by J. A. Huss
The bouncer guy I almost got into it with a couple weeks back—Otis, I think—eyeballs me like he remembers me. I don’t give a shit. I’m not in the mood to fight anybody tonight.
I nod to the door guy as I exit the front and make my way across the parking lot to my car. Just as I’m about to pull the handle and step inside, where I imagine myself sitting for the next hour or so, just kind of deciding where I’m gonna go next, I hear, “Hey! Guy! Tyler!” from behind me.
I turn around. Raven’s coming toward me. She’s thrown on some kind of kimono thing and hugs it close to herself in the chilly desert night. She’s probably a few years older than me, which feels old for a stripper, and that makes me kind of sad, suddenly. But she’s still pretty. Prettier than she seemed in the club. Like being away from the world inside has painted her with a gentler brush and the mask she has to wear has come off, revealing a truer version of herself.
“This is your car?” she asks, as she approaches.
“Yeah…”
She looks me up and down and nods her head a bit. “I remember you, y’know,” she says.
“You remem… Whatayou mean?”
“The night you came in and spent until daybreak in the private room with Scarlett. I remember you. I also remember when I sent you off that morning you looked like someone had killed your puppy.”
Wow. She remembers. Which causes me to remember. The night I saw Maddie, before I knew it was Maddie. When she was still just the angel from MY DREAM come to life. My dick’s getting a little hard thinking about how she felt and smelled and tasted that night, as we talked and touched each other, and she sucked my cock. Which is now getting even harder. I decide to make a joke to distract myself.
“That’s weird,” I say. “I never had a puppy. Had a snake once. Used to let it slither around on the sand in the back yard. My pops would yell at me because he was worried it’d get loose and eat the neighborhood pets. But then one time it actually did get away and wound up getting killed by a neighbor’s puppy. Which I always thought was ironic.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Is this the way you are all the time, or are you just fucked up right now because you’re a fuckin’ lovesick maniac?” she asks.
“Little from column A, little from column B,” I say.
Then, “I’ve seen your car, too,” she says. “The night that Logan asshole came looking for Scarlett.”
“Can we please call her Maddie? What? Who came looking? Who’s Logan?”
“I dunno his last name. Works for Carlos Castillo? I saw him follow her out into the alley a couple weeks back and then when I came looking for her to make sure she was okay, all I found in back there was this car”—she slaps the hood of the Defender—“idling, lights on, no Maddie in sight. Then later she showed up back inside with this rosy fuckin’ glow about her. Like the way someone looks after they just got fucked real good.” She tips her head in my direction, with a knowing and yet non-judgmental look. (Which is hard to pull off.)
I take a beat to let her have her Nancy Drew moment, and then I ask, “Who’s Carlos Castillo?”
“Jesus, man. Seriously?”
“Should I know?”
“You live here in Vegas, right?”
“Currently. Who is he?”
“Has a tequila empire. Owns at least a piece of just about every new casino development in town. Also supplies most of the non-pharmaceutical drugs that you see flowing through. Steve Wynn meets El Chapo with a touch of John Paul DeJoria thrown in. Seriously? You’ve never heard of him?”
“I’ve never heard any of the names you’re tossing around.” (Not entirely true. I know who Wynn is. Mostly because I lost like a hundred grand in his dumb casino one night a few months back. Fucking Wynn. Fuck that asshole.)
“Not a big news watcher, huh?” she asks.
“The world is depressing enough without watching the fucking news. But, so, this Logan guy… Was he the one in the t-shirt or the one who didn’t know how to match his belt to his shoes?”
“Fuck are you talking about?” Raven asks, fairly.
“Yes, it was me. I was there. I fucked up two guys who were chasing Maddie that night. And then she… thanked me. Nicely. Yes. I suppose I assume this Logan clown was the one holding the gun, but whatever. What do—what’s his name? Castillo?—and Logan have to do with Maddie?”
“I’m not sure, but on Halloween when she got into the car with them, I—”
“Wait, what?” I interrupt. “What are you talking about?”
“Halloween night, Maddie came stumbling up here, shoeless, like she’d just been to hell and back, and got into a car with Carlos, who was waiting for her. Honestly? I thought that was gonna be the last I’d ever see of her. I was shocked when Pete told me she was back at the club, working morning shifts.”
I understand all the words Raven is saying to me because she’s speaking English and using proper syntax and grammar and shit, but I have no idea what the fuck she’s actually talking about.
That’s where Maddie went after she left my apartment? Here? And then she—? And she’s working morning shifts? Here? At the strip club? Pete’s strip club? In the MORNING? I’m very fucking confused. So I say, “I’m very fucking confused. What exactly are you saying to me?”
“I’m telling you everything I know, chief.” (Somehow it doesn’t bother me when Raven says it.) “None of what’s going on with Scarlett—”
I start to correct her again, but she puts her hand up.
“—Maddie, is any of my business. And nothing that’s going on with YOU and Maddie is my business. But… She’s a smart girl. And despite being kind of an asshole, I think she’s probably a pretty good girl. And what I know for sure is that she’s all alone. And from how it looks, you’re also all the hell alone. And you also evidently give a huge number of fucks about her—no pun intended—and I don’t wanna see a smart, nice girl like that end up dead. Or maybe even worse…”
She laughs out a tiny, soundless laugh, and shakes her head.
“…managing a strip club when she’s thirty-seven years old.”
Shit. That’s a sad fucking moment of honesty.
“So,” she continues, “I’m just letting you know that even though she left you this?” She hands the note out to me. I take it. “Maybe right now isn’t actually the best time for her to be without backup.”
Taking life advice from a stripper with a heart of gold at three in the morning, in the parking lot of a titty-bar in Las Vegas. This is what my life is.
“So do you think I should go to her now? Her place? Find her? Get her to tell me what’s going on?” I ask.
Raven sighs, seemingly exasperated. “No, you dumb-dick dummy. That’s like…that’s like getting what you want. That’s taking. I think you need to just be there for her. Not the other way around. Seems to me, based on what I know from you, and what Pete told me, that you owe her that. Not about you right now, bud.”
“Yeah.” I sigh. “I’ve heard that before.”
“Whatever she’s got going on with Carlos Castillo isn’t likely to end soon, or well. Trust me.” She puts a little extra English on that, like she knows of what she speaks. “So I’m saying… Just keep an eye on her. She needs someone to. You get me?” She raises her eyebrows at me.
“Yeah. Yeah. I get you. Thanks.”
She winks at me, turns to leave, then stops and turns back.
“Your car? It’s a Defender, right?” she calls.
“Yeah,” I say.
She nods, gets a tiny grin, then says, “OK then.” And then she spins on her heel and walks back inside the strip club, kimono swaying in the night breeze.
The next couple of weeks are a blur. But not a blur like they have been for the past few months. Not the kind of blur where I don’t remember what I’ve done or who I’ve done it with. Where days go by and I don’t remember them. Where I take Ecstasy (which, after spending some time on the internet and discovering Raven was right, I’m realizing means
I’m probably funding this Carlos Castillo character’s drug empire every time I drop a tab in this town) and fuck a bunch of questionably fuck-worthy pussies. No. More like a blur of activity. Which feels amazing.
I don’t know if I truly, truly realized how adrift I’d been until I had something to focus my attention on. But now, every morning, I wake up bright and early (actually, I usually just don’t go to bed—Red Bull is a lifesaver) and I park just out of the way from Pete’s, so that I can see who’s coming and going, but so they can’t see me, and I wait and watch for Maddie.
I’ll have coffee and doughnuts and pretend I’m on a stakeout. It’s fun! Evan caught me leaving one morning last week as he was getting back from pulling an all-nighter on third watch, and asked me what I was doing, and I must say I was pretty smooth in the way that I avoided having to get into a conversation about it.
“Where are you going so early?”
“Gym.”
“Okay. See ya.”
Fucking. Masterful.
I’ll wait until I see Maddie go in for work, then I’ll sit there for a few hours and make sure that no one shows up who looks suspicious. (I can’t actually imagine if anyone is going to try anything that they’d do it at a strip club at, like, eight in the morning, but then again that’s when someone would be least expecting it, so it might be the perfect time to try some shit. You gotta cover all your bases when you’re attempting to guess what the next guy is gonna do. Think three moves ahead at all times. As Denzel Washington says in Training Day, “The shit’s chess, it ain’t checkers!” And Tyler Morgan is the motherfucking Grand Master. Everybody says so.)
Then when she gets off work, I’ll follow her back to her place to make sure that no one comes by who seems like they’re up to no good, and at that point, I’ll swing back to Evan and Robert’s for a couple of hours to grab some sleep, and then I start again.
She’s still working at Pete’s on the weekend evenings too, and that’s been my favorite part of my new purposeful existence. Because it’s typically pretty crowded and I can kind of sneak in the back of the club and sit there in the corner mostly unnoticed and watch her dance.
It does make me a little crazy to see her giving lap dances and shit, but the look of disgust on her face that I see when I can peek at her lets me know that she’s not having a particularly good time. Which I hate for her. But I’d probably hate it more if she looked like she was getting off on it. Just being honest. Honesty is probably my second-best quality after my amazingly awesome dick.
A couple of times Raven has walked by while I’ve been running into the bathroom to avoid Maddie seeing me and looked at me like she was about to say something, but then I’ll give her a sign to ward her off and she’ll shake her head and roll her eyes, and keep walking.
The thing I’ve yet to figure out is what exactly this Carlos Castillo/Logan asshole drama is all about. She doesn’t seem to be doing much else besides working at the strip club and going home. Occasionally she’ll, like, go to dinner with her prostitute roommates or swing by a real estate office and come out looking dejected, but that’s it.
I have to suspect that it has something to do with money. If for no other reason than almost everything always has something to do with money. Growing up in Vegas teaches you that, if nothing else.
Money’s just never been a thing I cared all that much about. Which is, of course, probably exactly why I now have so much of it. One other thing I’ve learned is that the less you give a shit about a thing the easier it comes to you. The more you try to force something, the greater the likelihood it’ll all go south.
I spent a little time hanging out in Nepal and I met a Tibetan monk who was cool as shit and had what we in the military (and maybe other people too) call “a thousand-yard-stare.” That thing that happens when you’re seeing something off in the distance that nobody else can see. It’s like depth…or focus…or something. Well, my man Lobsang had a thousand-mile stare. (Meditating every day for like forty years’ll do that for you, I guess.) And he tried to teach me a few things, but one of them was something I already knew about.
Non-attachment.
When you’re defusing a bomb, you’ve gotta kinda have a detachment from the possibility that it’s gonna blow up and kill you. You have to let go of your attachment to the hardest thing there is to dis-attach from: Your life. If you just accept that you’re gonna die someday anyway, then you don’t think too hard and get nervous and fuck it all up. When you start getting too precious and careful, that’s when the boom happens.
Which is why I’ve got to handle this thing with Maddie exactly as if I was defusing the biggest, most life-threatening bomb I’ve ever tried to dismantle. Because it is. And If I lean into it too hard… it’ll explode.
So, I’m doing what Maddie asked. Lying back. And I’m doing what Raven suggested. Being there in case she needs me. And somewhere down the line, I have faith that it’s all gonna work out.
Because it fucking has to.
And this is what I’m thinking about on this Thursday morning as I sit in my car, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts, watching YouTube videos of some of my favorite movie clips, when I look up and see a vaguely familiar figure walking across the parking lot of Pete’s Strip Club in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The fuck-stick I now know is called Logan.
Shit. This is it. This is what the fuck I’ve been waiting for. This is what Raven warned me to be on the lookout for. Whatever Maddie’s into with this Carlos douchebag, this Logan cock-smoker is the fucking harbinger.
This is my chance to do right by Maddie. To be there for her when she needs me.
The problem is, now that this moment is here, I’m not sure what to do. I’m not certain what the right play is. Do I hang here and see if they come out together? Do I see if he comes out alone? If he does, do I follow him or go in and make sure she’s okay? Do I let her know I’m here for her, or stay under the radar? Crap. Turns out I have been playing fucking checkers and not chess after all. And now this cocksucker is trying to capture my queen. Shit!
Logan is through the front entrance and into the club.
Damn. What do I—? I need to be cautious. I need to make sure I’m doing the right thing. I want to make sure I’m there for her, but I don’t want to freak her out. I need to—
And these are the thoughts that keep cycling through my brain as I nod to the doormen at Pete’s—the sunshine outside giving way to a dark and smoky cave of flesh, sex, and thudding drumbeats—and adjust the gun I took from my glove box (Logan’s gun) under my t-shirt, into the back of my pants, and move forward into the shadows ahead of me.
Chapter Seven - Maddie
The sigh is long and sad as I sit parked in the alley behind Pete’s, just staring at the back door in the early-dawn light. It’s a crappy door. Black with lots of scuff marks on it. Like it’s been kicked in lots of times. Like it was old thirty years ago and no one’s been paying much attention to it, so it’s just getting more tired-looking. More and more ugly. Its glorious days of being a new door far behind it. Or hell, maybe it only thought it was a glorious door? Maybe it was never anything special. Never had a nice shiny doorknob, or lock, or anything. Maybe it’s just been telling itself it was nice once?
My alarm goes off on my phone, letting me know that I’ve got five minutes to get inside or Raven’ll have my ass.
Except she won’t. She doesn’t work mornings. I’m pretty sure there’s no manager on duty in the AM. Pete’s here. Pete practically lives upstairs in that office and he almost never comes down, so he doesn’t even count.
Maybe I’m the manager?
“Ha!” I laugh so loud, one of the waitresses walking by to go inside looks over at my car with a scowl. Like I was laughing at her.
“I’m laughing at myself, bitch,” I snarl.
But she can’t hear me and she’s already pulling on that tired door handle anyway. She disappears inside.
Maybe I am the manager? I mean, I did make
the morning schedule last week. And Candy came to me with a problem the other day. One of the new girls stole her shoes, so I had to go take care of that and get them back. And then I did actually fire someone yesterday. Pete said he was doing the books, so could I just… you know, get rid of her?
So I did. I didn’t like her, so I took a little pleasure in that.
Jesus fuck. I’m the goddamned morning manager at Pete’s!
I sit a little longer wondering if being the manager at a strip club is better or worse if I’m only twenty-five and not thirty-seven, like Raven.
It’s not.
If my mother knew what I was doing… holy shit, I can’t even imagine what she’d do. Probably make my father walk inside, drag me off stage—
Don’t go there, Scarlett, the angel says.
That would be fucking epic! the devil exclaims.
—and make me move to stupid France with them. My mother would cry, I’m pretty certain of it. And it’s not like they’re judge-y or anything. It’s just… they’d be so disappointed in me. I had such potential as a teenager. My mother has actually never said that to me, but I’ve read the look in her eyes. Every time I start something and then fall on my ass, she frowns and gives me this look that says, You had so much potential before…
You know, I fell off Mount Everest after Scotty died and… yeah.
And then there’s the whole Tyler thing.
I sigh again. It’s even longer and sadder, if that’s even possible.
My alarm dings again, letting me know I’ve got one minute to make it on time.
I shouldn’t care so much about being on time, but I do. Because sad as it is, I need this stupid job. I’ve made some cash since I started working here full time. Like, almost nine thousand dollars. But I’ve pretty much sold my soul for that money. And I have no pennies to spare, either. I can’t shop, or even try to get more video appointments with the real estate people, or fucking eat, if I’m being honest. And now I’ve only got a few weeks left to get the other hundred and seventy-six thousand.
