Preview: A Club of Our Own

Usually, when I post previews here, I like to give sneak peeks of the steamy bits, but this week, I got the urge to share a set-up scene from the new story I've been working on. Everything here is still subject to change, including the title and the characters' stage names, but I'm getting pretty excited about how it's shaping up. These two are going to have so much fun teaming up against their boss!

***

“My girls!” Larry Doyle called out from the front of the locker room at the Minx Mixer Lounge. His voice was as cheerful as an off-the-shelf greeting card, and there had been a time when both of those things had brought a warm glow to Lillith’s mood.

The last few years of her life had been an intensive crash course in cynicism, however. Greeting cards now felt like markers of where an honest gesture should have been, and Larry’s voice left a sourness under her skin that she was going to have to make a concerted effort to scrub off as soon as he shut up. Otherwise, it would cling to her all day, affecting her dancing, her client time, and crucially, her money.

There weren’t many things that had gone the way Lillith had planned them, but being able to afford her fragile freedom, and some comfort too, was one victory that never lost its novelty. It was one she meant to hang on to, no matter what else turned to shit around her.

“Family meeting, girls, huddle up.”

Lillith covered her costume with a jacket and her grimace with a smile, and made her way through the maze of lockers and makeup tables to the source of the echoing voice.

After a few seconds, the rest of the dancers had joined her in forming a rough semi-circle before their boss.

“Check-in, how’s everyone feeling tonight?” asked Larry, baring his perfect teeth and scanning the circle for the honest responses that every single dancer there was too skilled to give him.

“Feeling great!”

“Feeling sexy!”

“Feeling like a winner!”

They all knew his favorite answers, and how to change them up just enough.

“Glad to hear it,” he said. “Just a few bits of housekeeping to go over. Firstly, I want to see some more smiles out there! Remember, there’s nowhere in the word better to be than here!”

Corners of mouths, Lillith’s included, winched themselves higher at his command.

“Second, we’re having a pajama party after closing this Friday!” he said, as if presenting an excitable dog with its favorite treat. “We’re going to play nerf tag and eat pizza and talk strategy all night, so plan your cheat days accordingly. It’s mandatory.”

A muffled bristling could be heard in the shifting of high heels.

“And third.” Larry paused. It was not a calculated, dramatic pause. He did those often, and they were much longer. This was a pause of hesitation.

Lillith’s stomach took on a preparatory hardness. Anything that gave Larry that kind of pause had to be really bad.

“I don’t want anyone to be taken off guard and say I didn’t warn them. Steve Carson is officially welcome back at the Minx Mixer Lounge, and he’s likely to make an appearance. I expect all of you to show him the same hospitality you would any distinguished customer.”

On Lillith’s left, Paisley wilted at the sound of Steve’s name, and continued wilting millimeter by millimeter for the rest of the announcement.

Lillith’s stomach clenched in ill-advised sympathy, and she bit her tongue.

“He’s… he’s coming tonight?” Paisley asked, like she was hoping she’d misheard.

“Yes, probably,” Larry answered. “Does it matter when?”

“I just thought,” said Paisley, “if we know when he’s going to be here, maybe I could switch shifts with someone?”

“You don’t think you can be a professional about it?” he asked, in his coldest warning tone.

“I was a professional last time,” Paisley mumbled, crossing her arm behind her back and grasping her elbow. “But it didn’t—”

“That’s debatable,” Larry pointed a finger at her, almost close enough to brush her nose. “I had a chat with Steve, and he says you tried to charge him for twenty minutes of VIP time for practically nothing.”

Well, if Steve says it, then it must be true, Lillith thought, and bit down harder, because talking shit to Larry was one of the many impulses that was not good for her money.

“We were in the room for almost an hour!” Paisley exclaimed on the verge of tears.

“Working?” Larry asked. “Or talking?”

Talking is half the job, asshole.

“Talking was all he wanted to do!” said Paisley. “I told you, he asked for a VIP room, but then he kept asking about my family, my real name, where I lived, all the places he wanted to take me on vacation, what we’d name our kids—”

“How many girls here have had a client fall in love with them?” Larry demanded.

Lillith grudgingly raised her hand along with the others. Either answer could be used against them in the long run.

“It’s your job to take that interest and redirect it in a way that serves your business, and our business,” Larry lectured on. “You keep them focused on enjoying the moment.”

“I tried,” said Paisley, a couple of her tears escaping.

“What do you want me to do?” Larry asked, tossing his hands in the air, making Paisley flinch when his fingers passed near her face. “When that man steps through the door, he doubles the amount of cash up for grabs out there.”

He gesticulated in the direction of the lounge proper.

“He brings in more than the rest of the guests put together, and watching him spend it makes them want to spend more, just to keep up. Would you take that opportunity away from yourself, away from all your teammates here,” he gestured around the locker room, “Away from me, just so that you can avoid some awkward conversations?”

Paisley slumped and looked down.

“Please,” she said. “Just don’t put me in a room with him again.”

“Oh, of all the juvenile bullshit!” Larry groaned. “Meeting adjourned.”

He swatted at the air in the direction of the other dancers, as if they were a cloud of foul-smelling air. Most of them went, glad to be out of his sight. A few, Lillith among them, stood paralyzed and watching.

“Go on!” Larry jerked a few more of them into dispersing. “Go back to whatever you were doing. Don’t worry, there will be money in the club tonight. I’ll have a chat with this one about how she’s so much better than the rest of you. How she can’t lower herself to breathe the same air as—”

“Her stalker,” Lillith finished aloud, in spite of herself.

“What was that?” Larry blinked at her in disbelief.

Paisley looked at Lillith, guardedly hopeful, like she was a life preserver in the ocean.

Lillith cursed herself internally. This was exactly the kind of doomed, idealistic tactical error she’d resolved to outgrow.

Nothing was worse for your money than pissing off your club owner.

But Larry had heard her, and already adjusted his opinions of her accordingly. She couldn’t take it back, so she might as well make the best of it.

“It just seemed like you were having trouble coming up with the right word for Paisley’s stalker,” Lillith repeated. “So, I thought I’d help you out.”

“Oh, you did?” Larry scrubbed his face with his palm. “Do you know how fucking disappointing it is, getting this from you? I thought, out of everyone here, I could count on you to think about the team.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” said Lillith, her voice firm and factual. “Paisley, has Steve ever threatened you?”

“Well, kinda,” said Paisley. “He said he could get me fired a few times. He said he always gets what he wants. And ever since he got my phone number, he’s been sending me all these videos of him practicing with knives and swords and guns, telling me about how deadly he can be.”

“You know what that makes him?” Lillith asked Larry.

“Let me guess,” said Larry. “It makes him technically a ‘stalker’?”

“More importantly for you,” Lillith held her voice steady, “It makes him a ‘foreseeable threat’ to Paisley, and this club, and everyone in it. If you as franchise owner ignore that threat, and he comes here and… and hurts her, the club would be liable.”

A vein flared in Larry’s forehead at the word “liable.”

“Not that Paisley would ever sue, I’m sure,” Lillith said quickly. “She’s a team player. A family member. Just like the rest of us. But supposing Steve comes in here with one of those detector-proof plastic guns. Or he waits outside for her with the regular old metal variety. And instead of shooting Paisley, or only Paisley, one of his stray bullets hits another guest, and that guest sues. What happens then? I’ll tell you. The parent company will pin it all on you. They’ll call you a ‘bad apple’ and wash their hands of you. The courts will have this place liquidated down to the copper wiring to pay off the family, and then there’s no more money for any of us.”

Larry’s jaw clenched.

“Look who’s suddenly a lawyer,” he taunted through his teeth, which meant he was buying time to think.

“Not a lawyer, and not your lawyer,” Lillith acknowledged. “So nothing I say is technically legal advice. But I was a paralegal, before I realized there’s nowhere in the world better to be than here.” She forced another grisly smile. “And I’m sharing the same info with you that I would with my own father.”

If I liked my father.

Larry stood there for several seconds, clenching and unclenching his jaw, vein pulsing, looking back and forth between Lillith and Paisley.

For a few of those seconds, Lillith dared to hope that she’d made her point.

“You’re talking about what-ifs,” Larry growled. “I’m talking about paying our bills tonight. And even if a disgruntled client did decide to do something stupid, no one here would ever betray the family by claiming there were ‘warning signs.’ Isn’t that right, girls?”

For the first time in months, there was a pause before the approved reaction.

“Jesus Christ,” said Larry. “Do none of you realize what would happen if I exiled every blowhard who claimed to be a dangerous man to impress one of you girls? We might as well turn this place into a brunch buffet. How well do you think bitter old church ladies tip the pretty young things who fetch their coffee? Does that sound like a life you’d enjoy?”

“No, boss,” the dancers answered from all over the locker room, the hesitation gone.

Lillith followed along, resigning herself to one of those days when the sourness under her skin would not leave.

She’d said what she could say, and it made no difference. Maybe next time she would remember not to.

“You two,” Larry pointed to Lillith and Paisley. “You’re both off the roster tonight and off the main stage for a week. Get out. And if you can’t come back and give a hundred percent to this family and all of its generous clients, don’t come back at all.”

Wiping her eyes furiously, Paisley grabbed her coat and backpack, neither of which fit over her ornately feathered costume, and ran for the door.

Lillith picked up her own bag and followed.

All she had to do was walk out of the locker room door, and then out the side exit, and forty feet to her car. Then she could get on the road and beat the hell out of her steering wheel, and cry, and sing, and eventually calm down enough to assess the damage and make a plan to fix it.

But of course, she only got as far as that first set of doors before Paisley fell into step beside her.

“Hey,” Paisley sniffed self-consciously.

“Don’t mention it,” said Lillith.

“Oh, okay,” said Paisley. “I was just going ask if you wanted to share an escort out.”

She nodded toward Clyde, one of the bouncers, who was leaning against the wall and waiting for the evening rush to begin.

Lillith had been planning to sneak out on her own without making a scene, but after calling out Larry’s security errors so publicly, she didn’t want him to hear that she was being careless with her own safety.

“Fine,” she said.

They both met Clyde’s eye, and he walked close behind them as they made their way out to the parking lot. He mercifully did not ask why they were leaving minutes after they’d arrived.

“Well, this is me…” Paisley said, putting her hand on top of a car with peeling gold paint. “Do you…?” She wiped her eyes with one of her feathers. “I really don’t know if I’m coming back, so….”

Lillith sighed, and waved her onward, toward her own car. “Come on. Let’s get you a drink.”