Nikki clocked out at one a.m., California time, caught a cab, and made it to her Los Angeles walk-up a half-hour later.  She entered the tenement and began dragging herself up the stairs.  She tried to be quiet.  She tried to be as quiet as a mouse.  But the downstairs door to Louie’s apartment opened, and the big-belly building superintendent stepped out.  She wasn’t quiet enough.

“Where’s my money, Nikki?” he asked.

Nikki continued to drag herself up the stairs.  “I told you tomorrow.”

“It is tomorrow!”

“It’s one a.m., Louie.  Do I look like a bank?”

Louie looked at her sizeable ass.  His dick began to get hard.  “It’s one-thirty a.m.,” he said.  “And maybe.”

Nikki stopped walking and looked down at him.  She held one hand on the rickety railing for support.  She was that tired.  “I haven’t been to the bank yet, okay?  I just got off work.”

“The owner put me in charge of maintenance and rents.  You owe me rent.”

“Are you deaf?  I just told you I haven’t been to the bank yet, Louie!”

“The bank, yeah right.  Who are you kidding?  I doubt if you even have a bank account.”

“Ah, forget you,” Nikki said with irritation in her voice and continued to walk up the stairs.

“I want my money, Nikki!”

“You’ll get your money.”

“You work at a bar in Beverly freaking Hills!  You should have my rent payment with tips alone.  You’re the only woman I’ve ever heard of who works in a bar in Beverly Hills and don’t get tips!”

She didn’t get tips.  It was by Pablo’s design.  It was under the guise of a tip-sharing system, where all the workers got an equal cut at the end of the night.  But it really didn’t work that way. Pablo gave the lion’s share to the girls who also worked upstairs, fucking rich men, whenever duty called.  Something Nikki was never going to do.  Her tips barely paid her cab fare.

She continued heading upstairs to her own apartment.  “You’ll get your money,” she said again.

“Shouldn’t have gotten demoted,” Louie said.  “You paid on time when you managed that joint.”  Then he smiled as he looked at the movement of her ass.  “Need to get your fat ass in shape,” he said, lusting after that fat ass.  “That’s what you need to do.”

“And you can kiss my fat ass!” Nikki shot back.

Her words angered Louie, and he rushed to the bottom of the stairs.  “You owe me money, you fat bitch, and you talk to me like that?”

But Nikki had fire too.  “Because I owe you money doesn’t mean you’re going to talk to me like that!”

“Fuck you, bitch!”

“Fuck you, bastard!”

Then Nikki made it into her apartment, slammed and locked the door, and leaned against it.

And her bravado, just like that, was gone.

Nothing was going right in her life.  Not the job.  Not trying to afford that L.A. rent on a bartender’s salary.  Not even her nonexistent love life.  Teddy Sinatra, the one she had such hopes for, the one who used to call her every day after their brief encounter in L.A., said he would go see her again as soon as he was able to get away.  They talked almost daily for months.  It was a long-distance relationship that she definitely thought was going somewhere.

But then he went silent on her.  Singing like a canary one day, and then silent as a mute the next.  She hadn’t heard from him in over a week.  She picked up the phone a couple times and called him herself.  She even left him a couple voice messages.  But he never called her back.

Not that she blamed him.  What she had to offer a guy like him?  He was rich.  Great looking.  Strong and rough, but with a big heart too.  At least that was how she saw him.  And she was a barmaid.  Thirty years on this green earth and barmaid was all she had to show for it.  Yeah, some match she’d make him.  Great going, Nikki.  Some match you’d make!

But forget it, she thought, as she pushed away from the door.  Love and all that shit was a pipedream anyway.  And Nikki was no dreamer.  Time to get rid of the bar dirt, she decided, and to get her head out of the clouds.

She headed for the tub.