Chapter Four

Georgia hustled down the poorly lit street cursing the Amoxicillin. She was late for work.

Their shared apartment had been blessedly quiet for once and the antibiotics had made her drowsy enough to consider taking a short nap to recharge before her shift. Linh should have woken her, they usually walked the three blocks downtown together for safety.

That just called to mind their shared peeping session and the subsequent argument two nights earlier. Her roommate had been adamantly convinced that all the action upstairs was due to word getting around concerning the secret stud in apartment 10a.

Georgia had asked if Linh had drunk any kool-aid recently.

That hadn’t gone down well and the petite Asian had spent the last forty-eight hours locked in her room. Georgia thought her friend might be avoiding her except each time she approached Linh’s bedroom door–totally ready to make up–she heard… sounds.

Wet sounds. Buzzing and humming sounds. Soft moans and schlicking sounds. All in perfect time with the constant percussive thudding of protesting plasterboard coming from the floor above.

Georgia hadn’t found the courage to knock. It seemed rude to interrupt.

Sammy was going to be pissed. Friday night was one of their busy nights. At least by the First Edition's low standards.

Municipal zoning regulations meant that the Candy Lounge–the uninspired name of a sleazy strip joint one street over–couldn’t serve **** and Georgia’s boss had the **** idea of supplying them with drink coupons to drum up some much needed extra business.

That usually meant at least an extra half dozen oily patrons who stared dismally at Georgia’s small chest as they got their pre-game buzz on and nursed their flaccid dicks through the lining of their trouser pockets.

Except that wasn’t the case tonight as Georgia hurried through the door into the First Edition.

“Georgie! Oh thank god. I need you back here mixing cocktails as fast as you can.” Sammy cried over the thrumming mass of customers milling around the bar.

Cocktails? Since when did they serve fancy shit like cocktails? Georgia pushed through a mob of women to slip behind the bar top and boggled at the crowd.

Did Sammy add ‘Ladies Night’ to her increasingly uninspired calendar of themed events? Because this last-ditch attempt to drum up business might actually be working.

The small dank bar was busy with people. Loud with people. Standing room only with chatting, laughing and sighing people. All exceptionally feminine people dressed up and kitted out for a night prowling the nicer side of town for a hot date.

Or at least that was how it looked to Georgia seeing so much T&A on display. Low cut tops and high hemlines were a common theme. Ridiculous high heels and bare midriffs too. There was an entire platoon of feminine forms wrapped up tight in clingy insubstantial outfits that hugged womanly figures of every variety.

“We’d like two Moscow Mules and a Bend Over Shirley, please.” The bar was lined two deep with jostling female bodies. The three waiting patiently in front of Georgia were a redhead and two nearly identical chestnut brunettes all dressed in slinky shiny clubwear mini-dresses that showed off a fantastic wealth of smooth flawless skin.

“Uh, right. That’s vodka, ginger beer and lime…” Georgia grabbed a dusty bottle of Smirnoff but flailed about for a shaker. Where did they even keep those? “Can you run the second half of the order past me again?”

“It’s vodka, a dash of raspberry squash and grenadine topped up with sprite.” Sammy appeared beside Georgia, helpfully pressing a cocktail shaker into her hand. “A classic Bend Over Shirley.”

“That’s right!” One of the twin brunettes beamed. Her little pink dress had a long dripping neckline that almost reached down to her navel and only held her impressively full perky chest in by some act of black magic. “You should come work at the Candy Lounge with us. Love your hair by the way.”

“Aaaaw~ thanks, I’m glad he likes it.”

Georgia was staring at her manager's hair too. The usually flat flaxen locks were poofed out big and bouffant with enough hairspray to constitute a genuine fire hazard. Gone was the business like bun or the sometimes practical braid in favor of high voluminous hairstyle that went out of fashion in the sixties.

“I need you to mix drinks, dear.” Sammy reminded her, as she free-poured spirits with one hand and bounced her golden hair with the other. “I know you are unwell so I can forgive the tardiness but I cannot abide laziness.”

Dear? She was speaking like Georgia’s mother again and that was as unwelcome as it was unsettling. Georgia started looking for the ginger beer in a purely Pavlovian response to her manager’s tone.

The fiery haired knockout hopped up to lean over the bar. Her verdant spray-on dress warping around a supremely lush bosom as it pancaked against the polished timber as she whispered out an urgent question.

“So… Is he here tonight?”

Who? Oh no…

“Maybe, maybe not. You’ll have to stick around to find out.” Sammy replied flippantly but a shifty gleam had entered her mercurial eyes. “It’s a three drink minimum on Fridays. Sorry girls but you’re all familiar with how this works.”

Georgia had no sooner slid the drinks across the bar when the three strippers slapped down their money with frustrated faces and Sammy quickly counted out the cash into the chiming till. They had mostly paid in singles.

“Sammy, have you got a second to chat?” Georgia began to ask, feeling an unexpected stab of uncertainty. Then Linh **** her way through the throng to deposit a serving tray full of variously shaped glassware onto the bartop.

“Phew… Busiest. Night. Ever.” Her roommate gasped, mopping at her brow. Then she grinned happily. “Good to see you, Georgie. Feeling any better?”

Georgia felt lost at sea. She wanted to apologize to Linh for her snide remarks from the other night. Question Sammy about her new hair-do and the sudden boom in exclusively female patronage. To grill Linh about the outlandish powder blue and lilac butterfly make-up around her large dark eyes and the silver micro-mini hot pants digging deep into her fellow bartenders' trim ass crack.

“Fine, I was just going to have a quiet word with Sammy about…”

About what exactly?

Georgia didn’t know where to start. Maybe the fresh ocean of estrogen flooding the bar in tiny hip-hugging skirts and teensy tube tops would be a good place to start. Or the warm acres of soft female flesh out on parade and sipping on atrociously over-price drinks with embarrassing names like “Sex in the Driveway” and “Pop my Cherry”?

Georgia thought she recognized some of the faces in the crowd. Nameless girls and women from her apartment building who never made eye-contact in the lobby were suddenly dolled up like tarts and whispering animatedly to each other in enough make-up and slingback heels to outfit a small army of streetwalkers.

“We’re very busy tonight, Georgie. It will have to wait.” Sammy said. She was pouring a line of milky shots called “Buttery Nipples” for a gaggle of young women dressed up as naughty schoolgirls as though it were Halloween. “I need your help serving the customers. I’ll be happy to chat all you like after quitting time.”

Georgia stared at her for a long second before Sammy jerked her head towards the crowd of patrons. They sure looked thirsty alright but Georgia had a sneaking suspicion she couldn’t mix the long tall drink they were all so earnestly seeking.

“Cum in My Panties!” A tall blonde in a skintight backless halter dress shouted at her above the increasingly noisy crowd. It was covered in sparkly sequins and cute tassels with a Worlds Best Bridesmaid sash pulled across her ample chest.

“Excuse you?!”

“Three more Cum in My Panties, please.” The presumed bridesmaid said as two more with similar sashes and equally skimpy clubbing attire giggled behind her. “That’s vodka, peach schnapps, whipped cream…”

Georgia’s hands moved on autopilot. She wasn’t even measuring out the liquor as her narrowed eyes roamed the crowd. There wasn’t a single male present. Which was both suspicious and a relief. It meant that he wasn’t here. Mister 10a.

Vince.

“Hen’s night?” She shouted the question over the hubbub of the excited flocks of women. “Aren’t you missing someone?”

Someone destined for a big white dress and an institution deeply rooted in patriarchy and gender inequality, Georgia refrained from saying as she pushed the drinks over to the rosy cheeked party-goers.

“No, she’s around.” The blonde said with a saucy wink that raised a five fire alarm in Georgia’s hind-brain. “I think she went to the bathroom.”

All three of the glammed up girls giggled then sighed and shook their heads. They looked… Rueful? Envious? Definitely a bit dreamy eyed.

Something about the bathroom?

“Enough bullshit! Is he here tonight or not?” A dainty mocha fist hammered the countertop and several pairs of eyes turned to see the gorgeous young Lily Pierre fuming back at them.

Her voluptuous barely-legal body was wrapped in a teensy strapless black satin number that clung to her flourishing curves like warpaint. Her candyfloss hair was styled high and big hoop earrings hung nearly to her bare shoulders. “You can’t keep stringing us along like this!”

The First Edition was swamped in silence as every feminine gaze locked onto Sammy who raised her hands in a sign of calming supplication.

”Vince was here, only an hour ago….” She began to say before an outraged maternal shriek drowned her out.

“Lily Pierre! What do you think you are doing?!” Heads turned like spectators at a tennis match to see an elegant coffee-skinned woman wearing green hospital scrubs looming in the doorway. “You are meant to be studying at home, young lady. Not dressing like a hooker and going out to bars!”

“Mama, I thought…” The teen drama-queen began to protest but was overruled by her furious mother.

“You didn’t think anything worth a damn. You are not so old that I cannot still thrash your disobedient backside.” The Haitian nurse snapped in her lyrical accent as she stalked towards her mortified daughter. “The lord knows I have suffered enough of this quarrelsome behavior. You will come home this instant.”

The murmuring crowd parted before the disapproving parent like the waters before Moses. She seized her daughter's arm in a tight grip before rounding on Sammy with molten iron in her glare.

“She is not yet twenty-one…”

“I know. She’s only been served soda tonight.” Sammy soothed with that mothering voice that sounded so odd coming from her. “I do not serve underage…”

“Is there a problem here?”

If the appearance of Mrs Pierre had quieted the room, the deep masculine voice silenced it so thoroughly that Georgia would have sworn she could hear the panties drop.

Vince stood in the bathroom doorway supporting a knock-kneed Latina bombshell in a frilly white cocktail dress with a violet Future Mrs Ramos sash stretched askew across her buxom olive cleavage. She was leaning heavily into him as she wiped at her puffy lips with the back of one hand and tried to straighten the glittering novelty tiara in her seriously mussed raven hair.

Scuffed sneakers, blue jeans and a wrinkled off-white linen shirt. Vince looked, as always, like a poorly dressed grocery bag packer with his buzz cut hair and sweaty complexion.

The women around Georgia moaned in unison as though a rock star heart-throb had just strolled onto center stage.

“Vince, Help! Mama is trying to get in the way of our love.” Lily squealed, reaching out to him with longing arms. “Tell her we are together and she will have to let me go.”

“L-Love?” Mrs Pierre's expression had lost its sharp edge and she was looking at the mangy dirtbag with no small measure of confusion.

Georgia was actually relieved to see it. Vince’s mysterious mojo wasn’t as universal as she had initially feared.

“Your daughter just has a silly teenage crush. We’ve only ever chatted, my word on it. Nothing more.” He assured her, handing the sagging bride-to-be off to her friends who cooed and fussed over her proudly like a bunch of giggling fan girls. “How about I walk you both home? We can straighten out this mess and let everyone get back to enjoying their Friday night.”

Georgia gawped at the brazen way the filthy degenerate so casually palmed off his latest bathroom conquest to act like the voice of innocence and reason. There was no way anybody was going to fall for that shit.

“Yes… yes, I think that would probably be for the best.” The statuesque nurse replied, the **** draining from her voice with each slow word passing her full cinnamon lips. She was tugging at her hospital scrubs as though trying to position them better to show off the lean lines of her mature figure. “Lily, was this the young man you wanted to bring around for dinner?”

“Yes, Mama.” The Caribbean firecracker wasn’t in her mother’s grip so much as they were walking arm in arm towards the door with Vince guiding them with an overfamiliar hand on the small of each of their backs. “He’s just the best, you’ll see.”

Georgia had never heard an entire bar full of women sigh in such regret to watch them leave together.

The localized change in air pressure would have raised the mercury in a barometer.

---

“What was that?!” Georgia demanded after the last of the downcast patrons left and Linh had flipped on the glowing neon closed sign.

It was only ten o’clock but Sammy had decided to call last drinks early. As though there wasn’t any point keeping the register open after Vince had departed with the mother/daughter duo.

“What was what, dear?” Sammy asked, sorting and counting out the stack of bills haphazardly stuffed into the till. A happy symptom of the night’s brisk trade.

“Stop doing that.” Georgia challenged her. “Stop calling me dear. You’re not my mother and you never called me that before he started sniffing around the bar.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.” Sammy said with infuriating calmness, straightening a tall stack of singles. “Tonight was our busiest night in months.”

“More like our busiest night ever!” Linh gushed excitedly. “The cocktails were a brilliant idea. They really appealed to the younger female market and that will only attract more male customers.”

“What male customers? There wasn’t a swinging dick in the house except… no. No, that isn’t what we need to talk about.” Georgia pinched the bridge of her nose and sniffled. The antibiotics were beginning to work their medicinal magic but her head was still as clogged as the shower drains at the YMCA. “It’s Vince. He’s doing… something to all of you and I’m the only one who can see it.”

She didn’t miss the way her co-workers' eyes misted over at the mention of the ridiculous guy’s name. Even if they did snap back to reality a moment later.

“Vince? He seemed like a nice sensible young man to me.” Sammy said, gnawing thoughtfully on her bottom lip as she played with her puffed out hairdo.

“Totally nice!” Linh exclaimed eagerly, batting her long fake lashes and wiggling her slender hips in wholehearted agreement. “He complimented my eyes and said he liked my butt. No guy has ever complimented my butt before.”

“That’s what I mean.” Georgia threw up her hands in exasperation. “Sammy, I’ve seen you roll grown men into the gutter for a fraction less than he has been getting away with under your nose. And Linh, since when do you wear big eye makeup and booty shorts? Seriously, think about it.”

“I’m just trying a few new things.” Linh said self-consciously, tugging at the bottoms of her shiny silver hot pants. They barely covered the lower hemispheres of her tight little rump. “You could be a little more supportive…”

“So, he’s good for business. That’s what I am hearing here.” Sammy said definitively. “Even if half of what you are saying is true–which I don’t believe for a second–we still need the extra revenue stream to stay afloat.”

“He fucked that poor bride in the mens bathroom!” Georgia shrieked, she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Are you both deaf and blind?”

“You don’t know that.” Linh accused but she was blushing up a storm and looking away as she said it. “That girl was pretty drunk. He was probably acting like a gentleman and holding her hair back.”

“Exactly.” Sammy agreed, nodding her head emphatically and bobbing her full golden locks to and fro. “Vincent mentioned he was looking for extra work and we’ll need a man to work security if we are going to keep bringing in the numbers like we did tonight. I was considering offering him a part-time job working the door.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“Deadly serious. This bar is a business, Georgie.” Her manager said with a hungry glint to her eye. “I’ve got needs like any other business woman. Invoices to honor. Wages to pay. Positions to fill.”

They all turned at the sound of tapping at the locked door. It was double glazed and one of the older regulars, a perpetual lush named Jerry was knocking and peering inside as though checking for signs of danger.

“What about him, don’t you still want his business?” Georgia asked, waving expansively at the graying old barfly.

“Who, Jerry? No, we don’t need his type coming here anymore.” Sammy snorted, casually blowing off the lifelong customer. “From now on, we only serve real men here at the First Edition.”

“Mmmhmm~ that’s right.” Linh agreed, squirming her toned little rear-end up onto a bar stool where it kept wiggling as though the cute barmaid couldn’t sit still. “Ancient creepo’s like him are only going to ruin the bar's awesome new energy.”

Georgia felt a chilly spectral finger run down her spine at the unspoken implication.