“Oh, by the way, you know that guy who’s hung up on you. The Hedge Funder? He slipped me a few bills to let him know when you’d be in again. Should I?”
Cornelia smiled. One of her harmless regulars.
“Sure. Earn your money…”
“Any good books I should read?” Pete continued. He’d noticed early in her sessions here that she spent her spare time backstage reading, and was always happy to talk about the books. He’d thoroughly enjoyed her recommendations.
Cornelia was about to reel off a list of good reads she thought he would enjoy when the dancer who’d been occupying the stage stormed past them on her way to the dressing room. Her tape came to an end. Pete quickly pressed a button, and the muted sounds of a big band tune hit the speakers, the customary transitional music the club played between acts.
“Later,” Cornelia said. “My turn.”
She moved away from the cabin and crossed behind the curtain to the other side of the small stage where she would be making her entrance.
The music began.
A melancholy piano.
Darkness. Then a lone spotlight exploded, harshly revealing her standing motionless on centre stage. Pale skin. Black leather. Blonde hair. Muted red lipstick.
Cornelia drew her breath, lazily extended her arms, reaching, stretching, her hands fluttered to the sound of the bass now underpinning the melody. The rest of her body remained frozen. The tinkling of glasses at the bar or at the scattered tables stopped; isolated conversations ceased.
A distant keyboard, organ or harmonium — the P.A. system was muddy and did the music no justice- quivered in the melody’s background and Cornelia’s head began to sway gently from one side to the other as the wall of sound began to grow in size and emotion. As if a statue was awakening from a thousand-year slumber. One hand grazed the translucent wrap that barely covered the top half of her body, and the thin material caught the light and shimmered. Her long, unending legs began undulating like a vertical tide from the stage upwards, ripples of movement moving towards her midriff.
Cornelia bends her knees, her body rotates on the high heels and her regal arse tightly constrained by the leather bottom is now facing the onlookers. She bends, offering the spectators a full view of her rump’s curve. A steel guitar pierces the serenity of the dance and she straightens and pivots several times on her axis, her whole body now coming to life, tremors rippling between the white skin, the tautness of her stomach, the hard hills of her breasts laced within the black leather bustier.
She knows every eye in the room is on her. She closes her own eyes and accelerates her swaying, her dancing, her seduction.
One hand on the metal pole, she skips a figure of eight around it, head falling backwards, medusa hair swinging down between her shoulder bones, brushing against the small of her back, leg extended in front of her, a perfect horizontal line criss-crossing the metal pole. The rest of the music fades as she floats along on its melody and once again just the piano can be heard, dragging the tune onwards, lonely, sad, languorous, towards its inevitable lingering conclusion.
Her movements around the pole slow down until once again she stands motionless and someone in the audience rudely yelps. Within seconds, the music resumes, a new tune with heaving rhythms and relentless percussion unleashed. Cornelia nervously pulls the transparent, gauzy wrap away from her body, revealing the full domino visual effect of black and white, skin and leather, in all its glory, scattering the thin piece of material in her wake as she kicks a leg up and races across the stage and the abandoned wrap floats down towards the dusty dance floor.
Her body, all sinews now electrified and in the right gear, shakes and sways and glides like a whirlpool of movement, graceful, enticing, provocative. Cornelia opens her eyes again. Recalls her waltzing hand and without missing a step or a single planned tremor begins to pull the cord lacing the bustier across her front. The thin, black leather string effortlessly slithers back in her finger and soon the bustier gapes open, barely held up by her small, firm breasts. A skip, a jump and hey presto the bustier falls to the ground, but she is now with her back to the sparse audience, cupping her breasts in her hand as she bends again and offers them a final view of her arse in its black leather sheath, flesh far from invisible, perceived but still shielded from their hungry gaze, straining against the material.
One brief moment, the melody all but drowned in dissonance and reverb before the next bridge in the music intervenes and it flows, launches again in full flight, Cornelia’s wandering mind alights on a fleeting memory: Paris. The swing club and its ornate chandeliers, the young Italian girl and the line of imperceptible hair fluff descending like an arrow between her belly button and her genitalia, the look in Giulia’s eyes, but it’s all a confused blur of movement and she returns to the present, and, now on automatic pilot, goes through the rest of her routine through a veil of indifference, exposing her pale breasts in full view now and, after a final change of tune, dives into her finale, with the right amount of flexing, bending, teasing and outright exposure, until all that is left of the leather two-piece is on the stage floor and she is fully visible, cunt unveiled, bare, as one final time she reverts to being a statue, motionless, legs apart, stance proud and upright, eyes piercing the darkness of the room, daring the punters to comment or even applaud, her jungle of blonde curls bathed in the sunlight of the lone spotlight like a basket of snakes, smoking, fierce, untamed. And then the light holding her captive at the very centre of the stage is switched off and it is dark night again. She keeps on standing there a while, a few shy claps in the audience, the sound of glasses clinking, being refilled, and that awful music they always put on in the intervals between the dancers.
Unseen, she moved off the stage and made her way towards the changing room, brushing against a Latina girl in a slutty outfit making her way towards the stage in their relay race of stripping and teasing.
She badly needed a shower again.
She’d been sweating more than usual. Maybe it was the jet lag? Couldn’t really wait until she got back to Washington Square. She couldn’t stand the feel of it much longer, had to wash it off right now.
Dried off a quarter of an hour later, she was about to dress into her civilian clothes again, when the crimson lights above the changing room door lit up. She was the only dancer there right then, so it must be for her. A lap dance request. Not her favourite game.
She set her jeans back on the chair and grabbed her work outfit again.
It was her hedge funder. Her current greatest fan. They came, they went. Never meant too much to Cornelia. He’d certainly made good time getting here after being advised of her presence, she reckoned.
“Hi,” he greeted her, with a large smile on his face.
“Hello,” Cornelia walked into the small private cubicle. He was already sitting on the settee, his legs apart, jacket off. He was wearing totally uncreased black corduroy trousers which had probably never been worn before and his customary starched white shirt. His idea, no doubt, of leisure attire in the rush to reach the gentleman’s club from his downtown condo.
A fifty-dollar bill had been placed on the worn green settee’s corner. He knew the routine. He’d been visiting her over six months already; had probably spent most of a thousand bucks on lap dances with her in that space of time.
“How are you? Been on vacation? Anywhere nice?” he asked.
“Nowhere special,” Cornelia replied, stepping towards him and positioning herself above his knees, ready to straddle him.
She unhooked her top. Leaned in towards the middle-aged guy, catching a whiff of his deodorant, or was it after shave, observing with detachment how his sandy hair was perfectly sculpted and trimmed.
“Music?”
“No need,” he said. Strains of the music playing onstage a few curtains away were leaking through all the way to the cubicle anyway.
“A silent lap dance, eh?” Cornelia said.
“The best,” he remarked. His ey
es alighting on her pink nipples now almost grazing the crisp material of his shirt as she leaned forward, barely making actual contact with him. He took a deep breath. Cornelia was now sitting on his knees and to an unheard rhythm began grinding her arse against his thighs, shifting her weight from one thigh to the other with metronomic regularity, balancing, slipping and sliding. In an instant he was visibly hard. Her head fell towards him, and her jungle curls fell across his forehead, caressing him, whipping him gently. The hedge funder threw his head back and his chest heaved, the white shirt momentarily wiping against her jutting nipples.
Three minutes can sometimes feel like a wilderness of eternity.
Cornelia never offered any extras. Just a basic lap dance. No frottage. No unzipping the punter’s trousers and helping him manually to climax. No lips or mouth on his cock, let alone his face or any other part of the man’s anatomy. She had explained the rules the first time he’d called for her after her show. Naturally, on the initial occasions, he had suggested more, offered more cash, but she was not prepared to change her rules. For him or anyone else. She had made that clear.
The allotted time ran out. Cornelia began to rise.
“No. Stay,” he asked, his hand extending to the jacket draped across the other side of the settee and pulling out a further bank note.
“It’s your money,” Cornelia remarked and began to grind into him again.
“No need for that,” he said. “Just talk…”
Again. He always wanted to talk. But Cornelia was not into conversation. This was a job, that was all. She felt no need for bonding or extraneous manifestations of friendship. Just keep it professional.
“Fine,” she agreed. Still sitting on his knees, his bones now pressing hard into her flesh. Tiredness rushed across her body. Maybe it had been a bad idea to come and work so quickly after the transatlantic flight.
“You never say much, do you?”
“That’s not what I’m here for, is it?” Cornelia replied.
“I realise that, but… it would be nice to know something about you, wouldn’t it? After all, you seem intelligent… and with all due respect, not like your average sort of lap dancer…”
“So, I’m articulate and I can spell and I don’t have a Bronx accent… Does it make me any sexier?” Cornelia asked her customer.
“Absolutely,” the hedge funder said, with a soft chuckle. “And you have a sense of humour, to boot…”
“Thank you, kind sir.”
His tone changed. His eyes looking darkly into hers.
“Listen, you’re fucking beautiful but I just don’t understand why you do this… as much as I enjoy seeing you strip and these private sessions, you could do so much better for yourself… really… I don’t know what brought you here but if I can help you…”
Cornelia sharply interrupted his hurried flow.
“YOU listen. This is what I do. This is want I want to do. I won’t give you a sob story about my journey to get here. There was no journey. I didn’t grow up disadvantaged, I wasn’t abused or abandoned on some sidewalk bereft of everything following a wounding affair of the heart. I have no bad luck story to bore you with or gain your sympathy or your pity at that…”
Her head drew back and Cornelia straightened. On the P.A. across the room, on the stage where another girl was now performing, they could recognise the strains of Springsteen’s Born in the USA.
The man opened his mouth wide, as if to protest against her tirade.
Cornelia continued.
“Look, I don’t wish to be saved. I’m not drowning, just dancing. Because I like it, because it’s what my body is good at and if the pleasure I provide is worth a few bucks all the better.
Why is it so many of you men always want to invent some complicated story full of sound and fury to explain why we shake our butts on a badly-lit stage exposing our bodies to all and sundry. I’m not on drugs, I’m not a single mother and I know what my personal vices are and can happily live with them, thank you. And the very last thing I’m seeking is some Wall Street prince to ride in and save me from the gutter. There is no story to tell and no cry for help in my darkness. I don’t need the questions, or the pity. Just try and understand that and we’ll get on fine and I’ll keep on showing you my tits or spreading my legs for your delectation and private fantasies. It doesn’t come free of course, but you know that already, and beyond that I’m not for sale.”
Her punter was now fully silenced.
Cornelia glanced at the man-sized watch on her wrist.
“So, you still want to know the reason I’m a stripper?” she asked him provocatively.
Puzzled, he said “Yes.”
“I do this because I collect books,” Cornelia said. “And now your time is up. I have to leave now. See you.”
She rose from the couch and still proudly topless swiftly stormed out of the narrow lap dancing area and made her way back to the artists’ changing room. She was laughing inside from the dazed look on the man’s face, his lips pursed like a fish’s mouth. Because for once she had actually told him the truth. Well, maybe a half truth: the dancing and stripping paid for the basic bills, but her freelance contract killing did actually pay for the rare books she liked to collect. As vices went, she could think of much worse.
The weather was still mild for the time of year and Cornelia decided to walk home, rather than take a cab. She needed the fresh air to clear the fog of her jet lag. She meandered up Broadway, made a detour through Chinatown and then reached Houston. There was a midnight movie playing at the Angelika, but she decided against it. Somehow she was not in the mood right now for an indie with an emo soundtrack. There was a fifty/fifty chance she would fall asleep halfway through anyway. She noted the film would still be playing for the next few days. There was no rush.
A nagging feeling of unease had settled on her mind.
The Greenwich Village comedy clubs and bars disgorged their hordes onto the quietly lit streets as she made her way North. Bleecker Street. Thompson. Sullivan and finally the shores of the darkened park.
The cell phone she had abandoned still sat on the table. It vibrated, then buzzed. Cornelia first ignored its insistent sound and moved over to the kitchen, took a sip of apple juice from the half empty carton in the fridge and then finally picked the phone up. There were six messages waiting. She held it to her ear.
“Hello.”
“Where the fuck have you been?”
“Here and there,” she said.
It was Ivan. She didn’t think she’d ever heard him swear at her before.
“Don’t you pick up your messages?” he asked.
“I’d left the phone at home and gone for a walk.”
“Damn, woman, you should have been in touch with me the moment you landed at Kennedy. Reported back.”
“Sorry. I was tired. Didn’t think. I would have called you in the morning.”
“Very unlike you.”
“So, sue me…”
“Cornelia, you’ve fucked up.”
“Have I?”
He snorted on the other end of the line.
“How?” But Cornelia knew. She’d broken one of the basic rules. Leave no witnesses.
“You know very well what you’ve done, girl. I’m disappointed with you, really.”
It had been barely 24 hours since the hit. How could they have known? Was there someone else at the Paris club, observing, checking matters out?
“Why did you spare the other woman?” Ivan continued. “You know it’s not on. And don’t go telling me you took pity on her. There’s no place for sentiment in this business. You of all people know that.”
“It just happened, Ivan.”
“Well, the shit has hit the fan, my dear.”
“Let me guess: the doorman reported back?”
“No matter how it happened, Cornelia. I’m having bad pressure applied. The customers are furious…”
“Even if the girl talks, to the French police or whoever,” Co
rnelia protested. “Worst possible case, all she can do is describe me. There is no open connection to you or your principals.”
“That’s not the way they see it, I’m afraid,” Ivan said.
“I’m sorry, Ivan. I’ve let you down. I’ll forego the payment and reimburse the expenses. And the cost of the Sig Sauer, which right now is at the bottom of the Seine. It was disposed of soon after the job, I threw it from a bridge. It won’t be found.”
“That’s just not good enough.”
“So?”
“Not only did you let the girl go, but she is thought to have then taken some documents from the hit’s apartment. She has to be found.”
“Me?”
“You’re the only one who really knows what she looks like. She hadn’t been introduced yet to the man’s associates, so apart from the doorman at the club who only caught a quick glimpse of her, no one else can now recognise her.”
“Oh, Ivan…” she began to plead.
“Go back. Eliminate her.”
“A tall order…” Cornelia said.
“You’ve always been resourceful. Anyway, you have no choice. You messed it up and I’ve been instructed to the effect that if the young girl is not found and those documents retrieved within ten days at most, it’s you who might have to pay the price. I’m sorry.”
“Who are these principals of yours?”
“You know I can’t tell you that, even more so in the present circumstances.”
“It would help to know a little. Might explain who she is and where I should be looking out for her…”
“I don’t even know that, Cornelia, you realise. And there is no way I can ask. You know how it works: every link in the chain must remain just a voice on the phone …”
“And right now I’m the link that sticks out like a sore thumb…”
“Yes.”
“Damn.”
“I’d hate to lose you, Cornelia. I’ve always liked you and you’re good at the job. Quirky but efficient. I’m still surprised you could have made such an elementary mistake, what with all the experience you have.”
I Was Waiting for You Page 6