“Not that,” Tess said to the millionth outfit Milo pulled up on his laptop. “I’m trashy, but I’m dancing around a pole, not selling myself. No one will believe I’m trying to audition in that.”
Milo scrubbed his face; it looked like he was trying real hard not to glare at her. “You aren’t making this easy. Pasties and a thong. Why is this such a big deal?”
She flicked his shoulder with her fingers. A month or two ago, he’d have yanked her fingers down and threatened to snap them off if she touched him again; how times had changed. He still gave her a glare, but it was more heated, a warning of what happened to bad girls who didn’t behave instead of an actual threat.
“Because you want me to be convincing. Because you want me to get you in a door with people who are conditioned not to trust anyone. Because I’m going to be considered a problem because of Toro going to ground. Because if I don’t look just right, none of it is going to matter. And anyway, no one wears pasties anymore. Thongs yes, pasties no. And when poles are involved, getting string stuck in your ass crack just isn’t sexy.” She leaned past him and scrolled down the screen a little farther. “That,” she said finally, pointing. A green bikini with scaled patterns over it and matching gauntlets. The entire fabric was stretchy Lycra, and would both smoosh her boobs together for maximum cleavage while also making sure that her nipples stayed exactly where they were supposed to be. No point in giving away for free what she could get people to pay for.
Milo stared at the screen for another long moment. “I’m just saying that I’ve never seen a pole dancer wear that much.”
“Then you’ve seen the kind of pole dancing that’s only about getting tips. This kind is about getting tips but also being incredibly gorgeous while you do it.”
She hadn’t actually had an audience in a while, and the little strut she’d done for him before wasn’t anything like the routine she’d put on at the club. She’d have to make some calls too, make him get her some kind of burner phone, make sure she could set up a couple auditions over the next few days. It wouldn’t be as easy as Milo seemed to think; as if people who were a little poor and a little hungry for an exhibitionist girl who would stuff a twenty between her boobs for them couldn’t also appreciate an athletic routine that brought to mind acrobats and high wire performers while also wearing a skimpy bikini that caught the stage lights.
It wouldn’t actually be as hard as she was making it out to be to get her foot back in the door. Not unless Toro had blacklisted her. But with his own fortunes on the drop, it was unlikely he’d have enough clout to make that happen right now. Six months ago, almost certainly. Now? She was positive he was on the run. Where else would he be?
There was a terrifying possibility that Tess had not allowed herself to consider. That he was watching her. That going to one of the clubs that were under his control would result in disaster. That he would take her back, and because she’d left at all, he would punish her severely. Scar her face or her body so badly that no one would ever want her again, and she wouldn’t be able to work. With no degree and no job history, she might possibly get a job as a waitress somewhere, but nothing else would ever happen. She’d die in the street for all that anyone cared about her.
Was having a baby really any different? Milo kept promising to take care of her and the baby, but she didn’t really have the financial knowledge to know what different kinds of trusts were, or how they could be canceled or something in the future. She didn’t want to be beholden to another man, didn’t want to be relying on her body to get her what she needed to survive. Not like this.
Babies were a lot – stretch marks everywhere, and even if she chose not to keep the kid once it was born, what were her options? Would anyone believe her that she didn’t do drugs, didn’t have diseases? Would anyone be able to give her baby a good home? Or would it always be haunted by who she was and what she had done? She didn’t want to be a blemish on her child’s life forever.
Maybe the right choice was to leave the moment she was out of Milo’s sight. Get rid of the pregnancy and just… move to a new city. Start over. Make up a history, make up a life, and be someone new. But the thing was that if she could get rid of the financial stress… the idea of a baby was pleasant. Maybe even wanted. Maybe something she’d always wanted, but never let herself dream of. After all, what had been the point of dreaming? If she’d gotten pregnant under Toro’s “care”, one of two things would have happened: she would have been forced into an abortion, or he would have taken the child and raised it in his lifestyle. Raised it to be a murderer, a drug lord, and a monster – if it was a boy. If it were a girl… She didn’t even want to think of that – what a man like Toro might be capable of doing to his own little girl.
And if he’d decided halfway through a pregnancy that he didn’t want the baby after all… neither she nor the baby would have been safe. He might have been satisfied with putting a bullet in her brain. He might have decided to make sure the treatment was more… drawn out.
She pushed herself away from that train of thought as hard as she could. Milo was looking at details, saying that the costume she’d chosen was in stock in her size at a local store. She’d always had to modify things to fit her curvy figure, but for now, this would do. This would have to do.
“What now?”
He shrugged. “What does one wear to pick up a pole dancer’s costume?”
She laughed, just a little. “Any old thing.”
Which wasn’t true at all. She put on some of the regular clothes he’d bought her, though she hiked the skirt up high and pulled the shirt down low.
He took her down to his car, which was nicer than she remembered. Maybe he’d switched them at some time over the crazy last few weeks.
It was weird, being out of the hotel room after all this time. It wasn’t a bad hotel room, as these things went, but the ceilings weren’t all that high, and she’d gotten accustomed to the walls being close around her. There wasn’t all that much light, just what Milo had turned on during the day and night. Since he’d kept a pretty irregular schedule, there was no telling whether it was morning or night, just the lights on or off.
She flinched hard in the daylight, and at the infinite distance of the sky. Thank God they were in a busy section of the city; the roads kept her reasonably confined on the sides, though there was still a lot more space around her than she really preferred.
Milo seemed almost prepared for this. He put his arm around her, like she was his girlfriend, and laughed gently into her ear, a chance to whisper that she was going to be okay. He passed her a pair of huge Jackie O sunglasses that she could put on and stop cringing away from the sun. She probably looked like she had an incredible hangover, but that wasn’t all that surprising; not uptown or downtown.
“Thank you,” she whispered back, and he pulled her in gently to kiss her temple.
It tugged at her heartstrings in a way nothing else had ever. He’d fucked her and made her pregnant and kissing her soft was the most intimate thing he’d done. It made her melt and smile in a way that she hadn’t in a very long time. But she pushed those soft feelings away as hard as she possibly could; it was too much for her to handle when she was about to strip almost all the way naked in front of strangers. For that, she needed to be tough, untouchable, and unbreakable. She could make it happen; she always could. The only question was at what cost would it be done?
Milo drove them across town, out of the pretty buildings and tall offices into the section that cities always had. The buildings were older, the streets were narrower, the cars parked on either side of the road meant that drivers needed to slow down and make sure they were leaving enough room between themselves and the other vehicles. Not everyone slowed down. Not all of the pedestrians looked before they stepped into the street.
It wasn’t quite the kind of neighborhood where gunshots were ignored because they were commonplace, but it also wasn’t all that far away from such a place.
He parked in front of a little shop that did not have bars on its front windows, but she could see roll-down metal shutters that could be closed at night. There were mannequins in those windows, wearing skimpy costumes that no store in the nicer parts of town would display. One was a flapper dress, covered in a fringe, that barely covered the mannequin’s plastic ass; the other wore a bikini, not unlike the one she and Milo were here to pick up. He took her hand like she was his girlfriend, and it gave her the same soft feelings that she’d had before; she forced to swallow them again. Why did she want to give in to this? Why did she want him to be a part of her life? She’d never wanted that before, not since she was a tiny child. She hadn’t wanted that from Toro, or any of the men that had come before him. They had been a means to an end, a way to get what she wanted: food, safety, and in all honesty, a way to scratch the endless itch of wanting physical pleasure and contact. It was safer than fucking random people from bars and more interesting than a rechargeable vibrator. It was better than nothing, but not by all that much. Wanting more than that wasn’t safe. Wanting more than that was how girls like her ended up as mules for drug kingpins and hooking for pimps who swore they loved the girl, and that just as soon as he’d paid off his bills, she could stop. She’d worked hard to make herself so untouchable that she’d never be fooled like that. She wasn’t going to allow that to change because of some stupid wish that was probably hormone related anyway.
So instead of letting Milo lead the way into the store, she pulled free of his hand and strutted inside first. She didn’t have four-inch heels, but she could walk like she did; she got every inch of sway out of her hips that she could. She let the door bang on her way in; Tess had known how to make an entrance since she was a preteen. She struck a pose in the doorway, her hand on her hip, her left leg extended just enough to highlight her calf under her shortened leather skirt, and her sunglasses low on her nose so she could stare over them like some kind of movie starlet.
She spotted the proprietor; a skinny, sweaty man, taller than most, with a thick head of hair that didn’t look entirely his. He stuck his hands deep into his pocket in a way that made her think he’d gotten a hard-on just from glancing at her in the doorway. Oh, this is going to be fun. She heard Milo walking in behind her and could almost feel the displeasure rolling off him. He’d gone on and on about staying under the radar, and she understood why he wanted that; she also understood that down here, his version of staying under the radar would be standing out. No one survived unless they were louder than life, flamboyant, hard, intense, take no prisoners. Strutting into a shop for slutty dance gear like she owned the place would make her just another diva; walking in all quiet and mousy would attract so much more attention than he wanted. But trying to explain that to a man was useless. Especially, she suspected, this man. Why waste her time?
She swayed her way across the floor, moving her hips like Jessica Rabbit, and stopped just a step too close to the skinny man. His hair was pristine, and he wasn’t bony-skinny under his shirt; in another life, she might have found him attractive. Today, though, he was an obstacle in her way, and she needed him out of it.
“Hey there, handsome,” she said, tilting her head back to look up at him and running her hand down his chest while he swallowed. She stopped north of his belt buckle, but only just. “I heard you have something in the back that’s just my size.”
He glanced down at his belt and her hand and swallowed hard a second time. “Well, then.”
And then she pulled back, smiling like she was all business. “It’s the green scaled model with the gauntlets.” She told him her size, and he looked disappointed, but no more so than he would for anyone else who didn’t drop to her knees to suck his dick. She was now just another customer who didn’t fuck him, but he didn’t expect any of them to actually fuck him, so it was no big deal.
He went into the back to find the costume, and Milo slid up next to her. “What was that?”
Over the past few weeks, there had been so many times she’d been on Milo’s turf, doing what she needed to do to be safe and sane in his world. It had been fun and exciting and sexy, there was no question, but it had also not been hers. This world, however? This was entirely hers.
“What does it look like?” Tess asked, giving him a thousand-watt smile that she suspected he would not recognize. “I’m blending.”
Milo opened his mouth to ask another question, but the proprietor came out of the back then, holding an opaque plastic bag. It was one thing to twirl and spin half-naked around a pole in one of the most acrobatic fashions Tess had ever seen or tried, but accepting a dance costume in public and carrying it through the street, that just wasn’t done. She didn’t roll her eyes, but the temptation was painfully present.
The man named a price. Tess raised an eyebrow and cocked her hip, and suddenly she was getting a fifty percent discount as his eyes went straight down her chest and tumbled into her cleavage. Milo didn’t exactly snort behind her, but he came close. But he paid the man, and he didn’t argue.
Back out on the street, he managed to find his voice again. “That was something else.”
Tess nodded. “I’ve survived in this world for an awfully long time. I appreciate the effort, but frankly, I know more about blending in this world than you do.”
“Is that so?”
“It absolutely is.”
He looked like he wanted to argue the point, but before he could get too involved, he gave a little shrug. “It doesn’t matter. You did good in there, kid. That’s the point.” The vague Humphrey Bogart accent didn’t hurt, either.
“Thanks,” she replied. She found herself wanting to take his hand again, but there was no world where that was appropriate, and it especially was not appropriate in this one. She wasn’t his girlfriend, she wasn’t even really his baby mama. She was the girl he’d kidnapped, knocked up, and was willing not to kill. There was nothing else between them, and it was going to be the worst mistake she’d ever made to pretend otherwise.
“So, what now?”
“Do you have a specific place you want to start?”
He shrugged. “Toro has a dozen clubs in the city, right?” She nodded. “I can’t find information on any of them. No yes’, no nos. He’s just a ghost. I think he’s left town, honestly, but I need to know for sure before I leave too. I need to get a sense of where he’s going, what’s going on. I need to have a direction.”
“And you need to have it before Bastille does.”
“And that. If he hasn’t already.”
Tess nodded and thought for a minute. “Assets,” she said, after a little bit. “That’s the place to start. If anyone tells us anything, it’ll be Sammy. The front-end manager,” she added when she noticed Milo’s raised eyebrow.
“In the know about Toro’s affairs?”
“Not more than any of the other managers. But he really liked my ass back when I worked there, and if I shake it for him, he’ll tell me anything I want to know.”
There was a flash on Milo’s face for just a moment, but whatever it was, he hid it quickly. She studied him for a long moment, hoping the expression would return so she could figure out what was going on, but he hid it too well.
“Is it worth it, if he doesn’t know anything?”
“I didn’t say he didn’t know anything,” she said, turning and walking back towards the car.
She didn’t bother to tone down the sway in her hips; she hoped, in fact, that he’d enjoy it. This was the version of herself she knew; the version that flounced and flaunted just to get the attention – because when she was doing that, no one paid attention to the rest of her. No one noticed that she was stashing cash, or getting information that could be bargained for her life later, or anything else. They just saw her tits and her ass and the way she used them.
“I just said he didn’t know anything more than everyone else. He’s the most likely to tell me what we – what you need to know.” She got to the car and spun around, one eyebrow lifted to ask when he planned on unlocking the car. He pushed a button on the keychain and tried to be subtle as he adjusted his dick in his pants. Good boy, she thought. Good fucking boy.
“Let’s go, then,” he said. “To Assets.”
She didn’t finish the line, just slipped into the car, the bag in her lap, trying to pretend that his eyes on her body didn’t make her incredibly, almost painfully wet.