Rent Money

"Victor, wake up!"

Victor rolled about on the couch as he snapped to consciousness. Andrew was standing over him, glaring. "Huh? What? What is it?"

"It's fucking 8:15, that's what it is," Andrew said. "You've done nothing literally all day. We had an agreement."

Victor sat up. Around him, the apartment was in shambles. Piles of dishes and discarded food containers littered the small kitchen. The living room was filled with discarded socks and empty drink glasses as well as a fair share of beer cans. "I meant to get to it today, Andy," he explained. "I did, but I was up all night."

Andrew glared at him. "I know you were up all night because you kept me up all fucking night. I told you I wouldn't mind, but I was being fuckin polite. Since that clearly went over your head, I'm gonna stop that. No more being polite. And don't call me fucking 'Andy'. You want me to call you Vicky?"

"Sorry," Victor said. He hung his head and tried to look as contrite as he felt.

Andrew softened his stare, but continued, "You lose your job, and what do I do? Do I throw you out into the street?"

Victor waited for him to continue, but apparently Andrew was asking an actual question. "No Andy—Andrew, no. You've been very understanding. That's why we're friends."

"You're damn right. We're friends, and that's why you've been here for four months and paid no rent. But we can't do it any more. Look at the state of this place, Victor. I asked you. I said, 'Victor, everyone needs to have little fun now and again so I don't mind your party. It's your birthday after all.' Do you remember me saying that Victor?"

Victor could only nod.

"Do you remember what I said after that bit? After being so kind and understanding? I said that, in return for me paying your rent and buying your food and helping you celebrate your birthday with our other friends, that you should get up the next day while I'm at work and clean the fucking apartment." Andrew held out his arms to the disarray around him. "And what did you fucking do Victor?"

"I fell asleep," he answered.

The answer struck Andrew's temper once again, "You fell asleep. You've been asleep for four fuckin months, Victor. Shit, you were asleep for two years before that as well. It's time to wake up. I can't support you forever. So it's come to this. I've thought about it at work all day. You wouldn't care, but I was promoted this morning to senior manager."

"Oh that's not true, Andy, I care. Congratulations."

"Thank you," Andrew said curtly. "It's Andrew," he added, but less harshly. "Still. Had to make some decisions. If you can't pay your share of the rent, I need you to move out. It's already been four months and you've had no luck, but I'll give you only till the end of the week."

"That's fair," Victor answered, resigned. "Oh, but I've got good news! I heard about a job last night. Phillip was telling me about a gig tending bar."

Andrew's eyes narrowed, "Something permanent?"

"If I play my cards right, maybe," Victor said.

"So not permanent then. You're not going to make enough to cover rent in one night, Victor."

"That's the thing though," he replied. The conversation with Phillip from the night before came rushing back and excitement filled Victor's body. "This is some kind of special club party or something. Four hours at $250 an hour. Not counting tips. Phillip says his girlfriend did it last year and made four thousand in one night."

Andrew was skeptical. "That's nonsense. That's five weeks salary for me. Do you even know how to tend bar?"

"Course I do," Victor said, somewhat offended that his friend would doubt that skill set. "You remember our uni days. I did it part time back then, mostly for beer money. This is a real deal though. I have to call that number that Phillip gave me is all."

"And when is this high roller party?"

"Friday night," Victor said. He was starting to compose himself, searching for his phone which had likely fallen into the couch.

Andrew sighed. "As in this Friday? Today? Christ Victor, you've slept the whole day and lost out on yet another opportunity."

Victor's heart sank. He'd lost track of time. The party was meant to happen tomorrow, but that was yesterday which made today the tomorrow in question. Finally finding his phone, he looked at the screen pleased to see that the battery had not died. He had a single missed call from Phillip from two hours earlier. The couch had muffled the sound of the ringer. Swiping Phillip's name, he called his friend back. Andrew watched with a mix of pity and contempt. The phone rang twice before Phillip answered.

"Victor! The fuck have you been?" Phillip asked through the tiny speaker.

"Sorry, I got tied up," Victor stammered. "Am I too late? Did they get someone else for the gig?"

"A bit," Phillip said, annoyance clear in his voice. "But no, you can still work it if you hurry. Doors don't open until nine. Need you there before quarter till. If you can't make it, Lucy will work it again."

"No worries, I'll be there. Headed over right now. And that's for this Phillip, I owe you one." Victor hung up the phone and pumped his fist. Looking up, he saw Andrew still staring at him with an unimpressed face.

"Well, don't fuckin sit there!" Andrew blurted.

***

Victor managed to squeeze in a quick shower and throw on a decent set of clothes before rushing out the door. He was familiar with the club hosting the event, a place about a twenty minute walk from his apartment. Needing to make it in ten minutes rather than twenty, he set a steady pace and jogged the distance.

As he did, the months of lethargic lounging around the apartment became evident quickly. His lungs seared with sharp pain, and his calves started to burn. The time without direction or purpose, other than drinking, had not been very kind to his body. Luckily, at twenty-five, he still had some resiliency of youth. Or at least that's what he told himself. With each aching step, he promised to be more vigilant about the gym and cut back on the beer. The slight pooch of his belly wobbled as he ran, and he became unusually conscious of how feeble looking his arms were in the dress shirt he had chosen.

Victor had never been much of a jock. Always a bit on the thin side in his teenage years, he'd always identified more as a lovable oaf than as one who sought popularity through looks. The truth was that he'd never quite felt comfortable in his own skin. For that matter, he'd never felt comfortable in anything. The shirt he wore, his job, his life in general all seemed ill fitted to him. They weren't wrong necessarily, not in a way that he could put his finger on, but they weren't right either.

He'd managed to survive for almost twenty-five full years, but four months earlier something finally set him off. The manager at the banking firm came in one day and saw a small figurine on Victor's desk. The figurine was of an anime character, a tall slender fellow with oversized clothes and physically impossible hair. Victor had bought it at a shop despite not knowing who the figure was or having seen a single episode of an anime before. Something about the figure had appealed to him, and in a rare instance of materialism, he'd bought it for his work desk. Other people in the office had club pennants or family photos on their desks. One woman had a big Gryffindor flag on her cubicle wall. None of those things attracted the attention of his employer, but the very first day he had the statue on his desk, he was called into the manager's office and given a long talk about professionalism.

That'd been the end of it. He'd turned in his notice immediately, much to the shock of the middle aged man whose power trip suddenly had consequences. Victor did not like his job, but that did not mean he wasn't good at it. As he gathered his belongings in a box, the only thing he'd found that was actually his was a can of peanuts and the figurine itself. The figure now occupied a place of prominence in his room, though it had quickly been forgotten as the reality of unemployment set in around him.

All of this occurred to Victor once more as he jogged the last stretch to the club, replaying in his mind for the thousandth time. The rush of activity had one benefit of flushing his body with endorphins and making him quite upbeat despite his dark thoughts as he entered the club.

"Are you Lucy's replacement?" asked a middle aged woman with speckled grey hair. Victor nodded, assuming that was the case. "Finally, you're cutting it quite close. I'm Martina, I'm in charge tonight."

"Thought I'd see ol' Jacob," Victor said dumbly. He'd wanted a minute more to catch his breath before he was thrown to the other waitstaff as a piece of meat into the lion's den. The woman's eyes flashed at him with impatience.

"Who?" she hissed.

"The owner?" Victor did not think his question was too out of line. He'd done parties at the club before, and Jacob Crowley was usually in the back office making sure no one darted out with the night's take.

The woman shook her head, "We rent the facility for the night and provide our own staff. Of which you are part unless you insist on continuing with these banal questions. Now then, come with me. And take this." She handed him an apron and stalked off.

Martina led him back to kitchen gallery, a long corridor with windows on either side. On the left, the windows opened into the kitchen, providing platforms for the passage of food from the cooks to the carriers. On the other side, the windows were shuttered with sliding doors which opened to the bar so orders could be passed back and forth. Victor had always admired its functionality. Gathered in the gallery were the other staff.

First thing, he noticed that not a single one of them was female. It wasn't that he looked from face to face, but men have a way of acting when women aren't around, a certain looseness and purposeful indelicate demeanor. The moment Martina rounded the corner, the lot of them shuffled quickly into their normal assumed personas. While he presumed it lost on Martina, Victor noticed the odd mood shift immediately. On one side were arrayed the waiters, behind them leaning through the kitchen windows were the cooks. Victor recognized most of the cooks, but knew none of them by name. Apparently Martina's exclusive staff did not fully extend into the kitchen, for as easy as it might be to drop a new waiter into a restaurant, dropping a cook into a kitchen was a recipe for disaster.

On the other side, Victor assumed the array of five young men wearing black aprons like the one he had been handed were the bar staff. He knew none of them by name or face which disappointed him as he fell in line beside them.

Martina clapped her hands together, "Excellent we're all here. First of all, I want to thank you all for agreeing to work on such short notice. I've met most of you, but for those who I have not had the pleasure, I am Martina Carson. Our guests will start arriving soon. Dinner will be served at ten, and we will close down at three. We're in for a long night, but you will be compensated well. For your wage, you will need to see me before you leave. As a precaution, please put your name and address on this list so that I can mail your earnings to you."

She produced a clipboard and started it at Victor. Sheepishly, he scribbled down his address, feeling as though Andrew peered over his shoulder as he did. Martina continued, "Some ground rules. Our guests will all be imbibing, likely heavily. As a result, they can be rather aggressive with young men. Under no circumstances are you to reciprocate any flirtation. You may of course accept tips. The ladies all understand the no touching rule, and they usually find their pocketbooks as acceptable alternatives. Also, it is customary for us to provide drinks after your shift has ended and the kitchen is sorted. Now then, kitchen and waitstaff, Mr. Sands has the menu and so forth to go over with you, if the bar staff would join me at the main bar."

The groups dispersed, and Victor followed the others to the long mahogany column on the other side of the gallery wall. Two other smaller drink stations were located on the left and right of the club's main room creating a horseshoe around several dozen tables which faced a stage. Martina assigned two of the young men to each bar, Victor receiving his assignment at the main one. She went over a pre-planned drink menu and several other supply issues before saying, "One last thing, they're going to want to buy every one of you a lethal amount of shots and drinks and whatnot. I'm certain you all have experience with this, and I'll leave you to your own methods of dealing with it. But our guests are here to entertain themselves in the unique way of our organization. You will not be reprimanded for having a few so long as you're able to keep the booze flowing. Understood?"

Victor and the others murmured yes. Martina dismissed them, and they headed to their posts. Victor started to familiarize himself with the layout of the bar. He'd worked it before, but new well liquors were in place and the taps had changed. His partner for the evening, a young man named Arthur, went through a similar ritual before he started cutting limes. While the waitstaff buzzed about in a last ditch effort to prepare things, the bartenders didn't have much to do. Victor restocked ice and practiced one of the preset drinks, but mostly he and Arthur chatted about how they heard about the job.

"My friend's girl. They only started dating a few months ago, but she was apparently pretty keen to find any of his friends that knew how to tend bar," Arthur explained. He was a tall, gangly fellow with a well kept, lengthy beard. It consumed the majority of his face, other than two sparkling blue eyes.

Victor contributed his own story about how Phillip's girlfriend had recruited him. They both considered it odd that two women had replaced themselves with two men, especially since Victor pointed out that not one other woman was on staff for the event. They did not have time to explore that small mystery further because the guests started to arrive.

Not knowing what to expect, Victor was not sure why he felt so surprised. In pairs or groups of three, they entered, each one as beautiful as the next. Victor had never seen so many beautiful women in his life. They almost glittered in the lighting as they meandered through the tables to find their place. He considered what type of party might consist solely of beautiful women and came up with several implausible answers. A super model convention perhaps, but these were not super models. A few of them had the high bone structure and elegant posture of a runway model, but just as many were short of stature and curved of body. Fashion industry seemed to be the right track except many of the women were dressed in overtly provocative manners rather than the experimental style of one fashion expert trying to impress another. The more he looked, the more he saw that all of these women had nothing in common other than the fact that they were all enticingly beautiful.

He learned quickly thereafter that the main business of the evening was to get soused. Once the women found their table, they began seeking alcohol. Waiters started to turn up with drink orders and lines began to form at each of the bars. Victor was entirely without time to survey the crowd as he rushed to fill all the drink orders, but that did not stop him from noticing each woman's appeal. Many of them wore low cut tops, and they pushed themselves against the bar such that their cleavage was sure to draw the young men's attention.

A reprieve came when dinner was served. Martina took the stage at one point and seemed to give a report. Other women did the same, but none of the waitstaff had time to listen as they scrambled to restock their stations. The speakers ended with a lot of cheering each time until finally the meal was cleared away, and the real madness began.

Victor did not count the number of attendees, but gorgeous bodies packed the room, and all of them needed a refill. The work was enjoyable and the scenery divine. As Martina had suggested, the women loved to buy drinks for the staff. Victor tried to pace himself, but it was not often in life that he received such attention. Before long, his head swirled. They kept coming, melding into a blur of hair and supple flesh that thirsted. Victor worked diligently despite his growing drunkenness.

A few times he was drawn into conversations. Other times, he was ushered out from behind the bar with a tray of brightly colored shots to dispense around the room. The women started to dance and music, somewhat unearthly, thundered in the club. As Victor worked, he saw in the fray things he didn't believe. Some of the women were naked, he was sure of it, but he couldn't exactly keep an eye on them. The moment he saw something, his attention was snatched back to the bar where someone wanted a drink. Another time, he could have sworn that a woman was sitting on a table, legs spread, with another of the beauties happily licking at her friend's slit. But again, the scene disappeared behind the gyrating bodies of beautiful women.

As the night grew long, the drinks became more complex. Finally, Arthur beckoned him over to a group of women who looked particularly devilish. They had their own bottle and began explaining something to the two young men. Amid the din and haze of alcohol, Victor heard them offer a membership in their club. Arthur, his newest friend, clapped him on the back and encouraged him to take the bargain. They spoke of wealth and power and influence. Victor thought it all a fun game and took the women's drink along with Arthur, shared a laugh, and went back to work.

The final hour peeled by slower. Many of the women left or sought carnal desires in more private settings. In an almost blind stupor, Victor and the others relied on their mechanical instincts to survive the cleaning and putting away of the bar. As they worked, Victor notice that Arthur looked different. He had shaved. The bright blue eyes now stood out from a bald face, which had a softer curve than Victor had expected. They said their goodbyes to one another as the party closed down.

Before staggering out into the world, Victor encountered Martina one last time. She was much nicer after a few drinks, Victor thought as she rambled some explanation at him. She handed him an envelope and said, "Be careful with it on the way home. And congratulations, Victoria." Victor made an effort to correct her about the name, but his tongue was thick and speaking was too difficult to manage. Instead, he smiled and gave her a hug.

Wandering out of the club, he tucked the envelope in with his other tips and set off toward home.

***

Victor woke. His mouth tasted foul. As the tendrils of his consciousness refilled his mind, seizing control of his limbs and faculties, he braced for the oncoming torrent of pain and discomfort. Yet nothing came. He did not kept track of how many drinks he had, but he believed it would be a safe estimation to put the number higher than twice the amount he had consumed on his worse night. Perhaps, he thought, the hangover is delayed. Perhaps I am still drunk, or I have drunk myself to sobriety. He flexed his hands, but did not find the creak of stiff muscle or the fatigue of dehydrated cells.

He had made it to his room and even managed to make it to his bed. He had not, on the other hand, undressed. His clothes reeked of perfume and alcohol. Beside him on the bed was the small figurine. He had retrieved it in his stupor for some unknown purpose and laid with it in his hand all night.

A sudden shock woke him up entirely. The envelope. He patted his pockets quickly and found nothing. Leaping from the bed, he stumbled and fell flat on his face. With a wince of pain, he scrambled up and went into common room of the apartment. It was clean and well kept. Andrew must have spent the evening tidying up. Glancing at the wall clock, Victor saw that it was only half past nine in the morning. So long as it's still Saturday, I've been asleep for a few hours at most.