episode 3
Bizopp
Three months before the attack.
Roland’s Shift Log
Collected pieces of: Ram Board 38” x 25’, a scrap of pine Builder Bruce was using to frame up the Cardroom Bar, carpenter pencil.
Bar Isabell’s not doing well — AC’s broke. It’s triple-digit summer in Sactown. The bar kinda stinks. Business is way down.
The day after I find out about Isabell, our landlord, Omar, comes into the restaurant with some creepy-ass workers and tries again to sell me on the idea of him being the boss. We’re late on rent, again, and he’s gotta plan to take over the business and bring me on as an hourly to work off my debt. He’ll cover the back bar’s booze collection with cheap plastic red tablecloths, get a new chef, use disposable plastic utensils and paper napkins, and try ’n book events through a church group he’s oddly associated with.
I tell him to fuck off, again.
Mauzy and Isabell are off tonight, so before I tell’em about the Omar situation and the rubber $17,000 check, I work through a decent Thursday night with the staff. Luckily, it’s a little cooler, and we can serve guests in a pleasant environment. After customers have all left and we’re closing down, I open up and share what’s going on.
Kim and Zeke are sitting at the bar and just finished folding napkins. Mitzi’s putting away the polished silver, and Dani’s opening a bottle of house white.
“Shit, the setup is wonderful. Damn, I dunno.” Zeke’s purple lips kiss the last drop from his wine glass as he looks to the cellar for reinforcements.
“Oh, wait. I think I can add another layer. Fuck. Could be anything?” Kim scratches something in her server book.
“This better be funny. It’s kinda fucked up, so it has to be funny.” Dani and Mitzi ignore them and look at their phones. Zeke continues, “There’s a debt that has to be paid. The more fucked up, the funnier it has to be. No debt with a chicken crossing the street, see? But you get into incest. Debt goes up, and the funny has to be paid.”
“Ok, don’t distract and mess it up. I gotta keep it going. I’m inna’ groove. Maybe add a gender element, like cross-dressing?”
“I dunno, gettin’ in the weeds here.”
“Or I could get all code on it.”
“Process. Witness the process.” Zeke motions for a refill. “We're all waiting, Luv.”
“Ok, here goes. What’s a cross-dressing redneck's favorite… Ugh.”
“What? Not yet? Again, great setup.”
“No. I hate redneck jokes. Maybe we can just imply that the dad goes by the not usual gender names?”
“Wanna drink? I’m empty.”
“I just about got it. Hold up.”
“What poet did the priest… No. I take it all back. Let’s go back to the top.” Kim stands, shakes her blonde hair, and addresses the vacant bar like a packed auditorium. “What’s an incestuous father's favorite poet?”
“Ready, already. Tell us, luv.”
“Emily Dickenson.”
“Ahh! Super fucked up, love it, Doll!”
Dani shifts her eyes, “Gross. Not even funny.” She ignores the rest of the endless banter and asks, “So we’re really going to lose the restaurant to our fucking landlord?” She slips behind the bar with Mitzi and pours herself another glass of chardonnay. Mitzi holds up a bottle of Butterfield Bourbon and a handful of glasses. I nod, and she lines shots on the rail.
“Well, per the agreement, he gets everything if we’re two months behind. He can liquidate what’s here to pay off the million-dollar loan built into the rent I took to build this out. But he wants to keep the restaurant and have Me, Mauzy, and Isabell work for him as employees while he’s in charge. He has some stupid-ass ideas to make it all more profitable.”
I cheer the shot and dump the booze down my throat. “We’re over two months behind on the rent again.” The hot bourbon shivers down my spine, blooming trails of relaxation across my ribs, arms, legs, and back up to my head.
“We need 17K in the bank by Monday.”
“Shhhiiiite, I’ll quit. Fuck working for that arsehole.” Zeke groans, “Tons’o places I can work and make more money. We’re all here for you, Roll. You’re one of us. He’s one’a them.” Zeke’s English accent is similar to the pretty ones in “Love Island" or the poor kids in a cool London movie about crime. He’s a short, older guy with one hand, a weathered face, boyish freckles, a red ‘n grey beard, and rusty hair pulled into a lazy ponytail.
In the folded rolling paper in the crook of his right arm, he pinches and sprinkles powder from a tiny zip-lock on some sorta tobacco/weed combo. He licks, then twists a joint. “We’re building somethin’ special here.” He loads the smoke in his lips and talks outta the side of his mouth. “The Landlord’s not. It’s why we’re all here, Roll.” The staff grunts agreement. But it’s late, and we wanna have fun and not figure out my failed dream.
Zeke’s Zippo bings. He lights the spliff, snaps it shut, then passes it around. We smoke and drink in silence for a few minutes. I’m talking before I realize — the words fall outta me like trash from a split bag. Ya know when you lift the final bag to the dumpster at the end of your shift, and it’s the last thing you need to do before you go home, but a cascade of empty bottles, discarded meals, cocktail napkins, and the weird coagulating things that happened when unexpected items meet all spill out?
“I can’t lose this place, guys. You know I had fucking shit growing up, nothing, and there’s notta lotta of options for a guy like me. This tail only gets me so far…”
There’s always some spoiled food in that last trash bag, and always coffee grinds, that get all over your feet and work clothes that you’ll have to wash before tomorrow's shift. Garbage everywhere.
“..And Iz is Prego.”
When I say this, I almost throw up. For the last thirty hours, or so, I’ve been in a dream state, half engaged. I haven’t said it out loud yet.
“Isabell’s pregnant! Shit Roll! Congrats!” Mitzi jumps up and gives me a hug, everyone cheers.
“Didn’t you guys just adopt a stray cat? Mr. Last Name Whatever. Damn, you’re in a pickle, huh?” Dani shrugs.
Fuck yeah, I’m in’a pickle! Whatever that phrase fucking means? Ok, I get it, a kid is a gift, but how? Really? How in the fuck? For fucks sure, I’m not ready to bring a life into the world.
Sheeeet, I just wanna run, and run fucking fast! Right now, I’m about to lose the only thing that’d let me succeed in life. This bar. My bar. Bar Isabell. But, our AC’s broken, business is way down, our landlord’s a fuck, it’s hot, it stinks, and I do not have $50K for the repair.
Fuck, I dunno, how much does a baby even cost? Do you have to pre-pay? Do they hold the baby ransom if you can’t pay? Me, Isabell, and our new baby running through a dark parking lot, the bright white hospital behind us. A mean-looking group of nurses cramming through the automatic doors, holding clipboards, chasing us down. Me pushing Iz in a wheelchair, sweat on her head from the delivery, holding our tiny, squishy baby.
Is the baby a lizard? Was the cord cut, was the purple belly button attachment to its mother swinging around? Fuck, or is our baby like a half-lizard, or I guess, maybe, a 1/4 reptile type thing? Will the baby have a tail? Scales?
Shit, will Iz hatch an egg?
AHHHHH!
We’ll see, huh?
“Mate, ya here, buddy?” Zeke plugs his phone into the sound system and brings me out of my ruminating death spiral with a fresh pour of whiskey and a queued-up song. “I know what this boy needs.” The music starts silently with some synthy notes, then talk-singing. A little bass, and there it is, the late 90's famous chorus.
“Oh, man, not this song?” Kim buries her face in her hands.
“Serious, dude? This guy sounds like a heavy metal cartoon character, an Emo-Sesame Street Muppet?”
Mitzi’s arms are up, she’s in mock-slow motion, swaying her arms, head-banging her fiery hair — wavin’ her phone flashlight like she’s in a concert.
“Dude? Isn’t this some fucking religious band?”
Zeke, “Wha?” He looks insulted. ”It’s an epic song ‘bout having a baby. Required material for ‘ol Roland here. Papa to be.”
As the guitar, drums, and tempo increase, Zeke climbs to the top of the bar, leans back like a rock star, and sings into the sloshing neck of a bottle of Butterfield. “Created life!” He leaps off, continues singing, working the room, rotating between air guitar and air drums, then chasing all of us with ‘Arms Wide Open’ for long rocking embraces. Kimi and the crew sing along, laughing and teasing Zeke about liking basic old guy shit.
We all drink more.
Kim finds a playlist about being a father that goes from Eminem to Beyoncé to more garbage about a future I can’t imagine, let alone handle. I keep drinking, smoking, and pretending to pay attention.
A few hours later, the conversation tilts back to how to keep the failing restaurant afloat. We start making jokes about selling sex, drugs, and cards. It’s about 2 a.m., and we’re still sitting around the bar. Mitzi’s actually lying face down on the bar and Kim’s practicing massage therapy moves on her back.
“Roll, what if we have like'a spa-type place next door in that empty warehouse space? We can make it all fancy and charge hella money.”
“The space next door’s available. We could get it for cheap. That ‘For Rent’ sign is hella old.”
“And do happy endings and get stacks’a cash from rich ass mother fuckers.” Mitzi’s head is resting on a stack of linens. “We could use that place to fuck. Like people. For money?”
“Or animals, we can do a farm shows?” Zeke jokes.
“Yuck, no serious. I’d fuck some dude for money. Big deal.” Mitzi closes her eyes to enjoy her massage.
“We can be all holistic about it, good food, healing vibes, massage, then some lovin’. I mean, if he’s hot enough ’n rich enough. Shhh-yeah.” Kimi leans into Mitzi’s shoulder blade with her elbow. “Hell, I’d do it.”
Everyone lets out a lazy yay of drunk cheers. The barroom’s quiet, I push and keep the joke going, “How much would you charge if someone like Paul wanted to go a round. Ya know?” Paul, one of our regulars at Bar Isabell, a middle-aged forty-year-old white guy. A weathered face for his age, but he has caring and smart eyes, and he’s funny. A typical “john,” from my john experience, which is none.
“Like fuck? Paul? I dunno.” Kimi’s rubbing Mitzi’s hand and forearm. Mitzi’s eyes are closed, and she’s making groaning noises that creep me out.
Kim ponder’s, “I mean just fucking, sucking, and shit like that? I’d wanna be classy about it."
“Gimmie a real number, notta once in a lifetime number. Like… pretend it’s your job, and you do this three, four nights a week. What would you need?” I press, take a drink of beer, smile, and let her know it’s all just fun.
Kim grins, drinks her chardonnay, smiles again, and proudly sticks a tag on it. “I’d fuck him for $500 and then another $500 if it took longer than 20 minutes. So $1000? Hella fancy. $1000 an hour! Ha!” She covers her mouth and takes a nervous slug of chardonnay. “Don’t tell him that, and don’t say that ever again!” She laughs. We all laugh.
I love how honest restaurant staff is with each other. If ya ever wanna genuine, no-nonsense opinion ‘bout something, bring it to a restaurant staff after a shift. After all the customers have left, and they’re folding napkins, talking, and drinking. At that point, all the bullshit’s used up, the politeness is over, they’ll tell it to ya straight.
Kim continues kneading into Mitzi’s lower back and butt, still thinking. “I could do that three times a night, three nights a week?” She pulls out her phone and does some math. “Fuck! That’s over $400,000 a year!”
“You’d have to pay the house, but not taxes, because…this is illegal… So let’s say the house takes 40%? You work three hours a day, three shifts a week? That’s…” Dani's on her phone. “Wow! That’s about $270,000 a year?!”
“Damn, I could pay off Massage School and my bachelors…” She plays Mitzi’s behind like a drum. “Inna year!”
“Shit, Roll! Let’s do it!” Now everyone’s phone calculator’s out, planning all kinds’a different situations. How long's a shift? How many shifts a week? Do you charge by the load? By the hour? Some look up what sex workers make. Is there a union? We all fall down the rabbit hole.
It was Kim, Dani, Mitzi, Nelson, Zeke, and me that night. The night it was born, and we really started thinking about it.
As Mitzi sits up, Nelson shocks us with, “It’s not that bad, you know? I did it through and outta high school.”
“Not that surprised.” Dani chimes in over her most empty glass of chardonnay. “$1000 is pretty steep for Sacramento, though. Maybe we start at $500, and you work a five-hour shift, three days a week.” Dani punches in some numbers, “But you can always negotiate higher rates. House gets 40% of everything, even tips. At lowest you’d be making $216,000 a year, after the house takes 40%? 40% works? Right, Roll?”
Nelson pulls a beer from the tap. “Yeah, you get to pick who you wanna fuck. If it’s weird, you just don’t do it. Most people are pretty nice, and they’re just lonely or horny. Dani, you said $216,000 a year?”
“Forty percent sounds good.” I joke.
“Yeah, you’re a dude, though, Nel. Some guys are fucking scary, I’d be freaked out.” Kim’s over the conversation, cleaning up, and loading glasses into the washer. She stops, changes her mind, and pours herself another Chard.
“When did brothels get so gross? In the movies and in the past, they seem to be such kind’a cool places, Moulin Rouge and such. Not all baby-oiled up with deep base, glitter, or methed-out desperate rag dolls with scary pimps? Or is that a stereotype? I’ve never been to one.”
“Shit, I’d fuck some fat dudes for two hundred K a year. And tips? Fuck yeah.” Mitzi darts her eyes around, hops off the bar, and opens a fresh bottle of house red. “Ok, confession time.” She pours herself another shift drink. “Was gunna carry this to the grave, but since we’re all talkin’.”
We all stop, put down our phones, and share glances. Mitzi, behind the bar, re-does her thick red ponytail, takes a sip, and smiles. “Last year, I worked at the Mustang Ranch, outside’a Reno, for a Summer.”
“What? You were a prostitute?!”
“Wha?”
“Does Frank know?”
“Nah, he’d freak out. He’s real traditional.”
“Heh. Yeah, he’s going out for the academy, right?”
“Shh, don’t tell!”
“But yeah? I made a grip. Changed my name, went by Simone. The place was kinda depressing though, and eventually, I hated it. Not the fucking and stuff, there was this rotten bitch working there and tons’a catty fighting with the girls. A bad energy for me. Roll, if we did it here, you know I’d make some mon-eee!” Mitzi does a little dance, waving her hips around.
“Simone, huh?” Kim’s ponders. “I think Mitzi is sexier, sounds more fun.” She shouts over to me and Dani.
“We gotta be high class, Roll, real elevated ’n shit, ya know.” Then back to Mitzi. “You should keep your name, Mitzi, if we open a brothel.” She switches thoughts and asks, “What about sex trafficking? Sexploitation and all that shit. I don’t wanna be a part of the criminal underworld and all that creepy stuff.”
“If everyone’s willing, what’s the problem? We just staff people we know, people that wanna do the work. We’ll sell all types, guys, girls, tall, short, fat ’n skinny. Fuck, what if we all get rich?”
Kim smiles, hugs Mitzi from her perch on the bar top, and stares ahead in thought. “What if we change the world? With love, I mean. Love, like real love.” She sips her chard and shakes her blonde hair from her face. “You can only give love away. And in return, the only currency love accepts, is love. Just love. Only love.”
“Yeah yeah, real sweet, Kimi pie. With love and all’a that. But you see. Let’s make it better yet. We’ll sell’a close approximation of that ‘Love Currency,’ You call it.” Dani must have pressed the equal sign on her phone calculator and liked the amount that came up. She shows it to Zeke, now he’s smiling and starts tearing paper cocktail napkins into tiny pieces.
Kim stands and gazes to a far-off horizon like an inspired something or other in some damn rom-com movie. “What if we make the world better than we found it? With just love?”
“Love, yes, love!” Zeke shakes the pieces of paper up, like he’s jerking off, “Preach, doll. Yes, love.”
“And all we have to do is get people off?” She looks around the room, just now getting the joke, looking all innocent ’n sweet, like little Judy Garland landing in Oz.
Zeke tosses the cocktail napkin confetti up and over all of us. “Yes, love ‘em all and get ‘em off for money. Moneeee!” Zeke’s perfectly timed joke fills the air with confetti and decorates the bar room like a pathetic victory parade. Mitzi kisses Kim on the cheek, torn cocktails napkins stick in their hair and fall in my drink. “Love ya, doll.” Kim and Mitzi grab more cocktail napkins and start ripping them up and throwing them to the windless interior were all drunk in.
“Even if we have stupid costs and hardly work, we can bring in over $4,000,000 a year? And shit, I haven’t even done the card table numbers yet!” Dani ignores the swirling-laughing-celebration-mess and continues running numbers on her phone.
“Fuck, we can be making over $10 mill a year!! Then double that if we work our asses off!” Mitzi skips around the room with Kim — drinks in tow, toasting their new future life.
“No wonder they make selling sex illegal?” Kim grabs Zeke into their dance circle. “People like us. Using what we got to get rich. Selling love. Not stuck workin’ a shitty job payin’ off college the rest of our lives.”
——————————-
I don’t bring up my Mom; besides, I’m not even sure. When I was young. I remember a few mean dudes who’d take money from her, and they’d fight. I also recall a lot of “friends” who were men, lonely-looking guys hanging outside the trailer. And her thin bedroom door, and muffled noises that don’t make sense to a young kid. Maybe I didn’t fully put it together ’til tonight, but I think Mom did whatever to survive.
Why aren’t brothels makin’ a shit ton of money now? You don’t hear about Brothel Barons making a killing and retiring on millions? Or is it just because they don’t talk about it? Our brothel’ll be different, though. Elevated service, great food, a cool inspiring environment, classy. One of a kind.
After all the staff leaves, I stare into my reflection across the bar and remember Isabell and me installing this mirror—when we were building our dream bar. The failed bar. Bar Isabell. The bar we all just drank the product of. The behind-on-all-our-bills bar. The about-to-fall-off-a-cliff bar. The heading-straight-back-to-our-shit-hole-landlord bar. Our lost-dream bar. The Isabell is-prego-we’re-havin’-a-baby-we-ain’t-got-no-money-holy-shit-we’re-in-debt bar.
——————
“We can see our past lives in here.” Isabell’s eyes looked like she was setting up a joke, but she corrected her reflection to look serious.
“It’s a good back bar mirror. Surprised you saved it. When we first got in here, I thought it was trash with the rest’a the junk.”
“See. You can save anything. Just needed some love. Paint stripper, and silver.”
“Like most things. You can save ‘em with strippers, silver, and love.”
“Har har. Plus, you gotta have a great backbar. The back bar’s the soul of a bar.” Isabell curled up to me, and we looked at each others bloomed smokey reflections.
“Savin’ stuff from the old place. Kinda our vibe, right? Clever-industrial-DIY.”
She looked around the almost framed-out restaurant. We were about a month from opening. “Like, what did this mirror see all these years before us, before I cleaned it up?”
“Who knows. Bar secrets are sacred. This mirror’s an old school pro. It’ll never tell.”
“Sing the song. You gotta say your great-grandmother’s maiden name, your grandma’s maiden name, and your mom’s maiden name. Then you’ll see who you were before you are now.”
“Like past lives? You just make that up?”
“Yeah, pretty good though, right?”
“Yeah. My scales just got shivers.”
“Maiden, Maiden, 1, 2, 3. Maiden Maiden, can you see. Maiden 4, 5, 6. Maiden Maiden show us tricks.”
“Damn, sounds like a horror movie?”
“Ok, you go first.”
I held her strong, small hand. “Shit, I only know my Mom’s name. I think it was her maiden name. Maybe it was my Dad’s? Not sure.”
Before I pass out, I come back to now and say aloud to my antique reflection, “Shit, life’s short. It’s really just about making a decision and doing it, right?"
I stretch out on’a booth and search for business loans on my phone. I fill out a few online forms, Shady lenders for desperate people: Small Biz Loans, Money 4 Your Biz Quick, Bizoop Now, Quick Cash, and my favorite name, Abracadabra Magic Money.
Once I complete the form, which asks how much I’m looking for, past business revenue, and projected income, I get a call from a New York number, literally one minute after filling out the form.
I figure to try and get the rent paid first, then find a way to finance the new brothel idea. I let the incoming call go to voicemail and fill out more forms. Since Bar Isabell has been open for a few months, I have some banking and revenue records from the restaurant.
——————
After passing out in the booth, I wake to a quiet, sun-filled bar, thirty-six voicemails, fifty-three emails, and a bunch of texts from random loan companies, and a few from Isabell.
I’ll get home soon and talk to Iz, but for now, I return a few calls to the organized creeps that prey on small businesses. On the phone, I get the usual greasy salesman. Probably stuck in a basement somewhere in Queens, Siberia, or Bangladesh. They talk to me like we’ve spoken before.
“Hey, Roland buddy, we have that money ready to lend. Just send those bank statements. You said you were going to get them over last we talked?” I never talked to this guy? I know it’s a sales technique, and send him bank statements from the last few months for fun. In an hour, he gets back, “Looks like your business is doing well. You’re just in a slump. We can help!” I hear another sales guy saying the same line in the audio background. It’s a terrible loan, but if I’m going to fail, let’s really fail.
I take a predatory $75K cash loan with terrible interest under the business (seriously bad, like 350 to 400 APR bad). Then, before a new lending company knows, I borrow another seventy-five K. I take more ridiculous loans and get as much cash as possible. Some lend me 25K, some lend 100, and soon I’m another $500,000 in debt.
The second the money clears in the bank, I call Builder Bruce, the guy who constructed the bar and restaurant for us. “Can you build this in three months? I’ll get you half the cash upfront, then the other when you're done on time. Oh, and keep your mouth shut about it.”
“Sure thing.” Builder Bruce shouted over the whirl of what sounded like table saw tools and a truck beeping behind him on the phone.
He had a crew there the next day. It’s all under-the-table cash, no need for permits, and Builder Bruce was grateful for the work. So, Abracadabra, three months later, we have a brothel next door.
Dani and I write up a budget on the back of some menu paper. Six Clock Rooms to sell sex in, three card tables for poker and blackjack, the restaurant and bar. We figure after staff, salaries, rent, and this ridiculous debt I have to pay off, we’ll have to hold our breath for three months, theeeeen we’ll start making some real money.
