Get my message? Dinner tonight?

Eric was her sexual savior, and she started thinking about where they’d go to do the deed. She didn’t like the idea of the ever-vigilant Jada seeing a man disappear inside her apartment. But Eric also had a roommate, and Piper was past the age of having sex while a bro played Call of Duty on the other side of the bedroom wall.

She went back to work. A routine online check to see if anything new had shown up about Spiral revealed a recent post on a local club life message board left there by somebody who called himself Homeboy7777.

Spiral is the best place in Chicago to score all kinds of good shit without getting stabbed or shot.

She’d stake her reputation on the fact that nobody was scoring much of anything at Spiral, now that Dell was gone. Registering herself as Wastoid69, she posted an appropriately obscene response, denouncing Homeboy7777 as a troll and Spiral as a “fucking drug wasteland only good for picking up the hottest chicks in the city.”

***

At five on Friday evening, Piper met Jen and Amber at Big Shoulders. It was one of their favorite places, with good coffee, friendly baristas, and Carl Sandburg’s poetry painted on the wall.

Hog Butcher for the World,

Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat . . .

Piper hadn’t seen her friends for two weeks, and she’d been looking forward to this all day, but Jen was uncharacteristically glum. “Dumb Ass called me into his office and asked me how I felt about getting a face-lift.”

Amber Kwan smacked the flat of her hand on the table hard enough to rattle her cup of house-blended tea. “Your face is perfect,” she exclaimed. “Ask him how he feels about a sexual discrimination lawsuit!”

Hearing the soft-spoken opera singer speak so vehemently made Piper laugh, and even Jen smiled, but only for a moment. “I’m trapped,” she said. “I don’t want to leave the city, and what other local station is going to hire a forty-two-year-old meteorologist?”

The early October days were getting shorter, and a streetlight came on outside the window. “Maybe you need to remind him how many over-forty women are watching the news,” Piper said. “How does he think they’ll react if they hear about the kind of discrimination you’re facing?”

“Yeah, that’d work, all right,” Jen scoffed. “He’d twist the story against me while he replaced me with someone younger, prettier, and cheaper. After that, I’m sure every male-owned station in town would jump at the opportunity to hire a known whistle-blower.”

She had a point.

Amber distracted Jen with the latest gossip from the Lyric. Without Berni shooting her threatening looks, Amber was funny and relaxed. Piper made up her mind to talk to Berni about her attitude, whether Amber wanted her to or not. Then she dropped the bombshell about what she’d seen in Lincoln Square.

Amber and Jen peppered her with questions, none of which she could answer because, two days ago, she’d let an overweight senior wearing a foam cheesehead get away from her.

Buffy interrupted. It was Coop, and she excused herself to take the call. “What’s up, boss?” Boss, not lover.

“Logan Stray.”

“The teen pop star?”

“He’s not a teen any longer. He’s coming to the club tonight to celebrate his twenty-first birthday, and you’re on guard duty.”

“I’m not a bodyguard, remember?”

“Tonight you are. Nothing’s going to happen to that little putz’s ninety-million-dollar body on my turf.”

“Doesn’t he have his own security?”

“Pop star bodyguards aren’t good at saying ‘no’ to the kid who signs their paychecks. I want someone around who reports to me. The club doesn’t need bad publicity.”

“You’re already getting some.” She filled him in on the message board post she’d uncovered that afternoon.

He wasn’t happy. “Stay on top of it. I don’t want to give Deidre any excuse to walk away from this deal.”

“I understand. The post probably came from somebody who got turned away at the door, but I’ll keep a close eye out.”

“Real close.”

A blender whirred on a few feet away. She stuck her finger in her ear so she could hear the rest of what he was saying. “Wear that blue dress tonight, and try to look sexy. As far as Logan and his crew are concerned, you’re a special hostess.”

“That makes me sound like a hooker.”

“As soon as he sees you, he’ll know you aren’t.”

She couldn’t decide if that was a compliment.

***

Logan Stray and his posse showed up just after midnight. The pop star was barely Piper’s height but looked even smaller next to his hulking bodyguards. His black knit cap revealed a fringe of dirty-blond hair complemented by a scraggly soul patch. His dark-framed sunglasses were unnecessary in the dim light of the VIP lounge, and she stifled a grin as he bumped into a table. He might be cool, but he definitely wasn’t smart.

The three women who clung to his entourage wore tatters of spandex that made Piper’s short, cobalt-blue dress seem demure. The group settled in a gargantuan booth overlooking the main club floor. Piper introduced herself to the closest of his bodyguards as the club’s VIP coordinator because it sounded better than “special hostess.” She greeted Logan, who gave her the once-over.

Before long, the group had ordered a couple of magnums of Armand de Brignac, two liters of Grey Goose, some Gran Patrón Platinum, and lots of Red Bull. Coop took his time coming to greet the pop star. Logan hopped up and gave him a couple of manly slaps on the back. Only a few days had passed since Coop had been attacked, and she noticed his nearly imperceptible wince. But as she stepped forward to intervene, he gave her a back-off glare.

She was growing increasingly frustrated by all the inventive ways Coop kept her from sticking close to him. This was her third night as the club’s sole female bouncer, and her attempts to get the other bouncers to step in had only increased their hostility. They’d disliked her before, but even more now that they’d been informed that Coop had originally hired her as a watchdog. She couldn’t shake her uneasiness about his safety. She’d have felt better if she’d been able to track down Keith and his girlfriend’s new address.