The Last Dance

Chapter One

The Last Dance

AJA FOXX

~ Iren ~

My apartment was the kind of place you could clean top to bottom in the time it took to microwave ramen.

The only visible difference between my bedroom and my kitchen was that the kitchen had a window, and the bedroom did not, which meant that all food preparation doubled as impromptu light therapy.

The couch came with the unit and was older than I was. The faux-leather upholstery cracked if you looked at it too hard, which I did often and with intent.

I once tried to patch a rip with electrical tape and now the tape was peeling, its adhesive failed by months of pizza grease and the slow, humid death of city summer.

I crouched beside my mattress and slid out the mason jar I kept there, feeling the chill of the hardwood floor through my knees. The jar had “Tuition” written on it in black Sharpie. If I ever made it to college, my first thesis would be on the combined forces of guilt and irony.

Tonight’s take: seventy-four singles, one five, three damp tens, and a scriptural verse scribbled on a business card wedged under the lid.

I’d started a collection; half the city’s closeted evangelical contingent funneled their existential panic through my tip jar. They liked to leave me little notes about redemption and damnation, and occasionally a phone number.

My costume for tonight was already on. A pair of mesh shorts that left approximately nothing to the imagination and a tank top sliced within an inch of structural integrity.

The mesh shorts were a crowd favorite. So was the tank, apparently, if you listened to the peanut gallery in the dressing room.

I didn’t take it as a compliment. I took it as proof that people would throw money at anything that looked like it might say something sarcastic and then stretch.

I was, regrettably, good at my job. I had a body built for the shallow end of Instagram thirst traps—long legs, six pack abs, ribs visible only on deep inhale, and arms that never lost the yoga definition no matter how many carbs I inhaled at 3 a.m.

The only downside was that I still had to live inside it, and the inside was all nerves and velocity and a compulsive need to keep moving, keep talking, keep doing anything except sitting in silence.

I sorted the bills by denomination and smoothed each one out against my thigh. I did this every time, and it always calmed me. Probably some relic of the orphanage: counting what you had, making sure nothing slipped away, not trusting memory because memory was unreliable and frequently cruel.

I stuck the business card into my “God is Watching and So Am I” collection, now up to twelve, dropped the bills back into the jar, and twisted the lid tight.

The apartment didn’t have a full-length mirror, so I checked my outfit in the oven door. The effect was less “young professional” and more “malnourished gymnast” but that was, apparently, what sold tickets.

Phone check: 7:03 pm. I worked the early shift, which meant less money but fewer entitled creeps. In theory. In practice, creeps respected no temporal boundary.

Checklist, again, just to settle my head: Keep your shoes on backstage.

Never accept a ride home. No one cares if you cry in the bathroom, but do not let them see you do it on the floor.

No private sessions, not even for regulars.

Never leave a drink unattended. No numbers, no exceptions, even if they were hot.

Especially if they were hot.

I was dumb, but I wasn’t an idiot.

It looked like I had everything covered. Shoes, phone, keys, emergency twenty folded into my phone case, and enough residual anxiety to power a small city block. I pulled the door shut behind me, heard the triple-click of the lock, and headed down three flights of sticky stairs to the street.

It was October and the city had finally decided to let summer die. The night air was a shock, the kind that made every nerve in your arms and legs bristle for a second before you got used to it. I kind of liked it.

It reminded me that I was still there.

The Velvet Club was only a twenty-minute walk, even less if I cut through the loading dock behind the defunct furniture store and didn’t get mugged. I debated taking a rideshare, but the walk helped bleed off the edge.

Also, I had seventy-four singles in my pocket and didn’t want to explain to a stranger why I was carrying enough cash to make it rain at a low-budget bachelor party.

I moved fast, head down, arms in close. The city was a blur at night. There were lights in random windows, people talking to themselves or talking to phones or, in one memorable instance last week, singing opera at the top of their lungs while juggling what looked like three raw chickens.

I liked the city at night because nobody expected you to make sense.

The club’s sign glowed faint blue in the dark, understated compared to the day-glo carnage of the sports bar next door. I liked that about it. Velvet was expensive enough to be anonymous. People came here to vanish for a night, and no one ever asked you for your real name.

I took a breath, ran through the checklist one last time, and pushed through the door. Game face on. Shoulders back. I could do this.

I always did.

If you wanted to know what Velvet looked like from the floor, you had to imagine the lighting first. Amber on the stage, violet slicing the dark at weird angles, and in every shadow a dozen pairs of eyes waiting for someone to slip.

The main room was a cross between a speakeasy and a spaceship: booths upholstered in burgundy, black lacquer tables, mirrors everywhere, but nowhere you could look straight at yourself for long.

The music was always loud enough that you had to lean in, but never so loud you couldn’t hear the register opening when someone bought a round.

I was three dances into my shift, already slick with the industrial-grade sweat that came from moving under the stage lights. Tips were light, but it was Tuesday, and Tuesday was for regulars. Regulars tipped well, but only if you remembered their names and the names of their dogs.

I didn’t even like dogs, but I had a running spreadsheet in my head: Gavin, pitbull named Frankie; Tony, beagle, not neutered, weird source of pride; Michael, a rescued labradoodle who was the emotional support animal to end all animals.

The things you did for rent money.

Between sets, I worked the floor. The manager said it was called “working the room” but it felt more like running crowd control on a sinking cruise ship. The guests never changed, just rearranged. You could see who wanted company and who wanted to watch.

There were the shouters, the touchers, and the men who sat at the bar and pretended not to look. My job was to make them all feel like they were getting their money’s worth, and that I was enjoying it. I was getting paid for the lie, so I tried to make it a good one.

Parsons arrived at 8:22, seven minutes after I called last song on the main stage. I didn’t need to look at the clock to know it. He was like the lunar cycle: precise, inexorable, unsettling even when you knew it was coming.

He chose the same booth every time, the one that had the best angle to the stage and the least direct light. He ordered a drink—never finished it. He never looked at the menu. He didn’t need to.

The other dancers called him The Deacon, not because they knew his name but because they could smell the religion on him from across the room.

I thought it was more accurate to call him The Undertaker. There was something somber about his posture, the way he folded his hands and never, ever slouched. He wore the same jacket every time, taupe corduroy with a blue button-down and khakis that looked freshly ironed.

Nothing in this club was freshly ironed except him.

I swept past his table like I didn’t see him, but of course I did.

His eyes were always on me. Not in the way of a guy hoping for a peek or a number or something to jerk off to later.

His look was the look of a man taking inventory.

Every inch of skin, every motion, filed away.

I’d felt the weight of it the first time and I’d never gotten used to it.

Tonight he was early, which put me on edge.

I did a circuit of the floor, running the small talk algorithm.

Gavin asked if my classes were going well—not in school, but maybe someday.

Tony wanted to know if I’d seen the news about the flooding—no, but my building had a mouse problem if he wanted to swap stories.

Michael was already hammered and tried to tip me with a loyalty card to an espresso bar.

I took it anyway. Someone once tipped me a two-dollar bill and I still had it.

Call it sentiment or call it hoarding, I didn’t care.

I could feel Parsons’ eyes from across the room. Every time I angled toward the bar, he adjusted in his seat. He never made a move, never smiled.

He’d wait until I passed close enough, and then—every time, like clockwork—he’d leave a folded business card under the coaster. The first time, I thought it was a joke. The third time, I started collecting them.

I did not want to be on stage when he was in the room, but that was the job.

The manager motioned me to the back hallway, where two other dancers were waiting: Carmine—giant, beautiful, with the best hair of anyone I’d ever met, and Zain—short, wired, always smelled faintly of Red Bull and armpit.

Carmine was running his hands through his hair and Zain was arguing with the DJ about his walk-on song.

The DJ was not listening.

“You see The Deacon’s back?” Carmine asked, sotto voce, like the walls might gossip if he wasn’t careful.

“His money’s green,” I said, trying for casual. “I’d take him over the bachelorette party in the corner.”

Zain laughed, and his laugh was always just a little too loud. “He tips, like, what—three dollars a night? He’s not even a perv, just a tourist. Can’t even stare right.”

“Yeah, but he’s weird,” Carmine said. “He’s got that look.”

“What look?”