And maybe tonight, too. Hell, maybe even for the whole time Russell Mulholland was in town. It would be for Maisy, right? It would go into her college account. Jeez, Ginny could probably squeeze enough out of the guy over the next couple of weeks for Maisy to go for her doctorate. It wasn’t like it would be any hardship to get horizontal with a guy who looked like that. It wasn’t like sex was any big deal in the first place. Ginny had never enjoyed it, anyway.
Enough, she told herself. If she was going to sell herself out to Mulholland, she might as well be riding one of the poles at Minxxx. The dancers made even more than the waitresses did. But her skills as an actress only went so far. It had taken her years to get into the character she played at work and to get comfortable showing as much skin as she did. Even now, there were some nights, like tonight, when she couldn’t quite hold onto her character, and she let the facade slip. Damn Russell Mulholland and his blue eyes anyway. And when that happened, when she let herself think about how she was dressed and how the men looked at her—and groped her—she came all too close to quitting.
And she couldn’t afford to do that, she told herself as she turned her attention back to the evening’s take. She sorted the bills quickly by denomination, flattening them out as she went. Some guys thought it was funny to stuff their tips in the bottom of a glass that wasn’t quite empty, meaning a few of the bills smelled like rank Bourbon. Ginny didn’t care. Tomorrow morning, she’d take them all to a branch of her bank that was miles away from her usual one to deposit them.
She did her best not to go to the same branch more than a few times a year, and she always went through the drive-thru. Nothing screamed “Working for tips in a bar” like a big ol’ stack of wadded-up, Bourbon-stinking cash, and she didn’t want to risk anyone at her regular branch—or any other—finding out what she did for a living. Beechwood was a chatty, friendly neighborhood, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if one of the tellers said something to Hazel about the piles of fetid money Ginny always brought in to deposit.
She pulled a shoe box from the very back of the closet and tucked the money inside, then returned it to its hiding place and placed a half-dozen other shoe boxes atop it. And, as she always did after handling the money given to her by groping hands—once she washed her own hands, she meant—she estimated what the total amount would buy. Half a semester’s worth of textbooks, she figured. Provided Maisy majored in something other than law or medicine that required prolonged study.
Ginny sighed. Oh, well. If Maisy wanted to major in one of those, Ginny would find a way to pay for it. She always found a way to pay for whatever her daughter needed, be it school uniforms or organic food or orthodontics. Because Maisy Collins wasn’t going to end up like Ginny. She was going to not just know her mother but love her and be close to her. And she’d never have to worry about how many more days they had before the landlord evicted them. And she wouldn’t go to bed hungry. And she wouldn’t have to listen to screaming and the back of a hand in the apartment next door.
Most of all, Maisy would never, ever , end up huddled behind a rancid Dumpster in the pouring rain, while at one end of the alley, cops were trying to find the Caucasian female, fourteen to eighteen years old, who’d just tried to break into the bakery, and at the other end, Mikey Malone was looking to bust up the girl who’d just told him she was pregnant with his kid. Never, ever would Maisy get that sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, wondering how the hell she was going to survive.
· Six ·
MONDAY NIGHT FOUND NATALIE SITTING AT A TWO- seater table in the corner of the Brown Hotel’s sumptuous English Grill, awaiting her porcini mushroom ravioli and sipping a predinner martini. She was still
Enough, she told herself. If she was going to sell herself out to Mulholland, she might as well be riding one of the poles at Minxxx. The dancers made even more than the waitresses did. But her skills as an actress only went so far. It had taken her years to get into the character she played at work and to get comfortable showing as much skin as she did. Even now, there were some nights, like tonight, when she couldn’t quite hold onto her character, and she let the facade slip. Damn Russell Mulholland and his blue eyes anyway. And when that happened, when she let herself think about how she was dressed and how the men looked at her—and groped her—she came all too close to quitting.
And she couldn’t afford to do that, she told herself as she turned her attention back to the evening’s take. She sorted the bills quickly by denomination, flattening them out as she went. Some guys thought it was funny to stuff their tips in the bottom of a glass that wasn’t quite empty, meaning a few of the bills smelled like rank Bourbon. Ginny didn’t care. Tomorrow morning, she’d take them all to a branch of her bank that was miles away from her usual one to deposit them.
She did her best not to go to the same branch more than a few times a year, and she always went through the drive-thru. Nothing screamed “Working for tips in a bar” like a big ol’ stack of wadded-up, Bourbon-stinking cash, and she didn’t want to risk anyone at her regular branch—or any other—finding out what she did for a living. Beechwood was a chatty, friendly neighborhood, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if one of the tellers said something to Hazel about the piles of fetid money Ginny always brought in to deposit.
She pulled a shoe box from the very back of the closet and tucked the money inside, then returned it to its hiding place and placed a half-dozen other shoe boxes atop it. And, as she always did after handling the money given to her by groping hands—once she washed her own hands, she meant—she estimated what the total amount would buy. Half a semester’s worth of textbooks, she figured. Provided Maisy majored in something other than law or medicine that required prolonged study.
Ginny sighed. Oh, well. If Maisy wanted to major in one of those, Ginny would find a way to pay for it. She always found a way to pay for whatever her daughter needed, be it school uniforms or organic food or orthodontics. Because Maisy Collins wasn’t going to end up like Ginny. She was going to not just know her mother but love her and be close to her. And she’d never have to worry about how many more days they had before the landlord evicted them. And she wouldn’t go to bed hungry. And she wouldn’t have to listen to screaming and the back of a hand in the apartment next door.
Most of all, Maisy would never, ever , end up huddled behind a rancid Dumpster in the pouring rain, while at one end of the alley, cops were trying to find the Caucasian female, fourteen to eighteen years old, who’d just tried to break into the bakery, and at the other end, Mikey Malone was looking to bust up the girl who’d just told him she was pregnant with his kid. Never, ever would Maisy get that sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, wondering how the hell she was going to survive.
· Six ·
MONDAY NIGHT FOUND NATALIE SITTING AT A TWO- seater table in the corner of the Brown Hotel’s sumptuous English Grill, awaiting her porcini mushroom ravioli and sipping a predinner martini. She was still
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