More Than A Maybe

by Monte, Clarissa

  I smiled. “You’re a secret agent.”

  Maybe it was just the tension of the situation, but we both laughed at that. It seemed to give her all the permission she needed.

  “I’m a dancer,” she said simply.

  It was probably just naiveté, but it actually took me a moment to process what she said. What it meant.

  “You mean . . . for money?” I asked, as the sudden understanding sent my eyebrows furrowing together.

  “Well, not for free!” she said, raising her voice.

  She seemed to take it as an accusation. For all I know, maybe it was one.

  “You know what? Never mind,” she said, pulling her hand quickly away from mine.

  I felt immediately awful — like I was confirming some long-suspected fear about me. I immediately started backpedaling.

  “Jayla . . . that’s not what I meant. Really. I just . . . please understand, I just have no idea about that kind of thing. It’s a world away from how I grew up.” I took a deep breath, and as I did, I saw her face begin to soften. “Seriously. Please. Tell me more. What do you do? How does that work?”

  My interest seemed to satisfy her, and I saw her smile return as the warmth came back into her voice. “It’s not really that complicated. I take off my clothes and men give me money for it. Hell — women too, sometimes.” She shrugged. “Simple.”

  Simple. It was like hearing the word for the first time. I’d been told by my mom that women who took off their clothes for money were stupid, or trashy, or even traitors; any number of a dozen cruel things.

  But I also knew Jayla. She was nothing like that. Besides, more than a few of my Goddesses had done their share of burlesque in their day. True, the dancing Jayla did was no doubt a bit racier than the burlesque shows back then, but still . . .

  I raised my eyebrows. “Anyway, that explains why you’re so sleepy all the time.”

  Jayla grinned.

  “Ha! Sleepy like a fox, bitch. That money pays my tuition, pays my bills . . .” She paused, and a cloud seemed to pass over her face for the briefest of moments. “Look: I never told you this, but my family doesn’t really come from money, you know? They always did their best, but . . . I dunno. Med school was always my dream, not theirs. And if you want anything in this life, you have to get it yourself. Sounds cliché I guess, but it’s true.”

  I realized I was seeing the real Jayla. I didn’t see a sleepy and somewhat irresponsible classmate . . . I saw an independent woman who saw what she wanted and went for it, without worrying about anything else.

  It was simple. It really was. I felt a new respect for Jayla growing inside me. There was more than that, though . . .

  I saw a person who had something I wanted. I envied her courage; her happy-go-lucky sense of assurance that everything was going to work out just fine. If I was really going to make it on my own, I’d need to figure out where she’d gotten it.

  Jayla looked at me — she clearly expected me to say something. “Well?”

  I looked back at her, a bit startled. “Well . . . what?”

  She blinked. “What do you think?”

  Looking back, it was obvious — but I really had no idea what she was talking about. At all.

  “I think it’s great,” I said, as cheerfully as I could. “I hope I can figure out something like that.”

  It was Jayla’s turn to look startled. “Like that?” she asked quizzically. “Why not . . . that?”

  I finally understood what she was getting at — but I could only open my eyes in a wide stare.

  “ME? Dance? On a stage, with everyone . . . ”

  Jayla laughed the same carefree laugh that she always kept at the ready. “Yes, you! I mean . . . okay, not to be mean, but I know you could make more in a single night dancing than you make in an entire week of slinging pancakes at that café. You’re young, you’re hot . . . ”

  “I am not. And I’m as flat as an ironing board.”

  Jayla shook her head at that. “You bad-mouth those boobs all the time! You gotta knock that shit off, girl. You are hot. There — I said so. You could be using what you’ve got! Look, the boss at the club is a pretty good guy. Billy. He’s got a good heart.”

  “It’s not his heart I’m worried about. It’s the whole idea. I mean, isn’t there like — y’know, a creepy back room or something?”

  Jayla just shrugged. “You mean the Champagne Room? Sure. But you decide if you wanna go back there, and who with. Shit, or you could bartend, if that’s not for you. Those bitches behind the counter make good money. Can you make drinks?”

  I shake my head. “No. Maybe I could mix a gin and tonic, but . . . ”

  Jayla smiled. “Well, whatever. It’s fine if you can’t. But look . . . I’m not trying to pressure you, okay? And there isn’t a girl at that club that loves doing that job. But it lets you take charge of all the shit in your life, you know? Take control. And that can get you anywhere.”

  She reached into her purse and pulled out a card. “Amateur Night is Fridays. Amateur School, they call it. I’ll introduce you, walk you through it. Let me just put my work cell on here . . . ”

  Are you serious? I thought. Amateur School!?

  I tried not to let my feelings show on my face as Jayla wrote out her digits and placed a card on the table in front of me.

  I looked at it doubtfully:

  M I R A G E S

  Gentlemen’s Club

  Jayla tapped the card. “I keep this part of my life separate. If you want to talk about it, call me at this number, okay?” She checked her watch, then stood as she pulled her bag over her shoulder. “Sorry . . . look, I’ve got to go. But listen . . . I’m not saying you’re out of options or nothing. There are always options. I’m just saying you should think it over. Yes or no, you can call me anytime. You gotta know that by now.”

  I nodded and forced a half-smile. “I know.”

  She leaned over and gave me one of her big squeezy Jayla hugs . . . and then she was walking away, with the strong and steady step of a girl who knew exactly where she was going.

  After feeling that new closeness to Jayla, after learning that secret part of her life, I now felt incredibly alone. I looked at the card on the table and sighed. A moment later, I’d finished my coffee, and I was on my way as well.

  Jayla’s business card, however . . . well, that went with me.

  Chapter 2

  I didn’t do anything about it, though. Not right away.

  Okay, to be honest, that night after the conversation with Jayla, I’d actually entertained the wild suggestion for a moment. I’d gone into my room, put on a deep-red dab of lipstick, and tried to do a few steps of Marlene Dietrich’s sexy gorilla-suit striptease from Hot Voodoo. Still, it wasn’t working. I didn’t have Marlene’s style, or her grace, or her fantastic set of curves. I just had flat-and-bashful Alice, a million times more colorless than any of those Goddesses on my black-and-white Watchman.

  And so for a few weeks I’d tried denial — that, and a return to the same-old-same-old. Or, at least, some semblance of it.

  Although I was dropping out of the pre-med program, I told everyone that I was just taking a break. I promised my professors that I’d keep my nose in the books, and I did . . . for a while, as best I could. Still, more and more the coffee refills and scrambled egg platters of my waitressing world did their best to fill up my days. I would wake up, dress, spend a grueling eight or ten hours waiting tables, gather up my tips, and then go home and study my old textbooks until my eyes were too tired to keep open. Lather, rinse, repeat.

  For a short while I was able to keep my head above water . . . at least, that’s what I told myself, holding on to the self-assurance that everything would work out. Pretending is what got me through my days: through the daily hassles of tip-stiffing customers, orders of burnt toast, the shouting of my short-tempered manager . . . that’s what sustained me. That, and those stolen hours of classic film, that would whisk me away to a long-gone world of c
aptivating monochrome.

  But the nights became darker, and my pretending began to break down. There, all alone in the tiny apartment home my mother had worked so hard for . . . that’s when the tears came.

  I realized that I had a choice: I could take the card that Jayla had given me, call her number, and let myself be introduced to a world that, while scary and even dangerous, at least offered a clear way out. A clear way up. Or I could continue to work hard, follow the rules, and hope that other people would see fit to give me enough money to live on. That’s what I’d always done . . . except now, that train had completely slipped off the tracks.

  And so I made my choice: I took the number and dialed. That action — that simple action — filled me with a tiny new bit of real, genuine hope . . . the first I’d felt in a long time.

  Jayla answered the phone — her voice was groggy, but perked up immediately.

  “Alice! What’s up?”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m in.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. When she spoke, Jayla sounded serious.

  “You know . . . I knew you’d call, somehow. I knew it.”

  I tried to force a laugh. “You thought I had no other choice, huh?”

  “No way, girl! I just felt like you were ready to start making a couple of choices on your own.”

  I took a deep breath through my teeth. “When do we begin? How does . . . how does this work?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Jayla. “It’s pretty straightforward. I’ll introduce you to Billy — he handles all the schedules. Like I said, he’s okay. After that, you’ll be doing Amateur School. It’s a theme night — naughty schoolgirl bullshit, pretty easy. You’ll dance one song, then work the crowd. Each new dancer gets 200 bucks and whatever other tips they make for the night. If it goes okay . . . well, I’m pretty sure I can get you in as a regular. Girls come and go a lot.”

  I bit my lip, nodded. “Got it.”

  “Okay, then,” she said. “You free tonight?”

  * * *

  I had no idea what to wear to that kind of interview. I settled on a look I decided to call Desperate Ex-Waitress — black skirt, my least grease-spattered blouse. It didn’t exactly scream gentlemen’s club, but Jayla had said it didn’t matter. She picked me up in her battered-but-reliable Volkswagen, wearing cutoffs and a Mirages T-shirt. I felt immediately overdressed, but Jayla was quick to reassure me.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, giving my arm a friendly Jayla squeeze. “You look fine. Like you’ve never done this before.”

  “I haven’t!”

  “And that,” she said, flashing me a tight smile, “is why the guys love Amateur School.”

  The club’s exterior wasn’t exactly a surprise. It was out in an unincorporated part of the county — neither city nor suburb, but rather a scrubby-looking area that seemed perpetually cloaked in a shady sort of grey. The building was pretty unremarkable during the daytime, just an average-looking rectangle in the middle of a rough gravel parking lot. True, its dark and windowless exterior gave it a feeling of being secret and forbidden, but I supposed that was the point. Men needed a discreet place to watch the dancers, and the dancers needed a discreet place to be watched.

  Billy wasn’t what I’d expected. He was a round, cheerful man of around forty, with a booming voice and a scraggly beard to match. My first thought was that he’d make a good first mate on a pirate ship — or possibly a Fastpass attendant at Pirates Of The Caribbean. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting him to look like, though . . . someone more creepy, I guess? Billy seemed more like a reliable big brother — not what I’d been expecting. That’s not to say that it wasn’t a little shocking to actually find myself inside of Billy’s office. He had quite a few glossies on the walls of former and current dancers, who were posing in ways I would have thought impossible for anyone but yoga instructors. Seeing them made my heart thump a little more quickly.

  “Jayla!” boomed Billy cheerfully. “How’s my very favorite Mirage girl?”

  Jayla smiled. “You know me — I’m good. How’s Nina?”

  Billy chuckled. “Still getting over her birthday party. You’d be surprised how much cake a three-year-old can put away.” He smiled at me. “Kids, what are you gonna do? I’m Billy, by the way.” He reached out a beefy hand.

  “Alice,” I said, taking his hand in my own and shaking it. It was reassuring, seeing the two of them together — like watching any other co-workers greet each other at the office. I felt myself begin to calm down just a little.

  Billy gestured to a pair of chairs, and we sat. “Jayla tells me you’re thinking of doing some dancing for us.”

  I nodded slowly. “That’s about the size of it.”

  Billy smiled. “Well, I also hear you don’t have any experience. But I’ll tell you — that’s no problem, okay? Our customers like to see a girl on her first time out, and you can’t fake that kind of genuine first-time performance. Did she tell you anything about our Amateur School nights?”

  I shrugged. “Mostly just about the costumes. Schoolgirl things? I’m not sure I really have the body to pull off anything too . . . uh, provocative,” I said, feeling my eyes fall to the place on my chest where my boobies definitely weren’t.

  Billy gave a scratchy chuckle. “Don’t worry about that — trust me, we get dancers with a lot of different body types in here, and they all got their own loyal fans,” he said. “As for the dancing, you don’t have to worry about that either. We’ll get you a DVD with a little routine for you to do. You can practice at home.”

  I nodded with just the slightest incline of my head, but I didn’t say anything. Billy noticed the apprehension, and he smiled, gently. “Listen, Mirages is a little different from some of your other clubs, maybe. We try to take care of the newbies, give them some advantage up there. We save the schoolgirl stuff for Amateur School. For first-timers only. Those costumes always go over big — should take some of the pressure off. And then, if you want to keep on dancing here, you can get more imaginative with your costuming.”

  Imaginative. I liked the sound of that, actually — if I was going to do this more than once, the mental image of me flouncing around like Barbara Stanwyck in Lady of Burlesque made me feel just a bit better about going through with it all.

  Yeah — emphasis on the IF.

  I gave a little nervous laugh. “That’s . . . good to hear. It’s just . . . it’s hard to imagine myself as a dancer, I guess,” I said.

  Billy was quick to reassure me. “Don’t get me wrong, okay? This is a big step for every new girl. But we take care of each other around here. Family-owned, family-run. Our security is good. And it’s not so cutthroat like some of your city places. If you need anything, Jayla or one of the other girls will be glad to help you out. You just gotta ask.”

  Jayla nodded and touched my arm. “Anytime.”

  I nodded back, smiled just a bit more easily. Somehow . . . some part of me was starting to warm up to the whole idea.

  “Okay,” said Billy, standing up. “Let’s get you fitted out.”

  * * *

  It had all been surprisingly organized after that. Jayla had dug through a jumbled closet in the changing room and fitted me with one of the club’s official Amateur School outfits — your standard plaid mini and midriff-baring top, with MIRAGES embroidered into the cotton. Billy gave me the DVD of the routine I had to learn, along with the music (I was hoping for Alice Cooper’s School’s Out, but ended up with Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time. I tried not to make a face). Before I knew it I was out the door and back in the passenger seat of Jayla’s Volkswagen.

  Jayla treated me to dinner that night to celebrate — we had caterpillar maki and spicy salmon rolls at her favorite sushi place. I marveled at the simple but beautiful accuracy of the sushi chefs, their movements like dancers themselves. It was incredibly nice to be the one ordering at a restaurant for a change . . . I realized that I couldn’t actually remember the last time I’
d been waited on, rather than the other way around.

  Jayla pointed at me with her chopsticks as she chewed. “Best advice I can give you, win or lose, just make sure to hang around with the customers after you finish your routine. You can’t make money hiding your ass backstage, and they always tip big for new girls.”

  I nodded. “A damsel in distress, right?”

  Jayla laughed. “Yeah! Now you’re getting it. That’s the game, girl. Just remember, you hold all the cards in that place. Someone gets too far out of line, you get them kicked right out of the club. But you let them feel like they’re helping you out.” She paused and looked at me thoughtfully. “That’s part of what they pay the money for — so they can feel that sense of control. Like the money doesn’t matter. Like they’re actually being a help to a girl.”

  “Sounds like philosophy,” I said.

  Jayla just smiled and popped another piece of spicy salmon into her mouth. “Just the way the world works. You’ll see, once you’re shaking it in on stage in that mini.”

  I laughed. “Not much to shake, I’m afraid. Front or back.”

  Jayla’s face grew suddenly cloudy at that. “Girl . . . just don’t talk that way, okay? Please. For me. It doesn’t matter what you’re born with. You just have to go out there and move all the things you wish you had. Those men will eat it up. I mean, shit . . . you told me you’re always watching those classics, right? About those old movie stars and all? The ones who could twist any man around their finger?”

  “Sure.”

  Jayla shrugged. “All I’m saying is that can be you, Alice. It’s all about that confidence. That’s what all those black and white Hollywood bitches had. They’d wake up in the morning and they knew exactly who they were. Only difference between you and them.”

  I just sighed at that. Give me a break, Jayla. It’s not that easy. Not for me.