Chapter Six - Maddie
December 28th
Three Days Until New Year’s Eve
“You want some tea?” Raven asks. We’re sitting in her kitchen—well, I’m sitting at the small wooden table up against the windows that overlook her backyard and she’s in the kitchen holding a tea pot under the tap, filling it with water.
I reached out this morning to see if Raven was available for a bit, right after we made Tyler’s hair appointment with Rodney. I don’t know what it is about seeing Raven that makes me feel like it’s the right first step in... figuring out what my next step is going to be, but it is how it feels. Call it a hunch, call it intuition, call it having no fucking clue how to start centering myself and throwing a dart at the dart board. They’re all probably the same thing.
“Yeah, sure,” I say, nervously glancing at Brandon, who is sitting across the table from me just staring. At me, not Raven. There’s one of those triple-tiered serving platter things between us, so he’s partially obstructed by Christmas cookies and shit, but still, his gaze is… intense.
“So,” I say, looking at him.
“OK, I guess,” he answers. I’ve decided he’s some kind of freaky mind-reader because he does that every time I open my mouth. Answers questions I never asked. But he’s always right. Like… he knows things.
“What’d you guys do for Christmas?” Raven calls out from the other side of the kitchen island.
“Shit.” I laugh. “You really don’t want to know.”
“OK,” Raven says, wiping her hands on her apron as she walks up behind Brandon, places her hands on his shoulders, and leans down to bite the outer edge of his ear.
I cock my head at them like a confused dog. “You guys…”
“Yup,” Brandon says.
“Uh-huh,” I say back, just staring at the two of them. Raven plops down into the chair next to me. It’s not a table chair, per se. It’s like… an accent chair. All comfortable with throw pillows and thick arm rests. Kinda homey and classy at the same time.
Which, surprisingly, is kind of a metaphor for Raven right now as well. She’s baking today, hence the apron. And from the look of the triple-tier tray of cookies, she does this a lot. But under the apron—which is white cotton with ruffled edges and has a vintage fifties cherry pattern on it—she’s wearing a long white dress that flows around her legs like ethereal smoke when she walks.
“Who are you guys?” I ask.
Raven laughs, grabs a Christmas cookie off the tray, and takes a bite. “Just people,” she says.
“Right. So…” I look at Brandon, waiting to see if he’ll answer this question before I ask it as well, but he doesn’t. Probably because he already knows it was a question for Raven, not him.
Freaky mind-reader.
“So what are you up to these days?”
“Well.” Raven sighs. “Dealing with insurance shit, mostly. I hired an architect to give me the lowdown on what it’s gonna take to rebuild Pete’s and—”
“Did he leave it to you?” I interrupt. “Like in his will?”
“Not exactly,” Raven says, smiling as she chews her cookie. “We were partners.”
“Partners?”
“I was the silent kind. I mean, as far as the stripper shit went I was just the manager. But I took lead on the good deeds department.”
“Good deeds department?” I ask, thoroughly confused.
“Yeah.” She sighs. “Well, you wouldn’t.” Know about that, she means. Obviously, Brandon’s freaky mind-reading skills have rubbed off on her. “Because we didn’t advertise or anything. But we had feelers out.”
“I’m sorry, what the fuck are you talking about?”
Raven laughs again. “Tell me something, Maddie.”
“Sure,” I say. “What?”
“How did you find us?”
“You mean Pete’s?”
“Yeah, how did you know to come ask for a job at Pete’s?”
“I just kinda…” I was gonna say went in there, but that wasn’t how it happened at all, was it? “I came across a flyer one day. When I was shopping for a drone.”
“Yeah, I’d heard you talk about that stupid drone before. What was the deal with that?”
I wave a hand in the air. “Just one of my harebrained ideas.”
“OK, so you found a flyer. What did it look like?”
I shrug. “It was red paper with black writing. Had an illustration of a girl swinging around a pole wearing a devil costume.”
Raven lifts one eyebrow. She and Brandon share a look.
“What?” I ask. “What’s that look for?”
“Go on,” Raven says. “Finish the story.”
Something is happening here, I’m just not sure what. “Well,” I continue. “It had dollar signs on it and had something like ‘Make Quick Cash’ printed at the top.”
“So you picked it up at this… drone store…”
“Yes,” I say.
“And what? You needed cash? For that Carlos shit?”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “So I went in and applied. And you know the rest because you’re the one who interviewed me.”
“You were wearing white that day,” she says.
“Was I?”
“Yes, you were. White shorts, white tank top, and white wedge shoes. Which is why I hired you.”
“How do you remember that? And what do you mean, that’s why you hired me?”
She sticks the rest of her cookie into her mouth and brushes crumbs off her hands as she chews. Then she smiles and says, “Pete’s was just a strip club to most people. But underneath he and I had a little… thing going.”
“What kind of thing?” I ask. “And what the fuck did you mean you had feelers out?”
But the tea pot starts screaming and she jumps up, saying, “One sec. Hold that thought,” as she goes back behind the kitchen island and starts pouring tea.
I glance at Brandon just as he takes two cookies off the tray, places them on the table in front of him, and then smiles as he lifts one up to his mouth and takes a bite.
These people really have a thing for cookies.
Raven returns with our tea on a serving platter. She places a mug in front of me, in front of Brandon, and in front of her place at the table, and sets down a sugar bowl filled with light brown cubes, a small ceramic pitcher of milk, and a little container of honey with one of those cute wooden dippers.
I take a bunch of sugar cubes, add a splash of milk, and they both opt for honey and no milk.
“Mmmm,” I say, taking a sip of tea. “Thanks, I needed this.”
“OK,” Raven says, settling back in her chair and bringing her legs up so her knees are in front of her. “So I met Pete a while back. Before Carolina died. They were running the strip club already and I was working there. Pretty much just doing what you were doing. Being defensive and haughty.”
“Hey.” I laugh.
“Truth, Scarlett, truth.”
“Whatever.”
“I was about your age too, maybe a little younger. I’d just had a baby, so I was kinda desperate.”
“Wait,” I say, looking around. “You have a kid?”
“I did,” Raven says. She looks sad all of a sudden. “I gave her up for adoption.”
“Oh,” I say. Jesus Christ. I have no clue who she is right now. I mean, I’d assumed I knew who she was, but clearly I have no idea.
“I got pregnant and my boyfriend left me. I had a job, but it was just waitressing. The two of us together could afford the place we rented, but me alone?” She laughs. “Not enough tips to take care of that. So I was gonna get an abortion and just erase that part of my life completely, but dumbass me wandered into one of those health clinics run by nuns and shit, so they talked me out of it.”
“Oh, that sucks,” I say.
“No,” she says. “Not really. I mean yeah, I was really pissed off when I found out they only ran that free clinic to like, talk bitches like me out of getting abortions. Like… I got rage-y with those do-gooders and started screaming and yelling. But they gave me a home. Sent me to live with this couple who were looking to adopt, who took care of me, and sent me to therapy, and bought me an insurance plan so I could get prenatal care, and gave me money for school. Shit like that. And at first it was like… yeah, I want all your free shit, but you can’t have my baby. I mean, it felt like a transaction, ya know? And I was all emotional like pregnant women get, and well, it was not pretty. But in the end I did decide to let them adopt her, and they said we could have one of those open adoptions, ya know? Like, I could remain a part of her life if I wanted. They were actually cool about it. The only catch was that I’d have to move out because that would make it all too weird.”
I try to picture her. Young. Desperate. Sad.
“And it was… well, a little bit harder than it sounded to pack my shit after I gave birth and just leave her behind.”
“I can’t even imagine.”
She shrugs. “It was the right thing to do. I wasn’t strung out or any bullshit like that, but my history was checkered with so many bad decisions. I just… I just pictured her life without me versus her life with me and… decided she was better off, ya know?”
“So you left her behind?”
“Yup. I took that money they gave me for school, got on a plane to Vegas, and used that money to rent a place and start again.”
“As a stripper at Pete’s?”
She nods. “I stumbled in there one afternoon after finding a flyer. A red one with black writing and an illustration of a devil swinging around a pole.”
I am actually incapable of words right now. My mind is racing trying to fit all the pieces together, but I can’t. They make no sense.
“I was drawn to those dollar signs too,” she says, looking over at Brandon with a smile.
I glance at him just in time to see him smile back. Well, sorta. His lips kinda tilt upwards a tiny bit.
“And that’s how it started.”
“But… but what does that have to do with—?”
“I came into the club holding that red flyer and Pete took one look at it and said, ‘Not hiring.’ But Carolina was there, and she took it from my hand and gave me another one—this one was white and had all the same stuff on it. Same text, same dollar signs, same picture—but with one change. There was an angel swinging around the pole, not a devil. And she said, ‘I think you meant to bring this one, right, dear?’ And I said, What?’ And then she winked at me, winked at Pete, and he said, ‘You can start tomorrow at five AM. You’ve got morning shifts.’”
Things aren’t coming full circle. I have nothing to say about this story except… “What the fuck?”
Raven smiles at Brandon again. Like there’s something underneath that explains everything and I’m not privy to it. Then she refocuses her attention on me. “Carolina had this deal with a local church. Desperate girls would come to them—kinda like I went to those church people when I was pregnant—and sometimes they’d send them to Pete’s.”
“I’m sorry, wait. What? The church would send them to Pete’s?”
“Well, not as a matter of course, obviously. Jesus. But if, after talking with them and assessing where they were at and what they needed and so forth, and especially if they had any experience on the street or dancing or whatever, it was the one place where they could work safely. Legally. Make money to feed their kids and pay rent. And not have to be walking the Strip selling their bodies or God knows what.”
“That sounds like a very progressive church,” I muse.
“Judge not lest ye be there, Scarlett.”
Touché.
“So you had the red flyer,” I say.
“And so did you,” she responds.
“Yeah.”
“And when Carolina got sick… well, she was trying to make sure she left something behind. Pete was on board with the good deeds but didn’t want to run it. Desperate girls don’t relate well to a man, he said. By the time they got to the point where they came to him, men had usually been the problem and they needed a woman who understood. And I dunno, Carolina saw something in me, I guess. Potential. Or some business sense, or hell, maybe it was just my sadness after leaving my baby girl behind so she could have a better life than I did.” She shrugs. “And she gave me her half of the business, with the stipulation that I could never sell it. It was mine, but only as long as I stuck around to help others.”
“So that’s why you’re still there. Or were still there before it burned down.”
“No,” Raven says. “That’s not why. Pete signed over my half after Carolina died. Said it was my life, my choice, and I was a grown woman who could make her own decisions. I stayed because… well, I like being the angel in disguise. I like being who I am. I like seeing the girls come in and change themselves. Change their lives. I like guiding them. Playing big sister or whatever. It… it just fulfills me.”
I feel sick all of a sudden. Not because of Raven choosing to be a stripper for all these years, but because I was so, so, so wrong about her.
“You wanna see a picture?” Raven asks, pushing her chair back from the table and standing up before I can even answer. “Give me one sec.”
I look over at Brandon. He doesn’t smile. Just places one finger on top of the remaining cookie sitting in front of him and slides it across the table at me.
It’s an angel. Decorated with a white frosting dress with pale blue flowers as accents. She’s got a gold halo over her head.
This time when I look back at Brandon, he is smiling. He says, “They’re good.”
I pick it up and take a bite. It’s sweet and reminds me of Christmas when I was a kid and my mom used to bake cookies too. Reminds me of happy times, before I fell down the mountain and needed to claw my way back up.
Raven comes back holding a thick photo album, which she opens and places on the table in front of me. She flips to the last page and points to a teenage girl. Black hair, dark eyes, wearing a swim suit and holding up a gold medal.
“She’s on the US team for the next summer Olympics,” Raven says, her voice cracking with… what? Sadness? Regret? Loss?
No. Pride.
“This was the previous year’s world championships. She actually won three gold medals. This picture was taken just after her first win.” Raven laughs unexpectedly. “She thought that was the best moment of her life. She had no idea what was coming next.”
I just stare at the girl. But then Raven sits down, scoots her chair closer to me, and flips the album back to the first page. There’s a picture of her—young, smiling, looking very tired as she holds a brand-new baby in her arms.
“Does she know you?” I ask, suddenly heartbroken and happy at the same time.
“No,” Raven says softly. “When I left I told her parents, ‘Don’t mention me. If she asks, you can tell her, but not until she asks.’ And so they send pictures every month. She’s so fucking interesting, Maddie. So smart, and pretty, and just… spectacular. Every month I’m just blown away at what she’s doing with her life. And when I think back to all those choices I made—to keep her, to give her away, and then to walk away—well, when I see this, when I see how much I’d have stifled her full potential by being selfish …” She sniffs back the sadness, lifts her head to look me in the eyes, and says, “I did all the right things. Made all the right decisions. And I wouldn’t take any of it back. I have no regrets at all.”
We spend the next hour looking at every single page in that photo album. And then Raven kicks me out. Says she’s having a party tonight and needs to get ready.
Brandon walks me to the door, holds it open for me, and says, “Take an angel with you.” And then he hands me a bag of cookies, which I had no idea he was holding, and as soon as I take it, he closes the door.
I think about everything the whole way back to Evan and Robert’s house.
All my bad decisions led me here. To this moment. To that interaction in Raven’s kitchen.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe all our mistakes add up to something bigger. Maybe all the bad decisions were just good ones in disguise.
I have been a failure for seven years. But I learned something from each one. I fell down, but I got back up. Stronger than I was. Better than I was.
And now I need to make the past mean something.
I don’t know what that looks like. I don’t know how I’m gonna do it, but I believe I can. I am nothing if not a fighter.
So I decide to embrace Scarlett. I decide to accept that I strayed, receive the gift of wisdom, and believe in who I am. Both the good and the evil.
I decide, after all, I can be just like Raven.
I decide I can be the angel in disguise.