Chapter 12

Jenica

I've been working at Richardson's club for one week and learned a few things in that time. The first was that dancing is hard.

These girls aren't just strutting around the stage, baring all. There is a mix of skill and artistry in what they do. It takes not just a beautiful body but stamina. When athleticism is paired with a sexy swivel of the hips, or a suggestive hand, dancing tells a story that can stir a range of emotions from adoration to curiosity and of course, desire. It takes real talent to do what they do.

I may have been an athlete once but my muscles scream watching these girls. And their costumes…they're not just items of clothing to be removed as the music progresses. They are layers of that story, peeled back with perfect cadence during the routine, with a grand finale of strategically placed pasties and scraps of fabric that leaves the audience begging for more.

I didn't think I could do what they did every night. Rock out to a little Nirvana, sure. But dance in front of hundreds of men in a way that makes them want to throw cash at me? No way. I'm the last person anyone would want to see on a stage, so it's a good thing Richardson has me in the job that he does so I can watch and observe instead.

Cigarette girl—a job as archaic as it is demeaning. When I put on what I realized was a bikini the first night, and one of the staff members in the bar handed me a tray, I looked at them like it was some kind of joke. But when I was ushered into a corner and told to stand, I realized it wasn't a costume at all. That was my job.

When Richardson said he would be watching, he wasn't kidding. Every night I felt his eyes on me; observing how I interacted with customers and assessing their response to me as I stood there with a try full of smokes and stogies. While I was perfectly content to stand there saying ‘cigars, cigarettes,' over and over each night, doing so in a bikini was infuriating.

I guess it's a blessing in disguise because as long as I was the girl that customers came to when they wanted a smoke, I wasn't the one they watched when the dancers came on stage, and that's how I came to my second observation—the club and those who came here, were nameless.

Not only did the job I was working harken a bygone era, but the club itself. Like speakeasies of the past, the only thing that identified it was not a secret word, but a symbol. A fox head adorned silver cards customers carried, as well as cocktail napkins and matchbooks on every table. It appeared to be their key to everything. There were no receipts, no money changed hands at the bar; the only time I did see cash was when customers threw it at the dancers or slipped it into their G-strings.

One thing I did know about them, however, was the men who came here were powerful. I was right that first night when I said this place was for the rich. They arrived with an entourage and had an air about them that indicated money was no object. But their time here wasn't just about pleasure. It was also a place of business. While some men watched the dancers, others disappeared through the black door or held court in the leather booths, curtains drawn, and Richardson was a part of it all.

He was always there to greet them when they arrived and patted their backs when they left. The more I watched him, the more I began to realize he hadn't been on the run the past seven months, but here, making money, living the high life.

The last thing I learned was that time here is elusive. Like a casino, there are no clocks anywhere. The club is designed to be one long party, where the drinks never stop, and the skin is unending. Thankfully, it does end, however. Every night at two o'clock, the club closes and everyone goes home, only to start again the next night.

"Well there you are." I turn at the sound of Mamma Louis's voice. Turns out not calling her Mamma was impossible. All the girls did and she did feel like a mom in this den of snakes. "How are you doing, sugar?"

I turn and smile gently. "Just getting some fresh air."

"Ah," she nods and comes over to where I'm standing at the railing. The air is anything but fresh. It's pungent. A mix of dank earth and cigars that clings to your hair and skin. But I'll take the stink with the quiet. It beats being inside.

It had only been one week and already I was feeling the impact of being here every night. I switched to black coffee in the morning, and Mountain Dew in the afternoon, and before leaving each night, I took a whiff of the can of chewing tobacco Danny left at Nana's a few months back. By the end of my first month I wouldn't be surprised if I were sipping jet fuel.

Thankfully, this was my last night before a couple days off. Apparently the club was closed on weekends, which seemed dumb since most businesses made their best money on Saturday and Sunday, but I wasn't complaining. I was anxious to sleep in, focus on my real life for a bit, and think through all I'd observed over the past week and see if anything could be used to bring Richardson down.

"Can I do anything to make things easier for you?" Mamma asks, pulling me from the thought.

"No, ma'am." I look down and pick at the railing. "I'm just going through an adjustment. It'll get better."

Thanks to my impossible schedule, I hadn't talked to Ellery much the past few days and I missed her. Not to mention the one time I did call Jake, just so I could hear his voice on the answering machine greeting, it just rang and rang. I didn't know what was worse, not hearing that dorky greeting of his, or knowing he'd unplugged it and possibly why.

The idea of Jake seeing other girls had crossed my mind, but the idea of him bringing a girl back to his room and not wanting the phone to interrupt whatever or whoever he was doing, drove me wild with jealousy. More so than seeing him with that redhead the night of the frat party. I may have shut the book on him and me, but I'd gotten used to having all his attention and didn't like the way it felt to no longer have it.

"Have you made any friends yet?" she asks gently. "The girls are lovely once you get to know them."

They may be lovely, but between the dancers and staff was a derision I didn't understand. Dancers stayed backstage, staff up front, and neither group talked to the other. However, both appeared to be unified in one thing—their aversion to me.

The girl that cleaned my vomit the day I met with Richardson gives me dirty looks every chance that she can, and the dancers, while they smile and say hello, don't really talk to me. I am an outside to both, so because neither knows what to think of me, they ignore me altogether.

It's fine with me. I'm not here to make friends, and honestly, the fewer I talk to, the better. Less chance of anyone connecting the dots on where I'm from, or who I am. But it would be good to talk to a few of them and learn more about this place.

"The girls are fine," I say with a shrug.

"Well," she taps the railing, "when you start dancing, maybe all that money you make will put a smile on your face, hmm?"

"Money?" I look over at her.

"That is why you're here, right?"

"Oh." I tuck my hair behind one ear and nod. "Right."

My first night here I'd made up a story that was as fake as my name. I was from Savannah where I'd run into Richardson while looking for a job and he'd suggested I apply to be a dancer at the club. It seemed plausible—a young girl so eager to make money that she took the first door that had been opened for her—and apparently Mamma believed it.

"Guess I wasn't really thinking about it," I admit.

"Not thinking about it?" She lets out a hearty laugh. "Well honey, think about it. Why do you think the others stay here, the benefits? Hell no. They do it for the money, doll."

I'd been so focused on how angry and miserable I was here, that I never thought to ask what the dancers make.

"What's their cut?" I ask, suddenly curious.

"Seventy percent goes to the house and thirty to the dancer."

"Thirty percent?" I repeat, eyes wide.

"I got forty in my time," she pats her head. "These ta-tas knew how to bring a man to his knees back then."

She jiggles her boobs and I can't help but laugh. "You worked here?"

"Sure did," she grins. "That was before Richardson ran things. Back when love was free and this place served a different purpose."

I nod, making a note of her response. Richardson hadn't always run the club, which meant it either wasn't part of Elmhurst, or had been but under someone else's thumb. And she had worked here when love was free. Was she talking about the sixties? Peace, love, and all that shit.

Deciding to look into that another time, I file it away and ask another question. "What would you say an average night looks like for one of the girls?"

"Well, on a good month, the top dancers bring home one to two. Cherry is our most popular, so she pulls two consistently."

"One or two hundred dollars on top of their wages?" My mouth falls open. "Really?"

"Oh heavens, no!" She waves the question away like it's a bug from the swamp. "Who would dance for that? Thousand, sugar. One to two thousand."

"Thousand?" I swallow. "Are you kidding?"

"Not at all," she smiles proudly. "These girls use what God gave them and what Mamma taught them."

Holy shit. As a cigarette girl I'd made nothing in tips. Come to think of it, I was making nothing working here, period. Well, that is if you count the evidence Richardson had that could send me and my friends to jail as nothing, which I didn't. It was the whole reason I was here. But when it came to money, it was a zero sum game. I didn't get a paycheck. I was earning my freedom.

But what if I could stash a little cash away while working to bring Richardson down? Enough money for one year of college, maybe even two? A silver lining in this shit storm, as my father would call it. Wouldn't that be something?

"You want to give it a try?" Mamma asks with a curious smile.

As soon as she asks the question, I know my answer. No. I don't want to give it a try. The money here is tainted and taking it from the Devil to save for the future he's trying to destroy, was a karma I just didn't need.

"I'll stick to cigarettes for now," I say simply. "Besides, I would probably make an ass out of myself."

"Tell you what," she pats my hand. "How about we watch Cherry's routine together and I give you some pointers?"

"I don't know," I shake my head.

"Boss told me to get you ready." She adjusts her skirt and pats the back of her head. "You can consider watching Cherry dance my first lesson."

I'll do anything to get out of carrying that fucking tray and who knows, maybe watching with Mamma will encourage some of the other girls to talk with me. "All right," I agree.

"That's the spirit!" She grips my chin between her thumb and forefinger, giving it a squeeze. "I knew I could turn that frown upside down."

I don't know what it is about this woman that makes me like her, but I do. It makes me wish we could have met under different circumstances.

Mamma and I make our way back inside and when we reach the dressing room, Cherry is standing in front of her vanity, adjusting her wig.

"Okay, y'all!" She claps when done. "Let's go bring the roof down, huh?"

The girls cheer and whistle, following behind her as she makes her way out of the dressing room and down the walkway to the stairs that connect to the stage.

Mamma and I follow, and when she slides into a viewing area behind the curtain, I do the same. There has to be at least two hundred men gathered around the stage—nearly double the amount that was there before I headed outside for my break—and clearly they are all here for one reason, her.

She makes her way up the stairs and walks to the center of the stage, silence falling over the audience as her heels click across the smooth surface. Turning her back toward the curtain, she strikes a pose, and when the lights dim and Warrant's "Cherry Pie" starts to blast out of the speakers, a round of applause breaks out as the curtain comes up and she starts her routine.

Like a filly breaking out of a stall, she leaps over to the perimeter, blowing kisses at the crowd, stopping to grab the tie of one man, letting it slide through her fingers seductively, before returning to the center again and doing her first real dance move.

Moving her hips and torso in a circular motion, she moves with the grace of a belly dancer, displaying a kind of flexibility and control that is both captivating and hypnotizing. It's a powerful move that when paired with the ending of the song's first verse, ends with the discarding of her first item of clothing.

Tossing it behind her, men pump their first in the air and holler, as she shakes her now bikini clad boobs, while wiggling her curvy bottom. As the chorus hits, shereaches for the buttons to her cut-offs, which is met with wild applause. Turning around slowly, she drops them slightly so the audience can see the line of her G-string, before turning back around, and sliding the shorts down slowly, until they are around her feet.

Stepping on heeled foot out of them, then the other, she turns around, and bends over slowly, looking between her legs, giving the audience a wink, before straightening and kicking the shorts to the back of the stage with flourish.

Pausing for a moment to show off the miniscule red bikini she now wears, Cherry twists one way and then the other, before dropping into the splits. Bringing her hands up, she pretends to smooth down her blue wig, before rolling onto her back, opening her legs in a side scissor kick, before doing a somersault and crawling on her knees toward the perimeter of the stage.

The song builds with intensity, as does the cheers of the men watching, and when she returns to the center of the stage and reaches for the tie behind her neck, she pulls it loose and her tits spring free. The men go crazy, some grabbing their heads with both hands, as she reaches for a pie on a table that seems to magically appear, dips her finger into the crust, and pulls out a plumb of filling. Striding over to the side of the stage she wiggles her finger in front of their faces, before bending down to feed it to a man who waits with his mouth open like a baby bird waiting to be fed.

With a small waist, round bottom, and boobs much too big for her frame, she is every guy's dream, and it is easy to see how she rakes in as much as she does. But it's not just her skin that draws them in. Dancing full throttle in nothing more than pasties and a G-string, she is sexy and confident and worth every dollar being thrown at her.

When the song ends, she nears the edge of the stage, dipping low so the men can get an eye full, then turns, wiggles, and makes her way to the back of the stage in time for the curtain to drop. As she bounds down the stairs a staff member walks along the edge of the stage, collecting cash from men waving it wildly, then meets Mamma backstage.

Once Mamma has counted the take, she gives a wad of bills to Cherry, who kisses her on the cheek and strides toward the dressing room happily, then stashes the rest in her bra.

"And that's how it's done," Mamma says with a smile. "Lesson one in the books. Empty their wallets and make them beg for more."

She winks and turns for the dressing room and I stare after her, open mouthed. Yeah, no. I can't do what Cherry just did. Not for all the money in the world. That means I need to double down and get something on Richardson before he expects me to.

When the night is over I practically run out of the dressing room and race home in record time. I can't wait to wash this place off me, crawl into bed with a pint of ice cream, and spend a couple of days pretending like the past week never happened.

But no matter how hard I try to make believe that it didn't, I know it did, and I hate Richardson for it. For all of it. The job he made me do. The bikini I was forced to wear. And the dancing that I was supposed to learn. I may have told myself I was fine with everything that went on at the club, but now that it was behind me I couldn't pretend anymore. I hated it. I hate everything about it.

I couldn't do it. No matter how much money I could make, I could not get up on that stage. Something told me if I did, I would regret it for the rest of my life.