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“Beautiful name for a gorgeous woman.”
After that is when the questions started, and that's been the routine for five weeks. Six hours of dancing—eventually, Marco even let me play my own music during those hours—and a strange game of question and answer. I dance, stay dressed (to whatever degree I am—I work at a strip club, after all), and we . . . chat. Small talk. Silly things. Favorite animal. Have you ever traveled? Do you read? Small questions that, in the grand scheme, haven’t taught me much about the mysterious man but have made him strangely feel like a friend.
It’s actually kind of sad to think about how this total stranger knows more random facts about me than some of my best friends.
Then my own family.
“Let’s go with childhood vacation. Favorite?” he asks today, and I cringe. Beyoncé sings her lungs out over the speakers as I work on an answer.
“Childhood vacation? That’s all you’ve got?” I say, and he smiles in the shadows, white teeth catching dim lighting. In five weeks, I’ve still never seen his full face.
“Delilah, we’ve covered pretty much every like and dislike over the past few weeks. I think vacation is a very reasonable request.”
“Yeah, why are you still coming here, Mr. Romano?” I say, trying to change the subject. Because for all the fancy dinners I’ve been to, the galas and fundraisers and talk shows I’ve been dragged to, I only remember one childhood vacation.
We drove there. I was six, Lola eleven, and Mom hadn’t gotten sick yet.
It wasn’t fancy, and it wasn’t extravagant, but I loved it all the same.
Still, I want to be mysterious, gorgeous, cultured, and sophisticated in this room, even if I’m dancing for money.
“I’m bored.”
“So bored you drop a couple grand a week at a strip club?” I ask, swaying my hips to the beat. “Sounds kind of depressing, Mr. Romano.”
“Do you want me to stop?” he asks, and for some reason, my heart stutters. "Stop coming?"
Do I want him to stop?
The question might as well be, Do you secretly pray that this man will stroll in and request a private room each shift? Do you hope to catch a look at him walking in from the parking lot when you start your shift? Oh, and the times he didn’t come on a Tuesday but a Thursday, did you stress and worry that he was done with this strange routine?
The truth is, I enjoy these hours with the mysterious Dante Romano. It started simply, as pure relief to have time off stage, away the dozens of eyes locked on my body. Relief from being semi-covered, from having an easy night.
It’s somehow turned into liking this strange private time with him. It became answering his chaotic questions about everything and nothing, never asking anything personal or intrusive, and always, always returning the favor. Always giving back his own answers. Favorites and least favorites, firsts and never-have-I-evers. I know this man backward and forwards.
“I didn’t say that," I reply, not telling the whole truth because that would be pathetic—telling a man who pays for your time that you actually like dancing for him.
He stares at me.
I smile, then I answer with a sigh.
“When I was a kid, we went to Lake George one fall. It was fun. My parents took my sister and me out of school for a few days, and they rented a little house on the lake, and we just . . . existed. It was fun. Rare, for my family.” I move over to the chair Marco leaves me, sitting in it and taking off my towering shoes. “It was the only family vacation we took that I remember. My mom died a few years later.”
He knows that part, the confession coming on the third Tuesday when he told me his mother died when he was five.
“Sounds nice.” I don’t reply, explain more, or justify my answer because I don’t have to. It’s not the way it works here with us.
The night goes on like this: silence and a few questions before more comfortable silence. It never feels like an interview or anything weird, more like how when you’re on a long car ride and you have small talk to fill the silence.
Except today, he finally pushes the line in the fifth hour.
“Go out with me tonight.” The words sound like they rush out, like he did everything in his power to hold them back but something in his subconscious won the battle.
“What?” I stop moving altogether.
“Dinner. Go out to dinner with me.”
“I don’t . . .”
