Chapter Two
Roe
I dropped the mascara wand into my pink makeup case and exhaled. My gaze flicked up to the corner of the light-studded vanity mirror.
“You made this sound a whole lot more fun than it is,” I said to the picture of the woman taped there.
My grandmother stood there in all her showgirl glory—legs for days, perfectly coiffed bleach-blonde hair, red lips, and blue eyes, and a headdress with feathers standing two feet off her crown that looked like it weighed ten pounds.
Her body? Killer in her bikini that acted as her uniform.
She was beaming.
My gaze flicked back to my own reflection.
I looked a lot like her: the same high cheekbones, dainty chin, delicate nose, blue eyes.
The only real difference was that I stopped bleaching my dark brown hair years back after an unfortunate salon visit that had all my hair breaking off until I had no choice but to give myself a bob and slowly regrow the length.
To give myself the elegant, vintage look the casino required, I had learned to set my hair so I managed “Old Hollywood Curls” that curved toward my face and managed to give me an old-school glam look even when I was shuffling into work in my sweats to get ready for the day.
I wasn’t a showgirl. Not the way my grandmother had been in her prime. Mostly because there simply weren’t many of those jobs available anymore. And even when there was an opening, the competition was so fierce that I had next to no chance to make it.
I wasn’t the best dancer anyway.
So I leaned into my strengths.
I was a lounge singer.
Same sort of glamour with slightly more clothing most of the time.
My dress was hanging in a garment bag behind me, fresh from the dry cleaner with that warm starch scent that I always found oddly comforting.
I had six dresses—one for each night of the week when I was working. Only six because, well, the damn things were expensive as hell. You know, if you wanted to get well-made ones that looked like quality under the stage lights, which had a tendency to highlight any slight flaw in material or cut.
And, well, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to invest more in this job.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love the stage, the singing, the oldies I crooned, the applause of the crowds. I’d eaten all that up since my days on the beauty pageant circuit.
But this particular job?
Not so much.
“Knock knock.”
And there was the very reason.
Right on time.
“Hope you’re not decent.”
It took actual work to keep my lips from turning into a grimace as my boss came into the dressing room.
Maybe I wouldn’t be so disgusted by the behavior if I hadn’t learned from the past when he came barging in while I was standing in nothing but a thong, and his beady eyes raked over me. I needed to scrub my skin raw to get rid of the slimy feeling that clung to me afterward.
Now, I made sure to stay in my sweats until after his usual drop-in. And he always popped in.
In my mind, it was only because he wanted to catch another eyeful of me. Or, let’s face it, worse.
“You know,” Frank said, blue-eyed gaze sweeping over me, “men don’t like women who dress like slobs.”
I ignored that, knowing that if I let myself, I would say a thing or two that I’d regret when my rent bill was due. While I was looking for a way out, I knew I had to be smart about it.
“Did you have some requests for me?” I asked instead, pretending that organizing my makeup case required all my focus.
I had a usual rotation of old-school, sultry lounge music that I mixed with a few more upbeat songs and even some remixed modern ones to make them slow and sexy.
But every once in a while, a guest would have a request—usually for an anniversary. Or Frank would hear something that he wanted me to incorporate into the set list. Typically a terrible choice, but I had to do what the boss wanted, ill-advised or not.
“I have some friends coming tonight,” Frank said, running his fingers over my pantyhose that was draped over a hanger.
He insisted I wear them year-round. The sheer black ones with the black seam up the back. He never missed an opportunity to touch them when he saw them around. I figured the guy had some kind of fetish for the things.
“Okay,” I said when he didn’t continue.
“I want a private set.”
Ugh.
Of course he did.
Just what I wanted—to be alone in a room with him and his drunk, creepy friends with no one to protect me. Because, let’s face it, the security staff were going to be loyal to the almighty dollar more than their morals.
Still, I needed the money.
Also, I didn’t exactly have a choice.
Frank was not the kind of man who took no for an answer.
If you tried, he was all too happy to make you suffer for it.
He was powerful enough in the area to make sure I would never again be able to find work singing.
Or entertaining, serving, bartending. I’d be stuck working at some chain store or a corporate job that sucked my soul out one nine-to-five at a time.
“I already have four sets tonight,” I reminded him. It was my only plausible way out. “We don’t want to tax my voice.”
“You’re off tomorrow. Plenty of time to recover.”
That wasn’t exactly how it worked, and he knew it. He just didn’t care.
“What time?”
“Eleven.”
Well, at least it gave me a break to get something to eat before I had to get on stage again.
“Alright.”
“Alright?” Frank asked. “You could sound more enthused, you know. A thousand other girls would kill for this opportunity.”
Why not offer it to them, then?
I knew why.
Whether I liked it or not, I was Frank’s pet.
I wasn’t sure if it was because he genuinely appreciated my talent, or if it was simply because I was the only woman he’d employed who didn’t give in to his charms.
To be fair, Frank wasn’t bad-looking. Yes, his eyes were a little beady, a bit close-set, but overall he was pretty average with his brown hair, slim, tall build, and oval face. If you factored in his wealth, I could see why some women might be willing to sleep with him.
But, well, Frank gave me the creeps on the day I interviewed. And that was way before I heard all the rumors about inappropriate behavior—if not outright groping or assault. Bad deeds covered up by greased palms and settlements.
Thankfully for me, I had a good gut instinct when it came to creeps. It was just something that you learned when you grew up in a world where your beauty was treated like a commodity.
And because I was trained from the cradle to always be poised, I’d long since learned how to handle men like Frank—ones with a lot of power and bad intentions.
It was done carefully.
Charm mixed with careful boundaries.
If I was too firm with him, I knew he would blackball me. So I wasn’t. I was simply always very ‘busy.’ Someone was always ‘waiting for me.’ I made it seem like my time was extremely limited. It let him see my rebuffs as coy and elusive, not as an outright rejection.
After a year of this careful dance, though, I was just about done.
I had a feeling this private set was only going to push me closer to that edge.
But the extra money might be worth the anxiety about it.
Because while tips were rare during my normal sets, for private events, they were much more common.
They came quietly—slid across tables, tucked into hands, never announced. But they more than made up for my sore throat for the next day or two.
“Maybe they would,” I agreed, casting Frank a sideways glance that, if you ignored the glint in my eye (and he would), could be seen as flirtatious, “but you want me,” I said, letting a slight pause hang in the air, “to do it.”
He sucked in a deep breath, his gaze moving over me once again. “Yes, yes, I do. Eleven then.”
“Eleven,” I agreed.
“Want me to have some tea or cough drops ready for you?”
Dosed with God-knows-what? No thanks.
“I have my own. But thanks.” The smile I shot him was plastic. Luckily, Frank didn’t know the difference. “I’m on in ten,” I said, with a pointed look at the clock, then at my garment bag.
“Right. Right. Gotta give you time to get gorgeous. Not that you need it.”
I wanted to get up, to yank the door open for him. But if I got up, it gave him a chance to reach for me.
Whenever possible, I stayed seated or as far away from him as possible.
Thankfully, he finally opened the door and stepped into the opening.
“Break a leg, Monroe.”
I waited for the door to close, then for the sound of his shoes to trail down the hall. Only then did I get to my feet and rush to the door.
The dressing room had no lock. For obvious reasons when the owner was such a vile human being.
So I did what I always did when I was about to get naked—I wedged my vanity chair under the door, then took my garment bag to dress behind the door in case the chair didn’t do its job.
Was there a chance that Frank had some peephole or hidden camera in the room? Yep. Which was why I got dressed facing the damn wall. If he was looking, all he would see was a little ass cheek. Nothing more than he’d see if I were in a bathing suit on the beach.
I shimmied into the tight dress, adjusted my boobs into the built-in bra, then pulled the chair back to sit down and slide the pantyhose up my legs to clip into the garters.
Finished, I stepped in front of the mirror once again to take it in.
My dresses for lounge singing were much like my outfits for beauty pageants and, later, my modeling get-ups. They were a uniform. They put a wall between who I was and who I projected. They allowed me to detach a bit from my body.
Whether that was good or healthy, well, that was up to the professionals. It was how I got by a life of being objectified and, yes, objectifying myself.
“What do you think, Grandma?” I asked, running my hands down my belly and hips.
I had her to thank for my figure. Well, her and my mother, who instilled the importance of healthy eating and exercise in me from a very tender age.