he was on the phone as she snuck past him backstage, telling whoever was on the other side of the line off good.
“How could you do this to me? Do you know who I am? Rick Rizzo! I made The Benton Girls Revue. And you think you can screw me over like this? I don’t think so!”
Sunny rushed toward the dressing room, happy she’d escaped Rick’s notice, but sorry for whoever was on the other side of that phone.
“Ooh, twin, you’re lucky Rick didn’t see you!” her friend Prudence said when Sunny dropped into her usual seat in the long line of makeup mirrors, after changing into her Benton Girls costume. Sunny’s and Pru’s costumes weren’t topless, but they didn’t leave much to the imagination, either, basically string bikinis, dripping in fake jewels. However, they did match, and since she and Pru were the only two black Benton Girls, with similar builds and the same big bouncy curl extensions, they often called each other “twin” when they were in costume.
“I know, right!” Sunny answered, slathering concealer onto the dark circles under her eyes. “The only reason I got away with it was because he was already yelling at somebody else on the phone when I walked in. I’m guessing it’s one of the newer dancers.”
The poor girl had probably called Rick to bow out of rehearsal, not realizing that Rick morphed from a loving dance dad into your worst tyrant nightmare when you broke one of his rules—like not skipping out on rehearsal without at least forty-eight hours’ notice and/or a doctor’s note for a fatal disease.
“Poor thing. But they’ve got to learn some way. I know we did.” Pru said. She nudged Sunny with her elbow. “One more thing you’re not going to miss about this place when you’re gone, right?”
Sunny gave her friend a grateful smile. Pru was one of the few people she’d told about her plan to study dance pedagogy at New York Arts University, and she’d been nothing but supportive. They’d both started out in the chorus line at the age of twenty-two, and were both now twenty-seven. A half decade was a long time to shake your can-can for tourists, many of which were only there to see the topless girls. Pru didn’t blame her for wanting to move on.
She just wished Rick would feel the same way.
As if summoned by her thoughts, their boss suddenly appeared in the doorway.
His face was lined with disgust, and she waited for him to inform the room that one of their newest hires had just been fired, but instead he said the last words she’d ever expect to come out of his mouth.
“It’s with a heavy heart that I have to inform you that The Benton Girls Revue has just been cut from The Benton’s line-up of shows.”
Stunned silence met his announcement until Pru stuttered out, “You—you mean tonight’s show has been cut? Just tonight’s show, right?”
Rick shook his head. “I’m sorry, Pru, honey. I wish I could say it was just for tonight, or that management was just cutting back the number of shows we put on. I suggested all of that and even offered to take a pay cut. But Mr. Benton’s assistant wasn’t hearing any of it. She said The Revue is cancelled. No more shows—not even a farewell one. Order came from The Third himself.”
Cole Benton III or “The Third” as some of the longer-time employees called him. Sunny had never met the CEO of The Benton Group herself, but according to Nora, he wasn’t anything like his grandmother, all work and no play with little to no sense of humor. Still, Sunny wouldn’t have expected this from The Third. His grandmother had started out a showgirl and surely he knew how much Nora treasured The Revue. Not only was the theater they performed in named after her, but she also came to see the show the second Tuesday of every month, and she’d even had the Benton Girls perform at her annual Christmas event to raise money for Lung Cancer awareness, which had taken the lives of both Sunny’s grandmother and Nora’s husband.
As if reading Sunny’s mind, Rick said, “Sunny, aren’t you besties with Nora Benton?”
“Not exactly,” Sunny answered. “She and my grandmother were very close friends.”
“Sunny’s grandmother was our first African-American showgirl here at The Benton, and then she went on to become one of our most prized seamstresses behind the scenes,” Rick informed the group, his voice somber and reverent. He held his hand out palm up toward Sunny and said to the rest of the dancers, “So you see, Sunny has both a personal and a historical stake in making sure our show goes on, and we can continue the story her grandmother began.”
Well, she wouldn’t quite put it that way. Though Sunny was proud of her grandmother for integrating The Benton Girls, that didn’t mean that she herself wanted to stay with the show forever like her grandmother had.
“Sure, I can give Nora a call,” she offered. “Though I’m not sure how much she can do.”
Rick waved his hand in front of his chest. “No, no, no. Not Nora. If she had any power in this organization, I’m sure we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
True, Sunny thought. Nora loved The Revue. If she had anything to say about it, The Benton Girls would have kept going forever.
“No, we need you to go to the top dog himself,” Rick told her. “In person, so he can’t just deflect your call. How about it, Sunny? Will you go plead our case with The Third? Figure out a way to keep one of the last revues in Vegas going, so we’re not all out of a job?”
Sunny wanted to say no. She wasn’t exactly a master negotiator.
However, everyone in the dressing room was looking at her now with beseeching eyes, including Pru, her best friend, who really needed this job and the benefits it provided to support both herself and her little brother.
“Okay,” Sunny found herself saying against her better instincts. “I’ll go talk to Mr. Benton. I’ll go talk to him right now.”
The Benton Group currently had holdings all over the United States, but Cole Benton had maintained the flagship executive offices near the top of the hotel’s original forty-story building. So Sunny didn’t have to go far to confront The Third. After getting back into her street clothes and borrowing a cardigan from Pru to wear over her tank top, it was only a matter of simply walking on over to The Benton’s main bank of elevators.
However, when she got inside the first elevator car that opened up for her and pushed the button for the 35th floor, her head began to fill with righteous steam. Seriously, how dare Cole Benton just cut their show without even a little bit of warning? What a prick, she she thought, as she walked past the empty receptionist desk, rehearsing the polite but passionate plea Rick had all but written down for her.
Sunny came to an abrupt pause in the doorway of the outer office. Then she checked the nameplate on the door. The wood-and-glass sign declared this to be the office of Cole Benton, the CEO of The Benton Group of Hotels and Casinos. However, his outer office was not only sparse, with just a simple black desk and a black leather couch to appoint it, but it was also empty, the chair behind the secretary’s desk currently without an occupant.
Sunny hesitated, all revved up with nowhere to go. What should she do? Wait for the secretary on the couch? Hope that she’d be back sometime soon? Or...
Her eyes went to
