Chapter 11: The Strip Club Proposition
The money from Marcus felt like a hot stone in Leonid’s pocket. He’d dropped it on his landlord’s desk this morning, the old man’s surprise a fleeting satisfaction. Now, hours later, the satisfaction had curdled. The memory of the blade on skin, the controlled panic in Marcus’s eyes—it played on a loop behind his own.
He needed noise. Distraction. Something loud enough to drown out the silence in his own head.
The Velvet Room was all noise. Bass lines vibrated up through the soles of his boots, syncopated with the pulse in his temples. Neon—pink and electric blue—cut through a haze of dry ice and cigarette smoke, painting everything in a sickly, carnival glow. He slid into the cracked leather booth opposite Anton and Dimitri, a whiskey already waiting for him. He downed half in one go, the burn a familiar, welcome anchor.
“You look like shit,” Dimitri said, not unkindly. His eyes were already glazed from the joint they’d shared outside.
“Rent’s paid,” Leonid said, his voice flat. He lit a cigarette, the flame momentarily highlighting the sharp angle of his jaw. He exhaled, watching the smoke get torn apart by the strobe lights.
On stage, a dancer moved with a tired, professional grace. Her skin shone under the lights. Leonid watched, but his mind was elsewhere—in a dank alley, in a gym, in a kindergarten classroom a lifetime ago.
“You know,” Dimitri said, leaning across the sticky table. His words were slightly slurred. “You’re doing this the hard way.”
“Doing what?”
“The money thing. The whole… struggling artist bit.” Dimitri gestured with his beer bottle. “You got a golden goose. You just ignore it.”
Leonid stared at him, smoke trailing from his nostrils. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Jennie.” The name hung in the air between them. Anton snorted into his drink, a wet, ugly sound.
Leonid’s grip tightened on his glass. “What about her?”
“She’s loaded. Family money, the quiet kind. The ‘donate-a-wing-to-the-library’ kind.” Dimitri’s smile was all teeth. “And she’s so fucking gone on you, Leo. It’s pathetic. You could ask her for a kidney and she’d ask if you wanted the left one or the right.”
A cold trickle, entirely separate from the whiskey, worked its way down Leonid’s spine. He saw her face from the photo on his desk. The silent vow in her dark eyes.
“He’s not wrong,” Anton chimed in, wiping his mouth. “Remember in sophomore year? You casually mentioned that limited-edition console was cool. The one that cost like a grand? She had it delivered to your door the next week. You threw it back at her. Dramatic fucker.”
Leonid remembered. He’d been furious. He’d called it pity. She’d just stood there, taking it, her expression unreadable.
“That’s different,” he muttered, taking another drag.
“Is it?” Dimitri pressed. “You just put a knife to some trust fund kid’s face for eight hundred dollars. Jennie would hand you eight thousand if you just stopped scowling at her for five seconds. She’d probably set up a direct deposit. ‘Leonid’s Rent and Mischief Fund.’”
The logic was obscene. It was airtight. It made the switchblade in his jacket pocket feel crude and stupid. A primitive tool for a primitive solution.
He watched the dancer arch her back, a practiced move meant to look like ecstasy. It just looked like work. Everything was work. Working at the bar, working to seem like he didn’t care, working to stay afloat. The ease of Dimitri’s suggestion was a seductive, oily thing.
He finished his whiskey. The ice cubes clinked like loose teeth.
“It’s not that simple,” Leonid said, but the protest was weak, even to his own ears.
“Why not?” Anton laughed. “You think she doesn’t know you’re a bastard? She’s known you since you ate glue. She sees you. The whole, ugly package. And she’s still there. That’s her problem, not yours. So use it.”
Use it. The words merged with the thumping music. Use her. He thought of the towel. A simple, clean act of kindness he’d immediately contaminated with a joke. He couldn’t just accept goodness. He had to soil it first, so it matched everything else.
Asking her for money would be the ultimate soiling. It would take her worship and turn it into a transaction. It would prove, once and for all, that he was exactly what everyone suspected: a beautiful, userous leech. The clarity of the thought was almost calming.
He signaled the waitress for another round. He watched the stage, but his mind was nowhere near the club. It was building a cage of perfect, twisted logic.
Dimitri nudged his shoulder. “Well? Am I a genius or am I a genius?”
Leonid accepted the fresh glass. The whiskey inside was the color of amber, of old, trapped light. He looked at his friends, their expectant, drunken faces. He let a slow, cold smile touch his lips—the same one he’d used in the alley.
“Maybe I will,” he said, his voice a low rumble under the music.
His friends roared with laughter, thinking it was just another one of Leonid’s deflections, a dark joke to move the conversation along.
He didn’t laugh with them. He sat back, the cold smile still fixed in place, and let the plan unfurl in the dark, quiet place behind his eyes. It was thrilling. It was despicable. It was, perhaps, the most honest thing he’d ever consider doing. The knife had been a demand. This would be a request. He wasn’t sure which one made him feel dirtier.
He pulled out his phone. The screen glared up at him. His last notification was still her message about cortisol and sleep cycles.
His thumbs hovered over the keypad. The noise of the club faded to a distant roar. He started to type, deleted it, then started again. Three words. Simple. A hook cast into deep, still water.
Need to talk.
He hit send before he could think about it. The message, stark and unadorned, vanished into the digital ether. He placed the phone face down on the sticky table.
The immediate silence that followed, deep inside his own skull, was louder than any music.