“Fuck this place. I’m not risking my health, maybe even my life, to continue working here. I’m going back to Vegas, if not Puerto Rico.” Once reaching her bedroom, Kenzie resumed tossing her personal belongings onto the mattress. But following an emotional back-and-forth, she was so distraught that some items fell to the floor. Kenzie heard Jim enter the room and felt his hands from behind. She hesitated for a moment, then spun and wrenched away.
“Don’t touch me, Jim! You know I don’t want anyone touching me.” Her tone cast a vicious swath through the air. “I’ve saved my money and don’t need to be working here like the other girls do. I always said I’d never let this brothel define me or get its clamps into me so deep that I could never get away. I’m not Pamela or Nicolette!” Kenzie gathered her clothes and shoes, all mish-mashed together without any rhyme or reason, and stuffed them into a pair of pink suitcases.
So unlike her.
“Cierra, wait. Let’s talk about this.”
She hooked her purse with a finger and turned to face him. He stood with a limp posture as if all his bones had dissolved away, leaving only his skin to make do with standing. This man was her best friend, the only person other than her mother Kenzie believed she could trust. How could she leave him like this? What’s worse, this could be the final time she would ever see Jim. He had been there in her darkest hour and helped guide her out of the abyss that had been her failed marriage. He has always been there for me. Without his assistance, where would Kenzie be nowadays? Probably nothing more than a sad statistic.
But no matter how much she cared for him, she couldn’t stay in the brothel any longer. The world is too fucked up. She had to leave.
Pain funneled through Kenzie’s heart as she gripped both suitcases and held one against her front – a shield between them – and when she spoke, she barely recognized the sound of her own shattered voice.
“You need to get out of here, too, Jim. It isn’t safe. It’s not safe anywhere. I’m sorry, but I know this brothel is your life. You’ve been working here for thirty-seven years, and you’re stuck the same as the others. I wish you’d leave with me, but I know you won’t.” She reached for the bedroom door just as Jim again touched her shoulders.
He rested his forehead on the back of her head. “Please don’t do this, Cierra. Ride it out some more, okay, and let’s see what happens. Don’t rush to any decisions like this. No one knows what is going on right now or what’s going to happen tomorrow, next week, whenever. I love you and want you to stay. I need you to stay.”
She clenched her eyes, damning all her tears to Hell. “I can’t.”
“Let her go.” Seconds later, Colt held a forearm to Jim’s chest, stopping him in his tracks as he attempted to follow Kenzie through the hall while pleading with her to change her mind. “Let her go, man.” And then, without so much as even a goodbye to anyone else, Kenzie exited the house and cried all the way down the block to the Twin Tops Motel, where her car was located.
“Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck! Goddamn it!” Jim’s angry gaze sliced Colt’s face before he stormed off to an empty room and slammed the door in his wake – a monstrous bang to add to his uncharacteristic outburst. “Fuck! I love that girl!”
Behind the bar, the color had drained from Lindsay’s cheeks. “What’s happening, Colt?” Her voice was so quiet that one could probably drown it out by whistling. “The house is falling apart. Christina and Kerri left earlier too. What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.” A panicked expression filtered across his features. “I don’t know, honey.”
“Colt, I just received some horrible news.” Pamela bristled into the parlor from the opposite corridor, holding up a piece of paper. “This is an official notice from the Nevada State Legislature. Our worst fear is being realized.” Pamela stabbed her fingers through her hair. “According to this, Governor Sisolak has ordered a mandatory shutdown of all strip clubs, massage parlors, and brothels throughout the state of Nevada, effective at midnight tonight.” Pamela’s words brought up the hairs on the back of Colt’s neck. “It says the shutdown is for thirty days, but both you and I know it’s gonna be longer than that. Much longer.”
“What?” Air stalled in Lindsay’s lungs. “A shutdown?”
“And it says if any venues don’t close – if they try to fight it – they will, quote, face appropriate civil and criminal penalties as a result of their inaction, end-quote.”
Colt’s bloodless lips twisted in a mockery of a smile. “Oh, that’s great. That’s just effing great. Let me see that.”
“Open up! Sheriff’s Department!” A series of incessant knocks accompanied by the ominous sound of Tony Spaeth’s voice – Sulaco County’s sheriff and Happy Ending Ranch’s biggest adversary – broke through the front door. “Open up, McCarron, you piece of shit!” The smarmy little bastard was using his trusty megaphone. “Sheriff’s Department! We finally have orders to shut your ass down once and for all.”
Colt’s face turned ashen. “Oh, dear.”
Tears stung Lindsay’s eyes and she sniffled, wiping her runny nose with her forearm. “Fuck the Coronavirus!”
(End of Chapter 32 – to be continued)
