We turned the radio up, sang as loud as we could to the songs we knew, and faked it to the songs we didn’t, choosing our course at random, careening through the streets until we were outside of the city, on the country roads that we knew some of our classmates liked to race each other down. It was thrilling to witness the rows of crops whip by in dizzying patterns, to be the only set of headlights on the roadway, for the curves in the road to move the contents of my stomach, to stick my hand out the window and cup the air as it whooshed by.
Caro muttered something out of rhythm of the song we were listening to, and I glanced over at her. She was a better singer than I was, so I was always eager to point out if she missed lyrics or her voice broke.
She didn’t glance back. Her eyes were fixed on the road, her mouth set in a grim line.
I felt, more than heard, the tires slip into a skid, my gaze still fixated on Caro’s face, watching her eyes get wider and wider and then nothing.
Chapter 2
Beer didn’t taste so good to me anymore. I couldn’t so much as look at a bottle of the stuff without feeling that heavy clash against my teeth, knowing what came next, knowing what I’d caused.
No, to dull my brain these days, I could only stomach the bite of liquor. I preferred it to hurt a little, going down. It was a tradeoff, a tiny form of penance for the numbed bliss I found in being drunk.
If I drank enough of it, I didn’t feel anything.
“You’re up, Beauty,” the bartender said, jerking his thumb toward the dinky little stage across the floor. “Hope you’re sober enough to make a little money.”
“I’m fine.” I downed the rest of my cocktail and wove my way toward the stage. There weren’t many customers tonight. Hell, there were usually not many customers ever—but it paid the bills.
My music started before I could hop onto the stage, but I didn’t much care. As long as I kept the customers drunker than I was, my tits and ass would be the only things that mattered to them. I figured I could probably even make money by just standing up here and not dancing at all, but I’d never been brave enough to try it.
It wasn’t fun going to bed hungry, and I needed the money to feed myself and to keep gas in my car.
I used the pole to haul myself to my feet and started doing a slow spin around it before exploding into a swing, responding to an upbeat burst of notes in the song that was playing. Swinging around and around with all the alcohol I’d had to drink was practically a form of meditation. All the colors and faces around me blurred, and I could pretend I wasn’t here, pretend that nothing had happened, that I still lived in Texas, that my parents…
I dropped out of the spin abruptly, ignoring my dizzy head, going on all fours to approach a grizzled man seated at one of the tables closest to the stage.
“Is your name really Beauty?” he shouted over the music, as I arched my back and then popped my ass out abruptly, emphasizing the curves my body had softened into, making the little tin coins on the wrap I was wearing tinkle.
“Sure is,” I said, putting a leg on either side of him and gripping him so hard he nearly spilled his drink. “Buy a dance from me and I’ll let you see my driver’s license to prove it.”
That was the one thing I could do for my parents, after everything. I could embrace the name they’d seen fit to give me. I could stop disrespecting that little bit of legacy left behind, own it, and let it be the one thing that still tied me to them.
I noticed another man approach the stage in the periphery, so I held my thong strap out and let the first man slip a few bills beneath it, snapping it securely against my skin.
That was the way this game was played. I danced and they came, mesmerized by the sway of my hips or the way I spun and shimmied, ready to bestow dollars upon me. Later, they could buy me drinks at a jacked up price and I’d get a cut of the profits. If they really liked me, I’d perform a special dance for them right at their table so other customers could get jealous at how attentive I could be and want to buy more dances. Those little intimacies were much more expensive than the tips I got up on the stage, but I had to dangle the bait in front of their faces to get them to bite.
One song ended and I rolled right into a dance for the next song, adjusting my moves to go with the beat. It was Caro who’d taught me to dance, adapting the moves she’d learned from her older cousin into routines we could master to impress the naïve boys at our school into thinking we were much more worldly than we really were.
I didn’t want to think about school, or Caro, or any of that. I couldn’t.
I climbed to the top of the pole and abruptly hung upside down, spinning slowly so everyone could see, not caring that one of my breasts had popped out of my cheap bikini top before I’d planned for it to do so, wondering just how much it would hurt to let go and slam headfirst into the stage fifteen feet below me. Would it kill me or just maim me? Would anyone even notice me fall?
As I gripped the pole with my hands, I righted myself, sliding downward, remembering how badly I’d hurt my legs the first time I’d tried this move. Now, the friction was only an afterthought.
The trick had earned me a few piles of singles along the stage, and I kicked them toward the center of the platform so the customers couldn’t go changing their minds and taking back what was rightfully mine.
A third song and my bikini top was tossed aside, earning a few whoops from the back of the room. I shed my thin wrap, coins ringing like bells, and it was just me, a pair of battered heels, and my black thong, spinning around the pole, wondering if the money I earned tonight would fill up my gas tank so I could get the hell out of here, wondering where I would even go if I could.
There wasn’t anything here for me anymore. Not after that night.
The song ended, and I gathered my clothes and money, waiting for the first customer to request a special dance from me—now that they’d seen everything I had to offer.
I bellied up to the bar again in the meantime, laying out the handful of bills I’d earned, doing my best to straighten the wrinkles out of them. When I’d first started out in this business, shame had driven me to exchange the bills for higher denominations—and much crisper paper. But now, I didn’t care to buy my groceries with the singles I’d danced for. It was a way of life, and the knowing glances from cashiers didn’t sting me like they used to.
Alcohol could dull everything.
I counted out enough money for another cocktail and signaled the bartender.
“Vodka Red Bull,” I said. I didn’t like the bubble in the drink, as it reminded me too much of the carbonation in beer, but I needed a little boost to my game or I wasn’t going to make it through the shift.
“Can I buy that for you?”
A customer settled into the chair beside me, and I couldn’t help but stare. He was gorgeous; he clearly took much better care of himself than most people who frequented this establishment. His blue eyes sparkled with mischief, and his neatly trimmed beard did a poor job of hiding his smirk. I couldn’t guess fashion labels just by looking at an outfit, but I could tell that they were high end because of the way they fit this man’s body—his suit jacket hugging his strong shoulders, the trousers highlighting his trim waist, and his shoes polished to an opulent shine.
“That sounds nice,” I said, propping my chin up on my fist, continuing my casual perusal of his physical attributes. He had nicely manicured nails, I saw, as he smoothly withdrew a few bills from a money clip, alerting me to the fact that this was a man who earned his money with his mind instead of his hands. I unwittingly wondered what those hands would feel like on either side of my hips, guiding me as I gave a dance just for him, right here at the bar.