Page 34 of Caught Up

“I’ll cover the next,” Taylor added.

“No,” Sylvia said. “I appreciate the offer, but if we capitulate too easily, he’ll try to milk us for even more. I think it’s smarter to make it look like we’re scrambling. Besides, if we end up staying, we need to find a way to make the rent sustainable in thelong-term.”

We spent the next fifteen minutes brainstorming ways to come up with the extra cash, not just to cover rent for the next few months, but so we’d have some savings on hand if we were able to move and needed to make serious renovations. Expanding ownership was mentioned, as well as creating a Kickstarter, limiting how many floors we rented, and threatening our landlord with death and dismemberment (Taylor’s suggestion, though I was tempted to second it).

The trouble was, we were limited in our options. This city still had a handful of vice laws on the books, meant to govern the moral behavior of its citizens. Because of them, we were only allowed to operate by being a private,members-onlyclub. We could never own property, and were instead forced to rent out buildings like the one currently housing Velvet. That way, we weren’t facilitating sex and therefore couldn’t be accused of prostitution; we were only facilitating the space for sex to maybe or maybe not take place in. We couldn’t even sell liquor. Instead, we had bartenders who were available to mix and pour whatever drinks our patrons brought in themselves.

Our asshole landlord, a shady, aging man named Patrick McKinney, knew all this and used it against us. This was the third rent spike we’d faced in less than a year, and it was so steep that I worried Sylvia was right, and it would only get worse. Fifty dollars per square foot was an astronomical price. It was as much as what the big buildings charged downtown, and way too costly for a space this size, especially given its location.

Was this McKinney’s way of forcing us out? It didn’t make sense from a business perspective. We were the only people willing to pay thecurrentrent on this place, let alone what he was threatening to raise it to. This wasn’t exactly a nice part of town, and the only reason the interior looked as good as it did was because of our renovations. Once we were gone, the building would likely sit empty for god knew how long before McKinney finally came to his senses and dropped the rent back to a reasonable price.

Or was he just such a greedy bastard that he didn’t realize he’d finally pushed us far enough that we were ready to look elsewhere? I’d only met him once, but that had been enough to get a good read on the man: slimy, misogynistic, bigoted, and stingy. Those types of people didn’t tend to look at the big picture. They just took and took until there was nothing left or the people you preyed upon finally had enough and snapped (I really should have seconded Taylor’s suggestion).

We ended the meeting with a game plan going forward, each of us taking on our own tasks. Ryan, Taylor, and I had volunteered to scope out other venues, research current rental standards for large spaces, and see if there were other, more progressive landlords in the city willing to take a look at our books and realize there was cash to be made from play clubs like ours.

I’d stop at nothing until I found a new home for Velvet. I loved this place with my whole heart, and not just because I had a stake in it. Velvet was theonlyplay club in the city, a place for people to safely explore their kinks, own their sexuality, and discover their true selves. And that meant almost as much to me as my advocacy work.

I’d do anything to save it, and no one—not even gross old Patrick McKinney—was going to take it away from us.

12

Lauren

“So did heactuallygrovel?”Taylor asked.

I nodded. “Got on his knees and everything.”

She clutched my arm and gave a dramatic,full-bodyshudder.

“Did you just come?” I asked.

“I think I might have.”

On her other side, Ryan rolled their eyes and tightened their hold on Walter’s leash. There was a pigeon on the sidewalk up ahead, and Walter had proved he couldn’t be trusted around them. It was an absolutely beautiful midsummer day. Thecornflower-bluesky was dotted with fluffy clouds, there was a slight breeze, and it was like everyone in the city was out enjoying the weather, dressed in as little clothing as humanly possible.

Several days had passed since myrun-inwith Junior at Velvet, and in that time, my roommates and I had been like ships passing in the night, each of us busy with our own schedules, especially with the added stress of trying to book so many building tours for this afternoon. So far, we’d seen one with a central location that needed more renovations than we could afford, and another closer to our own neighborhood with great transportation links that was stunningly appointed but too expensive. Now we were taking a midafternoon break to grab coffee and catch up.

“How hard did you make him beg?” Taylor asked.

“Pretty hard,” I said, “and I hate to admit it, but the man gives good grovel.”

Ryan shook their head. “It’s always the scariest people who have the secret begging kink.”

Taylor’s eyes met mine. “I’m going to need the whole sequence of events that led to you gettinghand-fuckedin the stairwell.”

A passing gym bro heard her and nearly tripped over his own feet. Taylor had never learned how to moderate her volume in public, and it was one of my favorite things about her.

“It started before the show,” I said. “Junior manipulated the guy I’d been sitting next to out of his seat and then apologized to me about church and what happened in high school.”

“How’d he even know where to find you?” Ryan asked.

I kept my lingering suspicion about demonic summoning to myself and instead gave them a much more rational answer. “I think he must have followed me home after Mass.”

Taylor perked up at that. “And where do we think that falls on the creepy versus hot scale?”

“Creepy,” Ryan answered.

She nodded. “Cool, yeah, I was totally going to say that.”

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