Escorting the Actress (The Escort Collection 2)

I closed my eyes and fired.

Liberty Begins - Almost Perfect

There was only one thing that had ever made me more nervous than going to work at that club. That was being alone with my mother’s boyfriend, Ray. There were at least some parts of my job that were redeemable. I couldn’t say the same thing for Ray. But I didn’t have time to think about that now, which was good, because I never really could stand to think about him. Right now I had to go to work. And at work, I had to stay alert.

It was Thursday, our busy night, when the convention-goers were out for their last hurrah and the weekend tourists were just starting out. At The Treasure Chest, we always made our best money on Thursdays. They didn’t have as many girls on as Friday and Saturday, and we all have a lot more opportunity for attention. Not that I wanted it. I knew that didn’t make sense to anybody, but it was the truth. I got to the club at nine and in the locker room the girls were talking, trying on their crazy, tiny outfits, teasing each other. I always listened to them before we went out on the floor; it soothed me to be around the hum of other people after being in my quiet apartment all day. They talked about the crazy things their kids had done that day, the fights they’d had with their boyfriends, how they’d waxed their own bikini lines and how bad it hurt — but how aerodynamic it would make them. I did my own waxing, too, but I couldn’t make up funny stories about it like Adriana or Keisha could, so I just kept quiet. I pretty much always kept quiet. All the other girls had plenty of things to say, to fill up the space.

The Treasure Chest was considered upscale for Vegas, and we had some of the prettiest girls. There were about thirty of us in total, mostly young with a couple of lifers thrown in. In stripping, you’re considered a lifer if you’ve done it for ten years or more. Most of us, myself included, start at twenty one. So even though the lifers are still relatively young, they’re getting old for this place and they know it. They make jokes about getting traded down to the Gulch, which was a grimier club a few blocks over, where the women were older and the drinks came in plastic cups. “At least the liquor over there is cheap!” Tracy said sometimes, after a shift where she couldn’t get anyone to go to the Champagne Room with her. Tracy is good humored and she always laughs when she says it, but her eyes look hooded. I think she might be scared. You don’t make good money at the Gulch, and from what I hear the management encourages mileage.

Mileage was something bad when you were a stripper. It meant something like you had to do as much as you could, go as far as you could go, without actually having sex during a lap dance. I’d heard that a lot of the guys still came that way.

I didn’t want to end up at The Gulch. I didn’t want poor Tracy to, either.

I was always nervous before I went out, and I didn’t like putting on my outfit, but I did enjoy the makeup. For those few precious minutes in front of the mirror before it was time, it was like I was a little girl again, digging through my mother’s overstuffed makeup bag. I had better makeup at work, more expensive stuff, but I remember the distinct smell of her inexpensive, sparkly eyes shadows and blush. If hopefulness had a scent, that’s what it smelled like, even though her compacts were cracked and plastic. My mother’s makeup promised transformation, something better than what was already there. I would lock myself in the bathroom and rummage through her bag whenever she was napping on the couch, holding my breath so she wouldn’t wake up and catch me. And after, as I looked up at myself in the mirror, all of ten with bright blue eyeshadow on, I thought I looked pretty. Not as pretty as my mom, of course. No one was as pretty as my mom.

So now, it always comforted me, the sparkly eyeshadow, the black mascara, the hot pink blush, the process of transforming my face into something that made people stare. My beautiful mask. Playing dress-up with my face was so much more fun than playing dress-up with my body; because if you looked at just my done-up face, I could be anybody. I was almost perfect. I could be one of those girls in town for the weekend, out to dinner with my fiancé, having a two-hundred-dollar bottle of wine and not even blinking when the bill came. I could be any one of those girls at a club, from a suburb across the country, who just came in for the weekend. With a face like this, I could be waiting for my boyfriend to bring me a twenty-dollar drink that I might not even finish. I could be wearing a beautiful dress and a thousand-dollar watch, have a decent apartment and good job to go back to, parents and siblings somewhere, all hoping I’m being safe and waiting to hear about my crazy weekend in Vegas.

But I don’t actually have any girlfriends, and my watch is a cheap plastic glow-in-the-dark one I bought at Walmart. I’m not from the suburbs, and I’ve never had one of those nice, ridiculously expensive dinners at a five-star restaurant with anyone. I don’t know who my father is and my mother, rest her soul, is dead. My sister’s gone. No one cares if I’m safe. The only place I’m going after work is to my cheap apartment in the scary part of town, with my mask off before I even leave the building. I will eat macaroni and cheese that came from a box and go to bed, alone. So no, I’m not wearing a nice dress tonight. In fact, underneath my white button-down shirt and short plaid skirt that resembles a schoolgirl’s uniform—a slutty schoolgirl’s uniform—I’m wearing a leather thong and a black bra that has cut-outs for my nipples. And hot pink fake-suede sky-high spike heels.

Maybe I’m a little bitter. But I know I shouldn’t complain, because a lot of people have it so much worse.

I tried to concentrate on my sparkly eyeshadow in the mirror until Alex tells me it’s time to go out. I was first tonight and being first on a shift meant you were a warm-up act; the girls that came on later were usually the prettiest and got the biggest tips from the late-night, liquored up crowd. The Treasure Chest was different from most other Vegas clubs this way — girls actually wanted to dance onstage here. At some of the other, bigger clubs there were over a hundred, sometimes two hundred, girls who worked there. A lot of the dancers didn’t want to bother going out on stage when they could let the newbies do it and they could go into the crowd and do lap dances, where if they hustled they could make a lot more.

All of the other girls at the Chest were big on going out into the crowd, too, but because there were less of us and it was a smaller club, we all wanted to dance onstage. It’s what we w

ere known for. The other girls used that stage time to leverage the crowd, to give them a little taste so they’d want to buy an appetizer, an entree, and dessert. Of them.

Going out first, before the club was really crowded, meant that you were either in trouble with management, the crowd didn’t like you, or both. Usually it was both.

Tonight, for me, I was going first because I was in trouble. Alex was punishing me by making me dance for the college boys who only drank light beer and could only afford happy hour. There were enough girls tonight that I wouldn’t be on stage when the conventioneers and post-steakhouse crowd showed up. Those guys got bottle service and tipped in tens, not ones. If you didn’t get that stage time you wouldn’t be able to get them interested, thinking about you, and clamoring for individual dances.

When I was first hired, six months ago, I got all the best shifts, all the best slots. When Alex interviewed me he asked if I had any experience. “No,” I said, looking at the floor, hoping it was dark enough inside that he didn’t see the blush creeping up my neck to my face; strippers couldn’t blush.

“Who needs experience?” he asked, and laughed. “You’re a perfect ten.”

People had always told me I was pretty. I got stared at a lot. I had long, thick, dirty-blond hair, big blue eyes, and perfectly smooth skin. My sister Sasha, especially, used to get so mad that people were always nice to me. She said it was just because of the way I looked. She was pretty herself, and very smart, but she said none of it mattered when she was next to me.

“But look at Mom,” I would say. Mom was more beautiful than me and Sasha and every supermodel ever put together. She was tall and thin, with alabaster skin, long raven hair and beautiful, thick, naturally long black eyelashes. It was like living with Snow White. Wherever we went, complete strangers, male and female, would gape at her. Men would trip over themselves to open doors for her. Sasha and I used to joke that small birds and butterflies would follow her around. None of it mattered, though. Sometimes I think her looks made it worse. It made it too easy for her to get what she wanted, and what she wanted never seemed to be good for her.

“Look where it got her,” I would say, and Sasha would look over at Mom, passed out on the couch, and she would just shrug.

“You won’t make the same mistakes,” she’d said, and she was right about that. But just because I wasn’t strung out it still wasn’t easy, like she seemed to think it was going to be. Being pretty didn’t mean you’d never be lonely.

I would tell her that now….if I knew where she was.

Stripping wasn’t easy for me, but I needed the money. Waitressing was not an option. I couldn’t handle talking to people that much. So dancing was it. I had no clothes on, but at least I didn’t have to chat. At first Alex took care of me and gave me the good shifts because he’d thought he had a chance with me. I had since heard that he did this with all the new girls, and that made me feel better. I didn’t want to be singled out. But Alex was getting enough play that he was okay — most of the time. You had to be firm. He was just looking for something beautiful for free in a town where nothing was free, not even the free drinks. But I wasn’t giving anything away. Some of the girls who weren’t the best looking managed to hang onto the best shifts; I didn’t like to think about how.

Next to me Adriana was adjusting her long, fake black ponytail and examining her eyeliner. “Are you up first?” she asked. I squared my shoulders.

“Yup, he moved me,” I said, and managed a smile. “He wants me out on the floor. Alex is trying to make a point.”

“Always,” she said. “Tell him to keep his little point to himself.” She laughed. Adriana’s aunt was married to one of the owners, so Alex left her alone. She had a boyfriend and two little girls and kept her coveted place in the lineup because she was absolutely beautiful and could sell Champagne time better than anyone. At twenty-five, she was a legend at our club. All the new hires had to train with her, myself included. She gave me exactly twenty minutes on my first day. That was it. She taught me how to maintain eye contact while I was on stage, to make each customer feel like he was the only guy in the room, even when I was looking at every guy in the room. She gave me pointers about how to get them to tip well and request private time with me.

Adriana gave me all the basics in those twenty minutes, but I would never come close to her. I could memorize my lines, but I would never be an actress. Adriana, however, was a natural. She was born to do sales. She made it look so easy and night after night, guys paid thousands of dollars to have an hour with her. Men flew across the country to see her on a regular basis. One older guy, who was rumored to be a millionaire, had even proposed.

I didn’t have her gift. I couldn’t look at someone like she did — like she knew who they were, and they didn’t disgust her. Like she still wanted them and liked being with them. All while managing to get paid a large sum of money. It was a business transaction, and Adriana got that. I knew what it was supposed to be, but I couldn’t get over feeling like it was some sort of messy emotional exchange that I wasn’t at all capable of.

“You’re up,” she said and pointed with her chin to where Alex had appeared at the door. He looked like he had spent too much time in a tanning booth, which in fact he probably had. Like so many other men in Vegas, he used too much hair product and had too many sparkly details on his too-expensive jeans. But this was his perpetual look, like he had no choice in the matter; I couldn’t picture him any other way.