Urban Renewal

“
THAT
’
S
IT?
” the radically contoured, raven-haired young woman said. Her once-sweet face twisted into a bitter grimace. “
That’s
where I’m supposed to work?
That’s
the place where you said I’d be so—”

“Safe? Guaranteed, honey. Twenty-four-karat, with a platinum cherry on top,” a similarly structured blonde who looked too young to have a driver’s license answered reassuringly. Her pampered hands rested possessively on the steering wheel of her azure-toned Mercedes two-seater, a hardtop-convertible she proudly referred to as “off paper, totally.”

I earned this
, ran through her thoughts.
It’s mine, not some loan-shark “finance company’s.”

“It looks … scary. Like someone dropped it into the middle of a junkyard.”

“We work
indoors
,” the blonde sighed dramatically, not disguising her weariness of the brunette’s nonstop fretting. “This isn’t your first ride, girl. You know there’s not going to be no free-peek windows, so what’s it matter what’s outside?”

“But …”

“Ssssh, now. If you don’t like it, what would you be giving up?”

“If I don’t bring home—”

“You’re not
going
home, remember?”

“But all my things—”

“They’ll still be there, don’t worry.”

“You don’t know him.”

“That’s one thing
I
don’t know. You just sit still for another minute or two and I’ll show you a couple dozen
you
don’t.”

“
THIS
HAS
to be a joke,” the brunette whined as the little Mercedes wove its way past the gutted remains of vehicles ranging from motorcycles to semi-trailers.

“Ssssh,” the blonde said again. “Girl, you have
got
to learn a little patience.”

“Maybe that’s my problem. Sometimes, I think I’m
too
damn patient,” her passenger said, eyeing the motley collection of free-range dogs hunting the rats who were constantly in motion among the twisted piles of rusting metal.

The blonde wheeled her car past a fenced-in area marked “Valet Parking.” The brunette got only a vague glance at neat rows of parked cars before the blonde abruptly turned left and rolled her little prize to the back of what looked like a long rectangular concrete bunker. Only a discrete band of blood-red neon spelling out “XX” broke the dullness of its appearance.

The back area was almost as wide as the main building, but no more than twenty feet deep. There were numerous individual slots, each marked with a letter above its door. The blonde tapped a key on her iPhone.
Brand-new—no more
bootlegs for this little girl!
she thought, as she did every time she used it.

When an indecipherable grunting noise answered, she said, “Arabella. And a friend.”

Slot J opened. Arabella drove in confidently, left her keys in the ignition, and climbed out as the door slid down behind her.

“Will you come on?” she snapped over her shoulder.

The brunette followed as the blonde stood in front of a mirrored door. An audible “click” sounded. The blonde strode inside, tugging her friend’s hand, as if they were BFFs about to enter a club one of them wasn’t so sure about.

An extremely large man stood behind the door, his upper body covered in Maori tattoos. His eyes were forced into slits from the compression of his eyebrows. It was a full ten seconds before he nodded.

“What was
that
?” the brunette asked.

“That’s just K-2.”

“Like ‘Kato’?”

“No, like Kay-Two. Get it?”

“No. But …”

“But what? You think your ‘man’ is going to just walk past
him
?”

“Not without an elephant gun.”

“Hold that thought,” the blonde said, smiling.

“
THOSE ARE
the dressing rooms,” the blonde said, “but we won’t be going on for another hour or so. I thought you’d want to look the place over first.”

“Uh … okay.”

The blonde opened another door. “This is backstage. If you’re going on, you walk up those stairs. If you’re not, you just … Well, follow me.”

The two women seated themselves at a small round table set against the wall, to the right of the stage.

“Mae can sure work that pole,” the blonde said. “It’s real brass, by the way. Used to be in a firehouse, the way I heard it.”

“Everything’s very … nice.”

“Oh, it’s the
best
. That’s not some cheesy carpeted-over linoleum your feet are resting on, honey—that’s deep-pile. Plush. Look around. Look anywhere you want—you’ll see nothing
but
the best. Check out over there, way over to the other side. That section’s for the paying customers … and I don’t mean the ones who want to get close to the girls; the ones who want the girls to get close to
them
, right? And trust me, there’s not a cheapskate in the lot.”

“But we work for tips only, right? No—?”

“You don’t do anything you don’t want to do,” the blonde assured her. “When I told you everything in here was the best, I was talking about the girls, too. Sure, there’s a VIP Room and all that, but you can just work your shift, and anything they throw on the stage or stuff in your garter or whatever, that’s what you earn.”

“VIP Room? Does that mean I—?”

“Nooooh,” the blonde answered, stretching out the word like a bratty teenager. “That ‘Valet Parking’ is just a shuck to make the marks feel like big shots—there’s no
other
parking lot. But the VIP Room, that’s … well, it costs whatever it costs, see?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Ah … look, honey, it’s not that complicated. Some girls cost more than others, some girls will do some things other girls won’t … and some girls won’t work that room at all.”

“How does the house make its money, then? All the watered champagne in the world wouldn’t pay for this setup.”

“You rent your spot. Three girls are always onstage: one on the pole, two up front. Costs you a hundred bucks for twenty-five minutes. Some trios do better rotating, some not. Doesn’t matter—you take turns working whatever spots you decide, and you split up the tips at the end. Or you could even go it alone, but that’s three hundred for the twenty-five minutes, so you’d better
really
work it, you make that choice. And, not for nothing, that champagne
isn’t
watered.”

“That’s some ‘rent’ they charge here. Six hundred an hour.”

“Which would be almost fifteen grand every day—they never close. But you can buy eight slots at a time—that’s why it’s twenty-five minutes, so you can take five for yourself if you’re going right back on again.”

“Jeez.”

“Oh, you don’t
have
to do it. They’ve got more girls who want to work here than they can take. But if you work, say, six slots, you should pull in well over a grand a night, net.
After
the rent, see?”

“Without ever leaving the stage? No lap dances, none of that VIP Room stuff?”

“Yep.”

“But the girls who
do
…”

“Oh, sure. There’s girls taking an easy ten G’s a week out of here.”

“Do you ever—?”

“Honey, what
I
do is up to me. Just like it is for you. And what you
don’t
do, either. What
I
don’t do is talk about what I do, you with me?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Now, glance—and I mean
glance
, no more—to your right. There’s a man sitting in that far corner. That’s his private spot.”

“He doesn’t look like much.”

“He owns the place.”

“Oh. Is he here all the time?”

“Not even close.”

“Then who stops people from—?”

“Look at the door, baby. You can look
there
as long as you want.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t. You see one bad guy at the door. That’s Bruno. And he
is
a certified killer, sure. Now look behind the bar. That’s Gringo.”

“Gringo? But he’s—”

“You think a Mexican named ‘Gringo’ is weird, wait ’til you meet Princess.”

“Are you serious?”