feel. Not if I want to survive.
Jimi was one of the only people who understood—he had taken me in after my folks had died—but instead of being a father-figure in my life, he’d turned into something else. Even boss wasn’t quite the right word. He was a dictator. A manipulator.
If the call comes in today, if I get this job, then at least I don’t have to go back. I don’t even have to think of the club again.
Polly has gone upstairs to his room. I’ve sent him some promising leads off the job app, and he’s going to look at them as soon as he’s had a while to calm down. Meantime I text the other guys to let them know the money situation.
Graber sends back a scream emoji. He’s working at a coffee shop downtown. I’ll do what I can, but I can’t chip in much extra. Yeah, Graber, I know. That’s why I’m feeling so anxious right now.
Roan’s more straightforward: How doomed are we? I’m running low on anxiety meds.
Pretty doomed.
We’ll be fine if I get this job is what I tell him, though.
As I’m typing into my little phone with its cracked screen, it rings, and for a second I’m so startled I think I’m going to drop it. It’s buzzing in my hands like a living thing, and I think it might be the company I’ve applied at.
Except it’s not.
It’s Jimi again.
“We’re down a man tonight,” he tells me.
“And I should care…why?”
“C’mon, Finn. Where’s your team spirit? Aren’t we a team?”
We are not a team.
“Listen,” he says, “we’ve got some new whales coming in tonight, and I need someone to sling drinks.”
“You gonna let me do it fully clothed?”
He scoffs. “Come on. You know the drill. People like to see you.”
“Even though I’m an ugly.”
“Because you’re an ugly. Makes the boys look better by comparison.”
“This conversation is doing wonders for my ego.”
“Getting a truckload of benjamins in tips won’t hurt your fucking ego, Finn. There’s nothing to be scared of. You know how these guys are. Half of them take a boy home, put their heads in their laps while they cry.”
I can’t help but laugh. It’s the unspoken truth of the club. In some ways, it’s just overpriced naked psychoanalysis. People are so weird about sex. So many feelings. What’s the point of having a feeling about it? It’s a bodily function. Nobody cries about sneezing. When you get hiccups, you want them to go away.
Laughing is a mistake, though. Jimi thinks he’s got an in. “You’ll do it.”
“I won’t do it. I don’t want to be a waiter there anymore. It’s fucking scary. I’m telling you, I’m out of the business.”
“Damn it, Finn,” and now his voice is lower, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think there was a tinge of a threat to the growl. “I need you here. All right? I can get a million roid-bunnies from the gyms. They don’t have what you have.”
The scar. The sense that I can be hurt.
Badly. Brutally.
Because I’m an ugly.
Please don’t do this.
I can hang up. It is within my ability to do. It’s the red button on the screen, right under the cracked glass. There’s no need to argue, or discuss, or talk at all. One button, and the conversation is over, and I can get back to my life.
“You know what you have?” He wants me to ask. He wants me to be curious.
I won’t give him the pleasure.
“Vulnerability,” he says. “You’re like a little lost deer in the woods, with those big dark eyes of yours. You look like, one wrong move, and you’ll scramble away. It’s the perfect contrast with the boys.”
I’m not vulnerable, because to be vulnerable means you have to feel something, and I don’t feel anything at all. Not anymore.
That’s the key to survival. You have to be a zombie. A mannequin. You can’t let things like no job and no money and (maybe) no place to stay get to you. If things get to you, then you’ll fail.
“I’ve already told you no, Jimi.”
“Come in early, get shaved and showered, help us oil up the boys—”
It’s easy enough to tap the button to hang up. You just have to do it.
My mannequin thumb, my robot thumb, feels under someone else’s control as it hovers over the button.
“Goodbye.”
“Fine, look, I’ll double the money just for tonight. Okay? Is that what this is all about? I’ll—”
His voice goes away and stops filling up my head.
“Anything?” I asked Polly.