Winning Texas

by Nancy Stancill

  “All of these girls have given their best to please you,” Genta said. She waited for Juliana to speak.

  “Here’s what we’ve decided,” Juliana said. She pointed to Leka, Mimoza and Afrodita. “These girls will dance at this club six days a week. They can stay in a room of the apartment we own near here.”

  She motioned to Elvana, Ardita, Rita, Edona, Bora and Vera.

  “These six will go to our ranch in the Hill Country and work for a year or so,” she said. “Then they’ll be free to try out again for our clubs or do whatever they want.”

  The room suddenly went silent. Zogu looked at Genta for guidance, but couldn’t glean anything from her expression. In their negotiations, Krause and Juliana had never mentioned the ranch. Genta pursed her lips and nodded, a signal for Zogu to speak. He saw the girls glance at each other with unspoken but urgent questions.

  “Shouldn’t the girls all stay together?” Zogu said. “They need each other to get used to a different country and a new life.”

  “There’s no place for all of these girls at our clubs yet,” Juliana said. “Their dancing and their looks are not top of the line, but they will get their chance later.”

  “What would they do at your ranch?” Genta asked. “They’re city girls, not used to farm work.”

  “We will find something for them to do,” Juliana said. “They can help with household work, tend the animals or help us in other ways. They must earn their keep.”

  Zogu didn’t like this at all and he could see uncertainty in some of the girls’ faces and anger in others. One of the girls, the younger one named Vera looked like she was about to cry. They’d come from Albania hoping for glamour and, if not riches, at least solvency. They’d all worked hard to learn to dance, not tend cattle.

  “All of these girls must work to repay the money we pledged to bring them from Albania,” Krause said. “The dancers won’t be given a salary yet, but can earn money in tips. We will provide them with IDs and help with costumes.”

  “When we get the girls to the ranch, we’ll give them more instruction about our needs there,” Juliana told Zogu and Genta. “Take it or leave it.”

  Zogu nodded and Genta helped the girls gather their belongings.

  “I’ll pick up the girls tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock and drive them to the ranch,” Juliana said. “They will enjoy their life in the beautiful Hill Country.”

  On the way back to the motel, Leka sat with a comforting arm around her cousin Vera. Zogu knew that the two were close. Vera was petite, with chin-length, platinum-colored hair and a perpetually frightened look. She’d been so tense during the audition that she hadn’t done well.

  “Zogu, you must think of a plan to change this,” Leka told him in her usual decisive tone. “If they must go to the ranch tomorrow, we need to think about how to get them back soon. Vera and Bora are only eighteen.”

  “It’s not that simple,” he said. “It is true that the money must be paid back.”

  Zogu tried not to panic as he wove through the proliferating afternoon traffic. He was worried about the girls, but also concerned that Genta would blame him if Krause and Juliana didn’t come through with their final payment.

  He knew in his heart that whatever went on at the ranch was unsavory. He’d heard rumors about how girls were used there, but didn’t know if the stories were true. He’d delivered girls there, but had left them just inside the guard gate as instructed. He knew it was forbidden to linger, or to ask questions.

  CHAPTER 36

  The next morning, Vera was the last of six reluctant girls to board the van headed to the ranch. Leka could see that behind the wheel, Juliana was tapping her foot and scowling, but she didn’t try to rush them.

  Leka, at least a head taller than Vera, practically smothered her cousin in a parting hug. How could she let Vera go, after she’d promised her mother and her aunt that she’d look after the younger girl? She smiled and tried to concentrate on keeping the inner turmoil off her face. Otherwise, she’d just add to Vera’s angst.

  “Bye, little one,” she told her. “You will be in my heart and we will talk every day.”

  She’d given Vera her cheap cell phone, which she’d convinced Zogu to buy for her at a bread-and-beer store near the motel. She hated to give it up because it was the girls’ emergency link, but she’d get another as soon as she danced her way into some tips. She’d hide some of her money for emergency purchases, including a phone.

  Leka could tell Vera was trying to act brave, but she looked heartbreakingly tiny waving from the van. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, she’d fitted her pitifully small bundle of belongings into a compact duffle bag. She sat in the far back seat. All six of the departing girls waved to Leka, putting on the jaunty front she’d advised last night.

  “Don’t let the cold-hearted Juliana see that you are afraid,” she’d told them. “Stay together and pretend you are happy to be going to her place. She will treat you better.”

  She’d instructed Vera to call her at the motel when they arrived at the ranch, which Leka had heard was located about three hours from Houston. After the van disappeared, she fretted as she washed her clothes in the laundry room and tried to get Mimoza and Afrodita to help her clean. She could tell they were also despondent, though they didn’t talk about the other girls. The three of them would be leaving the motel today, moving to a room in the house that Mr. Krause owned near the club.

  Nearly four hours after the van left, the motel phone finally rang. Leka was pleased that Vera sounded less frightened and even a little excited. They’d arrived at the ranch, which she described as beautiful, with nice-looking buildings and lots of trees. Vera and the five other girls were headed to the dining room.

  “How was your trip, little one?” Leka said.

  “Good. We went through a gate with guards,” she said. “They were very friendly to Ms. Juliana, treating her like the big boss. We could see a fence all around the property. The guards let everyone in and out.”

  “Has Ms. Juliana treated you properly?”

  “She’s trying to act nice, but she watches everything we do. I think she’s afraid that we’ll escape,” Vera said.

  “Has she told you what you’ll be doing at the ranch?”

  “She says she will explain our duties after our lunch. I have a room…” She trailed off and Leka heard some noise in the background that sounded like a struggle.

  “Please give my phone back,” Leka heard her cousin say in a pleading tone. Then someone disconnected the call. Vera was gone.

  CHAPTER 37

  Betsy Marr peered from behind the stage as a woman the deejay had introduced as Leka finished her dance routine at the start of the happy-hour shift. She hadn’t met her yet, but Betsy was struck by Leka’s poise and graceful moves. The blonde dancer was tall with pretty legs and a nice smile. She might be close to Betsy’s age, unlike some of the other dancers who looked decades older and kind of hard. Something about Leka’s turned-up eyes looked appealingly foreign, like the glamorous Russian models Betsy had seen in fashion magazines and on TV shows. She was sure she wouldn’t ever meet anybody like Leka on the poky streets of Marfa. Coming from West Texas, where everyone was either Anglo or Mexican, Betsy was intrigued by the international flavor of Houston. Patrick had taken her to Chinatown recently, south of the fancy downtown area, for a lunch of spicy chicken skewers with peanut sauce. She had been surprised that so many Chinese and Vietnamese people lived in Houston. Patrick told her that the hot, humid climate reminded them of their Asian homelands. Houston was the biggest and most exotic city she’d ever seen, so much more exciting than San Antonio. She’d gone to the Alamo City a few times with her dad. The Alamo was sweet, the river walk
was fun, but Houston seemed more like a place where important things happened every day in those amazing skyscrapers.

  The Texas Girls Club wasn’t exactly empty, but Betsy counted only about twenty people in the big room – all men, naturally – drinking at scattered tables near the stage. A small audience suited her just fine. This was her first shift at the Texas Girls Club and a big, rowdy crowd was the last thing she wanted. Her legs felt rubbery, and despite the wheezy air-conditioning, her forehead was clammy with sweat around her hairline. A half-hour ago, Patrick had dropped her off in his black pickup, turning away her pleas to stay for a while during her first shift.

  “Baby, you’ve got a job to do, so put on your big-girl pants,” he grinned, giving her a big smacking kiss on the mouth and leaning across her to open the passenger door at the club’s front door.

  “I’d feel better if you were with me.” She waited until the last possible moment to get out.

  “They don’t want boyfriends hanging around,” he assured her. “You’ll just be distracted. You need to focus on the big tippers in the audience. You know we need the money.”

  “What’re you going to do while I’m gone?” she asked.

  “The band will probably practice for a while at Donnie’s,” he said. “Maybe go out for a few beers afterwards. Call my cell and I’ll pick you up whenever you’re done.”

  She wasn’t happy to hear that. Donnie was the least attractive of Patrick’s friends, kind of a no-manners cowboy who began every sentence with the words fuck or shit. Betsy was no prude, but she didn’t care for his constant stream of profanities. Donnie lived in an unbelievable pigsty of a garage apartment and always had slutty-looking girls hanging around. She’d been over there a couple of times and the girls would flirt shamelessly with Patrick, right in front of her. Of course, her handsome boyfriend was the best-looking member of the band, no doubt about it. But she didn’t want to get into a fight with him about Donnie.

  “Okay,” she said. “Wish me luck.”

  “Honey, you’ll be great,” he said. “The customers will go crazy over those boobs.” He waved as he speeded up and drove away, looking sexy with his newly trimmed black beard.

  Now she was walking out onstage and she’d better not think about Patrick or anything except swaying seductively to the thumping rock music she’d chosen. She’d heard the deejay announce her made-up name, Sugar, and that was her cue to get out there and prove herself. Her jittery lips made it hard, but she somehow managed a half-smile. She’d dressed in a black lace mini-dress she thought was kind of sexy and she could tell right away that most of the men liked the way she looked. She saw a couple of them nudge each other and nod.

  She just danced the way she’d learned with her friends, mostly by going to the boring school dances in junior high. She shimmied and shook a lot, avoiding fancy footwork. It wasn’t anything special, but she could tell the men were watching every move she made. A lot of them were focused on her breasts.

  The tempo of the music speeded up and she unzipped the dress, pulling it over her head while trying to keep a slow wiggle going in her hips. She couldn’t do it as gracefully as the girls she’d watched earlier, but she guessed that came with practice. She was wearing red satin tap pants, which were kind of like low-slung boxer shorts, with a matching lacy tank. A few of the younger men whistled and cheered, which gave her more confidence for the second number. It was slower, and she took her time, shrugging off her red tank top and bra to reveal the blue pasties that sort of covered her nipples.

  It gave her a funny feeling deep in her stomach to show her breasts, but it wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. Several men whooped and hollered and a few came up and shoved bills in her tap pants or laid them on the stage. She smiled, feeling shy but pleased they’d liked her. She picked up the bills, her garments and bounced offstage. She didn’t really know what to do next, so she ambled into the dressing room and found her pink terrycloth robe.

  There were about ten women in there, and she caught the eye of Leka and her posse, two girls with the same foreign look around their eyes. She smiled at them encouragingly and was rewarded with friendly looks. Leka conferred with them briefly and they all came over to introduce themselves.

  “You are Sugar, no?” Leka said in foreign-accented English. She shook hands with Betsy and introduced the other girls, Afrodita and Mimoza. They smiled and said hello, but not much else. Leka explained that they didn’t speak much English yet, but added, “They will be your friends, like me.”

  “My real name is Betsy,” she told Leka. “This is my first day. I was really scared out there.”

  “I know how you are feeling. We all were scared when we started working two days ago,” Leka said. “Are you a Texan?”

  “Yeah, from West Texas,” said Betsy. “Came to Houston with my boyfriend. Where are you from?”

  “Tirana, in the country of Albania,” Leka said with pride.

  Betsy didn’t even know where Albania was, but Leka explained so that she kind of understood, though her grasp of geography was hazy. She listened eagerly to Leka’s story about their journey to Houston hiding as stowaways. She’d never heard anything so exciting from girls her age. She sat with them at a rickety table in the corner of the dressing room, feeling that she’d finally found some friends. They seemed so much nicer than the nasty girls she’d met at Donnie’s house. What a crazy trip the Albanian girls had been through hiding on a ship to Houston. She promised she wouldn’t tell anyone about it. She felt sorry for them when Leka told her about her cousin and the others who’d been sent to a ranch in the Hill Country. She’d lived on her dad’s ranch all her life and knew that it was hard work and not at all glamorous.

  She reveled in the girls’ companionship until a large woman butted in by clapping her hands and shouting orders in Spanish. She scolded that they needed to get in line because they’d all be dancing again soon. The girls on shift duty would take turns performing on stage, giving Betsy and the others more opportunities to dance as new customers arrived.

  “That’s Mrs. Jimenez,” Leka told her. “Be careful around her and do what she says. She is very mean.”

  “And stay away from Bobo, the man who guards the door and looks at you with evil in his eyes. He will try to touch you.” Leka grimaced and her friends wrinkled their noses with distaste.

  Every time she left the stage, Betsy gravitated toward Leka and her friends. They giggled about some of the older men in the audience and exchanged more stories about their lives. Leka translated to the girls so they could all participate in the conversation. It was nice to have someone her own age to explain how things worked. She wasn’t sure she totally understood the club’s operation. There seemed to be unwritten rules in this strange world. She’d looked, every time she was onstage, for Mr. Krause, the owner who’d been so nice to her. But he wasn’t in the audience.

  Midnight approached and Betsy ached all over from dancing, smiling and standing for so many hours. Mrs. Jiminez told her to punch her time card and leave. She put on jeans, packed her duffle bag and called Patrick to pick her up.

  He pulled into a parking space and opened the passenger door. She sank into the passenger seat, so glad to sit down. She could smell the acrid marijuana and sour beer on his breath across the seat, which she resented after working all night. But she decided not to say anything. She didn’t have the energy for a fight.

  “Well, babe, how much did you make?” He said eagerly.

  She hadn’t added up the pile of crumpled bills she’d stuck in her purse. She rummaged around and counted it.

  “It’s $276 dollars,” she said proudly.

  “That’s a start, but not great for a whole night,” he said. “You’ve got to do better than that for us to be able to stay in the fancy
motel you picked out.”

  “I thought you’d be so happy,” she said in a small voice.

  “Houston’s music scene is slow right now,” he said. “Just worried about money. Might have to do a couple of months on a rig, or go back to Greece for a while. I don’t want to have to leave you.”

  “Well, if you don’t blow it on pot or booze, we should be okay.”

  “Don’t nag me, Bets. I won’t put up with it.”

  “Can’t you see I’m dead on my feet?” She wasn’t going to smooth things over for once. “Just get me out of here.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Lila Jo’s luck had been remarkably consistent that night at the poker game. She and Travis had found the fancy host house on a Memorial-area street where about half the 1960s ranch-style houses had been torn down to make way for grander two-stories festooned with columns, stone accents and three-car garages. Travis hated neighborhoods that looked neither one way or another, that were always in process of becoming something else. But he understood the impulse for transformation, even though it didn’t always result in improvement.

  For the past couple of weeks, both he and Lila Jo had lost money most of the nights they’d ventured out to private games. But tonight she’d bested everyone at the table and was taking home close to $1,000 in cold cash. He’d won a few hundred, after a long losing streak. Normally, Lila Jo would be taking celebratory swigs of bourbon, but she’d left the good stuff on the table and had sipped Diet Dr. Pepper all night. She seemed less animated than usual and didn’t make her usual jokes about beginner’s luck.

  They said their goodbyes to the boisterous group and Travis drove the fifteen or so miles to his apartment on the north side. Was she angry with him? He opened the door and stepped aside for Lila Jo in a faux-ceremonious bow, expecting her to make some kind of wisecrack about his gallantry. But she rewarded him only with an absent-minded smile.