Zamani (15 page)

Liz started with tender
kisses, but those quickly became more urgent.
 
Olivia’s head swam as she felt Liz’s
hands slide under her shirt.
 
There,
she found the pendant Olivia always wore, a small dagger in a sheath, the blade
razor sharp. When her hand grazed it, Liz pulled back from the kiss a bit, and
she looked into Olivia’s eyes, smiling.
 
She moved her hands, bringing them to the back of Olivia’s neck,
grasping the thin, fine chain.
 
She
slid the chain over Olivia’s head and unsheathed the blade.
 
Carefully, she made a small cut on her
own wrist before grabbing Olivia’s hand and making a matching wound on her
arm.
 
Pressing the wounds together,
she leaned forward for a quick kiss before pulling Olivia’s wrist to her
mouth.
 
Olivia did the same.
 
This time, Daniela had chosen her fate.

Chapter
Twenty Two

     
Wren and Alex were trouble from the
start. Wren hadn’t started dancing yet, and in the early morning hours she and
some of her street colleagues were looking for an easy mark for a good
mugging.
 
Alex was tending bar at
one of the gay bars on the end of Bourbon toward Esplanade.
 
They saw her leave, headed toward the
Marigny on the way home at the end of her shift.
 
It wasn’t until Wren bumped into her
that she realized she wasn’t a boy; Alex’s eyes flashed in anger as Wren
brushed up against her. Alex saw only a threat, but Wren saw the most beautiful
eyes.
 
Alex had a cigarette tucked
behind one ear and her hair was short.
 

“Hey, you got a light?” Wren
asked her.
 
While this was a signal
to her compatriots to stand down and not move in for the strike, she also
wanted to talk to Alex more than she wanted to rip her off.
 

Alex relaxed and
smiled.
 
“Sure.”
 
She shook out two cigarettes and handed
one to Wren, then flipped open her Zippo and lit them both.
 
She kept moving though, mumbling “Have a
good night” before Wren could distract her further.

She watched her turn a
corner and disappear and then she and her friends went in search of better
pickings.
 
She made a note of it
though. She knew she’d try to find Alex later, as she’d felt a rise of
excitement when her eyes met Alex’s.
 
Besides, her smile was too good to ignore. There was fun to be had
there, Wren was sure of it.

She’d just arrived in New
Orleans a few weeks before, and her first order of business had been to make
some fast money.
 
Even once she
picked up work as a waitress, she kept running with the pack of street kids
she’d fallen in with.
 
They had a system,
but she was growing weary of rolling tourists for whatever cash was left in
their pockets when they drunkenly stumbled out of the bar at the end of the
night.
 
After the chance meeting
with Alex, she knew it was time to grow up a little.
 
She couldn’t very well chase after her
and say, “Hey, we were about to mug you, but you’re so cute, so let’s start
over.”
 
She didn’t make the decision
to clean up her act right that moment, but it was a tipping point for her.
 
She decided to try less criminal forms
of thievery.
 

She was serving at one of
the smaller, less touristy restaurants by day.
 
The owners were older and preferred to
focus on breakfast and lunch service.
 
Locals and those who worked in the Quarter welcomed the old mainstays. They
could afford red beans and rice or a good bowl of gumbo at Lena’s on their way
to work.
 
She enjoyed working there,
too, which was the main reason she didn’t mind they didn’t do dinner
service.
 
Initially, she’d been
glad—it allowed her to spend her evenings playing and making trouble.

She was ready to start
working toward something better, though.
 
Wren’s original plan had been to open her own business in town. She
arrived with a freshly printed college diploma and plans to be the next big
thing in New Orleans.
 
Reality set
in pretty quickly when she arrived, though, and she’d run out of money even
quicker.
 
Hustling and petty crime
were things she’d been doing since she was a kid, and she’d immediately fallen
back into her old habits. It wasn’t long, though, before partying and picking
pockets both wore thin.
 

She decided to check with
some of the clubs in the Quarter to see if any of them needed help with bussing
tables or serving drinks.
 
One of
her housemates told her there was good tip money in strip club serving, as long
as you didn’t mind a little grab-ass.
 
Wren figured she could take care of herself and if she didn’t like it
nothing was really lost other than a few nights of her time.

So, she wandered down to the
Casbah after Lena’s shut down for the day.
 
The club doors were closed, but there was someone outside smoking a
cigarette.
 
She’d seen him there
before, and she was right in her assumption that he managed the club.

She approached him
tentatively.
 
“Hi, mind if I bum one
of those?”
 
He eyed her up and down
before reaching into his shirt pocket and shaking a cigarette loose from the
pack.
 
She noticed that he handed it
to her with the filter facing her and he was ready with the lighter.
 
She smiled at him and they smoked in
silence for a few minutes.
 
She
wasn’t sure how to broach the subject of a job. Just as she was about to try to
make more small talk, he dropped his cigarette on the pavement and stepped on
it.
 
Taking another out of the pack
and putting it between his lips, he turned toward the club and pushed the door
open.
 
“You coming, sweetheart?
 
I suspect you’re looking for work, as
pretty girls don’t stop and share a smoke with Frank unless they want
something.
 
Bring your cigarette
with you—you can smoke in here.
 
I was just taking a break.”

The club was drab and sad
during the day.
 
Without the music,
lights, and scantily clad dancers, it was just an oblong room with a bar at one
end, a stage in the middle with chairs packed around, and a doorway in the back
that led to the dressing rooms. There was also a partitioned private dance
section at the back of the club.
 
The chairs were all tired leftovers from who knows how many diners and
cafes, and the tables were also likely salvaged from street cafes fortunate
enough to replace them with newer, better tables. More likely, the cafes failed
and left the furniture behind for some enterprising club owner like Frank to
make use of.

The bar was at the front of
the club, allowing the bartender to keep an eye on people as they entered and
left.
 
There was a two-drink
minimum, and Wren later found out the guys who tended bar had clickers they
used to keep a tally of how many drinks should be going out.
 
This was in part to ensure the girls
knew who to run drink orders to, but also to help ensure the dancers were not
skimming drinks for themselves.
 
Frank kept a pretty close eye on the books and made sure every dime was
accounted for.
 
He always got his
cut.

He slid behind the bar when
they came into the club and started making sure things were stocked and ready
for the night.
 
He’d started as a
bar back many years ago and moved his way up.
 
As a younger man he’d been more fit and
able to serve as bartender and bouncer.
 
He’d moved up into management at another club and when the Casbah’s
owner was ready to call it quits, he’d stepped in and made him an offer for
part ownership. Under his management, the club thrived and he was eventually
able to become sole owner.
 

He watched Wren taking in
the club and he cleared his throat as he set a shot glass on the bar and nodded
to the barstool.
 
“Have a seat.
 
What’ll you have?
 
No charge, as this is shoptalk.
 
And don’t refuse the drink offer.
 
In this business it’s bad form to not
drink with your potential boss.”
 
He
got out another shot glass for himself while Wren took a seat.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got
a bottle of vodka in a freezer somewhere?”

Frank winked at her. “Of
course I do.
 
A good bartender’s
always ready.”
 
He poured them both
shots, the vodka fogging the small glasses.
 
They raised them in a silent toast and
downed them.
 
He refilled them
without asking and went back to checking the supplies.
 
He knew she’d eventually get to what she
came here for, and he was enjoying the company.
 
She was easy on the eyes.
 
She looked young, and even though she
was dressed in khaki pants and a t-shirt from Lena’s, he could tell she was in
good shape.
 
Her long, dark hair was
pulled back from her face into a ponytail, but a few wavy tendrils had fallen
out.
 
He could imagine her on stage,
and his silent waiting was part of the job interview.
 
He wanted to make sure she had the personality
to go along with the body.

She didn’t disappoint.

“So, I’m hoping maybe you
have some work I could do around here; I work at Lena’s during the day,” as she
said this she pointed at the logo over her left breast and grinned.
 
“I’ve heard sometimes you need girls to
work the door or serve drinks, bus tables, that kind of thing.”

Frank eyed her silently,
wiping a glass with a bar towel.
 
“Oh, honey, I don’t know that kind of work is your best bet.
 
I think maybe there’s other things you
could do here that would work better.”

Any other man would have
come off as creepy in saying this but Frank had a way about him that made it
ok.
 
She had seen him eyeballing
her, but he wasn’t a letch, which she found interesting considering the
business he was in.
  
He
continued, “You? A busser? Honey, you really should consider dancing.
 
We’ve got room for more girls, and trust
me, as a busser and server you’re going to get hands on your ass.
 
You might as well get paid for it and
get paid more than the $2.10 we’ll pay you an hour to sling and clean up warm
beer.”
 
Frank lit two cigarettes,
handing her one.
 
“I’ve gone to only
having fellas do the bussing anyway; the girls do some of the serving.
 
I want the money going to the dancers,
where it belongs.”

She explained to him that
she’d never danced before, but she was willing to give it a try.
 
He gave her the paperwork she needed to
fill out for legal purposes while he got on the phone. “Rachelle?
 
This is Frank.
 
Can you come in early?
 
I have a new girl who needs to be
trained, and I’ll cover your usual take for the night.”
 
Rachelle agreed and was there by the
time they raised their shot glasses in a toast to the paperwork being done.

Rachelle was not much older
than Wren, but she’d been dancing for a while and was one of Frank’s more
established dancers.
 
She led Wren
down to Checkpoint Charlie’s for more drinks and some talk about her stage
persona before they went shopping for some clothes she could wear on
stage.
 
They took their purchases
back to Rachelle’s place where she quickly transformed herself into Tabitha,
her innocent blonde stage persona. Wren became Morrigan, a much darker
character decked out in all black leather and lace, complete with a long,
billowy duster. Rachelle explained how the duster would swing dramatically when
Wren worked the pole, and she showed her how to work it to maximum effect.
 
Under the duster, she wore a pleather
bra with a black lace top over it, a G-string and black pleather hot pants. A
black leather fedora and mid-thigh black leather boots with a substantial heel
completed the outfit.

She soon made her debut on
stage, and she quit waiting tables at Lena’s after the first week.
 
The money was too good, and she started
living a nighttime existence that clashed with the early morning and afternoon
service hours at Lena’s.
 
She
promised herself she’d be a better customer than server for Lena’s, and work at
the club became her focus.
 
She was
squirreling money away where she could. She still had her eye on opening a
business of her own someday.
 
But
for now, she was going to enjoy herself.

The second time she saw Alex
was a night Frank sent her to the podium outside the club to do a little street
advertising and work the door.
 
She
was enough of a draw that he could send her out early to sell tickets and the club
would fill faster.
 
Those drawn to
her would also sit longer and buy more overpriced drinks if they knew she’d be
on stage.
 
She built up a bit of a
following quickly, and she started dancing with other girls, which also brought
in more money and put her in more demand.
 
She was doing her best carnival barker imitation when she saw a flash of
a smile across the street.
 
Even
though Alex’s hair had grown out and was near her shoulders, Wren knew it was
the same girl she’d seen before.

Alex was with her friend
Kirby that night. They’d been to dinner, and they were headed toward Oz--Alex
for work and Kirby for drinks and a little dancing.
 
Wren spotted Alex through the crowd, and
locked her eyes on her, watching her move closer to the club.
 
She and Kirby were laughing at some
private joke as they passed near the club, and Wren spoke up above the din of
the crowd trying to get their attention.
 
Other than a quick glance in her direction, they ignored her.
 
She watched them move up the street.