by Reinke, Sara
“That’s bullshit!” Pilar snapped. Spinning on her heel, she stormed toward the front of the store. “Open this gate and let me out of here.”
“Pilar, wait,” Chita said, trailing behind her. “Where are you going?”
“I have to be at the club by ten, remember?” Pilar said, sparing her a glare. “And in the meantime, I guess I’ll just ride my bike around awhile and try to figure out what I’m going to do next…since I’m on my own.”
****
To her surprise, a flurry of activity seemed underway upon her arrival at the strip club. Although Melaza didn’t officially open until eleven in the morning, dancers and staff arrived earlier to get ready. Pepe and his gang members seldom made an appearance before noon; to find more than a dozen Los Pandilleros motorcycles parked outside left Pilar stricken with fear.
“Mierda,” she whispered, bypassing the parking lot and riding her own bike past the bar.
She hadn’t planned on riding the motorcycle to work and made several loops around the block before deciding to park in the rear of the club, hiding in the relative shelter of the dumpster enclosure, a ten-foot chain-link cage with vinyl slats woven through for privacy. It didn’t smell the best, but few employees if any would venture back there until after her shift ended, and from the building or parking lot, her bike would be secreted from view.
She’d brought her wig with her, tucked into her backpack, and before slipping out from behind the dumpster, she put it on her head, shoving her hair haphazardly beneath it. Even though it was obvious this wasn’t her real hair, she’d never been seen without it anywhere near the club, wanting to keep at least some modicum of anonymity among customers and coworkers.
Inside Melaza, even though no music played yet, the walls nearly hummed with the din of overlapping voices. The lights were on, the stage and main floor brightly, uncharacteristically lit. Despite the number of motorcycles outside, the Salón Tipeja was conspicuously empty.
I wonder if they’re all back in Pepe’s office, Pilar thought as she hurried toward the dressing room. By now, someone surely would have discovered Miguel’s body. She’d left him lying in a heap in the middle of the road, had dragged his bike off the nearby shoulder, sending it with a splash into the shallow, murky water just beyond the edge of the highway. She’d retrieved her bat and knife, tucking both back beneath the heavy shelter of her coat; then she’d retraced her steps, working her way back into town and from there, home again.
They don’t know it was me. She ducked into the dressing room and scurried past the other girls to reach her locker. Her hands were shaking; it took her three tries before she was able to spin the right combination and open the padlock. Opening the metal door, she caught a glimpse of herself in a small mirror hanging inside. Dark circles framed her eyes. The slight purplish shadow of a bruise lingered against her cheekbone, a haunting souvenir from where Miguel had punched her in the helmet.
They don’t know it was me, she told her reflection. No one saw me, no one was there. There’s no way anyone else can know.
But still, as she pulled out her makeup bag from the top shelf in her locker, her hands trembled and her heart raced anxiously. As she sat down in front of her mirror, she could hear the other girls whispering together. They, too, realized something was wrong and although they didn’t know what was going on, they were aware of the tension palpable in the air. She tried to ignore them, focusing instead on carefully pressing her makeup sponge beneath her eyes, using thick pancake foundation to cover the telltale shadows.
Out of the corner of her gaze, she saw Chita step through the dressing room door. She looked mournfully at Pilar through the mirror; then Pilar tore her eyes away. Struggling to keep her hand steady, she drew a thin line of scarlet around the outer edges of her lips, then filled them in with bright red lipstick.
“Hey.” Chita slid onto the stool at the vacant vanity beside her.
Pilar cut her a glance as she blotted her mouth with a tissue. “Hey.”
“Brought you a Diet Mountain Dew.” Chita reached into her backpack, pulled out a bright green plastic bottle and set it on Pilar’s table. “Figured you could use some caffeine.”
Pilar made a show of leaning forward, peering in the mirror as she applied her eyeliner. “Thanks.”
Chita yanked a makeup case from her pack and opened it in front of her, sifting through an assortment of tubes, brushes and applicators before pulling out her powder. They sat in silence for a while, each of them dabbing, dusting and dotting. One by one, the other dancers finished getting ready and returned to the main floor to wait for the opening call. Finally, fewer than five remained, including Chita and Pilar.
As Pilar stood in front of her locker again and pulled her shirt over her wig, careful not to knock it loose now that she’d pinned it more securely in place, Chita turned on her stool to face her.
“You want to wear my silver sandals?” Chita asked, her voice hesitant. “They always look really hot with that.”
Pilar glanced at the first costume she’d pulled out, a metallic blue string bikini with sequined trim and G-string bottom. “Sure. Thanks.”
Chita slipped down from her stool. Her locker was next to Pilar’s, and she snooped inside momentarily before pulling out a pair of stiletto sandals. “Please don’t be mad at me.”
Pilar softened. “I’m not,” she whispered
“You know I love you, right?” As she offered the shoes, Chita’s eyes were round and glossy, swimming with sudden tears, and her bottom lip trembled slightly.
“I know,” Pilar said with a nod.
“I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
Pilar hooked her arm around Chita and gave her a hug. “I won’t.”
They finished changing and walked out together onto the floor. By then, the club had opened, and music throbbed and pounded in the air. A dancer had already taken to the stage, and a loose scattering of customers, no more than a handful—the “early birds” as it were—had found seats in the shadows to watch. The Pussy Lounge remained empty, and Pilar could tell just by looking that the bartenders, bouncers and waitresses were all still on edge.
“What do you think’s going on?” she asked Chita.
Chita shrugged. “Don’t know. But I saw Pepe when I came in. He looked pretty pissed about something.” Reaching out, she caught Pilar by the arm. “You’d tell me, wouldn’t you? If something had happened, I mean. If you’ve done something stupid.”
“What do you mean?” Pilar asked, feeling herself bristling defensively again.
Chita looked at her evenly, solemnly. “You know what I mean.”
Pilar sighed. She didn’t want to fight anymore, not with Chita. “Yeah,” she said. “I’d tell you.”
Even though the truth was, she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. I can’t tell anybody, not even you, Chita. Not anymore. I’m sorry, but I just can’t.
As she averted her gaze, she caught a glimpse of someone in the far corner and froze. Elías Velasco sat at the exact same booth where she’d found him yesterday, his eyes fixed across the room at her. Chita noticed her distraction.
“Hey, that guy’s checking you out pretty hard,” she remarked. “Who is he?”
Somehow she’d managed to miss the fact that all the color had abruptly drained from Pilar’s face, that her posture had grown rigid and her breath had sucked to a startled, anxious standstill.
“I…I don’t know,” Pilar said, feeling her shoulders shake, a steady tremor that worked its way down to her hands and through her chest, fluttering through her heart. “I’ve never seen him before.”
“Yeah?” As they both watched, Elías held up a dollar bill folded lengthwise pinched between his forefingers. Still holding Pilar’s gaze, he gave it a little waggle in invitation. “Looks like he wants a dance.” Chita gave her a little push that sent her tottering forward on her high heels. “Go on. Está que estilla.” He’s really hot. “If you’ve only got a week left here, you may as have as much fun as yo
u can. Adelante!” Go for it!
What is he doing here? What does he want? she thought, and she could have sworn that she could smell him as she stumbled across the room, that strange but tantalizing sweetness of his blood.
“Well…uh, hey guapito,” she said, managing a strained smile. “Didn’t expect to see you again so soon.” With a nod at the bill—which she could now see was another fifty note—she added, “Is that for me?”
“It is.” He nodded with a wan smile. “How about a couch dance?”
Couch dances took place in a small room in the back, an alcove lined with semiprivate booths, each equipped with a personal brass dance pole and comfortably upholstered black leather sofa. They cost more than a floor dance, and Pilar knew many of the dancers used the added privacy and price to touch the customers.
“You can get right up in their lap, grind on them as long as the bouncers don’t see,” one had told her once in a conspiratorial undertone and with a wicked sort of smile. “Pretend you get off doing it. They love that.”
Pilar preferred to dance on the pole with her customer a safe two feet away on the couch. She could approach him if she wanted to—which she never did—but he couldn’t move from his seat. And if he had any expectations other that, she figured it was his own damn tough luck. A fool and his money are soon parted and all that.
She held out the waistband of her thong, letting Elías lean forward to slip the money beneath. “Sure thing, guapito,” she said. “Follow me.”
They had the couch room to themselves, and Elías nodded at her in invitation to choose which sofa she preferred.
“This one.” She took him by the hand, leading him to the far corner. Spinning him in a circle to face her, she pushed his shoulders gently, easing him down onto the couch. He watched her the entire time and his attention both intrigued and troubled her. He didn’t look at her like the other men did. As they had been the day before, his dark eyes were sharp and focused, his gaze fascinated—as if she fascinated him.
“You’re awfully dressed up,” she remarked, draping her hands against his knees, then spreading his legs so she could stand between them.
“It’s a workday,” he said as she leaned over, her fingers slipping against the knot in his tie. She remembered now how much she’d enjoyed the sensation of power over him during her dance the day before, how it had felt strangely, acutely arousing to her to realize she could manipulate him, turn him on, leave him breathless and helpless with want for her.
Tugging gently, she loosened the tie at the apex of his throat, unfettering it, then slipping it out from beneath his collar. “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice low and gravelly. His eyes had grown hooded, his breath coming more quickly now, and sharp.
“Making you a little more comfortable.” Clasping the length of silk lightly between her hands, she stepped back toward the pole, toying with it lightly. “You don’t mind, do you?”
He watched as she turned her back to him, then slipped the tie over her left shoulder toward her ass. Her free hand stole suggestively between her legs, catching the other end. When she drew the length of silk between her legs, then out again, his gaze followed her movement, entranced.
“No,” he murmured, shaking his head. “Help yourself.”
As the next song started, Pilar began to dance. She looped the tie around the brass, then twisted the ends around her wrists, feigning being bound. With her back to the pole, she slid down, spreading her legs and rolling her hips, her hands suspended above her head. Leaning back, arching her spine, she presented her breasts to him, straining against both the tie around her wrists and the confines of her bikini top.
He watched silently, his hunger obvious in the intensity of his gaze, as she stood, untwining her hands. Holding on to the pole, she bent over, legs straight, then drew the tie up and down against the cleft of her buttocks. Shooting him a coy glance off her shoulder, she straightened again, then hooked her leg around the pole, looping gracefully around to face him.
Está que estilla, Chita had said. And as she regarded him now, Pilar had to admit that her friend was right. More than just the fact that Elías Velasco was extraordinarily handsome, there was something about him that attracted her. It’s the way he smells, she thought—that mixture of cologne and the distinctive fragrance of his blood, so different than any other human she’d ever met. It’s the way he looks at me too—not like a piece of meat, but like a woman. And the way that makes me feel.
Acting on impulse, not giving herself the chance to reconsider, she stepped toward the couch, breaking out of her personal safety zone near the pole. Planting her knees on either side of his hips, she took him by the hands, drawing his arms up toward a horizontal bar positioned above the couch.
“What are you doing?” he asked, stiffening in surprise.
I don’t know, she thought in all honesty. As his heartbeat quickened in response to her sudden, unexpected closeness, she could sense it. And as it sent his blood racing through his body in ever-quickening surges, it made her own heart race to match his needful rhythm. I have no idea what I’m doing, but as long as it feels like this—good to me—I’m going with it.
She drew the tie around his left wrist, then looped it around the bar.
“What are you doing?” he asked again, but this time a slight, wry hook to his mouth suggested he understood her intentions perfectly well.
“Do you trust me?” she asked, looking him squarely in the eye.
“Yeah.” With his unbound hand, he reached up, daring to touch her, to brush his fingertips against the arch of her cheek. His thumb trailed against her bottom lip in a gentle tug, making her heart flutter like a startled dove taking flight. “I do.”
Pilar didn’t know which surprised her more, his admission or her response to his touch. For a moment, without thinking, she turned her face reflexively toward his hand, finding something in his caress she hadn’t anticipated, hadn’t felt in the past year—pleasure.
Immediately defensive, as much against that unexpected feeling as her own powerful reaction to it, Pilar drew back from his hand. She managed to recover, to offer another mischievous smile and a laugh as she caught his hand, pulling it alongside the other one at the bar. “Your turn,” she said.
Once his hands were tied, she felt safe again, ready to mess with him, to cross her own boundaries, dare herself—and him. Chita had told Pilar to have as much fun as she could, and for once, Pilar figured why the hell not? After last night—after the last year—she needed some kind of release. Some kind of escape. And Elías offered that to her now, whether he knew it or not.
Fuck it, she thought, grasping the bar above her and standing up on the couch. With her body literally millimeters away from his own—and him helpless to do anything except watch—she began to dance, rolling her hips in time with the music.
Grasping the bar, her hands alongside his, she leaned over, bringing her breasts into taunting proximity to his face. Then she untied her bikini top and let it slip away, falling against his lap in a tangle. Using the tip of her tongue, she licked her index fingertips lightly, then drew them in slow, sweeping circles around her nipples until each hardened, bulletlike and taut. He watched, mesmerized, and when she squatted over him, lowering her hips until they nearly touched his own, she could feel the hardening swell of him press against her through his slacks. “Do you like that?” she asked, and he nodded.
“Yes,” he whispered. “God, yes.”
She could feel the warmth of his body radiating against her, could smell the fragrance of his blood as it coursed just beneath the surface of his skin. It didn’t escape her notice that as she rocked against him, he raised his hips from the couch to meet her. When the swell of his arousal rubbed purposefully against her apex, she felt another unexpected shiver of pleasure.
“Do you like it?” he asked her softly, turning his face to speak into her ear.
Ever since the night her father had been killed, the idea of sex had repulsed her. It
had been so long since anything sensual had felt good; in that moment, that wonderful friction left her hanging on a breath, her entire body tensed with sudden, eager anticipation, wanting more.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked, her voice low and husky, nearly a purr.
The light in his eyes had shifted from thinly veiled desire to out-and-out hunger now, that same barely tempered desperate need she felt mirrored in his gaze. “Córrete,” he breathed, the word sending a pleasant sort of chill racing down the length of her bare spine. Come for me.
Moving slowly at first, teasing him, tempting him, Pilar rolled her hips again. He closed his eyes and uttered a low groan. She moved faster, rocking the couch beneath them, and he arched his back, straining against his bonds, matching her stroke for stroke. In that moment, she could imagine what it would be like making love to him, to have him inside her, his body stripped and revealed beneath her. For the first time in a year, the idea neither repelled nor terrified her. Instead, excited by the rush of his blood, the realization of him helpless, hands bound before her, and her own mounting pleasure, she couldn’t hold back, couldn’t control or contain a wild, sudden surge of uninhibited need.
“Córrete,” he said again, ragged and hoarse. His gazed locked with hers, his dark eyes hungry and fierce as she moaned, nearly there, so close now, breasts bouncing with each powerful stroke, her skin glossed with perspiration, her breath bated in eager anticipation. “That’s it, Pilar. Come for me.”
In that moment—at the sound of her name—her eyes flew wide. Her passion abruptly withered and she jerked away like he’d just thrown a pan of scalding water at her—because for all the world, it felt like he had.
“What?” She gasped, nearly tumbling onto her ass as she scrambled off the couch, away from him. “What did you say?”
His eyes grew round with dismayed realization. “Wait…” he began.
“You called me Pilar.” Stricken, she cut him off.
Elías struggled against his bonds. “Please wait. Listen to me.”
“You…you’ve known all along, haven’t you?” Pilar stumbled back, furious with him and with herself—both for her own naïve bravado and stupidity, and the fact that she was suddenly, unexpectedly on the verge of tears. “Oh, my God.”