“Hey,” I called when he looked up from his desk.

His eyes narrowed.

And there was the sharp astuteness.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said quickly, coming around one of the chairs in front of his desk and sitting down.

He sat back and stared at me.

“Life’s a little rocky lately,” I came clean (kinda). “Family stuff with my brother and his ex and their kids. It’ll be okay.”

He looked to Dorian, who had taken a seat beside me. His mouth got tight at what Dorian silently conveyed. He again looked to me, then, wisely, he let it go (I knew, only for now).

“I got a proposition for you I want you to take away and chew on,” he declared.

“All right,” I said.

“I wanna move the club to a revue.”

I had no idea what that meant.

“Sorry?” I asked.

“You, Hattie, Pepper, Dominique and maybe Champagne, along with Lottie, will have the stage for your own dances. Your music. Your choreography. You can take it all off. You can keep something on. I don’t give a shit. As long as it’s sexy, entertaining, and keeps me havin’ a velvet rope outside my door.”

I found myself breathing funny.

“I’ll hire other girls who’ll do routines together in between you girls doin’ your thing,” he went on. “Burlesque style. Filler will be general stripping, though the headliners won’t be onstage during this time, so patrons have plenty of breathers in the program to buy drinks and regulars still think they’re comin’ to a titty bar. And maybe I’ll throw in a comedian to MC.”

Holy shit.

This was so cool.

“Like Lottie, tips will be collected for you,” he continued. “I’ll be uppin’ the cover charge, so I’ll also pay you more as a base salary since you’ll have to come up with your own routines and wardrobe. But to get you started on that last, I’ll give you a stipend. Only thing you gotta do for the stipend is sign a contract that says you won’t quit for six months. You don’t do that, and you want your time onstage, you gotta provide your own shit. You don’t want your time onstage, you can dance in the burlesque. You don’t want a part of any of this, and I go this way, we’re gonna have to have another chat. You can serve tables, and waitresses don’t make dancer money, but they don’t do bad. Or you can tend bar.”

With this offer on the table, I wasn’t tending bar.

“I’m interested,” I said in a voice shimmering with excitement, my mind reeling with ideas, music choices, costumes.

He nodded, some tension I didn’t notice leaving his face.

He didn’t want to lose me, freak me or land any unwitting pressure on me to do something I didn’t want to do.

I might have failed to mention, I totally loved my boss.

“We go this way, we’re gonna invest in a few things that’ll allow you to be more creative,” he continued. “Dorian and Lottie have brought me ideas for lights and lasers, sets and props and other shit. You got anything you need, depending on the cost, I’ll consider it.”

“Can I Flashdance this mother?” I asked.

“Girl, you dump a bucket of water on you and kick around wearing a wet teddy, I’ll give you a bonus,” he answered.

Finally!

My life was looking up.

“I’m totally in,” I said.

Smithie smiled at me.

“Have you asked Pepper or Hattie?” I queried.

“Pepper, last night. She’s in. Hattie’s up when she gets here.”

“Smithie, I think this is a great idea,” I declared.

He looked to Dorian.

That message was clear.

I turned to Dorian.

“Ian, I think this is a great idea,” I told him.

He tipped up his chin, cool as shit, but I saw his dimples popping.

I smiled at him.

And made a mental note to go out the next day and find a kickass red teddy.

* * *

The next morning, my phone rang, waking me up.

I saw my alarm said eleven o’clock.

That meant a solid seven hours of sleep.

Things were looking up.

I peered at the screen of my phone.

It said MOM.

Okay, that could mean things were going back down, if Brian and/or Angelica got hold of her.

Or it could just mean she wanted to have Saturday lunch with her daughter.

I reached out, grabbed my phone and took the call.

“Hey, Mom,” I greeted.

“What in the blazes is going on?” she asked.

Yup.

My luck.

Things were going back down.

“Mom—”

“Now, Brenda called me, told me she had one helluva time calmin’ Angie down, she was beside herself, cryin’ and carryin’ on because you confronted her about finding a job and told her she wasn’t being a good mother.”

Ohmigod!

That woman was the worst!

How had this escaped me for nearly ten years?

“And Angie was in such a state, Brenda had to take the kids for the weekend, and she had plans this weekend she had to cancel so she wasn’t real thrilled you chose this time to share your thoughts with her daughter,” Mom kept going.

I opened my mouth.

But Mom wasn’t finished.

“Now, between you and me,” she said, “I been thinking a lot, and not just lately, but for some time, that Angie needs to take a good hold on her bootstraps and pull those babies up. But you think maybe you and me, and maybe Brenda, and also Brian, could sit down and have a chat about it and how we’d approach it without you bein’ pissy about Angie calling you a morning after you had to dance to help out and you laying into her?”

You know?

Boone was right.

It supremely sucked.

But he was right.

I was enabling this shit.

By either not extricating myself, or not telling it like it was, I was part of the problem.

No more.

I had no reason whatsoever to shield Angelica from whatever shit was going to befall her because of her own actions.

None at all.

“Angie gets bi-monthly massages. She’d called me about a migraine which meant she needed my help with the kids, but she really just wanted to sleep in. She was having a facial that day. She goes out to lunch with her girlfriends, has food, wine, a good time. And she does it wearing designer flip-flops that cost over three hundred dollars that she hides from us because if we saw them, we wouldn’t give her money for her massages, her lunches, her facials and her designer shoes.”

Mom said not one word.

She didn’t even make a noise.

So I kept going.

“That morning, I came to the house and Portia had made breakfast for her and Jethro. Cereal. She also helped Jethro pack his lunch. And she stuffed his book bag. While Ang had a lie-in. The house was a mess. There was little food in the kitchen. But she had a facial planned.”

Mom remained silent.

“When I looked in on her, she asked me for money for a field trip for Jethro that I’m assuming she either already paid for, since this month you’ve given her a couple hundred, Brenda has given her a couple hundred, I’ve given her more than a couple hundred and Brian has given her two thousand.”