Bianca looked at the man for a moment. He was in some casual slacks and a nice button-up shirt. Again, with the way folks talked about The Den, she was expecting to roll up to some kind of biker club joint where everybody was in cut-off leather jackets with no shirts underneath.
“Why not?” she said. “I mean, honestly?”
He stared at her, waiting for her to finish.
“I mean, look at you. You look uptight. Seems like you can really use a nice dance, and plus, I always support my friends no matter what their hustle is.” She looked him over then took a swig of her drink.
He chuckled a bit. “It’s really nice to support your friends and the hustle. I can respect that. But a dance I don’t need, honey. Maybe I will get you one.”
Bianca started moving to the song that the DJ was playing while she drank her drink. Once the liquid was gone, she began picking the edible fruit out and eating it one by one.
“Yo, Tee,” he called out to the bartender. “Can’t you see the lady’s drink is empty?”
“No dances for me. I’m a lady, honey.” Bianca picked up the napkin off the bar. “It’s a gentlemen’s club.” She ran her fingers across the word gentlemen on the napkin. “So it’s a playground for gentlemen, not ladies. This isn’t the place for me to indulge in dances. Plus, I’m not a girl who likes girls,” she said with a smile.
“Nice to know, Miss . . . lady.”
She nodded and then stood up. “I have to go to the ladies’ room. Will you save my chair please?”
He looked at her as if she had said something insulting, but then he nodded. “Yes, I will be your chair-sitter for you.”
“Why, thank you, sir. By the way, my name is Bianca. Now you know me,” she said, then walked away.
En route to Miami, while on the bus, she had contemplated for hours what her alias would be, but she decided on nothing. She made up her mind that she was not going to come to Miami and live under an alias. That’s why she’d given the man her real name, as well as used her real name for everything else. Running from the truth and keeping up with a lie were two different things. The latter was much harder. Lies resulted in distrust. Bianca would need people to trust her.
Bianca’s eyes couldn’t help but notice the mystique behind the blue velvet door. Everything in Bianca wanted to “accidentally” walk to the back room that she saw a few patrons enter into every now and then, but the restrooms were clearly marked. Besides, she’d planned this all out in her mind. That was the problem, though. Sometimes things can be planned out to the T, and in the blink of an eye, it all goes straight to hell.
Bianca had to do a double take when she entered the restroom. It looked more like a restroom one would find in some high-class private clubhouse or something. It was plush! When Bianca first entered, there was a quaint little sitting room with a round couch to the left and a table in the center. To the right was a round table with four tall, high, upholstered chairs surrounding it. The room was carpeted. Not only did it look absolutely amazing to be a bathroom in a nightclub, but it smelled good. There were a mixture of perfumes and women’s fragrances on top of the lavender scent that seemed to be permeating through the vents.
Once again, Bianca got crabby looks, like the whole freaking joint was a clique, and she was the ugly, pimple-faced new girl. It did not matter that Bianca was a beautiful dime piece. She was an intruder in the eyes of these ladies.
“Hey,” Bianca said to a group of women who were clustered over on the couch, each with either a drink in hand or one sitting on the table in front of them.
Not a single one of the women replied.
Bianca looked to the couple girls on chill in two of the four chairs. Whatever they were doing prior to Bianca entering the bathroom, they ceased immediately upon seeing her. They looked like two high-school girls caught smoking in the girls’ bathroom by the school principal. Bianca was about to speak to them, but she just flipped her hand and kept it moving instead.
After exiting the little lobby area, Bianca moved into the area where the sinks were. There were four sinks on each side. Nothing fancy here, but again, everything was nice and sparkling clean. Ahead, there was a row of bathroom stalls. There were six on each side, but the stalls were huge, like those ones meant to fit a wheelchair, only these weren’t for the handicapped. Bianca walked by to find an empty one. She noticed multiple pairs of high heels in a single stall a couple times. There was giggling and chuckling coming from one stall, while moaning and groaning came from another. Bianca finally found an empty stall and went inside.
What the fuck? The stall was like a little gathering area. There was the toilet, of course, with a nice oblong lid that could kind of be used for a table if need be. There was a chair on each side that flipped out of the wall. There was also a shelf.
“Do people come in here to piss, or hold business meetings?” Bianca mumbled under her breath. That’s when it hit her. She’d been so focused on the mysterious pathway out in the club, when this was probably where she really needed to be.
When Bianca came out of the stall, she began touching up her makeup and fixing her hair in the mirror. As she touched up her lipstick, she spent the entire time ear-hustling two girls standing nearby.
“Girl, I ain’t make no money tonight. I swear shit kinda slow for me.”
“Bitch, you seen Mikey? That nigga always spend.”
The first
