Nervous (11 page)

jude

I couldn’t take the shit one more second. Not one more second. I took over and screamed out, “There is no way in fucking hell Henry’s coming back into the picture!”

“What did you just say?” the bitch doctor asked me. I didn’t respond. “Jonquinette?” I got up from the chaise and started for the door. “Jonquinette?”

I turned to face her and gave her an evil grin, but still refused to reply.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Your worst fucking nightmare, bitch!” I spewed out at her.

She sat back down calmly at her desk and folded her hands. “Well, it’s nice to finally meet you. Do you have a name?”

“Hmph, you think you’re so fucking smooth.” I had to admit that she was just that: smooth. I would have expected her to freak out or something. “Okay, I’ll play along. My name’s Jude—and yours?” I sat down across from her at the desk. Nobody out attitudes me. “Oh, never mind, I already know your name. Bitch!”

“That’s not very ladylike, calling me out of my name,” she said.

Was she trying to piss me off or something?

“Since I’m not a lady, who gives a flying fuck?” I retorted.

“So Jude, what made you finally come out and say hello?” She reached into her top drawer and pulled out a cigarette. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Suit yourself.”

She lit one up. “Was it Jonquinette talking about reaching out to her father?
Your father?
”

“Henry Pierce is not my damn daddy!” I said. So much for playing it cool.

“Hmm, you seem to harbor a lot of negative feelings toward him.”

“My, my, you are a mastermind,” I stated contemptuously. “It took getting a degree to figure that out?”

“Jude, I’d really like to be your friend. Would you consider that?”

“I don’t need any fucking friends.”

“You know, Jonquinette thinks she’s going insane. The things you’ve been doing aren’t very nice.”

“You don’t know the half of it. I’m proud of myself.” I crossed my legs, determined not to let the heifer make me lose it.

“Why’s that?” she asked.

“Because I’m the shit. Jon’s lucky to have me. Without me, she would’ve had her ass kicked her entire life. Without me, she would’ve let everyone run over her, especially the Queen Bitch, Meredith.”

“Your mother?”

I sighed. “I don’t know why you keep referring to that hoe and bastard as
my
parents. I don’t have parents.” The slut just didn’t get it. “Anyway, like I was saying before you so
rudely
interrupted me, Jon wouldn’t have a leg to stand on without me. Don’t go throwing a pity party for her ass. You should be celebrating the fact that I
exist.”

“But the two of you can’t coexist together.”

“And why the hell not? We’ve been coexisting all this time.”

“Because that’s not healthy.”

“So what are you saying?” I asked, getting pissed off all over again. The bitch had lost her mind and I told her, “If you think I’m going someplace, you need a psychiatrist your damn self.”

She was determined to try to bond with me. The slut. “Jude, tell me about yourself.”

I shrugged and said, “There’s nothing to tell. I put foot to ass when need be, protect Jon from people that try to fuck her over without grease, and I love to have fun from time to time.”

“What kind of fun?” she asked.

“I’ll be honest. I love fucking. Fucking is the only thing worth doing in this life.”

Marcella seemed bewildered. Good, I’d finally stumped her. “Do you honestly believe that?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Men are such wimps. They always fold under the pressure of the pussy. I like controlling them like the little puppy dogs that they are.”

“That’s the word I was looking for,” she said.

“What word?” I inquired with disdain.

“Control. You want to control things.”

I stood up and leaned over the desk. “Don’t get it twisted. I
do
control things. I’m always around. I just let Jon deal with normal day-to-day bullshit so I don’t have to. If I wanted to, I could take over for good and never, ever let Jon come back. That’s how dominant I am.”

Marcella smiled at me. “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”

“Excuse me, bitch?”

“If you could truly take over for good, you would’ve done it years ago.”

“You’re beginning to bore me.” I didn’t like the way the conversation was headed. She didn’t know shit about anything and to top it off, she wasn’t shit to me so I announced, “I’m leaving.”

I had made it to the door and opened it when she jumped in front of me.

“No, don’t leave yet.”

I poked her in the shoulder. “If you don’t move out of my way, I
will
give you a beatdown you’ll never forget.”

“Jude, we really need to continue this conversation.”

“I’m going to count to three and then I’m swinging,” I told her. “One.”

“Jude, please stay,” she pleaded.

I balled my right hand into a fist. “Two.”

“When can we talk again?” she asked.

“Three,” I said and lifted my fist to steal her one in the face.

She must have known that I was serious because she moved to the side and said, “Okay, okay.”

I damn near tore off her arm as I stormed past her out of the office.

There was no way I was going home. I headed straight to a bar to get my drink on. When I walked into a pub, it was boring as shit and there were only a bunch of losers hanging around. I decided I needed to do something more adventurous.

How dare that bitch doctor imply that I wasn’t in control? Huh, she was a complete idiot. Everything I had said in her office was the truth. If I really wanted to, I could make Jonquinette disappear altogether and just be Jude. But I didn’t feel like working a full-time job to pay bills and I had no work experience of my own. None whatsoever.

A lightbulb went off in my head. If I could devise a way to make my own money, fuck Jon and her boring lifestyle.

I left the pub, got back into the car, and headed for “the seedy part of town.” The part of town where there were liquor stores on every corner, pawn shops on every other block and most importantly, a shitload of strip clubs.

I spotted one that seemed to have heavy traffic, even for a Monday evening. A lot of desperate-looking businessmen and blue-collar workers were flooding into the joint. The name on the awning was The Bedroom.
Not very creative,
I thought.

The shitty name didn’t matter to me. I only cared about the place’s potential as a moneymaker.

When I got to the door, some idiot tried to tell me I had to pay a ten-dollar cover charge to come in. I informed him that I was there to apply for a job. He looked me up and down and grinned. Even with the homely looking outfit Jon had selected for the day, he could still tell my body was banging.

“Go on in,” he said, moving aside to allow me to gain entry.

“When you get in, ask for the owner. His name’s Skippy.”

“Skippy? What the hell kind of name is that?” I asked.

“Hey, it is what it is,” the bouncer at the door replied. “As long as I get paid, I don’t care what his name is.”

I couldn’t fault him for that one so I said, “True enough.”

I was pleasantly surprised when I got inside and it became clearer to me why they had such a large clientele. It was a classy place, despite its outward appearance. There was a nice leather bar spanning the entire length of the club on the left and about fifty or so tables scattered around the dance floor in the center. All of the tables had plush velvet chairs and the waitresses wore cute little velvet outfits that left hardly anything to the imagination.

I stopped one of the waitresses in her tracks. “Where can I find Skippy?”

She pointed to a chubby black man seated at the end of the bar talking on a cell phone. He had on an outdated suit with a wrinkled shirt and his tie was crooked.

“Shame on it all,” I said aloud. “You mean to tell me that crusty son of a bitch owns this place?”

The waitress laughed. “Yeah, Mr. Crusty runs the show.”

“Where’s the bathroom?” I asked.

She pointed to the back of the club. “Down that hall on your left.”

I made my way to the bathroom and did some self-improvement. While I had made it past the bouncer with ease, I needed to spruce up some before I approached the owner. I unbuttoned the top three buttons of my blouse and hiked up my skirt a few inches to show more leg. I let my hair down and shook it to give it more of an untamed appearance.

Interestingly enough, there was a basket on the counter with all kinds of makeup in it. I guess the girls wanted to make sure they always looked good so they could land major tips. Lucky me. I lined my eyes, darkened my eyebrows, threw on some rouge and put on the raunchiest shade of lipstick I could find: blood red.

I puckered up, took one last glimpse at myself in the mirror and then went back out into the club.

Skippy was still in the same spot at the bar, but he was off the phone and had some hoochie momma all up in his grille. It seemed like they were having a heated discussion but I didn’t give a shit. I approached them and pushed her to the side.

“Excuse me!”
she said nastily.

“You’re excused. No problem,” I replied. I pushed up on Skippy and stood between his legs while he sat on the barstool. “I need to have a word or two with Skippy.”

The hoochie momma spewed “Bitch!” at me and then started walking away. She pointed at Skippy and said, “We’ll finish this later!”

“My, my, my,” he said, eyeing me from head to toe. “You sure are a feisty one.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” I nodded my head toward the bartender. “Since you own this joint, how about a free drink?”

“Normally, I don’t give out free drinks but you can have one.” He glanced at the bartender. “Sheila, give this young lady whatever she wants.”

I told Sheila, “Hook me up with a blow job.”

She laughed and said, “A woman who knows her stuff.”

“A blow job?” Skippy inquired. “That’s a drink?”

“Yeah. You mean you own this place and nobody’s ever asked for a blow job?” I rubbed my hip against his thigh seductively. “I mean, a blow job drink. Not the real kind. I’m sure there are plenty of requests for those around here.”

He grinned at me and almost started drooling on himself. “You’ve got some height on you, girl. How tall are you?”

“Tall enough to wrap my ankles around a man’s neck and let him pummel his dick into me
all night long.”

Skippy was about to say something when Sheila came back with my drink, which consisted of equal parts of Kahlua, Bailey’s, and vodka layered into a pony glass and topped with whipped cream.

Skippy practically came on himself when I put my hands behind my back, placed my mouth over the top of the glass, raised it, and took it all down the hatch in one swallow. I put the glass back down on the bar, using only my mouth and asked, “Don’t you just love a woman that swallows?”

Skippy cleared his throat. One of the strippers came up to him and before she could say a word, he told her, “Beat it!” She rolled her eyes and walked away. “This must be my lucky day but I have to ask. To what do I owe this honor?”

“Skippy, I’ve got a straightforward proposition. I’m interested in being a stripper. At least, I
might
be interested.”

“Can you dance?”

I gave him a fierce look. “Can you get your dick hard?”

“Hell, yeah,” he replied.

“Then there’s your answer to a stupid-ass question.”

He raised his hands in the air. “Hey, I had to ask. It’s obvious you have
certain talents,
” he commented, picking up the pony glass and staring at it. “But the men come here to see women shake that ass with some degree of expertise.”

I looked over at the dance floor. There was some bitch performing off “Back That Thang Up” by Juvenille. “You mean like her?”

Skippy glanced at the dancer. “Yeah, just like Kandi. She’s one of our headliners.”

I smirked. “Well, Kandi doesn’t look the least bit sweet to me and if she’s truly one of your headliners, then you’ve been seriously missing out.”

“You talk a lot of shit,” he said.

“But I can back it up.”

“Come by tomorrow and audition.”

“Fuck that. I want to dance tonight, right now.”

Skippy shook his head. “Naw, never that. All the dancers have to do a private audition first. I can’t just let you get up there without knowing that you can handle your own.”

“Private audition? Is that the same thing as a trial fuck?”

Skippy eyed me suspiciously. “You sure you’re not the poe-poe?”