by Genovese, CM
“Hi,” the cute, super skinny girl with jet black hair said as she approached him.
Girl, don’t do it. He will break you in half.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Oosik said. “What’s your name?”
“Brandy.”
“Did someone tell you to come see me?”
“Mmm hmm.”
“It’s twenty dollars for a lap dance,” he said.
I nearly spit out my drink. This motherfucker had gotten so confident in his ability to please that he was now charging the lap dancers for lap dances. This would be the talk of the club for a while… if she paid.
“I have it,” she said. “If what they say is true.”
“Baby, for twenty bucks, you’ll find out,” he replied.
She took his hand and led him into the back of the house. This place was as classy as they came on the outside, meaning in the main room. But at the back of the house, an area with private rooms and no cameras, it was widely known and accepted that people could pay for a happy ending. Only this time, Brandy might be the one paying for it.
“I can’t believe her,” Lolli said.
“If she pays the twenty,” Skittles said, “she’s gonna pay the rest of it. Ain’t no way she’s gonna grind up on that thing and not wanna go all the way.”
“He’ll kill her,” I said.
Pipe spit out his drink with laughter. “Ain’t that the truth. He’s gonna fuckin’ skewer her.”
“Like Vlad the Impaler and shit,” Beezus said.
“Okay, spill it,” Lolli said. “Why do you have a tattoo of a children’s book on your arm?”
“It’s Oosik’s fault,” Beezus said.
“It’s your own damn fault,” I replied.
“Fine,” he said, “but it was his dare.”
“Tell me, baby,” Lolli said as she moved to Beezus’s lap and wrapped her arms around him.
Any other night, I might have tried to get a dance from Lolli. I might have even been slightly jealous seeing her all over this guy’s lap. Especially with the way she looked back at me every now and then to see if I was watching her. She’d had a thing for me for a while. Tonight was different though. I couldn’t get that brunette off my mind. She’d hit me with a fucking frying pan and waltzed right into my goddamn heart. My jaw still hurt. My head ached. And I wanted her.
You don’t fucking want her. You just like her untamed ferocity.
Whatever it was, I liked it. When I saw her sitting on her floor, in her panties, I wanted to pick her dainty ass up and take her into the bedroom. Even with that bag of frozen veggies against my face, I wanted to taste her, to put her pussy in my mouth and suck on it. It was instant attraction. Instant heat.
And you walked out of her fucking apartment. Idiot.
“My name, Beezus, came about because I was really drunk one night, and this girl wouldn’t fuck me. So, I tried to give her my own story about the birdses and the—”
“Beeses,” Pipe and I both chimed in.
“Beezus,” Beezus said with a shrug. “So that was how I got the name. Well, another night when we were all gettin’ a little wild at the MC, I stupidly said I could take any of the other brothers in a fight. Not a full-on fistfight, but you know, a tap-out kind of match.”
“Boys,” Skittles said.
“Always trying to see whose dick is biggest,” Lolli added.
“Oosik’s hands down,” Pipe admitted.
“And it was Oosik who challenged me to a brawl,” Beezus said. “But… there had to be a prize. I said if I won, he had to get my name tattooed on his arm. I didn’t think he’d go for it. He did. But his demand was if he won, I had to get the book, Beezus and Ramona tattooed on mine.”
“And you lost,” I said.
“Royally,” Pipe added.
“Oh, bullshit,” Beezus argued. “I was this close to beating him.”
“How close?” Pipe asked, nearly leaping out of his seat with excited laughter. “Please! He whooped your ass!”
Lolli got up off Beezus’s lap and moved over to me, standing behind me to massage my shoulders.
“Just like that you bail on me?” Beezus asked. “I lost a fight and you don’t like me no more?”
“I like you plenty, sugar,” Lolli said. “I need to talk to Rain for a second though. If that’s okay.”
She took my hand and pulled me toward the private room.
“I don’t want a lap dance right now, Lolli,” I said.
“You hurt my feelings, Rain.”
“I don’t mean to.”
“Well, it is what it is. Anyway, I need to talk to you. That’s all.”
Even a lap dance felt like betrayal, and I wasn’t even dating the chick from the VFW. What the hell was her name again? Cassandra. Cassie. She looked like a Cassie. Damn, she was fine. I couldn’t believe this chick hit me, and I was hung up on her. Did she knock a screw loose?
“One of our girls is missing,” Lolli said as soon as we were alone together.
“Who?”
“You remember Minka?”
“Of course.”
Minka was a curvy Asian woman who’d hooked up with our club VP, Frostbite, a few times. Frost liked her a lot, but dancers were dancers, and she couldn’t give up the lifestyle to be his side chick. He couldn’t marry her because, you know, his wife would have frowned on it.
“She’s gone,” Lolli said.
“What do you mean gone?”
“I think she was taken. The last night she was on shift, a group of foreigners were in here. You know, the big, cold kind. Weird accents. German or maybe Russian. I gave one guy a lap dance and he burned me.” She lifted her tiny skirt to show me a burn mark on her inner thigh. It had blistered. “With his cigar,” she continued. “His name was Palach something.”
Palach.
“The Executioner,” I whispered.
The name hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest. Cassie had taken care of my face. Lolli had taken out my chest and gut with that one word.
Palach.
It couldn’t be him. He was rotting away in prison. The only reason we hadn’t been able to get to him was because of his status on the inside. He was too protected. Could it be possible that he’d been allowed to walk? Had he gotten paroled?
“Motherfucker,” I said.
“You okay, sweetie?” Lolli asked.
I barely heard her. I wondered how many Russians went by that name. How many of them came into this strip club? Reaching for my phone, I dialed BP’s number.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I think he’s out.”
“Who?”
“Him. Fuckin’ Palach.”
“Nah, we woulda heard.”
“Lolli told me one of their girls is missing. Minka. Russians were here the other night and she gave a lap dance to some guy named Palach.”
“Tell him he burned me,” Lolli said.
I didn’t need to tell him that. It wasn’t the kind of added info that mattered. To her it did, but he’d cut my fucking throat. That was enough reason to find him and butcher that motherfucker. I wanted to find him and go at him face to face. No blades. No guns. Only me and him.
“I need to find him if he’s out,” I said into the phone.
BP was quiet. Finally, he said, “I’ll find out if he’s out.”
He hung up and I sat next to Lolli. She threw a leg over me and wrapped her arms around my head. I wasn’t paying for a lap dance. I didn’t even want one. One second my mind was on Cassie, but it had all changed when I’d heard that name.
Palach.
Lolli grinded her lap against me. I looked over her shoulder and past the open curtain of our room. A tiny hand shot through the curtain of the room across from us and the loudest cry of pain I’d ever heard in my life shook the entire private area. Lolli stopped grinding and turned toward the sound.
The scream died down and then it was painful gasps, cries, and begging for more as that tiny chick, Brandy, paid the full price
and rode Oosik’s cock.
“I can’t believe she did it,” Lolli said.
I was numb. All I could think about was revenge.
* * *
Lolli didn’t do it for me. She’d danced her ass off trying to break through my wall, but it didn’t faze me. The only thing on my mind was Palach. Until BP got back to me with news, I wouldn’t be able to think straight.
Needing more drinks but not wanting to be surrounded by women, I left the strip club and drove myself to the VFW. Cubby’s place was always like a second home to us. The hangar might have been our MC, but his bar was like a backup club. This was one of those times I needed to be in quiet solitude. At his place, the drinks were cold, the music was good, and there wasn’t pussy being thrown at me in all directions.
Like a plethora of pussy is a bad thing.
It wasn’t. But right now, I needed to think, and Lolli and her girls didn’t make it easy to focus. The familiar whine of Bob Seger’s ‘Turn the Page’ greeted me as I stepped in and sat down at the bar. Maggie was the first to see me and stormed toward me, whispering harshly, “Not tonight, Rain. Not anymore.”
I nodded.
“Really?” she asked, with the shock of someone seeing a druggy turn down a hit.
“Am I that bad, Maggie?” I asked.
I didn’t mean bad in bed, but bad as in it was such a shocker that I’d agree we weren’t good for each other. Had I really come on that strong?
She thought about it for a second, and I saw something in her eyes that might have been empathy. “No, sweetie. You’re not. I’m a bitch.”
“You’re not.”
“We’re just not good for each other.”
“I agree.”
“Wow.” She smiled and walked away, returning with a cold beer. She put it down in front of me and said, “First one’s on me. Whatever’s bothering you, I hope you sort it out without hurting anyone tonight.”
I smirked. She knew me fairly well it seemed.
“Palach,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Nothing. An old friend.”
She nodded and left. I sipped my beer and ran a thumb along my scar. When I closed my eyes, I could feel it. I could see the shouting, the shaking of fists, the wild crowd of inmates cheering on my demise. Nothing makes you feel like a worthless piece of shit like lying in a puddle of your own blood and seeing people cheer about it.
My phone rang. I answered it.
“He’s out,” BP said.
Ice water ran through my veins. The motherfucker had gone free. He was out here on the streets of Anchorage somewhere, taking women. I knew it was him.
“You hear me?” BP asked.
I hadn’t realized I was so silent.
“Yeah, I hear you.”
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I’m at Cubby’s. Drinking a beer.”
“Don’t do anything stupid,” he repeated, proving once again that he knew me better than I knew myself. “We don’t even know where he is. He could be back in his fucked-up motherland for all we know. Maybe the night he saw Lolli was the night he was headed back.”
He could be right, but he wasn’t. I knew it. I could feel it in my bones. That motherfucker was here somewhere in the city. After downing my first beer, I pointed at the bottle and Maggie was quick to return with another.
“You okay, hun?” she asked. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you so sullen.”
“It ain’t sullenness,” I said.
“Then I feel for whoever pissed you off.”
She walked away and Cubby made his way over.
“You ain’t fixin’ to hurt somebody in here are you?” he asked.
“Am I that fuckin’ readable?”
“When you’re like this, yeah.”
“It has nothin’ to do with anybody in here.”
“Well, don’t look now, but I think you’ve got a visitor. Or at least she’s lookin’ right at you. Hope she ain’t the one who pissed you off.”
I had no clue what he was talking about, so I turned on my barstool and saw her. The brunette who’d nearly caved my head in with a frying pan. She stood in the doorway, taking off her jacket. She wore a T-shirt underneath. It had some design with a tattooed chick with big boobs and bright red lipstick. She held a giant hammer in her hand. It read: Hammer Me Good. Jackhammer Springs Resort.
She made her way over to me slowly, cautiously, like I might spit in her face for what happened the other day.
“I hoped you might be here,” she said.
I wanted to be mean to her. Rottenness was in my nature.
“I wanted to apologize, again, for what happened,” she added. “I was really scared.”
“What had you so shaken up?”
“It’s a work thing. Mind if I sit with you?”
“I’d be upset if you didn’t. But I have to warn you. I’m going through some deep shit in my head right now. If I’m mean, it ain’t on purpose.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
She sat next to me, and I couldn’t help staring down at that T-shirt again. It was cold out, and even through her bra I could see her hardened nipples. My sensible side told me I should look up, into her eyes, but the animalistic part of me wouldn’t dare.
“One of my favorite places in the world,” she said. “Jackhammer Springs.”
I chuckled at that. It was cute that she thought I was interested in the shirt graphic and slogan.
“Jackhammer Springs,” I said before taking a swig from my beer. “What do you want to drink?”
She held a hand up to gesture for Cubby to come over. He did.
“What can I get you, darlin’?” he asked.
“What he’s drinking, please,” she said.
I watched her as she accepted her beer and put it to her lips. Her face was smooth, pale, but her lips were too red to be natural. Yet I couldn’t be sure she wore lipstick. She glanced right at me, noticing I was watching her, and her golden eyes reflected the overhead light. This was one of those moments that would have been in an old 80s music video, back when MTV still played good music and showed videos. The song playing in the bar was Bon Jovi’s ‘Bad Medicine’ and I completely agreed. She was bad medicine. I must have accidentally mumble sang part of the song because she giggled and sang too.
“You’re too cute for your own damn good,” I warned her.
“Elaborate please.”
“Do I really need to spell it out for you? Okay, cool,” I turned so I was sitting sideways on my barstool, looking directly at her. “You’re gorgeous. But you’re too sweet.”
She laughed and took a sip of her beer. “Too sweet? Boy, you don’t know me.”
“Boy? I’m all man, baby.”
With a roll of her eyes, she said, “Prove it.”
This never fucking happened. Never. My heart beat hard in my chest. It was amped up like it was about to blow out my speakers, burst through my chest, and grab hold of her. I’d lost all thoughts of Palach. That should have been impossible at a time like this.
“Prove it?” I asked.
The song changed to Eric Clapton’s ‘Wonderful Tonight’ and she leapt off her stool. “I love this song. Come on.”
She grabbed my hand. “Whoa, wait a minute. What’s going on?”
“Dance with me,” she said.
“Dance with you?”
“Dance with me.”
“Here?” With an open palm, I gestured at the room we were in. It wasn’t a dancing place. It was a pool playing, poker betting, domino slamming VFW for crying out loud.
“You said you’re all man,” she teased. “A real man doesn’t give a shit where he is or who’s around. He makes sure his woman knows it’s only about her.”
“Is that right?”
She nodded. “Mmm hmm.”
“My woman.”
She rolled her eyes again and tugged on my hand. I couldn’t let her down at this point. She led me to only a few feet away, and said, �
�Come on. It’s a short song.”
Between a dartboard and a card table, she wrapped her arms around my neck and began to sway softly to the music. My hands found her waist and when she put her head against my chest, she said, “Thank you for being there.”
“Being where?” I asked, kind of confused and bowled over by her forwardness.
I’d been with forward chicks, the kind who want your cock and aren’t afraid to admit it, but nobody like this had ever come along. She didn’t seem to want anything and wasn’t willing to give anything up. She simply wanted to dance. And she wanted to dance with me.
“On the other side of my door,” she replied. “I thought it was someone else. I’m so sorry I attacked you, but I was really scared, Rain. And it was you. Thank you for being there instead of someone else.”
“Who are you afraid of?” I asked her.
There was an instant connection with this chick. It seemed to happen during the dance. I hadn’t felt anything like this since Trish, and I wasn’t even sure I’d felt it then. I’d been in lust with her at first, then we’d called it love, but there was a jolt coming through Cassie during that dance. I’d been thinking about her a lot, but that had all been based on looks. She was damn sexy. Then after the fight in her apartment, I was kind of digging her feistiness. That fight she had in her. Now, this was different. Her vulnerable side got to me. It brought down my walls. I wanted to be tough, to say something cool, but I couldn’t.
“I found out at work that… girls are being taken,” she said. “Somebody’s taking young girls, and I thought maybe they were following me. But they weren’t.”
Pulling away from her, I put my hand softly under her chin and lifted her face toward me. “Russians?”
“Huh?”
“Is it Russians taking the girls?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. The girl I talk to… her name’s Nia. She’s homeless. She said they were foreigners.”
Mother… fucker. Stay calm. Tell Cassie you have to go and round up your brothers to hunt these motherfuckers down.
“Listen to me,” I said, touching her cheek with my fingertips. “Nobody’s gonna touch you. Not now. Not ever. I’ve got this.”
Her face pushed past my hand as she lifted up on her toes and pressed her lips against mine. It was unexpected. It was simple. But damn it was fucking great. Her lips pecked mine quickly and then went to back away, but I wanted more.
