"Just keep an eye out for him when he swings by again," she teases with a wink at me, "and get his damn number next time! Come on, I'll walk you to the cars."
As the sounds of our heels clicking on the asphalt of the parking lot echoes through the street, my smile fades before too long.
Even if Natalie can help me come to grips with the fact that I can't work around the clock, I can't deny the fact that I can't even look at this club of mine without feeling a pang in my stomach.
I don't know what the feeling is. Dread? Worry over the fact that, for all Natalie's protests, I can't do this every night? The feeling that I'm trapped keeping this place running? Yeah, probably all of the above.
Even as I watch Natalie's motorcycle pull out of the lot and I start the ignition of my own car, the vibration sending a shiver of a reminder of the night up my body, I can't help but think about how uncertain the future is. I might own a club, but this place is only scraping by month to month. The only thing keeping it up is my hard work.
The work never runs out.
And debts are due soon.
3
Katy
It's been three months since I let myself take a night off with the suited stranger at my club. I dressed up the night after, even if I didn't want to admit I was doing it consciously, but all it earned me was a few compliments from the regulars. He didn't show.
The same thing happened the next night, and the next, and so on, until I finally stopped counting and figured he regretted something about the night.
I'm fine with it. I'm not the kind of lady who likes any more commitments than she has to take on, and right now, I have enough pre-existing commitments to worry about as it is.
The rain is pattering on the glass floor-length window of my apartment. "Floor-length window" being singular — my place isn't half as ritzy as most of the other club owners' in Brooklyn.
It has a charm of its own, though. Cozy, hardwood floors, and a decent view of a park below from where the windows face out onto the streets of Brighton Beach. It's no dump, but it's easy to find better places to call home on this side of town.
None of them are anywhere near my price range, though.
I'm padding around the apartment barefoot with Natalie, making a mental checklist of some of the junk I have laying around the place and writing them down on the tablet in my hand.
I raise an eyebrow at a couple of old art pieces I bought a few years back, now hanging on the light cream-colored walls near the windows.
"Aw, come on, Katy, the room's gonna look like a hospital without a few odds and ends to make it seem lived in," Natalie protests when she sees me eyeing the pieces. "You couldn't get much for 'em, anyway."
"Right now, each of them doesn't mean much more to me than its price tag, honestly," I reply flatly.
I stroll around the house, perusing a few other odds and ends.
"Let's see...that old computer could be sold for scrap parts, probably. And these old car speakers, I don't even know why I have those laying around in the first place. Some dusty college textbooks I never got more than a few weeks' use out of, those are definitely going."
I'm selling my stuff. A lot of it. As much of it as I can live to part with, in fact. Just as I'd had to cough up for my debts three months ago, and each month after that, the time is here once again to pay my dues. My dad’s old debts on top of the ‘protection money’ which just means they won’t rough me up, add up to a lot.
And I don't have the money, I admitted to Natalie just a few hours ago over the phone. I stop taking inventory a moment to flop down on the couch — which I can also probably part with too, I decide.
Natalie is frowning at an old lamp in her hands.
"Tch, seriously Katy, you've paid your dues on time every month since this stupid debt fell into your lap. Won't they, you know, cut you a little slack? It's not like you can't pay, it'll just be a couple more days."
When Dad passed, I inherited more than just the Amber Room. Dad liked to gamble, and the Russian mob in Brighton Beach ran all the rackets. Turns out, Dad wasn't such a lucky guy.
"It's the mafia, Nat," I let out in an exasperated breath, "being late on payments is first on the list of things not to do."
Up until now, I've been able to scrape by. Barely.
But the debts are due soon, and I realized too late that I'm short. So here I am, pawning off my old stuff on my tablet and silently hoping that Natalie is right.
Hidden expenses rack up, running a night club. Sure, it seems like it's just a matter of balancing the monthly bills with the income from drinks and cover charges, but maintenance fees start building up in waves. Every few months, someone breaks a barstool or a window or there's a problem with the sound system and not only do you have to shell out for that but also the DJ you hired won't work under these conditions and you have to scramble to pay another one last-minute and...