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“When I first came in, he fired someone on the floor. Her boyfriend was fighting with another guy over her.”
“Oh, yeah. Poor Ruby. She has a kid you know. Just trying to feed her. But the boyfriend was just so jealous. Of course, he’s also a drunk and jobless.” Marci rolled her eyes.
“Aren’t they always?”
“You can set your tips by it.”
I snorted. “So, if he doesn’t like relationships on the floor then…?”
“Why does he do it? Hypocrisy.” Marci shook her head huffing in amusement. “Of course, he doesn’t really fire you for having a relationship. Only if it spills into the club.” Her face became bleak, and she sighed. “There was a girl here, six months ago.” She sighed again, shaking her head.
My heart began racing as I realized who she might be talking about, and I couldn’t help clutching Marci’s wrist. “What happened to her?”
Marci gave me a sharp look. “Nothing. She was just fired.”
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and then opened them again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’d… uh, I just heard that one of the girls from here disappeared. Was it her?”
Marci pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I don’t know about disappeared. But she was definitely fired.”
“What happened?” I tried to sound casually curious about it.
“Alright so Celia—that was her name—she was like… mad talented, right? She’d get on the pole and the other dancers would stop to watch her. So Igor, who was like one of the guards or whatever, he started chasing her, you know buying her flowers, chocolates, just showering her with attention.” Marci waved her hands about in illustration, her long manicured nails clicking like crab fingers.
I nodded keeping my eyes on hers. “Mmh?”
“Yeah, so at first she was all like, ‘I’m not interested’.” Marci rolled her eyes again. “But she starts watching out for him, starts blushing when he’s around. I mean you could just see that she was falling for him.”
I leaned on the table, my arms crossed on the linoleum. Behind us, the room was buzzing with conversation, people calling out to each other. I didn’t worry that anyone was eavesdropping. “When was that?”
Marci’s brow furrowed as she thought. “Oh, like about a year ago. Soon she was letting him buy her drinks after the show, giggling with him at the bar and letting him buy all her lap dances.”
I nodded impatiently, willing her to get to the good part.
“Next thing we know, she’s moving in with him.” Marci gave me a look that said more clearly than words what she thought about that.
“Was Igor like, ” I lowered my voice, “a criminal type or…?”
Marci shrugged. “All I know is, he worked security for the club.”
“Okay, and then what happened?” I turned on my stool, crossing my legs as I faced her.
“What always happens. Things started to sour. Pretty soon, they were snapping at each other in public. There was one incident where Igor was openly flirting with someone else, and Celia poured a drink in his lap.” She leaned towards the mirror, refreshing her lipstick.
I drew a shaky breath meant to steady me. “Then what?”
“Well, I tried to talk to her, y’know. Get her off the ledge. But the damned fool had gone and fallen in love with him. She would watch him go to the guard room with some girl who didn’t want to pay the cover charge —you know,to pay him in kind—and she’d stumble and get her routine all wrong. It was painful to watch.”
God, why didn’t she come to me?
I swallowed the lump in my throat and willed myself not to cry.
“Anyway, push comes to shove right, and they’re screaming at each other like a couple of banshees right there in front of God and everybody. I think there were some big shots in the club too that day. The boss was incandescent with rage. Fired them both on the spot.”
“Shit.” I turned back to the mirror to finish removing the mascara from my eyes mostly to hide the emotion I was feeling from Marci.
“Yeah. So, after a few days I call to check on her, just to see if she’s okay, because I know she was living with Igor. She doesn’t pick up. So, I go over to her old place. Her neighbor told me she hadn’t seen Celia in a minute. So, I didn’t know what else to do but keep calling. She probably left town, doesn’t want any reminders. But it’d be nice if she answered one of my texts, just so I know she’s okay.”
A tear escaped my eye, and I wiped it away quickly. “Yeah. That’d be nice.”
