Chapter Two—Two weeks prior
My time at the Half Moon Diner passed quickly, and relief acted like an estranged second cousin when the guy I had knocked down that morning didn’t come in. Then again, I had watched for the dark mop of his head and his commanding dark eyes for my whole shift. I would’ve liked to have at least given him a free cup of coffee for the abuse. I mean, I’d knocked him flat as gum on the sidewalk during New York’s busiest commute time.
I arrived at my apartment at two-thirty. My roommate and best friend of twenty-one years, Ari, was already home and in the shower when I got back. I dropped my bag on the couch in the living room before heading for the bathroom and knocking. “Ari, food.”
“’Kay.”
I walked further down the hall to our bedroom, stripped out of my black pants and white top, and grabbed some jeans and a burgundy button-up before bounding to the bathroom in my undies.
I knocked again, “You out and decent?”
“Close enough.” She stood, leaned close to the mirror, in her bra and skinny jeans when I entered. “You’ve got about seven minutes of hot water left.”
“Thanks. Food’s in my bag in the living room.”
“What’s the special today?” Ari leaned over the sink toward the mirror.
She applied long strokes of eyeliner over her lids. Something that I could never get the hang of—it looked funny above my reddish lashes. Her frosty purple hair was straight and angled just below her ears. Her blue eyes were usually hidden behind matching purple frames that thinned out her nose. Ari looked at me in the mirror and winked one long mascara-caked set of lashes at me.
I reached into the shower, the water was hot the second that I turned the knob, and my seven minutes began.
“Tuna fish and tomato soup, mine’s the one with the mustard.” I stuck my head under the water, washing my hair took forever. It was short enough that you wouldn’t think so, but curly hair harbors rat’s-nests like a son-of-a-bitch. I broke three brushes this past year alone.
“Ugh. That is disgusting. Mustard and tuna do not go together my dear,” Ari said.
Seven minutes ended too soon, but I was clean. By the time I dressed, it was three, and my second job started at four. With the tuna warm and the soup chilled, I ate quickly.
Ari sat on the couch, laying out the things from her purse. “Hey. I don’t have to work tonight, so I’m gonna go look for a new job.”
“What happened at the bagel place?” I asked around a mouth full of the tuna.
“The boss is being an ass. He won’t even write up that piece of shit for cornering me in the storage room and trying to feel me up. I think the jackass deserves to be fired. I mean, I got treated the same way when I was stripping—only I got paid more. I should just go back—”
Anger and fear dumped over me like a bucket of ice water. Uh-uh. We were not going through that again. “There is no way you are going back to that shit hole. I don’t care how hard it is to make rent.”
“And eat.” She sighed. “At least, you get free lunch. They make me pay for everything.”
I couldn’t blame her. If I could’ve found a job that made enough money that I’d only need the one, I’d probably keep going back to it, too. But her ex-pimp, which he wasn’t really—but yeah—he pretty much was, had done some nasty things to her, and made her do even worse things for others in the private dance rooms. Stripping I could handle, but I didn’t want my best friend to whore herself out to feed us.
