Run To You

been able to hold out for more than six hours. Her old Doc boots were scuffed, but they were worn in, comfortable, and supported her feet.
    After Penny Ho, Edith Moorehead took the stage and shimmied in a meat gown to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.” It just went without saying that the dress was an unfortunate choice for a big girl like Edith. Unfortunate and dangerous for the people who got hit with flying flank steak.
    Stella fanned her face with a cardboard coaster as she poured a glass of merlot. She was off in half an hour and wanted to get her side work done before the next bartender took her place. In the entertainment district of Miami, bars were open 24/7. Ricky chose to close his between five and ten A.M. because business slowed during those hours, and due to operating costs, he lost money by staying open. And more than groping an unsuspecting female employee, Ricky loved money.
    Stella lifted her long hair from the back of her neck and gazed across the bar. Her attention stopped on a couple in fairy wings going at it a few feet from the white Elvis suit. They’d better take it down a notch or one of the bouncers would bounce them. Ricky didn’t tolerate excessive PDA or sex in his bar. Not because the man had even a passing acquaintance with anything resembling a moral compass, but because, gay or straight, it was bad for business.
    Wedged between the fairy couple and the Elvis suit, Anna’s G.I. Joe sat back farther in the shadows. A slash of light cut across his shoulder, wide neck, and chin. The strobe at the end of the stage flashed on his face, his cheeks, and the brim of his hat. By the set of his jaw, he didn’t appear happy. A smile twisted a corner of Stella’s lips and she shook her head. If the man didn’t like queens and in-betweens, he could always leave. The fact that he still sat there, soaking in all the homosexual testosterone surrounding him, likely meant he had a case of “closet gay.” Anger was a classic sign, at least that’s what she’d heard from homosexual men who were free to be themselves.
    After Edith, Anna hit the stage to Robyn’s “Do You Know.” Her lip-synching was spot-on. Her stage presence was good, but in the end, Kreme Delight won the night and the Back Door Betty crown. Anna stormed off the stage and out the front door. Stella glanced across the room toward the white Elvis suit. G.I. Joe was gone, too. Coincidence?
    At one forty-five, she was caught up on most of her side work. She sliced fruit and restocked olives and cherries. She washed down the bar and unloaded the industrial-size dishwasher. At two, she closed out, transferred tabs, and stayed around long enough to get tipped out. She untied her leather tip purse from around her hips and stuffed it into a backpack along with her heels and hairbrush. Out of habit, she took out her Russian Red lipstick. Without a mirror, she applied a perfect swipe across her mouth. Some women liked mascara. Others rouge. Stella was a lipstick girl. Always red, and even though she’d been raised to believe only fast girls wore red, she never went anywhere without ruby-colored lips.
    She fished the keys to her maroon PT Cruiser from the backpack. The car had more than one hundred thousand miles on it and needed new shocks and struts. Riding in it jarred the fillings from your teeth, but the air-conditioning worked and that was all Stella cared about.
    She said good-bye to the other employees and headed out the back door. June, warm and slushy, pressed into her skin despite the early morning hour. Stella had been born and raised in Las Cruces and was used to some humidity, but summers in Miami were like living in a steam bath, and she’d never quite gotten used to how it lay on her skin and weighted her lungs. Occasionally, she thought about returning home. Then she’d remember why she left, and how much better she liked her life now.
    “Little Stella Bella.”
    She glanced up as she shut the door behind her. Crap. Ricky. “Mr. De Luca.”
    “Are you leaving so soon?”
    “My shift was over half an hour ago.”
    Ricardo De Luca was a good seven inches taller than Stella and easily outweighed her by a hundred pounds. He always wore traditional guayabera shirts. Sometimes zipped, sometimes buttoned, but always pastel. Tonight it looked like tangerine. “You don’t have to leave so soon.” His lifestyle had aged him beyond his fifty-three years. He might have been handsome, but too much booze made him pink and