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“Sure thing.”
I wanted to shout, I’ll do anything, let’s get this over with, but I held my tongue. It was a new thing I was working on, this whole ‘being quiet’ business.
She pivoted back around, apparently satisfied with my answer, and escorted me the final few meters into the theater proper.
Only, it wasn’t much of a theater anymore. Now, it was a fully rigged strip club. Twenty-foot poles stretched to the ceiling, and if I squinted, I could see the loaded black boxes near the top which would pop open if some patron pressed the “make it rain” button at their VIP table. The button would activate the boxes, which in turn would drop some ten thousand dollars on any given dancer.
At a glance, I estimated there were approximately thirty bottle service tables, plus standing room on the second floor and near the tip rail itself. This show must’ve made Dazzlers serious money. I could only imagine how high the house cut was.
“Okay,” the woman said. “Take off the coat, let’s see the costume.”
I turned redder than my hair. “It fits fine.”
“While that may be, I’ll still need to see it.”
As I reached with reluctance for my coat’s belt, I felt like I was in the show, peeling off pieces of my costume for the hungry eyes of onlookers. I wondered if this stranger could see the inexperience written all over my limbs and facial features.
I haven’t mentioned this until now because it wasn’t pertinent, but I guess you oughta know — technically, I’m like, kind of a virgin. Or, um, just a virgin, period. I know, I know, it seems like bullshit, I get that. Vegas girl, cocktail waitress, twenty-one… trust me, I understand how weird it sounds. And I totally support other women who have sex, and who get paid to have sex, but it’s just… I haven’t.
It didn’t start out because of some political stance, like I wasn’t trying to wait until marriage. It was one of those things that kind of quietly occurred in the background, growing and bubbling without much notice. I’d just never had a serious relationship or the time. As I got older, my virgin status became more pronounced in my own mind, like it was looming over me, an ever-swinging axe. Now, if I’m being honest, I think the only reason I haven’t swiped my V-card is that I’m embarrassed about my lack of experience. Like come on, who in this town is a virgin at twenty-one? Hell, who’s a virgin at fifteen?
I let the trench coat drop down to my wrists, revealing my barely covered body to the FOH manager. Her eyes squinted, trailing across my breasts and hips. Could she read my prudishness? Was it that obvious? I felt a tremor rise through my fingertips.
“Fine,” she said at last. “You’ll do. Leave your coat in the back. The other girls will divide up sections with you and go over the lay of the land. Don’t come to me unless there’s a crisis, and there better not be one.”
She waved a hand vaguely towards what I took to be the backstage area, then waltzed away like she had been bored of me from the moment I’d entered.
Well, there was nothing to do but follow orders. I marched in the direction she’d pointed and sure enough, past an enormous bar that would’ve required at least five bartenders at any given time, I saw a small service door. From its depths came the sound of high-pitched voices, chattering over one another and the occasional underscored curse word.
“Fuck you, Tate,” I whispered under my breath, and then walked inside.
I was met by a cacophony of young women, each more gorgeous than the next. These must be the strippers, I thought. Who else has muscle that taut? But then, upon second glance, I realized they were all wearing some iteration of the same red underthings I had on. Shit — these were my fellow waitresses. Since when were cocktail servers meant to look like Victoria’s Secret models? I covered my body reflexively, feeling altogether too ugly to be amongst this group.
And I didn’t recognize any of them to boot. Prior to this, I thought I knew every waitress in Dazzlers, but evidently, they’d been keeping the really pretty ones locked up in the theater auditoriums. That figured — give the hot girls less ground to cover in a shift so they developed wrinkles slower than the rest of us. I tried to stifle some mounting resentment, but upon glimpsing one girl’s obscenely tight ass, I quickly gave up the fight and let the annoyance take over.
“I’m Kiki,” I said in a monotone voice. “I’m supposed to work a shift tonight.”
They all glanced in my direction, but nobody responded.
After a painfully long beat, one waitress turned in my direction with a sunny smile. Turns out, it was the one with the great butt, who I’d kind of been wishing a plague upon only moments ago.
