by Bec Linder
Good grief. Still muttering darkly, and stark naked, I crouched down to see what he’d gotten for me.
It wasn’t actually that bad. I’d been afraid of a tweed skirt suit or something, like an old lady would wear, but it was just a sundress, with sleeves that went down to the elbow and a scooped neck. And a pair of leather sandals, to replace my flip-flops.
“How did you know my size?” I asked, suspicious, and then realized the answer: he had looked at the labels on my clothes, of course. “Never mind. Dumb question. You know everything about me, right?”
“Hardly,” he said. He folded the paper and set it aside. “Sassy. I should apologize. I didn’t realize that you were so… attached to your clothing.”
I sat back on my heels and looked up at him. He looked genuinely sorry, and it occurred to me that maybe he’d been trying to do something nice. He’d gone out—or had someone go out for him, probably; I had a hard time imagining Turner shopping for clothes—and bought me a pretty dress that he thought I would like. So, still weird and infuriating, but my mom always told me that people’s intentions were what mattered. Okay. I could be gracious. “I’m still mad at you for throwing out my t-shirt, but the dress is nice. So thanks.”
He cleared his throat. “You’re welcome.”
“So where’s my coffee?” I asked him.
He at least had the courtesy to look ashamed of himself. “I wasn’t sure what time you would be up.”
“You need to upgrade your life,” I said. “You’ve got this kick-ass apartment with nothing in it, and you don’t even have coffee. Do you really go out every single morning and buy coffee? You don’t even have a television! Nobody lives like this.”
“I do,” he said. “It’s time for me to head to work, Sassy, which means it’s time for you to go home. I’ll give you cab fare.”
“Sure, just one question,” I said. “Did you throw out my underpants?”
The look on his face told me that he totally had.
“That’s cool,” I said. “I don’t mind freeballing.”
“Free—but you don’t…” He trailed off. “Never mind. I’m not engaging in this conversation. Take my money and get out of my house.”
I grinned, and took the shopping bag off to the bedroom to get dressed. I had definitely won that round.
* * *
Yolanda had left for work by the time I got home. As much as I liked living with her, there was something really nice about coming home to an empty apartment, and an entire empty day with nothing I needed to do. Turner hadn’t said anything about seeing me again that night, so maybe I would actually be able to keep my promise to Yolanda and go out for dinner with her.
I had a ton of things I needed to get done: grocery shopping, cleaning, yoga, playing with Teddy. But first: coffee.
I let Teddy out of his cage and fed him while the coffee was brewing. When the coffee pot stopped gurgling, I left Teddy perched on the kitchen counter happily ripping apart an apple and sat down with my laptop to finally satisfy my curiosity.
Alex Turner, I typed into the search engine, and then frowned at the results that came up. Apparently he was an English musician. I found that hard to believe, unless he was leading some kind of transatlantic double life. I tried Alex Turner New York, and that gave me more of the English musician guy, and also stuff about some football player. I found it hard to believe that someone like Turner had no internet presence whatsoever, but maybe it went along with his whole “dark and mysterious” shtick.
Well, whatever. I probably wouldn’t find anything very interesting anyway. Some boring corporate profile. Alexander Turner, CEO, CPR, QFC, has made many strippers cry and driven at least five competitors out of business. Five didn’t sound like enough. Ten? Fifteen? For all I knew, he owned every gentlemen’s club in the city.
I sent Scarlet a text message. Won’t be at work for the next month. Everything’s fine, see you in August.
She wrote back a few minutes later: ??????
I didn’t respond. I wasn’t sure what to say, and I didn’t want to do it by text anyway. Maybe I would drop by the club soon and talk to her in person. Turner had only said I couldn’t work at the club, not that I couldn’t be there. Loopholes.
I spent the day running errands and fussing over Teddy. I knew I didn’t give him as much attention as he wanted and deserved, and I felt guilty about it, so I tried to make up for it whenever I had a day off. He still seemed pretty well-adjusted, though, so I tried not to worry about it too much. I had a feeling that Yolanda played with him a lot in the evenings when I wasn’t home, even though they both pretended that they barely got along.
Yolanda got home from work around 6. I heard her coming up the stairs, and then the sound of her key in the lock. Teddy waddled along the back of the sofa and shouted, “Hi Teddy! You feathery jerk!”
I cracked up. I was laughing when Yolanda came in the door, and she stopped and gave me a narrow-eyed look, keys still in her hand. “What’s so funny?”
“Teddy just greeted you,” I said. “You don’t call him a feathery jerk every time you get home, do you?”
“Not every time,” she said. “I forgot you were home today. What else has that bird told you?”
“Everything,” I said. “All of your secrets. Do you still want to go out for dinner?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I need a drink first, though. And I want to change. You’ll make me a drink, right?” She shot me a pleading look.
I rolled my eyes and got off the couch. “What do you want? Vodka and Coke?”
“Yes please!” she called, heading down the hallway toward her room.
I got everything out of the fridge and poured Yolanda a generous helping of vodka. As soon as I opened the soda bottle, Teddy clicked his beak and said, “Teddy wants a drink!”
“This is a grownup drink,” I said. “Teddy can have water and fruit juice.”
I heard Yolanda’s footsteps coming back down the hall. “Don’t give that bird any caffeine or he’ll be even more impossible to deal with,” she said.
“You must think I’m crazy,” I said, turning to hand her the drink. She’d changed out of her suit and into jeans and a blouse. So we weren’t going anywhere too fancy for dinner, but we weren’t going to a burger joint, either. I’d have to change out of my yoga pants.
“Fruit!” Teddy said.
I sighed and told Yolanda, “I’ll feed him, and then I’ll change, and then we’ll go to dinner.”
“Fine with me,” she said. “I’m in no rush now that I’ve got my grownup drink.”
We didn’t end up leaving until close to 7. The dinner crowd was at its peak, and the streets were packed with people. We walked down 7th Avenue toward our favorite Greek place, and I basked in the warm summer evening and the sounds of people laughing and talking all around us. I liked New York, and I would miss it when I was gone; but I was still glad to be leaving.
The thought sobered me. I needed to tell Yolanda that I would be moving.
Maybe not tonight, though.
She spent the walk talking about her latest project at work. Her job sounded super boring to me, but she loved it, and I was happy to nod in the right places and ask enough questions to keep her talking. I didn’t really understand why anyone cared so much about emerging global markets or whatever, but I was glad that Yolanda kept an eye on things so I didn’t have to.
The restaurant wasn’t too busy. We got a table outside and ordered a bottle of retsina. I loved eating outdoors and people-watching. The waiter brought us pita bread and olive oil while we looked at our menus, and Yolanda finally wrapped up her story about her dumb coworker and leaned toward me, arms folded on the table. “So, what’s new with you?”
I didn’t answer right away, trying to decide how much I should tell her. I stuffed another piece of pita bread in my mouth to give myself a few moments to think.
It didn’t work. “You’re delaying,” she said. “There’s something juicy, isn’t there? You kno
w you’re going to have to tell me everything now.”
Busted. Well, I wanted to tell her. It was hard for me to keep a secret like this bottled up inside. And Germaine had only said I couldn’t talk about the specific terms of the agreement, not that I couldn’t talk about it at all. As long as I didn’t mention Turner’s name, or the money, I was probably okay. More loopholes. Turner couldn’t even get mad at me. Taking merciless advantage of loopholes was basically his entire mission in life.
“There’s a client,” I said. “At work.”
“Better and better,” Yolanda said. “Keep going.”
“Okay, well, he’s paying me to stay away from the club for the next month and just, like, dance attendance on him all the time,” I said. “It’s kind of weird, but it’s cool not having to go to work. And Germaine says I can come back after the month is up, no problem.”
“Huh,” Yolanda said. “So is he your sugar daddy now?”
“I guess so,” I said. “Whatever, it’s cool. He’s an okay guy. It should be fine.”
Yolanda was watching me closely. “You like him,” she decided. “Oh, this is good. Tell me about him.”
“I don’t like him,” I said, even though the stupid flutter in my stomach told me I was a liar. I must have been an idiot to develop a crush on Turner. He was rude, demanding, and somehow still impossibly sexy and fascinating. I wanted to know everything about him. It was so dumb.
“Sure, of course not,” Yolanda said. “Strictly business. So what’s he like?”
“He’s a jerk,” I said. “You know. Rich. Used to getting his way. It’s fine, he isn’t mean to me or anything. He’s just weird. His apartment barely has any furniture in it. He doesn’t even have any coffee.”
Yolanda clutched her chest with one hand. “No coffee?”
“I know,” I said.
The waiter interrupted us then to take our orders. When he was gone, Yolanda leaned toward me again and said, “He’s paying you a lot of money, right?”
I looked down at my water glass. “Yeah. It’s sort of—yeah.”
“That’s great, Sasha,” Yolanda said. “Really. Maybe after this you can finally quit that job, yeah?”
“Well,” I said. I sighed, and rubbed one hand over my eyes. I didn’t want to tell her yet, especially not at a restaurant. One or both of us would probably end up crying. “Maybe so. Maybe I’ll look into getting my GED, like you were talking about.”
Yolanda sat back in her chair. “You know what I think?”
“What?” I asked.
“We need to celebrate,” she said. “This is going to be a two-bottle kind of night.”
* * *
I checked my phone that night after Yolanda and I got home from the restaurant, but Turner hadn’t texted me. I’d given him my number that morning before I left his apartment, but he hadn’t told me when I should expect to hear from him. It was kind of weird knowing that he could summon me out of the blue whenever he wanted. Two hours wasn’t a whole lot of notice, but at least it showed he had some awareness that I had a life outside of entertaining him.
When I woke up in the morning, I had a message from a number I didn’t recognize.
I took a deep breath before I opened it, heart beating a little faster. Come over at 7. Bring some of your little lingerie. A
I rolled my eyes. Only assholes signed their text messages. I don’t remember your address, I replied.
He texted it to me, and then, a few seconds later, Come alone. Tell no one.
I stared at my phone, a little baffled. Was he trying to be funny? He must have been, I decided. Nobody said something like that and meant it. I wasn’t sure how to respond, though, so I just left it.
I spent another glorious, relaxing day lazing around my apartment, watching television with Teddy perched on my shoulder. Finally, at 3, I got off the couch and put on a bra and some real pants. I felt guilty about ghosting on Scarlet with no explanation, and I knew that if I didn’t go see her soon, I’d put it off until it was too late, and she would never forgive me.
So I walked to the club, sweating like a pig the whole way. I’d have to take a shower before I went over to Turner’s place. Halfway there, I realized that I should have texted Scarlet to make sure she was actually working that night. Too late now. She’d be there or she wouldn’t.
The club hadn’t opened yet by the time I arrived. Javier let me inside, and I went straight to the seraglio. Fresh Meat and Xanadu were sitting in the front room, laughing at something on Xanadu’s cell phone.
They both looked up as I came through the door. “Hey, Sassy,” Xanadu said.
Germaine hadn’t said anything to them, then. If they knew about my arrangement with Turner, or even that I wasn’t going to be working for the next month, they would be all over me like white on rice. It was fine with me if they just thought I was showing up to work like always. I didn’t want to tell them about my personal business and wouldn’t even if Turner hadn’t told me to keep my mouth shut.
“Hey,” I said. “Is Scarlet working tonight?”
Fresh Meat nodded. “She’s getting ready.”
“Thanks,” I said, and moved on to the dressing room.
Scarlet spotted me as soon as I stepped into the room. Her head whipped around and her eyes narrowed. Shit. I was really in trouble.
There was a handful of other dancers in the room, so I quickly moved toward Scarlet before she said something that would put all of them on high alert. I didn’t want the whole club knowing what I was up to. They were the worst gossips in the world, everyone from the dancers to the servers to the dishwashers. It was like living in a small town where everyone knew exactly who you were and would call up your dad the instant they caught you sneaking cigarettes behind the convenience store. Not that that had ever happened to me.
She grabbed my arm as soon as I came within grabbing distance. “What the fuck?” she snapped at me.
I shook her off. “Look, I know,” I said. “Let’s go sit at the bar and I’ll explain.”
“Yeah, you’d better,” she said, standing and tying her robe closed over her lacy bra. “I hate that mysterious text message bullshit.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know what to say.”
All of the other dancers were watching us curiously by then. So much for my efforts to fly below the radar. I didn’t totally trust Scarlet to keep a secret, but she was nosy and smart, and I knew if I didn’t tell her she would find out somehow—and then tell everyone else, just to get back at me.
We left the seraglio and went out to the bar, Scarlet teetering behind me on her stilettos. She didn’t say anything to me until we’d sat down and ordered our drinks: Coke for me, whiskey for Scarlet. She downed her shot in one gulp and slid the glass to the bartender for a refill. Then she looked at me and said, “Spill.”
“It’s a client,” I said.
“Oh, so you don’t have cancer? That’s good,” she said. “No secret babies?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not pregnant. It would take me more than a month to have a baby, anyway.”
“Well look at that, little Sassy understands the basics of human reproduction,” Scarlet said.
God, she could be really mean when she was pissed off. “You’re an asshole,” I said. “Do you want me to tell you or do you just want to act like a jerk?”
She looked a little sorry, then. “Okay, fine. I’ll shut up and listen.”
I told her the whole story, leaving out key details like Turner being The Owner. Her expression changed from interest to surprise and finally settled somewhere around envy. When I finished talking, she drained her glass again and said, “Lucky you.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said, annoyed. “It’s totally luck. There’s no other reason a client would be interested in me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Chill out, Sassy. I just mean it’s a sweet deal for you. Same guy all month, no dancing, and I’m assuming he’s rich, which means he’ll probably buy you shit.”<
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I decided not to mention the dress and shoes he’d already bought me. “Yeah, maybe,” I said. “He’s kind of… I don’t know. He’s weird. I don’t really understand him.”
Scarlet looked at me for a moment, assessing, and then started laughing. “The irony! What about rule one, Sassy? Isn’t that the lecture you gave me on my first day?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said stiffly.
“Sure,” she said. “Play dumb. That’s okay. I know you, and you’re gone. Hook, line, and sinker. Enjoy the ride. Don’t get in too deep. You know they always walk away and break your heart.”
“I’ve never had my heart broken,” I said.
“The general you,” she said. “Not you specifically.” She sighed, and clambered down from the bar stool. “I have to finish getting ready. Text me if anything exciting happens, okay? And stay out of trouble.” She kissed me on the cheek and tottered off toward the seraglio.
I couldn’t decide if that had gone better than I expected, or worse. Whatever. Nobody had cried, at least.
I glanced at the clock. It was already a little past 4, and clients were starting to arrive. I needed to head home and get ready to go to Turner’s. I finished my Coke and was about to bail when a voice said, “Is this seat taken?”
I knew that voice. I turned and looked up. It was Altman, one of my regulars.
Well, that threw a wrench in the works.
“Hello, Sassy,” he said, and sat in the chair Scarlet had just abandoned. “I barely recognized you. The hair, you know. How are you?”
Shit. I needed to be nice to him, because taking a month off was probably going to lose me some of my regulars anyway, and I couldn’t afford to piss him off; but I also needed to not be late to Turner’s. I decided to hedge my bets. “Oh, Mr. Altman! I’m doing just great. It’s so nice to see you. I wish I could chat, but I’m actually not working tonight. I just stopped by to say hi to a friend.”
I thought he would try to argue with me, but his shoulders rounded and he looked down at his hands. “Sure. I understand. It’s just that I got some bad news today, and you’re such a good listener.”