Crazy for You (2 page)

Hottie Latte was Milwaukee’s first lingerie café, and might well be its last, judging by the protesters marching out front, brandishing signs with hand-scrawled slogans:

This Shop Serves Porn!

Send the Strippers Packing!

Close this den of iniquity!

Most of the demonstrators were women, but a few were men slinking around, hunch-shouldered, with my-wife-made-me-do-this looks on their faces. They appeared to have been bussed in en masse from the suburbs, and they wore plastic badges on their coats proclaiming themselves The Doyennes of Decency.

Hottie Latte’s windows were draped with café curtains sheer enough to let in light but opaque enough to prevent peeping. One of the male demonstrators was kneeling on the pavement next to the window, pretending to tie his shoes while sneaking peeks into the café through gaps in the curtains. A woman probably his wife came up to him and whacked him over the head with her protest sign. Creaking to his feet, the man sheepishly resumed marching, but you just knew that if his wife let him off the leash for a single second, he was going to be dashing straight through the front door.

The demonstration wasn’t my concern, however; I simply needed to get inside and do my job. “Excuse me,” I said politely, weaving my way toward the door.

One of the Doyennes stepped in front of me, blocking my path. She was tall, with
feathery white hair, black eyebrows drawn into a scowl, and a beaky nose. Paste a goatee to her chin and she could have played Uncle Sam in the Fourth of July parade.

“You’re one of
them
, aren’t you?” she barked at me. “One of the jezebels.”

“Jezebels?” I repeated, wondering whether she was off her meds. I checked myself over to make sure I hadn’t accidentally worn my hot pants and thigh-high vinyl boots, maybe with a sign advertising “Hourly Rates Available” plastered to my rear. But I was dressed as usual. Black turtleneck, jeans, and navy pea coat. No makeup except for a brush of mascara and a light smear of lip gloss.

“Scarlet women. You’re not fooling anyone, calling yourselves waitresses.”

I didn’t have time for this. I had four more write-ups to do today. “Would you mind moving?” I asked.

The other demonstrators were gathering around, eager to harangue an actual harlot.

“Strumpet,” hissed a Doyenne.

“Floozy,” another sniped.

“Tart.”

“Tramp!”

“Slut!”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“What would your mother say?”

Unfortunately for the Doyennes, their demonstration seemed to be having the opposite effect from what they’d intended. It was midmorning—time for a java, a jelly doughnut, and a jolt to the gonads. Men were streaming toward Hottie Latte in salivating clusters of twos and threes, some looking a trifle embarrassed, some hiding their faces behind sales reports, and some grinning broadly and sassing the protestors right back.

“Go back to the ’burbs.”

“Listening to the voices in your heads again?”

“You stay out of my coffeehouse, I’ll stay out of your church.”

I broke through the Doyennes and scuttled into the shop alongside a trio of construction workers. The place was jammed. The counter stools, prime viewing spots, were all occupied. Most of the tables were taken, too. All the customers were male.
Businessmen, college students, gray-haired gaffers who looked as though they were here to have their pacemakers juiced, grungy guys in hip waders who appeared to have just climbed out of the sewers all of them were willing to pay seven bucks a cup to have waitresses in teddies and thongs froth their cream.

I found a place near the rear of the café at a table the size of a checkerboard. The place was loud. Silverware clattered, crockery banged, blenders roared, and male laughter boomed, nearly drowning out the chants of the anti-slut crowd outside. A delicious incense of coffee-cinnamon-cocoa-yeast swirled through the room, reminding me that I hadn’t had breakfast yet.

Six waitresses bustled about, three about college age, the others pleasant but unremarkable middle-aged women who might serve you at IHOP, except that IHOP waitresses didn’t wear bustiers that pushed their boobs up to their chins.

Being a female, I’d probably be ignored, I thought, fishing my company iPad out of my purse and bringing up the evaluation form. The café’s rating would be based on the friendliness and efficiency of the servers, as well as the quality of the product. Later I’d do a detailed write-up and email it to the office.

I lost my bet with myself. A waitress materialized at my elbow.

“Hey, girl—you here to apply for a job?”

“Job?” I was caught off guard. “Umm, no. I just want a coffee.”

“Oh, too bad.” Her eyes swept swiftly over me, not missing a thing. She was small and Asian, with glossy black hair piled atop her head, dark, tilted eyes, a wide mouth outlined in fuchsia lipstick, and freckles like a nutmeg sprinkle across her nose. She wore five-inch heels and a magenta teddy with ruffles cascading down the backside like a bustle. I would have robbed Victoria’s Secret at gunpoint for that teddy.

“I like how you stood up to those hags out there,” she said.

“They seem to think you’re running a strip joint here.”

She laughed. “Nothing that exciting. We really do serve coffee. I’m Juju, the manager.”

“Mazie. Nice to meet you.”

We shook hands.

“You like chocolate, right?” Juju said.

My mouth went into salivary overdrive at the mere word. I nodded.

“Knew it! I’m psychic that way. I always know what a customer
really
wants. Come back behind the counter so we can talk. I’ll whip you up a cocoa.”

I followed Juju to the galley behind the counter and watched. She was a blur of motion, whisking a pot of coffee off the hot plate, slamming an empty carafe into its place, standing on tiptoe to add water to the coffeemaker’s reservoir, scooping cocoa powder, adjusting the heat on the milk steamer.

“Sure you don’t want a job?” Juju asked, not missing a beat as she split two bagels and popped them into a four-slice toaster. “You could make a lot of money with those oompahs of yours. Real or silicone?”

My hands flew to my chest. “These, you mean? Original equipment.”

“Holy damn—you’re lucky, girl. Mine are fake.” She thrust her chest out so I could admire her bumpers, which thrust up like igloos out of the Arctic plain. “BOGO sale. Buy one, get one free. Cost me three grand. But my tips go up a hundred sixty percent. That silicone paid for itself in a month.”

“Hey, Juju, I need a refill,” a guy in a business suit called.

“You just hold your shirt on, Mister Big Shot,” Juju yelled at him, then turned to me and winked. “Better tips when you talk smack. I tell them I’m Thai because guys think Thai girls are hot, tip bigger. But I’m really Filipino. Dumb Americans don’t know the difference, they think we all look the same.”

“Is Juju your real name?”

“Shortened from Jhun-Jhun.”

She poured cocoa into a mug, squiggled whipped cream atop it, and sprinkled chocolate confetti over the whole thing. “Try it,” she ordered, thrusting the drink into my hands.

I sipped. I took a deeper sip, coming up for air with a foamy smile and the urge to tap-dance across the tabletops. “Terrific!” I raved, and dived in for another sip.

Juju grinned. “My own recipe. Starbucks would kill to get it. Come work for me and I’ll make you all the cocoa you can drink.”

“I’ve got a job.”

“I bet you don’t make fifty bucks an hour.” Juju switched on a Krups coffeemaker
that looked like the boosters on the space shuttle. “Four hundred a day, cash. What the IRS don’t know don’t hurt it, right?”

I chewed over that four hundred a day. Rhonda Cromwell was paying me ten bucks an hour. Did I say
paying
? I hadn’t seen an actual paycheck yet.

“Ow! Shitshitshit!” The percolator spat scalding drops of coffee onto Juju’s breasts. Small, angry red blisters bubbled up on her exposed flesh. Working in skimpy lingerie left way too much skin exposed, I thought, shivering at the thought of flashing my thonged derriere to the frigid air every time the door opened or closed.

“Do all your waitresses wear
those
?” I asked, pointing to Juju’s heels, which forced her feet into
en pointe
positions.

“Oh, yeah—heels make your ass stick out. Gets you tips like crazy. You get used to them after a while.”

That was like telling a new prison inmate that you got used to the cheeseless macaroni after a while. I watched Juju as she trip-trapped out to the tables in her stratospheric heels. She worked the room, dipping low to display her 3K boobs, cajoling refills from customers who’d been dawdling over their mokes and caps, speaking in a singsongy pidgin she must have swiped from
National Lampoon Goes to Bangkok
. Juju was
good
. Juju was a walking stimulus package.

By the time she clopped back behind the counter carrying a tray of dirty mugs, I had enough material to write up my evaluation. I insisted on paying for the cocoa, because CRS mystery shoppers are not supposed to be influenced by freebies, not even a single stick of gum or sample bite of chicken on a toothpick. As I packed up my things and headed for the door, Juju called after me, “You go buy a cute teddy, come back and work for me.”

I smiled noncommittally.
For four hundred bucks a day, could I put up with a frostbitten fanny?

Chapter Three

When you meet your ex’s new girlfriend it will be just after you’ve spilled soup down your front.

—Maguire’s Maxims

Outside the café, a news crew had arrived to cover the demonstration. A reporter was interviewing Mrs. Uncle Sam, who was explaining why Hottie Latte was responsible for the decline in American morals, male-pattern baldness, and rain at picnics.

My heart skipped several beats. I missed the step down outside the café and klutz-stumbled to the sidewalk. The camera hid his face, but there was no mistaking the linebacker shoulders and admirable butt of the man filming the reporter. This could only be Ben Labeck, veteran cameraman, hero at large, and big-time heartbreaker. I didn’t need to see his face because it was permanently etched on my memory: eyes the exact brown of Ghirardelli chocolate chips, ruddy-bronze skin, twice-broken nose, and dark hair that looked as though it’d been combed with a hedge trimmer. His size worked to his advantage; he was tall enough to film over most people’s heads and big enough not to get pushed around if a riot broke out. He was wearing his usual working uniform: jeans, sweatshirt, denim baseball jacket, and clodhopper work shoes that would have looked at home on a construction site.

Cutting off the Doyenne mid-rant, the reporter began nattering about the importance of this “grassroots protest movement.” Tall and slim, she had honey-blond hair like poured silk, a nose the size of a dust mote, and pouty lips the exact shade of her raspberry jacket. She wore a pencil skirt, a camisole top cut low enough to reveal the tops of her oompahs, and shoes that Juju would have approved on the grounds of
makes your ass stick out
.

“This is Aspen Lindgren, reporting
live
from downtown Milwaukee,” she chirped, wrapping up the segment.

Managing to tear himself away from licking her cleavage with his lens, Labeck
turned and started filming the crowd. Reflexively, I ducked my head, turned up my coat collar, and scurried away. He hadn’t seen me. Five foot three is not a good height if you need to screw in a lightbulb or watch a parade, but it’s the perfect height for getting lost in a crowd. Taking deep, calming breaths, I told myself that the fluttering sensations in my midsection were simply due to hunger.

Five minutes later I was sitting in a scarred wooden booth at Happy Soup on Wells Street with a steaming bowl of chicken booyah and enough oyster crackers to salinate the Great Lakes. Chicken booyah is a Wisconsin thing, like cheese curds and bubblers. It sounds like something a chicken would do on your shoes, but booyah is a thin chicken stew with chunks of onions, carrots, potatoes, and whatever leftovers the cook digs up out of the fridge. No two batches are ever the same; no two cooks make it the same way. Once I found a chicken neck in my booyah. Creepy, but not enough to permanently put me off the stuff.

While I waited for my soup to cool, I typed up my report, giving Hottie Latte high marks in every category and adding an asterisked note at the bottom:
Best for the over-sixteen coffee drinker
.

I finished my report and dipped into my soup. I must have been more upset about seeing Labeck than I’d realized, because my hands were shaking and I slobbered the first spoonful down the front of my turtleneck. I mopped the spilled noodles with a napkin, leaving a wet blotch at sternum level. My stain-attracting ability is why I prefer to wear black. I’d tried to buy a black winter parka, but since I couldn’t even afford Walmart prices, I’d been forced to shop at the Army Surplus Store in the mission district, where I’d found a pea coat in a shade of navy so dark it was almost black. It was a man’s size small, and I was always forgetting the buttons were on the wrong side, but it was warm as toasted marshmallows and fit fine, except for the fact that the sleeves brushed my knuckles.

I used to have nice clothes. I had money to fritter away on cosmetics, movies, books, manicures, and pizza delivery. I had a house, too, with Pottery Barn furniture, a room set aside for the nursery I hoped to fill, and a backyard rose garden, but my mother-in-law had stolen my house, my savings, and all my assets when I’d been sentenced to prison. When you’re on the board of directors of the right bank, technicalities—like legal
ownership—can be thrust aside. I wouldn’t need my possessions anyway, since the state of Wisconsin would be providing all my needs for the rest of my life.

When I’d escaped from prison, my mother-in-law had first tried to kill me with a do-it-yourself home electrocution kit, then had attempted to brain me with a laminated horse hock. Facing charges of attempted homicide, she’d paid a psychiatrist to have herself declared non compos mentis and get herself committed to a velvet-lined loony bin. Since she was immune from legal proceedings as long as she was locked in the Ralph Lauren Institute for the Rich and Deranged, I couldn’t sue her to get my money back. But she couldn’t stay there forever. Someday she’d be getting out. And I’d be ready with my pit bull lawyer.