Page 10 of Wolf
“There’ll be no window cleaning for you,” I say sternly to Grams when she pulls out her hand-held window wiper from under the kitchen sink. She’s been on a serious cleaning bend lately, which is all well and good except for when she turns her focus to all the windows in our turn of the century Victorian home. Grams gets dizzy sometimes. The last thing I want is for her to fall off the step ladder and end up breaking a limb while she’s tackling something as trivial as washing windows. “I’ll do it over the weekend, allright?”
“It’s no bother at all,” Grams insists, tucking a few strands of her curly gray hair behind her ear. “Remember, I need to stay active in my old age. Keeps the muscleslimber.”
“True, but not when it comes to anything that requires you stepping up off the floor. I’ll do it. It’s not safe for you to climb that step ladder, especially when I’m notaround.”
“Oh, all right. Quit your lecturing,” she says in that cute chuckling voice that makes me smile every time. She sets down the window wiper then looks up at the handcrafted chalet style cuckoo clock hanging above the windows at the sink. “What time do you have to be at worktonight?”
I check the time. My shift at the Speak-Easy Gentleman’s Club starts in under an hour, but I’ll need time to change into my uniform and put on makeup. “In about half-hour.”
“You should take a jacket. The temperature’s going to dropovernight.”
I look down at my clothes. My cream V-neck t-shirt, black yoga pants, and red zippered hoodie will be more than enough for whatever weather comes. After all, it’s practicallysummer.
“I think I’ll be fine, Grams,” Ianswer.
“You can never have too much to wear,” she says, wagging her index finger at me, her bushy gray eyebrows knitted together foremphasis.
“And that’s my queue.” I pick up a dinner roll off my half-eaten plate and grab my purse, getting up. “Promise me you’ll leave the windows tome.”
“Oh, allright.”
“See you in the morning, Grams,” I say and hug her briefly, then I snag the window wiper from the counter and put it behind my back. I’ll need to stash it in the trunk of my car. Grams can be pretty stubborn attimes.
“Be safe, love,” sheanswers.
“I alwaysam.”
Giving her a wave from the kitchen door, I hurry to my Chevy Cruze. As I’m putting my things in the back seat, the hairs at the back of my neck stand on edge. I’ve been having this weird feeling like someone’s watching me for a few days now. I’m used to trusting my instinct, but I can’t see how anyone can have eyes on me in the spot where I’m standing. Our house is set back on a large, wooded four-acre lot, well beyond the outskirts of the city’s subdivisions. We have no neighbors for at least a mile. The only house we can see at all is an abandoned house on the other side of the street, a place I know like the back of my hand. And that’s the thing. The only direct view from our home is in the rooms at the back of the house, on the secondfloor.
Putting it out of my mind temporarily at least, I get in the car and drive to work. Grams doesn’t much like that I wait tables at a gentleman’s club, but I don’t mind. It’s one of the tamer strip clubs downtown, it pays the bills, and I get to keep my days free to be with Grams while she’s doing her thing around the house and out in thegarden.
“Look who’s cutting it close to startingtime.”
I follow the voice just in time to see the back door of a late model Jeep Wrangler as itopens.
“Hey, Bex,” I reply to one of the strippers I made friends with. She’s one of the sexier, sassier, mouthy types, but she’s a straight shooter, and I always know where I stand with her. I scan down her body and see she’s wearing her two-piece stars and stripes cowgirl stripper’s outfit. “Oh, you’re super early. Already dressed, I see. Good for you,doll.”
“Got my priorities straight, as always,” she answers, lifting out a pair of white, high-heeled cowboy boots from her trunk. “I forgot these back here. Hey, how’sGrams?”
Bex is the only coworker I’ve hung out with outside of work. We have a couple of things in common, but they’re the types of similarities that are so deeply rooted that they forge faster, stronger bonds. She also lost her parents as a kid. They died in a car accident. And we’re both natural redheads. I don’t easily admit that we’re both mouthy. I’d like to think I’m the quieter, less outgoing type, but whatever. We hit it off my first day on the job, and although we’re not besties or anything like that, there’s mutual respect betweenus.
“She’s great, thanks.” I grab my purse and we walk in through the back entrancetogether.
“Tell her I saidhi.”
“I will. How busy is it on the floortonight?”
“Pretty quiet, but I’m sure that things will heat up in the next couple of hours, and then it’ll be a nuthouse untilclosing.”
“That should be good for tips, at least,” I tell her as we enter the changeroom.
“Hell yeah.” Bex opens her locker and dumps her keys on the top metal shelf inside. “Oh, that reminds me. Try to stay on Jeff’s good side for the next little while. He was complaining about having to move up the start times for some of the wait staff onweeknights.”
“Yeah? Why?” I ask and take out my uniform. It’s a skin-tight minidress with straps across the deep V back. This getup is ideal for someone slender or athletic or tall, but not for a short, curvy girl like me. It shows off my thick thighs and barely covers my ass. Still, I do what I can to make up for my size with spiked heels when I’m on shift. Tonight, we’re wearing hot pink. We alternate between, black, red, midnight blue and hot pink, depending on the night of the week. With my bold, bright red hair that falls down past my back, I get a lot of comments from the patrons on hot pink night. Most of them are harmless, but there’s always one or two with grabby hands to go along with the sexual innuendos. Thankfully, we have almost as many bouncers as dancers, to keep the patrons incheck.
“He’s still pissed about the new Hooters that opened down thestreet.”
“That’s weird. They haven’t really eaten into the late shift traffichere.”
