It was still early when the pay phone rang. Not even midnight yet, but the tiny joint was packed. Every couch and cubicle in the backroom was full, so were the eight bar stools and all the chairs surrounding the stage. Frat boys leaned against the new jukebox, a few more leaned across the bar, trying to talk me into leaving with them.
Myron and Maxie wandered around making sure everybody was drinking & everybody was paying. Some nights they’d practically give the place away, but when it got busy, they got greedy and the unspoken rule was nobody leaves while there’s still money in their pockets.
I barely heard the pay phone ring over the noise of the music, the laughter and the cash register.
Big Maxie hung up and went into a huddle with Myron. They walked over to the bar, and Maxie squeezed past me. “I got the bar. Go. Go get Piper.” Maxie tossed his head towards the lounge in the back of the Lollipop and pushed me out from behind the register.
I stood there smiling.
Myron shoved me towards the back room. “Go, you little slut, you got a delivery. Now. What are you waiting for?”
Legally, the Butterfly and the Lollipop were Myron’s joints. There was Winks and the Cookie Jar too, but that was before me. They’d been such a huge moneymakers everyone thought it’d never end. It was the 70s, fans and feathers were gone, there was a whole new breed of dancers and a whole kind of money. Guys crammed in to get a peek of pink and girls went home with a thousand bucks a day, clean. No tricks, no handjobs, no hustle. Myron rolled naked over a bed of cash, all his girls were happy and all their girlie habits fed.
When the liquor authorities started making rules about small spaces, booze and cooze, girls went back to wearing the g-strings they’d dropped. The novelty of the bars wore off. Furs, cars, condos, diamonds, cocaine, heroin; Myron’s girls had expensive habits. Suddenly he was deep in a hole of a different color.
Enter Joey Two Shoes. Shoes was in the Butterfly. And he was in the Lollipop.
When it was time to pay, Piper and I brought champagne, Johnnie Walker Black Label and each other. There was always a crowd watching porn and dipping into the mound of cocaine in the center of the table, no matter when we got there. The pile of coke never got smaller and there were never any other girls there.
I wanted a drink, a blow and Joey Two Shoes. He was handsome and mean. I wanted him to want me. He wanted Piper. Piper just wanted to be loved.
“Go, you little slut, you got a package to deliver. Now. What are you waiting for?” He was annoyed. Shoes almost always called when the joint was packed. Never when we were sitting around with nothing to do.
“I’m just imagining the two of you, working the bar in leotards and heels.” When we left, there wouldn’t be enough girls to go around. It killed them to miss even a dollar.
Myron wasn’t always a paunchy middle aged bar owner, in hock up to his neck, trying to hold the interest of underaged dancers with presents and drugs and lies. He used to be was a suit. Not a straight suit, but a suit nonetheless.
Myron was a shyster, a lawyer. Past tense. That’s why Mulberry Street hung around, he’d been their lawyer. Louie the Ice Man, Jimmy Peanuts, Rocky, Crazy Jimmy, BooHoo, Chief, Harry Brooklyn, Eddie Bug Eyes, Jack the Jew. Myron was a man who believed in going that extra mile in search of the holy grail, the fast and easy buck. If you rolled snake eyes and had to go directly to Jail? Myron stepped up to pass GO and collect two hundred dollars, even if he wasn’t exactly entitled to it.
Disbarred, but not imprisoned, he changed his name, scraped some money together and went into the always profitable business of tits and ass. In the beginning, everything he touched turned to gold. Then came the girls, the cocaine, the state liquor authority, the excess, the huge, huge debt–and Joey Two Shoes.
But Myron is a dealmaker, with an eye for a scam and a nose for a sucker. He always knew who he owed, how much and what they’d settle for.
He put a brown paper bag on the bar. Two bottles of Johnny Black and two bottles of not the worst champagne. “Go, get Piper, pack up and start moving. Shoes ain’t gonna wait all night.”
This entry was written by , posted on January 14, 2010 at 8:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1981, Butterfly, dirty boys, partners in crime, The, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
