but before I could get to Gerri, a bouncer grabbed me, lifted me in the air with my feet kicking, tried to make me go the other way. I wrestled with him, clawed him, finally got free.
By then the girls were breaking for the emergency exit. Butter was hurt, her hair all mangled, blood on her face like she’d been slashed by a wolverine, stumbling into tables, clawing to get free from whoever tried to stop her, the white blouse she had on covered in blood.
The side door flew open and slammed the brick wall, allowed a streetlight to create a moment of visibility. Outside was the same truck. Yellow fog lights on the front. Its engine revving, lurching like it was ready to take flight. I heard the squeaky voices of the young boys panicking, screaming at the girls to come on and hurry the fuck up.
No more screams from Gerri. Not a single sound.
30
Vince
I woke at sunrise. No woman at my side. My mind ablaze. Dana had been my sunshine and happiness. The river that flowed through my life and quenched my every thirst. I’d have to thirst again. Would have to find a river that was truly mine.
This afternoon I had an interview over at Dan L. Steel. Was nervous about that. Job changes, just like the possibility of a layoff, raise a brother’s stress level. At Boeing, unless a new contract dropped in their laps this week, I was the next one scheduled for involuntary unemployment.
Nikes were in the corner, so I put those on and ran the Crenshaw Loop. Eleven miles and some serious change. Ran the course in less time that it usually took me to run Inglewood Ten. Probably because while I ran, I blanked out, and with every step I became more nervous.
Dana was sitting at the top of the stairwell. I was about to go off on her for not calling before she came to get her stuff.
Until I was close enough to see her uncombed hair. Eyes bloodshot. Face oily. Trembling. Hands massaging each other.
She wiped her eyes. “I need a friend.”
Dried blood covered her shirt.
31
Dana
It was right there in black and white. The metro section of the Times had an article about how Gerri Greene, real estate agent, divorced mother of two, former Cal State Long Beach honor student, was attacked at a strip club on the Sinset Strip. That summed up what was printed in the mainstream papers. Stories that had more empathy, that hit from that struggling single-mom angle, ran on the front page of the African American newspapers: Wave, Crusader, and Sentinel. Gerri’s face, the one grinning on every bench and bus stop on the west side of L.A., was on the front of every paper.
Reporters called my job and asked me a question or two, but I hung up in their faces. The Asian girl who worked down at Blondies saw opportunity knocking like a Jehovah’s Witness, opened her big mouth and told the whole world her version of what went down that night. Did that bull while she posed for the reporters, swinging upside down from the trapeze. She said that Butter and her friends had come down, said that they wanted to audition for the club, but wanted to sit in the back and watch first.
Played the owner big-time. All of that young T&A looked like a gold mine in the making. Let the whole crew in without checking ID. Even bought them a round of drinks. When the dust cleared, the owner of that gentlemen’s bar had no comment. I pretty much expected that.
On that floor, I had held onto Gerri and screamed for help. Hadn’t ever seen anybody look the way Gerri did when I made it to her.
Fifty stitches to Gerri’s pretty face, chest, arms, and back. A concussion. Ankle twisted, leg fractured from being pulled from a stage that was six feet high. Yanked from heaven to the hell below.
I was glad that she was going to be okay, in the physical sense.
The two teenage boys who had tried to jack us and two of the girls from Dangerous Lyrics had turned themselves in. They did that after their pictures were shown all over the news. Butter was still on the run. On the morning and evening news, reporters showed that girl’s estranged mother in front of the camera, begging for her only daughter to come back home.
That wasn’t the end of it. The midday news played a snippet