Blade

 

In my office in the back, music thumped through the walls from the main room. The rhythmic thud of the bass from outside my office told me who was onstage. I could tell my girls apart by the tempo and style of their music. Some were soulful and took their time to build up the audience, while others preferred to be fast-paced and exciting. I prided myself on having something for everyone.

 

Unfortunately for some of my clients, however, I didn’t have prostitutes. All my women were professional dancers. They were clean. I had to run a clean business to stay in business. I didn’t allow my women to sell extra services or go onstage under any illegal influences. I didn’t like to let them drink before performing, but I understood that sometimes nerves took their toll.

 

Women didn’t come to me because they wanted to make it big in the stripping business. They came to me because what we did paid well. They were almost always down on their luck or looking for a quick, easy buck to get by until things picked up. Others just realized they had talent and made more money working the pole than they could have made working nine-to-five.

 

But now I had to audition new girls because three of my lovely ladies had been selling their bodies on the side. They had been offering more than lap dances in the private rooms and picking up clients of their own from our crowd.

 

The cops had been harassing me about it for months, which brought the guys in the Vicious Thrills MC down with me. I didn’t need special attention from the cops because some of my girls didn’t know how to handle themselves as professionals. It was already an exotic dance club, and I was already a known member of the local motorcycle club.

 

Basically, the cops wanted to believe that any businesses our members ran were merely money laundering fronts for the MC. There was never anything out of the ordinary when they checked my books, so I let the evidence speak for itself. It allowed me to maintain both my innocence and my reputation.

 

Letting go of my edge would have been bad for business, so I let people believe what they wanted to believe. As long as they couldn’t find any signs of wrong-doing, I was in the clear, but I stayed sleazy and hard in the eyes of the law and, more importantly, my patrons. Image was everything.

The ad I had put in the local underground paper turned up quite a few girls to take the positions I needed filled at The Bounce House Gentlemen’s Club. So far none of them had been right. There was never any shortage of girls who were willing to bare it all for money in the city. The streets were a rough place, especially for young women.

 

But that didn’t mean every girl who found herself on the street belonged on my stage. There were shelters, churches, and other places for women whose talents and looks didn’t quite fit what I needed.

 

I had lost count of the girls who had come through my office, and I was starting to lose interest when the petite strawberry blonde with bright blue eyes came in. She wore jeans that were a little loose and a t-shirt that hinted at the curve of her breasts.

 

What caught my attention most of all was the innocence in her face. She looked young. There was no way she was old enough to be on my stage. She was young and undefiled, and there was no way she needed to be there. I couldn’t help her, and I certainly wasn’t about to hire someone who looked underage, not with the cops keeping a close eye on the place. Still, there was something about her.

 

My ex-wife had strawberry blonde curls like this innocent doll-faced princess in front of me. There was something similar in her eyes, too, something that took me back to when I had first fallen in love with my ex-wife, before she had turned into the heinous bitch who had left me holding just my balls in my hand at the end of our marriage.

 

I didn’t want to let another innocent little beauty get ruined by this life. She was hot, but she was not a dancer. She might have been good in bed, but I did not want to put her on the market like that.

 

“And who might you be?” I asked, forcing myself to form words.

 

“My name’s Lucy,” she said meekly.

 

There was a sadness in her voice, but there was also determination. She didn’t sound like she had much confidence, but she made it clear that wasn’t going to stop her from trying. That was an admirable quality in a person.

 

“Is Lucy your real name or your stage name?” I asked. It was a legitimate question in my line of work. I didn’t want to call her by her real name at work. Besides, if I hadn’t asked, I would have assumed a name like Lucy was a cute little stage name for a good girl gone bad, just like the one in front of me.

 

“I don’t have a stage name. I’ve never done this before,” she answered bashfully.

 

I adjusted myself in my pants. Those were the words every man wanted to hear from a girl. Professionally those words were a red flag, but, personally, they drew me in. I wanted to see what this pretty little tart could do before I told her no and sent her packing.

 

My office was only for the first part of the interview process. I usually talked the girls up a little bit and tried to get a feel for who they were. I wanted to know if they were going to fit in or be problematic with my other girls. I didn’t do that with Lucy. I wasn’t planning on keeping her around. I just wanted to get a look at her.

 

I had my phone plugged into a speaker set on my desk. I reached over and hit play to start some music for her to dance to. The rhythmic bass in the little desktop speakers didn’t quite drown out the PA system in the main room, but it gave her a little something to work with, not that I expected much from her. She stood stiffly and looked like me with wide, scared eyes.

 

Her inexperience showed all over her face. She was probably the type who made sure her blinds were closed before she got ready for bed. She probably slept in a full nightgown with a high neck to keep herself perfectly hidden. She was so virginal and puritan, I didn’t expect much more from her than I was already seeing.

 

“Go ahead and show me how you dance,” I urged her, sitting back in my chair. I had one hand down on my lap, cupping the growing bulge in my pants. My other arm rested on the arm of the chair, holding my chin in my hand.

 

“Shouldn’t I have a pole or something?” she asked nervously, glancing around the room.

 

Her nervousness was heartbreaking. “Just show me what you can do first. It’s not all pole dancing out there. I want to see how you handle your body.” I wanted to handle her body. I wanted to see what she was trying to hide under those clothes. I stroked myself through my pants, thinking about what I could do to a girl like Lucy.

 

I reached over and skipped to the next song on my playlist. The energy suddenly picked up. It was a much fiercer dance number than the previous song. I watched as her hips started to sway slowly to the beat. I told myself she needed to warm up and reminded myself to be patient with her. After all, she did say it was her first time.

 

Once she found her groove, she started moving her body like she was begging me to touch her, like she was inviting someone to join her or take her right there in the office. The other someone in the room was me, and I was having a very hard time staying on my side of the desk. I didn’t touch my girls. It was part of being careful and keeping work clean.

 

But Lucy wasn’t one of my girls.

 

She pressed herself against the desk and started working her hips like she was trying to grind on someone behind her. I watched in awe as this unlikely little thing moved her body like the pros out there on the stage.

 

I stopped the music and she stood up straight, pushing her strawberry curls out of her face.

 

“Why’d you stop it?” she asked, out of breath.

 

“I think I’ve seen enough,” I told her. I couldn’t even imagine what she would have been like on the pole. She would have blown everyone away. Hell, she could have probably pulled more money than the other girls without even using the pole. There were girls out there who didn’t use it much, but I was sure if she touched it, the world itself would have had an erection.

 

I sure as hell had one. I hunched over the desk and thanked her for coming in.

 

“I thought I did pretty well,” she argued.

 

“Yeah, I’m sorry I put you through that. I really shouldn’t have, but I think I’ve got enough girls now,” I lied. I didn’t have any new girls. I was going to have to choose from a far less qualified but more experienced batch simply to keep from having the cops on me for an underage dancer. Even if I accepted that she was of age, she didn’t look it, and appearances were everything. A young dancer would have certainly brought in some business, though probably the wrong kind.

 

“Okay,” she said quietly, lowering her head.

 

“Thank you for coming in,” I told her as she turned and walked away. I wanted to get her number to call her for myself, but I told myself to let her go. Like so many others, she was bound to find her way.

 

I heard all manner of sad sob stories from girls who came through my office, but Lucy was possibly the saddest of all, and she hadn’t told me anything about herself other than her name. She crumbled as she walked away. All the wind had been pulled from her sails.

 

I sighed. I wanted to help her, but the club wasn’t the place for her. I couldn’t help girls who couldn’t help me. I tried to tell myself she was just another lost soul.

 

“All right, work,” I told myself out loud in my office, forcing my attention back to the interviews. I didn’t have time to let every single girl get on the stage, and I was doing these interviews during business hours instead of the middle of the afternoon. As long as I was there, I was going to see my prospective dancers. I was working my remaining girls to death to cover for the three I’d let go.

 

I adjusted myself for the next girl and called her in. I saw several more before calling it a night on the interviews. I told the remaining girls I had already hired the girls I needed. It was such an easy lie to use. Most of them didn’t even question it. They simply sighed or rolled their eyes and wandered on down to the next place.

 

That was fine by me. I had a stack of papers and a nice collection of photos in my phone to go with them. I figured that when I went back through that stack, I was bound to find my new girls. I closed my door and sat back down behind my desk. I was underwhelmed by the selection and overwhelmed by the sheer number of girls I was about to dig back through.