Friends Like These question

Todd called me while I was shopping, telling me where to go and when, and the rest of my day was boring until then. By eleven p.m. I was walking toward Layla, scowling at the line to get in. It didn’t look like much from the outside, but hey, you can’t judge a book. Todd was standing outside talking to a gigantic doorman in a decent suit when he saw me and waved. Everyone looked me up and down as I swaggered right past the long line to the door, the doorman already opening the red velvet rope and stepping inside.
I knew girls were waiting to bitch at their boy-friends for staring at my ass in tight black leather jeans while secretly envying me for fitting into them. My matching leather halter top left nothing to the imagination either. Todd grinned.
“I expected you to be fashionably late,” he said.
“I was going to be, but I lost track of time.”
He kissed my cheek and escorted me inside.
The place was huge. The walls of the first floor were orange-yellow rag roll with old-fashioned torches flaming angrily. Fire hazard. Oh, no wait, they were fake. Some kind of lights that looked like flames. Statues of faux marble, Grecian warriors and Venus de Milos stood as sentries flanking crimson couches with jaguar skin throw pillows. Red velvet curtains hung here and there for semi-privacy. The dance floor was gigantic and easily accessible from all sides, with the obligatory dais set aside for VIPs. There were bars everywhere. Cages hung suspended from the rafters, pre-sumably for go-go girls. The DJ, a semi-celebrity, was a green-haired black man called Enigro.
Two flights led upstairs, the balcony obscured from below by the frenzy of colored lights. Bar-maids in catsuits bore trays of drinks with swift efficiency. My breath hissed out between my teeth, and Todd pointed to a sofa beside a marble statue of Bacchus.
We made our way there and sat, stretching out and crossing our legs on the primitive art coffee table. A barmaid arrived out of thin air with a tray of drinks, a Zombie for me, Tom Collins for Todd, and four shots of liquid heroin.
“Are the bartenders psychic, or what?” I asked. The girl smiled.
“Mr. Haggerty sends these with his compli-ments,” she said.
“Mr. Haggerty?”
“Rabbit,” Todd said, tipping her handsomely.
“He asks that you wait to do the shots with him,” she said before disappearing into the crowd. I watched her go, picturing myself in her outfit. I’d look good in that, too, I thought. There were foun-tains in remote corners, light glowing from under their frothing tumult, illuminating the walls with a rippling glimmer that combined with the flickering torchlight, out of reach of the stabbing colored beams. Grecian columns supported the balcony, and here and there gargoyles leered at the crowd.
“Like it?” Todd asked, expelling a cloud of fragrant smoke.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,”
“That’s the idea.” We clinked glasses and drank.
“Who is this Rabbit guy? How do you know him?”
“I’ve been running in bigger circles,” he said.
“Is that all you’re going to tell me?”
“For now.” I spotted Layla, looking fabulous, at the same moment she spotted us. She tugged on somebody’s elbow and that somebody turned with his eyebrows raised questioningly. She gestured towards us with a jerk of her chin and he followed her gaze, locking eyes with me.
So this is Rabbit.
He was on the short side, in a black leather jacket with lapels like a suitcoat, black trousers and shoes, and an emerald shirt I found out later would match his eyes. He looked like every pretty boy movie star, with the hair and the angelic good looks and the affected scowl. He smiled a crooked smile and came with her across the dance floor, moving through the play of lights.
Up close his nose had been broken, but not too badly, and a few shiny purple scars marred his bronzed complexion. His teeth were way too white. Layla beamed at us as they drew near.
“Rabbit, this is Simone.”
“Sam,” I said, taking his hand.
“Simone,” she corrected me.
Rabbit had the firm grip of a man who’d reminded himself to make it so. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Why Rabbit?” I asked, trying my luck.
“A hundred corny reasons,” he said evasively.
“Any good reasons?”
“Just one. May I tropose a poast?” He lifted two of the shot glasses and handed one to Layla. We all raised ours in salute as he toasted.
“To evil,” he said.
We drank.
And drank.
Everybody who was anybody was at Layla’s grand opening, and it was, without a doubt, the best club ever. Rabbit had designed everything and had a hand in much of the actual construction. The floor plan was, according to him, planned so that no one would have to squeeze uncomfortably past inconsiderate crowds, and no one could catch fire or start a fight. Every eventuality had been planned for. No one had to shout for a drink or have it spilled by a jostling drunkard. Rabbit was very proud of his place, and he let it show.
He was charming. God, he was charming.
He was self-assured and articulate, and didn’t seem to ever be without a drink. He was having a great time showing off his enterprise and telling jokes and smiling his crooked smile.
I can’t imagine what it was about him I didn’t like.
He had this expression, sort of a facial catch phrase, of “Who, me?” when he said something off-color or pinched his girlfriend’s ass. He did it a lot the more he drank. I still couldn’t figure out why I was there, though. Rabbit wasn’t flirting with me. He didn’t seem interested in me at all aside from conversation.
Layla, on the other hand…
She dragged me out onto the floor after another shot, her eyes locked on mine as we danced. I could not help remembering my ex’s animal theory as we moved sensuously to a hauntingly familiar song. Every motion was a display of perfect curves to entice and inflame. She closed her eyes and sang along and suddenly I realized I was dancing to a techno version of Eric Clapton’s famous song, no doubt mixed for this occasion. The club glowed around me with the magic of drunkenness, that frivolous, adventurous feeling that anything could happen, and probably would. Bright, loud flashes of color played on her face and body. She was close to me, so close that I could feel her breath, our bodies moving within inches of each other but never touching. She opened her eyes, and I kissed her.
The look she gave me was a slap in the face. She was gone an instant later, leaving me standing there stupidly ashamed, stared at by the nameless dancing people around me. I fled. Not to the ladies’ room, not to the exit, but straight to the bar. I quickly lit a cigarette, took a long steadying drag, and ordered another Zombie in a quavering voice.
The hand that held the cigarette was trembling. God, I’m such an idiot.
My drink arrived, and was set down empty a moment later. Only then did I go to hide in the ladies’. It was empty, thankfully. No big black woman on a stool by the sink, no chattering girls fussing over makeup or boys. I went to the mirror and took a long look at myself. I was drunk. Not too drunk but not sober. Deep breath, calm, control. I was fine.
I leaned across the counter and kissed my reflection.
Then I saw them.
Slim brown feet in heels, gold-painted toenails. The fog in my head cleared instantly. Had she heard me? Did she know it was me? It took one look to know she wasn’t sitting down behind the locked stall door. What was she doing? I went into the stall next to her, sat down, going through the motions so as not to arouse suspicion. A few courtesy flushes for authenticity.
She took a deep breath, let it out in a sigh, and opened her stall. Through the crack of the door I watched her go to the mirror and compose herself. Breath mint, perfume, then notice the kiss in front of her. From where I sat it rested on the cheek of her reflection. She stared at it a moment, and then at herself. She took another deep breath.
“Here goes,” she murmured, and walked out.
My cigarette was an inch of dead ash by now, forgotten in my hand. I dropped it into the toilet, flushed, and put myself back together. Freshened up, and armed with a new cigarette, I steeled myself to go out and make as dignified an exit as possible. Outside the bathroom door was a statue of Cupid, obviously mocking me. I gave him the finger.
I moved uncertainly through jostling crowds of laughing people and splashing fountains towards the front, and was intercepted by Rabbit. He smiled pleasantly and leaned in close to shout something I couldn’t hear, taking me by the hand to a table upstairs past a bouncer and a velvet rope.
Right in front of us, Todd was selling pills in the shadows. He’d just set up business, right there in the open, and his customers were unashamedly buying and taking. Without a care in the world. Christ, there was even a menu, with "Our Prices Are Insane!" at the top and "Each Sold Separately" across the bottom.
I looked questioningly at Rabbit, who gave me his look.
Who, me?
He leaned across the long table and took a tab from Todd’s box, holding it out to me.
“Fancy one?” he asked. I shrugged, smiled, and he suddenly became solemn and rigid, holding the pill up before me.
“Body of Christ,” he said, and I bent my head, taking it onto the tip of my tongue. He signaled to some unseen barmaid to bring another round, and asked me for a cigarette.
“Todd’s cloves are getting tiresome,” he said.
“Don’t you have your own cigarettes?” I asked.
“I don’t smoke.” He grinned impishly. “I just want to look cool.”
He didn’t take himself seriously. That’s what I liked about him. It was all an act, though, a front. That’s what I didn’t like. He was role playing almost. He was a beta or a gamma male trying to fake being an alpha. And what was the story with his girlfriend?
“Give me a jump off yours,” he said, and lit the cigarette I’d given him with the smoldering tip of mine. “Sam, are you having a good time tonight?” I nodded. “You like this place?” he asked for about the tenth time.
“Of course.”
“Todd here tells me a lot about you. Says you’re a very popular girl and you know a lot of good people.” Um, I’m a stripper, and I know a lot of druggies. “Maybe you’d like to tell the right people about this place.”
“I don’t think you’d need me for publicity,” I said.
“That’s not what I mean. This part of the club, here, is for the real party. That out there is for the rabble. Get me?”
I nodded slowly.
“This is where friends of mine and Todd’s will come, and, hopefully, friends of yours. Friends who know how to keep a secret, and enjoy spending money. This up here is the real party, the secret party, out of sight of the public eye. A real VIP section.”
He led me away from the table and met a girl with our drinks. He thanked her and toasted with me to evil. We watched each other’s eyes over the rims of our glasses.
“You can expect a healthy cut for your trouble,” he said. “And you don’t have to dance for any-body.”
We walked past black leather couches, their occupants somewhere between second and third base. On each coffee table was a vase with one dozen red roses. Lines were cut and waiting on some, joints were burning forgotten on others. It looked like the party I wanted to be invited to.
Rabbit flashed his crooked grin at me.
“What do you say, Sam? We in bed together or what?”