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1
Alice
“How much did you make last night?” My sister Lydia asks her favorite question. I grip the steering wheel tighter, listening to her cough through the speaker. “The club had a great night. Not many people know that Valentine’s Day is one of the busiest nights at a gentleman’s club.”
Gentleman’s club.
That’s funny. I haven’t seen a gentleman at The Sunshine Lounge since Marvin ‘Popcorn’ Wooster took over. The former owner who hired me ran a decent club. Dale kept it clean, the bouncers took care of the creeps, there were no ‘extracurricular’ activities allowed.
Now, it’s sticky carpet, private back rooms, drugs, gambling and the worst of the stereotypical things you’d imagine. And Popcorn fits right in. It’s hard to pin down his age but maybe sixty-five? Maybe seventy-five who knows with deep pockmarks in his face, a horrible greasy comb over and a bulbous nose that hints at decades of drinking the rot gut whiskey he always has handy.
His foggy white right eye, the result of being sprayed with mace at point blank range a few years ago by a dancer who apparently was tired of taking his shit, tops off his look.
“I made enough,” I answer Lydia, hoping she will leave it alone.
The chugging sound of the engine in my Buick seems louder with each passing mile and the snow is coming down harder making the road ahead pure white.
“You know we need to make a payment on the house, Alice. Can you come back later today? I need—”
We need to make a payment? I have my own dorm room at Marygrove where I’m in my freshman year, and I lived with my best friend Bria for the most part since my parents died so I wouldn’t have to change schools. Lydia decided to take the little bit of life insurance money we got as a down payment on a rundown house in another seedy town west of The Pines where we grew up.
So I’m not sure where this whole ‘we’ thing comes from when she needs money.
“I know. You told me last night. I’m going to Bria and Martel’s now. If I get there. The roads are getting crazy bad.”
“Bria’s? That’s like an hour each way. When will you be back?” Her question has more bite than before as I squint to make sure I’m keeping the tires on the two tracks showing on the road. “Maybe you could ask Bria for the money. She’s loaded now with Martel…”
“No.” I snap. “I’m not asking them for money Lydia.”
There’s been a more ominous sense of foreboding in Lydia’s pleas lately. I know things are tight, but I took this job to pay for my school, not bail out my older sister. Again.
The peaceful feeling I had when I woke up this morning is quickly fading. It’s Sunday and I have a short mid-winter break from classes, so I also took the time off work and jumped in my car. I’m heading down to see Bria and her fiancé, Martel, for a few days. Her life has done a one-eighty in the last couple months and I’m wildly happy for her.
Martel has an engagement ring on her finger, she’s living with him at his massive, gorgeous cabin and he has a fierce protectiveness over her that gives me a twinge of envy.
“Alice?” My sister’s voice breaks through the happy memory. “When will you be back? I can’t put off the payment.”
“I guess I’ll try to be back in the morning,” I bite out the sharp answer. I had hoped for a few days just with me, Bria and Martel and driving back and forth to placate Lydia was not in the plan. “I’ll let you know. I need to hang up. I have to concentrate on driving.”
“Please, Cheery.” She uses the nickname my father gave me when I was little. “You know I hate to ask for money, but I really need you to be here tomorrow. Okay?”
“I’ll do my best.”
She’s still griping when I end the call and my good mood from this morning has nearly evaporated. I love my sister. I do. She’s twelve years older than me but , even at nineteen I’m way more responsible. I try to constantly remind myself that she didn’t do well with our parents’ death, but I didn’t either.
She was such a train wreck after the accident, there wasn’t much room for me to fall apart. My mother always told me I was an old soul, more mature than most, and since they’ve been gone Lydia has regressed, and I’ve been left to help prop her up more and more as time goes on.
She’s the one that got me the job at The Sunshine Lounge. She worked at the club as a housekeeper first, then she became what they call the house mother. Marvin, nickname Popcorn, who was just a shift manager at the time, fired all the girls one night when they came to him asking for more security when one of the girls had an overzealous customer follow her into the restroom. They all stuck together, made their request a demand, said they weren’t going to perform unless changes were made.
