I wanted to get this over with. Whenever Dahlia came, it usually wasn’t a good sign.
“Is Haley here?” she asked. I raised my hand and she nodded at me. “Good.” My stomach rolled as the gravity of her question set in. She wanted me to be here for this. Did that mean she had caught me, and knew what I had done with Lucas?Shit.I needed to explain myself.
But what would be my best option? Admit that I was actually attracted to a club member, or confess that I knew that I wasn’t the only one who did it? That wealldid it? Offer her a few names, like Mel’s.
“We’ll be holding auditions for potential new hires soon,” Dahlia said. A few people cooed. “A fire dancer and a snake dancer.”
My jaw dropped. Both of those talents seemed too close to my own performances.
“You mean a belly dancer?” a server asked. “Like someone who dances with a snake?”
Dahlia nodded, stealing a glance at me. “Exactly that.”
“That’s way too close to my performances,” I cut in. “Dancing is still dancing.”
“And almost all of our performers have some element of dancing. Iris dances as part of her performance,” Dahlia said. I disagreed. Iris timed her contortion to the music, but that didn’t mean she was dancing. “Mel moves when she paints.” I glanced over at Mel. She shrugged. Again, could you call it dancing if you dropped glow in the dark paint on yourself on the beat of the bass? “You are an aerial dancer. A fire and a snake dancer would be grounded. I think we’ll make an exception.”
“They’re still dancers,” I argued. “Might as well get a pole dancer for that matter. Hey, why doesn’t everyone take lessons on the art of pole fitness while we’re at it?”
Dahlia narrowed her eyes at me. “You are welcome to add pole dancing to your repertoire at any time. In fact, I think it would be a useful addition, seeing as you’ve been doing the same routines for five years now.”
Dahlia knew why I wasn’t interested in the pole. I was strong enough physically to learn the pole as an apparatus, but I wasn’t going to do something that I believed eventually led to Mama’s premature death.
I let out a sharp breath. I needed to relax. It might not have been serious. It might have been Dahlia’s way of kicking me into gear.
But since when had Dahlia ever wanted a pole dancer? There were strip clubs in Sage City. Only an hour away. Our club was supposed to be different.
A few of the servers asked Dahlia questions. She answered each of them, until one question broke through the rest. “That brings up a good point,” she said. She turned to the rest of us. “You could be doing more than you are right now. Earning more money from the members. Usingallof your physical assets. What do the forms call it?” She turned to Iris. “Openings? Suction? There are ways—” her eyes lingered slowly over each of us, “—to make sure that the Terrariums are worth everyone’s time.”
What exactly was she implying?
“Are you suggesting we have sex for money?” Iris said. Thank you, Iris, for saying what was on everyone’s mind.
“I’m not suggesting that you have sex for money. That would be breaking club policy,” Dahlia said, her voice incredulous as if Iris had suggested the worst atrocity. “I’m saying that you should do whatever youneedto do, in order to increase business. If not, I’m afraid I’ll have to increase fees on the serving end.”
So she did want us to have sex for money. She didn’t want to say it outright, to put herself in jeopardy.
This was aggravating. Dahlia had made these rules to protect us against laws, against unplanned pregnancies, against weird situations with club members. Mama had ignored those rules, and she had ended up pregnant and on a five-year penalty with janitorial work. And now Dahlia wanted to make us do it, to pretend like it was onourown accord, in order to save her ass?
Dahlia left, and a few of the servers stayed in the lobby, finishing off the cupcakes. The rest of us headed to the dressing rooms and to our bedrooms. We needed to somehow make sense of what Dahlia had said before the club was scheduled to open for the evening.
Would ‘doing more,’ as Dahlia put it, help ease my debts, and guarantee my sister’s freedomsooner?
But it was a damn trap. It wasn’t like Dahlia was telling us to have sex for money straight up, saying that she would back us up if something happened. She was trying to be subtle about it, so she could protect herself when the worst consequences occurred.
Dahlia was like that. Always telling us that you couldn’t call it sex-trafficking if there was no sex. To her, we were simply working off our debts. She thought of herself as a loan shark.
Except for the fact that she was worse. For most of us, everything we owned belonged to her. If we tried to abandon her, we would pay with ours and our family’s lives. But if we were grateful, if we worked hard enough, we could have freedom too, for the price of working here until we were no longer profitable, or until our children were forced to do the same. Until our little sisters were roped into the same fate.
“The club must not be doing well,” Teagen said to Iris. She shook her brown hair out of her eyes. “Think about it. If Dahlia is asking us to literally become sex workers now, then that means she’s our madam, and she can’t afford whatever bills are coming to the club these days.”
“I think it has something to do with the local mob,” Iris said. “She mentioned something about protection fees once. I don’t know. But I’m not going to do anything like that. She can’t make me.”
Rumors passed between two friends. How much of what they said was true? What did it mean if the one person who was supposed to protect you in this strange life, suddenly threw you into a dangerous situation?
Would it be dangerous with Lucas, a man I trusted?
