“Ladies,” he said. “Let’s get our weekly staff call up and running.”
I shook my head in disbelief. Some things just will not die, Apocalypse or not.
“Call?” I asked. “Who are we calling?”
“We’re calling our hearts and minds together. We’ve been enormously blessed,” he said. “But it’s a waste to have all these resources and not make the most of them. So we’re going to be entrepreneurs and start a business.”
I raised my hand. He waved it away.
“My wives. And Verdell,” he said. “You’re all so beautiful, and it’s a shame the world as we know it, doesn’t know it. So as of this moment on, I’m turning this Costco into a gentlemen’s club. I’m taking suggestions for names.”
I raised my hand again. “What about me?”
“Look, I wouldn’t say you’re classically pretty, but—”
“What if it’s a question and a name suggestion?” I asked.
“That name better be good.”
“H-How about Robert’s Ill-Advised Mistake?” I sputtered.
“Question denied.”
“This is a terrible idea,” I said. “And you’re putting us in danger.”
Over the next few days, the girls worked really hard. They built an area with supplies from the store that made it look somewhat presentable as a strip club. They made a sign that just said, “NAKED GIRLS” and hung it up outside. Four additional women straggled in from the outside, begging for shelter and a job. Robert sent me to turn them away and then me again to chase them out of the store after one of them pushed me down and ran inside. I chased her down and told her she could keep a supersized jar of applesauce if she left. She agreed, but more importantly, people started to come in—people who looked worse for wear, near zombiehood, but still willing to part with whatever they had for the chance to see a strange woman’s nipples. They lined up even before Robert opened the doors.
Rachel cornered me while I tried to bathe in the small sink in the bathroom.
“We have a problem,” she said. “None of us want to strip.”
“Thank god,” I said. “I was concerned we’d be setting feminism back a peg.”
“Okay.” Rachel nodded. “But no one wants to tell Robert. It might hurt his feelings.”
“I get it,” I said. “No one likes to hear no, but if you appeal to his sense of logic, he’ll get over it eventually.”
“Exactly,” she said. “That’s why we thought you should be the one to tell him.”
I sighed. “Me? Why me?”
“It’ll be one of those feminist things that you really like to do,” she said.
“You don’t enjoy women’s rights?” I asked. “What woman doesn’t enjoy that?”
“Meh.” She was clearly bored by the subject. “Who has the time, you know?”
“I’ll see what I can do.” I gave up.
On the onset, I was dead against stripping for money. End of the world or not, I still had morals and I was not going to shame my mother, wherever she might be. I decided I would only say something when he inevitably asked me my opinion. Unfortunately, he never asked me. I waited and waited, watched in judgment as Robert’s wives made homemade costumes and put together talent acts with the minimal amounts of talent they possessed. It was just going to take too much effort, so I let it be.
I marched into Robert’s office, which was just the section with kids’ furniture.
“Robert, we need to talk.”
He sat up in a baseball themed bunk bed.
“What now?” He sighed.
“The girls will come out, but we’re not taking our clothes off.”
He frowned and folded his arms. “Who’s we?” he asked. “You’re not getting ideas, are you? I don’t know if we can afford to lose money if you’re up there.”
“I’m going to ignore that comment,” I said. “But the bigger issue is that no one wants to do it. So we’re doing a variety show, even though some of us aren’t convinced that there’s a lot of talent here.”
“Fine,” he said testily. “If that model doesn’t work, then I’m taking in women who will.”
“Respectful as always.”
“What about you?”
“I thought you said no one wanted to see,” I gestured to my entire body, “this.”
“I stand by that,” he said. “I just need to know what you’re contributing.”
“I’ll count money,” I said. “I’ll schedule acts. You sit here and continue to brainstorm bad ideas.”
I volunteered to set up a meeting room with a schedule for all the women, and that seemed to get him excited. He asked me to do inventory, and that’s when I realized that there would be some things that weren’t going to change anytime soon.
We were getting all kinds of things as trade—iPods that didn’t work, shoes, Wheat Thins, books, action figures, weapons, drugs, etc. Robert just took anything, but after a while I had to put a stop to it.
“Listen,” I said to him after one night as someone had used a broken belt in exchange for admission. “We’re getting a lot of junk here. We’ve got to crack down and start asking for things that are actually useful.”
Rebecca shrugged as she tried to play off her defensiveness. “You didn’t say what I could take.”
She then burst into tears and ran off.
“Honey bunches of oats, no!” he said, running after her. “Come back!”
After that, Robert weirdly agreed and we set up a new system. We took things like weapons, gallon jugs of water, tools for trade and some harder drugs, which I didn’t even want to touch. Some of the girls set up their own bartering system for private entertainment, which ended up being one-on-one conversation behind the aisle of feminine products. It turned out that most men were just really lonely, and the women seemed pretty keen on copies of Twilight books and bottles of perfume.
As much as the feminist in me disagreed with the business, it was doing well, and I was pretty proud of how our hard work was paying off.
Most were still afraid of me, but I helped barter for better things. One night a guy tried to grab one of the new girls to kidnap her. So I snapped to action, and by snapped to action I mean, I first ordered Joaquin to take him down, which wasn’t easy, given that he had downed an entire can of spray cheese and had fallen asleep immediately after. When that got me nowhere, I ran after him, brandishing a defunct fire extinguisher. The scruffy-looking vagrant was in the parking lot with the struggling girl, set and ready to cram her into his Kia Sorrento when I called out.
“Hey!” I shouted.
I swung and missed, but it was enough to strike fear in his heart. His eyes widened and his arms immediately let go of the girl, who fell to the ground, whimpering. He put up his hands in surrender.
“Sorry, man,” he said. “I thought she wanted to come home with me.”
He backed away as I came at him again with the extinguisher. I felt real power, which charged through my veins like an adrenaline rush.
“Do I come to your house and take your stuff?” I asked.
He opened the door to his car. “Look, help yourself to whatever you want,” he said. “I got a box of envelopes, some pens, a stuffed animal. I think it’s a squirrel.”
I looked down at the girl.
“You want to go home with him?”
She shook her head. “He was talking to me, and I didn’t want to be rude, so I let him carry me out—”
I held up my hand. “Sir—”
The man ducked into his car and started the engine. I didn’t think anything of the incident until Rebecca approached me one morning and sat.
“I have to tell you something,” she said. “A lot of the girls agree. You did a great thing last night, and we really appreciate you looking out for us.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That means a lot to me.”