Page 53 of Good Days Bad Days
“Boys are so lucky,” she says as we leave the glow of the resort town and are embraced by the darkness of the country roads. “In Girl Scouts all we did was press flowers, go on a few nature walks, and if we were lucky, learn a little basic first aid. So if you ever get a first-degree burn, give me a call. I know exactly what kind of ointment to use.”
“Pressing flowers sounds nice. Boy Scouts could be a little moreLord of the Flies, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, yes. We read that in lit class.” She slowly removes hairpins from her updo, placing them in the ashtray one at a time. “Listen, girls are just as cutthroat. We just hide it better, which makes me think we’re more dangerous.”
“I don’t know about that.”
Dangerous.The word evokes images of her car, torn up, dented, and scratched, and Betty only a little less damaged.
“What? You think because women haven’t had the chance to start wars that they wouldn’t if given the opening?” She shakes her hair out and runs her fingers through the stiff shoulder-length strands.
“You really want to start a war, don’t you?”
“No. No,” she snickers half-heartedly, working her hand free from a sizable tangle. “Don’t get me wrong, I love being a girl. I love dresses and makeup and fancy shoes, but being a girl is more than that. Put us on a deserted island and I promise you we’d have many of the same problems as thoseLord of the Fliesboys.”
“Is that who tore up your car? A rogue Girl Scout?” The question slips out, her hands drop to her lap, and her long, dark lashes flutter as she melts back against her seat.
“That’s not nice.”
“Sorry. It was only a joke ...” I expect a sharp retort or bitter silence, but she looks resigned as she stares out the window.
“No, it’s fine. You came all the way out here. It’s natural for you to have questions.” She curls her legs up on the seat and crosses them like a yogi at a retreat. Her bare feet peek out, and though we’re speeding down the highway at fifty miles per hour, it’s like we’re sitting comfortably together in my living room.
“It began like any other workday there,” she starts, and I split my focus between the road and catching glimpses of her expression. “I mean, I don’t clock that many hours anymore since I moved off-site, but I come in on busy nights or when someone calls in sick. I can’t complain—the money isn’t terrible, especially on a weekend and especially in the VIP Room. I got tired of the grabby hands and the sexual advances a long time ago, and the smoke has started to really sting my eyes and I get this cough every so often ... anyway ... I’m ready to be done, so it’s not like getting fired is a tragedy. But it’s the money. My income at WQRX isn’t exactly great, and my family still needs me to help out, you know?”
She checks in to see if I’m keeping up and maybe assess my level of compassion or judgment. I nod to let her know I’m on her side, and she continues.
“All I have of value is the car. It was a gift from my boyfriend.” She clears her throat and corrects herself. “Ex-boyfriend. I met him at the club. He was a businessman from Milwaukee, handsome and really well established. He wasn’t the kind of guy who looked down my top or grabbed my ass or anything like that. He was sweet and really kind of protective. When Harry was around, no one messed with me. But you’re not supposed to date the men who come to the VIP Room unless they have this extra special key, and Harry didn’t have one.”
I memorize every detail in case I need to use it in a police report in the future: Harry. Milwaukee. Regular at the club.
“Anyway. We dated in secret, and he treated me like a queen. He’d tell me every time I saw him how it killed him to see men ogle me and how he wanted to marry me and get me out of this place. Blah. Blah. Blah.” She waved her hand in the air and then smoothed a crease in hercotton pant leg. “But I didn’t want to get married until I graduated. So, he got me the car instead of a ring. And then two weeks later, as I was walking into the locker room, this woman in a pretty gingham dress came up to me holding the hand of a cute little blond girl with pigtails. ‘Please,’ she said, grabbing at my arm with her dainty kid gloves, ‘please stop.’ I thought she might be a religious zealot trying to save my soul or something, but then I looked closer at the girl. She had Harry’s eyes. Damn fool was married the whole time.”
She stops talking and digs through her bag as though she’s explained everything, when clearly she hasn’t. She takes out a pack of gum and pops out a white rectangle, offering me one. I decline, choosing instead to ask my first question.
“So, Harry, he’s the one who wrecked your car? ’Cause you stopped seeing him?”
“Oh, my God, no.” She tosses the pack of gum back in her bag, her teeth crack through the hard candy surface, and the scent of peppermint fills the car. “We got in a fight that night and I told him I never wanted to see him again. He threatened to tell the Bunny mother about everything, but his wife must’ve gotten to him first, ’cause I never saw Harry again and that was over a year ago. No. It wasn’t him. Sorry, I’ll start again. Tonight I was filling in for my friend Larissa. She’s one of the handful of girls that also has a day job, so we cover for each other lots. The night really picks up after dinner, at least in the VIP Room where Larissa is stationed, and that’s when he walked in.”
“He?” I prompt when she doesn’t clarify.
“Don,” she says, biting at her glossy red nail. “Hollinger.”
“Shit.”
“More like holy shit,” she jokes somberly, and I feel sick. “As you well know, it’s not the only time I’ve seen someone there I recognize,” she said, referencing the night she nearly ran into not only me, but also Don and the whole executive team and potential advertisers.
I assumed she’d be more cautious or maybe even quit, but obviously she’d chosen to keep playing with fire or perhaps felt like she had noother choice. She tells me the rest of the story like she’s lost in a dream, her delivery monotone, her eyes glazed over like she’s watching the scene from a great distance.
“Usually when I recognize someone, I see them first, avoid the table, get one of the other Bunnies to swap with me or something, and that does the trick. Honestly, most of the time men don’t even look at our faces, that’s why you caught me by surprise that last time. I don’t know”—she taps her thumbnail against her front teeth—“but this time I definitely didn’t see him first. I was working at a table across the room when someone grabbed my elbow roughly but not rough enough to trigger the bouncer Eddie, who hangs out at the bar. My heart nearly stopped. He didn’t yell, not in the lounge, but he did look at me like I was dirty and told me I’d better meet him in the hall in fifteen minutes or else.”
The “or else” lingers ominously in the air. I could probably guess the rest of the story, but she continues, and I listen with rapt attention.
“I snuck out the side entrance to the stairwell that leads to the guest rooms, where Don was waiting for me. I’ve never seen him so ... unglued.”
I haven’t seen him anything more than stern, but I can imagine what unfiltered Don Hollinger looks like because I know what my dad looked like when my mom burned his toast or forgot the celery in his chili. I follow the curve of the highway, nearly wild at the idea of Hollinger harming Betty.
“Bunnies aren’t allowed back by the rooms ever—and I knew it. I knew the rules and I knew why. My Bunny mother told us on our first day of training: ‘We’re not a brothel and you girls are not strippers, remember that.’ And so we were never, ever, ever to go anywhere close to the guest rooms. Well, it didn’t take long for my security to show up after drunk Don started yelling. They forced him out, and within ten minutes I was out, too. Fired.”
