Mr. Rodriguez explains how the division of her tips works

Bria instinctively straightened under the rough-looking man's flinty gaze.

"You made two-hundred and two dollars," he said, a faint sneer lifting a corner of his lip.

The mention of how much she made floored Bria. She hadn't had time to count the money and would never have imagined it was so much. If she made that much money every day she'd be able to pay her first, last and second rent by the end of the first month!

"Of that amount there are certain deductions."

"Deductions? I didn't buy anything!" she protested, leaning forward indignantly. "I only dropped the one platter..." onto the carpetted upper floor, she didn't add, where the drinks promptly soaked into the rug.

"You are allowed a certain amount of mistakes per shift. I am talking about the division of the money between what you keep and what others get."

"Others? That's not fair, I'm the one who delivered the drinks, I'm the one who was getting groped," she protested, even pulling aside one of her dress straps and baring a bruised breast to his eyes.

"Every waitress has the same deductions. Twenty-five percent go to the performers, because without them there would be no customers. Do you object to that?"

They were getting tips too, she thought mutinously, so why should they get some of hers? It wasn't fair, she thought to herself, but Mr. Rodriguez was glaring menacingly at her and she swallowed a lump.

"Fifteen percent goes to the bar, which in this case is Chris. Without the bar you would have nothing to serve." he paused for an objection, but thinking of Chris Bria didn't have the heart to object.

"A percentage that you choose goes to the bouncers. It is not mandatory, but they do not earn tips from customers so think of it as their tip. Typically they are given twenty percent," he explained. Bria nodded, but mentally dismissed the burly men from her mind.

"Twenty-five percent of the remainder goes to the house."

"What? Why?" Bria blurted, reddening under his gaze.

"Would you like to serve beer on the street instead? Do you think you'd get as many orders, have as much protection?" he asked, and she shook her head, as much from the desire to make him stop glaring as from the urge to get him to stop.

"Now, rounding your earnings to two-hundred, that means fifty goes to the strippers," he pushed a stack aside and put it into an envelope. Bria watched it go forlornly.

"Thirty goes to Chris," he said, and Bria gave a little sigh as that money went into another envelope.

"That leaves one-hundred twenty dollars. The house gets twenty-five percent of what remains after you tip the bouncers. If you give nothing to the bouncers the house would get thirty. If you gave twenty to the bouncers, the house would get twenty-five dollars. In the first case you leave with ninety. In the second you leave with seventy-five. Understand?"

Bria nodded automatically, shocked to find that her two hundred had been reduced so much.

"There are monthly quotas. Per month the house expects to earn one-thousand six-hundred and fifty dollars."

"What?" she squawked, flopping back in the chair, stunned. That was more than her rent!

"The house expects you to earn enough to to pay it seventy-five per day, on average," he explained, but Bria was still too shocked from the monthly amount to respond.

"Today was a half-shift, so we will count today as a freebie. Money from today will still count toward the monthly goal. Failing to meet the monthly goal will result in penalties."

"P... penalties? You... You can't do this. I can complain to..."

"To who?" he asked in a silky voice, but she was smart enough to see the barely hidden danger it hid. "You are paid in cash, there are no contracts. You are a beautiful girl who can earn quite a bit working here. Tax free. In fact, I have one girl who earns around seven-fifty a night. She brings home over four-thousand dollars a month, and that is with no taxes. Ever. Do you think a waitress in a deli could earn that much?"

Bria wanted to complain, to protest the injustice, but he tapped the stack of money that was to be hers.

"Decide. How much to the bouncers. If you pay them nothing, the house gets twenty-five percent of the one-hundred twenty dollars, leaving you with ninety. Otherwise you pay them what you want and the house takes twenty-five percent of the remainder."

Bria edged forward on the hard wooden seat, at a loss. She wanted, needed, all the money she could get, and the less she paid the bouncers the more she could pay the 'debt', as she thought of it, that the house demanded. After all, they'd still do their jobs and wouldn't be any the wiser if she didn't pay, wouldn't they?