Free Ladies Night by Christian Keyes

the buildings, and he knew he was getting close. Unless someone was having one hell of a house party in the middle of the week, the music couldn’t have been coming from anywhere else but a club.
    Within a few more yards, Amp spotted the sign for Club Eden. Bright red light bulbs spelled out each letter. A smaller sign with similar red bulbs spelled out LADIES NIGHT on the wall next to the entrance.
    Exactly what kind of club was this? Before going to prison, Amp had been more of a ladies’ man, so he was no stranger to clubs of all types, but it had been a while, and he knew the club scene had changed. It always does. He spotted the same customized Aston Martin that he’d seen Madam get into at the park. It was in a reserved space near the front.
    As Amp took a good look at the tan stucco building, he thought he remembered the place. Back in the day, this building had been one of the biggest and hottest sports bars in town. It wasn’t his regular stomping ground or anything like that, but he’d come over this way before from Long Beach, where he was raised. If this was the same building he was thinking of, he’d been there a couple of times to watch a football and basketball game or two. Come to think of it, this was the place where he’d had one of his first beers. Actually, one night he’d had one beer too many and gotten sick. That was also the last time he’d visited the place. His boys had clowned him good.
    The memories of the good old days were making Amp smile, something he hadn’t done a lot of in prison. It actually felt somewhat weird to him, so he stopped smiling and redirected his focus on the task at hand.
    Amp approached the entrance to see what this place was now. He stepped through the red metal door, and his eyes had to adjust in the darkened foyer. The walls in the entryway were painted black, and the chandelier with ruby red lights was definitely more for show than for seeing. Gold poles with red velvet rope marked the area where people were supposed to line up to enter. The club had a scent to it—not a bad scent, but one Amp couldn’t immediately recognize.
    Amp spotted the coat check area to the right, and he smiled at the cute little brown-skinned woman who was working there. She returned his look with a friendly smile of her own. There was just something about that chocolate.... He thought about how sweet it would be to take her into that coat check room and caress the nape of her neck while he kissed her passionately. After all, it had been a long time in prison, and the feeling of a woman’s warmth was well overdue.
    He snapped back out of his daydream and regained his focus. He was there for a purpose. Opposite the coat check was a split door with the top half open. The woman sitting behind it was there to admit patrons, but instead she was messing around on her cell phone. There was a sign hanging on the top half of the door listing the entrance fee, which Amp thought was shockingly high. There was another sign that listed a few rules, which Amp didn’t bother reading.
    â€œExcuse me,” Amp said, but the woman apparently couldn’t hear him over the music coming down the short hallway that probably led to the main part of the club. The woman on her phone wasn’t paying Amp any mind.
    Figuring he’d have to find Madam himself, Amp walked by, down the black marble swirl path. At the end of the hallway, he was taken aback by how much the place had changed since its days as a sports bar. Straight ahead was a stage about ten feet long. The floor was decorated with the same black marble swirl flooring as the foyer. Surrounding the stage were about a hundred anxious-looking, cackling women of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Most of them had some fruity-looking signature drink sitting in front of them. The women were working their crowns of glory, with thousands of dollars’ worth of hairstyles done up to perfection: weaves of the