“You go to school?” I ask Izzy.
She nods. “Got accepted into biochemical engineering at UC Berkeley.”
“Wow. Is that why you moved up here?”
She swirls the thin red straw through her mojito. “Yeah. I’ve always wanted to go, but I couldn’t afford all four years there, so I started at JC and worked full-time to sock enough money away that I could apply as a junior transfer.”
“I’m impressed. Berkeley’s super hard to get into.”
She shrugs like it’s no big thing. “I guess.”
There’s no way I’m telling her I just flunked out of Santa Cruz. And it makes me think maybe Mom was right. Izzy had a goal and busted her ass to make it happen. I’ve never had to work for anything. Mom and Greg took care of everything, and I’ve always just expected they would. Maybe I have taken everything for granted.
“See!” Ginger bites the cherry from her drink off the stem. “That’s what I’m talking about. Here’s a girl with a serious brain,” she says, pointing the cherry stem at Izzy, “and she’s selling her body to a bunch of horny men who have no respect for her as a person to fuel their fantasies of superiority over women as a whole. They slip cash into your g-string to establish their ownership—to demonstrate that you’re an object to be bought and—”
“To finance my education,” Izzy cuts in. “And I don’t wear a g-string.”
Ginger looks past me at Izzy and throws her hands up, exasperated. “You should be interning at Lawrence Livermore and discovering the cure for cancer, or developing sustainable food sources for third world countries.”
“I looked into it,” Izzy tells her. “Couldn’t make the rent on what they pay interns, so the cure for cancer will just have to wait until they revamp their salary structure.”
“No offense here, Ginger,” I say, turning to watch Jonathan and the guys as they sound-check up on stage. “You know I love Jonathan like a brother, but I’m pretty sure you knew he was one of the biggest man-whores in the Bay Area before you started sleeping with him. I can’t speak for what goes on between you two, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t have a whole lot of ‘respect as a person’ for most of those girls,” I say, making air quotes. “He was just fucking them.”
“No offense taken,” she says, and I can tell from her expression she means it. “The difference is, sex is a basic instinct. It’s organic and necessary, and, when it’s consensual, both partners benefit. How do you benefit by dancing on stage?”
“Other than the money?”
“What’s the price of your self-respect, Red?” she asks, her eyes narrowing.
“Four hundred a night,” I say a little defensively, then add with a shrug, “and it makes me feel desirable and sexy.”
“You are sexy and desirable,” Ginger counters. She waves a hand across the crowded bar. “Any guy here would give his left nut to get into your pants.”
I give her the skeptic’s squint. “So, you’re saying sleeping with those guys would be less degrading than dancing for them?”
She points at me as her eyes brighten, thrilled that I’m finally getting it. “Exactly!”
I don’t even have a response.
Jonathan saves me from needing one when he leans into the mic and says, “This first song goes out to my all my favorite girls.” He grins and flicks a salute in our direction, and two girls at a table in front of us squeal and wave their arms in the air, bouncing in their seats. I’d bet tomorrow night’s tips that Jonathan’s slept with both of them.
As Jonathan and the guys launch into their first set, Ginger stands and drags Izzy and me off our bar stools. “C’mon, you guys,” she yells as she tows us to the dance floor. “Time to use your siren powers for good instead of evil.”
On stage, Topher whips his long blond hair in and out of his face, and his lead guitar is like an extension of his long lean body as he cranks out a riff that has everyone is the place moving. Three-quarters of everyone in the bar sings along as Jonathan wails about how girls are like pizza toppings, each one different but none of them bad. It’s one of the first songs he and Topher wrote together when they started the band two years ago, and it’s become their anthem. Any Astray regular knows it.
Ginger, Izzy, and I dance up front, near the stage, and while Jonathan seduces every woman in the room with his voice, I can’t help but notice where his eyes linger. Ginger moves her body to his urging, like a snake to her charmer, and his gaze stays locked on her.
Maybe there’s hope for that boy yet.
Chapter Nine
WHEN JONATHAN DROPS me at the club on the way to his gig the next night, Izzy and Brittany are already in the dressing room. Brittany smirks at me as I grab my stuff from the closet. She’s back on center after my demotion.
Izzy mouths, Ask her, then flips her eyes at Brittany.
I give her back a subtle shake of my head and a wide-eyed look that screams, Shut up!
She rolls her eyes at me and heads to the closet for her costume.
God, I should ask her. My only other alternative is to watch Jonathan walk around naked from my nine hundred dollar a month sofa for the foreseeable future.
I shove Izzy aside and grab my stuff, weighing the pros and cons as I change.
“So . . .” I finally say as I’m lacing up my last boot and Brittany finishes her makeup, “I heard you might be looking for a roommate?”
She shoots a glare over her shoulder from the vanity. “Maybe.”
“Um . . .” I say, fighting to keep the grimace off my face, and focus on tying my boot. “I’m sort of looking for a place, so . . .”
Her eyes narrow. “So, what?”
“So . . .” I continue. “I was wondering what you pay for rent . . . or what you’d want me to pay, I guess.”
She spins her stool and stands. “You want to move in with me. Seriously?”
“Maybe.”
“Seven hundred,” she says, turning her attention to straightening her nylons.
“Where is it? And how big and all?”
“It’s a two bedroom in the Haight.”
“San Francisco?” Izzy screeches from across the small room. “You have a place in the city for fourteen hundred a month?”
Brittany looks up at her. “It’s rent controlled.”
Izzy turns to me. “Hell! I’ll sell my soul for that. You can have my place.”
We all just look at each other for a second, then Brittany surprises me by plucking at her devil costume and cracking up. When she stops laughing, she flips a hand at me. “My roommate’s moving out at the end of the month. You want to come by and check it out later this week?”
“Um, yeah . . . okay.”
She nods and pushes through the door into the hall.
I give Izzy another wide-eyed look, then follow her out.
We hit the stages and Pete does our intros, and I can’t stop myself from searching the crowd for Harrison as I dance. I know he’s gone. I know I’ll never see him again. But the stupid truth is, even though I know he’s not going to be there, I can’t stop wishing for it.
So, just like every other night for the last week, I suck, my crowd is sparse, and my tips blow.
When I finish my stage shift and Nora tells me I have a private, I’m more shocked than she is. No one’s hired me for the last week. She pushes open the door to the VIP room and I brace myself for Sweaty Man or Horny Guy. But when I step into the room, my heart stalls. All I can do is stare.