Tea Leafing: A Novel by Weezie Macdonald Read Free Book Online

Sam’s favorite waitresses slipped by her. “Seen Mary Jane?” Sam
inquired. The waitress nodded toward the dressing room and was off through the
crowd. Sam quickly weighed her options. Combover was nowhere to be seen and
money was ticking away.Making a
brief pass by Boise, she promised to return quickly. He nodded and smiled, transfixed
by Birdie’s ability to defy gravity.
    Mary Jane sat in front
of Sam’s locker in the dressing room drawing deeply on her Marlboro Ultra-Light
100. Sam admired the bartender’s profile as she approached. Her features were
chiseled without being hard. She kept her smokes tucked into a granny-style
clasp-top cigarette pack with embroidery on the front that read: “Between two
evils, I always pick the one I’ve never tried before.   — Mae West.” Mary Jane studied the pack as she slowly
spun the clutch in a circle by the metal prongs, her cigarette balanced gently
between her first and second fingers.
    Mary Jane had the
perfect Florida girl look, which was fitting since she’d grown up in
Jacksonville, raised by her single mother. Her white-blond, blunt-cut pageboy
framed her features perfectly. Razor-straight bangs sat just above the arched
eyebrows guarding her piercing blue eyes. Not just blue, but a white, gray,
blue so pale if it weren’t for the darker ring around her irides, they might
blend imperceptibly with the whites of her eyes. She was medium height, but in
a world of six-inch stilettos, she seemed shorter than her five-foot six. Her
skin glowed with a light tan, although not nearly as dark as most of the
dancers.
    Mary Jane looked up as
Sam grabbed a nearby chair and sat backwards on it, folding her arms across the
back and propping her chin on her forearms.
    “Combover is in the
house.” Sam whispered.
    Lowering her head, Mary
Jane did a quick scan of the dressing room out of the corners of her eyes. The
beauty of a strip club is that there isn’t much loitering in the dressing room
when it’s a packed house. Straight commission is a great motivator. But as
Birdie always pointed out, it’s not straight commission since girls are in the
hole a minimum of a hundred and twenty dollars when they set foot inside the door
to work. Between house fees, DJ fees, house-mom tip-out and various other
charges, the club sees to it that a dancer’s pay supports the rest of the
staff. So, the dressing room was almost empty except for Lucille, the house
mom, who was rumored to have once slept with Elvis. She lurked nearby,
pretending to be preoccupied, like a bad spy. And that’s
exactly what she was, a spy for the management.
    Mary Jane glanced
briefly toward the locker where the masking tape with “Lena” written on it had
been torn from one of the lower doors. “Where’d you see him?” She asked,
rolling the burned paper ringing the tip of her cigarette around the lip of a
black glass ashtray.
    “On the main floor, but
I lost him.”
    “The bouncers will boot
him when they see him.” Mary Jane looked at Sam’s reflection in the long
vanity. “Do you think he did it to her?” she whispered.
    Sam raised an eyebrow,
“Who knows, but I’d sure like to have a word with him.”
    Looking down at her
feet, Sam thought about kicking off the platforms they were wedged into. She
didn’t dare, since they would swell like popovers the minute the shoes came
off. Once those bad boys puffed up, nothing but time would help.
    Birdie came slamming
through the back door that led from the stage to the dressing room, soaked with
sweat.
    “DAMN! Got any watah ?! ” Birdie said , huffing for air
and tromping towards the two huddled by the lockers.
    Mary Jane handed Birdie
a big bottle of Evian she’d stashed in her apron. Birdie turned the bottle up
and drank most of it in a single chug.
    Birdie’s garter was
crammed full of money, and bills were stuck to her body like tissue paper on a
piñata. Sam knew it had been a good set for the Bird since there were several
Benjamins