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STACKING THE SHELVES with what remained of our stock, I caught sight of my watch – and gasped.
“Oh, shit!” I muttered to myself, and I rushed to the back of the store to grab my stuff.
“What is it?” Dad asked, with concern in his voice. He was right to have it. Enough had happened over these last few years that it always seemed like he was on edge, and I couldn’t blame him.
“I need to get to my other job,” I told him, and he sighed heavily. We didn’t talk about the details, but when it came to the life I had outside of this store, he wasn’t exactly happy about it.
“Do you have to go?” he asked, and I nodded.
“You know I have to, Dad,” I reminded him, as gently as I could. I was sure he would have done anything to make it so I didn’t have to do what I was doing right now, but still. It wasn’t like there was much else we could rely on when it came to keeping ourselves afloat. Sometimes, you had to do stuff you didn’t want to, it was as simple as that. And I wasn’t going to let my own father get pulled underneath a wave of debt if I could help it.
“I know, I know,” he replied, and he leaned on the scuffed-up counter that he served what few customers we had left from. I reached over to give him a hug.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I promised him. “Really, I will.”
He didn’t reply. Probably wanted to pretend that the reality was nothing close to what was actually happening right now. I knew it was painful for him to admit I was doing the stuff I was doing, but it was what we needed if we stood any hope at all of keeping this place running.
I grabbed my bag and headed to the bathroom to change. Just being a waitress there, I knew that I didn’t have to uphold the same standards the rest of the girls in the club did, but if I wanted to make any money in tips, then I was going to have to embrace it a little bit.
I slipped on a short black dress and made sure that the heels I usually wore for my shifts there were in my bag. No way would I stalk the streets in those things, I would end up breaking an ankle, and they were so painful on my leg injury that sometimes I wondered if it was worth the boost. But, again, the tips were worth it, and there was no way I was going to miss the chance to make every cent I could for us.
I brushed my hair back and slicked on some dark lipstick, touched up my eyeliner, and headed for the door, dropping a kiss on Dad’s cheek before I made it outside.
“You be safe!” he told me, and I smiled at him.
“You know I always am,” I reminded him. He might have hated what I was doing, but that didn’t mean I was going to stop.
The streets were already busy by the time I started off to the club, and I hoped that would reflect on the footfall in the bar tonight. I would be able to make a decent amount of money if there were enough guys in there, getting drunk enough to mistake me for one of the dancers and handing me off huge stacks of cash in the hopes that I would get a little more naked. I would always take it – it was their mistake, and I wasn’t there to talk anyone out of any of those. No, if anything, I was there to make sure people made plenty of them.
Hennessey’s wasn’t exactly the kind of place I had ever seen myself working at. It was a strip club, and though it tried to sell itself as something a little more classy than that, none of the girls working there seemed to be under any illusions about the reality of what they were doing. I doubted that any of the men who came in did either. They were there to get drunk and ogle some girls, maybe buy themselves a private dance if they could afford it and see how far they could get. I was just there to deliver the drinks and make sure it all ran smoothly.
I had thought to hide it from Dad, but I knew he would find out one way or another. He always did. The two of us lived in that little apartment together, and there was no way he would be able to ignore the smell of booze and smoke and cheap body spray on my clothes when I got home. Better that he heard it from me, and knew I wasn’t doing anything too nefarious, than I let his mind wander and come up with a million things he would be too scared to ask me about.
He hated it. I didn’t blame him. But he knew just as well as I did that we were going to need to hustle if we were going to be able to keep the store open. My dad’s little Serbian bodega had been going for nearly three decades now, but it had never been in the kind of trouble that it was in right now.
It all started when that place opened across the street. That big-ass store that was fancier, had more staff, had more products, seemed to sell most of them for cheaper than even we did. I was pretty sure it had the help of some mobsters behind it, probably using it to launder money or something, but there wasn’t much we could do about that part – the best we could hope for would be to hang on to our regulars, and pray they didn’t get too distracted by what our new competitor had to offer.
Of course, they did. It didn’t take long until we saw most of our customers slowly drift away to that store, and we were left scrambling to make do with what we had left. I wasn’t going to let Dad lose this place, not a chance in hell, and I knew I had to work double-time to make sure that never happened.
This waitressing gig was just one of the many that I had taken on to try and ensure we didn’t lose this store. I taught dance still, a few days a week, though it wasn’t like I could do much myself – it had been nearly ten years since the accident that had taken me out of that game, and honestly, sometimes I missed it so much it felt like my heart actually ached in my chest. But there was nothing I could do to roll back the clock on that. I just had to work with what I had.
Sometimes, I would look at the girls working the stage, and I would wonder if I would have been better off up there. I’d be making more money, probably, that was for sure, but I wasn’t certain that was going to be enough to justify doing that to myself. They all seemed so confident, so sure of themselves, and I was certain I would have been tripping over my own feet and basically begging for a way out of it every moment that I was on that stage.
Besides, I didn’t know if I even had it in me to do that sort of thing for money. I didn’t look down on the girls who did, but I had no clue if I would be able to match up to what they provided. I would likely be kicked out the first night I tried to so much as go near the stage, and I was sure that was a sign that I was to stay off of it for now.
I arrived at the back of the club, the back entrance that led into the staff area notably worse than the one the customers used. I supposed it shouldn’t have surprised me much; Hennessey’s was all about creating this fantasy for people, this fantasy that they could get lost in, and there was no way we would be able to do that if we were tripping over ourselves to get in there, after all.
I checked my make-up in the mirror, and saw that the cheap lipstick I’d put on had already started to migrate around my face. I sighed and smudged it back into place, wishing I had the nerve to ask one of the dancers to borrow some of their long-wear stuff. It would have made more sense for me.
I was about to head out, through the front and into the bar area, to see if anyone needed drinks delivered or something like that – but I was waylaid before I could get to the bar, by a man I recognized at once.
“Mister Ransom,” I greeted him, the owner of the club that was giving me a little work right now. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s fine,” he replied. He had a curt way about him, always had, and I knew there was no point in letting any of this get the better of me. He was just drunk, no doubt, as he always was, looking for one of his favorite girls to keep him company for the evening. I doubted he had to pay for their time the way the rest of the patrons here did.
“You’re Nadia, aren’t you?” he asked me, and I nodded. I wasn’t even sure, before that moment, that he knew my name, but it was something of a shock to find out he did. I wasn’t sure whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that he was aware of me. A man like that, sometimes it was better to go under their radar than spinning right through it.
“Yes, I am.”
“Can you dance?”
I felt a jolt of discomfort rush through my system. I knew most of the girls here danced, and that I shouldn’t have expected anything else from him. I should have known that, eventually, me just serving drinks wasn’t going to be enough to keep him sated.
“I’m not a dancer—”
“We need someone to cover for Stacey tonight, she’s out,” he explained. He didn’t sound much like he was giving me a choice. I doubted that he had exchanged ten words with me before this, and now, he was coming out swinging like I owed him something. I frowned at him.
“I’m not a dancer,” I repeated myself, and he rubbed a hand over his face and sighed.
“You’ll make twice the money you do waitressing,” he offered. “And you won’t have to work as many hours. Just take it, all right?”
I paused. I got the feeling that I didn’t have much of a choice here, one way or the other. I had to go along with what he was telling me, because he was the boss, and the boss got to decide how things ran. I didn’t want to lose my job here by refusing him – and honestly, I knew I could use a little more in the way of money.
“Just dancing,” I told him, firmly. There was no way I was going to do anything else, not the extras the other girls did in the back. I knew they were just doing what they had to in order to make it, but I couldn’t bring myself to think about it. No way could I put on the act that I was actually attracted to these guys, that I wanted to touch them and please them and... ugh. Just thinking about it made me a little ill.
“Yeah, yeah, obviously,” he replied, waving his hand impatiently. “How quickly can you get on the stage? We have some spare outfits around the back...”
He wasn’t going to take no for an answer, and I knew that the best call I could make would be to go along with what he was offering, take it at face value, and hope for the best. I needed to make more money, and just one night of dancing, that wouldn’t make a difference to the way I felt about myself, would it? My dad would never have to find out – I knew it would kill him if he did – and I wanted to pull in enough cash to allow both of us to stop worrying for a little while.
“Sure,” I replied, finally, and he grasped my arm and gave it a grateful squeeze.
“Thank fuck,” he muttered. “Okay, into the back, the girls will get you set up with everything you need.”
And with that, I knew there was no way that I was getting out of this – I was going to see this through. I was going to dance. Even just for one night, a barrier that I had promised myself I was never going to cross, not as long as I lived...
Shit. I couldn’t believe I was actually doing this. But I needed the money – and I needed to make sure I stayed on Mister Ransom’s good side, above all else.
