Page 13 of Yield to Me

Chapter 7

The door jingled as I walked in the entrance of No Doze. Clay looked up from the espresso machine and waved. “You look worn out,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said sarcastically since no one liked to be told they looked tired, but I smiled anyway. He started fixing me an iced coffee, and Bobby poked his head out of the back room and asked if I still wanted the Friday early a.m. shift. I said yes and thanked him for still giving me hours, even with the new job.

I was relieved to be there, like I could finally relax without my mother making rage course through my blood vessels. While Regina had good intentions, it was hard for her to have a normal conversation without it turning into an all-about-Grayson lecture. It was rare that he ever had anything to do with the topic, and it only further cemented my belief that you couldn’t trust anyone, not if it meant giving your heart to someone only for it to get chewed up, pulverized, and spit out on a silver platter, like Grayson had treated Regina. I had even dated a boy back in high school for two years, had lost my virginity to him, and when he dumped me for my best friend, I didn’t feel betrayed; I felt relieved, like I knew all along that I would be let down, and now that the time bomb had finally exploded, I could rest easy in my reaffirmed beliefs. I had had flings since then, the kind of thing where it was easy to break it off. I didn’t want anything serious. There was no point.

I grabbed a chair and sat at the bar counter. Clay set the coffee and a pesto flatbread in front of me.

“How’s the new job?” he asked.

“Michael came in today,” I said.

“Was he drunk?” Clay chuckled. “Can he afford that place?”

“He can’t, but his new girlfriend can.”

Clay laughed hard, with a grin on his face like it was too good to be true. “You mean your not his number one crush anymore? Shocking.”

“Guess not,” I said. “I’ll have to ask him what he was doing. He acted like he didn’t even know me.”

“Are you surprised?” Clay paused. “Wait. Are you jealous?” He turned his head to the side as if pondering. “You are, aren’t you? Come on, Riley. You knew he was going to pull this crap eventually.”

“I am not jealous. I deserve the same respect that his new girlfriend does, which means treating me like an equal, not like I’m the rug beneath his feet.” I groaned and looked around the shop, seeing that there were only two regulars in the back. One of them saw me and waved. I waved back. “Slow tonight, huh?” I asked. “Tell me about your love life.”

Clay wasn’t seeing anyone, but he had a crush on a classmate in his lab group. Clay made sure to walk her to her dorm room or car after study group sessions, but he couldn’t tell if she had a boyfriend or not. She brought up a few different names, but she never seemed to have any plans with them unless it had to do with school. He wanted to ask her out to dinner but was nervous.

“Ask her out to pizza,” I said. “For one, pizza is totally casual, so it won’t be as nerve-wracking. You have to eat it with your hands.” I raised my eyebrows and motioned with my hands as if I was eating two slices at once. “And everyone loves pizza.”

“Pizza it is.”

A few customers entered, immediately disbanding the temperate atmosphere in the cafe. I sat at a table near the entrance and finished my flatbread. Out the windows, people passed by. Some laughed to each other, and others scurried past as if they didn’t want to be seen. Every once in a while, one would enter or exit the café, dreamily gazing at the chalkboards behind the counter. I was in a daze too until one woman entered. A fur jacket sat on her shoulders, her long hot pink fingernails peeked out from the sleeves. Booty shorts and fishnets hugged her lower half. I expected high heels, but there were Chuck Taylors on her feet, the tongue flap loose and the strings untied. The woman ordered in a wispy voice, and Clay looked flustered as he scrambled to make her drink. She winked at him, left a five dollar bill in the tip jar, more than the cost of her coffee. The woman was graceful while still being comfortable in her skin, confident that she didn’t have to do anything to catch a man’s attention. Perhaps it was in the way she moved, her aura, the hypnotized me. All I knew was that there was something about her that made her different, in a way that I envied her. I wanted to figure out her secret for myself, to represent it in sculpture somehow.

“Did you see which way that woman went?” I asked.

Clay pointed to the left of the store. “Get her number for me,” he shouted. I grabbed my purse and waved, ignoring the request. The bell chime jingled behind me.

The truth was that I had never been to a nightclub before Surrender, and I sure as hell had never been to a strip club. I had a feeling I was underdressed in my hoodie and button up work shirt, but the cashier checked my ID, took my cover charge, gave me drink tickets, and ushered me in. The music radiated between every surface; I could feel the bass thudding in my core. I followed the hallway to a smoky room—open and wide all the way to the back of the club, like a large warehouse. Purple lights sparkled on the walls. A bar was right next to the hallway. I traded a drink ticket for a vodka cranberry. I wandered around, trying not to look at the men sitting on the couches, but allowed myself to see the women. There were different body types, and varying degrees of undress. A black woman, over six feet tall, wore a white silk robe that fluttered around her as she stretched across the room. A redhead, hair too bright to be real, glided around a pole on the stage, the light flashing blue and green on her skin. She stopped, balancing on one leg, and leaned back, towards the ground, her spine arching as if she were an eel.

I quickly found an empty chair next to a small table with ice filled cups. A waitress cleared it for me without saying a word. Although there were many men sitting in dark corners on couches and chairs like me, there was only one man sitting at the stage. He shook his shaggy blond and gray hair out of his face, looking up at the woman, each time placing folded dollar bills in front of her.

“Do you often find yourself in strange clubs at night?”

I turned. Owen leaned against a chair nearby, watching the woman on the stage. He turned towards me, waiting for an answer.

“Believe it or not, it’s my first time here,” I said.

He pulled out the seat next to me and sat. I wondered how long he had been in the club, if he had seen me walking around. I tried to take a sip of my drink, but it was already gone. Liquid beads slurped up my straw. Owen waved down a waitress and I ordered another vodka cran. We sat in silence for a while, the music filling the space between us. Our chairs were only a few inches apart. Owen’s hands rested carefully on the arms, his watch catching purple glimmers.

“It’s not the most refined place,” he said finally, “but it’s good for business meetings. I was actually finishing one when I saw you.”

I smirked. “So you don’t come here for the gorgeous women?”

“I would be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate their beauty.” Owen scooted his chair closer to mine, and the waitress brought our drinks. I noticed that he didn’t look at the waitress’s ample cleavage, even though it was right in his face as she put down the drinks. Once she was gone, he leaned over to me.

“You see,” he said, “These women, they have more power than you’d realize.” The new woman on stage, a platinum blonde with her hair in a ponytail, flipped upside down, gripping her legs around the pole. I was surprised that the woman’s breasts seemed smaller than mine. “I once asked her,” he pointed to the woman on the stage, “if she’d dance for a business client, and she refused, saying she didn’t need the money. I ended up giving her an excessive tip, and even then, she wouldn’t touch him.” The woman pulled the triangles of her bra to the side, exposing pink nipples that matched her lips. She slid down the pole upside down like that, then crawled to the edge of the stage, her back curving like a cat. “It takes more power than you’d realize to be able to withstand the criticism, the rejection, the harassment, and still command attention with your presence,” he said. He put his hand on mine. “Like what it takes to be an artist.” I turned, and he stared back at me. “I admire women with power,” he said. He turned back to the stage. “It’s what I was saying about my interests. It takes a brave, strong woman to be able to surrender with her whole body and soul.”

I was glad that the music covered my lack of response. I hadn’t thought of it like that; when I watched the men and women subject themselves to torture and pain at Surrender, I couldn’t ignore the fact that they shuddered, whimpered, and sometimes even cried. But when I had photographed the triad couple, I noticed that they were all smiling when they were done, chattering in high pitch voices about when they were going to do it again. I had to admit that it was impressive to see what a person could take, and inspiring too.

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