I laughed as I leaned, as I always did when I thought about Louise vs. Loulou, good vs. bad, my very own naughty and nice combination split down the middle into two very separate people.
I much preferred Loulou.
And three nights a week, I could be her without impunity.
“I’ll never get used to seein’ you like that,” the woman who was largely responsible for my new two-sided nature said as she pushed open the emergency door and stepped into the alley beside me.
Ruby Jewel was her honest-to-God given name. Her mother had been a prostitute that found a decent John who married her and provided for her and their two kids. They weren’t a poor family. Ruby wasn’t abused as a kid, she didn’t need the money and she was pretty well adjusted as far as twenty-one-year-old girls went. She just loved to dance, she loved expensive shoes and she loved The Lotus.
We’d actually met at the one and only Youth Cancer Support Group I’d gone to in Vancouver. Ruby had been diagnosed as a kid with brain cancer. She’d battled it for four years before finally going into remission. She’d succumbed to the disease again when she was seventeen, this time in her bile ducts. After a year of intense treatment and three surgeries, she’d beaten that too. Ruby Jewel was a fighter. I’d known it the second I had seen her sitting in the depressingly empty classroom on a plastic chair waiting for group to begin. She was wearing a tiny dress held together with silver safety pins and her hair was out to there. Somehow, even rocking all that, she didn’t look like a whore. She just looked super cool, someone who had grown to love themselves and was comfortable not only in their own skin but in their own personality, flaws and all.
I’d sat beside her and left two hours later with a new best friend.
“Is it the joint?” I asked mildly, as she pushed her dark red bangs back from her sweaty forehead and waved a hand to cool herself.
She was wearing blue, red and white spandex short shorts and nipple coverings shaped like miniature American flags. It was one of my favourite outfits she wore.
“Nah, it’s the complete ease you got goin’ on out here. I’ve seen you, from afar obviously, livin’ the classy life. You go to a church every Sunday and to a school where you wear uniforms for Christ’s sake. And yet here you are, Louise Lafayette leaning against the wall of a fucking strip club as if you were born an’ raised here.”
She shook her head but it was with awe and warmth that she turned to me to say, “You’re incredible. Weird as shit, but also incredible.”
“Back at you, babe,” I said.
We smiled at each other before hers broke off and her eyes darkened.
“How’re ya feeling?”
“Why?” I snapped.
I didn’t like to talk about the cancer, about Louise and her life when I was at the bar. Ruby knew that and, normally, she respected it.
She bit her scarlet painted lip and shifted on her heels. “Just that something weird is going on tonight and I don’t know if you should be here or not.”
I straightened instantly, my foot jarring against the pavement as I stood up. “What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “Dunno really. Debra told us girls that tonight had to be the best show we put on in our lives.”
A little shiver scuttled down my back. I knew Debra was frustrated with The Lotus. It was a lot of work and she was tired, not just of the club but of hard living. Her third husband had left her five months ago for a newer model and she hadn’t recovered.
I’d had a feeling for a while that she wanted to sell but the thought of her doing so slayed me. I’d found a little oasis of crazy calamity in my perfectly ordered life. It was what got me through the hours spent hooked up to poison that was supposed to cure, it was what pulled me through the teeth aching monotony of my day-to-day existence.
“Shit,” I swore.
It was a bit excessive but I’d found out that I liked cursing. There was some kind of release attached to the words that always made me feel better.
It didn’t then, not with the thought of losing The Lotus weighing on my mind.
“The new owner might not want to change things up,” Ruby offered. “I mean, they’ll definitely keep on the dancers but probably the serving staff too.”
“What use will they have for me though? I’m an underage, unpaid hang around.”
“Yeah, but you’re super cute so let’s hope that the buyer is a man with good taste,” Ruby said with a smirk.
I snorted but her attempt at easing me fell short. There was anxiety like arsenic in my blood.