by Bella Grant
I dropped my bag on my table and pulled my hair out of the elastic band holding it back. Rita watched me in the mirror, frowning. “What?”
“I’m so jealous of your hair,” she sighed.
“Why? Your hair is the most gorgeous pure black.”
“And bone straight,” she grumbled as she lifted my hair, wavy after being in a ponytail since 7 a.m. “Won’t hold a curl longer than an hour.”
“In this humidity, you should be thrilled.” I laughed as I grabbed towels, soap, loofa, razor, shampoo, and conditioner from my locker. “I’m hopping in the shower and may take a nap in the lounge.”
“Why don’t you go home for a while before you come to work?” she asked, curious. “I live too far, but you don’t.”
I lived ten minutes from the club if traffic was right, and I finished school by four. I had four hours to waste between, and sometimes, I did go home. But the club had Wi-Fi for its patrons and workers, and I could study or play on my phone here as easily as at home.
“Because I probably wouldn’t come to work,” I joked. Her bubbly giggle followed me as I disappeared into the locker-room-style showers. Five shower heads descended from one wall, and the room was big enough for a girl to shower at the far end and walk past the others when finished without getting sprayed by the water. When I had to shave, I preferred to use this shower rather than the one at home because of its roominess and the built-in bench across from the shower heads. My shower at home was smaller than a coffin, in my estimation, while this one was nearly as big as my bedroom.
I tossed my towels on the dry bench and placed my razor next to it. Another rule was to be completely hairless in the areas where American women were expected to be. Rita lived by waxing, especially at the bikini area, but the idea of someone else intimately touching that part of my body was distasteful. I’d found creams that prevented the ever-present bumps, and luckily, I’d been born with skin like a baby’s.
The only complaint I had about my skin was its extreme whiteness. Not quite albino, I still avoided the sun, and when I did go out in it, I slathered on so much sunscreen I might slide off the beach chair. I’d been praised for my skin and made fun of for it, depending on who was around. Regardless, I had protected it with sunscreen and hats most of my life, and I’d reap the rewards when I turned fifty but still looked thirty.
The showers heated up so fast I wished I could live here. I let the spray sluice over me and lifted my hair off my neck so the water would glide down my back. Gratefully cooler, I let my hair fall and reached for my loofa and body soap. I breathed in the ocean smell of the soap and wished briefly I was at the beach, breathing in the real ocean.
I let my mind wander. If I had my way, I’d be on a beach chair—under an umbrella, of course—with a fruity cocktail in one hand and a novel in the other. A waiter would stop by every now and then to check on my needs, and after two more fruity concoctions, I’d rise from my chair and walk across the veranda to my room, slip inside, and stretch out on a glorious bed someone else had made. One day, I told myself with a sad smile. Yeah, when you are fifty.
Sighing, I rinsed the delicious soap off my body and started on my hair. Nursing school first, work for a few years and pay off the student loans, and maybe after that, I’d have the money to spend a few days on the coast. Not in the plush resort I’d imagined, but that wouldn’t matter to me. And all that meant another year at Burlesque. I reached for my razor, sighing with resignation again, and set about the task of creating a body that men paid money to look at.
Eliot
“I am not the least bit interested in going to a strip club, Art,” I grumbled as I stared at the report in front of me. It was not pleasing in the least and did not reflect the amount of work my team had put into the research. “What the hell?”
“What’s wrong?” Art asked, glancing over my shoulder to read the report.
“Are these numbers accurate?”
“As of two days ago, yes.” Art looked at me, his expression sympathetic. “I know it’s not what you wanted.”
“It’s not even fucking close,” I seethed. I crumpled the report in my hands and slumped into my chair to stare out the window at the Atlanta skyline. My office was on the top floor of the building that housed the research company I had started, MindMatters, Inc., and the view was spectacular. I didn’t see it, though. My mind was circling the fact that the newest development drug for Alzheimer’s did no more than my original prototype. “I just don’t see how, with the improvements we’ve made to the drug, our subjects show no improvement whatsoever.”
“I agree, but Eliot, this is only the fourth drug. Viagra went through dozens upon dozens before they found the right equation.” He snorted, and I jerked around to look at him, eyebrows raised. “Imagine those tests, huh?”
A corner of my lip lifted. He chuckled, I followed, and soon, we were laughing. “What a sight!” I agreed, shaking my head.
“Don’t worry, boss. You’ll find the right combination—or one of your talented young scientists will,” Art assured me. He clapped his hands together and rubbed them. “Now, back to my original proposal. The strip club?”
I rolled my eyes at him, frowning at his persistence. “As I already explained, I’m not the least bit interested in a strip club.”
“You’re a tight-ass, and your tight ass needs to relax,” Art informed me. “A strip club—especially the one I have in mind—is just the thing to take that tightness and loosen it up a bit.”
“Are you asking me to go to a strip club or propositioning me for a sexual act?”
Art snorted. “Like I said. Tight-ass.”
“Tight-ass or not, you aren’t getting a piece of it,” I deadpanned, pressing my lips together so I didn’t grin.
Art’s laugh echoed as he threw his head back and let it loose. “Damn, sparring with you can be such fun. Let’s spar with some titties!”
“Sparring with you is like talking to a fifteen-year-old boy,” I returned with a chuckle. “Titties are the last thing on my mind. I need to work on these equations. We’re so close.”
“Listen, man. You need a break,” Art insisted. “When’s the last time you went somewhere besides this office, the lab, or your house?”
“Yesterday.” Art tilted his head and pursed his lips, waiting. “I picked up dinner at Chino’s.”
Art scoffed. “You’re going home, and I’m picking you up at nine. You will be dressed appropriately, and you will get in my car.” He stood after his pronouncement and left my office without waiting for my agreement.
Sighing, I swiveled my chair again and stared out the window. Art was right, though I wouldn’t say it out loud to him. The man’s ego was bigger than the entire state of Georgia. But I really hadn’t been anywhere but the three places he’d listed in the last month. Paradoxically, I couldn’t find a breakthrough because I was too focused on trying to find one.
When I’d created the original formula, I’d been sitting in a movie theater surrounded by people laughing at the antics of the actors on the screen. I’d been working for six months without a break, searching for the exact combination I needed to ease the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. I’d leapt up, throwing popcorn all over the people in front of me and spilling my soda, and raced back to my lab. Three days later, I’d created the drug that had helped a generation of Alzheimer’s patients retain their memories for much longer. The drug had also made a few million, which had allowed me to continue the research company.
With that success behind me, I was ready to attain my new goal: create a drug that stopped the debilitating process of Alzheimer’s altogether. My mother’s face popped into my head, and the familiar pain ripped my heart. At the age of fifty-two, she’d begun to lose her memory. By fifty-four, full-on Alzheimer’s had set in, and she’d died with no memory of anyone around her. I had watched her cry for hours because she missed this person or that, people I’d never heard of. On lucid days, when she knew who I was, she would hold my hand and te
ll me stories of my childhood. Those had faded so quickly, though, and after her death, I’d struggled to remember her before the disease.
The first drug had been finished a year after her death, much too late to do my mother any good. But it would lessen the pain others had to endure as their loved ones settled into old age.
Yes. Yes, I should go with Art, I told myself. But seriously, a strip club? I wondered if I could change his mind, convince him to go to a bar and have a few drinks, maybe flirt with a few ladies. Naked, uneducated women at a strip club didn’t sound the least bit appealing. If I was going to socialize, I wanted to speak to people of the same caliber as myself, not a woman who probably didn’t graduate from high school.
I rose and gathered my wallet and keys, which I always left in my desk at my office. I took off the lab coat and hung it on the back of my door as I walked out, pausing to lock it before heading to the elevator bank.
My assistant left every day by six, so she’d been gone for over an hour at this point, though she’d left me a note about a meeting with the pharmaceutical company tomorrow morning at ten. If I planned to eat anything before Art picked me up, I’d better hurry. I phoned in an order to Chino’s—my favorite Chinese place—as I climbed into my Mercedes, one of the few luxuries I’d bought myself when the Alzheimer’s drug formula had sold.
As I drove to the restaurant, I ran through a list of reasons to stay home rather than go with Art to a strip club, no matter how high-end. Every reason fell flat until my phone rang, though the person on the other end wouldn’t be of much help. I hit the Bluetooth on the steering wheel.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Hey, kid! How’s my favorite son?” My dad’s boisterous voice filled the car, and I reached for the volume.
“I’m your only son,” I reminded him with a small smile, as I did every time we spoke. It had become a tradition of sorts, one I still thought was funny.
“That you are, my boy!” he yelled through the phone. “What’s going on?”
“Well, I’ve almost got the formula right for the new dru—”
“Tsk, I don’t want to hear about work,” he interrupted, which grated a little. After Mom died, my father wouldn’t speak of her condition or anything to do with it. My research was completely foreign to him because he chose it to be. “Tell me about your personal life.”
“I don’t have one of those,” I reminded him sarcastically. “My life is work, work, work.”
“Ah, you’ve made enough money that you can retire now. What are you, thirty?”
“Thirty-two,” I corrected him with a roll of my eyes. “And you know money is not the reason I do what I do.”
“Yes, I know,” Dad replied with a sigh. In the background, I heard a high-pitched voice call ‘Steven’ and ask who he was talking to. I cringed in my driver’s seat, grimacing as my father replied. “It’s Eliot, baby.” He listened for a moment and returned to our conversation. “Tiffany says hello.”
I grumbled under my breath before wishing her the same. I hated the woman and avoided visiting my dad if she would be home. She rarely was. The woman—only three years older than me—spent her time spending my father’s money with abandon. And though I’d thought she was stupid, I quickly discovered she was a calculating, manipulative bitch. Dad thought she hung the moon, so I had to assume she was amazing in bed, though I refused to let my father discuss that with me. He had tried on more than one occasion while drinking, but I’d never been drunk enough to listen.
“She wants to know when you’ll visit when she’s here,” Dad said, a smile in his voice. Dad knew very well I didn’t like her. I’d never hidden it.
“Probably never, if I can help it,” I replied as I turned into the parking lot of Chino’s.
“Now, Eliot, she’s your stepmom,” Dad reminded me needlessly.
“Yes, she is,” I agreed. “Listen, Dad, I’m picking up some dinner, so I need to let you go.”
“And what are you doing after dinner?” he asked before I could hang up. With a sigh, I told him Art had invited me to a strip club but that I was planning to get out of it. “You will not get out of going. You need to go. Knowing you like I do, you’re close to a breakthrough, and Art knows that you need to get out. Am I right?”
He may have married a money-grabbing bitch, but the man knew me well. We were close in spite of her awfulness. “How’d you guess?”
Dad chuckled. “Go out tonight. I’ll call Art and pay him to kidnap you if you don’t.”
My laugh was small but sincere as I nodded my head. He really would offer Art money to get me out of the house. He’d done it before. “Alright, I’ll go. But if I get some kind of fungus from sitting on the chairs there, you’re paying my doctor bills.”
I ended the call on his raucous laugh, loud and boisterous, and climbed out of the car to get my food.
At precisely nine, Art texted me that he was downstairs and to hurry my ass up. I’d chosen jeans and a polo with sneakers for our visit to the ‘upscale’ strip club Art had chosen. When he’d texted me the name of the club, I’d snorted around my bite of beef and broccoli. Burlesque. Classy, I’d mused with a derisive air as I’d forked up more rice and ate the aromatic food.
My condo was a studio close to the company. Spacious, with open architecture, the only rooms hidden from sight were the bedroom, bathroom, and closets. The kitchen, rarely used, was stainless steel everything, and sometimes, I lamented the fact that I didn’t cook. The living room was decorated in blacks and whites, the furniture was black, and the carpets were white. I liked the sterile look and straight lines of the living space I’d created for myself, though I’d been told by more than one woman that the place was cold. Which is why I choose not to date. Too much work, and too many opinions I didn’t care about.
“Where is this place?” I asked after I’d climbed into his car—a flashy Porsche—and I could hear the snotty tone of my voice. I didn’t adjust it. “No, wait, let me guess. We have to drive outside the city to a back road that leads us to a mysterious building with no outside indication as to what kind of establishment we’re walking into.”
“Have you always been such a fucking snob?” Art asked, frowning. “The club is just outside of downtown. The building looks like an old theater.”
“Like a movie theater?”
“No, a theater where plays are performed. I know you think it can’t be anything but tacky, but Burlesque really is a classy joint.”
I snorted. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Pull that stick out of your ass, or I’ll pay one of the strippers to do it for you,” Art grumbled.
“You’re fucking hilarious.” I watched as the Atlanta skyline loomed ahead of us. Art exited and took the loop around, so I assumed we were in for at least another twenty minutes of driving. I let my mind fill with the equations for the new drug, manipulating numbers and adjusting ratios. Sighing, I only saw the one equation, the one I’d already perfected. I shook my head and focused again, seeing nothing outside the window.
Art cleared his throat loudly, jerking me out of my mathematical thoughts. “Stop calculating.”
“I was thinking about titties.”
Art chuckled. “I’m not sure you ever think of titties.”
“On occasion.”
“Well, think about them now and stop thinking about the drug. Rather than a movie theater for your distraction, you’ll have tons of titties jiggling in your face.”
“Hmmm, plastic titties, pretty faces, and empty minds. Just my style,” I said sarcastically. I could almost hear Art’s eyes rolling in his head.
“Those are the things you want in a stripper, Eliot. Big tits, a face for the screen, and they don’t expect to talk to you or you to talk to them.” Art laughed.
“You know, Art, if I have to be around women, I’d prefer women who can, at the very least, have a conversation,” I explained to him as if he were slow.
“You aren’t fucking marrying her. You might no
t even be fucking her,” he said with a raucous laugh, much like my father’s, and a wink.
“Are you high?”
“Not yet! But this place caters to all needs,” Art promised
“How the hell are we best friends?” I grumbled. Art didn’t feel the need to reply, so I reached over and flicked on the radio. If I found a station he liked, Art might not speak the rest of the trip.
Twenty minutes later, Art announced ‘we’re here’ in the middle of his rendition of Guns-N-Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine.”
I mumbled, “Thank God.”
The building was unassuming, though a tasteful sign above the door, lit by round globes, announced the name of the club, Burlesque. The letters were done in bright red paint with small red bulbs around the lettering rather than neon. The door was black, the building brick, and it did resemble a theater with posters in stylish frames. Rather than displaying upcoming plays to be performed however, erotic art, beautifully rendered, drew the eye. The art looked like what one would see in a museum, and after seeing the outside, my interest about the inside was piqued.
“The building doesn’t give the impression of a strip club,” I mused to Art, who smiled smarmily. With some sarcasm, I added, “And valet? Fancy.”
“Wait ‘til you see the inside,” Art said. “The owner converted an old theater. There are balconies to sit in if you want to see the show but not touch, but those spots are usually empty unless someone wants lap dance after lap dance or has reserved one for a private party.”
I looked at Art, a question in my expression. “Jesus, how often do you come here?”
“Not as often as I should, considering the fee to be a member,” Art grumbled as he passed the keys to a valet driver. He straightened his shirt as he walked to the front door, which was opened for him by an attendant who knew his name.
“Not that often, but the staff knows your name.” My eyes struggled to adjust to the dark atmosphere, and I frowned when we reached a reception desk with a woman dressed in professional attire. I leaned close to Art and asked, “Do I have to purchase a membership?”