Page 49 of The End of Summer

My. God.

“Oh, hey!” she calls.

I walk towards her as she maneuvers her way out of the silks, landing as gracefully as a bird coming down from the sky, all wings and feathers and floating.

“Don’t stop on my account,” I say. “That looked really cool.”

“Yeah, they’re fun,” she replies. “Pole silks – but they’ll burn your skin something fierce if you’re not careful.” Gretchen shows me the inside of her forearm, where she has what looks an awful lot like a rug burn.

“Ouch,” I say. “That just happened today?”

“Uh huh. I’m still learning,” she smiles, sheepishly.

Gretchen grabs a bottle of water that’s in the floor over by the wall of mirrors. The light shines neon purple all around us. “Want some?” she asks, holding the bottle out to me.

“I’m good, thanks,” I say. “What time did you get here?”

“About 30 minutes ago,” she replies.

“How was your brunch?" I ask.

“It was great, thanks. How was your morning?"

"Busy, but good. Got some errands done." I try to sound nonchalant, as if I didn't spend all morning thinking about this moment rightnow.

“So, are you working the party tonight?”

“Nope. But Steve – he’s the guy who organizes everything – he said he’d keep me on the roster for the future.”

“That’s nice. I honestly can’t imagine keeping up the pace of doing this beyond the summer. It’s a lot.”

“Well, sure, I mean especially if you’re dancing all night long. I only have to humiliate myself for under an hour. You guys have to do this all night, right?”

“Not exactly. The way it works is the group of girls arrives and first we let them dance and hang out, just warm up, give them some shots to get them to relax, you know? Then we do a pole dancing lesson. That’s actually really easy because we show them a move and they practice it over and over for each other.”

“That doesn’t get boring?”

“Well, sure, for us it does, but not for the girls. Most of them have never been on a pole before, so they feel like deviants even going near one. It takes a lot of time just for them to learn how to walk around a pole. Some of them have what Arrow calls ‘elephant feet,’ like, their step is just so hard that nothing looks sexy. So, we try to teach them how to walk, for starters.”

“Show me,” I say.

She laughs. “You want me to showyouhow to walk around the pole?”

“I do.”

“You’ve got no shame, huh?”

“Please. You’ve seen me in a baseball thong. Pretty sure nothing’soff limits with us.”

This makes her snicker, and the sound does something to my chest cavity.

“So, come on.” I grin. “Let’s see if I’ve got elephant feet.”

“Okay,” she replies, shaking her head. “First things first. Come stand here.” She leads me over to a different pole and directs me to stand in front of her. The pole is to my left. She taps on my left shoulder. “This is your inside arm.”

“Inside arm,” I repeat, raising my left hand.

“Good. And this,” she taps my right shoulder, “is your outside arm.”

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