Not again! Ugh! Why can’t you just leave me alone!?
I looked down at my phone as it lit up suddenly. The vibrations rattled my dorm room’s wooden desk and jolted me back to the present. My stomach turned as I scanned the screen. I recognized the number almost immediately despite it not being attached to the name in my phone’s miniscule address book.
It was the same number that called every single Friday for the last three years. And I wasn’t going to be the fool who picked up. They would just have to track me down and kick me out of school themselves. I was nowhere near prepared to pay off the $10,000 I had in tuition debt. And unlike what I promised the last time I was tricked into answering, I hadn’t found a bank that was dumb enough to let me get a loan out in my name.
So I was going to have to dance this dance once again. I was going to have to be coy, lay low, and avoid any official looking people on campus. If they couldn’t find me, they couldn’t demand I pay the money I owed. Or, worse, they couldn’t kick me out of school. I knew this for sure since they threatened to last year but hadn’t yet pulled the trigger.
It wasn’t like I was a deadbeat or a bad person. I wanted to pay. I actually wanted to be that college student with the pile of student loan debt I would have to scrimp and save for after college. But no one trusts the poor to pay back on time even when they have full-time jobs and work their asses off to be straight-A honor students. I followed the rules, I never skipped a class, I even volunteered on weekend mornings when I wasn’t recovering from a late night shift. Still, I was the one who couldn’t be trusted.
The phone call reminded me I should check my bank balance. It was like a Friday routine for me. University of Nevada Las Vegas’ Student Finances Office gives me a call. I pretend I didn’t hear it go off as I frantically log in to my bank account. As the page loads, I cross my fingers and pray to a higher power that some mysterious being has taken pity upon me and deposited a large sum of money into my account. But I was always wrong. I had exactly $3,280 in my name. UNLV wasn’t getting their money today. Or tomorrow. Or the next day either.
I waited for my phone to ding a notification of a missed call and voice mail before I peeled myself away from my desk. I spent all afternoon prepping my paper for History of Middle Eastern Trade Relations that I completely forgot to keep track of the time. With only twenty minutes ‘til my shift at the club, I had to rush. I opened the closet doors next to my own and started rummaging through Lana’s wardrobe. She kept the sluttiest clothes in the back. I started there.
I’d normally pick something more demure, something more fitting of a girl like me who lived her life in baggy t-shirts with funny slogans on them and loose fitting yoga pants that hid my bony waist. But Lana was, yet again, late on her laundry and had yet to restock on her overnight bag she brought along to every work shift just in case she decided to “hang around” with a customer.
I sighed as I pulled down what I hoped was a spandex black pencil skirt and a sparkling silver halter top. It was way too flashy for me, but at least my stomach would be covered and my scarecrow like legs would be concealed. Taking one quick glance in the mirror as I tied my waist-long straggly blonde hair into a flowing ponytail, I looked at the reflection staring back. This wasn’t the girl I wanted to be. This wasn’t the girl I'd envisioned for my future. But I had to do what I had to do to be that international businesswoman with an office in Tokyo, New York, and Paris. And working at the Strip Top Bar was what had to be done tonight.
I slipped on my favorite pair of beat up Chuck Taylors and grabbed my bag. My work shoes were already packed and ready to go. A pair of strappy black stilettos, I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing them anywhere else but work. And, even then, I struggled to walk like a normal human being in them. Luckily for me, working as a greeter meant I just had to stand there as I told tourist after tourist how ridiculously long the wait would be to get in.
No one trusted me to be a waitress like Lana. That required a skill I certainly didn’t have: flirting. On slower nights, I watched her as she coolly bent down low, dangerously close to a man as she took his drink order. She giggled at the right moments, touched arms at exactly the best times, and always had a devilish grin plastered to her Nevada sun-kissed skin that seemed to say, “Tip me, I’m so worth it.”
“You’re late, D’Angelo!” Daniel barked at me, as he always did, as I burst through the back door.
I leaned up against the kitchen’s prep counter as I struggled to slip on the strap of my shoe.
“He’s in a pissy mood. Two girls called off sick,” Cal, one of the security officers, walked past me, whispering in my direction. He winked as he warned, “I wouldn’t piss him off if I were you.”
I nodded back my appreciation as I awkwardly attempted running after Daniel to his office. I was just able to catch the hook of the door with my arm as he slammed it behind him, just barely sneaking in. I slithered past the other girls who waited around with bored, robotic looks on their freshly-painted faces until I found Lana. She wore a cut-off black tank and a gold mini-skirt with just enough fabric to cover her ass. Her severe bob brushed against her eyes as she stared at me amused.
“What the hell happened to you? Did my closet explode on you or something? I told you to go for the clothes in the back. You look like you came from my grandmother’s funeral.” She gestured to the skirt that just fell at my knees.
“This was the best I could do. I didn’t have much time to go through your costumes. Plus, I thought this wasn’t bad. I mean, my shoulders are showing at least. Isn’t that enough?”
Lana let out an exaggerated burst of air as she pulled a handbag out of her purse. She handed me a tube of bright red lipstick, the kind I would think was reserved for streetwalkers, along with some jet-black liquid eyeliner and a bottle of pink perfume. “Here,” she added as she handed me the supplies, “You’re going to need this tonight.”
I looked at her bemused as I applied the eyeliner and spritzed the perfume on my wrists. “What do you mean? I work in the dark hallway. No one was going to care what my makeup looks like.”
“Not tonight, you’re not!” Daniel suddenly interrupted their conversation, causing me to jump and smear the ruby red paste all over my chin. “You’re serving tonight. We need another girl up there to cover Vera’s shift. Her and Janelle are out. Something about a sick kid or something.”
“I’m what?” Lana handed me a tissue as I stared at my boss in shock. When I was hired, he had told me I had no shot in hell at ever working as a cocktail waitress, let alone a full server with the VIPs. I didn’t have the look, the style, the personality. And now, after two years of being stuck to a cold, damp hallway with impatient clubgoers, I was officially being moved on up.
“Lana, walk her through it before doors open.” My head raced as he continued to address the other girls in the room, “Tonight’s a big night. The entire Las Vegas Cowboy basketball team was here celebrating last night’s overtime win, and I don’t want any mistakes, especially with bottle service. At a thousand a bottle, you bet any dropped glasses or split champagne was coming out of your paychecks. Do you understand me?”
The girls mumbled an agreement as they stood and walked towards the dressing room. I wanted to follow, but I couldn’t seem to make my legs move. My whole body wanted to sink into the leather couch and melt with the fabric.
Lana reached out her hand towards me sympathetically as she pulled me to stand, catching my body as I wobbled from the shoes. “Come on now, girl. It isn’t that bad. Just pour some glasses of champagne, fetch them some food from the kitchen, and make sure they get everything they ask for. Cal was working security tonight, so he’ll keep you nice and safe.”
“Safe? Why do I need to worry about being safe?” My mind reeled as I tried to make sense of what Lana was talking about. She was just a waitress, not a police officer serving a bad neighborhood beat. What did she have to be worried about?
Lana ignored my question as she showed me the VIP setup. Up on the top floor rafters, each room was equipped with a little station for security and the waitstaff. The waitress was to stay in the wings until the VIP summoned them for a request. She then took the order on her tablet for the private bartender to make. It all looked so simple, but the dark, confined space coupled with the booming music from the club below rocked her. It was going to be a long night.
Lana shouted over the bass as the cheer of the crowd filled the club. “Your tablet’s beeping. You’ve got your first, official VIP.” She stared into the screen and then looked back at me. A smirk popped up across her face. “You’re in for an interesting night. It’s Eric Tombly!”
I shouted quickly, knowing I only had minutes, “Who?”
Lana knelt before me, grabbing at my hips. “Basketball star. Big guy in the league. Totally handsome. Totally handsy. Totally a great tipper.” Lana rolled up the waist of the tight skirt, lifting the hemline to well above my thigh. She then untucked the silver halter top and gathered the extra fabric in the back. Using a hair tie from the waitress supply area, she tied the back into a knot above my bellybutton. She commanded as she finished securing the shirt in its new place, “Lose the bra.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“He’s almost up here, girls.” Cal slyly glanced back at Lana tightening the shirt up against my skin as I pulled out my strapless bra from the neckline.
Lana took one last look at me, approving of her quick handiwork. “She’s ready. Let him in, Cal.” She placed her hands on my shoulder as she stared into my eyes. “Just do what he asks. He’s not a bad guy. Okay?”
I gulped as I stepped backwards from the black curtain and into the purple glow of the VIP room. A group of about ten men dressed in tailored shirts and jeans were taking their seats at the plush leather couches. I stood before them, attempting to make myself heard over the noise, “Hey, guys!” I tried to fake enthusiasm and emulate Lana’s perky fresh voice, “I’m Kylie, and I’ll be taking your order. Can I get you guys a bottle of champagne or vodka?”
“You can get that tight little ass on my lap!” the man sitting at the far end called to me, gesturing with his hands. By the way the others laughed and his stunning, towering physique, I guessed this one had to be the basketball player. I slowly walked towards him as if he were the big bad wolf in grandma’s clothing. I repeated my request for the table’s order one more time as he pointed to the first champagne bottle on the list. “5 of the Diamond Star.”
I nervously walked back to the waitress area, grabbing the bottles from behind the bar as the bartender quickly tended to the other mixed drinks. When I returned, all but a few of the men had left for the dance floor. Eric, however, remained. He gestured again towards his lap. “You’re working for me now, sister. And I’m ordering you to sit.”
I placed the bottles down on the glass table before the couch and then took my place at the far end of the couch. “Can I get you guys anything else? Any hors d'oeuvres? Mixed drinks?” Anything to get you to leave me alone?
“You can sit over on my lap like I asked you the first time.” He looked at me pointedly, “Don’t make me get mean.”
I stood slowly, making my way over to him. He leaned back as I sat propped up on his lap. His arms outstretched, circling my naked stomach and twirling my ponytail with his twisted fingers. “I love a girl with long hair. Something to hold onto during the ride.” He reached towards the uncorked champagne bottle as he said, “How about you pour a little of that champagne for me.”
His hand began to stroke my back, sending goosebumps up my legs as I reached for the empty glasses. I felt him pull me back towards him, the champagne bottle clutched in my hand, “No, not in the glass. I want you to pour it into my mouth.” He opened wide, his mouth gaping like a fish.
I reached the bottle above his head and tipped it out as gently as possible, not wanting to give in to the inner demon that demanded I drown him in his own thousand-dollar bottle of alcohol. But instead he pulled away, swallowing deeply, and then smiling back at me with his wide grin.
“I like you. You’re going to stay with me tonight. Got it?” I tried nodding, but he pulled my hair, forcing my body to lean back into his. My hips could feel him stiffen and flex. He was a bundle of muscles, tight and toned. And I was a bundle of nerves about to explode. His large fingers caressing my skin didn’t help either. They touched at every uncovered inch, his nails almost digging into my thigh, along the skirt’s edge. His other hand stroked at the v-neck of my halter top. Every few seconds, it would skim underneath the fabric, causing the sequence to rustle.
The men talked as I stood awkwardly into the distance. I tried not to pay attention to what he was doing or how his fingers had found their way up the skirt and near my panties. Instead, I calculated my required tip and prayed to God that him tweaking at my erect nipples would give me enough money to perhaps pay down the college enough to get them off my back for a couple months.
Eric pulled me in closer, causing my skirt to hike up even higher. I could smell the alcohol ooze off his breath as he whispered into my ear, “You’re a good girl, you know that? But I can tell what you want.”
Without warning, a finger slipped inside the folds of my pussy. I let out a shocked yelp as I stood suddenly. My heel caught on Eric’s dress shoe as I caught myself from falling by hitting the edge of the table with my hands. Eric’s weight tossed me further into the glass top as I looked up to see the bottles spill over the edge and shatter one by one on the glass tile floor.
“What the fuck! What the fuck!” The men jumped as the spilled pools of the gold liquid pooled at their feet. “These are four thousand dollar shoes, bitch!”
Cal was there in a second. He had been watching her in the holding area, waiting for his time to swoop in. He grabbed me off the ground, my hands and chest covered in the champagne. He led me off the floor as he spoke into the headset. I could hear him say, “I think you need to come up here, Daniel. We’re going to need some help.”
Daniel and Roxanne, my replacement, were in the VIP area in seconds flat. I listened to Eric complain about the ruined shoes and the girl who clumsily spilled the champagne. He wasn’t going to pay for a dime of it. And, furthermore, he wanted more free alcohol before the night was through.
“What am I going to do, Cal? This was the best paying job in the whole city, and I’m going to be fired. Or worse, they’re going to make me pay for those asshole’s bottles. You saw what he was doing!”
Cal continued to hand me paper towels as I patted myself dry. A small cut from hitting the sharp edge of the glass table began to pool blood as he rummaged around for a bandaid. Daniel entered soon after, his face red and his veins bulging around his neck.
“What the fuck, Kylie! This was an easy job. You get the VIP his bottles and you do what he asks. Any idiot could handle it!”
“I’m so sorry, Daniel! It’s just that he scared me. He, uh—” I struggled to think of how to say that the basketball star was fingering me without my permission, “He startled me and my shoe caught on his when I stood. I didn’t mean to spill the bottles.”
“It doesn’t fucking matter. You now owe us $4,200.”
“What?” I asked deadpan, hoping that I'd misheard him in my nervousness.
“It’s coming out of your paycheck.”
“No, you can’t do this to me! It was an accident.”
“Like I give a shit. You fucked up and now you have to pay. Got it?” Daniel began to walk away.
I didn’t know what to do, so I grabbed his arm and fell to my knees. I was covered in champagne, my shirt clinging to my braless chest. My skirt hiked up right around my panties. But I didn’t care. He had to listen to me. “Please, Daniel. There has to be some other way.”
He looked down at me, his face looking almost amused by the way I'd begged him. He nodded to me as he walked away, beckoning to follow him. I made it down to his office and took a seat at one of his desk chairs across from him. I waited in silence as he typed on his keyboard and then he turned his computer screen around to face me.
He hit his space bar as a video screen came to action. It was a woman, naked from the waist down, her shirt rolled up and pushed down to her hips. A man was behind her, half hidden by her body as he rocked into her sex. Her white knuckles curled around the bathroom sink as she cried out a name I couldn’t quite make out.
I watched it wordlessly, not knowing what to say or what should be said. I wanted Daniel to stop it. I wanted to keep watching. I'd never watched porn before. It just wasn’t my style. And while I was certainly no prude to this kind of stuff, I wasn’t going to pretend to be happy to be shown porn at my workplace. But there was a small part of me, the one that rested deep in my stomach, that caused my body to clench and my heart to race. My mouth went dry and my palms sweat as I watched the actress orgasm.
After a few minutes, he pressed the spacebar again causing the video pause on the man with the wolf tattoo reaching down towards the woman’s face. Daniel stood up and opened a desk drawer as he addressed me, “If you want to pay me back for tonight’s fuck up, you have to do this.” He pointed at the motionless screen.
I gulped, lowering my voice to a faint murmur, “That? What are you talking about?”
“Porn, Kylie. You may not know this about me, though many of your coworkers already do, but I’m a pretty big producer here in Vegas. I'm looking for girls like you – good, wholesome, American girls with decent bodies – to perform in a couple of shows. I’ll pay you $500 per show.”
“Will I have to be naked? Have sex?” I wasn’t that type of girl. I couldn’t be. This was way too much.
A smile cracked on his face as he reached across the desk to hand me a contract. I look at the heavy paper with the dark black ink and the long lines. A feeling of dread and unease hit me like a ton of bricks. But there’s nothing else I could do. This was my only option. I scanned through the document one more time, making note of the words “star,” “sex,” and “nudity.”
“It’s your only option, kid.” He said as he hands me a ballpoint pen.
The area where my name should be was blank, but I took the pen Daniel was handing to me and quickly scribbled mine in the empty space.