Vegas, Lies, and Murder

by Sibel Hodge

  Mum yanked off her T-shirt and did a circular motion with her torso. Yep, sure enough, her boobs were swinging round and round in her bra.

  I put a hand over my eyes. ‘I’ll thoroughly look forward to that.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Tia tapped her finger to her lips, thinking. ‘Oh, what about this song?’ She showed the phone to Mum.

  ‘Perfect.’

  I stood up next to the pole, dressed in my bra and knickers, as Tia’s phone blasted out ‘Don’t Cha’, by the Pussycat Dolls.

  ‘OK, hold onto it with one hand, and walk around it to get some momentum going that will swing you when you get on,’ Mum said.

  With one hand on the pole, I pointed my tippy toes as I walked, trying to look like a graceful dancer instead of the clumsy tomboy I am. Gradually I walked faster, letting the strength of my arm spin me.

  ‘Now, let the pole take the weight on your arm and lift your legs off the floor while you’re still spinning,’ Mum said.

  So I did. Well, I attempted to. It was a lot harder than it looked. Wow, those girls must be strong. I slid my arm higher up the pole and lifted my feet off the floor, trying to make them spin gracefully behind, but they had other ideas. Somehow, one foot got stuck around the pole, and before I could adjust my arm position to accommodate it, I’d twisted myself into a human pretzel, somehow ending up almost upside down before falling onto the base.

  ‘You don’t want to get all twisted up on it,’ Mum said, pointing out the obvious. ‘If that happens again, just let go.’

  ‘What if I’m up the top? I’ll fall off if I just let go.’

  ‘In that case, don’t let go.’

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  ‘Why don’t we spin you round for a bit so you can get a feel of it?’ Tia suggested.

  ‘OK.’ I hoisted myself up the pole as if climbing a rope, wrapping my legs around it, holding on with my arms above me. That bit was easy. As a kid, I was always climbing trees. Dad had hung a rope on one of the ones in the garden, and I was up it any chance I got.

  ‘Now, clutch the pole really tight between your thighs and your feet,’ Mum said.

  Then Tia and Mum spun me around and around as I held on tightly, which was great for a while until they let go and I fell to the floor, banging my backside with a loud thud.

  ‘Uf!’ I pulled a face, rubbing my coccyx as I stood up.

  ‘Try it again,’ Mum said.

  I climbed back up and held on for dear life as they twirled me once more.

  Then I felt dizzy and disoriented and sick, so I released my legs, hoping to get off. The only problem was I forgot to release my arms and ended up in a tangled heap wrapped around the pole again, banging my stomach against it in the process. Great. I was going to be one big bruise by the time I got to the club.

  ‘OK, maybe it would be easier if you spin yourself round.’ Tia did a demo for me.

  ‘Yeah, I can do that,’ I said with more confidence than I felt.

  I took hold of the pole with one hand and walked around it, getting faster and faster until it felt like I had enough momentum to pick my legs off the floor and do a good spin—which worked! ‘Woo-hoo!’ I said, getting into it, my legs trailing out behind me. I started going really fast. Maybe too fast. Were you supposed to look like a vibrating Superwoman about to take off, or was I doing it wrong? Ouch. Slight twinge going on there in my back, but what the hell. It felt as if I was going fifty miles an hour, and I became disoriented. Then my hand slipped, and I shot off the pole, did a very undignified nosedive through the air, and somehow landed with my head trapped in the middle of the vertical window blinds hanging over the patio doors.

  ‘Ouch!’ I rubbed my shoulder. As I tried to sit up and scramble out of them, the whole thing fell down off its fixings and crashed to the floor on top of me. ‘Oh, crap.’

  Tia stared at the tangle of material strips on the floor. ‘Wowzer. You’re really bad at this, aren’t you?’

  I eyed the blinds as if it was their fault. ‘We don’t have time to clear it up now. Let’s try something else.’ I stood up and dusted myself off, ignoring the new aches and pains. ‘What about that handstand thingy you did?’ I said to Mum.

  She bit her lip. ‘I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.’

  I shrugged. I’d done millions of handstands as a kid. How hard could it be to do one as a thirty-five-year-old, few-stone-heavier adult? If Mum could do it, I could damn well do it, too! Oh, yes indeedy.

  I positioned myself a little way in front of the pole, placed my hands on the floor, and flipped my legs over, expecting to end up how she had—upright with the pole gripped between my thighs. No chance. I managed to get my feet off the floor then do a weird kind of somersault thing at high velocity so my legs went in a fast and furious one-hundred-and-eighty-degree flip, but I totally missed the pole and fell over on my back, my foot crashing into the wall. Not to mention I think I’d just cricked my neck again.

  ‘Oh.’ Tia’s hands flew to her mouth. ‘You’ve put a hole in it!’ She pointed to the wall, which now had a heel-shaped chunk missing from the plasterboard about half a metre up from the carpet.

  ‘Bugger.’ I quickly glanced around the room, trying to find something to cover it up with. The minibar fridge was fixed to the floor, so there was no chance of moving that. I eyed the red-velvet sofa. I could move that from the centre of the room over to that wall.

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ Mum was also eyeing the sofa.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ I started pushing it towards the dent, and Mum and Tia helped me reposition it so the hole was covered up.

  ‘There,’ Mum said. ‘No one will be able to see it now.’

  I plonked myself down on the sofa. ‘I’m really bad at this. There’s no way I’m going to be able to perfect any of these moves in a couple of hours. I’d need years. And at this rate, I’m going to break my nose or severely wreck the room.’

  ‘You’ve already wrecked it,’ Tia said.

  ‘Yes, thanks for reminding me.’

  ‘Well, why don’t we just stick to some simple moves without actually swinging from the pole?’ Mum suggested. ‘You could just use it for support. Dance against it, not actually on it. That can still be sexy.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, totally.’ Tia nodded her agreement. ‘Maybe something like this.’ She kneeled on the floor next to the pole, took hold of it with one arm, and lifted her knees up off the floor, arching her back so her hair trailed beneath her. Then she contracted her stomach muscles and leaned her torso forward so she ended up with her knees bent again, sitting back against the pole with one arm still holding on.

  It was an easy move that looked good, and I wouldn’t even have to take off to do it.

  ‘Yep, I like that one,’ I said, practising it a few times.

  Mum showed me another move where she stood facing the pole, holding on with both hands as she folded her torso forward and dipped her spine back while bending her knees, which made her knees crack. It looked good even if it didn’t sound good.

  ‘Ouch,’ Mum said. ‘I need to warm up more. ’

  Hours later, my muscles were aching, and I had what looked like a Chinese burn on my wrists. I hadn’t had this much exercise since I was forced to do games at school. My butch PE teacher was a sadist, and I had a list of excuses to try to get out of classes: I’ve got my period—always a good one, unless you used it every week. I sprained my arm, ankle, wrist, big toe, ear, knuckle—any body part was quite good for this. I forgot my gym kit—only worked once as they made me wear secondhand mouldy ones that had been festering for a hundred years in the spare kit box. I’ve got a migraine—off to the nurses’ station for some TLC. I feel sick—ditto. I’ve got a cold—no wonder I had so many at school.

  Usually, the only exercise I engaged in was sex. Oh, and fighting off people who were hell-bent on killing me. I likened a workout to hard labour at a Siberian prison camp. I mean, what was the point of running when you could walk around a shopping centre for hours o
n end? You’d burn exactly the same amount of calories and have something nice to show for it.

  I huffed and puffed, out of breath, sweat in between my boobs, as I practised more simple routines that kept my feet firmly on the ground.

  ‘That’s it—you’ve got it,’ Mum said. ‘And now that you know the basics, varying your routine will be easy. You can just go with the flow to the music. Make it up as you go along.’

  Someone knocked on the door, and Tia opened it. Suzy walked in, laden with bags.

  ‘Oooh, what did you get?’ Tia shrieked.

  Suzy dumped the bags on the bed then noticed the heap of blinds. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Slight accident,’ I said.

  She arched an eyebrow and gave me a supercilious smile. ‘It’s harder than it looks, isn’t it?’

  I ignored her and opened one of the bags, pulling out some glittery red stilettos about five inches high that would give you bunions and blisters galore.

  ‘They’re for you,’ Suzy said to me.

  ‘I can’t walk in those, let alone dance in them. Have you got any flip-flops?’

  ‘Flip-flops?’ she scoffed.

  ‘You can dance barefoot,’ Mum said. ‘I think I will. Although these look nice.’ Mum took out some shiny, nude-coloured ones that only had three-inch heels.

  Tia opened another bag and pulled out some black stilettos that looked even higher. ‘These are super sexy. Can I have them?’

  Suzy grabbed them from Tia’s overawed grip. ‘No, they’re for me.’ She handed Tia another bag. ‘I got these for you.’ She handed Tia some silver sparkly ones.

  The only pair left were in patent black, which had thicker, more modest four-inch heels and would hopefully be easier to walk in. I tried them on and practised a wobbly strut across the room. Had I really just agreed to dance in front of a bunch of leering, drunk guys and Fifty Shades of Perverts? Oh, what joy. I put my hand into the shape of a gun and pretended to shoot myself.

  Chapter 11

  We walked from the bright sunshine outside into the wide, dimly lit entrance of Polesque. The club had gold wallpaper and tiny studded lights in the ceiling. To the left was a gold booth in the wall with a gorgeous woman, who wore more makeup than clothing, taking entrance money. We explained we were there to audition, and she waived the fee. As we headed into the main club floor, the space opened up into a huge room. The T-shaped stage was to our right with tables and deep-purple vinyl chairs arranged around it. On the left-hand side of the stage was the corridor we’d seen Dana walk up in the video. On the opposite side of the stage was another corridor. At the end of it, I could see an entrance into the group VIP room. The corridor had six closed doors that probably led to the private VIP rooms. The crowd was pretty scant at this time in the afternoon.

  We headed to the bar and asked to audition, and the barman introduced us to a woman called Apple. She was a gorgeous redhead with green eyes, a smattering of freckles over her face, and a pair of bazookas that almost hit us in the face. I couldn’t even contemplate what size they were. Maybe JJJs?? She was dressed in a pink, glittery bikini top that only just held everything in and matching bottoms with ties on either side. She had a dangly belly-button piercing that sparkled in the disco lights, and silver stilettos that made my feet hurt just looking at them.

  ‘OK, ladies—follow me.’ She flashed a smile and led us backstage. ‘Have you got some gear to wear?’ She eyed our regular clothes.

  We all nodded.

  ‘OK, why don’t you get changed? You can leave your stuff here while you’re on.’ She pointed to a couple of sofas. ‘There’s another girl coming in soon to audition, so I’ll wait until she’s here, and then Ivan can get a look at y’all.’

  I peeled off my short denim skirt and vest top to reveal a bronze bikini with tassels in the boobage area. It was the closest I was getting to nipple tassels and was actually quite cute and sexy—perfect for the pool—but it felt sleazy and wrong in here. Good job I’d had a bikini wax before I came to Vegas. Mum was wearing a sparkly gold bra-and-knickers set, Tia wore a lime-green halter-neck bikini top and bright pink bottoms, and Suzy was dressed in deep-purple hot pants and bustier. Every now and then, I’d do a mini shimmy or shake, trying to reinforce the moves I’d just been taught. I probably looked as if I had Tourette’s or something.

  A girl called Trixie arrived and got changed, and as we waited backstage behind the curtain, I peeked through the black-velvet material out onto the club floor. There were a couple of guys in their sixties at a table right in front of the stage, who were busy scoffing plates piled high with food from the all-you-can-eat buffet, waiting for the show to start. Another table held a group of businessmen in suits, toasting each other every couple of minutes. Maybe they’d just landed an amazing contract and were celebrating with thongs and lap dances. In front of the stage sat a short guy holding a big fat cigar that was almost taller than him. He had curly, thick black hair and a unibrow, broken red veins covering his nose and cheeks, and chunky rings on each pinky. His red silk shirt had the first three buttons undone with tufts of chest hair poking out unattractively. I bet he had a gold medallion lurking underneath there, too.

  Apple poked her head through the curtain next to me. ‘The guy with the cigar is Ivan, the boss.’ Then she turned back to the others. ‘OK, you’re up first.’ She pointed to Trixie, who wore what looked like a frumpy white sports bra and big, hip-hugging knickers. ‘I’ll just go on and introduce you.’ Apple walked through the curtain as if she owned the stage. ‘And now, we have a few auditions going on, so be kind to them, guys! Don’t forget to give the girls a big round of applause. If you like ’em, we’ll hire ’em!’

  The two elderly food scoffers shouted out Apple’s last line with her. It must’ve been a regular catch phrase.

  Trixie teetered awkwardly onto the stage in her high heels and towards the pole at one end of the T. The song ‘Addicted to You’, by Shakira, blasted out from the DJ booth. The old boys cheered. The businessmen were engrossed in a conversation. Trixie grabbed hold of the pole with one hand, cocked her hip, circled her neck round, and flicked her long, blonde hair. She kicked her right leg up high in the air and arched her back in what was supposed to be a sexy move. It wasn’t, though, because a black platform shoe shot off the end of her foot, flew through the air, and hit one of the geriatrics, who was looking down at his plate. It landed slap-bang on his head.

  The man put a hand to his head, rubbing it and looking around, stunned. ‘What the hell was that?’

  ‘Sorry! Sorry!’ Trixie put a hand to her mouth. ‘Are you OK?’

  The businessmen looked up for the first time and started pointing at Trixie and laughing. ‘Come on. Stop jabbering and start dancing. What do you think we’re paying for?’ one of them yelled.

  Ivan puffed on his cigar, frowning at her. ‘You got one more shot, honey. Let’s go.’

  Trixie tried to kick off her other stiletto at the side of the stage before she did any more damage, but she obviously didn’t know her own muscle strength because that shot through the air, too, landing in the lap of old guy number two, whose eyelids pinged open as he grabbed his crotch, leaning forward in agony.

  Ouch!

  ‘Oh, no! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to do that!’ Trixie cried out. ‘It didn’t happen when I was practicing—I swear!’

  ‘Get her off! Get her off!’ The businessmen started shouting and clapping in time with their taunts.

  Both old guys were rubbing their injuries now.

  ‘Yes, get off before I get sued!’ Ivan pointed to the back of the stage.

  I cringed with embarrassment for Trixie as she flushed profusely, rushing off stage.

  Mum pranced onto the stage next and waited for the DJ to start playing. He did a slower number for her, and she found her rhythm instantly, getting into a routine of spinning round with one hand higher on the pole than the other, her knees bent behind her and legs crossed at the ankles in a move she’d told me earlie
r was called the frog. Then she hiked one leg around the pole at the knee, leaning back to increase her spin before elegantly sliding all the way down to the floor. She arched her back, which the old guys loved. They catcalled. She blew a kiss to them over her shoulder and went into another move, this time hooking one leg around the pole and spinning her body horizontally. She ended up on her side on the floor and kicked one leg up gracefully before getting to her feet again and spinning back on the pole, feet crossed on it, leaning back with one arm trailing behind her. After some more moves, she finished her routine and did a shimmying little bow to the crowd.

  ‘Woo-hoo!’ The old guys shouted loudly, standing up and clapping. Even the businessmen seemed to enjoy it and added their applause.

  ‘Come and see me after the auditions. You’re hired,’ Ivan said, taking a big puff on his cigar.

  Mum winked at us as she walked behind the curtain.

  Suzy was up next. She strutted onstage, tossing her long hair around. Yes, she was actually strutting. Two guys walking in past the stage whistled at her. She flashed them a saucy smile and blew them a kiss. I’d never seen such a complete transformation of someone in all my life. Stiff, boring, moody Suzy was now Strutting Sexy Suzy.

  One minute she was standing next to the pole, and the next she’d launched herself into a spin and was upside down, her legs scissoring out into a horizontal split as she hung on effortlessly with her arms. Like lightning, she was into the next move, holding onto the pole with one arm while the other was on the floor in a one-armed handstand, her body at a perfectly vertical angle above her next to the pole. Then she hooked one leg around it at the knee and did a quick spin-flip that turned her upright again, and her feet were on the floor. She strutted around the pole with her back against it, watching the crowd with a sassy smile on her face. A young guy beckoned her forward and tucked some dollar bills in the waistband of her tiny hot pants. She blew him a kiss and then was back on the pole, swinging with one arm as her legs trailed behind her before ending up doing vertical splits in the air. I had to hand it to her—she was really good. The crowd hollered, and another guy beckoned her towards him. She dipped down low in front of him and shimmied her boobs, and he shoved a handful of bills in her waistband. After more vertical splits, upside down spins, and scissoring legs, she did a somersault on the pole before landing on her feet and lifting her hands high in the air in a satisfied ‘Ta-da!’