by Bec Linder
I didn’t linger: a quick scrub, some conditioner in my hair, and I hopped out and pulled on my robe.
Fresh Meat was still sitting on the couch, clutching her enormous duffel bag.
“I hope you’ve got a change of clothes in that thing,” I said.
She nodded.
“Cool,” I said. “Let’s go get pretty.”
I led her into the dressing room and we sat in empty chairs at one end of the long counter. A few of the primping dancers gave us curious looks, obviously wanting to know what was up with the stranger, but I ignored them. No time for introductions now.
I opened up my makeup kit and slathered lotion on my face. “So, Germaine already covered the boring money stuff, I guess.”
Fresh Meat unzipped her duffel and took out a small zippered case, which she opened to reveal a butt-load of makeup. Good. “She explained all of that to me, yes.”
I rubbed on a thin layer of primer and dug out the rest of my makeup while I waited for the primer to dry. “I’m assuming this isn’t your first time stripping.” Nobody worked at the Silver Cross without at least a year of experience on stage.
“I was at White Elephant for a while,” she said.
“Not bad,” I said. “You’ll do fine, then. Same clientele here, basically. Some of them are a lot richer, but they don’t flaunt it. The only difference is—”
“The private rooms,” she said. “Germaine told me. I’m on board.”
“Decide now what your limits are,” I said. “Not when you’re already in there with a client.”
She turned to face the mirror, using a sponge to apply her foundation. “What are yours?”
“Anything they want, as long as they keep their pants zipped up,” I said. “Works for me.” I used my fingers to apply my own foundation, blending carefully along my jawline so that it looked natural. “You can do whatever you want on stage. Pole dancing is fine if you want to do that. I don’t. You’ll watch tonight and see what the other girls do.” I set my foundation with powder and started on my eye makeup. “What’s the first rule of stripping?”
“Don’t get involved with the clients,” she said.
Our eyes met in the mirror, and I smiled. “You’re going to do just fine, baby.”
The rules of stripping were flexible, and every dancer had her own list, but the first rule was always the same: don’t get attached.
My list went something like this:
Rule 1: don’t get involved with the clients.
Rule 2: don’t get involved with the clients.
Rule 3: do not, under any circumstances, get involved with the clients.
Some of them didn’t make it easy. They were rich, charming, handsome—everything a girl could ask for. But we were just bodies to them, and forgetting that was a quick road to heartbreak and sucking at your job. Better to stay detached, and make them keep it in their pants.
We finished doing our faces, and then I opened one of the cabinets under the counter and took out my wig.
Sasha Kilgore had boring hair: dark brown, straight, nothing to write home about.
Sassy Belle had hair like Marilyn Monroe: perfectly blond, perfectly curled and styled. The clients loved it. I had spent a lot of money on that wig, and it was worth every penny. Most of the dancers had lean, athletic bodies, but not me. I had the breasts and hips of a ‘50s pinup model, and there was no use in fighting it. Go big or go home.
Fresh Meat watched as I settled the wig on my head and tugged it into place. “Don’t you worry about it falling off?”
“Maybe if someone grabs it and yanks,” I said. “Otherwise it’s not going anywhere.”
“Hmm,” she said.
“You don’t need one, your hair looks great,” I said. Wig in place, I applied my lipstick, and then sat back and examined myself. Perfect.
Fresh Meat looked pretty good, too. I was always dubious about the new girls, but Germaine was no fool. She wouldn’t hire anyone who wasn’t up to snuff.
“Should I change clothes, too?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Nah. You don’t even need the makeup, I just wanted to see how you would do it. We’re going to put you at a table in the back with one of the busboys and the two of you can pretend you’re on a hot date.”
“Thanks a lot,” she said. “Now I’m all dressed up with no place to go.”
I winked at her. “Live and learn.” I glanced at the clock. Still half an hour to opening. “Come on, I’ll show you around the club.”
We left the seraglio and I gave her a brief tour of the club: the bathrooms for the waitresses and clients, the storeroom and kitchen, the locker room where the other employees kept their things; and finally, the series of private rooms where clients could enjoy the more… intimate attentions of a dancer of their choice. For a price, of course.
There were two types of private rooms. The first kind, the ones that opened off the main room of the club, were designed for private parties, and had sofas and tables. Some of our clients liked to entertain friends and business associates, and I had been to plenty of totally innocent parties where the clients drank and talked about stocks and didn’t touch me at all.
The other kind of room lined a corridor running back into the recesses of the building, and those rooms were blatantly about sex. They had beds and enormous soaking tubs and were designed to be private, intimate, and luxurious.
That was the secret of the Silver Cross Club: wealthy men, if they passed the application process, could have anything they desired, and be assured of absolute discretion.
I took Fresh Meat into one of those rooms and watched as she looked around. I couldn’t read her expression. “You don’t have to do any of this, you know,” I said. “The sex. There are plenty of dancers who only dance and never go into the private rooms at all.”
“I know,” she said. “But the money’s good, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, and shrugged. None of us would be doing this if it weren’t for the money.
We went back to the seraglio. It was almost time for the club to open, and most of the dancers were hanging around in the dressing room, gossiping and putting the final touches on their makeup. I cleared my throat loudly, and when that didn’t work, clapped my hands together. Everyone turned and looked at us.
“Ladies, we have fresh meat,” I said into the sudden silence. “This is Tempest.”
“Hi, Tempest,” they chorused obediently.
“She’s going to be watching tonight,” I said. “And then—”
That was as far as I got before I was interrupted by Poppy, who appeared at my shoulder like a specter of impending doom. She tossed her hair over her shoulder and said, “WHY are you all still SITTING AROUND when The Owner is going to be here ANY MINUTE!”
I cringed away from her and fought the impulse to cover my ears. I could never figure out why Poppy had to be so loud.
“We aren’t open yet,” Xanadu called from the back of the room, and I smirked. She and Poppy got along like two cats in a bag.
“We’re almost open,” Poppy said. “Germaine wants EVERYONE to be on her BEST BEHAVIOR tonight. We wouldn’t want The Owner to be disappointed!”
She always said that like it was a title. The President. The Dalai Lama. The Owner.
“Poppy, calm down,” I said. “It’s not like this is the first time he’s ever been here. Everything’s going to be fine.”
“You just jinxed it!” she shrieked.
That was it. “I’m out,” I said to Tempest, and bailed. I had just hit my Dealing With Poppy limit, and it wasn’t even 4:00.
I really needed a Coke.
2
It turned out that Poppy had totally rearranged the schedule and I wouldn’t go on stage that night until 5:30, which meant that I had plenty of time to sit around in my robe, paint my toenails, and listen to Scarlet talk about the hot grad student she had just started dating. He studied plasma physics, whatever that was. It sounded complicated.
�
�Does he wear one of those jackets with the elbow patches?” I asked.
Scarlet grinned. “That’s a stereotype.”
“Stereotypes exist for a reason,” I said. “You should bring him by.”
“Absolutely not. He thinks I’m a nurse,” Scarlet said. “I work nights in the NICU.”
“Baby girl, you should quit lying to your boyfriends,” I said.
“He’s not a boyfriend, so who cares? I’ll get sick of him in a few weeks and then I’ll never see him again,” she said. “It’s a white lie. I don’t have to explain my job to him, and he doesn’t have to get all worked up about other men looking at me. And at least I’m not a nun, like some people.”
“I’m not a nun,” I said. “I’d have to get one of those little hats. I don’t like wearing hats.”
“It’s called a wimple,” Scarlet said, because of course she would know something like that.
“Whatever,” I said. I took another sip of my Coke. “You think the owner’s out there right now?”
She shrugged. “Why don’t you go check, if you’re so curious?”
I probably should have been out there working the floor, chatting up clients and finding a lonely man with a fat wallet and an empty lap; but it was Friday, I had already met my goal for the week, and I was tired. Stripping seemed glamorous until you were in the thick of it, and then it was just dull. The men were all the same. Different faces, but the same empty yearning in all of them, and the same wandering hands.
“I don’t feel like it,” I said, like a sulky child. “Go get me another soda.”
She laughed at me. “Nope. How does my hair look?”
“Fine,” I said, still sulky.
“I have to go dance,” she said, standing. “Are you doing Schoenemann’s party later?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Germaine didn’t say anything about it.”
“Lucky,” she said. “God, he’s such a creep. He doesn’t even tip well! Not worth it.” She tipped her head to one side and examined me. “What the hell happened to your knees, anyway? Are you planning to go out on stage with those Band-Aids stuck all over the place? The clients are going to think you’ve got leprosy.”
“I don’t have leprosy,” I said. “I just fell on the sidewalk. It’s not a big deal.”
“It looks tacky,” she said. “You should tell Poppy you can’t dance tonight.”
I smirked at her. “Girl, if I’m doing it right, nobody’s going to be looking at my knees. You need lessons from me on getting them to look at your tits?”
“Trust me, they’re looking,” she said. She blew me a kiss, and then flipped me the bird as she walked out of the room.
Alone, I fluffed my wig and checked the time. Twenty minutes to go: time to get dressed.
Stripping was about the tease. If you went out there buck-ass naked, there was no mystery, and the mystery was what kept the clients watching. I didn’t think I was performing great art, or anything like that, but there sort of was an art to it: shimmy just so, wiggle a little, look back over your shoulder, blow a kiss.
I would never admit it out loud, but I loved being on stage. I loved feeling the energy of all those men looking at me, wanting me, seeing me—for those few minutes—as the most precious thing in the world. It was a rush. And the money didn’t hurt. When I sauntered around the floor afterward, and they tucked hundred dollar bills into my g-string, I felt like a queen.
I took that night’s outfit from my bag: a corset elaborately decorated with sequins, ribbons, and feathers; a matching g-string; thigh-high stockings; black Victorian-style boots that buttoned up the side; and, to top it all off, a long, sheer open robe. I had gotten really into burlesque in the last few months, and stopped pole dancing almost entirely. I’d done pole for a long time, but it started to feel too ordinary. Most of the girls did it. I wanted to do something different, and so I spent a while going to burlesque shows and watching what those girls did, and coming to work early to practice. I had to cough up a bit of money on the new costumes and accessories, but it had been a worthwhile investment. The clients loved it. My tips were better than ever, and I was determined to milk it as much as possible before the other girls caught on and started doing the same thing. For now, they just thought I had developed a weird interest in feathers, but I knew that wouldn’t last.
We were all friends, or at least friendly, or at least mostly; but I wasn’t dumb enough to forget that we lived in a dog-eat-dog world. I wanted to be the one doing the eating, instead of the one that got eaten.
I’d had the corset custom-made with a zipper on the side, so that it was easy to put on—and easy to remove. The difference between me and most burlesque dancers was that I would be fully nude by the end of my dance, and I didn’t want to spend any time fumbling around with my costume on stage. I zipped up the corset, and sat again to pull on my stockings and boots. Then I retouched my lipstick, and critically examined my reflection in the mirror. I looked perfect. Nothing was out of place.
I checked the clock again. Go time.
I left the seraglio and strolled down the hall toward the main floor, my robe trailing on the floor behind me. Scarlet was just finishing her routine, kneeling on the stage with a client’s face buried in her tits. I stopped at the edge of the floor and waited. It was impolite to deliberately take attention away from the dancer on stage. If the clients near me glanced in my direction, well—that wasn’t anything I could control.
The stage was a square platform in the middle of the room, with tables arranged around it on all four sides. That made it hard to appear on stage unnoticed, and so we all went to the other extreme and played it up as much as possible. The clients enjoyed watching us make our way to the stage, and it seemed like they needed the extra time to make the psychological transition from watching one girl to watching another. That was Scarlet’s theory, anyway. She was a lot smarter than me, so I tended to listen to her.
Scarlet’s song came to a close, and she blew kisses to the men watching her, smiling, and then climbed down off the stage to make her rounds and collect her tips.
I pulled my shoulders back, waiting for the spotlight to find me, feeling the familiar rush of adrenaline through my veins.
The Silver Cross didn’t do anything so tacky as announcing the next dancer. Instead, the club’s spotlight came on, and unerringly moved across the floor until I was centered in the pool of light it cast on the carpet. I struck a dramatic pose, head thrown back and one arm raised in the air, and I heard a murmur of appreciation spread through the crowd.
And there it was: I took a step forward, into Sassy’s skin.
Did it make me vain, that I fed on the energy from the crowd?
Maybe.
I didn’t really care, though.
I sauntered forward, the spotlight following me, and made my way to the stage in the silence that preceded the music that wouldn’t start until I stood on the stage.
Who could look away from me, when I was lit like this, and glowing, and ready to perform?
I walked up the short flight of steps onto the stage and made my way to the center. I stopped there and posed again, and the spotlight cut off, and the music cut on.
On stage, I was alive.
I began dancing, swaying my hips and running my hands down my body. I made eye contact with one of the clients sitting near the stage and winked. He leaned toward me, lips parting, and I wanted to laugh. I was powerful. In that one moment, I wasn’t doing it for the money. I was doing it because I wanted to. I wanted these men to look at me, and want me.
My dance was a striptease. The robe would stay on; the corset, eventually, would come off, and I would use the robe’s sheer fabric to conceal while revealing, until finally that came off too. I had fifteen minutes, and I didn’t intend to get naked until the very end. They would be desperate for it by the time I finally let one of them take off my g-string.
As I danced, I scanned the audience, wondering which of the men watching me was t
he owner. Was it the silver-haired gentleman in the double-breasted suit? Was it the middle-aged man ignoring me in favor of his phone? It could have been any of them. Unlike Poppy, I didn’t really care. The owner had never shown any interest in interfering with the day-to-day activities at the club, and so I wasn’t going to waste any mental energy worrying about it.
I turned on my heel to face another section of the room. It was important to keep turning around so that everyone got a good view. I bent my head to find the zipper on my corset and drew the zipper down. The two halves of the corset peeled open, and I drew it off and tossed it onto the stage. The gauzy fabric of my robe slid across my breasts as I made another quarter turn, and I deliberately arched my back to display my nipples.
A man near the stage raised his glass to me.
I winked at him and turned again, hips swaying the whole time, hands at my neck and then at my hips, letting them all imagine that it was their hands touching me, their hands gliding across the warm silk of my skin. I drew the rope open, fully exposing my body, and then pulled it closed again, teasing, giving them just a taste.
I paused for a moment, bending over backwards with my arms above my head. Upside-down, a man sitting toward the back of the room caught my attention, and I straightened again and turned around to get a better look at him.
Holy shit.
It was the guy from earlier, the one who had bandaged my knees.
I swayed in place, watching him, mesmerized.
He tipped his chin up, and our eyes met.
It shook me to my bones.
It was like wandering through the desert for forty days and forty nights, and suddenly finding water. Like remembering a long-forgotten dream, or waking in the night to distant thunder.
There was something in his eyes, darkly amused, that made me think he’d seen right through me, right down to the soles of my feet.
Rattled, I turned my back to him and kept dancing.
I knew he was there, though. I could feel his eyes on me.
