Last Girl Dancing

by Kate Aeon

“Yes, we can,” she told him.

  “Think about it.”

  And she lay beneath him, feeling desire burning her from the inside out, and she disconnected her mind from her body. She’d had plenty of practice at that.

  Why couldn’t they do this?

  And she knew the answer to that question.

  They couldn’t pursue each other because they were work partners with a critical job to do. Because people’s lives depended on the two of them having their focus on their work, and on both of them doing one thing and doing it well. And on that one thing they were doing well not being each other.

  Hank had said that Jess was going to have to stay sharp. To keep her mind on what she was doing every second, she couldn’t have it drifting off to him. If she lost her focus, someone else could die. If she lost her focus, she could die.

  She looked him in the eye, and took a deep breath. “Can I hate you for being right?”

  “Not as much as I’m going to hate myself; I guarantee it.” He kissed her lips once more, lightly, and pushed off her. “We still need to finish our workout,” he said. “I want to make sure you get the advanced stuff. Better that you have it and don’t need it than need it and don’t have it.”

  Jess nodded and rose. And they got back to work.

  Chapter Eight

  The next morning, Teri called to tell Jess she’d be starting on the day shift tomorrow, starting on days and alternating a week of days with a week of nights.

  “I have you on six days, off one, and then on six nights. I figure since you’re trying to raise a lot of money quickly, you’ll want a lot of hours.”

  “Thanks,” Jess said.

  “If you need a different day off than the one I’ve given you, of course, or if an emergency crops up, you can trade with the other girls.”

  As soon as they were done, Jess’s phone rang again, and she didn’t recognize the name on the caller ID. It showed a real name, though, and not that somebody was blocking the caller ID. So she answered anyway.

  “Is this Gracie Callahan?” a female voice asked.

  Jess almost said no. And then she remembered that people from the club were going to be calling her on that phone. “I’m Grace.”

  “Delaney Mills,” the woman said. “Louella said you wanted to buy some costumes.”

  "Desperately. I’m supposed to start work tomorrow, and I don’t have anything.”

  “I have a lot. You want to come over and take a look?”

  “You mind if I bring a friend with me?” Jess said, not wanting to meet with anyone from the club alone.

  “Not at all,” Delaney said. “My boyfriend will be here with me.”

  Jess got the address, called Hank to find out when he would be free to go with her, and called back to let Delaney know when she would be by.

  Hank drove. Neither of them said much the whole way over, though. It was the sort of awkward, painful silence that Jess would have welcomed when questioning a suspect. Sitting next to a man she almost couldn’t bear to keep her hands off, though, and with the urge to blurt out anything — anything — to make it end, that silence was hell.

  Delaney’s house was small, neatly tended, in a neighborhood euphemistically referred to as “transitional,” which meant that property values were on the way down and the drug dealers hadn’t shown up yet, but were expected at any minute. The owners of some of the houses on the street looked like they were setting up feeding stations for them.

  Delaney answered the door with the boyfriend, who was big and muscular and menacing, glowering behind her. Everyone exchanged names, and then Delaney smiled. “Nice to meet you, Gracie. Come on in.” The boyfriend and Hank went off to watch ESPN, and Jess and Delaney headed into the spare bedroom, where Delaney had a closet devoted to her costumes.

  Jess flipped through the hangers. “These are great. Which ones are you selling?”

  “All of them.”

  Jess turned to study her. “Why?”

  “You’re working at Goldcastle, right?”

  “Going to be.”

  “You’ve heard about the missing girls?”

  “No. I heard there might be some sort of problem, but not what it was.”

  “I haven’t heard anything solid. Just that maybe a couple of girls who worked there were murdered. Maybe. But...” She shrugged. “I’ve had a few close calls stripping, you know? I have a good boyfriend. I have a little money in the bank. And it seems to me like maybe it’s time to move on. Set up a dance studio, maybe, or do some modeling, or... something.”

  Jess bit her lip. “You’re smart, I think.”

  “And you still want to buy my costumes, which makes you... what?” Delaney asked. She smiled when she said it, but Jess caught a tinge of worry in her eyes.

  “Desperate,” Jess said, and trotted out the lie about her imaginary brother, feeling like a shit when she did it.

  Delaney looked sympathetic, and worried, too. “Be careful.”

  “I will,” Jess said, and went back to perusing the clothes on the rack.

  “I made the best money with the cop costume and the nurse one,” she added.

  Inwardly, Jess cringed. She wasn’t going to insult the police uniform, even in an unofficial version. She said, “I was looking for something... happier, I guess.”

  Delaney had accumulated a broad selection of costumes. She had a fairy with iridescent wings, a sexy witch, a cheerleader, a Catholic schoolgirl, a firefighter, a cowgirl with chaps that Jess thought looked cool, a Chicago-style gangster with a tommy gun, a nun with wimple and rosary, a French maid, a sequin-laden princess, and a jungle girl. She also had a collection of gowns.

  “If you’re working at Goldcastle, you’ll have to have gowns for evening wear — you can do all costume sets during the day, but you have to do at least one gown set if you’re on nights. Some of my gowns are one-size-fits-most, so they’ll work for you, but you’re a lot taller than me, so you’ll have to have a seamstress work on the hems if you get them.”

  Jess nodded, looking at the gowns. She pulled out a black one that had a halter top, no back all the way down to what Jess guessed would be butt crack, and in the front, a four-inch opening that started at the cleavage, then took a sharp turn to the left and ran down the left thigh. The only things holding it together were a rhinestone clip below the bust and another at the hip point. Jess, looking at it, thought it would be terrifying to wear something that a good wind could remove.

  Delaney said, “That’s a really good one. It’s easy to come out of, and easy to get back into, and the guys loved it.” And Jess remembered that getting out of the damned things was the whole point.

  She and Delaney settled on the cowgirl outfit, the jungle girl, the princess, and three gowns: the black one, a red one that was basically little patches of red material held together by lots of spaghetti strings, and a white one that actually provided good coverage. It reminded Jess a lot of the gown Audrey Hepburn wore in Roman Holiday, without all the sashes and official ribbons, and it came with long white gloves and a tiara. And best of all, it had about six inches of hemline tucked up underneath. Jess figured those ought to be enough. At least to get started.

  “Remember the closed-toe shoes,” Delaney said as Jess and Hank were leaving. “Goldcastle won’t let you dance in open-toe shoes; something about keeping down injuries. You can’t ever wear a watch, either.”

  “Thanks,” Jess said.

  “And get those grippy things from Wal-Mart to put on the bottoms, or you’ll bust your ass on the main stage. The floor right around the pole is unbelievably slippery.”

  Jess grinned. “Got it.” She paid Delaney in cash.

  Delaney’s voice dropped. “And watch your back,” she said as they all walked out to the parked cars. They stood in Delaney’s front yard at noon on a hot, sultry Atlanta summer day, and Delaney looked both ways before speaking, as if she was afraid something was going to jump out and grab her. “There really is something... nasty... going on t
here. I got wind of it and left — didn’t have to be told twice. I’ve never been one to figure that all the awful stuff in the world couldn’t happen to me.”

  “Thanks,” Jess said, and meant it. There were, after all, decent people left in the world. “If I didn’t have to be there, I wouldn’t. But I’ll be careful.”

  “They were nice people,” Hank said on the way back. “Her boyfriend was scared shitless for her — that somebody was going to come after her. They’re taking a huge financial hit because she quit dancing, but he’s relieved.”

  “I liked her,” Jess said. “She was scared for me.”

  “You should be scared for you, too.”

  “I’m the person who’s going in to fix things.”

  “Right,” Hank growled. “Tell me how that makes you bulletproof.”

  Jess started to tell him that no bullets had been involved — and managed to shut up just in time. She knew what he meant. She didn’t have to correct him. And he was right. Delaney was right too. She did have to be afraid. There was something about Goldcastle that set off all her alarms, something innately horrible and wrong about it. She was tempted to write off the feeling as being her reaction to strip clubs in general, but she couldn’t. The exotic-dance industry seemed cold and hard to her, but at least the other clubs she’d been in didn’t leave her feeling like something was creeping up behind her.

  “I will be careful,” she said.

  Hank didn’t look at her, but he nodded. “I know you will. And I’m going to do what I can to help you be more careful.”

  In the few hours she had left, Jess bought a bunch of thongs, picked out music, worked out dance routines, and did her own costume modifications on the red and the black gowns. Sparkly fringe and a glue gun stood in for sewing skill. It was “any idiot can do this,” but when it came to sewing, Jess was any idiot.

  And then she woke to the alarm clock blaring, and she lay there realizing that in a few hours, she was going to have to take off her clothes in front of a bunch of guys who were spending their lunch hour away from the office wishing for tits and ass, and she wanted to roll over and go back to sleep.

  But she got up, showered, glued the disguised microphone to her navel, shaved everything, washed and dried her hair, brushed her teeth, and tried to think about inconsequential things. She put on jeans and a T-shirt because she didn’t want to look like a dancer when she drove to the club; she stuck the black gown, a couple of thongs and a G-string, a pair of sweatpants for warming up and cooling down backstage, and the cowgirl outfit into her kit bag. She also tossed in a pair of black patent-leather pumps with four-inch heels and grips on the soles. She found that she could get all the rest of the costume gear — the toy six-shooters, the low-slung gun belt, and the lasso — into the bag. But not the hat.

  She sighed, and tugged on the high-heeled, fringed cowboy boots that would be what she danced in when she wore the cowgirl costume. Then she scooped all the makeup she’d bought into the bag, jammed the cowboy hat on her head, and swung out the door. She stopped off at Hardee’s for breakfast, had three ham biscuits, and did not succumb to guilt.

  Then she drove herself to Goldcastle. She was early, but one of the handouts Teri had given her stated that as long as she got in before eleven, she could warm up on the stage. The club was open from eleven A.M. until four A.M., but dancers were permitted in early. Jess called the surveillance van on her cell phone as she drove past it, told the undercover guys she was ready to go live, and they turned on her mike. Hank would finish placing the transmitter boosters when the club opened to customers, and the UC guy said sound checks inside the club had gone well for them so far. So she did the mike test, they said they had her loud and clear, and she headed in.

  There was a different gorilla at the employee door this time — still not one of the undercover guys, but not the one that made her skin crawl, either. “You’re early,” he said.

  She nodded. “First day. I wanted to test out the floor and the pole and the stairs and make sure there wasn’t anyplace where I’d be walking around in the heels and break my neck.”

  “Good plan,” he said. “We had a girl fall off the main stage doing a swing around the pole a couple of months ago, and she broke her leg in three places.”

  “Shit.”

  “Tell me about it.” He opened the door for her. “Hey, good luck on your first day.” He had a nice smile. She hoped to hell he wasn’t the killer, because she thought he seemed like a decent enough guy.

  She had the dressing room to herself, and found an empty locker. She planted one of her bugs, then got out the costume she wanted to practice in. She had to do a dress rehearsal of the whole thing. She’d realized on her way in that if she couldn’t take her clothes off while in front of an empty room, she was going to fall apart in front of a roomful of rowdy, shouting, hooting men.

  Jess stripped down to skin and started putting on the cowgirl costume. She started with a fringed red thong and matching fringed bra that she’d picked up at a local adult shop, then added Delaney’s furry black-and-white cow-spotted chaps, gun belt, and the silver six-shooters that had bright orange caps over the muzzles so no one would mistake the pretend status of the weaponry. She added the furry cow-spotted vest and bright red fringed glovettes. She shoved the hat on, and slipped back into the cowboy boots. And then she locked her stuff away.

  She went out to the stage, wishing she’d thought to bring a tape recorder with her music on it so she could try out her act to the music.

  She knew her dances well enough. She stood behind the stage door, ran her announcement through her head, put the smile on her face, and strode through the door and out onto the stage.

  It was dark. Chairs were up, a few safety lights were on along the baseboards, but the stage itself was a black sheen in a black cavern.

  And she felt like the darkness was watching her.

  She wasn’t alone, she reminded herself. There were undercover guys in a van outside. But if the killer was in the place, she was vulnerable in ways she couldn’t even bear to think about.

  She had to find a light switch... but maybe she should not worry about rehearsing on the actual stage.

  And then the lights came on, and Jess’s heart came to a full stop. Blinded, she stood there hoping Lenny’s hand wasn’t the one on the switch.

  A woman’s voice said, “You’d kill yourself trying to practice up there with the lights off.”

  Teri.

  Jess breathed a sigh of relief. “God. I didn’t realize when I came through the door that the lights would be off in here. It scared the piss out of me.”

  Teri laughed. “I’ll bet.”

  “You always come in this early?”

  “Not a chance. I still keep dancer’s hours by preference. I’m a natural night owl. But you said you were going to be here to try out the stage before we opened, so I figured I’d better be here too. Some of the boys get in early, surprisingly. Lenny’s one of them.”

  “Thanks, then.”

  “You have your music and everything?”

  Jess said, “Sure.”

  “If you want to run through one of your sets. I’ll be dee-jay for you, so you can get a feel for everything.”

  “I have time for a full four-song set?”

  “For now, do one fast and one slow.” Teri was in jeans and a tank top, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Like Jess, she wore no makeup. And Jess thought she looked even better that way. More relaxed. Happier.

  “I’ll get my music.”

  When she came back, Teri said, “Doing a full dress rehearsal, huh?”

  “I wanted to get the bugs out of the routine. No surprises, you know?” Jess laughed. “But to be honest with you, I was mostly concerned with the shoes.”

  “With reason.” Teri studied Jess’s music. “Tim McGraw’s ‘Real Good Man.’ ‘Hard on the Ticker,’ also Tim McGraw. Alison Krauss and Union Station’s ‘Let Me Touch You for a While’ — hmmm, haven’t heard that
one. And Faith Hill’s ‘Breathe.’ Heard that one plenty of times. Which two do you want?”

  “Give me ‘Real Good Man,’ and ‘Let Me Touch You for a While.’ ”

  “You got it. The cowgirl getup should work for you.” Teri grinned. “The boys here like cowgirls. Go on back, and I’ll call you out.”

  In a four-song set, the first song would be the stripping-to-the-bra-and-thong song; the second would be her fast pole dance — she’d toss the bra at the end of that. The third would be her slow pole dance, and the last one would be the floor song, where she would do the slowest, most erotic moves while lying or crawling on the stage. She was going to have to condense all of that.

  Jess stepped backstage and waited beside the door, trying to figure out where to modify for a two-song set. While she stood back there, the sense of being watched didn’t leave her, but she felt better knowing she wasn’t alone in the place. Or, more precisely, that she wasn’t alone with Lenny. Or the as-yet-faceless man — or men — who’d murdered at least three Goldcastle dancers.

  Teri gave her an intro, and this time when Jess burst onto the stage, cowboy-sauntering and with thumbs hooked into an imaginary gun belt, striding in her boots like she owned the Wild West, she had music going and lights on, and the grand ballroom didn’t feel creepy anymore. But it felt twice as cavernous.

  She faltered.

  No one watched her but Teri — but even so, it was the idea of the thing.

  Jess looked into Teri’s steady gaze, and her stomach knotted and her mouth went dry. She had mentally prepared herself for the performance aspect of this. Had worked out and practiced the moves, figured out how and when she would come out of the costume. She knew that she would be able to give a knockout technical performance that showcased her dancing and her body.

  But she had to get naked in front of a stranger — right now — and connect somehow, because getting naked and making the connection were the tools that she believed would bring the killers to her. And she was there to overhear conversations, and she was there to find connections between the victims and the killers. But most of all, in her own mind if nowhere else, she was there to draw the killers away from innocents and to her, to get her shot at them. To take them out.