“Mimi, I’m literally going to roast this dude.”
Yasmin stands in the doorway of Limelight’s head office with her hip jutted out. She waves a black credit card in the air between her thumb and forefinger like it was dropped on a bathroom floor.
Nayomi takes a deep breath in. She sits in a white ergonomic office chair behind a large, clear acrylic desk on one side of the room. Behind her is a large painting of a queen, depicted as an empress tarot card, leaned against the wall and almost touching the ceiling. She lets the air out loudly through her nose. “Who is it, the senator?”
“Yep. Five G’s,” Yasmin responds.
Nayomi pushes away from the desk and slides toward the window that spans the other side of the office.
Limelight’s guests love to look up at the club’s black-mirrored ceiling; it slants toward a skylight in the shape of the sun and offers a glimpse inside the other parties. There’s a celebrity sitting in a quiet corner most of the time, chatting with someone intimately or a small group of important A-listers.
What they don’t know is that when they look up someone else is almost always looking down.
Yasmin crosses the marble floor to stand at the window and follows Nayomi’s gaze. Across from Nayomi, at a desk and chair exactly the same as her sister’s, sits Avryl, who also looks down. The painting at her back is another queen, the temperance card.
On either side of the head office, with equally disguised views, are offices for security and an employee lounge. During the day when the club is closed, cleaners come in and out and deliveries of alcohol are received. Black satin curtains open to a view of the Bowery district of Manhattan.
From their perch, the sisters sit and watch who’s coming, who’s going, who’s watching and who’s being watched. And the money.
Three pairs of eyes gaze down into a booth set closest to the window, on the north side by a stage with huge ferns on either side.
Senator Declined Black Card is part of one of the bigger parties. He’s with three other men who look just as professional and stiff as he does, and women. At least two of them for each man. He sits in the middle of two women, one in a black sequined dress, the other all legs and a fur vest. He’s unaware of anyone’s eyes on him that aren’t in his party. His arms wave about in the air to emphasize whatever story he’s telling. Then, reaching the story's climax, he tips all the way over on his right side like a ship lost at sea, his feet flailing in the air. The women gasp and laugh like they’re competing for an Oscar only he can award.
“I wonder…” Nayomi says. She cocks her head to the side and squints her green eyes. “You think he might’ve done it on purpose? Some of these guys get off on that, you know; public humiliation.”
Yasmin has a reputation among the club members, hell, not just the club. The last time she kicked out a member because their credit card was declined it ended up on Page Six. It turned out he was part of a fraud ring, and the card was the tip of the iceberg.
That story meant a member broke Limelight’s number one rule: no talking to the press. Nayomi ordered Yasmin and Avryl to not bother with finding out who the culprit was but warned that everyone—Yasmin especially—needed to be aware of staying out of the gossip blogs.
An email was sent out to members about the press policy, but most of them ignored it.
And that little story helped extend Limelight’s waitlist, so the press turned out to be good in this circumstance. Avryl even had a couple of calls from people trying to trade in favors so they could get access early. She gave them the same answer she’d been giving them for almost a year: No.
It isn’t the possibility of being embarrassed that these potential members want. These types of members don’t think about that. It is about being in the place. If so-and-so from the such-and-such company is here from out of town, everyone knows the deal with the other such-and-such company is going down.
And then there’s the possibility of catching a little drama. You’d think these professional types would be above all of that, but knowing the drama pays. Sometimes literally.
The other thing about Limelight: no one here does anything for the ‘Gram. It’s not even a rule they really have to enforce. You get there, look around, and realize no one is on their phone. When something happens at Limelight, everyone in the room gets the experience of witnessing the act first-hand. They have precious stories to share with the ordinary folks who could never get in.
All this to say, Nayomi hates it when members play around with paying. In any way. She sees it as a sign of disrespect. Members wait months, years in some cases, for access. They get to rub shoulders and make deals and hear about cryptocurrencies, so when a card declines or their dues bounce, she takes it personally. She has pride in owning a prestigious club like this and only being twenty-six. However, she worries everyone underestimates her or thinks they can take advantage. Prices are not cheap, and there are no tabs.
It’s one of the first things she warned Avryl about when she started as Limelight’s new administrator in January. Avryl turned eighteen, went from graduation to the desk across from hers, and the first thing Nayomi said was: “Av, do not let any of these people give you shit just because you’re young. Especially not anyone in an expensive suit.”
It would’ve felt like an initiation into some secret adult world if Avryl needed an initiation.
“Who cares if he did it on purpose?” Yasmin spits out. You’d think she's the one who hates declined payments—which is very rare—but somewhere inside, in a place, she doesn’t want to admit exists, she likes it. To get the chance to knock one of these high rollers down a few notches. She waves the card in the air again and accidentally drops it.
“Should I cut it up?” Instead of bending down to pick it up, she goes for a sharp object on Avryl’s desk. Avryl grabs it out of her reach quickly.
“Ooh, aren’t we jumpy,” Yasmin teases and turns back to Nayomi.
“Let’s have a chat with him.”
The two leave without a word to Avryl. Of course, this isn’t little sister’s business, but it still irks her to know they didn’t even think to ask her if she was coming with. She’s overlooked, and it’s okay. Avryl knows her place: be quiet, keep to herself, do the admin, and let the big sisters deal with the bad guys.
She wouldn’t say she’s the baby of the family because she hates it when people say that, but being the baby has its advantages. It’s nice to sit back, watch her sisters live their lives, and ‘live their lives’ means making mistakes. Losing their tempers, spending way too much shopping online. Marrying the wrong men.
They all kind of form a protective bubble around Avryl. A new waiter once made the mistake of calling her ‘the mouse with the tits’ and immediately regretted it. Avryl had never seen any of her sisters that angry, especially Yasmin. And Yasmin was always angry. Even Luma, Yasmin’s best friend and the fifth sister-by-choice, looked like she was going to light the guy on fire with her eyeballs.