Boom town, p.1
Boom Town, page 1
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For Brittany Marie Hogan, who told me to “write that next bestseller.”
And…
For Angel, the story midwife of my wildest dreams.
THURSDAY, JUNE 5
ALL LADY JOSEPHINE WANTS is to get back to her camp.
She got turned around somewhere, and all the trees look the same here. Also, her stomach hurts. She stopped getting her monthlies a long while ago, so that’s certainly not the issue… Plus, her head hurts too.
What had the guys at the Lee Street Bridge given her in that bottle?
There’s a noise behind her, so she turns around. Too fast. Her arm brushes something scratchy, and then there’s a dull throb in her shoulder as the wind is knocked from her thin frame. The dusky sky blurs into focus overhead.
She’s gotta find her camp before the sun’s all the way down. She’s a tough ol’ broad for sure, Lady Josephine. But it don’t feel safe out in these woods at night.
She shuts her eyes then, even though she shouldn’t. The river’s nearby. She can hear it.
Her camp is near the river. Just inside the tree line a small ways up from the little alcove where she takes her baths.
She can follow the river.
She struggles to her feet, and as she stumbles along—zigzagging a bit, though she tries to walk a straight line—her gut swims. Maybe she shouldn’t’ve drunk that stuff. Those guys seemed nicer than most, but maybe they thought she’d hang out for a while and they’d get lucky. Most men are like that. At least the ones she’s met.
She drifts left and slips into the water but catches herself. Only her shoe and pant leg get wet. Up to the knee. There’s a crop of pines ahead on the opposite bank that look familiar… she thinks.
She gets to humming. “Sweet Love” by Anita Baker. It’s been in her head for some time now. Heard it when coming out of the convenience store where she spends most of her daytime hours. The owners are real nice and don’t mind her presence, so long as she stays outside. Even let her use the bathroom from time to time.
The car playing the song had been turning into the parking lot of the “gentlemen’s club” across the street. Lady Josephine had done some dirty dancing back in her day, but rarely for gentlemen, and never in a place as fancy-looking as that Boom Town. Even had a neon light in the shape of a girl holding on to a pole. She can’t remember ever seeing the parking lot empty.
She was really something back in the day, Lady Josephine was. Slender and brown-skinned with a head full of “good hair,” as they used to call it. One of the most sought-after call girls in all of Atlanta (though even with that profession, she tried to always do the right thing).
“Sweet Love” had been her favorite song.
She doesn’t like to think about the old times, but reminders sneak up. Just the other day, Lady Josephine overheard a woman talking on her cell phone about girls going missing. Said that if the girls were Black, no one would look for them.
Made Lady Josephine real sad. It was certainly true that nobody had ever looked for her.
She wishes she had another drink.
Lady Josephine trips over her own feet and goes down hard. Right into the ice-cold water. The burn in her nostrils kicks her will-to-survive into gear. That is something she’s never managed to shake no matter how bad things got.
The water is shallow here. If she could just get her feet up under her…
Her hand reaches for something jutting up out of the water on her right, and by the time her senses have caught up, she’s sitting on a rock ledge, soaked and shivering.
Something red in the water catches Lady Josephine’s eye. It’s bigger than the average piece of junk that washes up on these Chattahoochee shores, and trapped in an outcropping of rock that some part of her recognizes. She looks over her shoulder and sees the bright blue of her tent just beyond the tree line.
Well, look at God.
Her attention is pulled back to the red. It’s fabric, she realizes. Ballooned so it’s all she can see above the waterline.
The current pushes it against the rocks, and more of it breaks the surface.
An arm.
Lady Josephine leans over and vomits into the river.
THE LOVELY LADIES
MONDAY, MAY 26 Lyriq
I KNEW FROM THE MOMENT Damaris Wilburn walked in that she didn’t belong in a place like Boom Town. Sure, the inside of the club was a sight to behold. It was a lot bigger than it looked from the street, and had a show floor shaped like a half circle: the two long, curved bars set on either side of the entrance at the front wall made the room look like it was being hugged, and the three stages—each with a shiny, silver pole at its center—stuck out from the rear of the building like depraved rays of sunshine. Behind the middle one, BOOM TOWN was displayed in black letters, all backlit in neon green, with the pole lady bold and bright between the two words.
But still: it was the way Damaris stopped dead to take it all in. Eyes big as dinner plates and mouth all open—wasn’t a person on earth who could convince me she’d been inside a strip club before.
Couldn’t tell if she was amazed or horrified.
Either way, the girl was so busy gaping around like she’d just landed on another planet, she didn’t notice Guapa and me sitting beside the center stage, waiting for her to climb her little ass up there and show us what she was working with.
“Excuse me?” Guapa finally called out to her. “Over here.”
Damaris almost jumped out of her skin.
The audition went real bad. Not that Damaris had a clue: she’d danced her little heart out. It just… wasn’t exactly the kind of “dancing” people came to our establishment to see. There hadn’t been a lick of body-rolling, dropping, twerking, or popping. In fact, there was a point when homegirl launched into a series of ballet-like spins around the pole before abruptly dropping into a wide-legged squat and swinging her arms like propellers. It gave very interpretive dance.
If I hadn’t known the girl had zero experience, I would’ve thought she was making fun of our profession and been ready to knock her pretty teeth out. But she clearly had a dance background. No, she wasn’t busting the type of moves that would make men cash in big bills for singles and throw them in the air. But there was something about her ease of motion and how attuned she seemed to the music. Made her real hard to look away from. The maple syrup skin tone, gravity-defying titties, snatched waist, and naturally fat ass certainly didn’t hurt either.
Not that any of that mattered: I knew I would hire the girl from the moment the doors closed behind her. Even if it meant I had to train her myself. For one, I owed my life to the person who’d requested her audition—a cousin of hers named Tink. (Also owed Tink money, but that was neither here nor there.) More importantly, though, Damaris’s resemblance to someone else was so “uncanny,” as they say, it hit me like a punch to the ribs. After telling her we’d be in touch with a decision, I had to excuse myself from Guapa and Astro (our DJ) so I could run to the bathroom and sob. Hadn’t cried like that since my pawpaw died when I was eleven.
Scared the shit out of me.
What Damaris didn’t know (yet… because someone was sure to tell her): she looked a whole hell of a lot like one of the club’s former headliners: Felice Jade Carothers. Though only I called her by her given name.
To everyone else, she was Lucky.
Everything had been different when Felice was around. Not to toot my own horn (especially since it don’t really blow like that anymore), but she and I—Lucky and Lyriq—were legendary in the world of erotic dance. We moved as a unit: the Lovely Ladies. And with us in the building, Boom Town was the most notorious and highly patronized strip club in the city of Atlanta six nights per week.
If DJ Astro was on the turntables and we were on the stage, it was damn near guaranteed that whatever song ’Stro was spinning would eventually climb to number one on multiple Billboard Music charts. She and I literally helped make hits. One “Best New Artist” Grammy winner even thanked us in his acceptance speech.
We were everything.
But then I started having some issues with my health and had to take some time off. And by the time I got back and took over as dance manager, Felice was gone.
I never stepped onstage as a performer again.
And she never came back.
She’d been gone just over a year when Damaris ballerina-spun us into her orbit. And though I clearly knew the girl wasn’t Felice, I also knew there wasn’t a world where I would reject her.
So, I hired the little hoe. Very much against my gut and in defiance of the GM’s minimum two-years erotic dance experience requirement. Whole thing made me nervous as hell. She was young—barely twenty-one, according to her ID. And even though I had a feeling she would learn the ropes real fast once we started training, I also knew she had no clue what the hell she was getting herself into. There was a certain level of I-don’t-give-a-fuck a woman had to possess to thrive in this industry, and I wasn’t sure Damaris had enough to survive her first dance with actual customers in the building.
But even with the red
Thankfully, she was truly on her shit. Damaris was a perfectionist when it came to moving her body, so she trained hard. Too hard sometimes: there were mornings when I would get a call from the guard at six a.m. asking if he could let her in the building. “She says she needs to practice,” he would say. (I think the dirty bastard had a crush on her.)
It did surprise me how enthusiastically she shook her ass once she learned the ropes. I thought she would need time to get used to dancing nude—most grown women aren’t comfortable doing that even when alone—but two weeks in, when I had Astro turn on a song and take a seat beside the central stage so ol’ girl could show off what she’d been working on, she put on a performance so insanely sexy, even my shit got to tingling.
When she was done, ’Stro sat statue-still, eyes as wide and mouth as open as Damaris’s had been her first time in the building. Which was saying a lot: the man was surrounded by butt naked baddies six nights a week.
I’d seen that look on men’s faces before when they managed to snag a private dance from Lucky.
At Boom Town, a new hire typically chooses her own stage name, and then management—myself and Bones, the GM—either approves or disapproves. But as I watched Damaris move, I could see what she’d be called as clearly as if it’d been flashing over her head in neon green: Charm.
I thought to myself, This one will bring us good fortune.
Wish I knew how wrong I would be.
* * *
I HAVE NO IDEA how to approach the boy. Because Guapa was right: his vibe is definitely giving childlike.
When Guapa came banging on the bathroom door to tell me there was “somebody here lookin’ for Charm,” I’d rolled my eyes. Figured it was some guy who’d seen her on the daytime shift and come back for more. She had that effect on a handful of them.
“You ain’t tell him she’s not here?” I replied through the door.
“Of course I told him that, Lyriq. And he responded by asking to speak to the manager, like some disgruntled, middle-aged white lady. I was about to tell him to take a hike, but then it hit me that he used Charm’s real name.”
My whole body went hot. I quickly finished my business, pulled my dress down, washed my hands, and came out, pulling the door shut behind me. “Come again, now?”
“It’s some lil dude.”
“Huh?” A “lil” dude? Had the girl been seeing someone? Or what if it was worse? What if she’d gotten herself caught up in some shit?
“One who’s never been in a strip club before,” Guapa went on. “The way his eyes damn near jumped out his face when Knight walked past naked made that clear. Can’t be more than twenty-one, and I only give him that cuz you gotta have ID to get in here.”
“You said he used her real name?”
“Yeah. ‘I’m looking for Damaris,’ is what he said. She ever call after not showing up for her shift this afternoon?”
Normally, I would’ve told the truth: Nah, she didn’t. Which meant that if she happened to show up tomorrow, she’d get sent right back out the door. No call/no show equals no job.
But somebody showing up and asking for a dancer by given name wasn’t normal.
I looked at my watch. Most would assume I do it for the clock, but nine times out of ten, I’m checking my heart rate and ECG. The former was higher than it needed to be.
I took a deep breath.
“So, you gonna go talk to the kid?”
“Can you chill? Damn.” Nosy ass.
Though whoever the dude was, I definitely had to talk to him. If for no other reason than to find out how he knows Damaris.
I just didn’t expect him to look… the way he does.
He’s definitely man-shaped. Maybe six three, broad-shouldered and solid, his long locs neatly styled in a low ponytail of rope twists.
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn he’s some sort of athlete. Though nothing like the average one I encounter. There’s a purity about him that irritates me to no end. It’s in the way he stares straight ahead with his hands behind his back. Like he’s choosing not to indulge in the abundance of bare flesh baddies scattered about the space, doing hella impressive shit with their bodies.
He clearly ain’t here for a good time.
I lift my chin as I approach. “Lemme guess,” I say, crossing my arms (mostly to conceal my own flat chest; it’s been over a year since my breasts were removed, and yes: I’m still a little insecure about it, especially up in here). “You think one of my dancers stole your wallet?”
“Oh, umm…” He almost looks away as I step into his space but seems to think better of it. “No, ma’am. This is my first time visiting your establishment.”
Ma’am?? “Whoa now, honey bunch, you can’t come up in here and have bitches feeling old. You did ask for a manager, didn’t you?”
“My apologies. Yes, I did.”
“Well?”
“I’m looking for my friend. She’s one of the… dancers? I believe she goes by ‘Charm’ here—”
“And who the hell are you?”
That snaps him to attention. And my fury is real: I hate when people hesitate around the word dancers to describe the women—myself included—who’ve worked as entertainers in clubs like this one. Literally, that’s all the Boomer Baddies are doing: moving their bodies in rhythm to music.
Dancing.
How anybody else feels about that don’t have nothin’ to do with us.
I’m not sure what the kid sees when he looks into my eyes this time, but he deflates like a pin-poked balloon. “My name is Dejuan Taylor. Damaris— sorry, Charm—rents out the basement apartment at the house I live in with my mom. She hasn’t been home in a few days.”
He says more, but I don’t hear any of it. Because the small crowd near the entrance parts and I see the last person on earth I’d want around at a time like this.
The siren in my head is even louder than the music.
BEFORE Lucky
HE WAS AN ANOMALY at first. Not that white men never came into Boom Town—it was within five minutes of two different university campuses, so senior frat boys frequently stumbled in after parties, already drunk as hell. They were often some of the best-paying customers when they managed to actually get our attention.
What made T different was his bearing. I always hated the word swag because it felt overused and ill-defined, but there was really no other way to describe T. He was a smooth, but swaggy-ass white boy. Like the type who would have gone to an Ivy League school, but joined a Black fraternity.
He was tall-ish, dark-haired, and bearded. Green-eyed and well-built. Whatever cologne he wore screamed generational wealth, and even dressed business casual—blazer, button-down, dark jeans, Air Jordans—it was clear he was a man of means.
Didn’t hurt that he moved with the type of solidity that could part a sea of designer-draped hip-hop artists and their entourages without a single person realizing they’d moved. T was Important, and there was no denying it.
Though relatively young—mid-thirties at most—T looked like he would be more at home in an NBA box suite chatting up old money team owners than hanging out in a Black strip club. But there he was. He’d come in alone that first time—another thing that made him stand out. It was a Town Hall Tuesday, the club’s most “boomin’ ” night of the week. Called such because Micah Michelle Johanssen—Lyriq—and I, Felice Carothers, shared a headline set that DJ Astro would use to premiere whatever record he’d taken a liking to from his Hit Box the previous week. It was a literal wooden box—painted green, like everything else in Boom Town—with a slot in the top where aspiring artists could drop in thumb drives with music on them. Astro would listen to every submission.
Which is why Tuesdays were so packed: if you’d been one of the people to shoot your shot, you had to be in the building in case your song got chosen. And of course, you brought your whole crew.
