I turned to face her and gave her an evil grin, but still refused to reply.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Your worst fucking nightmare, bitch!” I spewed out at her.
She sat back down calmly at her desk and folded her hands. “Well, it’s nice to finally meet you. Do you have a name?”
“Hmph, you think you’re so fucking smooth.” I had to admit that she was just that: smooth. I would have expected her to freak out or something. “Okay, I’ll play along. My name’s Jude—and yours?” I sat down across from her at the desk. Nobody out attitudes me. “Oh, never mind, I already know your name. Bitch!”
“That’s not very ladylike, calling me out of my name,” she said.
Was she trying to piss me off or something?
“Since I’m not a lady, who gives a flying fuck?” I retorted.
“So Jude, what made you finally come out and say hello?” She reached into her top drawer and pulled out a cigarette. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Suit yourself.”
She lit one up. “Was it Jonquinette talking about reaching out to her father? Your father?”
“Henry Pierce is not my damn daddy!” I said. So much for playing it cool.
“Hmm, you seem to harbor a lot of negative feelings toward him.”
“My, my, you are a mastermind,” I stated contemptuously. “It took getting a degree to figure that out?”
“Jude, I’d really like to be your friend. Would you consider that?”
“I don’t need any fucking friends.”
“You know, Jonquinette thinks she’s going insane. The things you’ve been doing aren’t very nice.”
“You don’t know the half of it. I’m proud of myself.” I crossed my legs, determined not to let the heifer make me lose it.
“Why’s that?” she asked.
“Because I’m the shit. Jon’s lucky to have me. Without me, she would’ve had her ass kicked her entire life. Without me, she would’ve let everyone run over her, especially the Queen Bitch, Meredith.”
“Your mother?”
I sighed. “I don’t know why you keep referring to that hoe and bastard as my parents. I don’t have parents.” The slut just didn’t get it. “Anyway, like I was saying before you so rudely interrupted me, Jon wouldn’t have a leg to stand on without me. Don’t go throwing a pity party for her ass. You should be celebrating the fact that I exist.”
“But the two of you can’t coexist together.”
“And why the hell not? We’ve been coexisting all this time.”
“Because that’s not healthy.”
“So what are you saying?” I asked, getting pissed off all over again. The bitch had lost her mind and I told her, “If you think I’m going someplace, you need a psychiatrist your damn self.”
She was determined to try to bond with me. The slut. “Jude, tell me about yourself.”
I shrugged and said, “There’s nothing to tell. I put foot to ass when need be, protect Jon from people that try to fuck her over without grease, and I love to have fun from time to time.”
“What kind of fun?” she asked.
“I’ll be honest. I love fucking. Fucking is the only thing worth doing in this life.”
Marcella seemed bewildered. Good, I’d finally stumped her. “Do you honestly believe that?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Men are such wimps. They always fold under the pressure of the pussy. I like controlling them like the little puppy dogs that they are.”
“That’s the word I was looking for,” she said.
“What word?” I inquired with disdain.
“Control. You want to control things.”
I stood up and leaned over the desk. “Don’t get it twisted. I do control things. I’m always around. I just let Jon deal with normal day-to-day bullshit so I don’t have to. If I wanted to, I could take over for good and never, ever let Jon come back. That’s how dominant I am.”
Marcella smiled at me. “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”
“Excuse me, bitch?”
“If you could truly take over for good, you would’ve done it years ago.”
“You’re beginning to bore me.” I didn’t like the way the conversation was headed. She didn’t know shit about anything and to top it off, she wasn’t shit to me so I announced, “I’m leaving.”
I had made it to the door and opened it when she jumped in front of me.
“No, don’t leave yet.”
I poked her in the shoulder. “If you don’t move out of my way, I will give you a beatdown you’ll never forget.”
“Jude, we really need to continue this conversation.”
“I’m going to count to three and then I’m swinging,” I told her. “One.”
“Jude, please stay,” she pleaded.
I balled my right hand into a fist. “Two.”
“When can we talk again?” she asked.
“Three,” I said and lifted my fist to steal her one in the face.
She must have known that I was serious because she moved to the side and said, “Okay, okay.”
I damn near tore off her arm as I stormed past her out of the office.
There was no way I was going home. I headed straight to a bar to get my drink on. When I walked into a pub, it was boring as shit and there were only a bunch of losers hanging around. I decided I needed to do something more adventurous.
How dare that bitch doctor imply that I wasn’t in control? Huh, she was a complete idiot. Everything I had said in her office was the truth. If I really wanted to, I could make Jonquinette disappear altogether and just be Jude. But I didn’t feel like working a full-time job to pay bills and I had no work experience of my own. None whatsoever.
A lightbulb went off in my head. If I could devise a way to make my own money, fuck Jon and her boring lifestyle.
I left the pub, got back into the car, and headed for “the seedy part of town.” The part of town where there were liquor stores on every corner, pawn shops on every other block and most importantly, a shitload of strip clubs.
I spotted one that seemed to have heavy traffic, even for a Monday evening. A lot of desperate-looking businessmen and blue-collar workers were flooding into the joint. The name on the awning was The Bedroom. Not very creative, I thought.
The shitty name didn’t matter to me. I only cared about the place’s potential as a moneymaker.
When I got to the door, some idiot tried to tell me I had to pay a ten-dollar cover charge to come in. I informed him that I was there to apply for a job. He looked me up and down and grinned. Even with the homely looking outfit Jon had selected for the day, he could still tell my body was banging.
“Go on in,” he said, moving aside to allow me to gain entry.
“When you get in, ask for the owner. His name’s Skippy.”
“Skippy? What the hell kind of name is that?” I asked.
“Hey, it is what it is,” the bouncer at the door replied. “As long as I get paid, I don’t care what his name is.”
I couldn’t fault him for that one so I said, “True enough.”
I was pleasantly surprised when I got inside and it became clearer to me why they had such a large clientele. It was a classy place, despite its outward appearance. There was a nice leather bar spanning the entire length of the club on the left and about fifty or so tables scattered around the dance floor in the center. All of the tables had plush velvet chairs and the waitresses wore cute little velvet outfits that left hardly anything to the imagination.
I stopped one of the waitresses in her tracks. “Where can I find Skippy?”