Chapter 34
When the provost sends me an email about meeting in the next hour, I try not to curse him at the last-minute nature of the request on a day I’m sporting a hangover. I would be in a lot worse shape if Sammy hadn’t fed and hydrated me, but there’s still a fuzzy ache in my brain that I really want to use my healing magic to dispel.
A migraine would be worse, I remind myself.
That is, if I have one. And I’m not sure that I would with how full my internal cauldron is. Turns out Sammy thinks I’m sexy even when I’m a drunken mess. Or maybe it was that shower encounter that filled me up. He definitely wasn’t turned on in the garage when I was too confused and muddled to even think of accepting his gift. A car? Gods, the guy needs to put some boundaries on his spending.
Still, I’m flush with magic, and I rarely find myself without a supply of power nowadays.
Maybe I should get in the habit of using it more often. For myself and for others.
I decide to brew myself some hangover curing tea at lunch, and I’ll forgive the provost if this is to discuss the logistics of having library director candidates visit campus. I would be happy to offer a thorough tour of the facilities and host introduction sessions with the staff. Whatever is needed as long as we finally get the position filled with a qualified candidate.
I respond back that I’ll see him in an hour, then try to get as much done as I can before needing to jog across campus to reach the provost’s office.
I knock on the closed door and hear a muffled, “Come in.”
When I step into the impressive-sized office, I’m surprised to see that in addition to Dr. Hampton, the provost, there’s another person in the room.
Abraham Fellows sits in a wing-back chair in front of Hampton’s desk. The history professor eyes me with a narrow stare and a sense of smugness.
Is he on the library director hiring committee?
I feel like I’m missing something, and there’s also a sourness in my gut warning me I’m not going to like where this meeting is headed.
“Ms. Bellarose. Sit down.” Dr. Hampton waves me toward a rigid wooden chair, a much less comfortable choice to the seat Fellows claimed. “We have a concerning topic to discuss.”
Curse of the Dark One. Are there no candidates? Are we looking at another semester without anyone taking the lead in the library?
I keep these panicked questions to myself and settle on the hard chair, wishing I’d arrived before Fellows so I could get the cushy seat.
Hampton leans back in his plush leather chair and focuses entirely on me. “It’s been brought to my attention that you have a second job,” he says.
The topic, so different than the one I thought we were here to discuss, takes a moment to settle in my brain. But when I grasp it, my first thought is How did he find out about the university position?
As I try to figure out how to explain that all I have is a tentative job offer that I wasn’t truly considering because it’s a temporary position, the provost must interpret my silence as confusion. Or evasion.
“Your other job…at the prostitution club,” he explains with a terse sigh, conveying his utter disappointment in my apparent sexual proclivities and stained moral character.
Did he just…call The Jewelry Box a prostitution club? Yasmin will love that.
Understanding settles over me, and I firm my jaw to hold back an aggravated sigh.
And so the time has come.
A part of me always expected this to happen. Only, I thought I would be confronted while in my Pearl getup. That the condemnation would happen while I was surrounded by other dancers and Yasmin’s security guards.
Not on a Thursday morning alone in an office with a man—two men—who have misinterpreted the type of sex work I perform. And why is Fellows even here?
No matter.
One thing I’ve perfected after working at the club is how to keep an impassive expression on my face no matter what. Unless one of these men pulls a kitten out of his jacket, they’re fucked if they think I’ll break.
“Did you just call me a prostitute?” I ask, voice cold as ice.
Hampton straightens in his chair and clears his throat. “I’m telling you the facts as I know them.”
“What facts?” I offer an exaggerated glance around the room, as if expecting to find the evidence he’s basing his conclusions on. “All I’ve heard is that you think I have a second job as a prostitute. Which I don’t.”
And that’s not even a lie. Even if the provost considered stripping to be prostitution, I have never taken any money from my position at The Jewelry Box. Check Yasmin’s books, and my name will never appear there. Check my tax records and the only income I have listed is from College of Freedom and Faith.
For this exact reason.
“Really?” Fellows smug voice chimes in, and I turn to face his triumphant smirk. “Then how do you explain this?” He thrusts his phone forward, a video playing on the screen.
From the tiny speakers plays the chorus of one of my favorite songs to dance to. “Black Magic Woman.” Of course, this would be the song. On the screen I watch a masked Pearl perform a perfect Bird of Paradise. I’m inverted on the pole, legs in an angled split that sends one behind my back and through my looped arms, all while I spin.
Nice. Took me three months to get that right.
The video ends, and I flick my gaze up to meet Fellows’ intense stare, and I fight the urge to vomit.
Not because I’m scared or anxious.
But because I taste cheap chocolate on my tongue that lets me know he’s turned on.
Fellows is getting off on the fact that he’s seen me close to naked, and now he gets to use that to punish me. No doubt he expects me to burst into tears and beg for forgiveness. To plead for them to keep quiet about my extracurriculars and promise to be a good girl. And these two men will go home high on their sense of self-importance and moral superiority.
But they didn’t take one thing into account.
They don’t have power over me.
At least not as much as they believe, and I’m not about to give them any more. Not when I have fury fueling me and the best poker face in the city of Phoenix.
“To be clear,” I say, my voice sharper than they’ve ever heard from the kind, helpful librarian, “you went to a strip club, saw a blonde woman on stage, videotaped her without her consent, and then thought it was appropriate to show this video to me? Your coworker?” I tick the offenses off on my fingers, then face the provost in time to see the color draining from his cheeks. “Don’t we have a morality clause in our contract that is supposed to protect me from this?”
Fellows splutters at my side, his bobbing mouth searching for words. “B—but it’s you!”
“That woman and I are two different people.” Pearl gives nothing to anyone. Meanwhile, Ava Bellarose has been bending over backwards to support this administration for far too long. “I came to this meeting expecting to discuss the ongoing issue of the empty library director position. Not to be shown pornographic images professors illegally obtained.” I scoop my bag off the floor and straighten my more-than-knee-length skirt. “In the future, I will not attend a meeting with Professor Fellows unless an HR representative is present. Preferably my lawyer as well. And I suggest you prioritize properly staffing the college’s library rather than alienating the few employees you do have.”
“This—she—you can’t—” Fellow’s brain seems to be malfunctioning in the face of a confident, rather than cowed, woman. “Richard! You can’t let her just—just say that!”
Richard. Hah. Of course. They’re probably golf buddies. I wonder if they talked about this meeting before it even happened. Maybe had a circle jerk at the idea of setting me in my place.
They didn’t expect me to come from a place of power. To be willing to piss them off. Maybe lose my job.
But that’s exactly what I am willing to do. Even more so because I know others can’t.
If I get fired, then I’ll take Veronica’s offer. Or maybe I’ll start collecting the cash that gets tossed at my feet every Tuesday. I have options, and they’re a set of six-inch heels allowing me to tower over these men.
Not every person who comes into this office has the same man-killer shoes as me.
But hopefully, after today, these men will think twice about underestimating and bullying a normally friendly woman.
“Abraham, be quiet.” The provost hushes Fellows with a furious glare then turns a weakly apologetic smile my way. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, Ms. Bellarose. This has all been a misunderstanding.”
I give him the same face I offered to Sammy when he held up hundreds of dollars to attract my attention.
You are nothing to me, my expression says, and I see the withering of his last speck of confidence as it hits him.
“I have work to do.” I stride purposefully toward the door. At the last moment, I throw a parting comment over my shoulder. “And an email to HR to write.”