by Unknown
Without casting a backward glance, Marianne went to Katja, trying to hide the slight stagger plaguing her heels. It was as if Arnold’s eyes burnt heat into the back of her skull.
A small smiled twitched on Katja’s lips when Marianne reached her. “You’ve met Arnold.”
“Sherry…” Marianne said, by way of explanation, but didn’t really have much to add to the statement.
“She does it to all the new girls. She and Arnold have an understanding. He never asks for a lap dance, but he loves coming here so he can chat to someone. He’s a widower, you see?”
“Oh.” Marianne didn’t know what to say to that. It seemed almost pathetic to her the way Arnold had questioned her about her life, as if hungry for the smallest details she took for granted.
“He loved her very much. He has not remarried.”
“He still wears his wedding band,” Marianne said.
“Indeed. And he is one of our best customers.”
Something shifted in the way Marianne thought of Imperial House. In the past she would have envisioned the venue as a place of endless bachelor parties and drunken debauchery. Now she wasn’t so sure.
Katja flipped through the papers she held in her lap. “You know about our policy with regard to lap dances?”
“Um…”
“You’ve not done this before, I know. You’re green. We’re not expecting you to make huge amounts of money tonight. Or for the first week, for that matter. Take your time to get to know the place. We’re not a factory, not like some of the bigger clubs. You’d not get this kind of support at Henri’s or Blue Velvet. It’s cutthroat there.”
Marianne didn’t know quite what to say to that. Things were awkward enough already without imagining complications.
Katja continued. “We only hire local girls, or those who have legit residence. We’re looking at the long-term here. We encourage our girls go on and get diplomas in education or degrees in engineering. We know you’re not going to be doing this for the rest of your life. Substance abuse is not tolerated.”
“I-I…”
“Don’t say anything. We’re not a charity, either. If you’re not cutting it after a month, we’ll suggest that you get a job somewhere else, even if it’s waiting tables at a restaurant or temping…anything.”
Katja’s dark eyes, so like her nephew’s, bored into Marianne’s. The music in the venue seemed to dim ever so slightly, the moment poised.
Marianne was the first to look away. “I understand,” she murmured.
“You don’t at the moment, but you will soon enough, I’m afraid,” Katja said.
* * * *
As it turned out, Marianne didn’t perform any lap dances that first night. Granted, she did receive a few gratuities chatting to patrons for a bit after she took to the stage the first time. The whole “bright-shiny” new girl vibe, she supposed.
“Keep the focus on your eyes, mouth, and hands,” Sherry advised her. “Those are the most erotic parts of your body. If you move your hands over your body, down your legs, or caress the pole, the clients’ imaginations will do the rest. If in doubt, bend over with your ass facing the crowd and run your hands up your legs. This will give you a moment to collect yourself before you plot your next move. They’ll be so distracted they’ll think it’s part of the dance.”
Chapter 8
The alarm went off far too soon for Marianne’s liking.
“Wake up. It’s five thirty. It’s time to wake up. Wake up. It’s five”
The British woman’s clipped accent sent a wave of annoyance through Marianne. If only there were a way she could reset the alarm so she could have another two hours’ sleep, she’d be happy. But she had to get up.
The next fact she became aware of was the empty bed. Her arm snaked out to feel the cold linen to her right. Carl hadn’t come home last night, either.
The stale stench of cigarette smoke clinging to her hair and lodged at the back of her throat reminded her where she’d been the previous night.
Imperial House had offered its loud music; bright, flashing lights where girls dressed in next to nothing while men stared.
The back of her throat felt dry, and, although she’d had little to drink, the effects of some alcoholthe shooters she’d shared with Sherry and the others once things had quietened down at three in the bloody morningmade her want to keep her eyes firmly shut.
But she couldn’t keep her eyes shut. She had to get up—now—so she could get dressed and go to work at the call centre.
Marianne groaned, burrowing deeper within the duvet.
The last place she wanted to be right now was the call centre, with its sterile grey walls and prim middle-management prudes who’d want her to toe the line, be the good little tele-consultant, and match the others wasting oxygen in the cubicle farm. The rain lashing the window with each ferocious gust of wind offered even less incentive for her to move.
But that damnable sense of responsibility had her haul her body out of bed. Marianne winced at how stiff her feet were and minced to the bathroom.
* * * *
The train got stuck halfway between Mowbray and Rosebank for half an hour. It didn’t help Marianne’s mood that half the windows had been vandalised, so the rain swept in, soaking her to her skin and leaving her hair in damp tendrils on either side of her face.
By the time she started walking from Rondebosch station, her feet were twin ice blocks and she could not stop her teeth from chattering. Other commuters looked equally miserable, hunching in the lashing rain waiting for a bus.
All the while Marianne couldn’t stop thinking of her bed, of how deliciously warm it had been beneath the covers. The air conditioning inside the office was set too low, so by mid-morning she was still damp and frozen solid, to boot. Listening to irate and sometimes downright rude clients was just the cherry on the cake.
Should she feel grateful that she wasn’t the only member of staff who had arrived looking as if they’d have to travel through a swamp to reach work?
After her third cup of tea, she was still chilled to the bone, and a rising miasma of despair formed a lump at the back of Marianne’s throat. Was this sort of life, working day in and day out at a bleeding call centre, all she was worth?
During lunch she could no longer handle the atmosphere in the place. It was as if she’d become invisible, a small scrap of a person who meant nothing to no one. Half tempted to contact her motherwhom she had not visited or called in a whileMarianne dug her cell phone out of her handbag and turned it on. It was still raining, but she went to stand by the smoker’s niche, trying to summon the courage to scroll down the directory of names. The info box told her she’d had three missed calls, but she dismissed it without looking. She didn’t want to know whether it was Carl who had tried to call her this morning. Let him make serious effort if he really wanted to talk to her. He knew where she lived, after all.
Her phone rang before she had a chance to make up her mind, and Marianne almost dropped it from the fright. Judith’s caller ID flashed on the screen.
“Hello?”
“Mari! I’ve been trying to get hold of you all morning!” Judith’s voice was breathy with excitement.
“Um, I’ve been at work. We’re not supposed to take private calls. I work for a call centre, remember?”
“Agh, you can put it on silent or something. You’ve been so scarce. I haven’t spoken to you for two weeks.”
“I’ve been busy.” The last thing Marianne wanted to do now was tell Judith what she’d been up to over the past twenty-four hours.
“Marianne.” Judith only ever called her by her full name if something serious was afoot, and her tone had gone quite serious. “I’m worried about you. Since you’ve left the agency, you’ve just become, dunno…never mind. This is not what I’ve called you about. What’s up between you and Carl?”
“Why would you be worried about me and Carl?” Something twisted in her gut. Judith hardly ever asked about Carl. She didn�
�t like Carl.
“I saw him last night, Mari, at the Blah Bar. He had this blonde girl with him, and the way she was all over him suggested they were a little more than best buddies. What’s going on, Mari?”
The knife in her belly twisted, and Marianne gasped for breath. “I-I don’t…”
“Are you guys having difficulties? You can talk to me, you know?”
Marianne expelled a lungful of air, her knees weakening, so she slid down onto her haunches, stopping just short of having her backside come into contact with the damp cement. “We’re having a disagreement.”
“For how long?”
Night after night of silence returned to Marianne. When last had she and Carl made love? A month ago? Two months? It simply hadn’t occurred to her to even miss having sex with her boyfriend. He’d always been too busy or too tired.
Busy. All those nights he’d been working overtime, returning home smelling of cigarette smoke and wine. It all started to make sense now, and a lump churned in her belly.
“Marianne?”
Marianne cradled her forehead in her hand. Everything was coming apart at the seams. She allowed a small groan to escape her lips. It was all her fault. She’d let things to progress to this point. She should have seen the warning signs sooner, should have been more attentive, made more of an effort to be affectionate.
“Mari! Talk to me!”
“I-I’m okay, Judith. Really.” She wasn’t, but she wouldn’t let on, not until she’d had an opportunity to take a step back from the situation. She was still at work, still had a good few hours to hold herself together when all she wanted to do was throw up.
She’d lose the flat. Where would she live? She didn’t have a proper job. Moving in with her folks wasn’t an option. She’d end up being someone’s secretary in a small Overberg town more than three hundred kilometres outside of Cape Town. Or she could go work as a waitress and live in a backpacker’s for a while.
Or she could be serious about making it as a dancer at Imperial House and she could keep the apartment and sod Carl. He was a bastard anyway. He could have told her he wanted to end the relationship, the spineless twerp.
“Marianne.”
She realised she’d been silent for a while already. Although she wanted nothing more than to break down and let the tears flow, she kept her voice tight. “I’m fine, Judith, really. Let’s do coffee tomorrow, okay? I gotta go back inside. I’m handing in my resignation today. I’ve had enough of this bullshit.”
Chapter 9
Because she wasn’t on contract, the human resources lady couldn’t really do much about Marianne quitting and leaving the centre right then and there. The small voice of reason wailed somewhere at the back of Marianne’s mind, but she somehow couldn’t stifle the mad grin plastering her face, evidence of her giddy relief as she wobbled out into the milky sunlight.
“See, even the sun agrees this was a good idea,” she muttered, not caring if anyone overheard her talking to herself. Let them think what they will.
Reality started to bite on the way back home, once she sat on the train watching the graffiti-smothered walls flash by. What the hell would she do if the dancing gig didn’t pay off? Sure, she’d walked home with almost five hundred bucks in her purse last night, but the rent on the apartment was almost five grand.
She had to find out what the hell Carl was up to, and, despite her gut reaction to plainly ignore the sod, she dialled his number anyway, sucking in her breath and trying to compose herself as she pressed “call.”
“The number you have dialled is not available. Please try again”
Marianne killed the call before the mechanised voice annoyed her further. The bastard had switched off his phone, obviously too chickenshit she’d call him, which meant he must have seen Judith last night and was expecting trouble.
But the douche bag had the lease of the apartment in his name. That could be a problem should he decide to give notice. Marianne had to admit she had little recourse but to wait for him to call her. She sure as hell wasn’t going to lower herself to phone Carl at his studio. No. That would smatter of desperation. After all, he was the one who had stormed out of the house to be caught with some blonde sloozie at a club.
Her mood darkened when she walked up to her apartment in Vredehoek. Perhaps it had something to do with the chill wind that sent its icy fingers probing to her very core, stealing what little heat her coat offered. The thin soles of her court shoes did little to insulate her feet from the cold seeping up from the ground, and, by the time she fumbled with the key at her door, her fingers were numb, and it took more than one attempt to unlock so she could enter the relative warmth of her apartment.
Carl had been here while she was absent, again. Marianne struggled to suppress the angry growl at the back of her throat. He’d taken his computer and the TV. Boxes stacked in the spare room told her he’d been packing his things.
What, so did this bitch he was fucking have a semi-detached in Camps Bay and drive a Beemer? Did she do her shopping at De Waterkant and meet her girlfriends for tea at some to-die-for boutique hotel in Upper Orange Street? It would be so like Carl.
Besides, they’d been spotted at one of those upper-crust places where you had to pay fifty bucks just to get in, to be seen getting in. Hot tears seeped from the corners of her eyes, blurring her vision. Marianne dashed them away, striding to the bedroom where she cast down her bag and flopped onto the unmade bed.
For a while she blanked out, allowing her eyes to overflow with unshed tears so that the squares of the ceiling boards grew indistinct. A heavy feeling settled on her chest, and she had difficulty drawing breath. How long she lay there she wasn’t sure, but her phone rang, dragging her out of her miserable reverie.
Sure it was Carl, Marianne answered with a curt, “What?”
“Um, is that Marianne?” The man’s voice was like rich velvet, most definitely not Carl.
“Erm, who is this?”
A low laugh sounded. “Brett. I’m sure you remember me.”
Marianne sat up with a startled hiss. “I’m so sorry. I’m having a bit of…a really shit day.” Why the hell was he calling her?
“Delia’s called in sick, and we need someone who’s willing to come in. You don’t mind, do you?”
A dozen thoughts whirled through her head, the most dominant that of relief. She would not have to be home alone tonight. But shouldn’t Katja be the one calling? Surely handling absentee staff replacements was something for one of the management? Marianne decided not to ask.
“I’ll be there,” she said.
“I’m glad. You’ve got the beginnings of being a great dancer, you know?”
His words sent a spike of pleasure through her. “Really?”
“Sure. But I can see you’ve danced before.”
“I did belly dancing while I was at art school. Before that, I took some Latin classes when I was in high school. Nothing much ever came of it, though.”
“Pity, but it’s definitely an asset to you now.”
Marianne wasn’t sure what to say. No one had ever complimented her on her dancing except for her instructors, and this was the first time she’d performed in public, if it could be called that even. “Erm, thanks, I think.”
Brett laughed, the sound warm. “Look forward to seeing you, lady.”
* * * *
Feeling somewhat better about her situation, Marianne walked quickly down to Imperial House that evening. It always amazed her what a hot shower and a cup of tea could do to lift a mood, though she had paused to eat something small before she left. Choosing an outfit proved a bit trickier, but she settled on a short black dress she’d last worn to a dance during high school. She supposed she was lucky she could still fit into her old clothes, unlike some of the other girls with whom she’d attended school, who were already on child number two sans husband number one.
The chill wind hardly bothered her, but Marianne walked quickly, making sure no one followed her. It wa
sn’t the most sensible thing she was doing now, going by foot alone to cover the distance of a few blocks down to the city’s eastern district, but what choice did she have? With a small pang of guilt, she realised she’d still not told Judith what she was up to, nor had she even considered calling her friend that evening as she would have had Brett not put paid to her intentions.
What are you doing, girlfriend? she asked herself.
What was she doing?
The freezing gusts knifing through every available gap in her coat kept her from thinking too hard as Marianne concentrated on putting each foot before the other, a growing sense of excitement, of not knowing what lay ahead, blossoming within her.
The bouncers weren’t outside when she arrived, so Marianne entered, glad to not have the wind muss her hair further.
“Evening, Daniel,” she said as she stepped over the threshold.
The thin, sallow man looked up, nodded once, then returned to whatever he was reading. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she detected the slightest smile. What would it be like once her presence here was taken for granted so she could share easy banter with the others?
The interior of the club was dim, and Marianne hesitated entering the gloom, which seemed, in her mind, to ooze between the tables like some living thing. Glancing on either side of the doorway, she could not find a light switch, but soft music and a faint glow coming from the office area prompted her to cross the intervening space on her way to the dressing room.
Without people moving about, Imperial House creeped her the hell out, making Marianne glad that she hadn’t had to be here any earlier. Maybe Katja was already here and she could spend some time chatting to her. It occurred to her then that Brett would be here, and a delicious thrill of danger tingled at the base of her spine. What if
“Marianne. Glad you could make it.” Brett’s voice was deep and sounded from right behind her.
She let out a strangled squeak and spun around to face him, a hand pressed to her chest. “Y-You startled me!”