BWHYB - Chapter One

Danny Wire was barefoot on stage, stilettos where just too dangerous after a few liters of Jack and a cocktail of pills bought for a hundred bucks and a blow job in an unnamed alley of Vegas. The twenty bucks spent on makeup concealor at the advice of another dancer was also well spent. It advertised to conceal dark circles and other imperfections, which it did. It was great for bruises left by overzealous clients or rough surfaces like concrete, but it did little to cover scabs from broken glass or that knife wound Danny received from a turf battle with Chantilly last week. Those she just had to hope would heal fast, that her clients wouldn’t care enough to complain or that Vido, her boss, wouldn’t be around to notice. 

Tonight she had told the light guy, to use the pink spotlights only and no direct light. The clients like the dark anyway. Most of them gravitated to the booths lining the walls of the club where their faces could be hidden in a veil of black from any tourists that might stumble over Club Erotica and dared to step inside. Tonight there was a group of four college boys sitting at the stage, who booed her as she hit the stage hard after losing her grip on the pole. She made up for it by shaken her tits in their face. They rewarded her with smiles and a few bucks, college boys were easy to please. She could feel Benito’s glare follow her as she left the stage and prepared tonight’s pleas and hoped he wasn’t getting sick of hearing it from her.

Benito was the bouncer, stage manager and Vido’s most trusted body guard. He was a large Latino man, with one too many tattoos and bullet holes, but he had soft eyes and a big belly that Danny thought made him resemble more of a teddy bear that the hardened gang member he claimed to be. Danny was good at her job; she learned fast what type of guys liked girls like her and how to work them. Danny’s looks were average by anyone’s standards; straight dark hair nicely proportioned facial features, nothing special, but she was thin in all the right places with extra curves where it mattered. Benito was one of those men who liked girls like her, not so much for her looks but because he saw the broken mess she was and thought he could be the one to save her from all of it. If he would have known she didn’t want saving he might have kicked her out on the street long ago. Saving was the last thing Danny wanted, she knew she wasn’t worth it and wished people would stop trying.

“Damn it, you’re a mess?” Benito looked Danny up and down.

“Come on, Benito, give a girl a break.” She was in no mood for his knight in white armor act.

“Did you even try to clean up before coming in tonight?” There was dried blood from a scrape on Danny’s knee and lipstick stained the skin around her lips.

“I tried.” In truth she didn’t try at all. She hadn’t been home in the last three days. Being left alone only meant that the demons she was trying to drown could be heard that much louder and the last remnant of her conscience would start adding up her worth on this earth which meant the chunk of cold metal she kept in her shoe box would start calling her name. Aside from all of that she could feel eyes on her. Maybe it was her father looking down from heaven, but she felt more exposed when she was alone than standing naked on a stage. So she stayed away for as long as she could and popped pills to help her sleep the few hours her nightmares would allow.

“Yea? Well, ya need to try a little harder.” He could hear the pout in her voice starting to change. Danny was like a feral cat, when pity didn’t work she was fast to change her approach. Her tongue was more venomous than a black widow, she could hit like a prized fighter and man, she sure like to cause a scene. When the Steve, the bartender tried banning her from drinking one night she took a bottle on stage with her. After drinking half and spitting the other half on the patrons she threw the empty bottle at the bartender hitting him in the back of the head and then launched herself over the bar at Steve, arms and legs flying, all scratching and biting. If she wasn’t Vido’s favorite girl, there would have been hell to pay, but Vido just laughed in amusement and still makes fun of Steve for getting his a*s kicked by a scrawny, two-bit w***e.

Benito grabbed Danny tight around the wrist and started dragging her to the small bathroom that the employees shared. He closed the door behind them. It was a cramped fit, Benito hated it and usually used the alley out back, and the room seemed even smaller when you had to shove someone in there against their will.

“I can’t keep covering for you.” Benito pulled out his first aid kit. Over the years he had become a combination of makeup artist, seamstress, pharmacist, and enabler. Along with the necessities like rubbing alcohol and band aids, his little box included everything from mascara to the Plan B pill. Danny had a mouth that would make any sailor blush and the upper cut to make them jealous, but as soon as that door closed she’d crumble and the waterworks would start. Benito didn’t know if it was him or if she just was that messed up. Gently he cleaned her knees up and tried to fix her face as best he could through the tears. Maybe she was playing him, like Steve always said, but there was a pain in her cry he had never heard. Nine times out of ten he would end up tearing up too.

“Come on, there’s a client asking for ya.” He handed her a tissue and mascara and waited with the door open for her to collect herself.

“Who is it?”

Benito kept his eyes on the floor. “Some new guy. Table 12.”

Danny cringed. There were a few tables in the very back corner with large pink velvet privacy curtains that patrons could reserve for the higher price menu items. Most of the girls would pitch a fit if they had to visit those tables more than once a week. She cupped his large face in her hands and pulled his face to look at her.

“High roller?”

“He’s dressed real nice, full suit, and none of that Men’s Warehouse s**t either, looks custom. He even had cuff links. Real pretty one too, very metro.”

Danny pushed up to her tip toes so she could kiss him on top his shaved head. “Nice, we’ll eat good tonight Papi.”

“That’s my girl.” Danny always gave him a nice cut of her tips. He exhaled from deep inside his heart. Did he love money more than her? Steve would say she was just a w***e trying to keep her job, sharing tips was nothing more than job security. Benito did love her though. Steve was just pissed because Danny beat him so bad he had to get twenty stitches and ruin his pretty face. Tonight would be the night, Benito thought. He would go to Vido and ask to have Danny taken of the payroll. He made good money; he could take care of her good. He watched Danny saunter away.

“Table twelve.” She said to Steve. Danny wasn’t Vido’s favorite girl just because she had a nice body. She was his favorite because she could swallow just about anything if she had a few shots of Jack for a chaser. Before Steve could pour her drink she grabbed the shot glass and bottle, tonight she needed a little more than one.

“Bring it back this time, okay.”

She flipped him the bird as she walked away. Jerk was always trying to cut her off. Danny pulled back the pink curtain and straddled the man in the booth. She didn’t look at him, she never did. It was much easier to justify the things she did if she didn’t humanize the act. He started to talk, she hated talkers, the ones who should have went to a shrink, or confessed to their wives, not a dancer. She kept grinding hoping he would shut up. 

“Don’t you remember me?”

“Oh, yea, sure honey, you were here just a few days ago.”

“Danny, look at me. Don’t you remember me?”

Great, he was a romantic. They were even worse than the talkers. At least once a week she had some poor sap asking her to marry him. Benito just shook his head and escorted them out. Benito said it was just one more reason why she was Vido’s favorite; she knew how to keep them coming back.

Danny sighed. “Listen honey.”

“Look at me Daniela” Her heart raced, she thought she might pass out or loose the contents of her stomach. No one there knew her real name. She looked at the man. At first she didn’t recognize him. Last she remembered he had a horrible buzz cut and that was five years ago. She smacked him hard and stood up to leave.

“Danny please just sit down and talk to me” He looked her up and down. “I had no idea things had gotten this bad for you.” Years ago when Danny told Tse Sung that she was pregnant he begged her to get an abortion. In retrospect she wished she had, her whole life had fallen apart that day. Tse Sung was much older than her; she wasn’t even legal at the time. Just fourteen, she wasn’t even close. Danny assumed he was married or just freaked out because of her age. She told him over coffee and hadn’t seen him since.  

Tse Sung slid a picture across the table. It was a little girl with the same long black hair and dark eyes as Danny and Tse Sung’s soft lips, high cheek bones and thin frame.  The doctor in the maternity ward of Liberty Psychiatric Hospital told her the baby was stillborn, but she had heard the cry as they wheeled the small body from the room. She spent four years there and this last year had been spent drowning away the echo of that cry and that place. Whatever was left of her soul and his love she was attempting to scrape away with pills, alcohol and the touch of anyone who promised to bring her a little closer to death’s doorstep.

“What do you want me to do about it Tse Sung?” Years ago she begged him to run away with her and raise their baby. Like a coward he abandoned her. The wounds he left her with had been pestering for five years but it hardly mattered now. She was in no shape to start over.

“I took her.” Tse Sung looked scared.

“What do you mean you took her?”

“They were hurting her, so I took her. Danny, I can’t keep her, I’m too close to them.”

Danny stared at the little girl in the picture, she felt sick, and his riddles weren’t helping the growing pain in her head. She needed a drink and a good f**k and for Tse Sung to shut up. She could drink away the memory of this night just like she had the vision of her dead mother. She was fidgeting wildly, or maybe it was just the shakes. She took a long swig from her good friend Jack, her best friend she thought. The only one who truly gets me, Mr. Jack.

“You feel off their radar a long time ago, they just assumed you’d end up dead in a ditch. I have her with a friend, but I can’t keep her.”

“What am I supposed to do? Look at me.”

“Stop that!” Tse Sung swatted at Danny’s hand, she had been absent mindedly twiddling with the bottle.

Please help me?”

“You should’ve thought things through better.” She stood to leave.

“Please, you’re her mother.” He softly held her hand for what seemed like an eternity. “If you can help me, meet me here.” He handed her a slip of paper with an address, she slipped it in her bra and left.

Danny turned to leave, she was still trying to decide if she cared and if that even mattered. She threw open the curtain and tripped on it as she left. She crashed hard on her knees, she tried to catch herself on a table in front of her. Instead of stopping her fall the table tipped over sending plates of food and a pitcher of beer crashing down with her. Tse Sung rushed to help; she yanked her arm away from him and hurried to the changing room behind the stage. Benito followed her as she snaked through the tables when he caught up to her in the group dressing room she was pulling on a pair of jeans.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m not feeling so hot Benito.” She kissed him on the check and left.

What kind of mother could she possibly be? Where would she go, she had no family. What kind of work could she find with her record? Who was going to hire her? Danny wondered what her daughter would be like, what had they named her, how would the poor girl react to a complete stranger? After all, that’s what she was now, an alcoholic, strung out stranger. She wondered the streets until her feet hurt. She didn’t know when she made the decision to help Tse Sung, somewhere between Desert Inn and Flamingo she felt her pace start to pick up and she found herself standing in the lobby of his condo building. She would leave this town but she had one thing to do before she left. Danny slid her key into the private elevator, pressed the button for Vido’s floor and stood with her back against the cold glass of the elevator. The weight of what she was about to do felt heavy on her chest. She felt like the whole world had crashed down around her and she was going to suffocate. It wouldn’t be the first time her little world came crashing down and she supposed it wouldn’t be the last. How many times had she begged to die? How many times did she feel the tug of someone else picking her back up when all she wanted to do was give up? She kept coming back like the long shot in the last round. She was sick of fighting for a piece of this dirty world, but every time her finger was on the trigger she could feel those eyes on her. The life went out of her legs and she sunk down to the floor. Why wouldn’t they just let her die? What was she thinking? How was she supposed to be this child’s savior when her soul was filled with nothing but black death?

But maybe, just maybe. Maybe if she had something to fight for. Danny tried to think back to when she had a dream of what she might become, not what she had become. At some point there had to be something good about her. She tried to think past all the pills, past the nightmares and electric shock. She banged her head against the wall. She wasn’t the girl you went to for help. A good time, a hook up, someone to compare yourself to so you could feel better about who you were, that’s who she was.

All of mess her life was in now was Vido’s fault. Her head may have been messed up but the downward spiral was started by Vido. He gave her the pills. She was just stripping when she met him. He gave supplied the alcohol. He introduced her to his world, started pimping her out to his clients and using her for himself. There was some good left in her before Vido, Where Benito saw someone to save, Vido saw her true desire, to kill the little girl left inside, to cut her out and drown her judgmental voice. Before she left she wanted to get paid for all that he had done. There was a safe in Vido’s office. Vido was an idiot and way too trusting of her. She had watched him open the safe enough times to know where he kept the combo and the key. Danny stepped off the elevator.

“Hello? Anybody home?” It was early morning and normally at this time Vido would be out checking out his clubs to see if they were successful the night before. After that he would start the street crawl looking for parties and new clients. The only one around at this time would be his cleaner Hagar, who most likely just finished cleaning up after last night’s party.

“Oh, Hello, Danny. Did you need something?” Hagar hated Danny, she was sick of cleaning up Danny’s messes. There was a white towel in Hagar’s hand, she was wiping up something from the dining room table.

“What’s that?”

Hagar looked down at the towel that was spotted with red liquid. “Bloody Mary.”

“Oh. I think I left my cell phone here the other night.”

“What’s the number, I’ll call it?”

“I turned off the ringer.”

“Oh.” Hagar looked at the mess in the dining room and hesitated, trying to decide what was more important.

“That’s okay, I’ll look for it.” She winked at Hagar, “It could only be in a few places.” She hoped that Hagar had too much on her hands to bother with what she was up too.

Thank goodness for Vido’s stupidity. She found the key buried in the bottom drawer of his desk and the key hid in the pages of the dictionary. Only Vido would have such an impressive office and fill his bookshelf with things like a dictionary and smut magazines. There was more money in the safe than she had expected. There was a brief moment when she contemplated taking it all and wished she had brought a bigger bag. In the end she took fifty thousand it was more than enough to get her started. It wasn’t enough to atone for the things he had done to her; she wanted it to hurt him more. Sitting in the middle of his desk were the keys to his purple Maserati. He just bought it and had been bragging non-stop. Danny shrugged and shoved the keys in her back pocket.

She yelled at Hagar on the way out, “Found it.”

“Okay.” Hagar was scrubbing at a dark stain in the carpet and didn’t even look up at her when she left.

Danny indulged in a celebratory fist pump when the elevator doors closed. It had been a long time since she felt like living. For so long, she had been working at things she hated hoping that something or someone would put an end to her misery.

Danny drove down the strip in that sweet Maserati hoping she would see Vido so she could run him over with his precious car. The only thing that could make her happier would be to see the look on his face when he found out his car was gone or Hagar’s face when she realized it all happened on her watch. Danny took out the address, she knew the place well, it was a crappy hotel in the older part of Vegas that some of her older clients favored.

Reviews

[Lorrie]

This story has caught me straight from the beginning. You have very good character development, and very interesting characters at that. I agree w Anita that it's raw and to the point, the way those characters would be. Aside from a good editing, I think this is a good story. There are grammatical errors and some choppy sentences that need to be straightened out, but an editor could do a lot of that. The only character Tse Sung- I love the name but in the same respect it's hard to say in my head, lol. Good story. I'm going on to the next chapter.
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[Coyote Poetry]

You have create some interesting characters and a lot of situations in this chapter. I like how the story started. Allowing the reader to understand the dancer and the bouncer. I like how you led me in your words to the table where old problems rebirth. A excellent chapter. You have my attention.
Coyote

[Anita]

I actually really like this book so far. To me its raw and to the point. I think there were a few grammatical mistakes but other than that i love the way how you described things. I can feel her pain. keep it up!
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