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She must have known that I was serious because she moved to the side and said, “Okay, okay.”
I damn near tore off her arm as I stormed past her out of the office.
• • •
There was no way I was going home. I headed straight to a bar to get my drink on. When I walked into a pub, it was boring as shit and there were only a bunch of losers hanging around. I decided I needed to do something more adventurous.
How dare that bitch doctor imply that I wasn’t in control? Huh, she was a complete idiot. Everything I had said in her office was the truth. If I really wanted to, I could make Jonquinette disappear altogether and just be Jude. But I didn’t feel like working a full-time job to pay bills and I had no work experience of my own. None whatsoever.
A lightbulb went off in my head. If I could devise a way to make my own money, fuck Jon and her boring lifestyle.
I left the pub, got back into the car, and headed for “the seedy part of town.” The part of town where there were liquor stores on every corner, pawn shops on every other block and most importantly, a shitload of strip clubs.
I spotted one that seemed to have heavy traffic, even for a Monday evening. A lot of desperate-looking businessmen and blue-collar workers were flooding into the joint. The name on the awning was The Bedroom. Not very creative, I thought.
The shitty name didn’t matter to me. I only cared about the place’s potential as a moneymaker.
When I got to the door, some idiot tried to tell me I had to pay a ten-dollar cover charge to come in. I informed him that I was there to apply for a job. He looked me up and down and grinned. Even with the homely looking outfit Jon had selected for the day, he could still tell my body was banging.
“Go on in,” he said, moving aside to allow me to gain entry. “When you get in, ask for the owner. His name’s Skippy.”
“Skippy? What the hell kind of name is that?” I asked.
“Hey, it is what it is,” the bouncer at the door replied. “As long as I get paid, I don’t care what his name is.”
I couldn’t fault him for that one so I said, “True enough.”
I was pleasantly surprised when I got inside and it became clearer to me why they had such a large clientele. It was a classy place, despite its outward appearance. There was a nice leather bar spanning the entire length of the club on the left and about fifty or so tables scattered around the dance floor in the center. All of the tables had plush velvet chairs and the waitresses wore cute little velvet outfits that left hardly anything to the imagination.
I stopped one of the waitresses in her tracks. “Where can I find Skippy?”
She pointed to a chubby black man seated at the end of the bar talking on a cell phone. He had on an outdated suit with a wrinkled shirt and his tie was crooked.
“Shame on it all,” I said aloud. “You mean to tell me that crusty son of a bitch owns this place?”
The waitress laughed. “Yeah, Mr. Crusty runs the show.”
“Where’s the bathroom?” I asked.
She pointed to the back of the club. “Down that hall on your left.”
I made my way to the bathroom and did some self-improvement. While I had made it past the bouncer with ease, I needed to spruce up some before I approached the owner. I unbuttoned the top three buttons of my blouse and hiked up my skirt a few inches to show more leg. I let my hair down and shook it to give it more of an untamed appearance.
Interestingly enough, there was a basket on the counter with all kinds of makeup in it. I guess the girls wanted to make sure they always looked good so they could lan
d major tips. Lucky me. I lined my eyes, darkened my eyebrows, threw on some rouge and put on the raunchiest shade of lipstick I could find: blood red.
I puckered up, took one last glimpse at myself in the mirror and then went back out into the club.
Skippy was still in the same spot at the bar, but he was off the phone and had some hoochie momma all up in his grille. It seemed like they were having a heated discussion but I didn’t give a shit. I approached them and pushed her to the side.
“Excuse me!” she said nastily.
“You’re excused. No problem,” I replied. I pushed up on Skippy and stood between his legs while he sat on the barstool. “I need to have a word or two with Skippy.”
The hoochie momma spewed “Bitch!” at me and then started walking away. She pointed at Skippy and said, “We’ll finish this later!”
“My, my, my,” he said, eyeing me from head to toe. “You sure are a feisty one.”
