Damaged Goods

  When I’d pulled into a parking spot, I turned the car off and just sat there, clutching the steering wheel with all of my might. My breath came in short gasps. I could have been just as likely to peel out of the parking lot and forget about that place as I was about to march through the front door and start working right then and there.

  When my eyes locked on Reese’s backpack on the floor of the passenger side—she must have forgotten it—my mind cleared. My breathing slowed, and my hands moved from the steering wheel to the door handle. I shoved open the door and hurried across the parking lot before I could change my mind.

  The bouncer at the door took one look at me and gave me a condescending grin. “Hey, sweetheart. This isn’t no sorority sister kind of club that plays boy band music and serves fruity drinks. That club is a few miles farther down.”

  Now that my mind was made up, I wouldn’t let anything or anyone sidetrack me. I crossed my arms. “I don’t listen to boy band music, I sure as hell don’t drink fruity drinks, and I’d rather have my eyes stabbed out with a spork than join a sorority.”

  Bouncer Boy chuckled. Again, in a condescending, aren’t-you-just-as-cute-as-a-little-kitten kind of way. “This is a strip club. And not the male kind.”

  “Sounds like my kind of place.” I stopped in front of him and glanced at the door. “Now, mind letting me in before I file a complaint that this place is profiling their customers?”

  The bouncer’s smile stayed in place, but he stepped aside and pushed the door open. “Just so long as you know what you’re getting yourself into.”

  I squared my shoulders and slipped inside. “I know what I’m getting myself into.”

  I’d never been inside a strip club, but one of my first jobs in L.A. had been as a go-go dancer. Yeah, they were nothing alike. The music was different, the lighting was different, the clientele was different . . . The whole atmosphere was different. I tried to keep my blinders on, but that was impossible. Really, if I’d accepted that as my life, what was the point in milling about the club like a prude?

  It would just be a job. Nothing more. A way to take care of my family. It wouldn’t define me. Those were the words I encouraged myself with as I wove deeper into the club, searching for Jake or an office. I believed my reassurances somewhat but not fully. A very prominent part of me was terrified that if I went there—if I exchanged money for taking off my clothes—it would very much define me and I’d never be the same again.

  I shoved all thoughts of reassurance and dread aside and moved ahead. Really, for being so close to Death Valley, you’d never know it. The club was almost . . . classy. And yes, if anyone had ever accused me of referring to a strip club as classy, I would have called them a bold-faced liar. But really, if I could get past the varying-stages-of-naked women twirling around poles, stages, and laps and past the low-thumping music that had so much base it vibrated my insides, it could have been a happening club in Southern California. To find a place like that barely ten miles outside of a town that was the opposite of classy and sophisticated was like finding myself in the Twilight Zone.

  I didn’t see any sign of Jake, so I made my way toward the bar in hopes someone would know where he was or how I could get a hold of him. I was almost there when a hand grabbed mine.

  “Hey, honey. You work here?” The man who’d grabbed my hand was middle-aged and had on a suit and tie—and a wedding band.

  My stomach twisted as I slid my hand from his. “No, I don’t.” My stomach twisted again when I realized that the next time some guy asked me that, my answer would be different.

  I was thinking too much. This wasn’t the place or the job where one should overuse their thoughts. If there were a brain-off switch, I would have used it right then. I stopped in front of the bar and had to wait a minute before anyone noticed me.

  The bartender’s forehead lined when he saw me. “Can I help you with something?” Apparently he was about as used to seeing female patrons as the bouncer was.

  “I’m looking for Jake. Is he around?”

  The lines of confusion on his face vanished. Young girls looking for Jake must have been a common occurrence.

  “Yeah, he’s around. He’s in the back taking care of a situation. You want something to drink while you wait?” He swept his arm toward the impressive collection of bottles stacked to the ceiling.

  I shook my head. I might have been a rookie when it came to the strip scene, but I had a fair amount of common sense. Drinking inside that place—as an employee or a customer—was a sure way to wind up in trouble. “A situation?”

  The bartender’s eyebrow jacked up. “This is a strip club. There’s a situation every two seconds around here.”

  I supposed it was good to know what I was getting into. “Situations,” in a female’s world, translated into drama. I didn’t have the time or the patience for drama.

  “You know, one of the girls pulling out another girl’s extensions. Or sprinkling itching powder in another girl’s thong. Or rubbing a dead fish all over another girl’s costume. Or peeling the grips from the bottom of a girl’s eight-inch platforms. That kind of thing.”

  Could my stomach twist anymore without releasing my dinner? Oh, wait. I hadn’t had dinner. One of the few upsides to today. “And these types of thing happen a lot?”

  He grabbed a towel and wiped off the counter. “All the time. This place wouldn’t be a strip club worth a darn if some girl wasn’t trying to claw her way to the top every night.”

  “What’s the big deal with clawing your way to the top?” To me, it seemed simple. You came, you stripped, you went home. It didn’t seem like the kind of profession where climbing the ladder was a priority.

  “Because in this business, the closer you are to the top, the more money you make. It’s simple economics.”

  Yeah, I hadn’t seen that one coming. An economics lesson from a bartender inside a strip club.

  “Ah, there’s the big man now.” The bartender tilted his chin behind me. “And it looks like he was expecting you.”

  I spun around to find Jake coming my way with a shadow of a smile on his face.

  “I was wondering when I’d see you again,” he said.

  As strip club owners went, Jake wasn’t what I would have pictured. He wasn’t some slimy old guy who drove a Corvette and had leather skin from lots of fake tanning. He was young, obviously ambitious, and dressed like a banker.

  “Come on. Don’t B.S. me. You were probably taking bets on when I’d come in here looking for you.” Probably not the best way to start a job interview, but since this wasn’t a typical job, nor a typical interview, what was the point in giving typical responses?

  Jake’s smile went wide. “Yeah, you’re right. I bet my assistant manager you’d come walking through those doors on Monday. That you held out a few days meant I’ve got a few things to learn. It also means I lost five hundred bucks.” Jake leaned his elbow on the bar. “I don’t like to lose, especially where money’s concerned.”

  “So what do you want? An apology for trying a few more days to find a ‘respectable’ career cleaning hotel rooms or bagging groceries?” I scanned the room and what was going on around me. This kind of profession was a lot of things, but I wouldn’t call it respectable.

  “Screw apologies. I’ll settle for you dancing your ass off so that I make that five hundred back on your first night.”

  “Quite the business man, aren’t you?”

  “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  Yes, I certainly was. “So. The job offer. Is it still on the table?”

  Jake chuckled. “Oh yeah, it’s definitely still on the table.” His eyes flickered to a table a few over from us.

  I sighed. “You know what I mean.”

  The bartender handed Jake a bottle of water, and he took a long drink before replying. “I know what you mean, and yes, the job offer still stands.”

  I swallowed and kept my eyes up. “When do I start?” I was resolved, committed. I would h
ave figured something out if Jake had told me right away.

  “Tomorrow’s Friday, our busiest night. You wanted a job? You’re twenty-four hours away from making some serious cash.”

  I nodded and pushed aside the wave of dizziness I felt when imagining myself in the same position as the women staggered around the room.

  “You sure about this? Because you don’t look so sure,” he said. “And the only thing worse than a strip club with no strippers is a strip club with nervous strippers.”

  I stepped forward, staring Jake down. “Do I look nervous?”

  Jake studied me for a few seconds. “No, you look like the most confident person I’ve ever seen. Which means you’re scared shitless.” I opened my mouth to argue, but he cut me off. “That’s okay. If you can disguise scared shitless with bravery, that means you can act. That means you’ll do just fine here.”

  My eyes narrowed in confusion. “Because I can act? That’s what will make me a decent stripper?” Big boobs, oozing sex appeal, fake eyelashes, and making a pole my bitch seemed ten times more important there than the ability to act.

  “Look around you. What do you think we’re selling here?” Jake’s eyes swept around the room, and mine followed.

  I studied the women. I studied the men. I studied their interactions. I studied the club until I’d absorbed so much my head could have exploded. “An illusion. You’re selling an illusion.”

  “Bing, bing, bing,” Jake chimed. “You are right, my intelligent, scared-shitless beauty. And what is the most important piece of selling an illusion?”

  It slipped out of my mouth before I’d thought it. “Acting.”

  “Two for two.” Jake looked impressed. “You are really going to mess up my girls’ I.Q. curve. Don’t go giving them any ideas about going on strike or anything, you got it?”

  “I’ll come. I’ll work. I’ll leave. I will not, and I want it put on record right now, tolerate, put up with, or engage in any kind of drama-slash-‘situations’ that happen around here.”

  “That’s what they all say. Yet here I am, every night, feeling more like a referee than a club owner.”

  “Yeah, well this is me saying it.”

  “Noted. Anything else?” Jake lifted an eyebrow.

  I inhaled. “What time do I need to be here tomorrow night?”

  “Eight o’clock for orientation. You hit the floor at nine.”

  I was about to ask what orientation entailed—I doubted it was anything like the week-long orientation before my freshman year of college—when a customer approached Jake with his hand extended.

  “This is some place you’ve got, Jake. Consider me sufficiently impressed. And by impressed I mean I’ve been hard for so long my dick’s about to fall off.” The guy was about Jake’s age, had a buzz cut, and was decent looking.

  At least not only middle-aged married men frequented The Body Shop. Something about stripping for a bunch of guys who could have been my dad while their wives waited at home unsettled me. Well, it unsettled me more than the rest of it did.

  “Glad to hear it, Troy.” Jake shook his hand and patted his shoulder. “You had a lap dance yet?”

  Troy flashed a fifty. “What do you think this is for?”

  Jake chuckled and made eye contact with a pretty brunette dancing on the table closest to us. “You might as well put that away because you’re about to take a trip to the V.I.P. room. Compliments of the house.”

  Troy’s eyes went big as a wide smile formed. “That is a trip I am more than happy to make.”

  Jake shoved him toward the brunette. “Candy will take good care of you. Have a good time.”

  Troy studied the brunette, his smile tipping closer to beaming. “I don’t see how I possibly couldn’t.” Troy shook Jake’s hand again then glanced at me as though he’d just noticed I was a foot in front of him. His beam stayed in place. “Who’s this? A girl you keep all to yourself or one you share with everyone else?”

  Stomach twist number fifty-five.

  “Why don’t you come back tomorrow night and find out for yourself?”

  “Sounds like my kind of Friday night. I’m shipping out on Monday, so I might as well live it up before I spend another year up to my neck in sand and women sporting burqas.”

  “Until tomorrow,” Jake said.

  The brunette grabbed Troy’s hand and pulled him through the crowd.

  Jake turned back to me. “That’s one of my kid brother’s old platoon members. He’s in town for leave, and I invited him to come hang out.”

  Hanging out had such a different meaning now than it had when I was a twelve-year-old.

  “It seems like he’s enjoying himself,” I understated.

  “He’s earned it. Those guys put their lives on the line every day for twenty-five grand a year. They’re heroes, and in this place, they’ll be treated as such.”

  That might have been the only time I’d seen Jake without a grin. In fact, I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen a person’s expression drawn up so fervently. “Noted,” I repeated his word back to him. “So . . . what’s the V.I.P. room?” I’d rather know exactly what I was getting into before finding out as I went.

  Jake lifted his shoulders. “The V.I.P. room.”

  How specific. “How about . . . what happens in the V.I.P. room?”

  Another shrug. “Dancing.”

  I crossed my arms and waited. Dancing happened out here, so what was the point of a V.I.P. room if the exact same thing happened in there?

  “Sex?” he asked. “Is that what you’re worried about happening in there?”

  “Or anything even close to it.”

  Jake took another drink of his water. He’d obviously arrived at the same conclusion I had—no drinking on the job. “I’m an employer, Liv, not a pimp. We sell the illusion, nothing more.”

  “You just sell more illusion in the V.I.P. room?”

  “Precisely.” That ultra-white smile was back in all its glory. Jake checked the time on his expensive watch and pushed off the counter. “It’s been a great interview, but I’ve actually got a business to run, so I’ll see you tomorrow at eight.”

  “Wait. Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “Other than asking for a personal lap dance to make sure you know what you’re doing before I set you loose on our busiest night of the week? Or maybe asking you to strip to your birthday suit to make sure your naughty bits are extra naughty?”

  I shoved his chest. “If you were worried about my ability to dance or my ‘naughty bits,’ you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”

  “How right you are.”

  “But we could discuss my hourly wage. How much are you going to start me at?”

  Jake’s face ironed out before he burst out laughing. I crossed my arms tighter.

  “How much do I pay you?” he managed to say between his laughter. “How about how much do you pay me?”

  It was my turn for my face to iron out. “I pay you? That’s a joke right?” If that was the case, I was walking out those doors in five seconds flat and never coming back.

  “You really are a rookie, aren’t you?”

  Jake’s laughter cut back enough that I didn’t want to punch him in the throat anymore, but the amused expression still covering his face kept my fists balled.

  “Strippers aren’t paid by the club,” he clarified. “They pay the club a portion of their tips. Some places take as much as fifty percent of a dancer’s tips, but lucky for you, my club only takes thirty percent.”

  “Let me get this straight. I show up, entertain your customers, and for this great honor, I pay you thirty percent of my tips for the night?” I was missing something. I had to be.

  “I’d say you’ve got the basics, yep.”

  “How is that legal?”

  Jake drank what was left in the bottle then tossed it behind the bar. “Tell you what. Come dance tomorrow, find out how much you can make a shift, and we’ll see if you’re still complaining w
hen you leave.”

  “You’re the first person I’ll find when my shift is done. Which is . . . what time exactly?” I’d worked plenty of club jobs, so I was used to not getting off work until the sun was rising, but I didn’t know if a strip club kept the same kind of hours.

  “Your shift is over when the customers’ wallets are empty.” Jake winked before making his way into the crowd. He didn’t make it far before he stopped and snapped his fingers. “Oh, make sure when you hit the floor tomorrow night, you look the part. If these guys wanted to see girls traipsing about in ponytails and cotton jammies, they’d be home with their wives and girlfriends.” Jake’s gaze wandered down me, stopping at my feet. “And they might be comfy, but flats don’t get the job done around here. I’ve got a minimum six-inch heel requirement. You know, just as an FYI.”

  “Call me crazy, but I don’t have a lot of hooker heels in my wardrobe. Is there some Stripper Emporium around the corner I can stop at to pick some things up before tomorrow night?” Not that I could have paid for anything even if there were a store like that around.

  “God, you’re such a rookie.” Jake shook his head for the umpteenth time that night. “Just show up, and I’ll make sure you have what you need to get you by. Sound fair?”

  “Will whatever I ‘need to get me by’ be properly washed and . . . sanitized?” God, the thought of it made me cringe.

  “You’re going to be a serious pain in my ass, Liv.” I was about to reply when Jake lifted his hand. “No, no. That wasn’t a hypothesis needing to be proven or disproven. That was a statement, a truth that isn’t open to discussion. Thanks for your almost-input though.”

  Yeah, I was pretty sure that “pain in the ass” thing went both ways.

  “Oh, and Liv? Congratulations. You’ve just landed yourself one of the highest paying jobs in the county.”

  I smiled weakly before he vanished into the crowd. Congratulations went with celebrations, and even though I was relieved to have a job, it wasn’t one I was eager to celebrate.

  Oh, well. That was all right. Someone whose family was falling apart at the seams didn’t have the luxury of morality. Or turning her nose up at a paying job.