13

ELEVATOR CHAPTER 13: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: SIN CITY
The old devil is not the only one who knows how to get down and dirty, well it takes two to tango it’s time I dance with the devil.
He wants to play games? Let’s take the games to his home court.
“Aren’t you scared, your dad is very powerful he has eyes and ears everywhere I’d like to remind you Adrianna,” said Sheila when I told her about my plans over dinner.
“First off, they know where my mom is admitted and receiving treatments, so we have to move her to a different institution as fast as possible,’ I explain the first step of my plan.
“… and then we confuse them, I need to get a new car and a new phone he probably has them both tapped.” I say to Sheila.
Losing my phone was difficult for me because I had a sentimental value attached to it as it was a gift from my mom, but I have to do this for my safety and hers.
I’ve been deflecting questions that involve why I changed phones and a car from my mom when I go to visit her in the new hospital we moved her to. Sheila is still very scared of my dad’s power and influence but would go to the moon and back for me.
I had to make sure the new phone could not be wire tapped, I had to make sure to check for trackers under the car before buying one.
Sheila has spent most of the mission being anxious about being caught and rightfully so, but she also came up with a brilliant idea, she suggested I give my old car to Juanita and use the poor Puerto Rico immigrant as a decoy and instead of myself, Juanita will be the one being followed around.
It’s a brilliant idea except for the fact that I do not want to involve anymore innocent people in my scheme that would have a chance of hurting them in the present or in the future. Secondly, Juanita lives at home with me and my dad and if she’s running errands in a four wheel drive would you not find that as strange and suspicious?
Then it hits me like a fast curve ball on a windy night in the Yankees stadium during the World Series, although very expensive I knew my plan was sure to work, all I would need will be a few more hands.
I told Sheila about my plan and she helped me organize a few more of my friends and we met at a very unsuspecting location, a strip club downtown called Sin City.
I hate loud music and the sexualization of women as commodities, I want to puke, so much that I can’t stand rap videos and here I am, in a strip club. I sit by the bar and face the drinks turning my back to the disgusting shit show going on up on that stage.
I cannot judge any of those women up there, of course s ok me of them that is their last resort, life deals us different cards and they are just trying to get a livelihood from the cards life had dealt them, but still I am too appalled to watch.
A tall busty lady, whose height is even more exaggerated by her nine high inches stilletos, comes to me and offers a lap dance and I decline.
“Oh I see, you don’t swing that way honey?” She says in a manner that makes me believe she’s not done here, and she probes me right with her next sentence.
“That’s what they always say, they don’t swing that way until they swing by Sin City and next thing they’re doing more swinging than monkeys in an African jungle.”
“You’re missing the show, Missy”
said the tall, buff, bartender with the nimblest hands I’ve ever seen, as he mixes a Long Island Ice Tea cocktail. He shoots the stripper a raised brow she takes the cue and seductively catwalks away in frustration, rolling her eyes and grunting under her breath, but not after she blows both of us a kiss.
I smile awkwardly and say nothing, “Hah, see what I did there, Missy cos you’re missing the show?” Thanks to the act of turning my back to the stage and staring at the drinks all night while waiting for the gang to show up, Hector the bartender thinks I have a thing for him, and behind making corny jokes forever, men can be so obnoxious.
When Hector discovers that it does not work, he offers me a Long Island Ice Tea cocktail on the house, which I actually appreciate more than the jokes, but then he keeps hitting on me. ajs I just have to decline the offer in order not to fuel any thoughts in his head.
The other guys arrive an hour after Sheila arrives due to difficulty in locating the place, it’s in a lowbrow neighborhood opposite a liquor store and a church, yes a church and I’m not even trying to make a joke. Sheila herself arrived an hour after me and I was stuck with Hector the bartender for a gruelling week-long hour.
As the gang arrives we book a VIP private session and when the girls we paid for arrive, we tell them to help us drag one of the little tables sitter in front of the couches and hurdle them together in our corner next to our couch to make enough room for our paraphernalia, we brought maps, flashlights, markers… the whole nine, and of course some booze.
“Gary here knows Morse code,” says Jenny a friend from highschool, Gary is her new boyfriend at least till the month is over, she always has a new one every month. This is also something that made me sceptical about including him in the plans as I don’t trust him enough and he might not even be with her anymore in the next month and if they end badly he might want to retaliate by leaking her secrets. Collateral damage is what I’m not trying to be.
Also present at the meeting apart from myself, Sheila, Jenny and Gary, are my long time friends Hugo and Jorge Castro, two Mexican exchange students who transferred to our college and fell in love with the free world so much that they refused to leave and have been living here for a decade now.
“This will cost me a lot but losing my freedom is a bigger price to pay I don’t care if I go broke doing this.” I address the group, after all the pleasantries, jokes, reminiscing and awkward introductions have been made.
By awkward introductions I mean how Sheila is still single and Jenny is introducing yet again another boyfriend and one is tempted to ask, “what happened to Andy?”
“So I am sure Sheila has already briefed you all on my forced marriage arrangements to mean and ruthless man whose father’s favours my Devil of a dad is trying to aquire, and how he blackmailed me into agreeing to it by threatening my hospitalized mother’s life…” a deafening silence fall in the section, in contrast as they are trying to seem empathetic to my story by sighing and hissing, several ladies not far away from there are shaking their derrieres in front of men who are smacking them and throwing Dollar bills on them as the loud Southern rap music blasts away.
We go over the plan several times and make adjustments where necessary, we don’t even realize how late it has gotten, due to the fact that strip clubs, screw that all clubs party like crazy till dawn, and so 10pm is till very early, I silently curse my dad for putting me in this situation, that I had to visit this God forsaken place.
“This is a Billionaire we are about, he has connections all over the city, you’re being watched, there’s no way this plan will work Anna,” said Jenny. I’ve had Sheila’s dosage of pessimism I’m not about to listen to another person nag about the plan not working, I mentally shut my ears to her and continue talking.