Tender believed in God, but she didn’t have a lot of faith in Goldie’s holy plan. She knew that God helps those who help themselves. It took more than blind faith and some prayer to receive a blessing. For them to strike out on their own without any concrete plan was nothing short of stupid. Almost like a backwoods preacher who sticks his hand in a poisonous snake pit, then, when bitten, he refuses medical treatment, thinking his faith in God alone will save him. No, Tender couldn’t work with that. Despite what Goldie thought, she wanted out of the stripping game. She was growing tired of the grind, irate customers, pimps, and the cliques of girls in the club. She didn’t want to burn out like Goldie, but she caved in.

“Aiight, Goldie, I’ll go,” Tender agreed, surprising even herself.

Goldie squeezed Tender tightly. She was relieved. She didn’t want to go it alone.

“We gonna make it,” Goldie assured her. “You’ll see. Once we stop stripping, a whole new world will open up to us, watch ….”

Tender reluctantly went along with the program. But in the back of her mind, she wondered how they were going to break the news to Kat. She was surely going to flip out when she heard this.

As Kat steered her truck through the streets of Philly, she couldn’t get Q off of her mind. Especially not after all the things Tender told her about him. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know him or hadn’t even seen him. He was paid and that was all that mattered. She fantasized about what a man of his stature could do for her. If she got a crack at him, she promised herself that she would go all out. And for her efforts she was quite sure she’d be living large.

With her thoughts focused on Q, she inadvertently ran a stop sign. Kat didn’t even realize it until she saw the red lights of a police car flashing in her rearview mirror.

“What da fuck they want now?” she cursed aloud, banging on her steering wheel. She thought he was stopping her just to mess with her. “Damn,” she cursed after she looked and realized she had run a stop sign. Fuck it, she thought, just write me a ticket and let me go about my business. I don’t have any time for this.

Kat pulled over to the curb, switched her car off and placed her hands in full view. She knew the routine. She didn’t want to become a statistic of some nervous cop. She knew how quick the police were to brutalize and kill black motorists in the hood.