The Other Other Woman (28 page)

I thought for a second and exclaimed, “Oh, Matt, you don’t wear those MANDALS, do you!?” He danced all around giving me a straight answer, claiming that “if he did” they were just for walking on the beach. He was such a little fancy boy; of course he wore mandals in Miami. I should have known right then to run far, far away.

That morning, I happened to find a pair in his closet. He had a couple of shirts and a suit that he left in there as well. I definitely did NOT sniff his clothes to see if they still smelled like him, because, well, that would just be crazy.

So, I put the shoes on the floor and took a “the jig is up” photo of me standing next to them.

I don’t think we can see each other anymore.

Ummm, please forgive me for being a cretin and unfashionable buffoon!!

Even I have to draw the line somewhere. How’s it going up there?

Right now I’m by myself. Molly is at an appointment. Talk?

Sure.

We had lovely conversation. After giving me every mandal-wearing excuse in the book, he asked us about our plans for the evening. I told him that we were going to meet my friends, Nicole and Liza, at some place called Pubbelly. Afterwards, we planned to hit some clubs either with them or without them, depending on how everyone felt after dinner. He told me to be careful and made me promise him that we would get a cab before going to any bars or clubs. I loved how he always seemed so concerned about my safety, making it seem like I was so important to him.

We rounded out the afternoon with some shopping before heading over to the restaurant. Our dinner was unbelievable. We didn’t really understand the whole concept of the place. The men were dressed in Lederhosen but the waitresses just, well, looked like waitresses? Whatever it was, the food was fantastic. Brooke and I were getting aggravated with Nicole at first. I had met Liza before when she happened to be traveling through Raleigh, but this was our first time meeting Nicole. I had always found her to be very laid-back and extremely funny on our message board. But she basically took over the menu and started pointing out what she wanted to order for everyone. I could see Brooke getting a little panicky over it. She didn’t understand what a lot of the items were, and you don’t mess with our food. For a split second, I thought she might lose it. But then we realized that everything is prepared family style, and we both laughed later at how foolish we felt for ever doubting her intentions. All dishes were meant for the entire table to share, so it made sense, except for the bread pudding at the end. That should never, ever have to be shared.

Afterwards, we asked them where we could find the hottest club in town because we really wanted to go dancing. They both looked at us, and then at each other, and back at us again, like we had gone stark raving mad. “What?” I laughed, kind of nervously… now.

“Girl, please,” Nicole answered. “Miami isn’t like other cities.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning…” She was trying to be gentle, “You can’t just waltz into the clubs around here. Most of the time you can’t get in at all unless you are still 21, have fake tits, or have a couple grand to drop on a table. Or if you know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody…”

I think you could hear both of our hearts break at that exact moment. “What? But that’s what we CAME here for!” I cried.

“Oh, you can still have a ball! You can go over to the Bleau Bar at the Fountainebleau hotel. It’s definitely a Miami hot spot, great for people watching. Then you can point and laugh at all the girls being turned away from the club over there!”

“You have got to be kidding me. There is no place in this town where we can go dancing unless we are rich or look like plastic movie stars?”

“Umm, pretty much, yeah,” Nicole said. Liza nodded her head in agreement.

They could see the disappointed look on our faces. If these two girls didn’t feel like they could get in a Miami club, no way were they letting us in. They were both very confident ladies, both attorneys. Nicole was biracial, and had absolutely golden skin and fabulously curly hair, and Liza had smooth jet black hair floating down to the small of her back and very striking dark eyes with lush lashes. They were both attractive, intelligent, very hip women.

They each thought for a minute and then Liza said, “Well, there is one place that I can think of, but I haven’t been there in about seven years, so I have no idea what it’s like now… but it used to be fun. It’s called The Joint down near Washington…”

“Oh yeah, I used to go there,” agreed Nicole.

“Okay, maybe we can check that out,” Brooke responded, giving me a little more hope.

We had driven to the restaurant but did not want to be responsible for a car later. So we headed back to the condo and relaxed with some drinks on the balcony for a few hours before changing into our hootchiemamma outfits (which we would find were not that hootchie at all by comparison). Once it was late enough to head back out, we called for a cab and had the driver take us to The Joint.

Upon entering the club, I knew right away that it was not our scene. There was a live reggae band playing downstairs, but supposedly it was a regular bar/club upstairs. That was a lie. The place was even more dark and dank upstairs. Some creeper bought me a drink immediately, or I would have run for the door. But it seemed rude, so we each had a drink while sitting on a filthy couch. As soon as I finished my last sip the creeper was trying to pump us for personal information, so we pretended to go to the ladies room and got the hell out of there within minutes of arriving.

Once outside, we had no idea where to go. We just kept walking around hoping to find something interesting. There did not seem to be a single place where people were dancing. There were no crowds anywhere. It just seemed dead for a Friday night. I told Brooke that I would rather just sit at the cool bar that Nicole mentioned than to keep walking forever down in this area and find nothing. At least it sounded like the Bleau bar stayed crowded.

She agreed, so we gave up on the idea of dancing. We hailed another cab to take us to the Fountainebleau. We could barely get near the actual hotel because of the enormous sea of beautiful people mobbed up against the side of the hotel walls. It headed outside and stretched down the street. We quickly realized that this was the line for LIV, the club inside the hotel–“The Magical Forbidden Place” that Nicole and Liza spoke of, at least for our old, haggard asses.

We entered the door of the Bleau Bar, and we both stopped dead in our tracks. It was an incredible scene. The huge circular bar illuminated the entire center of the hotel in glowing blue light. It spilled out from underneath the floors, coupled with massive chandeliers overhead, creating an atmosphere of absolute opulence. It looked like Vegas, or at least as what I pictured Vegas to look like from watching mob movies… completely over the top, yet still very chic. More importantly, there were hotties everywhere. Scanning the room, the hotness was hitting us in all directions. POW! POW! POW! We both looked at each other, nodding our heads in giddy affirmation. YES! This is where we were meant to be. Brooke pointed out a Silver Fox for me that could have passed for Matt Wynne’s twin brother, and I laughed at how easy it was for her to pick out “my type” now. I think he caught us pointing at him, though, because he smiled and started laughing with his friend.

The bar was very crowded, but we still managed to secure a good spot. Within seconds, we were approached by an African gentleman named Delmar. He seemed very friendly and had a really cool accent, so we didn’t mind when he offered to buy us a couple of drinks. Drinks were $17 a pop at the Bleau bar. He told us he was the owner of one of the largest travel agencies in South Africa. He was actually very pleasant and engaging and, not realizing it, we talked to him for a long time. He bought us another round and started getting more comfortable and flirty with us. He kept telling me I looked like a school teacher. I guess he meant that as a compliment because he kindly suggested we follow him up to his room for an orgy. We quickly excused ourselves to the ladies room to determine the best way to escape from old Delmar.

In the bathroom we decided that the best plan of action was to tell him we really wanted to go dancing and that we were going to try to get into LIV. The Bleau Bar was closing soon, and the line wasn’t as bad now. We knew he wouldn’t try to follow us in there. He had mentioned the long line to get into LIV as part of our earlier conversation and how nightclubs were not his thing at all. We also fully understood that the LIV bouncers might look at us and laugh, sending us crying and humiliated out into the street. But we needed to ditch him one way or another. As suspected, he was not interested in LIV, so we thanked him for the drinks and bid him a fond farewell.

As we headed over in the direction of the club entrance, one of the bouncers called out to us, “This way, Ladies!” opening the velvet rope toward the front of the line. We, of course, looked around to see who in the world he was talking to. Holy shit, it was us?! So we headed up to show our ID’s and pay the cover charge. I think they said it was $40 for women and $60 for men but we both agreed we would have paid $400. We were dumbfounded that they were letting us in at all. We both ran through the door like we had just won a spot on The Price is Right. MALLORY AND BROOKE! COME ON DOWN!! Once we were safely inside, I checked us in on Facebook so Nicole and Liza could see that we had been victorious.

We entered on the upper level of the club. There were two gigantic winding staircases to get to the dance floor below, and confetti was flying everywhere. I felt like we were in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Neither of us had ever been to a place like that before. Even the Chicago clubs I visited were more like local dive bars with small dance floors. This was like being on another planet entirely. It kind of looked like outer space, actually, with neon laser lights flashing everywhere and house music thumping, just a very energetic frenzied pink and blue atmosphere.

Still buzzing from our drinks, we quickly headed down to find a spot on the hellaciously crowded dance floor. Of course, it wasn’t long before we each felt that familiar “I believe someone has their groin in my ass” feeling. We danced with each other and with several men at first as we moved among the crowd. Eventually two foreign boys, who appeared to be related or at least very good friends, shimmied up behind each of us. I didn’t even get a good glimpse at mine. After dancing up against him for at least a half hour, I was afraid to look for fear he might be ugly. I had learned in Chicago not to gaze too closely into anyone’s eyes while dancing anyway because they might try to slip you the tongue. I mean, unless you wanted that. My boy was much taller than me (who isn’t?), so when he did turn me around to face him, my head basically went into his chest. When he bent down to whisper something that I didn’t understand, I caught a little bit of his profile. He looked Caucasian but spoke a language I definitely didn’t recognize. I was also able to determine that he smelled awesome. Brooke was able to give me the thumbs up that he was pretty good looking, and I did the same for her. We danced with those two for the majority of the night.

Both were great dancers and, as the night went on, they got more and more risqué with us. I was wearing a short black dress and a thong, and I am 100% sure that his hands were holding my actual asscheeks for a good portion of the song selections. I had my back to him once more as he was grinding away. I was so hot and thirsty that I took his drink from his hand and finished it, handing him back the cup of ice. He took a piece of ice out of the cup and started running it all up and down the back of my neck with his fingers. That was nice; it was really hot in there. Then he moved it ever so slowly along my shoulder blades and finally, wait a minute, is he?! Did he just?! Right down inside my dress. That’s right folks. I just got my nipple iced on the dance floor at LIV. I had truly arrived in Miami.

Brooke almost peed herself laughing; she was witness to the whole thing. He flipped me around to face him and started to unbutton his shirt. I was more than happy to place my hands all over his chest too. Fair is fair. I was not interested in taking any men back to my boyfriend’s condo, however, and obviously neither was Brooke. So, after at least two or three hours of dancing we exited the floor and went to find the ladies room. We realized then that our feet were actually on fire. We didn’t notice until we stopped dancing, but Sweet Fancy Moses, I don’t think I have ever had that much foot pain, and I’ve had a lot of foot issues over the years from running. I went to hover over the toilet because you could not pay me enough to ever sit on a public toilet. In a club, in Miami, no less?! But I yelled to Brooke “FUCK IT!” and plopped my ass right down because I was in so much pain from standing. Once we came back out of the restroom, we found the nearest couch by one of the bars and sat on the back of it laughing, and at the same time, trying not to cry. It was there that we discovered it was five a.m., and the club was getting ready to close.

We both hobbled outside to get a taxi. Thankfully, they were all over the place. Brooke had a way with our cabbies. She always noticed their names and spoke very politely to them, engaging them in conversation about the local area. She was very much a people person, and much better at small talk than me. So, when we got into our last sweaty, smelly cab of the evening, she said:

“Hi, Xavier (noticing his name and picture), how are you this morning? Listen, I need you to do me a big favor. I’m a big woman… I get HOT. Can you be so kind as to HOOK A SISTAH UP WITH SOME A/C?!”

I busted out laughing at her and so did he. He was happy to do it though. We were both moaning and groaning about how tired we were and how much our feet hurt, and she took her shoes off in the cab and threw them right up on the center console. She was mostly joking, I think, when she suggested he rub her feet. But sure enough, he kept one hand on the wheel and reached down with the other and started massaging her toes.