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Men are easy. Ramona’s always known that, ever since she was sitting on her stoop at fifteen in booty shorts and a tank top, trying to imagine air brushing over her in the sweltering Bronx heat while passers by couldn’t keep their eyes off her.
Her momma worked shifts at the 24 hour diner, and when there was no one to watch Ramona and her sisters they’d sit in a booth with colouring books and homework watching the customers float in and out. There was a strip joint down the block, and if Ramona timed it right she’d be in the diner watching them get breakfast, heels to the heavens, teased hair, and piles of cash in their tiny purses.
Even at that early hour there’d be men talking to them. Grease smeared on their mouths from the food, dirt under their nails, wearing sweat stained shirts. The girls smiled and laughed and charmed them, even when Ramona could see the exhaustion in their eyes.
She noticed the girls never had to pay for their breakfasts and the men always gave her momma a big tip.
*
“Think I could be like them one day?” Ramona asks her sister.
“Why you wanna be like them? Study, Ramona, you’re not stupid, you could do great things.”
“They got money,” Ramona says, as if it’s not even a question. “And the shoes, man I want the shoes.”
“You can make your money another way,” her sister says, tapping a pen against her textbook. “Buy all the shoes you want, wear ‘em to some fancy job in Manhattan.”
Ramona eyes her sister before she sighs. “Their way seems so much more fun.”
*
Ramona was nineteen when she first stepped foot on a stage. Her momma was insistent she get a job after graduating, but there was nothing Ramona wanted to do. Ramona knew that who she was and where she came from would shut more doors in her face than open them. She wasn’t stupid. If she wanted the money and power she craved, she’d have to take it.
The first time she went out there, her Payless bikini tight on her tanned body and her legs steady in heels she’d been practicing wearing since she was sixteen, she let the music playing guide her. She walked around the room, introducing herself to men she kinda recognised from the block, to men twice her age, to men who had been giving her those kind of looks since she got her curves.
The looks hadn’t changed, but now she could monetise them, use them to get what she wanted.
All it did was reinforce what she knew about men, what she’d always known.
They were easy.
*
“Hey baby,” Ramona says, sliding into an open spot next to a man who looks kinda familiar. The leather seats are sticky against her skin as she gets his attention. “What you looking for?”
“A good time,” the man says, his hand clenching around his glass and looking her over. “You offering?”
Ramona leans in a little, resting her hand on his arm, nails scratching lightly against the exposed skin where his sleeves are rolled up. “Long week? Need another drink?”
“Yeah,” he says, meeting her eyes. The look in them is the same one she’s seen in all the eyes of the men at these clubs. “That sounds good.”
It’s not until she’s in her panties grinding on him in a private room that she realises he was her momma's mailman.
*
Men are easy to Ramona, women aren’t.
Women who have never set foot in a club always think that it’s full of cold bitches out to get each other. That they spend their time fighting for tips, fighting for the attention of the men who can’t keep their eyes off them. Ramona’s not gonna lie, some of the women are like that, but it didn’t take her long to realise she wasn’t going to be like that.
She’s a cold bitch in a lot of ways, but not with the girls. Never with the girls. Ramona wants to make money, and if the girls work together, they all get better, which makes the club more appealing to the men looking for ways to make their dull little lives more interesting, even if it’s just for a night.
Maybe that was always going to be her downfall. Not the money, not the drugs and the scheming, but the women.
Destiny.
*
“You gotta get your leg up,” Ramona says, laughing as Destiny makes a face at her. “Come on, honey, you’re stronger than you think.”
“My ass is not enjoying this, Ramona,” Destiny grits out, kicking her leg out as she hangs upside down.
“You look amazing, baby, you got this.”
Destiny shrieks, pulling herself up with her core muscles and grabbing onto the pole, her legs unwinding as she twists to make her ass stand out.
“Hold it,” Ramona says as the girls do a five count. “Okay,” she says as they get to one. “Drop it.”
Unravelling from the pole, Destiny sits on the stage and holds her arms up as Ramona sinks to the stage and pulls her into a hug. Ramona breathes her in, smiling as the girls cheer all around them. Pressing a kiss against the side of Destiny’s head, Ramona rests her forehead against Destiny’s and smiles. “You’re gonna kill it, baby.”
*
Women might not be easy for Ramona, but she always recognises when someone’s broken like her. There’s that glint of abandonment in their eyes, the hardness underneath the face they put on for customers, the desire to carve out a life that’s not a mundane suburban struggle.
If she thinks back, Ramona can remember so clearly the first time she saw Destiny on the roof, shivering and asking for a light. It was instinct to wrap her up in her fur, to want to keep her warm and teach her how to thrive in this life, not just survive.
There were nights where Ramona would sit with a client, looking over at Destiny and taking in how she worked. The tilted head, the wide eyed innocent look she’d give them before biting her bottom lip, giving the customer just a hint of what she could do for them. Selling a fantasy that all powerful men think they can buy.
Destiny was damn good at it. She even got Ramona.
*
“I always wanted to know, you know, why she didn’t come back? I could understand her leaving me, moms need a break, right? Especially after dad left, but she never came back.”
Ramona pulls Destiny closer and runs her fingers along her spine, hiding a smile in her hair when she feels Destiny shiver. “Some people aren’t meant to be mothers,” Ramona says quietly. “Just because you can get yourself knocked up by some man doesn’t mean you should.”
“You’re a good mom,” Destiny says, her face pressed against Ramona’s shoulder. “You’d do anything for Juliet.”
“She deserves the world,” Ramona says matter of fact. “I’d pull down the moon for her.”
Destiny’s quiet for a moment and then—. “I don’t know what it’s like to be loved like that.”
*
Ramona couldn’t be mad at Destiny for getting pregnant. She wanted to be, knew that the boyfriend was a waste of space, but Ramona had done the same goddamn thing. Stripper rite of passage: the boyfriend knows what you do and loves it, until he doesn’t. Then he takes it out on the girl in different ways. Bruises and cuts hidden with make up and dark lighting, money being stolen until the girlfriend is working for him not herself, the boyfriend getting greedy until the girl leaves the club and starts being pimped out.
Pregnancy is the ultimate trap, and the boyfriends know it. The girls want that unconditional love, and a baby provides that. Gives the girls a reason to live, gives them a reason to keep going.
When Destiny asked Ramona what she should do, Ramona had pulled her in and kissed her face, telling her she already knew what she wanted to do.
And Ramona didn’t see her again for years.
*
“I can’t keep dancing,” Destiny says, her hands rubbing over her stomach. “I could, I guess. There’s, like, no harm in it, right? Like would hanging upside down hurt the baby?”
Ramona fixes Destiny’s hair before wiping some mascara flakes off her skin. “Honey, no one wants to see a pregnant stripper.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Okay, no one who comes here wants to see a pregnant stripper,” Ramona says, dropping her hand. “And I don’t think you want to work at the places that have those guys.”
“He says he’ll take care of me,” Destiny says, and there’s a sparkle in her eyes that Ramona doesn’t have the heart to kill.
“Make sure he does,” Ramona says, eventually. “And, honey, make sure you don’t give him access to your bank account. I’m serious about that.”
“I promise.”
*
Before the crash it had felt endless, these guys had been making money for years screwing people over, and no one thought it would collapse the way it did. When the crash came, it took the men with it, so many vanishing from the clubs like their net worth did. With them went the apartment, the financing for the car, the nanny, and Ramona found herself at a loss.
She knew she was aging out, that by the time the economy recovered she’d be over the edge of what men wanted, no matter how many procedures she had. But she needed to keep going, needed to keep the money coming in.
Ramona still remembers the night she saw Destiny in the club. It was like the whole world stopped as soon as she saw her, and Ramona knew there was no other way the night ended aside from bringing Destiny into the scheme.
*
“When do you think you’ll stop?” Destiny asks, looking out of the window at the snow falling. “Like, when will it be enough?”
It’s quiet in Ramona’s penthouse for once, the kids are asleep, Destiny’s grandmother in a guest room, and there’s an open bottle of champagne on the table. “Stop what?”
“Stop this. Stop the scams, stop the drugging, stop dealing with these guys,” Destiny says. “It can’t go on forever, I mean—we can’t go on forever.”
“We could,” Ramona says, refilling her glass, the lights hitting her rings making them sparkle. “Men are always going to be like this.”
“Like what?”
“Easy to con.”
Destiny turns to look at her, taking the champagne Ramona offers. “That’s a really depressing way to look at the world.”
“Realistic,” Ramona says. “We have an empire here, baby, and you’re thinking about it ending?”
“I fucking love the money,” Destiny says before draining her drink. “But the rest of it—we do a lot of damage to these men.”
“So what? They did a lot of damage to the whole fucking country.”
“But—”
“No,” Ramona interrupts. “I don’t think about stopping. I don’t want to stop. Life is a hustle, baby, you know that.”
*
Of course, it did stop. In the most chaotic fashion Ramona could’ve ever imagined. Her entire neighbourhood watching out the windows as she got shoved in the back of a cop car.
And Destiny—.
It was a betrayal, Ramona won’t ever sugarcoat it. They were meant to be in this together, partners until the end, and instead—. Instead they fell apart.
When Elizabeth comes asking questions, Ramona answers. Gives her what she wants to know, holds back what she doesn’t deserve to know, and tries not to ask too many questions about Destiny. When Ramona offhandly mentions she never changed her number, Elizabeth’s mouth twitches as if she knows exactly why Ramona said it.
Despite that, Ramona didn’t expect the call.
*
“Hi,” Destiny says, her voice hushed. “Is that—I mean, Ramona?”
“Yeah baby, it’s me.”
“I’m—I spoke to Elizabeth. She told me what you said.”
Ramona grips the phone a little tighter. “I said a lot of things,” she says. “She published a lot of things.”
“The moms at Lily’s school—they look at me even worse than before now. I don’t know what I—I mean, I know what we did was—”
“Fuck their bullshit,” Ramona says firmly. “They don’t know who you are.”
“Yeah, well. They think they do, and we both know that won’t change.”
They’re both quiet for a time, Ramona closes her eyes and listens to Destiny breathing down the line. “Do you—” Ramona pauses, clears her throat. “Look, I don’t know why you called, but I’d like to see you. I’m not—this isn’t a hustle.”
“Isn’t it always a hustle?”
“Not with you,” Ramona says. It’s a little too honest, but after all these years, after—maybe it’s time Ramona started being honest.
“Okay,” Destiny says after a too long pause. “There’s a cafe I like, I’ll text you the address.”
Ramona breathes out slowly, rubs the moisture from her eyes and smiles. “Be just like old times.”
Destiny laughs. “Maybe not exactly like that.”
“No,” Ramona says, looking at the photos she keeps in her wallet. “But maybe better.”