What to Read After FSOG: The Gemstone Collection (WTRAFSOG Book 8)

by Sabrina York

  My favorite dance shoes are half-soled sandals, about as close to barefoot as one can get. I can feel the tiling under my toes, cool beneath my heels, but spin without friction, thanks to the leather on the pad of my foot. The range of motion is about as good as it gets, and the customers respond better to them than to ballet slippers, because there’s still a kind of intimacy attached to seeing a woman’s bare toes.

  Those slippers have become my signature. Any regular looking for me only has to ask for ‘the barefoot girl.’ I suspect that’s at the root of Marina’s virulent dislike of them. One day, she’ll pick one fight too many with me when a manager’s having a bad day, and the Queen of Clubs will let me go. But until then, we’ll have this same old argument.

  “I’m telling you, it’s not sanitary. I have to put my mostly bare ass on a tip rail she’s drug her feet over.” Even angry, Marina is beautiful. To me, it’s academic. Beauty is in power, and I’ve never seen anything powerful in her surgically refined figure. I’ve never understood the beauty that people see in girls like Marina, since I grew up surrounded by beauty in the clean extension of a leg, or the hard musculature developed from dancing adagio. The two concepts seem like they shouldn’t apply to the same word.

  And there’s something in the color of her eyes that reminds me of a girl I went to school with, who called me ‘chicken legs’ and started a rumor claiming I was anorexic. I’m good at putting my ego to the side, and I usually avoid the girls’ drama, but Marina has always tried her hardest to push my buttons.

  “I have to put my feet on the same counter that you and every other girl has had their bare ass on, that customers set their food on, that they put money covered in fecal matter on, and that girls step on with shoes that have walked on the exact same carpet as my feet. I guarantee you my feet are cleaner than everything else that touches that thing. Besides,” I turned to Kitty, “you know I filed my medical paperwork here already. These shoes are a perfectly acceptable doctor-recommended alternative to frankly dangerous heels that are linked to a million kinds of back and joint injury, even in people without my medical history.”

  Kitty sighed. I knew she was sympathetic to Marina, but hated being put on the spot. And no matter who’s right in the end, she’d bear the brunt of any decision made. So she had to resent both of us.

  “If you can’t do the fucking work, don’t take the fucking job. If you’re too injured to wear heels like a normal stripper, why the fuck are you here? It makes the whole club look bad.” I ignored Marina and resumed talking to Kitty.

  I flexed my feet against each other, enjoying the pull of metatarsals unbound to a rigid sole.

  “Are these shoes a work uniform? If they are, then I am entitled to reasonable medical exemptions that you are legally required to accommodate. And if they aren’t, then the club can’t tell me to wear them. And in either case, I am an independent contractor, not an employee. Unless you want to claim strippers are employees, but we all know that there’s no way they want to buy every girl here insurance or offer a wage.” Kitty’s mouth snapped shut. She knew she was in far over her head, but even the threat of letting my arguments play out in court—the owners would skin her alive, if that situation happened on her shift…

  There was a reason I attacked Kitty instead of Marina. If this was girl-on-girl, I’d lose. If this was OSHA-bait, they couldn’t or wouldn’t argue. I had no clue how much was whether I was right, not being a lawyer or legislator, and how much was them not wanting to chance being wrong. And while I was curious whether Marina was a hairpuller, I didn’t actually want to find out because of my own tactlessness.

  “Can you fucking believe this shit?” Marina asked Kitty.

  “Go for it,” I told her. “I bet minimum wage would be so much better than what you bring in on your own when you just play nice.” It was a widely acknowledged fact that the same legal classification that meant we had no job security, minimum wage, and no employer-provided benefits was also for our protection. We could make far more paying a house fee to perform while keeping the profits than we could as salaried entertainers.

  But if you read the laws, there was a strong argument to be made that any club that demanded performers follow a dress code and submit a schedule ahead of time was exerting a level of control only granted to employers—and thus, they could end up on the hook for the legality of their dancers’ conduct, as well as their medical expenses, wages, and benefits. No clue whether the argument would actually pass legal muster, should it come to that, but it would be a hard and expensive fight. And I had less to lose than they did.

  As much as I wanted to hurt Marina, take out some badly pent-up frustration, I knew this was the most effective way to do it.

  I smiled at Marina, as close to a shark’s grin as I could manage. Kitty stayed silent; I knew I had this, that there was no way she would risk me bringing this kind of shitstorm on them over a pair of shoes. And if or when they did want to play hardball, I’d dredge up every labor violation I could find, from the cracked and leaky concrete in the dressing room, to the almost perpetually out-of-order bathroom that meant at least once a week a dancer peed in the trash can in the dressing room, to the conduct the club turned a blind eye toward, in the back rooms. Kitty’s brow tightened, and she drew a deep breath. She flashed a placating smile at me, and I knew I’d won.

  Marina knew it too. “You can’t be serious. She’s bluffing. She’s a spoiled bitch who uses an old injury as a crutch, and then beats you over the head with it when you think she’s helpless. What do you wanna bet she Nancy Karriganed her own knee!”

  Kitty glared. “Enough, Jackie. You know damn well this isn’t something I can back you up on. And that personal attack was just over the line. Kalani, what’s your schedule?”

  I thought. “Monday, Tuesday; day-shift. Thursday, Friday, Saturday; nights.”

  Kitty wrote that down. “I’m leaving a note for the other managers. Jackie, you are not to work any of those shifts. If you want to submit a schedule like the rest of them, we’ll split the difference, but since you prefer not to schedule ahead, you have to work around the days she has already committed to.” She turned to me. “Kalani, you are not to work any shifts other than these. I don’t want to hear you two got in a catfight on your off-day.” Kitty only used our real names when she was cracking the managerial whip. I couldn’t resist sending a mocking smile Marina’s way.

  Not being allowed to work the weekend night shifts would hit her hard, since our patrons responded better to fast-paced hustles like hers when the club was full—namely, on those nights. With any luck, this would put her off starting the argument again for a good long while, even when she returned from her next out-of-town gig.

  “I swear to fucking God, in Vegas, they’d never allow this shit,” Marina growled as she walked away. Despite her tone and volume, she smiled enticingly at every man not in earshot.

  “And Kalani, I’m getting tired of moderating these little talks. What are you doing to antagonize her?” Kitty’s eyes were weary.

  “Way to blame the victim. I avoid her, I swear.” Kitty sighed, and turned away. No way I was going to admit to her that at every opportunity, when the dressing room was empty, I put my slipper-clad feet up on the dressing room counter, near Marina’s suitcase. It was petty, but it made me feel there was something in my life worth defending.

  I tried to tune Marina out for the rest of the shift. It might have been easier if the club was busier. And she definitely was sabotaging me, making beelines for tables I was working. So I focused on my stage performance. No point in poking that particular tiger again.

  Halfway through my next stage set, a group came in. I took stock of them from the stage, but concluded that they weren’t likely to bite. There were already girls descending on them. Two of them sat at the tip rail, and the others started looking for seats near them.

  Against common courtesy, Marina sat next to them, at the rail. As the stage was primarily advertisement, the mostly unspo
ken rule was that a dancer should never ‘steal’ another dancer’s customers from the tip rail. If a customer asked you to sit there and tipped for you, you could enjoy the company, and work him when he chose to leave the tip rail. But sitting at the tip rail to work a customer who hadn’t expressly asked you to be there, especially without tipping, was considered a slap in the face to the dancer onstage.

  I’d seen catfights start over less. I contemplated ‘accidentally’ spilling one of the men’s beers into Marina’s lap. But if I took the high road, ignored the lot, and complained to Kitty later, she was more likely to take Marina to task for it than if I escalated the drama.

  I avoided that part of the stage as much as possible, despite their tips. Marina wouldn’t likely try anything this close to a customer, but it wasn’t completely out of the question. Finally, Marina asked them to buy a dance, but left when they turned her down. Grudge or no, she was here to make money, and a few more men had just entered.

  To smooth things over with the men she’d left, I danced closer to them and smiled. One of them smiled back and put a five-dollar bill on the rail. “Wondered when you were going to make it over here,” he grinned recklessly. There was something familiar about his face, but I couldn’t place it.

  “Well, it looked like you had other entertainment. And I’ve rarely met a man whose,” I glanced downward flirtatiously, “kitchen had room for that many cooks.”

  He laughed. “Hon, you ain’t met me!” I laughed with him. He put another five down and held out his hand. “James.” I shook his hand quickly. One of his friends behind him tapped his back, and everyone at the table raised a toast to him.

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “My bachelor party.” He beamed widely, and my sense of déjà vu grew. I clapped my hands and let out a little whoop for him.

  “Congratulations!” I leaned over to his buddy and said, as quietly as I could, “If you tip the DJ and whichever girl you’d like, he’ll send your friend out of the single life in style, get him onstage with her and all.”

  The second man put down a twenty for me. “Thanks for the tip. Sounds like a show.”

  James heard him and put two and two together. “Aww, thanks, dick. You selling me out? You know I didn’t want anything major…”

  The other man clapped James on the back. “Not your choice today, asshole, not your choice today.” I laughed and winked at the bachelor. “So who’ll give us the best show?”

  I turned away from James, arched my face into his friend’s neck to speak. “Krissy has a great trick she saves for birthdays and bachelors: lighting her nipples on fire. She and Tori are both beltwhippers, too. That’s always a laugh. Tori’s got a nasty mouth on her, if you want to humiliate him a little. How much do you want to piss him off?” I pulled back and grinned.

  “You got any tricks?” He raised an eyebrow. I winked at him, but bachelor parties had never been my thing.

  “Oh, honey,” I leaned in close. “My best shows aren’t onstage.” Another friend tapped him on the shoulder, and I looked up.

  Now I realized why that bachelor looked so familiar, with his brother staring me in the face.

  “Lani?”

  I fled the stage.

  I ignored the DJ’s tentative calls of “Malia to the stage. Malia, to the stage.”

  I was halfway through packing my bag when Kitty came to look for me, swearing profusely. “What the everloving fuck was that? You can’t just leave in the middle of your set. You’re on thin fucking ice, here.”

  “Listen, Kit. I know some of those guys.”

  “So? We all know someone here, at some point. Get the fuck back out there, Kalani.”

  I pleaded with her. “I know some of those guys. I have to go.”

  “No, you don’t. You have to get the fuck back out there.” I hated myself for shaking. Kitty’s word was law, and I’d already demanded she stick out her neck enough for one day.

  “Please, can I go after my set?”

  “No, you can’t. Get the fuck back out there.”

  I set my jaw and returned to the stage. I hurried to the far end and talked to the DJ. “Sorry, feminine emergency.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that why you girls are supposed to do the tampon string checks before you get up there?”

  I tried to smile, but it came out wan and lifeless. He didn’t notice—it wasn’t especially his job to.

  He cued up the mic. “Thank you, Malia. Malia, for two of two, everyone. Tip this girl while she’s up there.” I wanted to swear at him for calling so much attention to me.

  The bachelor party had left the tip rail and congregated entirely at the table, though I was relieved to note that all of my tips were still cluttering the counter. If I had to be humiliated like this, at least I could spend the money on a gallon of ice cream and a bottle of booze.

  My heart raced as I attempted to remember how to work the stage. I tried to ignore my growing lightheadedness. I saw Kit watching me closely from the bar and resisted the urge to flip her off.

  The bachelor party was looking at me again, and one of them separated to approach the stage, money in hand. Kit would probably fire me on the spot if I ignored him. I tried to focus on the blinding spotlight above his head so I wouldn’t have to see his face. I prayed it wasn’t Ben.

  I reached for the money, and as his fingertips brushed mine, it evoked a memory, an opening port de bras for a performance that never made it to the stage. I shivered and convinced myself I was just looking for him, as I had in the months after I decided to cut him out of my life.

  I stood in front of my supplicant and forced myself to smile. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, and even though I couldn’t see his face, I recognized his voice. Fuck, today was not my day. Instinctively, I looked away from the light. Despite the fading halos in my vision, his face was almost as familiar to me as my own.

  Ben Meecham, my first pas de deux partner. The man my mother always thought I’d marry, for my first husband anyways. She also assumed I’d have several, like a studio-era movie star.

  He looked uncertain whether to offer me more money or not—how do you react when you find out your first love’s a stripper, anyways? But in the end, club etiquette won out, and he held a few bills out. I didn’t look to see how big. I didn’t reach for them.

  His blue-gray eyes cut into me, focused as if he was tuning out the venue lights so he wouldn’t topple offstage. But the danger here wasn’t targeting him. Only me.

  I glared at him. He had to be rubbing this in. Then the song ended, and I started to gather the bills scattered around the stage. I turned my back on him, threw my dress on over my head, and fled the stage again.

  Kitty could forbid me from leaving, but she couldn’t force me to work the floor. I sat in the dressing room, and even garnered a choice glare from Marina when she came back to change outfits. Two, then three, then four other girls interrupted me from my fugue, passing on the message that one of the men out there had paid them to ask me to come see him. I put my head in my arms and cried.

  There was no way I could face Ben like this. We grew up together, trained together, performed together. Working twelve hours a day or more, you don’t really have time to make friends or root relationships, except with your companions on that double-helping of heaven and hell. And if there was one thing I knew about him, it was that he wouldn’t give up until he’d said his piece. Ben was stubborn, generally the good kind of stubborn—at least where it concerned the sorts of teasing and hostility that male dancers (especially straight male dancers even at a professional level) tend to face.

  The last time I’d seen him was when he drove me to the emergency room and sat with me through a battery of x-rays and tests on my leg. I clutched his arm hard enough to bruise when the doctor told me that returning to the company was out of the question. And then I screamed at him to get out and tried to throw the pillow on the exam bed at him. I ignored his calls, hid under my sheets while
he knocked, begged me to talk to him through my door, and eventually swore at me for not answering. A few months after he stopped coming back, I broke my lease, since I could no longer afford the rent.

  I struggled to clean myself up, replace the eyeliner I’d cried away, and prayed my reddened eyes wouldn’t call attention to themselves. I took a deep breath, and left the dressing room.

  Ben was standing as close to the dressing room door as he could. Really, the door was just past the entry to a ‘staff only’ hall, so he wasn’t too far off. I didn’t get a moment to prepare myself, because he had plainly been waiting for me. I tried to glare at him. “If I wanted to talk to you, we would be talking. Your brother is waiting for you.” I didn’t know James all that well—really, I hadn’t seen him since several years before Ben and I moved out of state to join the same ballet company. But I did feel bad that his bachelor party was being hijacked so spectacularly. I’d seen enough giddy bachelors in here to want to keep that bit of debauchery pure.

  The other men at their table kept shooting glances and glares Ben’s way, but he didn’t look back even once. He focused on me, and the force of it made me simultaneously want to die of shame on the spot and distract him from whatever thoughts were churning beneath the surface.

  I split the difference.

  I tried to retreat into the dressing room, but he caught my arm. “Please, Lani. I thought you were—I don’t know what I thought. Your mom wouldn’t give me any information on you, your phone was dead, and a few of the other corps members, they said you had… I’m just glad to see you’re alive.”

  I gritted my teeth at his implication. Was that really what they said about me? He noticed I was shaking and stroked my arm, the way he always had when he knew I was on the edge of snapping at a choreographer during dress rehearsal. The familiarity should have comforted me, was likely meant to, but here it only subjected me to a sense of betrayal. “I told her not to. I told her that I would never be able to move on from ballet if I had to watch others who could still perform.” That was back when I still had a degree of hope that there might be something left for me.