“I’ll go get Talia to let her know everything’s ready.” Alejandro ignored the stairs, vaulting onto the stage, and went through the velvet curtains. Talia was nowhere to be seen, but he heard her unmistakable voice coming from the bathroom. He reached his hand up, stopping short of knocking on the closed door when he got caught up in the one-sided conversation.
“I’m sorry I’ve been out of communication these past few weeks.” A pause. “I know. You have every right to be upset. I promise that things will go back to normal next week.” Another pause. “Same day, the usual place at 10 o’clock. I will see you then."
Alejandro mentally counted to 10 before he knocked. “Talia? We’re all ready when you are.” The next thing audible was the flush of a toilet, as if to disguise what had just transpired. She opened the door, taking less than a second to glare at him before strolling past. Even in that short time, he saw diluted pupils and almost heard a heart racing inside her ribcage. “Who was that you were talking to? If that’s who I think it is…”
“Enough!” She cut him off. Her back was turned, but her head craned around like a cobra. “This is none of your business. I have been off my game for a long time and I need to get back in.”
“I understand that, but not with him. It’s those kinds of people that can make this business dangerous. I’ve served him enough drinks at the bar to know what he’s like and he only cares about one thing.”
The rest of her body turned around to face him. “I am well aware that we use each other for only one thing. I have no problem with that.” She threw up her arms. “I do not know why we are still having this conversation. We have had this deal for many years and I have safeguards in place so there are no issues. What can you tell me now that could possibly change my mind?” Alejandro opened his mouth to talk, but just as quickly closed it. Although the recent incident involving Amber provided enough grounds for him to ban this particular client from Calypso, he was sworn to secrecy by the edict Talia enacted upon founding the sirens.
* * *
Rodrigo Enriquez was the youngest of three sons of one of the brother’s closest associates. His enjoyment of hard liquor was eclipsed only by his insatiable sexual appetite. Naturally, this made him the perfect partner to suit Talia’s needs.
The night she first met him, he and Alejandro were having a disagreement that almost escalated to a fist fight. He’d had at least three drinks and become so belligerent Alejandro had to cut him off. “All right, that’s enough.” He stashed his glass in the used glassware bin below the bar. “Take your money and get out!”
“You can’t tell me what to do. My family could buy this club from your uncles if they wanted to.”
“Highly unlikely. They are our oldest friends. Otherwise, we would not dream of putting up with you.” He leaned over the bar and broadened his shoulders. “And it’s because you can’t hold your temper or your liquor that you are here instead of dealing in their business affairs like your brothers.”
Out of nowhere, as she often did, Talia materialized, “Having a problem. Alejandro?” She sidled next to him, gazing him square in the eyes.
“Talia,” his heart skipped a beat before he remembered what was currently happening, “what are you doing? You can’t be in the middle of this.”
She tilted her head slightly. “So funny that you think you have a say in how I conduct myself when this business is what it is, successful, because of me.”
Not a second later, she patted Rodrigo at the top of his shirt where the first button was undone. “Come into the back with me so we can continue this transaction.” She grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him through the defunct emergency exit door next to the bar.
It didn’t take much for Alejandro to piece together what happened. Since that day, Rodrigo always came to the club every other Wednesday. The best Alejandro could do, for Talia’s sake, was tolerate his presence. Ironically, Talia’s brief disappearance that night caused such an inconvenience for Vanessa and the others, they had to bring on another dancer in case they needed the extra flexibility. That dancer wound up being Amber.
His last two encounters with Rodrigo didn’t sit with him any better. The night he picked up Amber, Alejandro had to deliver the bad news that Talia wasn’t coming. Even without a drink in him, Rodrigo was livid. “What do you mean?” He slammed his fist, a shiny gold ring visible on its fourth finger, on the counter. “She’s always here on Wednesdays. Who else could she be screwing right now that’s more important than our arrangement?”
He raised a cautionary hand in front of him. “First of all, you don’t have a contract with Talia. You’re the only regular of hers where there’s no paperwork. That doesn’t make you special. As far as I’m concerned, she does you a favor, giving you a little fix every now and then. So all I will say is that she hasn’t been well lately.”
“Fine.” He gruffly turned his back and mumbled his order.
Amber never made another attempt to reach out to Alejandro to discuss the incident and he respected her privacy. But he decided the next time Rodrigo came to the club, he wouldn’t serve him anymore.
Naturally, he didn’t take it well and immediately looked for someone to blame. “If that bitch told anyone…”
Alejandro crossed his arms. “Amber didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to. One of the other sirens saw the evidence and reported it to me. Stay away from her and stay away from Talia. She doesn’t need you.”
“Oh, I think she does.” He puffed out his chest. “She is a sexual goddess and she knows that nobody can give her greater pleasure than me. You’ll see. She’ll call me when she’s ready and we’ll go back to business as if nothing else happened.” He flipped his stool and stalked out of the club.
* * *
After what felt like hours of drifting in thought, Alejandro refocused on Talia. She mocked his indecisiveness with the flicker of an eyebrow. “Couldn’t think of anything, hm?”
He wanted to mention Rodrigo’s ban from the bar in case she hadn’t already gathered that from the phone call, but he didn’t want to agitate her further. He just knew he had to make something else abundantly clear. “Nothing of interest to you. But when you have someone like Juan Paulo who’s interested in having more than just a one-night stand, I don’t know how you could want anything else. Certainly not someone so egotistical.”
“At least I have an understanding with Rodrigo about what we are to each other. You, on the other hand, never will.”
“Talia?” The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Juan Paulo raised a hand. “Sorry to interrupt, but Vanessa sent me to get you guys. She says you’d been here for ten minutes and was starting to get a little worried.”
“No problem, Juan Paulo. We were finishing up here anyway.” She glared back at Alejandro who echoed the sentiment before shrugging his shoulders and leaving. A huge exhale left her body and she crossed her arms at her waist. “How was your date with Vanessa?”
“We had a really nice time. I feel kinda bad I didn’t get to talk that much, but Vanessa made up for it by being an amazing tour guide.” He rubbed his throat self-consciously at the reminder.
“Did you take Scarlet’s advice about taking care of your throat? Your voice doesn’t sound as raspy as it did yesterday.” She tried not to make her concern obvious, but her hard exterior softened just enough to catch Juan Paulo’s attention.
“Yeah,” he replied with restrained enthusiasm, “it still feels a little rough, but it’s definitely an improvement. I might need to adjust my schedule to allow myself more time to heal.”
Steadily, the volume of noise in the rest of the building was starting to pick up. Talia tensed up, knowing she had to wrap this up quickly. At the same time, she knew she couldn’t go about her business without broaching the subject that had kept her up all night. The answer was blatantly obvious, but she wanted to hear it directly from him. “So… what do you think? Are the two of you going to go out again?”
“I mean,” he shrugged, subdued, “Vanessa’s great. I can see us becoming really good friends, but nothing more than that. We both kinda knew nothing more was going to happen between us.”
She nodded thoughtfully, taking it all in, but her surliness was quick to return. “I guess I should have expected this. Men tend to have this annoying habit of wanting what they can’t have. Now if you’ll excuse me…” Satisfied, Talia passed by him with her head held high.
“You’re right.” He whirled around to keep her in his sights. “Sometimes we can’t see that we’re fighting a losing battle. But it’s also just as easy to miss out on something that’s good for us even when it’s staring us right in the face.”
Skidding to a stop, Talia met him with a scowl, “And you think you know what’s good for me?”
For a long 10 seconds, neither of them said a word, each standing their ground. Juan Paulo then made the first move, closing the space between them until he was two feet away. He’d had nearly 24 hours to think long and hard about everything Vanessa told him about Talia’s past. It was a lot to process, but after hours of running through various lines in his head, the right words finally came to him to help make his case.
“Listen, Talia. I wish I could offer you a guarantee because that might be the only way you can return my feelings, but there are no guarantees in life or love. But for the moment I think it might be best if I take a step back to focus on some other things. I’d written so much music lately that it’s gotten a little out of hand and I might need to start narrowing down which ones I want to use for our demo tape.”
Talia’s heart skipped a beat for the briefest of moments. She hastily shifted her weight from her right side to her left. Feeling the blood starting to drain from her face, she quickly inhaled to reverse the flow. Nothing about Juan Paulo’s demeanor had changed so these subtle changes may have escaped his notice, but she couldn’t be sure. So she changed the context of the conversation with more deflection. “But what about Emilia? You made a commitment to be her escort for rehearsals and shows.”
“Don’t worry, I have no intention of changing that. I’m just going to be staying out of your way for a while, that’s all.”
Temporarily lost for words, Talia shut her eyes. Out of nowhere, a montage of memories from recent weeks flashed through her head. Each encounter she had with Juan Paulo seemed to borrow from every movie cliché imaginable. Their meet cute at karaoke. How he kept showing up in the most unexpected places. The way he wouldn’t take no for an answer despite her efforts to dissuade his efforts. Following this logic, a peck on the cheek and happily ever after wouldn’t be far behind. The mere thought sickened her, having lived enough of life to know things never work out the way they do in the movies. But when she resumed eye contact, the hardness in her heart softened at the sight of him and she almost wished things could be different. Inhaling deeply to ease all of the built-up tension, she finally said, “Very well, Juan Paulo. Now go. We’re already behind schedule.”
“Ok. Have a good show tonight.” He’d reached the curtains and was about to pull them aside when his gut urged him to get one final word in. “Talia, when the timing is right for you, you know where I’ll be waiting.” His self-assured smile was the last thing she saw before he vanished through the velvet barricade.
***
"I like it rough" is a song from Lady Gaga'a debut album that I've played countless times. I originally had the idea to use it for a routine. Amber choreographed it where the twins would do cha-cha for the first verse, her and Vanessa would do samba steps for the 2nd and they wind up dancing together in the end.
The "lore" behind this was that she contributed it early in her career but it was only performed a handful of times.
I'd originally wanted to use this title for the chapter where Amber goes home with Rodrigo and things go wrong for her. But I decided to edit it down to flashbacks and it was too good of a title not to use.
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