She followed him to the back room, which they used as a catch all for back up poles, overstock, and what not. But when he opened the door this time, she found a sparkling-clean room with yellow walls that still smelled faintly of the paint used to cover up the old dingy white. There were three cribs, a playpen, and several shelves stuffed with toys.
She covered her mouth with both her hands. “This is beautiful. I can’t believe you—“
But before she could finish a soft tap sounded on the door, and a plump Hispanic woman came in and introduced herself as Miss Beatriz. According to Miss Beatriz, she was certified to care for up to four children at a time and provide emergency daycare if any of the dancers should need it between the hours of eleven and six. The co-op would still be responsible for the afterschool care of the older kids, but Miss Beatriz would give the club much needed back up with the younger ones.
Lacey, who had literally had nightmares about one of the children getting hurt after what had happened with Ben and Spidey, had thrown her arms around Suro’s neck and thanked him with a face full of kisses. As it turned out his gifts weren’t as good as the ones the strippers got from their admirers.
They were way better.
“So I guess you think you’re hot shit now?” said a voice behind her when she was taking inventory at the bar before the day-shift bartender arrived at noon.
She turned around to see Candy, dressed in the pink teddy and white boots she wore for her rare daytime set.
“I don’t think I’m anything but counting these bottles,” Lacey answered. “Can I help you?”
Candy sniffed. “Here’s the rest of the rent money I owe you. Just got a hundred dollar tip off my lap dance. Big spender from that businessman over there. He’s Korean like the new boss.” Then she sniffed again.
“Suro’s Japanese and Chinese,” Lacey said, not liking the sound of that sniff. Lacey didn’t look like she had a cold or allergies, and she’d been short on rent money the last two months in a row. If that didn’t scream coke habit, she didn’t know what did. “And you’re not supposed to just give me your tips. You know everyone else has to get their percentage during tip out at the end of your shift.”
Candy sniffed again, this time with contempt. “That’s some bullshit. I’m the one working, not them busboys, bartenders, and bouncers. Who made that rule?”
“Tony did,” she answered.
Candy adjusted her breasts under the nightie. “Well, let me talk to the Chinaman then.” She gave Lacey a disparaging look. “He like chocolate, maybe I can convince him to change it.”
For a moment, the mere suggestion of Candy trying to rub up on Suro made Lacey’s mind go red with rage. She imagined herself cracking a beer bottle against the bar and using its jagged edges to show Candy exactly who Suro belonged to.
But her father’s voice came back to her like Jiminy Cricket. “Ain’t never no reason two ladies need to be fighting over a man, non,” he’d told her once, after he’d gotten cut on his arm pulling apart two girls who’d gotten into a knife fight over the affections of some thug in Cofi’s. “All it does is make both them heifers look bad. You ‘member that sure truth, cher.”
Lacey held herself still and said, “Go ahead and try it, Candy. But realize, he’s not as lenient as me. I’m going to give you a month, until Thanksgiving, to kick your cocaine habit, but if Suro picks up on it as easily as I did, he might fire you on the spot. Be careful.”
Candy’s smirk disappeared, but she didn’t back down. “Nobody’s going to be firing me just cuz I’m having a little fun on my own time.”
“Maybe that was true at the other clubs where you worked, but The Matrix has a zero-tolerance policy, not to mention a duty to tell the state if we think you’re an unfit mother because of what you’re shoving up your nose.”
Candy sniffed sharply and her back went straight. “I don’t do it around my kid.”
“Don’t do it at all,” Lacey said. “Those are the rules. You’ve got a month.”
Candy walked away then, but not before muttering, “Bitch!” under her breath just loud enough for Lacey to hear.
Lacey sighed and made a mental note to check in on Spidey in the co-op daycare while Candy was dancing. Despite what people outside the industry might think, most of the single mothers who worked at the club loved their kids and put their needs first. In fact, that’s why many of them ended up taking jobs like this—the pay was good and The Matrix was a decent club that treated its girls like the precious commodity they were. But just like with any group of people, there were always one or two rotten apples.
To Lacey’s relief, Spidey was fine, clean, and healthy and he seemed in good spirits when she came to visit him. “You’re getting so big!” she said, picking him up, and cuddling him in her arms.
As someone who would never be able to safely have more kids, she wondered how anyone could choose cocaine over this little bundle of goodness. But she also knew when you were young, like Candy, and didn’t plan to have a kid, it could turn your whole life upside down.
The memory of her own unexpected pregnancy came back to her. She’d only been in college a year when she’d started having flu-like symptoms like nausea, nasal congestion, and body aches that wouldn’t go away. At first she had chalked it up to her strenuous work course at Rutgers, but then she had nearly fainted in the middle of her Introduction to Financial Accounting final, which had been administered in a sweltering room with a faulty air conditioning system. After finding her outside the business school building, desperately breathing in the cool spring air, the T.A. had suggested she go get a pregnancy test.
“If you’re pregnant, I can let you make it up at a later date,” she told Lacey. “If not, you’re going to have to get a doctor’s note.”
Prior to that moment, Lacey hadn’t even considered the possibility she might be pregnant. She and Hector had used condoms the few times they’d had sex. Well, most of the time. There had been a party at his frat a month earlier, when they’d both drunk more than they should have....
With a stomach full of dread, she went to get a pregnancy test from the local CVS and took it back to the dorm room she shared with two other freshman girls.
When the blue plus sign appeared on the white stick, the bottom fell out of her world.
Though even then, she didn’t realize life as she knew it had just ended in more ways than one. Believing Hector to be the upstanding young man he’d presented himself as, she’d gone over to his frat house to tell him what the stick had just revealed. She’d found him in his nearly empty house. It was two days after the end of classes and most of his brothers had already cleared out of the house. The only reason Hector was still there was because his summer internship at Prudential didn’t start for another week, and he had decided to volunteer for graduation services as opposed to going home to his father’s splashy mansion in Wilbur Section.