Page 1 of Triple Play

PART ONE

Worcester

Prologue

EIGHT MONTHS AGO

June

“Melody, your plaid whale is here,” Charise calls to me when I’m mostly upside down. Normally, it’d be hard to hear her over the thump of bass—if not for how empty the club is. Empty enough I’m on stage, walking a new dancer through the basics of doing a pole-assisted headstand.

“Focus on your breathing,” I say to the new girl. She’s maybe twenty, so green she introduced herself to me using her real name: Tina, whoops, I mean Tiara. Mostly, Tiara’s been staring at the pole as if it might bite her. “If you can control your breath, you can control your body. And try to keep your hips stacked over your shoulders.”

“Like this?” She attempts a headstand on a neighboring pole—attempts, but doesn’t quite make it, her legs waving unstably until she returns them back to the stage floor. Her heels are shiny and un-broken-in. She glances around like the few regulars here are going to grade her.

“Better!” I’m not even lying—desperation makes anyone a fast learner. “You really don’t need to be perfect to impress these guys.”

On cue, a customer tosses a fluttering twenty.

“That’s for you,” I say to Tiara.

She frowns. “It’s pity money.”

“Rule one of doing this job”—I lower my voice—“pity money’s still money.”

Tiara finally takes the bill and shoves it into the money pouch she’s wearing around her wrist. “I’m just doing this until I earn enough for a more permanent dance gig.”

A sentiment I’ve heard a lot over six years from other dancers. Part of me wants to tell her to leave this place behind while she can. But I don’t know her life. “Here”—I fold myself into the headstand again—“let’s try it one more time.”

“Melody!” Charise hollers again. “Did you not hear? Got a plaid whale here to see you.”

Plaid whale. What the other girls have taken to calling him. It’s no worse a name than the one he gave me: John. I’ve been working at this club for six years. Every other guy is supposedly named John.

Either way, now that it’s June, John’s mostly ditched the plaid flannel. “He’s here on a Tuesday?” I ask, as I swing myself upright, climb down from the stage, and walk over to Charise, who’s shrugging like she’s equally confused.

Tuesdays are usually slow. On Mondays you get guys on the tail end of a long weekend. By Wednesday, people are antsy to cut loose. I’ve heard a lot of hump day jokes, and I make a point to laugh at all of them. Laughing at men’s unfunny jokes is as much a part of this job as dancing on a pole. Tuesdays, though: everyone’s an angel on Tuesdays. Useless, in other words.

So what’s he doing here? I’m trying not to question that. Money’s money, and John always brings that.

“If you don’t want him, I can take him off your hands.” Charise smirks around the offer as if she knows what my answer will be. Strip club etiquette says a dancer can’t take another dancer’s regulars without a negotiation, but Charise and I trade customers all the time.

I shoot her an exaggerated look. “Seniority says…”

“That you’re a senior citizen?” she finishes, even if I’m all of twenty-five. “Well, Miss My Joints Creak Up On The Pole, can I take him or what?”

“My joints are fine, thanks. And no, no, you can’t.”

Charise puts up her hands in her own defense. “Down, girl. I know you like him.”

“It’s not like that.”

She gives me a raised eyebrow, an amusedly skeptical uh-huh.

Protesting any more will officially verge into protesting too much. “Anyway, I got him,” I say.

“You better work quick”—she nods toward the door—“the Vulture is already with him.”

Of course she is.

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