Chapter 1 #2
I write it before I can object, then follow Cherry into the dressing area. Bright bulbs frame mirrors that repeat the room in narrow sections, every seam returning another shoulder or painted mouth; citrus cleaner cuts through the perfume.
Women sit at the counters in robes or underwear, with cash tucked under open palettes, and their conversations continue when Cherry brings me in.
Cherry reaches behind a coat in her locker, then removes a black bundle.
“My spare costume,” she says.
The top fits in one hand. “That’s an eyepatch.”
“Try it on before you insult it,” Cherry says.
Inside a changing stall, the black rhinestone top reveals two small triangle cups joined by thin cords. My breasts push past both sides, leaving underboob bare as the center cord draws tight. When I lift my arms, the triangles shift toward disaster.
The matching shorts sit high over my hips; the front covers exactly what I require, but the back narrows to a band that leaves most of my ass exposed. Cold rhinestones press into skin never dressed for strangers.
I step out, and Cherry stops with her lipstick open near her mouth.
“You said this was your spare,” I remind her.
“It is, but you’re only three inches taller than me.”
“Your boobs are half the size.”
She considers that. “Rude, though accurate.”
Cherry circles me, then tugs the back into place to expose another inch of my ass.
“Don’t touch the costume once you’re outside,” she says. “If you keep pulling at it, everyone will know you’re scared.”
The clear platform heels are half a size too small, leaving my toes at the front edge with straps pressing into my ankles; training returns as my knees soften.
I test a slow turn, but the rigid soles stop my first pivot. On the second attempt, I release my hips, fixing my gaze on the same bulb until the room steadies.
Two dancers stop talking, one watching my feet until I look at her.
I bend until my palms touch the floor between the clear platforms. The shorts climb higher as I rise without adjusting the fabric.
“Better,” Cherry says behind me.
My pulse beats fast in my wrists, though the second turn feels secure.
In the mirror, brown curls spill below my shoulders while smoke-gray shadow deepens my eyes and red sharpens my mouth into something bolder than I feel.
Black triangles lift my breasts without containing them; club light catches the bare swells at their sides, travels over my stomach, and glitters along the clear straps crossing my thighs.
Below my naked ass, the shorts offer so little fabric that every shift of my hips feels like a decision.
For the first time, my reflection looks capable of causing trouble rather than merely surviving it.
At the café, my body carried trays through cramped aisles, trained to occupy as little space as possible, while here the same body determines where people look. My breathing loosens when I see the attention gather, and the pleasure threaded through my fear keeps my hands away from the robe.
A blonde woman at the next mirror studies me. Her robe is open over white lace, with one bra strap hanging loose from her shoulder.
“Cherry, your friend is in the draw on her first shift?” the blonde asks.
Cherry closes her locker. “Every available dancer is, Lidia.”
Lidia snaps her compact closed. Her pale hair reaches the middle of her back, with every end cut level. She looks at my top again. “She’ll freeze.”
I take Cherry’s lipstick, repair one corner of my mouth, and return it. “Then you can enjoy being right from a respectful distance.”
Cherry laughs, and Lidia turns back to her mirror.
When George enters with a black velvet bag, the dancers gather around him. Cherry slips a short satin robe over my shoulders. It covers the costume but leaves my legs bare, cool satin brushing skin marked by the tight straps.
Large fake gems knock together inside the bag with the sound of hard plastic.
The dancers draw red, then green, before Lidia draws a dark blue gem, closing her fingers around it before she moves aside.
Cherry leans close to my ear. “She wants one man, Artur Dymov.”
“Who is he?” I ask.
“He owns Velvet Fortune and Dymov Casino.” Cherry lowers her voice. “He runs the Dymov organization, which men call a family when women are listening.”
I look toward the door leading to the club. Two security men stand outside it, both wearing jackets cut loose beneath their arms. “Mafia?”
“A Russian crime family, technically, though nobody says that around him unless business requires it.”
“Lidia wants a criminal with a club and an illegal casino?”
Cherry checks that Lidia can’t hear us. “The money helps, followed closely by his face. He comes here for meetings without requesting dancers, so rejection has made him irresistible.”
“Has she met him?”
“She danced on the main stage while he watched a card game. Lidia has considered them engaged ever since.”
Her hostility makes more sense now; years of wanting one man have narrowed into a bag of plastic stones, and the half-naked stranger beside her has been entered on the first shift.
When George lifts the bag toward me, my damp palm leaves a mark on the satin robe before I reach inside. Within the velvet dark, smooth plastic shifts around my hand, each stone indistinguishable from the others. I close my fingers around the first piece they touch.
Clear facets scatter the dressing-room light when I pull it free.
The dancers stop moving, and Lidia looks down at the blue gem in her hand as Cherry’s fingers close around my bare forearm. George checks the card under the drawstrings, although nobody needs confirmation.
“Diamond client is Artur Dymov,” he announces.
Every woman in the room looks at me. “Probability works,” I tell Cherry.
“Apparently it dislikes Lidia.”
The guaranteed fee may save our apartment, but Lidia’s expression strips luck of anything innocent. I haven’t earned a dollar yet, and already the diamond has given me an enemy.
After I return the diamond, George leads us onto the main floor as the bass rises through my clear soles.
Velvet Fortune opens below us like a secret dressed for company.
Black wood and dark red velvet drink most of the light, leaving islands of amber where dancers turn through smoke-soft air; mirrors catch a bare thigh, a crystal strap, the tilt of a hungry face, then break each image apart before it can become intimate.
Music lives under everything, its bass a second pulse traveling through the floor into my too-small heels, while perfume and citrus cleaner sweeten the warmer scent of bodies.
The room makes appetite look expensive and danger almost tasteful.
Cash passes from manicured hands to bare skin as servers disappear through narrow breaks in the mirrors, returning with silver trays and faces trained not to notice.
Above them, private rooms line the upper level behind smoked glass, a row of dark promises no one on the floor can see clearly.
When a guard opens the stair gate, my clear heels strike each metal step above the music, too sharp to disappear beneath it.
At the top, Cherry turns me toward her, checks the top’s cords, then places both hands on the tie of my robe.
“You can walk away,” she says. “George will give you another client.”
Below us, enough cash crosses one table to keep our apartment for months. At home, my landlord’s notice lies on the coffee table, and before leaving I pushed the black duffel back under my bed. I refuse to carry that bag into another borrowed room over one private dance.
“Take off the robe,” I tell her.
Cherry pulls the tie, and satin slides from my shoulders into her hands. Cool air reaches my bare ass before several men look up from the tables. I keep my arms at my sides.
At the last door along the private corridor, George turns the handle.
Beyond it, luxury has been polished into a trap for attention.
Three walls of smoked mirror erase every place I might look without seeing myself, while low amber lamps leave the corners dark and draw a single chair into the center.
Artur Dymov sits there as if the room were built outward from him, his black suit following the breadth of his shoulders before drawing close at the waist. His white shirt lies open at the throat, while thick thighs frame the chair with the ease of a man who owns everyone else’s patience.
Short dark hair exposes a pale line near his right temple, while a slight bend in his nose keeps an otherwise polished face from becoming too smooth.
The imperfection should make him less imposing.
Instead, it suggests something once struck him hard and failed to diminish him.
One large hand rests on the chair arm below a steel watch fitted closely around his wrist, the links catching amber whenever his fingers move.
Artur lifts his eyes.
They are gray under the amber lights, pale enough that I see the instant they settle on me.
Every stare from the main floor scattered across whichever skin passed nearest, but Artur’s attention stays with me as it moves down the tiny costume without hurry.
He pauses at my breasts, follows the bare length of my thighs, then returns to my face as if George has left us alone.
Heat rises along my throat, but I keep my arms at my sides, and I don’t want the robe back. Under this much concentration, every cold rhinestone becomes noticeable against my skin, my nipples tightening inside the inadequate triangles as a slow ache begins between my legs.
The diamond comes out of the bag by chance.
Artur looks at me as if everything after it belongs to him.