Free The Black & The White by Evelin Weber

cold sake.
    “ To bottle number 185!”
Carin said.
    We lifted our sake glasses in the air
and toasted before M.D. interjected, “Shouldn’t you be toasting to
Isabelle’s new job instead?”
    I suddenly became shy over his efforts
to have me be the center of the toasting affair.
    “ Nope!” Kim said. “To
Isabelle being single.”
    We all laughed.
    “ Oh, yeah. But any reason to
drink, is reason enough for me,” Carin added. Carin was a
self-proclaimed alcoholic.
    To that, we all toasted
again.
    “ To the bottle, our best
friend,” Carin said.
    We all left the restaurant and met
outside where Kim, Eric, and the rest of the group finalized plans
on where to meet.
    “ Let’s go to Serafina
tonight. I think Sysco and Romeo are throwing the party there. But
Suite 16 is still hot on Sundays with Pankaj.”
    These were the first words I’d heard
from Zozo all night long.
    “ Hold on,” she said. “Let me
see where my girls are.” She stepped to the side and made a call
before returning to the group. “Suite 16. They’re having the Paper
Mag and DNA agency party there. Should be fun. Sheri will get us
through the door.”
    “ Sheri is her modeling
booker at DNA, and Paper Mag is a magazine,” Kim explained. “They
usually throw a good bash. Don’t worry. We’ll get a table. Getting
a table is the only way we’ll get in.”
    “ I can go, right?” Carin
said. “I also have the invite?”
    “ Of course, baby!” Kim
assured. “You’re with me!”
    We took three cabs to the event. Zozo
explained something to the bouncer while the rest of the group
stood back. She was just as tall as the bouncer without
heels.
    “ This is a club?” I asked.
It certainly didn’t resemble Lotus with its fancy exterior. The
only similarities were the large bouncers in black garb and the red
velvet ropes.
    “ Yeah, a small one. A hot
spot. It’s like the VIP room in Lotus, but the whole
club.”
    We watched Zozo point to us, and a
moment later, a short brunette came outside and gave Zozo a hug and
a kiss before she gestured for all of us to come in. I knew
immediately by the way the girl kissed Zozo and directed her that
it was her booker.
    “ Phew, someone plain,” Carin
added, “I’m starting to get a complex hanging around skinny, pretty
people.”
    We walked in a single line through the
club. The music was piercingly loud, and the room was very dimly
lit. The bar to the left was packed. I looked around. Kim, Carin
and I were by far the shortest people there, despite my height of
five-foot-eight and Kim’s wedge heels. Towering over us were
international models.
    Carin and I danced to the hip-hop
music on our way to M.D.’s table in the back of the club, which was
already prepared with three bottles of Grey Goose vodka, carafes of
cranberry and orange juice, along with a silver bucket of ice. Kim
and M.D. were nowhere in sight, and I wondered where they’d
gone.
    Carin and I stood around dancing,
until Ben, the guy from dinner, turned to her and started dancing
against her. I sat down on the red leather ottoman and watched
them. Carin leaned back against him until she lost her balance and
he caught her. She continued to sway left and right, sometimes
spilling her drink on the floor.
    I noticed Zozo sitting on the other
side of the room, next to the DJ’s booth. She was chattier than at
dinner, laughing and talking with her other model friends. I
recognized one of the models from an ad I had seen in a
magazine.
    Kim and M.D. finally reappeared after
thirty minutes. As she danced her way to the table, I asked, “Where
did you go?’
    “ Where you probably thought
I was,” she winked. It was hard to hear her through the
loudspeakers. “Pent-up sexual tension,” she laughed. She then took
Eric’s hand and began dancing with him next to Carin, who was now
fondling her dance partner’s pants zipper. I watched her in
bewilderment. Carin seemed so out of character.
    Alone, I decided to walk across the
room to