The Glamorous Life 2 (16 page)

She removed her eye mask and peeped out of the plantation blind. She saw Mocha standing on the other side of the door. “Oh, shit,” she said. She jumped up and hurried to the front door to let Mocha in.

“Girl, I thought I was going to have to call Fred, the Fed, and tell him to knock your door down for a dance.” She joked of one of her faithful clients.

“Girl, if you knew the kind of night I had, you would have just let me sleep,” she said as she went down the hall and into the bathroom to pee. Mocha followed her and stood at the door.

“Girl, I’ve been calling you all morning, afternoon, and evening.”

“Evening?” she questioned, turning her nose up as she was pulling the toilet paper off of the roll. “What time is it?”

“It’s almost nine, girl.”

“Shit!”

“No shit,” Mocha said. “Me and some of everybody been calling you all day.”

“Girl, you have no idea what kind of night I had. Shit was mad real to the point I don’t even know where to start. My Big Spender found me at Imagination and Jean came trying to make me jealous, spending on every girl in the club but me. And that shit backfired on him when my Big Spender sent Jiggilo and his people in the vault for me!” She smiled as she washed her hands.

“Girl, I heard. They were talking about that shit all the way over at the Sugar Shack.”

Calliope started brushing her teeth, and asked, “For real? Damn, news travel.”

“You ain’t no gossip traveling faster than the ho stroll girl,” Mocha said.

“Did you hear that Jean got some hoes to break in my locker and steal all my outfits, my phone, dancer bag, just everything?”

“That’s ’cause he don’t feel you should dance and though he don’t show it he really love you. You know he feels like his woman shouldn’t be dancing at no club.”

“Well, if that’s love, then I don’t want or need his love. He hits me, he doesn’t talk to me, he doesn’t want me to work and make money, but what is he doing for me, besides getting me fired?”

“Well you know.” Mocha started to give her in-depth opinion on the situation but she didn’t. She looked at Calliope as a little sister she wanted the best for. “I told you that Jean was crazy and I’m not going there with you but that’s not why I drove all the way over here, damn near broke in your house, and probably got the police waiting for me to come out so they can arrest me for breaking and entering,” she exaggerated.

Calliope went back and jumped back under her white sheets and white comforter to warm up from the blasting air conditioner. “So what’s the scoop, what got you over here?”

“I got a call from the Shack and they said that your Big Spender was looking for me. Girl, I got dressed and went up there thinking that this man about to spend on me, I’m about to take over your sloppy seconds.”

“Oh yeah…” She was puzzled because she knew she was supposed to call him. She wasn’t shocked that he was back over at the Shack, but she was a little disappointed that he didn’t waste any time. But that was the typical man that frequented a strip club. This is what they did. Club hopped and chilled with the biggest booty or baddest chick from club to club. “What he spend?” she asked, curious as to how he was moving, trying not to get in her feelings. She just took him to be so different.

“Girl, I get over there and know, I’m going to be able to come up in a big way. As soon as I get there, he only wanted me to get in touch with you for him. He said you weren’t answering. I called, no answer. And then I called Compton. He said when he left you were asleep, and that’s when I came over. He broke me off to get you to call him. He said he gotta go home to Texas and it’s a must to see you before he leaves.”

Calliope smiled and that’s when Mocha pulled out her phone and called Mr. Big Spender for her and just like that sleep was no longer a priority. Getting to Big Spender was on the top of her list.

21

Calliope and Big Spender’s
timing wasn’t hitting on nothing. By the time she called him, he was already on the way to the airport. She was able to convince him to take a later flight. He would’ve changed the day altogether but it was a family emergency that required him to be at his mother’s bedside for a surgery the next morning. Calliope understood and respected that. Hell, she wished that she had a mother who was worth her dropping everything and running to.

Happy that they were able to squeeze a quick dinner filled with great conversation, at the end of the night he wrote on a small piece of paper a promissory letter, promising her that he’d make it up to her.

She felt that Lou was definitely different from any of the other guys that she had encountered but, hell, she really hadn’t taken the time to get to know any of her other customers.

Now she was at work, thinking of Lou, couldn’t seem to get him off of her mind. Cinnamon was in her zone and was about to turn it up a few more notches when one of Jiggilo’s bouncer goons crowded her space.

“Jiggilo wanna see you,” he bluntly said. She sucked her teeth, because what she heard was that he definitely was one person who could sure mess up a wet dream. Jiggilo was the owner of the club and she heard he was narcissistic, sarcastic, egotistical, and he ran that place like it was the army. “In his office,” said the bouncer goon. She knew that he most likely wanted to talk to her about the episode from last night about Jean. She was pretty sure that he was going to try to smack her with a big fine, but she was willing to bet that he wasn’t going to stress the foolery about her locker getting broken into or her workbag getting stolen.

“Not now.” Cinnamon asked, “Can it wait?” Not bothering to hide her instant irritation, she was trying to make money, why wouldn’t he wait until after her shift?

Julio, a tall, muscle-bound Spanish Rico Suave–looking guy, whom she was currently dancing for, must’ve felt her tension, locked eyes with the bouncer goons, and echoed, “It can wait until I’m done, right?”

The two men, Julio and the bouncer goon, were at a Mexican standoff.

The flunky bouncer goon wasn’t a sucker at all, and Julio had plenty of heart and could definitely hold his own even a long way from home. Holding up a finger, the bouncer goon said, “One song. On the house.” Then using the same pointer, he pointed toward another big-booty dancer standing a few feet away. “Let me introduce you to Toxic.”

Toxic, with smooth midnight skin, a banging body, and pretty face, though not as half pretty as hers, stood with her hands on her hips. In the business it was called a ho stance.

A close second, Toxic was Cinnamon’s nearest competition in the club. Cinnamon wasn’t a hater by a long shot. And there was no denying Toxic was one lethal bitch, yet Julio hesitated at first, he wanted who he wanted and didn’t feel nobody should give him what he wasn’t interested in. Cinnamon wasn’t mad; she respected loyalty.

Bouncer goon prodded by reminding him, “She’s on the house, my man.” He gave Toxic the eye and since she had his attention, she spun around in a circle, giving Julio a better gander at the goods.

Papi Chulo was slowly turning into Toxic’s Papi Chulo, in front of Cinnamon’s very eyes. She fumed, not sure who gave in first: his big head or the little head, threatening to tear the zipper from the seam of his jeans.

Papi Chulo compromised, palms up. “What the hell,” he said.

Lust, as it does in most relationships, had TKO’d over loyalty.

“You will come back, right?” he asked Cinnamon, and she nodded.

Stepping into Papi Chulo’s space, with a little something extra in the provocative sway of her hips, Toxic rubbed Cinnamon’s nose in her small victory.

Though she and Toxic were each other’s competition, it was still all love between the two outside of the club. She rolled eyes playfully. “Petty bitch.” She smiled, fully understanding that as much as she wished it was, there was no loyalty in the strip club.

They’d gotten no more than a few feet away when Cinnamon stopped cold in her tracks and turned to the bouncer goon.

“Nigga, is you fucking crazy?”

Bouncer goon watched her attitude. He said, “Jiggilo needs you—I get you. End of story. That’s it. That’s all. Now let’s go.”

“What let’s go? What the hell he want that couldn’t wait and warranted to giving a free dance to my client—shit, ain’t we trying to make money around here?” she asked.

“Don’t matter, Jiggilo’s the boss,” bouncer goon said, not really caring about her attitude at all.

Cinnamon had been working in clubs, off and on, since she was seventeen years old doing what she had to do to take care of herself and Compton. But when she first started working at the Sugar Shack some years ago, Jiggilo noticed her. Even though he ran the bigger and better clubs, he always seemed to roam into the smaller holes-in-the-wall to see what hidden treasures he could find, and there was no doubt Cinnamon was definitely one of them.

Though he’d never admit it to her face, even as an inexperienced dancer she was always one of Jiggilo’s favorites; he loved the way that the manager Mookie from the Sugar Shack always featured her on certain nights, and it never failed, how the high piles of dough rolled in for her. All the bigger and better clubs tried to approach her, but she remained loyal to the Shack.

Jiggilo knew he had something extraordinary on his hands and he had to put insurance on his investment. A year into her working the club, he too couldn’t resist her. He so badly wanted to make her his woman.

Though she was young, she was a long ways from being dumb. She learned a lot from ear hustling in the dressing rooms, while the older dancers poured their hearts out to each other. The dressing room was how she decided what role she would play in the game and what things she wouldn’t let play her. It was there she came to the conclusion that her existence in that club was for one reason and one reason only—to provide for her and her brother. Not for the drugs, not for the alcohol, not to marry any of the patrons, not to make friends (though she was glad that she picked up a couple on the way), not for the tri-sexual acts that went on freely in the clubs but for the money and the money only! With that being said, she herself needed insurance just as well.

Two years of him propositioning her, and she would never even take him serious, only becoming his friend and making him one of her allies. But she knew that he wanted her bad so at times she may have taken a little advantage of it. Especially when she needed a job, she called him up and he skipped protocol with her, no audition, no nothing. She just showed up and there was a gig waiting for her.

“He’s your boss, not mine,” Cinnamon shouted over the music in protest.

“You work at Imagination, don’t you?” Bouncer goon gave her that “this is a rhetorical question” voice and a stupid look. “And Jiggilo’s your boss then. Just go see what the man wants,” he added. “You know how y’all do anyway”—he gave her a dirty smirk—“you know you and the boss man.” She hated that the bouncer thought that her and Jiggilo had something going on.

Relenting, Cinnamon made her way through the club to Jiggilo’s office. On the way she spotted her brother and his boys making it rain.

Three years ago, she’d given him five bills to go shopping. He was now not even legal and though he loved his sister, he still had his own thoughts of how things should be done. He was the man of the house and should be taking care of his sister. Instead of buying sneakers and clothes the boy purchased a zone of crack. Partnered up with a friend, and now they had half of his part of town on smash.

Bro, out with a few of his boys enjoying the fruits of their labor, saw her looking at him and he saluted her with two fingers and a lopsided smile.

He funny,
she thought to herself, and then shook her attitude because he always seems to put a smile on her face.

Mental note: Tell the bartender to cut back on his drinks. The boy was already tight, never been one to really control his liquor anyway. And he didn’t make great decisions when he was drunk.
She shook her head, shot him a smile back, and kept it moving to Jiggilo’s office.

Outside the office door, Cinnamon took a deep breath, gathering her composure. There was no need to exasperate things by waltzing in the place with a shitty attitude.

She knocked on the metal door.

“It’s open.” Jiggilo’s voice was muffled by the thickness of the security door.

Cinnamon pushed her way inside, the office reeked of endo and cherry incense. Jiggilo sat at his desk with a neat pile of coke in front of him. To Jiggilo’s left, sitting in an overstuffed chair tastefully arranged in the corner, was a cat Cinnamon had never met before.

She took one look at him and she knew what time it was with him. His watch was the first thing that stood out. The diamonds were bouncing off the mirrors that laced the walls of the office. His dark chocolate complexion complimented the pink polo-style high-end shirt and white linen fitted slacks he was rocking. The dude was fine as fuck but in a metrosexual sort of way.

Jiggilo made the intros. “Cinnamon meet Peter, Peter meet Cinn.” Then he went on to cut to the chase. “It’s simple. I need for you to take care of me and my friend, Peter.”

Take care of …
she thought for a second and then tried to keep her composure.
No he didn’t go there. I know good and well he didn’t go there.

“Lap dance?”

Jiggilo started laughing. “You know better.”

Hands on hips and as much as she tried, she couldn’t control it. Some of that stank attitude she’d been suppressing returned. Cinnamon made it clear. “Look, I don’t think I’m his type. Nor yours anymore, for that matter.” It was obvious Peter and Jiggilo were more than just friends. More like fuck buddies, if not an outright couple.

That was the secret, although there were a few whispers. Nobody really knew for sure but the truth of the matter was that Jiggilo was as gay as a pink French poodle.

An ass bandit … a chicken hawk … a fudge packer—a straight-up bitch.

In Cinnamon’s mind, there wasn’t much lower you could drop on the totem pole than that (cum intended). She had no problem with people being gay, but she had a major issue when men would engage in relations with women and yet men were their preference. And that’s exactly what Jiggilo did. He toyed with the dancers in the club using his power and position to make them make fools of themselves. But she knew better and that wasn’t her.