Sign Here(11)

That was how she met Ruth Caroway.





PEYOTE





“WELCOME TO THE HONEY Pot!” Trey said as he gripped my arm and led me through the red curtain, perfume and smoke as thick as the velvet. The loud music and the warm flashing lights provided aggressively synthetic comfort. Everything was sticky and sickly sweet.

“I got forty dollars in ones,” Trey said, handing me a stack of crumpled money. It was damp.

“How about you just keep it?”

“No, no, no. We’re at the Honey Pot!” he said, shoving it into my chest. “You can pay me back tomorrow.”

“Where is Cal?” I asked.

“Late,” he answered. “Come on, let’s get our party on!” He snapped his fingers in the air, and a waitress came over. “Three J?ger shots, please,” he said, clapping me on the back.

I grimaced.

“It’s the house specialty!”

I felt a buzz in my pocket and, without knowing anything about the message, was grateful for it.

“Trey, I gotta answer this; it might be Cal,” I said, holding up my beeper.

“Hurry back,” he said. “Or I might need to drink your shot!”

When I got through the crowd and out the front door, the air almost tasted fresh. Not quite, but almost. You know that feeling when you’re in a theater or the subway and you really have to cough, but you’re doing everything you can to keep it in? That’s how the air feels in Hell, all of the time. Even so, when I got out that door, I looked up, some ancient part of me still hoping to see stars.

“Pey!”

I checked the line, which had grown since I arrived. Cal was there, smashed between a crowd of men with thick rings on even thicker fingers. I pulled her forward.

“She’s with me,” I said.

The bouncer looked me up and down and, after an excruciatingly long time, gave the smallest of nods. I pulled Cal past him and through the front doors, the smoke and fog of the club hitting me as hard as waking up in the bathtub.

“They wouldn’t let me in without a man,” she said, smoothing her work shirt.

“I didn’t choose this place.”

“Oh, hey there, wet blanket! Way to finally join the party!” Trey shouted at Cal when we arrived. I helped her take off her coat and put it on top of mine. Trey handed us both shots. Cal looked at her glass and back at Trey, miserable. I smiled brightly and clinked my shot glass with his, then tossed the liquid over my shoulder before bringing the glass to my lips.

“Pey!” Cal shrieked. I turned and saw a dark brown stain running down her shirt, as if made by a giant slug.

“I’m sorry,” I said, grabbing napkins.

“Party foul, Trip! I’ll get another round, but you’re buying,” Trey said, snapping his fingers again.

“It was a nice try,” Cal whispered into my ear as I dabbed at her shirt with napkins. I took the next shot in one gulp and gave the waitress my credit card.

“The first thing you two can learn about sales is how to make yourselves approachable. That’s why I brought you here.” His eyes were already at half-mast, but that’s another thing about Hell: you have no idea what alcohol will do to you. You could drink all night and not feel a thing, or have a few and get completely hammered. It depends on your intention. If you want to stay responsible, you will get wasted. You’d think we’d have figured out a system by now, but we haven’t. Regardless, you always wake up with a hangover. Never debilitating, but very unpleasant.

That’s our comfort zone.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be teaching us anything,” I said. “Plus, I’m just about to complete my own—”

“So, what I want you to do is sell one of these strippers on buying us a round of drinks,” Trey finished, ignoring me. And then he leaned back, proud of himself.

“They work here. Why would they buy us drinks?” Cal asked. I could hear the edge of panic in her voice.

“That’s the point. If you can sell a stripper at a strip club on the deal of paying for booze for her customers, then you’ll be ready for the real thing,” Trey said.

“I actually really am close to—”

“No one cares, Pey,” Trey said, pushing my cheek with his hand, a slap in slow motion. “Go! Go, grasshoppers! Go!”

I stood up just so he wouldn’t touch me anymore. Cal stood too. We walked over to the stage and looked up at the dancers, moving like eels in a tank. I swallowed.

“Look, I can take care of this, okay? Don’t worry,” I said.

“I don’t think this is a team activity.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t.”

Cal looked at the stage and then back at me, her eyes shaking a little. I smiled the best I could.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’ve got this. You get some air.”

“Thank you, Pey,” she said, putting her hand on my arm. It had been a long time since someone touched me. Someone I hadn’t just swindled into eternal damnation, I mean.

The way I saw it, there were two ways to get strippers to buy me drinks. One: I play the sympathy card. I tell them I’m getting bumped Downstairs, and I cry everywhere until they buy me a drink to get my sadness off them. Two: I pay them. Option number two seemed like the lesser amount of work; I didn’t have any tears built up. So I leaned over the stage in front of me.