“I’m totally a drug dealer.”
A cone of silence descended on their table. Apparently that wasn’t funny. “If I was a dealer, don’t you think I’d fuck myself up with my own product?”
“Didn’t say you were good at it,” Vi grumbled.
“I’m not a dealer. I promise I’m not. I had a great job I loved, but I screwed it up and got fired, that’s why I’ve been moping around Lucky’s, drowning my sorrows.” He fixed on his brunette dream girl who’d unwittingly given him another reason to keep showing up. “But I told Lux if she came out with us, I’d straighten up, so you won’t be seeing me around anymore.”
The suggestion of a smile tugged at Lux’s lips. It did strange things to his pulse.
“Hold on.” Cinnamon made a TV hostess arm wave over the table. “You told Lux you’d quit boozing if she went out with you, this is not the same thing.”
“It’s not, but this is Lux’s choice.” Like it was her choice not to tell the whole story. Did she do it to protect him from embarrassment? She had no idea how well he had embarrassing himself checked off already.
“That girl is a damn fool,” said Lavinia. “Of all of us she could be earning bank, in clubs where the dancers are treated right and the big money shows up, private parties, the works, but she won’t take the chance. There’s this club, Madame Amour, they have a competition with prize money. Lux could take it out if she wanted to. She won’t even try.”
“You don’t strike me as the scared type, Lux?”
Lux folded her arms, the action sending his eyes straight to her chest. “You’re buying my breakfast, not my life story.”
He blinked hard, had to bite back a response. He wanted to order everyone out of the room so he could go one on one with Lux about wasting her talent. But he wasn’t in a conference room, he was in a diner surprisingly lively for nearly 4 a.m. He shifted, and it was only when his spine hit the chair’s back he realized he’d been leaning way forward. When he did that at Plus, Sarina would touch his shoulder or scribble him a note telling him to sit back, not to look like he was about to jump down a person’s throat.
He palmed his face. He was having breakfast with five women he didn’t know, one of whom he virtually itched to be alone with, and he’d lectured them about their work choices, their lives.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” He was a desperately useless human being and he finally understood what Sarina had tried to teach him. Mostly people want to enjoy their work, and if they enjoy it, they do well at it, and the way to connect with people was to talk to them about what they enjoyed.
“What I should’ve asked you all is if you were having fun?”
Dead silence.
So maybe he
still didn’t get it, because when Sarina asked that, the people she talked to got busy responding, either complaining about things that annoyed them or falling about like silly kittens, pretty much purring and rubbing up against all the things they liked about work. It’d always been his cue to walk away, now it was his backup plan.
“What, like now?” said Lavinia. “I’ve eaten enough to store till next winter.” There were agreeable murmurs.
“No, as dancers? Does what you do make you happy?”
There was another awkward silence and Reid recognized it for what it was. To answer the question, the women had to share a part of themselves with him, and he’d done nothing to prove himself worthy of that.
Cinnamon took a sip of her coffee. “It’s a hell of a lot more honest than working as a massage therapist.” She put her cup down and took a deep breath. “There were guys who didn’t want to pay me full price because I didn’t give them a happy ending. I’m trained as a sports masseuse but going into locker rooms made me so nervous I used to puke. You know there are teams who won’t hire men, because they think there’s something weird about having another man touch them. They didn’t hire me because I was as good as a male masseuse, but because I was a woman. That’s not positive discrimination, it’s sleazy. I don’t have to worry about what the men who watch me dance are thinking. I know what they’re thinking. I don’t have to worry that my hand is going to accidentally end up somewhere I don’t want it. So yes, this is my happy thing till I’m done studying.”
“You never said that before,” said Lavinia. She shoulder-bumped Cinnamon. “Girl, that’s wicked twisted.” She looked at Reid. “I don’t have any Josephine Baker kinda reason for doing this. I just know this body,” she shimmied her shoulders, “ain’t gonna last forever and I want to use it before I lose it. I used to work in an office, but the money was bad and it was so boring I thought I was going to take a staple gun and go postal. One day I’ll have to do something different, but I’m young, I’m having fun and the fact I can make a man’s tongue hang out while I do it, yeah, I’ll take that. My name is Lizabeth, by the way.” She held her hand out to shake and Reid took it.
“I’m Kathryn,” said the dancer known as Cinnamon. She held her hand out too.
He was blown away by the power of that simple question and what happened when he actually listened to the answer. He felt connected to the women now in a way hired cars, waffles and grand gestures didn’t achieve. He looked to Tiffany.
“I don’t know yet. I’m so bad at it,” she said. “But there are worse things. I’m a singer more than a dancer and I want to be in musicals but I have to do something between auditions and I figured this might help build my confidence. At my last audition they said I had poor stage presence.” She stretched her hand across the table to Reid. “My name is Therese.”
Reid shook Therese’s hand, but he waited on Lux’s answer as if his next career move depended on it.
“No kidding,” said Vi. “I used to sing, cocktail bars and lounges. I wasn’t Barbra Streisand or anything, and I got older and jobs dried up. Lou has been good to me. This job keeps the rent paid, feeds me, my mother and daughter, and gives me enough left over to buy books. I could do worse.”
Lux played with the zipper end on her hoodie, her eyes down; she made no move to take her turn. He needed Sarina on speed dial and a dozen more of her inane but magic questions if he was going to connect with Lux, if he was going to learn her real name before they all turned into pumpkins.
Then she looked up. “You tell me, Reid.”
He grinned while the others made ooh, ahh sounds. He freaking loved the way his name sounded coming from her mouth, that was a fantasy fulfilled right there. He’d like to make her shout it. Jesus Christ, to be close to her, to think he could make her feel about him like he felt about her.