Nicolas had some weed, and it was just what we needed in our new “post-apocalyptic-no-hot-water-no-electricity-raccoon-hunting” world. I have to say, drugs don’t really have an effect on me, except making me hungry and sleepy, that’s why after trying it once, I never abused them. This time was the same; I ate three huge slices of pizza, felt sleepy, and soon took Mikky home, after thanking Nicolas for his hospitality and outlets. It was pitch black outside and the only light that we had was a cheap Chinese flashlight worth a dollar, which we had to buy for ten. I don’t know why, but weed made Mikky paranoid about our surroundings, and to her bad luck, two older men followed us to our building. They were talking Russian to each other, discussing something completely irrelevant, but Mikky somehow got an idea that they were some serial rapists who were after us, and so she rushed to the seventh floor in the complete darkness. I was walking behind at my normal pace, laughing my ass off. The two men, who disappeared on the second floor in one of the apartments, turned out to be our neighbors, and Mikky turned out to have a total drug incompatibility. The next day, when she came back to her normal self, we laughed at this little episode pretty hard.
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Since we had nothing else to do at home and nowhere to go outside due to the complete disaster still reminding us of Sandy throughout our whole neighborhood, Mikky and I decided to try to go to work. Since the area where “Velvet” was didn’t really get too much of a storm, we thought that we could make pretty good money, since the other girls were still staying home and trying to file their claims or just to clean up. But we didn’t know about the next big problem that several states in a row had to face: the gas shortage. We started noticing weird lines at the gas stations while our van was making its way to the club.
- What’s with all the lines? – I asked the driver when we couldn’t come up with a suitable explanation ourselves.
- Oh, haven’t you heard? Because of Sandy a lot of ships that were transporting gas and oil were prohibited to enter the harbor and now everyone’s panicking that for several days they will be left with no gas.
- Is it just in New Jersey? – Mikky asked.
- New York City had more gas to begin with. I haven’t noticed any problems while filling up my tank. But who knows how long it’s going to take to bring the new supplies to the stations…
I shrugged. It was the 21st century for God’s sake, gas shortage in New York, one of the biggest and the most developed cities in the world seemed as real to me as flying unicorns. But it was one of the most discussed topics among the customers though. In the Champagne room, one of my regulars, a very nice 60-something year old veterinarian was telling me a story of how he found his clinic partially flooded and what he had to do now to get the insurance money.
Nobody was happy with how their insurance companies handled their claims. And the biggest problem was that everybody who had flood insurance didn’t know that it only covered them if heavy rain caused the flooding; however, if the water came from the ocean and flooded the basement or the whole first floor, it wasn’t eligible for the compensation. Men were getting mad and wanted to get drunk. And we, the perfect therapists, the sympathetic wives, were right there to listen, to comfort and to make them forget all their problems for a couple of hours. Our prognosis was right: almost no girls from New Jersey showed up and we were making good money from our poor clientele.
I didn’t get them: they just lost a shitload of money, found out that their insurance wasn’t good and wouldn’t do anything for them, and they still went to the club to spend their last several hundred dollars. For what? I didn’t know, I didn’t really care; if they want to give me their money, I’m always there to take it. I was becoming more and more cynical and didn’t like it. Drinking my martini, I was thinking that I probably worked for too long in this weird environment and started to become someone I didn’t like. I didn’t feel bad for them anymore, I didn’t care. I started hating all men just because almost every day I only saw the bad ones. I wanted to go back home and be good again, I wanted to be good for my R. After all, he was the only reason why I still didn’t lose all the faith in humanity.
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“What do you mean, you can’t get gas?!” – my fingers were flying on my Blackberry keyboard with the speed of light. Today I had to warm cold water on the gas stove to fill up the bathtub to wash my hair and myself; I was tired of eating soup noodles since all the stores in our area were still closed; I couldn’t do the laundry as the laundry room got flooded and our super hasn’t fixed it yet… And now Coconut, my biggest profit, was texting me that the gas station ran out of gas at five cars in front of him.
“Go to another one, pump it yourself from underground, go to frigging Iraq, but get your stupid ass here!!! I could have stayed home, but came in tonite just to see you, to make sure that you are alright after that stupid storm, I came all the way from New York for you, and you can’t find a way to see me?!”
I read the message out loud to Mikky and we both start laughing.
- You’re such a phony bitch! – Mikky said.
I was. Of course I didn’t care how he was doing after the storm, as a matter of fact I wasn’t even going to text him tonight as he annoyed the crap out of me, and I was hoping to make money without his help. But unfortunately the gas shortage got even worse within these two days and it was dead in “Velvet”. So I put all my acting together and took the situation under control.
“If your ass is not here within an hour, don’t even bother to come back at all. If you can’t find a way to see the girl who you claim you love so much and want to marry, it only means you’re not serious at all”.
I’m showing it to Mikky again and she laughs.
- Why don’t I have a customer like this?
- Because they don’t make idiots like this anymore!
“I’ll be right there, my honey, I promise, even if I have to walk!” – a minute later my Blackberry beeped.
- Told you. – I smile at Mikky. – No more idiot manufacturing. They discontinued them.
That night Coconut proved me so right about his mental abilities that it wasn’t even funny anymore.
- So I found that guy, here in New Jersey, through a friend of mine who was here with me once, you remember?
- Mm, - I nod and take a big sip out of my martini glass, trying not to concentrate on Coconut’s talking too much, otherwise my brain would soon overheat and explode.
- So that guy, he’s a big mafia guy, he’s Italian I think, wants to sell his restaurant. So I’m thinking to buy it, just to have a business on the side, you know?
Palm face.
- You are going to buy a restaurant. You. You are going to handle a business?
A smart guy would have realized that he said something stupid and would have stopped talking. But Coconut wasn’t too bright.
- Yes. But I’m not going to actually run it, I’ll have a manager who’s gonna run it for me. And I’ll just be getting money from the business while still doing my accountant job.
- Where are you going to find a right guy to run it for you? And if you don’t even know anything about the business, how can you be sure that he won’t be stealing from you? Restaurant business is not that easy, honey, you have to be there 24/7 at the beginning at least. Do you know somebody honest and loyal, and at the same time experienced in this sphere, who can be your manager?
- Well, I was thinking to ask Margarita to be my manager. She’s a smart girl and she’s very nice to me, and she won’t steal from me, I’m sure.
- Margarita? The massage girl Margarita? – I couldn’t believe that a 40-year-old man just suggested having a massage girl from a strip club to be his restaurant manager. – Honey, have you thought of the fact that your manager’s main quality should be experience in the business and not the fact that she’s a nice person?
- I haven’t thought of that…
- I bet you didn’t. Sometimes I get a feeling that you don’t think at a
ll.
- I just want to be a businessman. I want to make a lot of money so you would marry me.
“I wouldn’t marry your stupid ass even if you were on the cover of “Forbes” magazine!” – I thought to myself but didn’t say anything, as Coconut was my most reliable customer despite all his stupidity, and who knew how business was going to be after the hurricane. It all wasn’t looking too good…
- Anyway, I gave the owner of that restaurant $70K deposit, just to show my serious intentions, and he promised not to cash the check until we sign the deal.
“Kiss that money goodbye,” – I smirked and took another big sip. Couple of more months of dealing with this guy and I’ll become an alcoholic.
- He wants to sell it for $700K, and he promised me the protection from all the bad guys in the area. – Coconut was excited like a five-year-old, who was putting milk and cookies for Santa and telling his parents how he’s going to catch him. – He was trying to scare me; he was sitting across the table, such a big tough guy, smoking a cigar and talking like some mafia guy from the movies…But I’m not scared. I’m a tough guy too.
- You got scared of Alana not too long ago.
- Yes, and you called me a chicken. I’m not going to be a chicken anymore, you want me to be tough, so I’ll be tough from now on.
“I want you to be smart too, but it doesn’t seem to work out too well either.” – I couldn’t help but crack a little laugh; this job made me such a sarcastic bitch, that my own remarks I was making up in my head while listening to all the bullshit from my customers, were making me laugh better than any stand-up comedians.
I got very drunk that night. But I made good money and it would make up for the next day’s hangover. I felt bad for my body, but listening to Coconut sober was something that was impossible to do. Sorry, not sorry.
Chapter 25
It’s a pretty well-known stereotype that you see on a daily basis: a beautiful, teen-something or twenty-something model looking, well-groomed young lady by the hand with an older, sometimes shorter, but very expensively dressed gentleman. It’s in the movies, commercials, on the internet, TV shows, among celebrities…let’s face it, it’s everywhere and most of the time it’s mocked and being perceived by many as something negative. Meanwhile, let me tell you the truth about what society calls “gold-diggers” and “young flesh hunters”.
From the historical and anthropological point of view, there is nothing more natural than a young beautiful lady making a decision to spend the rest of her life with an older, mature, experienced man who does well in life. Let’s face it: even in the animal world, what do males do? They fight with each other in order to occupy the position of a leader in their pack, and the leader has to prove to the pack his abilities to protect his family and to bring food every single day. Why do males do that? In order to mate with any female of their choice in that pack. And females in their turn will naturally choose a healthy, big, strong and assertive pack leader to reproduce their offspring with, rather than some smaller and less successful member of the pack.
Humans evolved, yes, but our instincts still determine our behavior every single day. We need to eat, but instead of hunting for food, we go to work and make money to buy it. And that hunter, who brings the most money, can bring all the food he wants, and not only food, but also clothes and a shelter. And when a young female has to choose who she would rather have her offspring with, the best “hunter” or a cab driver with an annual income of $25K…she will first think of her kids, who will have to eat good, organic food instead of some “buck-a-bucket” junk, wear cool, limited edition sneakers and go to a private school so they can become president when they grow up. Believe me, the choice will be obvious. A lot of those unsuccessful “cab driver species” though complain a lot that women are all about the money. But due to the lack of education or any particular goals in life, they don’t see the fine line between the money itself and what a person behind all those assets represents: women tend to choose the “best hunters” simply because they respect what they’ve achieved in life, they respect a strong personality that made that particular “hunter” so successful, they want that strong genetic code to be passed on to her kids so they can be the “best hunters” when they grow up. It’s not about the bank account, it’s about a determined, goal-oriented fighter, who probably went through a lot in life to create it, who never gave up despite of all the difficulties, who needs to prove to himself that he’s the best every single day, and whose best competitor is himself one day ago.
And if a male is the “best hunter” in his “village”, he will also most likely choose a pretty, healthy, young female as his mate, rather than deal with someone he has to put up with just because that someone is his only chance to have babies with. So here you go, the most natural match in nature is explained from the purely scientific point of view. And you can’t argue with science. I know what most people are going to say: those girls only think of money. No, they really don’t. And I can name so many examples of how girls refused to be in a relationship with the most perfect candidates just because they didn’t love him.
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A couple of days ago Mikky broke up with her “boyfriend” of 8 months... a wealthy, hardworking, smart, good-looking Jewish guy, only 38 years old, treating her like a princess, spoiling her rotten…guess what, they never even had sex. Impossible, you will say; power of beauty, I will answer. Us, dancers, drive men crazy sometimes.
They met at a club in Manhattan, where Mikky was working for almost six months. She was seeing Craig at that time but since he was financially worthless to her, and she desperately wanted to celebrate her 26th birthday in Vegas, she grabbed the bull by the horns, or Adam by his credit card, and booked their flight right from the VIP room. He came to see her in the club a couple of more times, they went out on a date to Jean Georges, but even before their plane landed in Vegas, Mikky realized that no money will ever make her sleep in the same bed with Adam, let alone any intimate relationship. So she came up with a pretty stupid explanation, genius in its simplicity. Mikky told Adam that she didn’t like sex at all. It made her all grossed out and she broke up with her previous boyfriend because he wanted sex all the time, and when she couldn’t give it to him as often as he demanded, he cheated on her. Surprisingly, Adam bought it and for eight months all their intimacy was kissing in the car when Mikky was really drunk and after which she would rush upstairs to her apartment to brush her teeth for five minutes.
When I met Adam, I couldn’t quite understand why Mikky was so annoyed with him all the time. He was smart, fun to talk to and treated everybody like a gentleman. I was working as a massage girl in that Russian club in Brooklyn, where Mikky started her “career” when she just came to the States, and he left me more tips than I did actual massages for Mikky that night, just to please her. Mikky had about six martinis just to be able not to yell at him all the time. Remember it next time when you’ll start saying that strippers will do anything for money.
Adam didn’t want Mikky to dance anymore and paid for her FIT courses of interior design. He drove her to school and back twice a week, even though it meant that he had to drive from his apartment in downtown Manhattan to pick her up in Brooklyn, drive her back to Manhattan, wait till she finishes her school and drop her off at home. Sometimes Mikky wouldn’t even talk to him in his car, as even the sound of his voice annoyed the crap out of her. He still didn’t care.
Mikky was so depressed about that relationship that she was crying in my apartment that she had to go to Barbados for his birthday, which meant she had to spend three days alone with him. Trying to somehow put up with Adam, she was drinking martinis before every dinner and was carrying a little water bottle filled with vermouth every time she had to see him. Remember that too when you say that girls don’t care about a guy’s personality if he has money.
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Not wanting to become an alcoholic, Mikky came up with a genius plan how to break u
p with Adam and not to look like a bitch at the same time. She went to the jewelry store right before Christmas and picked out a $3K set of diamond earrings and a necklace with a pendant.
- We don’t have sex and I’m really pushing it right now. – Mikky’s eyes were sparkling when she was telling me her plan. – I mean, we never had sex, but every month his company sends me a check for $4K, because “I’m working there”, and I have no idea even where his office is. He pays for my school, he buys me Burberry and Louboutins, and now I think it will finally be the straw on the camel’s back. There’s no way he’ll pay that amount of money for my jewelry, so he will have to dump me. And I will look good and like a victim! I’ll tell him that I thought that I finally found a perfect man for whom the spiritual connection is more important than sex, but he’s just like everybody else.
Adam not only bought her that setting that she chose, but a diamond bracelet on top of it. Oh, and did I mention that when Mikky’s father needed a very expensive treatment that only was sold in America and it was a matter of life and death, Adam sent the money right away, no questions asked?
Mikky couldn’t put up with her conscience anymore and no matter how nice Adam’s financial support was solving all her problems, she wrote him a long letter saying that he’s a great guy and he deserves the best girlfriend in the world, but unfortunately she can’t be that girl. She finally cut her financial cord and took a deep breath of freedom. She had no job and very little money saved, but it was making her much happier than having to pretend and play the role every day. Remember that when you say women choose money over love… we don’t. Yes, we unconsciously follow our instincts and choose the “best hunter” in the “village”, but if we don’t love this “hunter”, all the catch he brings won’t matter to us.
The New York Doll Page 14
