4. A Fun Time on the Town

I turned to look at Elissa. She was dressed in an old Nirvana tour T-shirt and jeans, clearly hadn't been expecting to be snatched by hired goons and trussed up in the store room of a downtown club. Life kinda surprises you like that, don't it?

"Ever used a gun before?" I asked, offering her the Glock butt-first.

"No," she said, not taking it. I took one hand and laid the gun in it. Her fingers closed over it reluctantly.

"This is the safety switch," I pointed to it and clicked it back and forth to show her how it worked. "This is the end the bullets come out of," I continued, nodding at the barrel.

"I figured that out myself," she said, an edge to her voice. I smiled.

"Alright, stick it in your waistband, at your back and follow my lead. I took her by the hand and tugged her down the corridor to the VIP room. "If anybody asks, we're just a coupla crazy lesbians looking for a fun time out on the town."

"I'm not a lesbian," she said and sounded offended at the idea.

"Neither am I," I'm something much more dangerous, I thought before saying, "But men like lesbians and they'll be a lot less likely to fuck us around, OK?"

She nodded and bless her, wrapped her arm around my waist, pulling me closer to her.

We paused at the door to the VIP room. The energetic moaning had stopped. I glanced back at the room where the goons were. The door was still closed and their hearts beat slowly and regularly.

I eased open the door to the VIP lounge and scanned the area. No drunk, drug-fueled Gen-Ys sucking face, no doorbitch. Awesome.

I quickly tugged Elissa inside the room, just as the door opposite opened and one of the staff appeared. Oh Christ. "Oh Elissa!" I gasped and locked my hands around the other girl's face and mashed my lips against hers. She resisted but then went with it, arms pressing me into her body. The staff guy stopped for a look. "Da! Do it again!" I pulled back from Elissa, who wiped her mouth and seemed stunned. I looked at the staff member still in the doorway. "I'm sorry, but my friend and I were just on our way out," I said as we pushed past him. He didn't try to stop us. Clearly he was storing up images of the two hot ladeez for his mental porn library. Bless his heart.

Elissa and I made our way through the crowds and to the front of the club. The doorbitch manning the velvet rope would be more concerned with fourteen year olds trying to pass themselves off as eighteen to bother much with us.

We got out into the cool night air unmolested and, still playing the girlfriend-girlfriend act, I put an arm around her waist and leaned my head against hers, as though speaking sweet intimacies into her ear. Instead what I said was, "My car's up the road about half a block. Until we get there you and I are lovingly devoted girlfriends, capiche?"

"Yeah, OK," she said and kissed me lightly on the lips. Either she was a really great actress or she wasn't quite as straight up and down as she thought she was.

"So," I said, as we walked hand in hand away from the club, "Why'd you get snatched in the first place?"
"Chris lost out in a poker game and needed a loan quick to cover his debts. He went to these mob guys who loaned him the money." Her voice quietened to a whisper I could barely make out, "He couldn't pay it back in time and I ended up here."

"What did they plan to do with you?" I really didn't want to know but had to know.
"I think they were planning on selling me into a prostitution ring," she said and sobbed quietly.

"Really?" I said as we reached the car. "Maybe I oughta go back there one of these nights and...bust a few heads."
"Listen, don't do anything that'll bring them down on me or Chris. Please, I'm begging you," Elissa said, tears glimmering in her eyes.

"Yeah, I understand. Sometimes I forget what it's like..." I trailed off, about to say something stupid like 'to be normal'

I opened the passenger side door for her before getting behind the steering wheel. Elissa got into the car, and as she leaned back into the seat after closing the door, felt the gun in the small of her back and handed it back to me. I leaned over her and placed it in the glovebox.

Elissa looked at me as I switched on the ignition. The CD player began playing Tool's Forty-six and Two.

"I never properly thanked you back there," she said. "Thank you. So much."

I pulled away from the kerb and headed back to her apartment. "You can thank me by having a little chat with your boyfriend about his gambling habits. Also you might want think about leaving town for a while in case those guys come back."

I glanced at the digital clock in the dashboard. It was time to go home.

Dawn was approaching and I still had five episodes of Dexter to get through..

The End.