Ladies Night (6 page)

Later on that night, after finishing up at the store, Amp was walking back to the place he called home. His pace slowed when he noticed a police car, with its lights flashing, sitting in the driveway at the halfway house. He wondered whether the police were bringing someone or taking someone away. Either way, it probably wasn't a good thing.

The car was empty and there was no one in sight, but as he stepped into the front yard, he could hear voices coming from inside the house. The screen door flew open, knocking over one of the plastic chairs on the porch, and Amp stopped in his tracks.

“This ain't right!”

Amp watched as two cops wrestled a handcuffed Melvin out of the house, past Mr. Barrett, who stood in the doorway observing the arrest, then toward the waiting cop car. Mr. Barrett followed the officers and Melvin down the steps. Paul stood on the porch watching everything go down from that viewpoint.

“Come on, man. Just give me one more chance,” Melvin pleaded to Mr. Barrett as one of the cops opened the back door of the cruiser.

Mr. Barrett didn't say a word. The smug look on his face made it apparent that he had no intention of giving Melvin another chance. As a matter of fact, the way he looked, Amp suspected he was getting some sort of satisfaction out of seeing yet another black man being handcuffed and thrown into the back of a police car.

Melvin must have sensed it too, because he turned his attention to Paul.

“Mr. Harold! Mr. Harold! You can vouch for me,” Melvin said before the officers closed him up in the vehicle.

Brad stuck his head out the front door. “This is some bullshit!” he said to no one in particular.

With a raised eyebrow, Paul turned around and said to Brad, “You wanna go with him?”

“No!” Brad replied without hesitation.

“Then get your goofy ass back in the house.”

Brad shook his head in dismay but did as he was told. Amp walked toward the porch to follow suit.

“Hold on. I want you to see this,” Mr. Barrett said to him, pointing toward Melvin still pleading in the back of the police car while the officers got into the front seat.

“What happened?” Amp asked.

“Failed his drug test. Had weed and alcohol in his system.” Mr. Barrett's answer seemed dry and rehearsed.

“Damn,” Amp said under his breath.

“I hope it was worth it.” Mr. Barrett shot Amp a disgusted look and then headed to his car and drove off.

Dude enjoys that part of his job way too much
, Amp thought as a slight chill ran through his body.

Amp headed up the steps to stand by Paul as they watched the police car take Melvin away.

“Like I said,” Paul stated, not taking his eyes off the squad car, “all you guys have to do is follow the rules. Keep your nose clean, do what you need to do to provide for yourself, and then you're on your own. No strings attached. No having to deal with me, and no Mr. Barrett.” He shook his head and walked away, leaving Amp standing there, taking in his words and all that he had just witnessed.

Amp's first impression of Mr. Barrett remained the same. His perception of Paul, on the other hand, was changing. At first he hadn't been sure how to read Paul, but now he could see that he was just a decent guy doing his job. All Paul wanted was to see the men in the house doing what they were supposed to do as well.

Paul made it sound easy, and perhaps for some it was, but for guys like Melvin, obviously it was easier said than done. Although Amp was bound and determined to do the right thing, he hoped Melvin's fate wouldn't be his.

 

 

The next morning after breakfast and getting his morning workout on, Amp returned to the home, which was permeated with a somber mood. Shit got real last night, and it was just the kind of reminder Amp needed to keep him focused on keeping a job and finishing his ninety days in the house.

Noticing the computer was free, Amp sat down and logged on. The computer wasn't anything fancy or high-tech. It definitely wasn't one of those new twenty-four inch, full HD, flat touchscreen monitors. It was just a regular desktop PC with a monitor and hard drive unit, but that's all Amp needed to do what he had to do.

Amp surfed the Net for a few minutes. He was in the middle of jotting down some information when Paul entered the living room.

Looking over his shoulder instinctively upon feeling the presence of someone else in the room, Amp said, “Paul, what if I want to get a second job?”

Paul's eyes narrowed. “For what?”

“I want to finish my degree.” After seeing Melvin arrested last night, Amp had lain in bed and thought about his life before prison. He'd been in college, headed for success. Not for a second had he foreseen prison in his path, but it had only taken one second, one mistake, to change the course of his life. Perhaps, he thought, it wasn't too late to get back on that right path and go back to school.

“These college classes I'm checking out online are expensive as hell.” Amp turned and faced Paul. “I figure I can get another job and stack my money while I'm here. That way I can pay for my classes and have some money to get an apartment when I leave here. Maybe a little piece-of-shit car.” Amp had really thought about what Paul said to him on the porch the previous night as they watched Melvin being driven right back to jail before he ever got a chance at real freedom.

“I don't see anything wrong with it.”

Amp turned back to face the computer, but then something else crossed his mind. He turned back around to Paul and asked, “Will Mr. Barrett?”

“I run this over here,” Paul was quick to say with authority. “What I say goes. As long as you obey the rules, he has nothing to say about it.”

Amp nodded his understanding as he turned back around to face the computer. Staring at the computer screen, he asked another question. “What if it's at a nightclub, doing security or something, with late hours?”

Paul sucked his teeth and was quiet for a moment. It was obvious that he wasn't too sure about the whole nightclub thing. “Well . . . I guess, as long as I can verify the employment and talk with the owner. If everything is legit, maybe. But remember, your parole has been sanctioned as ‘no alcohol,' so if you have so much as one drink, you'll be going back to jail. Do you really want that kind of temptation on a daily basis? This may not be a wise decision, Amp.”

Amp swung his body around in the chair, turning toward Paul and looking him straight in the eye. “You said you read my file.”

“I did.”

“Then you know that the last thing I ever wanna do is have another drink. Ever!”

Paul eased up, seeing that he had hit a sensitive subject with Amp. “Just get me the information.”

“Thanks, 'cause I'm gonna go check this one place out after I get off at Mr. Lam's tonight,” Amp said, taking out his wallet and then pulling out Madam's business card. “But don't worry. I'll make curfew.” Amp wanted to clarify that he wasn't running game.

“Okay. Just let me know,” Paul said then walked away.

Amp picked up the phone and dialed the number on the business card. It was time to start making power moves and putting some things in place.

After being on the bus for only a hot second, Amp noticed the address numbers were getting close to where he needed to be. He stood up and signaled to be let off the bus. Had he known that the club was only a mile and a half away from the halfway house, he would have walked.

Stepping out into the evening air, he watched as the Metro took off roaring down La Cienega Boulevard. He looked down at the address on the business card he held in his hand, then at the numbers on the surrounding buildings. He determined that he only needed to walk a bit farther south to find the place. Sure enough, a block later he heard the muffled bass thumping from one of the buildings, and he knew he was getting close. Unless someone was having one hell of a house party in the middle of the week, the music couldn't have been coming from anywhere else but a club.

Within a few more yards, Amp spotted the sign for Club Eden. Bright red light bulbs spelled out each letter. A smaller sign with similar red bulbs spelled out
LADIES NIGHT
on the wall next to the entrance.

Exactly what kind of club was this? Before going to prison, Amp had been more of a ladies' man, so he was no stranger to clubs of all types, but it had been a while, and he knew the club scene had changed. It always does. He spotted the same customized Aston Martin that he'd seen Madam get into at the park. It was in a reserved space near the front.

As Amp took a good look at the tan stucco building, he thought he remembered the place. Back in the day, this building had been one of the biggest and hottest sports bars in town. It wasn't his regular stomping ground or anything like that, but he'd come over this way before from Long Beach, where he was raised. If this was the same building he was thinking of, he'd been there a couple of times to watch a football and basketball game or two. Come to think of it, this was the place where he'd had one of his first beers. Actually, one night he'd had one beer too many and gotten sick. That was also the last time he'd visited the place. His boys had clowned him good.

The memories of the good old days were making Amp smile, something he hadn't done a lot of in prison. It actually felt somewhat weird to him, so he stopped smiling and redirected his focus on the task at hand.

Amp approached the entrance to see what this place was now. He stepped through the red metal door, and his eyes had to adjust in the darkened foyer. The walls in the entryway were painted black, and the chandelier with ruby red lights was definitely more for show than for seeing. Gold poles with red velvet rope marked the area where people were supposed to line up to enter. The club had a scent to it—not a bad scent, but one Amp couldn't immediately recognize.

Amp spotted the coat check area to the right, and he smiled at the cute little brown-skinned woman who was working there. She returned his look with a friendly smile of her own. There was just something about that chocolate.... He thought about how sweet it would be to take her into that coat check room and caress the nape of her neck while he kissed her passionately. After all, it had been a long time in prison, and the feeling of a woman's warmth was well overdue.

He snapped back out of his daydream and regained his focus. He was there for a purpose. Opposite the coat check was a split door with the top half open. The woman sitting behind it was there to admit patrons, but instead she was messing around on her cell phone. There was a sign hanging on the top half of the door listing the entrance fee, which Amp thought was shockingly high. There was another sign that listed a few rules, which Amp didn't bother reading.

“Excuse me,” Amp said, but the woman apparently couldn't hear him over the music coming down the short hallway that probably led to the main part of the club. The woman on her phone wasn't paying Amp any mind.

Figuring he'd have to find Madam himself, Amp walked by, down the black marble swirl path. At the end of the hallway, he was taken aback by how much the place had changed since its days as a sports bar. Straight ahead was a stage about ten feet long. The floor was decorated with the same black marble swirl flooring as the foyer. Surrounding the stage were about a hundred anxious-looking, cackling women of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Most of them had some fruity-looking signature drink sitting in front of them. The women were working their crowns of glory, with thousands of dollars' worth of hairstyles done up to perfection: weaves of the highest quality, natural coils, sis-terlocks, and dreads. Their faces were beat and their hair was laid. You couldn't tell them that they weren't fierce.

“All right, all right. This is DJ Dime, your voice of reason to keep all you lovely ladies from going insane over what Club Eden's got going on in here tonight.”

The women reacted to her announcement. Their chants, hollering, and applause made the place sound as rowdy as a basketball playoff game.

Amp looked around, trying to see who owned the jazzy voice with a hint of sultriness, but he hadn't stepped far enough into the club to be in view of the DJ booth in the back corner of the room.

“Dim the lights in this place. And, ladies, I want all eyes on the spotlight. Give it up for the one, the only, Babyface.”

On cue the lights lowered and a spotlight hit the stage. From behind the opening of the dark red velvet curtains appeared a muscular, caramel-skinned man. The diamond in his left ear was sparkling in the light. Standing around six feet tall, the oiled-up gentleman struck a pose, running a hand down his tight haircut. The ladies were whooping and hollering like he was a Greek god or something. He looked like a 23-year-old in the face, but there was no mistaking, from these grown women's reaction, that they sure thought he was all man.

The women were fanning themselves, reaching for him, whistling, and screaming his name. There seemed to be no embarrassment, and certainly no shame. This was their world. Babyface might have been center stage, but these women were definitely the real stars of the show. It was all about pleasing them.

Amp figured out quickly that everything he'd seen so far—from the updated black-and-red décor to the come-hither look Babyface was giving the crowd—was designed to make these ladies feel beautiful. When Babyface locked eyes with a sister in the front row, Amp imagined she probably felt like she was the only woman in the room, and that every muscle he moved was to please her and only her. Unlike its former sports bar atmosphere, now it was a place where every patron was meant to feel sexy and desired. If their men at home hadn't noticed the new hairdo or that new pair of shoes, not to worry. Tonight, they would be noticed.

Amp watched a pair of red lace panties sail through the air and land at Babyface's feet, and now Amp could place the scent he'd noticed when he first walked in. It was lust. Amp shook his head in disbelief. He'd heard of such scenarios at rock concerts or whatnot, but this was the first time he was witnessing it live. These women were out of their minds with lust. The dancers at Club Eden were rock stars in their own right.

As the DJ played “Boots On” by Christian Keyes, Babyface began to dance to the sensual beat. When the artist crooned, “I know how to move to make you hot,” Babyface thrust his hips forward, and the women in the crowd went crazy. Babyface then started crawling closer to the end of the stage so that all of the ladies could get a better view as he moved his pelvis up and down, slowly and deeply, to the music. It seemed as if the women were in a trance, until he started gyrating faster and faster. Then it didn't take long for them to start going into their purses and bras, pulling out bills and carpeting the stage with them. Dollars went flying until almost the entire stage was covered. Clearly red was the theme of the club, but green was the favorite color.

Amp stepped farther into the club, still shaking his head in amazement at the level of arousal that had these women coming off of so much money just to enter the club, and then throwing even more on the stage. He wanted to learn more, so he headed toward the bar, hoping the bartender could lead him to Madam.

As he walked over, a thought suddenly came to his mind. He looked back at the stage, where Babyface now had a woman wrapped around his waist. He was thrusting, and she was hanging on tight, like she was riding one of those mechanical bulls.

Could that be the kind of job Madam had in mind for Amp to do? He suddenly remembered the way she had been giving him the once over at the park. When he didn't know what kind of a club it was, he'd assumed she was talking about a job as a bouncer, or maybe just cleaning up the place; but after seeing what went on in Club Eden, he was thinking she might have meant something totally different. Had she been sizing him up, not to see if he could carry a mop and a bucket, but to see if he could bust a move?

“Oh, hell no!” Amp turned around, set on making a beeline toward the exit. It was very possible that he and Madam had two different ideas of work, and he felt no need to hang around and find out the possibilities.

Amp rushed through the foyer, past the woman still playing on her cell phone. He was halfway through the parking lot before he heard someone calling his name.

“Amp?”

He turned around and saw Madam.

“It is Amp, right?” She was wearing an olive-colored satin top, and her cream-colored pencil skirt looked like it was sewn on to fit only her body. She approached him confidently in her ankle-strap pumps.

“Uh, yes. That's right,” Amp said, feeling a little awkward. Witnessing her style and class again, he suddenly felt silly for rushing out of the club the way he did. She was probably going to think he was crazy for coming there at all if he wasn't willing to at least hear her out.

Madam's heels clicked on the concrete as she stepped up to Amp. “Leaving so soon?”

“Yeah. I came to see about working for you, but this”—Amp nodded toward the club—“is not my type of party.”

“Well, I was thinking along the lines of having you work the front door as security.” Madam placed her hand on Amp's shoulder. “You look like you can handle yourself.” She gave him the same type of once over that she'd given him at the park, sizing him up, confirming her initial intuition.

“What would I be securing?” Amp asked. “There's only women in there. Mr. Babyface looks like he can handle them just fine.” Amp was dead serious.

“You'd be surprised how wild those women can get, especially after a couple drinks. They tend to throw caution to the wind.”

“Along with an occasional pair of panties?” Amp added.

“Yeah, that too,” she said with a sly smile. She widened her eyes, silently asking Amp to consider the offer. “So, interested?”

He was relieved to hear that she wasn't asking him to gyrate up on that stage the way he'd seen Babyface doing. And he sure could use some extra money to get him closer to his goals of college and a place of his own. If it really was as easy as keeping a few horny sisters in line, he couldn't help but consider the opportunity Madam was presenting to him.

“What's the hours and the pay?” Amp asked.

“Thursday through Sunday, ten-thirty p.m. to two-thirty a.m. Fifteen dollars an hour, plus tips.”

Two hundred forty dollars a week would be good, no doubt, but something wasn't adding up, and it made him suspicious. “Wait . . . tips? For being security? Who tips security?”

“Trust me.” Madam smiled while eyeballing Amp's physique. “These women are going to like you.” She not-so-subtly leaned around to check out his backside. “When can you start?” she asked confidently. She was definitely a woman about her business.

But was it all too good to be true? Amp's doubts were front and center. “I don't know.” He needed a minute to take it all in, but he didn't want to waste her time with his indecisiveness either.

Madam rolled her eyes in her head. Clearly she thought Amp was taking too long to make up his mind. When Amp still didn't answer, she shrugged, gave Amp a look that said
you win some you lose some
, and turned to walk away. With every step she took, Amp saw his goals drifting further out of reach.

When he thought of it in those terms, working the door didn't sound so bad. What harm could there be in calming down a rowdy chick or two every now and again?

He was close to accepting the offer, but there was one more thing he felt he needed to say. “Wait,” he called out to her.

Madam stopped and turned back around to face Amp.

“Look, I'm in a halfway house,” he said.

Her face didn't reveal any feelings about what Amp had just said.

He continued. “I'm on parole. If the supervisor of the house approves it, I can start tomorrow. That's if the offer still stands.”

A satisfied smile came across Madam's face. “Have him call me tomorrow.”

“Will do.” Amp turned to head back to the house, deciding he'd walk this time instead of catching the bus. He had a lot to think about.

“Hey.” Madam stopped him. “If you have time, I can show you around.”

Amp thought about curfew, but it was only quarter to ten. He still had time for a quick tour. “Okay,” he agreed, walking over and extending his elbow for Madam to hold. He had done a li'l time, but he still had all the charms of a true gentleman.

Madam looped her arm through his, reaching her other hand up to give his bicep a quick squeeze. “Oh, yes,” she said. “The ladies are definitely going to like you . . . a lot.”

Madam and Amp walked back inside, passing the stage on their way to her office. By now the women were being entertained by another dancer, and the room had a whole new energy. They were really hyped up. Amp could see where security might come into play on some occasions.