Razor's Edge (Underworld Kings)

Everywhere I looked, gyrating women in some state of undress straddled men. I didn’t get it. Didn’t these men think about how the young girl they paid to sit on their lap would rather be any other place than in his lecherous company? Didn’t it bother them? I tried not to let it bother me as I scanned the room for my connection so I could get the hell out of there.

“Can I get you a drink to start? If you see a girl you like, you can just mark this card, and when she’s next available for a dance, she’ll make her way to you,” a woman said, placing a thick card in front of me.

I looked up at her bewildered.

Her eyes were the ones from my dreams.

Her voice, the one that lived amongst the debris of my broken heart.

“Ellison?” I asked. Maybe I was having an out-of-body experience. A waking dream. A serious delusion.

“Calvin? What the heck are you doing here?”

Chapter 33

ELLISON

It hadn’t been a great night. Adele had woken up with an ear infection, and I’d run her to the ER at South Vail Medical around four in the morning. She’d become an incredible swimmer, but the ear infections she got at the pool were a seasonal affliction and despite our best efforts, unpreventable—she got at least two a year.

“I’ll do the hot salt packs tonight after practice. Will Fox pick me up?” Adele asked me as I dropped her at school. It was her last year of elementary school and next year would be middle school. Somedays it was hard to believe we’d come this far, considering the circumstances she was born into. We couldn’t have done it without Fox.

“Yeah, honey, I‘ve got to work. I won’t see you until tomorrow morning.”

“Mom, when are you going to quit?”

“As soon as the house is paid off.”

“I thought it was your student loans.”

“What did I tell you?” She blinked her father’s big green soulful eyes at me. Adele was no fool, but I’d kept her in the dark as long as I could. Leave it to an Emporium co-worker’s kid to give her an earful at school about where I worked.

“That finances are none of my business. My job is to eat, sleep, study and get exercise.”

“Perfectly said! You do your job and I’ll do mine.” I kissed her before she hopped out of the car. “What time should Fox pick you up after swim practice?” I yelled before she disappeared into the crowd.

“We talk every day at lunch time,” she yelled, holding up an imaginary phone.

Adele was a daddy’s girl through and through. She and Fox spoke on the phone every day during her lunch break. They were inseparable and she looked just like him. Most people didn’t know and we just let them think whatever they wanted, because in the end, what you called people was meaningless and it was all about who truly showed up for you. With Calvin away and refusing to see me or even communicate, Fox had stepped up to the plate and raised Adele as if she were his, and that, to both of us, was priceless.

I pulled out of the drop off line and back onto the highway with just enough time to stop for coffee before I had to get to class and deliver a paper about Raymond Carver and the art of the short story.

Running on not much sleep and a full day of classes, I arrived at The Emporium with no time to spare. I’d tried putting my mascara and lipstick on in the rearview when I was stopped at the streetlights, but the effect was more sideshow clown than it was put together, like I’d been aiming for.

“You’re late, Kraft. I’m giving you the Z section.”

“Urrrg,” I growled under my breath. “No problem, Eddie!” I said as I punched my time card. The Z section was the worst. You’d think the more prominent tables that lined the stage would make more money for the girls. Well, they did—the girls being the dancers and not the ones who served drinks, like me. The customers who were the most distracted by the dancers often forgot to tip the waitstaff.

It was actually kind of funny that people thought it was scandalous to be a waitress at a strip club, thinking I’d be constantly, inappropriately ogled. The real truth was, I couldn’t have been more invisible had I tried. Even though our uniforms might be a little bit on the sexy side, pair that with naked women dancing and the patrons never so much as looked our way. I could have had six eyes or just one and I bet the tables I served all night still wouldn’t be able to pick me out of a police lineup.

I didn’t mind being invisible as long as I got paid. I was a single mom, my mortgage and school loans didn’t pay for themselves. The Emporium had been good to me and it seemed like a lifetime ago when Cavelli approached me and offered me a job. I’d been terrified during my interview and my body shook when I stepped inside, like I was going to be irreparably corrupted after I passed the threshold. Turns out, it had become a great job where I made a lot of friends and gained a financial and emotional freedom I’d never known before. People down on their luck weren’t scary or bad like my dad had always made them out to be. They were just people trying to survive and get by however they could. It wasn’t a moral deficit that led people down the wrong path, it was a societal deficit—the society I lived in and was part of. I think I never learned to see it that way growing up since my dad was a cop.