Bull Mountain(58)

“You need a shot?” Todd asked, lining up two shot glasses on the bar between them.

“Always,” Marion said, looking up from the thin stack of bills she’d been counting. By the look of what was in her hands, and what was still folded and feathering out from under her thong, she’d be lucky to crack sixty bucks. So much for the steak dinner.

“J?ger, right?”

“You know me too well, Todd.”

Todd poured the thick German green death-flavored liquor into the glasses and they hammered them down in unison, slamming the empties down on the bar. It wasn’t the kind of burn she liked best, but it was free, and free was good. Todd cleared the glasses and turned to an open foam clamshell of chicken wings sitting on the ice cooler. He dipped one in some kind of white sauce and shredded every bit of meat from the bone with one bite. Marion looked at the box of food and pouted a very intentional and practiced pout.

“You hungry?” Todd said, using one hand to cover his mouthful of food. “I got a ton of them. No way I can eat them all.”

The meth in Marion’s system stripped her of any kind of appetite—in fact, the smell made her a little nauseated—but she wasn’t thinking about herself.

“Oh, no, no,” Marion said. “I’m good. I was just thinking that my kid might be getting a little hungry, and I didn’t exactly break the bank tonight.”

Todd wiped his mouth with a bar napkin and tossed it in the trash. “No problem,” he said. “I’ll hook you up. Just remind me before you go.”

“You’re the best, Todd.”

“That’s what all the ladies say,” Todd said, shining his smile at her like a spotlight.

Marion rolled her eyes, but she was pretty sure that all the ladies did say that. Todd had turned back to the wings when the phone hanging next to the rows of liquor bottles behind him lit up. It wasn’t the regular bar phone but the direct line to Cutter, holed up in the back. The boss rarely ever came out on the floor. Todd snatched up the phone and held it in place with his shoulder while he listened and tried to divide the chicken wings into two piles. Marion was still lingering in hopes of getting another free shot before returning to the wild, and she watched Todd until he stopped what he was doing, looked at her, and said something into the phone she couldn’t hear. Marion raised her hands in a silent “What’s up?” motion, and finally Todd hung up.

“Cutter wants to see you in his office.”

“For what?”

“Dunno. He didn’t say, but he said now.”

Marion swirled the soggy plastic baggie in her mouth and slid off the bar stool as if her bones had suddenly turned to jelly. She folded her money in half and tucked it into her bikini top and made her way toward the back of the club, to Cutter’s office.

4.

The back office was nothing more than a converted storage closet. No windows or places to sit other than the folding chair behind Cutter’s desk. Besides a stack of filing cabinets against the far wall, a few signed photos of various “Featured Attraction” strippers stuck to the wall with Scotch tape, and an ashtray that should have been dumped five years ago, there was nothing else in the room except the man himself. Cutter looked no different from the bums he catered to out front. His clothes might have been more expensive, but his skin was just as cracked and Marlboro-dried, and his tightly curled black hair looked like it had been freshened up in a truck stop sink. He thought the blue-tinted glasses he always wore made him look European. Marion thought they made him look like the cheap pimp he was.

“You wanted to see me, Cutter?”

He didn’t even look up from the newspaper he’d been reading. “Get your shit, Marion, and get out.”

“What? Why?” She acted surprised but knew why before he even said it.

Now he looked at her. “What did I tell you about bringing kids here?”

Marion’s defensive posture deflated. “C’mon, Cutter . . .”

“Don’t ‘C’mon, Cutter’ me. I told you last time not to be bringing that little shit around here. I got enough problems with the cops and the holy-roller commissioners wanting to shut me down as it is. I don’t need them finding out I’m running a preschool in the parking lot.”

“I got nowhere else to take him.”

“Not my problem, honey.”

“Give me a break, here, Cutter . . .” Marion leaned down hard on the desk, hoping this would be a cleavage fix. It wasn’t.

Cutter stood up. “Give you a break? Are you kidding me? I gave you a break when I hired you. I figured that rocking little body of yours might be worth investing in, but it ain’t. You act like nobody has the right to even look at it. News flash—this is a strip club. I gave you another break last time I caught that little rug rat of yours in the men’s room. I’m out of breaks. You’ve been here for almost a year, and what do you have to show for it? Nothing. No regulars. No money. Hell, I’m losing money keeping you here. All you do is consort with the darkies and cram as much of that shit as you can up your nose. Don’t think it ain’t common knowledge that you’re gaked out of your head ninety percent of the time, gritting your teeth and scratching like a damn junkie. The other ten percent is spent at my bar begging for my liquor. Liquor I have to pay for. I’m sick of it. I ain’t carrying your ass no more and I want you gone. Now get your shit and get the f*ck out before I get Moose in here to throw your ass out.”