‘I think so too, Branson.’

  ‘Call me B.’

  ‘Okay, B.’

  After that first night, we all went home with a little more swag in our step. Hell, we were illegal aliens, safe-housers working for a crime lord for the past eight months, and now officially strip-club workers. Though two out of three of these ‘accolades’ had been forced upon us, no one could deny it now – us Palacios had street cred.

  IT AIN’T ALL BOOTY-POPPING

  We fell into the Pink Pie work routine pretty easily. Within weeks, the staff felt like family. Gordy, or the Captain as he kept trying to get us to call him, was the only thorn in our sides. He was always bitching about something or other. If there was so much as a rogue hair floating around on the carpet, he’d be down on hands and knees inspecting everything, proselytizing the importance of impeccable cleanliness.

  ‘He’s terrified of Ugly,’ Harrison explained. ‘Thinks he’s going to come in for an inspection any day.’

  It’s not that Gordy was a bad guy, just a tool. No one could muster up respect for someone who referred to himself in the third person as Cap’n while strutting around in metallic suits and shiny silk shirts. Then there were the motivational quotes – good God! Because he thought I took too long to tally up the dance commissions, he printed out a sheet of quotes on efficiency and work ethic that he cut into strips, one for each quote, and then gave to me along with a pack of thumbtacks and a small bulletin board.

  ‘Put up the bulletin board then stick these quotes on it. They’ll really make a difference once you read them every day and absorb them. It’s all about positive affirmations. That’s how you get ahead. I mean, look at me – positive affirmations got me where I am today.’

  I nearly told him a salary would’ve been much better incentive to boost my efficiency than a bunch of quotes about work ethic, but instead I just let him talk and grin at me with those phenomenally white teeth. As soon as he walked away, I threw the quotes and bulletin board in the bin.

  Hazel, Harrison, even Branson and the other floormen got quotes printed out for them too. During staff meetings Gordy would roll the quote sheets up like scrolls and hand them out like he was awarding diplomas.

  ‘Now listen, Branson, don’t go throwing this away. I got you some great quotes on positivity. It’ll really help improve your interpersonal skills.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘They’ve been complaining about you, you know, the girls. It’ll be good for you to work on how you deal with people.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  That’s all Branson ever said to Gordy, giving him the old Satan stare.

  We all tolerated Gordy that same way: with grunts, monosyllabic replies and gritted teeth. Even the strippers paid him the same one-worded lip service when he gave them motivational speeches, sharing his tips on the ‘art of conversation’, and on and on, one pointless pearl of wisdom after the next. The only employees who gave Gordy any backtalk were my mother (who I think Gordy even became a little afraid of), Sancho, and the one other barman, a guy who called himself Chill. Gordy was always going on about how heavily Sancho mixed drinks and how slowly he balanced the register at closing time. He never seemed to realize that my brother was already drunk when he turned up for work and only got steadily drunker as the night went on. I didn’t know if Sancho tweaked the bar inventory and drank through the club’s supply or if he walked with his own flask from home, but either way, it was pretty obvious to me that someone that drunk would never be a speedy worker. Gordy must’ve had blinkers on not to notice. Or maybe he really was just as stupid as he looked.

  Whatever the case, as soon as Gordy started prattling on about boosting productivity, Sancho would invariably interrupt him and start spewing inconsequential crap until Gordy inevitably accepted defeat and left Sancho in peace, working at his usual snail pace.

  Chill, the barman, had a different strategy. He liked to use Gordy’s motivational nuggets to launch tedious intellectual debates until Gordy couldn’t stand it any more and eventually fucked off, just like Chill had planned from the get-go. An example: one night Gordy called an ‘urgent’ staff meeting. We sat around in the fully lit club on the pink-velvet couches and armchairs. Like in any bar, nightclub or strip joint, there was a real sadness to the room under bright lights. You could see the ringed water stains on the black cocktail tables and the tiny rips in the carpet where spiked heels had hooked on loose threads. At the centre of the main floor, the circular stage with its silver pole had a starkness to it. All lit up, it looked more like a dais for a guillotine.

  Once everyone was there Gordy wasted no time in singling out Chill as the reason for the staff meeting. Chill had apparently told a customer to back off Alejandra after the customer had tried forcing drinks on her.

  ‘Now, Chill, nothing is wrong with protecting the wellbeing of your co-workers. But as you know, every customer who walks into this establishment is a man of high standing who expects to be treated a certain way. We can’t very well have staff telling them to “back off” anyone. It’s a gentleman’s prerogative if he would like to buy a lady a drink, wouldn’t you say? Besides, that drink purchase would’ve been money for the house. Having said that, Chill, what we need to remember is …’ A collectively stifled sigh as we all waited for the quote. ‘It is not your aptitude but your attitude that determines your altitude.’

  Chill stuck his thumbs through his belt loops and rocked back on his heels. We settled in for the debate.

  ‘Gordy …’ he began, running a hand over his chin.

  ‘You know you can call me Captain.’

  ‘Right, sure. Listen, Gordy, do you know the importance of assertiveness as a behavioural quality in the man of African descent? Do you understand the centuries – centuries! – of oppression endured under the thumb of the white man, where all the African man could do or say was “yessuh” and “nosuh”?’

  ‘Um.’

  ‘Do you understand why it is critical for me, a man of African descent, to feel liberated and respected enough in society to be able to assert myself and protect another minority from abuse by the oligarchy?’

  ‘Chill, you know very well that the customer who complained was black.’

  ‘Yes, I knew exactly who he was: a black oligarch. Same oppressor, different coat of paint!’ Chill’s non-prescription hipster glasses were practically steaming over. ‘And even though I know what strings he could pull, I still asserted myself to protect another marginalized person. Because that’s what we are here – the marginalized, the oppressed, the—’

  ‘All right, all right, for goddsake, forget the whole thing. Just don’t speak to the customers unless spoken to, okay?’

  ‘Yessuh, Cap’n, suh.’

  With our collective disdain for Gordy and our shared amusement at our varying Gordy-deflection tactics, us staff at the Pie were all pretty tight. The strippers, of course, were also part of our work family. We hung out with them while getting ready for our shifts, and they’d chat with the twins and Zulema at the bar on slow nights. They couldn’t get enough of Mamá and her beauty expertise. Most of them even ended up becoming regular clients who showed up at the annex for manis, waxing and the rest of it. They fawned over Vanessa, whose belly now had the same diameter as Pluto. They’d pull up her top and slather her stomach in cheap-smelling lotions, rehashing their own gruesome pregnancy and birthing stories.

  At first it shocked us to learn that a lot of the strippers had children, boyfriends, husbands, families who’d joine
d them from Venezuela and other neighbouring countries. But later on, I couldn’t understand why we’d been shocked at all – strippers were like anybody else. They just liked to earn a living shaking their asses, spreading their everything, and sweet-talking men. That’s right: they liked what they did for a living. At The Pink Pie there were no victims of human trafficking, no desperate addicts, no wholesome-yet-busty university students scrimping and saving to pay their tuition. We had good old-fashioned career strippers. Every one of them just loved getting men to pay cash to see them naked. End of story. As far as they were concerned, their bodies and charm were useful commodities for earning a living without actually having to give themselves to anyone and without the on-camera permanency of porn.

  I didn’t think how they chose to use their bodies was bad, though I knew stripping wasn’t for me. Not because of the nudity, but because of having to cajole strange men (usually assholes) into paying to see me naked. Night after night, plastering on a smile, enduring the customers’ greasy lines or worse yet, the arrogant insults and brush-offs if you weren’t to their taste. It took a thick skin, a cool temper, and a proclivity for endless small talk. So take note, any of you out there considering a stint in stripping: it ain’t all booty-popping and getting champagne sprayed on your tits.

  The weeks passed and we worked our four nights a week at the Pie, slept when we could, and continued to work our day jobs in a state of permanent exhaustion. I have no clue how the twins managed with school, since their request to take off Thursdays and Sundays was predictably denied by Ugly. As for Vanessa, you couldn’t help feeling sorry for her working all those long nights eight then nine months pregnant. She was kept in the backroom of the bar at all times. Her looming stomach horrified Gordy, whose sole desire in life was to run the most seamlessly perfect illicit strip club possible. If he so much as saw Vanessa peeking out from the backroom, there’d be a staff meeting and a lecture about upholding the company brand. Of course Chill used this as a launch pad for diatribes on women’s rights, but it never made a difference. Gordy wouldn’t budge. He couldn’t wait for Vanessa’s due date so she and her belly would be out of his hair.

  Sancho seemed to hate having Vanessa there too. He was genuinely worried about her being on her feet washing dirty glasses all night. The more pregnant she got, the more blatant Sancho became in his attentiveness. It was sweet. But I was pretty sure that soon the whole family plus the rest of the Pink Pie employees would be in on their secret.

  I hadn’t spoken to Sancho about his relationship with Vanessa since that time in the kitchen, so at our Eid-al-Fitr family dinner, I waited until he went to the bathroom then positioned myself in the hallway to tackle him when he came out.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, startling him as the bathroom door opened. ‘I see things are getting sort of serious with you and Vanessa now.’

  Sancho screwed his face up, belched. ‘What?’

  ‘Things are serious. It’s pretty obvious. You’re always fussing over her.’

  ‘She’s pregnant. Everyone fusses over her.’

  ‘Not like you.’

  ‘Okay, so what?’ He picked at something between his teeth, and then oh-so-breezily: ‘I guess I love her, so why wouldn’t I fuss?’

  ‘You love her?’

  Had I been a pug, my eyeballs would’ve been on the floor.

  ‘Yeah, I guess.’

  ‘So what does that mean, Sancho? You guys are gonna be together publicly now?’

  ‘Dunno.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll figure it out.’

  He burped again and with that final flourish, he was done with the conversation.

  I talked to Román about the Sancho–Vanessa romance a couple days later. We were spending my night off at one of the unoccupied exec apartments, lounging in bed together while Román sprinkled organic local weed into a strip of hemp paper. My skin still damp from our romp, I watched him deftly rolling the joint onto the tip of a cigarette – a roll-on, the Trinis call it – and run his tongue over the edge of the paper to secure it.

  ‘I mean, I have no issue with Vanessa really – not any more, anyway,’ I was saying, ‘but is Sancho really going to raise a kid that isn’t even his? He’s a raging alcoholic for starters. Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that she only just turned eighteen. How long are things really going to last between him and a teenager?’

  ‘Hmm … I don’t know, flaca, I think you should be a little more optimistic.’

  He sat back against the bedhead and lit the roll-on, then reached over and pulled me to lie stomach-down across his lap, sliding a hand over my bare ass and grabbing a handful. I reached up and plucked the roll-on from his mouth.

  ‘Focus!’ I laughed. ‘I’m seriously worried about what’s gonna happen when she spits this kid out.’

  I crawled across his lap to sit next to him, and we passed the roll-on back and forth a couple times in comfortable silence.

  ‘You’re overthinking it,’ he said finally. ‘Sancho knew what he was getting into. Maybe he sees raising Kingsley’s kid as some kind of moral Everest he wants to climb.’

  ‘Please,’ I snorted. ‘I highly doubt Sancho’s concerned about enhancing his moral fortitude. And what about the age difference?’

  ‘What about it? Look at us. You’re twenty-four, I’m thirty.’

  ‘Oh c’mon. A six-year difference is normal. Twelve years isn’t – especially not when one person is barely a legal adult.’

  He squelched the last of the roll-on in an ashtray on the bedside table, then turned to nuzzle my neck and inhale the coconut shampoo I always used now because I knew how much he loved it.

  ‘Who knows,’ he whispered huskily, ‘you could be saying you’re twenty-four and you’re really eighteen. Could be one of those jailbait girls.’

  ‘Mmm, you’re right. But then you’d be a pretty shitty surveillance expert.’

  He looked at me with mock indignation. ‘You saying I don’t know how to do my job?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘I can’t let that kind of disrespect slide. I take great pride in my work, Yola. I’m sorry but you’re gonna pay for that.’

  He pulled me across his lap as effortlessly as if I were a blow-up doll and raised a hand warningly above my ass. ‘Sure you wanna call me a bad surveillance expert?’

  I propped my chin in my hands, playing cavalier. ‘Pfft. Bad? More like the worst.’

  His hand came down with a smack. I yelped, laughing.

  ‘Be careful, Señorita Palacios. You forget I’m a dangerous man.’

  ‘Prove it.’

  And he had. Until nearly daybreak, when it was time to roll up the fantasy of us being a regular couple with a regular life living in our regular apartment, tuck it in my pocket, and return to my inescapable life as another cog in Ugly’s wheel of illegal enterprise.

  CHE

  It was September. We’d been working at the Pie for just over a month and despite the chronic fatigue, I actually enjoyed my unpaid job. Even Gordy grew on me just because it was so fun to make fun of him, especially when he took to making up his own nautical-themed quotes: ‘The sea is like life. Sometimes it’s rough.’

  Deep.

  He’d also bought himself a laminator and had taken to laminating the quotes he distributed nightly, presumably in the hopes of deterring everyone from throwing the quotes away. Now his office was plastered wall-to-wall in laminated A3 pages showing nonsensical nautical quotes in flowery fonts. Not to mention the immense laminated scroll above his desk bearing the mission statement of the Coast Guard.

  The man needed therapy.

  The only person Gordy never inundated with quotes, laminated or otherwise, was Vanessa, who he’d always considered a lost cause. Lucky for her, she’d finally got Ugly’s go-ahead for a maternity leave of sorts after Gordy submitted warning after warning that having a pregnant woman around was bad for the club’s image. And boy did she need it. Her morning sick
ness had persevered right through to her final month. Her joints ached, her feet swelled. She had hives on her stomach and thighs. ‘I look and feel like a troll,’ she told me one night in the dressing room, nearly in tears.

  ‘You look great, don’t worry,’ I said, though the well-distributed bodily thickness that had worked in her favour before had certainly turned against her and even her bump wasn’t cute because the baby was lying sideways, making her look impossibly wide.

  Not that any of it deterred my brother. He really must’ve been in love with her. As soon as she went on leave, Sancho stopped bothering to be discreet about his feelings for her. He was compulsively on his cell phone, his lifeline to Vanessa, and whenever he wasn’t working at the Pie or his regular job bartending at the casino, he’d be at Mauricio’s house massaging Vanessa’s feet, playing cards with her, making her fruit smoothies. He’d even taken her to her last doctor’s appointment according to Alejandra. It was all pretty endearing, so I took Román’s advice and kept my doubts about their relationship to myself.

  Nevertheless, I have to admit – I did feel a touch guilty to be tacitly supporting Sancho and Vanessa’s love affair. It somehow felt disloyal to Aunt Celia. That wasn’t the only reason I felt disloyal. With so much going on – the Pie, translating, finishing up my novel draft, sneaking around with Román – I’d been thinking about her less and less, hardly ever dipping into her memoir. Lately I’d begun to worry that if I didn’t start reading again her memory might eventually disappear just like she had. So on the rare occasions that I found myself with nothing to do, I’d pick up the manuscript and re-read it for hours, always stopping before the final chapter. Though I’d had the manuscript for months now, it had become some strange form of masochistic pleasure-delaying restraint to deprive myself of the ending. It was like I was saving a vintage cognac to be drunk on a special occasion. Or maybe it just felt like reading the last chapter would be the same as finishing the story of Aunt Celia altogether. The final goodbye, when there’d really be nothing more of her left, when I’d have nothing more to get from her. So to keep her at my fingertips, I would re-read from the very beginning, and with Germanic discipline, always leave the last chapter untouched.