by Shelly Ellis
But he hated seeing her in pain. She and her father had been close—very close. He knew how much it hurt her to no longer have a relationship with him. He wondered if Mr. Theo felt the same way.
“So you were confused back then,” Derrick began tentatively. “You aren’t . . . confused anymore?”
Mr. Theo glanced at Derrick as he continued to paint. “What do you mean?”
“I mean . . . the way things are now . . . the life you have now feels right?”
Mr. Theo stopped mid-brushstroke then turned so that he could level Derrick with an unwavering eye. “Do you mean, ‘Am I OK with huggin’ and kissin’ up on men?’ Is that what you’re asking, Dee?”
Derrick grimaced.
“Look, it may be hard for a fella like you to wrap your head around this, but let me drop some knowledge on you. Some of the roughest, toughest dudes you see out there standing on street corners,” Mr. Theo said, pointing to the awning window with his paintbrush, “have been known to slip, slide, and dip with other men. They just aren’t open about that shit. They don’t wanna lose face, at best—or end up beaten to death, at worst. It ain’t easy being a gay black man—even harder to be a gay black man in the ghetto.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not easy being the daughter of a gay black man either,” Derrick ventured, meeting him stare for stare. “Things may be hard for you, but have you ever thought about what Melissa is going through?”
“Of course, I have.”
“Well, I don’t see how you’re okay with all of this then. I don’t get how you can just . . . just walk away from everything. Your wife, your daughter, your—”
“Hold up!” Mr. Theo said, dropping his paintbrush into the paint can and taking a step toward Derrick. “I didn’t walk away from them. I love my baby girl with all my heart. I love my ex-wife too.”
Derrick rolled his eyes in exasperation.
“You can roll your eyes all you want, but it’s the truth. Love just wasn’t enough for me to keep living a lie. The man they knew wasn’t a whole man, Dee. I told them that. I told them everything . . . about how I really felt all these years, about the stuff I had been hiding from them. I didn’t expect them to be happy about it. I knew it would be hard to hear it after I had been lying for so damn long. But I’d hoped they’d hear me out . . . that they’d try to understand.” He tilted his head. “And you know what happened? My wife told me to pack all my shit and get the hell out of her house. I went to go live in a raggedy motel off of Route 4 for two damn months. And my daughter told me to lose her number and never speak to her again. That was their choice, Dee, not mine.”
Derrick slowly shook his head in denial.
“What? What you got to say now?” Mr. Theo challenged, sitting on his stool. “Just spit it out!”
“Look, Mr. Theo,” Derrick held up his hands, “none of this is my business.”
“No, it ain’t—but we’ve already started down this road so we may as well keep going. Go ahead and say whatever you got to say.”
“Well, Melissa and I have been arguing more lately and frankly, I . . . I think a lot of that shit has to do with you.”
“What the hell do I gotta do with it?”
“She doesn’t like me working at the Institute because it reminds her of you working at the Institute and how it kept you away from her. She keeps questioning my commitment to her . . . to our relationship because you cheated on her mom.”
Mr. Theo raised his gray brows again in surprise. “Who said I cheated on Sandy?”
Melissa, Derrick thought, but didn’t say it aloud.
“I didn’t cheat on my wife, Dee. I’d thought about it—many times. I even came close to it in my younger days, but I never did it. Me and Lucas didn’t get together until Sandy and I were separated. We knew each other socially, but that’s about it. I wouldn’t do something like that to my wife.”
Derrick squinted. This isn’t at all the story he’d been told. He wondered how Melissa had gotten the facts so wrong. Had her mother told a different story—or was his mentor lying to his face?
“I didn’t want to sacrifice my family to finally live the life I wanted . . . the life I needed to live, but I knew it may come to that. I just couldn’t be a hypocrite anymore. I had been teaching young men for years about . . . about being honest with themselves, about knowing who they are in here,” he said, pointing at his chest. “You remember the day when I pulled you aside, when you were about fourteen years old, when I asked you, ‘What do you really want to do with your life, Dee? Because the decision is yours—no one else’s. Who are you now, and who do you want to be?’ Well, I had to answer that question myself.”
“And this is it? This is what you wanted?”
“No, it’s not what I wanted, but it’s what I had to accept. I had to make sacrifices to be who I am, son.” He went somber. “Every man has to do it at some point in his life. Sounds like Jamal already has, based on what he told you and Ricky. Maybe you will too someday. I just hope your price isn’t as steep as mine.”
The storage room went silent. They could hear the dog barking upstairs and the thud of Lucas’s footsteps on the floor above.
Making sacrifices . . .
Derrick’s thoughts went back to Melissa. She had been pressuring him to leave the Institute for months now, and he wondered if one day she would give him an ultimatum. If she said he had to make the choice between her or his job, which would he choose?
“Thanks for talking to me, Mr. Theo,” Derrick said, rising to his feet.
“No problem, Dee. You’re always welcome here. You know that.”
“I’ll let you get back to your painting and show myself out,” he said, walking toward the opened doorway, but he paused just before he stepped into the downstairs hall. “And I’ll work on Lissa. I’ll see if I can get you two talking again.”
“I don’t know about that. But if you can work a miracle, I’m ready. I’m ready whenever she is.”
Derrick nodded. “See you, Mr. Theo.”
Mr. Theo waved before bending over to retrieve his paintbrush. “See you, son.”
Chapter 5
Ricky
“Ricky? Hey, Ricky!”
Ricky turned away from the stage, eying the hulking Club Majesty bouncer who stood at his side.
“What?” he snapped, not even bothering to mask his irritation.
“The cute dyke is back.”
“Huh? What the hell are you talking about?”
Ricky was distracted. He still felt the sting from earlier that night when he’d met Derrick for drinks at Ray’s. Seeing the empty spot in their booth where Jamal usually sat, Ricky and Derrick both had to face the sinking realization that it was official: that bitch ass nigga Jamal was done with them. Though both men had tried to pretend they didn’t care or notice the difference, Ricky knew they had. Jamal’s absence was as pronounced as his presence—maybe more so.
Ricky still couldn’t wrap his head around his former buddy’s reasoning for breaking up with his friends. Who the hell breaks up with their boys? They had known each other for almost two decades. Ricky had thought they would be tight for decades more, until they were old, gray, and senile. How could Jamal pull a move like this?
Ricky knew in his gut that Bridget was likely behind it; he’d put good money on it. But if Jamal insisted on following her lead, there wasn’t much they could do about it.
Maybe we’re better off without his bitch ass anyway, he mused.
And now Ricky was getting pissed off all over again watching one of his dancers make a fool of herself on center stage.
Before his bouncer walked up, he had been staring at Shana, a buxom Halle Berry lookalike. He could tell even under the hazy blue spotlight that she was either drunk or high as a kite based on the glassy look in her eyes and her wobbly strut in her platform stilettoes. Ricky didn’t play that shit.
He certainly was no saint when it came to alcohol and drugs. He was basically running two businesses, and a line o
f blow could keep him awake and alert better than any cup of coffee, but he didn’t let it interfere with his work. He expected the same of everyone else—from the bartenders, to the DJ, to the dancers who worked at the club.
Shana’s set would be over in the next five minutes, and once she made it to the stairs, he was pulling her aside and telling her if she ever did anything like this again, she’d have to pack her locker and not set another foot in this club.
“I said the cute dyke is back,” the bouncer repeated louder, trying to be heard over the heavy base of the stage music. His dark eyes shifted to a spot across the room, about twenty feet away from the mezzanine, where Ricky’s table sat. “You told me to keep an eye out for her. She walked in about fifteen minutes ago.”
Ricky tore his gaze away from Shana and now looked where the bouncer’s gaze was focused. “Thanks, Ty. You did good.”
Ty nodded then walked down the short flight of stairs leading to the ground level where most of the club patrons sat. Ricky finished the last of his drink, rose to his feet, and soon followed him.
He had noticed her in the club about a month ago. She was hard to ignore, one of the few women at Club Majesty who wasn’t working a pole or waiting a table. He also noticed she always sat alone. She had one of those old Rihanna razor-cut bobs that looked almost masculine, but she softened it with her delicate features and heart-shaped face. She had a nice build too—sinewy arms and round thighs and ass. Ricky had watched more than one guy at the club try to chat her up and buy her a drink, but she gave them all the cold shoulder. She only seemed to have eyes for the dancers, asking the girls for a private lap dance in the champagne room. This is how she earned the nickname “the cute dyke” among the Club Majesty staff and dancers.
Ricky couldn’t care less if the mystery woman was a lesbian. As long as her money was green and she didn’t cause any trouble, it made no difference to him. He only started to be wary of her when a couple of the dancers mentioned that during their lap dances, she asked questions and not the usual, “So where are you from?” or “You got a man at home?”
She wanted to know if any of the girls who were working at Club Majesty were underage, if any of the girls turned tricks on the side. She had even shown one of the girls a cellphone picture of young woman who looked to be around sixteen, and asked if they had ever seen her in the club.
That’s when Ricky started to suspect the woman was a cop—and worse, a nosy one. There were too many illegal things going on at Club Majesty to have the police sniffing around here. Ricky had finally gotten Dolla Dolla to agree once again that Reynaud’s was off limits. If he got wind of something like this, he’d panic and shift his operations wholesale from Club Majesty to the restaurant. Ricky couldn’t have that. He had to get this cop out of here, but he had to do it carefully.
He strolled across the room, forgetting about that punk ass Jamal and trying his best to ignore Shana, who he could still see in his periphery. He had bigger worries at the moment.
As he approached the mystery woman and stood less than a foot away from her table, he noted that she didn’t look up at him. Instead, she kept her eyes focused on the stage and downed whatever had been in her martini glass. He also noted that she smelled nice; it was a musk mixed with some flowery fragrance and vanilla.
“I can get that refilled for you,” he said to her, pasting on a charming smile. He looked her up and down. She was wearing a white tank top knotted at the waist and white skin-tight jeans tonight, giving her an almost neon glow in the darkened club. “What were you having?”
“I don’t want a refill,” she answered in a monotone, lowering her glass back to the marble tabletop. Her eyes didn’t shift from the stage.
“Well, okay.” He chuckled. “Just trying to be hospitable. We want our customers to be happy. You see, sweetheart, I’m the owner of—”
“I know who you are. You’re Ricky Reynaud. Thank you for your concern about your customers, Mr. Reynaud, but I have everything I need, and I’d appreciate it if you’d just let me do my thing. Okay?”
He cocked an eyebrow. Is this chick brushing me off?
At that, his fake smile disappeared. “Well, if you know who I am, then you also know I can kick you out of this joint at any second, so I’d be a lot nicer if I were you, sis.”
He expected her to flinch then, or at least finally make eye contact, but she didn’t. Instead, she drummed her nails on the table. They were neat, short, and clear—unlike the acrylic bedazzled talons many of the dancers at Club Majesty liked to wear. “Are you kicking me out, Mr. Reynaud?”
“No—not yet anyway. I’m still considering it. I want to have a conversation first.”
And that’s when she looked up at him. He could see all her delicate features up close—the doe-like brown eyes, pert button nose, and full glossy lips. “A conversation? A conversation about what?”
He grabbed the back of the chair and leaned forward, drawing close to her face. He could smell chocolate on her breath. She must have been drinking one of their chocolate martinis. “A conversation about why you’re here and what you’ve been asking my dancers. Come with me.”
He turned and started to walk away from her table. She didn’t budge from her chair though, making him turn back to her.
“You can come with me, or you can leave right now. It’s your choice, honey.”
A few seconds later, she rose to her feet, though she seemed to do it with great reluctance. She grabbed her purse from the table. “Lead the way,” she said, gesturing to him.
He took her to his office at the back of the club. As they walked, they passed dancers in gradual stages of undress. They all stared at him and the woman quizzically.
When he opened the door to his office and she stepped inside, brushing past him as she did it, he looked her up and down again. In addition to having a nice little body on her, he finally noticed now under brighter lighting that her nutmeg skin glowed like she had slathered it with body oil. She was also wearing open-toed, snake-skinned stilettoes that showed off her ruby red toenails. Ricky had always been a sucker for red toenails.
Just as his thoughts started to turn carnal, he caught himself.
This chick might be a cop, he thought. It didn’t matter how fine she was or what color her toes were, she posed a real risk for him and Club Majesty. He had to know what she was all about.
“Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to one of the chairs facing his desk.
He watched as she sat down on the white leather cushion and crossed her legs. Though she was trying to give the illusion of being casual, he could tell she was tense being in here. Her body practically radiated the message.
“You sure you don’t want another drink?” he asked, as he walked to a wet bar near his desk. “I’d be happy to make you one, Miss . . .”
“It’s Simone and no, I don’t want another drink. I told you that already, Mr. Reynaud.”
“Everybody calls me Ricky.” He grabbed one of the decanters and poured himself a glass of bourbon. He turned to her. “And yes, you told me you don’t want another drink, but what you haven’t told me is why you’ve been coming to my club.”
“I like to see beautiful women dance topless.” She shrugged. “It’s pretty simple.”
“Yeah, see, I’m not buying that. You’ve been asking them some very interesting questions, which makes me believe that you’re here for more than watching a bunch of girls pop and drop it low on stage.” He sat on the edge of his desk and stared down at her. “Why have you been coming to my club, Simone?” he repeated. This time there was a harder edge to his voice.
She didn’t answer him but stared right back at him defiantly. Part of him wanted to smile at her reaction. She wasn’t easily intimidated. He liked that, but he couldn’t let on that he did.
“Are you doing an investigation?” he continued. “If you are, honey, it was a shitty one. You’ve already blown your cover.”
“I’m not undercover,” she said between clenc
hed teeth.
“But you’re a cop. Right?” He took a sip from his glass.
Again, she didn’t answer.
“I’ll just take your silence as a yes. So look,” he said, setting down his glass beside him, “I card all the girls who work here myself, and all of them are of legal age to strip. No one turns tricks in this building—or they’ll get fired. Whatever shit these girls choose to do on their own time is up to them, but they know not to do it here. Club Majesty isn’t that kinda place.”
She let out a snort of contempt, making him incline his head.
“What’s so funny? You know something I don’t, sweetheart?”
“I know this club isn’t the perfectly legal place that you make it out to be. Everyone knows who you’re in business with.”
“If you’re referring to my business partner, Mr. Stanley Hughes,” he said, using Dolla Dolla’s government name, “I can promise you that he wouldn’t be involved with prostitution or sex trafficking. It’s not his thing.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and raised her chin into the air, irritating him. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that if I were you.”
“Simone, I answered your questions. I showed you that your worries about my club are unnecessary. So at this point, I expect you to not ask any more questions of my dancers and continue to be a happy customer, or you can no longer bring your ass up in here. Understood? So you can tell whatever captain or lieutenant or whoever the fuck you report to—”
“I’m not reporting to anybody!” she burst out, catching him by surprise. “I’m just a patrol cop and I came here on my own time. I’m looking for my little sister.”
Ricky fell silent.
“Skylar disappeared three months ago and according to her girlfriends, she hooked up with an older guy who told her she was cute. That she could be a model or a dancer in videos. He said he could help her make money, that he could get her work. The guy put her in touch with Dolla Dolla.” She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward in her chair. She reached for her purse and pulled out her cell phone. Ricky watched as she tapped a few buttons on the screen. She then turned the phone toward him to show the smiling image of a girl. “She’s only seventeen. She’s young and naïve . . . way too trusting, so I could see how she could get sucked into something like this. My mom and I tracked down Dolla and I asked him, point blank, if he’s seen her, but he laughed in my face. He told me he’s never heard of her. But that motherfucka knows where my little sister is! I can feel it! I thought she might be here. Have you seen Skylar?”