Taking Jana (Paradise South #2) (6 page)

Fuck. Just,
fuck!

She swallowed hard, then looked down at her phone. Her finger slid across the screen three times, swiping through names and numbers from her past until she found Eddie’s number, her old manager at The Wet Spot.

She’d blurred her lines before for her family. Now, it seemed, she’d have to blur them again.

CHAPTER 5

W
hen the operator’s
recording said that Eddie’s number had been disconnected, she ended the connection and tried again. She got the same automated message, though. Eddie was the
go-to
guy for the entire
Tri-state
area; he’d had thousands of contacts in the strip club industry. His number was disconnected? How strange.

She looked at her phone in thought, then browsed through more contacts until she got to her next lead. Never too late at night to call Amber, and so she hit her number as the cab pulled up.

*

Amber sounded great on the phone, even though it
was
too late to call her, as she was apparently no longer dancing. She was, in fact, being a new mom, hushing a rudely awakened baby, thanks to Jana’s
pre-dawn
call.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry, Amber. Go back to sleep, I can call another time.”

“Don’t you
dare
hang up, Jana Park. It was feeding time in a few minutes anyway, love. How are you?”

Jana’s heart warmed. Her sweet friend with what sounded to be a newborn? And the little thing’s crying didn’t seem to fluster the new mom at all. Jana smiled. Amber hadn’t always had that ability, to be calm and controlled in the face of chaos, and neither had Jana. It was Charlene who had taught them both the art of serenity, even and especially in front of the hundreds of hungry fantasizing faces at the club.

God she remembered in the very first week of Jana’s life as “Winter,” Jana had gotten out on that stage and had been slammed with queasiness. The queasy feeling like she got from her motion sickness, except that she wasn’t moving, not a bit. In fact, she’d been paralyzed. Frozen stiff. When the jeering and booing started, her paralysis had turned to a quivering trepidation. God, she thought she’d pee right there on stage.

But Char had come to her rescue. “Dance like no one’s watching,” she’d ordered in a harsh whisper. Charlene had taught her to block out the noise, the catcalls, the club clientele’s dirty, filthy looks, and intentions. And looking up at the bright blinding strobes, she began to dance like no one was watching.

And made a
shit-load
of money from it.

“God, it’s good to hear your voice,” Amber gushed.

“You too…you sound great. Like a happy little mama!”

“Yeah, I really am happy, Jana. I haven’t danced in over a year now. Got pregnant by Dominic.” The weekend bouncer at The Wet Spot, a decent guy, protective, with only a slightly dangerous jealous streak. “The club begged me to stay on, you know, the whole novel
prego-dancer
thing.” When she was still dancing, they’d made Tandy stay on until late in her third trimester. It had made Jana sick to think about it. “But, of course, Dominic refused. And I’ve got my lines too, right?” Amber asked as if she wasn’t entirely sure.

But Jana knew that Amber and Charlene had held to more stringent lines than most of the girls. So Amber screwed the steroidal head bouncer. She may have just wanted the out, and who could blame her? And there were far worse than Dominic. Far worse.

And as for Char, that was an entirely different story. Her lines had been crossed by force. And Jana shoved the surfacing thought back down deep into her mind’s lock box, safe and far away.

“Man, you remember what Char did to me when she caught me in the back that time? Talk about lines.” Amber had been inches from snorting her first line of coke when Charlene found her and pulled her away by the ponytail. Then she shoved her head in a shitty toilet bowl. Desperate measures, maybe, but with white snow being everywhere in the club—front and back of the house, in the parking lot, and being sold out the back door—Char did what she had to. Jana and Amber were like little sisters to her, she’d said.

And the trio were the only girls in the club who walked the straight and narrow. Their mantra: “Never high, never fucked, get in and get out with the bucks.” Completely cheesy, but they needed the levity, and, more importantly, they always needed the reminder because some of the shit that went down in the club was crazy enough to send someone over the edge, seeking the great high, white escape. But they’d stayed clean, and that’s how they’d made such bank, the highest grossing dancers in the place.

“Feels like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?”

“For sure. And Jana, that’s so amazing for you, getting the nursing thing done! I hate that you need to jump back into dancing again. But you can get in and get out, a few months tops, right?”

“One month. One month is all I think I can take. I gotta get back to my ER, to my Trauma Team. If they even hold my position that long. Yeah, I’ll make the rest of the debt up over a few years’ time, juggling credit cards. Hold off on buying a place. But yeah, one month is definitely all I can do.” Jana was telling herself as much as she was telling Amber.

“You still in the same shape, hun?” Amber asked, slightly distracted with the baby, who was now cooing into the phone.

“Despite the lack of sleep and the little time I take to eat, I look fit. And I do my yoga and crunches each morning, so yeah, I’m good.” She wasn’t as worried about her body as she was about her emotional state and, more than that, her ability to swallow her pride again.

“Good, you’ll need it, sweetie. The young ones are coming in even younger now…it’s totally insane! Fresh, young pussy overrides all, right?” Amber laughed while the baby hummed. The sweet rolling noise swelled and fell as Amber must have been bouncing the child in her arms.

Jana jolted forward suddenly, jarring in contrast to the mesmerizing baby sound at her ear. The cabbie had slammed his brakes for some asshole who’d cut them off. “Shit!” Jana directed at the cab driver.

“You okay?” Amber asked.

“Yeah, no, I’m fine. Jersey drivers.”

“Don’t I know it…so, hey, you remember Char called the young newbies the ‘tight twats’?” Amber laughed into the phone.

“Yeah, sure.” Jana smiled softly, solemnly. Yeah, she remembered. God, she hadn’t understood anything, let alone what tight twats or a virgin vagina
actually
meant to men until Char awakened her to the fucking real world. Jana had always been petite, young and sweet looking. Innocent. And after hearing Char’s ‘The great virgin dream of men’ theory, it all became crystal clear to her, how men saw her. As a
tight-twat
virgin. But one that was up on stage spreading it for them. Oh Lord, the dream in living color. All the way through her dancing career, Jana made tons of cash working the young virgin girl angle. Charlene had even helped her dress the part in schoolgirl uniforms to the nth degree. It paid the bills, but still to this day it made her sick to walk by a parochial school during dismissal. How sick and twisted the whole thing had been. Still was.

“Well, anyway, if you’re still toned, you have nothing to worry about, even the tightest cunts still get
coked-out
or out of shape in no time at the club. You’ll be golden, as always,” Amber said with a hint of obvious envy. “You’re a gorgeous
Latino-Asian
mutt!” Amber blurted.

Jana laughed. She had a
healthy-sized
ass but didn’t have the full and curvy voluptuous thing going on up top. She was on the small side of a B cup.

Char had damn near made a marketing plan for her at her start. Jana fulfilled two very specific niche markets in the club scene: the Lush Latino, with the
full-fledged
backside, lips, and lashes; and the Exotic Asian fantasy, with the eyes and high cheekbones, small, tight frame, and long, lustrous hair. How crazy, to view one’s attributes as marketable. But it was business, it was money.

“Oh, and forget about the pole, girl…no one can touch you there!” Amber added. “I’m still jealous of your ‘
Open-V
’ and your damn ‘Helicopter.’ And, oh God, your ‘Caterpillar’ drove them insane! None of the girls do much more than a climb anymore.”

Jana had had a unique and unknown advantage at the start of her dance career. She’d been a gymnast since age six and had competed all the way up through high school until senior year, in fact, when dancing took over her schedule.

“Jesus, I actually miss the pole. I almost joined one of those new pole fitness clubs, but it was too close of an association, you know?”

“Yeah, totally.” Then the baby started crying for something. “She’s hungry for boob, one second, doll,” Amber said, then whispered sweetly to the baby to hush and eat.

Jana caught herself imagining herself in Amber’s place. Or being the woman on the bus, with nothing else in the world mattering but that tiny, innocent being at her breast. A small ache surfaced in her chest until Amber’s voice brought her focus back.

“Okay, sorry. Anyway, J, I wish I could make a call for you, just to get you started quicker, especially if Eddie isn’t answering his cell. Which is totally weird. But Dominic burned the bridge with Eddie and the Demontes when I got knocked up, and he wouldn’t even let me step on property now, let alone call, even if I did know anyone there anymore. But hell, go there; see if Eddie is still there. That boy’d do anything for you.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that.”

“Just, you know, keep in touch. Tell me how it goes. And so I know you’re safe.”

Jana caught the underlying worry, because when Char had left for Vegas, they both wished they could’ve prevented what had happened. But Jana knew they couldn’t have. It was out of anyone’s hands. Jana had even spoken to Char the day before. One day before.

“Of course. I’ll text you my status after I go down there tomorrow night. Listen, Amber, it was so good hearing your voice. God…you sound like an amazing mama,” she said as a tiny pang of something Jana realized was envy rose up again in her chest. But thank God she had no innocent soul dependent on her now. Because she had her parents to deal with right now, and she could hardly handle them and their debts.

So, all she could do was to pray that in this lifetime her parents would learn to stand on their own two feet and finally release her so she could live her own life. Her own dreams.

“Good hearing your voice too, love. We’re out in Morristown now. Come and visit us if you can. I’d die to see you, and you can meet Charlie—”

“You named her—”

“—Yeah. Charlene, Charlie for short.”

“I love it, Amber.” Jana choked on her breath, holding back the sudden grief she had worked too hard to hide for the entire phone call. There had been no funeral, no closure, and as the years passed, Jana thought it best to keep it buried. What was the point of hashing out that shit? “Oh, hey Amber, gotta go, just pulled up to the hospital.”

“Yeah, sure, okay. Just, stay in touch, love. Please, stay in touch.”

Jana pressed ‘end’ on her screen and looked out at the road in front of her, the cab still several minutes from the hospital.

She gathered her hair back into a ponytail, pulling it tight enough to reset her state of mind with a bit of
brain-clearing
pain. Her trick again—hurt for hurt—this time not for motion sickness but to balance out everything else, topped by thoughts of Char. She divided her hair in two, gave each side one more good yank, the hair band now snug against her skull. She brought her arms down to her lap, and only then noticed a new tiny bruise on her forearm that hadn’t been there hours before, at least not when she was holding her father’s hand at the hospital. She must’ve done it subconsciously. God, she really needed to find some earbuds.

CHAPTER 6

W
atching Manhattan’s lit
up skyline across the river from the window while the cab weaved through the barren streets of Fort Lee, Jana went over her plan in her head.

She’d relieve her mother, send her home to sleep, then after a
three-hour
power nap in that horrible hospital room armchair, she’d deal with her father. Her mother would come back and she’d get down to Newark and hope that Eddie was still running The Wet Spot.

Because Eddie was her ticket. Beyond Amber and Charlene, Eddie had been key to her ability to make the money she had because he made the schedule. And Eddie had definitely favored Jana. He’d never been shy about crushing on her from day one, but besides and despite that, he kept her on as many rotations as she wanted, even though she didn’t reciprocate Eddie’s advances. While most men in the industry would have cut her off immediately for denying them, he put her, and kept her, on the rotation more consistently than any other dancer. She didn’t delude herself; Eddie wasn’t selfless by any means. The bumps in pay he got from Jana being on the schedule were motivation enough. The men she drew into the club made his
cover-count
skyrocket. And her regulars booked the back rooms as if their money grew like grass in the suburbs.

She hadn’t seen or spoken to Eddie since she transferred to The Manhattan Sweet Spot. He and his pocket were pissed. And Charlene had been leaving too, heading out to Vegas for bigger things; he’d lost two top earners in a single month.

But that was the business, and everyone knew nothing was forever in the club scene.

At that time, she’d been dancing for two plus years, and had figured out that beyond catching her folks up financially, she could actually fund nursing school too. She had reapplied to MMU not expecting to get in. But for a second time, she had. And The Sweet Spot was only a few blocks from campus.

But the real perk, compared to Newark’s club scene, was the exponential money to be had in the City. Even though, at the start, she’d been low on the totem pole—far fewer peak shifts and no private room demand—she’d still made twice as much money as she had in Newark. And once she acquired her own following at The Sweet Spot, well, astronomical history. She had never imagined having so much cash before, every last dollar of which would all go to cover the remainder of her folks’ debt and all of her college tuition. And for the next four years, she worked all night, hit class and studied by day, and grabbed some sleep and food somewhere in between. That’s how she got out of the clubs and obtained her ER spot.

But here she was again, the Newark club on her brain. Chills shimmied up her spine.

Just focus, Jana.

Okay, so the money would be less, but she, logistically speaking, couldn’t afford to get to the City from Fort Lee every day, not with the traffic. And if anyone from her ER saw her on stage, well, that was just unthinkable. She calculated that as long as she got full shifts and lap dance priority in Newark, in four weeks’ time, she could rake in thirty to forty grand, and that was based on figures from years ago. It was always safer to be conservative. From Thursday through Saturday, she’d have no problem pulling in two grand a night. Then, if she worked three weekday nights, she’d add another three to her weekly pot. Nine thousand a week. Yeah,
thirty-two
in the month would make a dent, combined with her savings and credit card advances. Oh, and she could try to sublet her apartment in SoHo while crashing at her folks’ place here…
ugh
. Still, she could do this. She could stop this new boulder her parents had hurled at her from steamrolling their lives and her life along with it.

Finding the financial solution in her mind was only a dopamine rush for an instant, though, as her hand went up to her shirt collar, holding it closed, and closer to her skin from the thought of baring her body again to those men and their starving eyes.

The cabbie cleared his throat, bringing Jana out of her zone. The cab sat idle in the hospital portico for who knows how long. The driver’s narrowed eyes glared at her in the rearview, showing his obvious readiness to move on with his shift, back to his own
never-ending
rat race, even though the meter was still ticking up every second she sat there.

She too had to get on with things. She stared at the bright white light shining through the hospital’s automatic doors, which were opening and closing rhythmically, again and again, because the cabbie had pulled up too close to the damn sensor.

She began to gather her things as the driver’s expression in the rearview willed her to move her ass.

Look, asshole, it’s not like you aren’t charging me for sitting
here.

Being rushed to do something she resented and detested—and by this piece of shit!—made her jaw clench and her stomach cramp. She wanted to send Driver Dredge in to her parents, into the hospital, in to pay the damn hospital bill that was mounting every second, and then send him down to Newark after that to get naked and gyrate for an audience of horny assholes!

She took a few deep breaths, shot him back a look in his little mirror, and tossed a wad of crumpled ones over the divider.
For interrupting me and my
procrastinating.

She got out of the cab, and instead of helping with her bags, the driver only sat and straightened out the crumpled bills. Walking through the automatic doors, she glared over her shoulder one last time, only to catch the dickhead gawking at her ass through his passenger side window. She cringed while chills shot up her arms.

Get used to it, Jana.
And
fast.

She sighed long and hard, then continued on, weary and spent, dragging her baggage behind her.