The next night I was scheduled to work, Lara pulled me aside before we opened and handed me an envelope of cash.

“You do three pole shows tonight, ok? And you stay sober. Ish. That’s the new deal, got it?”

I nodded, and she shoved the envelope into my hands before I could ask any questions. When I opened it in the dressing room, I found three hundred dollars cash inside. Pretty good bank considering I could still make tips on top of it. Later, when I danced, I looked over to the bar and saw Vic sitting at his usual table, watching.

I found out through the gossip train that Vic had an in with the owner, whose name was Ron Davies. He was something like an errand boy or a right-hand man for the retired cop who bought this place back in the nineties. He did odd jobs and dirty work, the kind of stuff that needs to be handled secretly, off the payroll and all. Davies had known Vic since he was a kid, and in some ways, he was like a father to Vic. In that regard, Vic was a little like royalty at Diamonds, though you wouldn’t know it talking to him. Well, maybe not royalty. He was more like a favorite bastard, I thought. Maybe it was him who had put the word in with the boss for me. Either way, I was pretty grateful to have the pressure of working skeevy clients taken off me.

The first time Vic and I ever became anything was a couple months after the night he drove me home. I’d started to feel my way around Club Diamond, to learn all its secrets and all its tricky little intricacies. Don’t ever dance for a dude wearing sweatpants. They don’t tip and they just want you to feel their boners. Be nice to Lara because she had the last say on the schedule. And none of the other girls got as much take home for floor shows as me, so I had to keep that well under wraps if I didn’t want my hair yanked out in the back parking lot. Even though I tried to keep a lid on that last point, I still found my shit mysteriously starting to go missing.

It began with a pair of Pleaser peep toed stilettos in sparkling red that I saw Ruby wearing a couple nights after I assumed I’d misplaced them. I opened my mouth to say something to her, but then I saw her looking across the club to Vic’s table. He wasn’t looking back at her, and when she turned and saw me staring, she glared venomously. Maybe she’d noticed that he always watched me when I was on stage and that he sometimes found me on my breaks to trade me spliffs for one of my clove cigarettes. Either way, we were nothing, and besides, Ruby had a husband at home. Later that night, I overheard them talking when I went out back for a quick cooldown and a smoke after a dance.

“Just give me something, Vic. A little lift. I don’t care what the fuck you cut it with or whatever,” said Ruby. They were standing around the corner and they must not have heard me come out. I eased the door shut slowly behind me and lit up my clove.

“Ok,” I heard Vic say to her. “You going to pay me this time, or what?”

“Pay you?” she said indignantly. “What the fuck was I doing with you last week after close? You want money or you want your dick sucked?”

“Money,” he said firmly. “I told you that was going to be the last time.”

“And I told you I don’t have it. You seriously going to do me like this Vic? I thought I was your girl?”

“My girl? What the fuck are you talking about?” said Vic. “That why your husband’s been following me around when I leave here? You know what happens to guys who do that shit to me, Ruby? They end up at the bottom of the lake, ok? I felt bad for you. That’s why I let this… This thing go on so long. But you got to stop. Or else something shitty happens to someone who doesn’t really deserve to be dragged into our fucking mess.”

Ruby didn’t answer right away, but I heard the sound of her sniffling. “It’s her, isn’t it? That fucking kid. I seen you ogling her, you fucking perv.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” said Vic. “Far as I’m concerned, you’re all a bunch of walking dollar signs.”

“Fuck you,” Ruby spat, and I heard the sound of something splashing and Vic cursing softly below his breath. Ruby rounded the corner, still wearing my heels, and when she saw me, she narrowed her eyes and wiped at the tears smearing her stage makeup. She snatched the cigarette from between my fingers, and I winced as her glittering red claws snapped within inches of my face. She took a long drag and ground out the mostly unfinished clove beneath the toe of my favorite shoe. “And fuck you too, whore,” she said before tearing back inside the club.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

As Vic rounded the corner behind her, I saw that startled look I’d seen on his face the night I’d invited him up to my apartment.

“Shit,” he said when he saw me. “You hear that?”

I nodded as I looked him up and down. As always, he was dressed in black jeans torn and faded from years of use. His black hooded sweatshirt was zipped up to ward off a cold wind I’d never seen him shivering against. Something wet that smelled like vodka and grenadine dripped down his chest, leaving pink drops in the snow behind him where he walked. His shoulders were hunched like they always were, so you knew he was tall but couldn’t tell how tall until he wanted you to.

“Look,” he said to me, his eyes darting to the cracked door leading back inside the noisy club. “For whatever it’s worth, you… Well, you’re my favorite dollar sign.”

“Ok,” I said, not knowing how else to break this awkward moment off. Vic nodded and headed back into the club, leaving me to light another cigarette as I grinned like a fat cat hiding a canary behind its teeth. Why the fuck didn’t I see it then when so much bad karma was looking me right in my goddam face?

People see what they want to see. That’s what Jeremy would have said if I’d ever asked him about it. He always got people like I never could, saw them for what they were even if it was uncomfortable. He sure as hell saw through Vic the first time he met him, didn’t he? Then again, I guess everyone seemed to. Everyone that is, except for me.

That same night, when I finished up my shift, I waited in the dressing room until everyone else had gone home, and I broke the padlock off Ruby’s locker with a hammer I got from the maintenance closet. There they were, still shining and gorgeous. I slipped my shoes on and took a neon blue wig Ruby had worn for eighties night a couple weeks ago from the back of her locker. I snorted my last line of the shit Vic gave me and started out from the dressing room, still wearing my fishnets, leather minidress, Pleaser peep toes, and my new electric blue wig. I don’t know why, but tonight I was finally feeling like I had found my way through the unbeaten wilderness. Tonight, I was alive in my skin and thriving in my new little fish tank. I didn’t know how long that feeling would last, so I wanted to just exist in that space for a while little longer.

By that time, I expected everyone in the club to have left except for Lara, who might let me work the pole for a little if I told her I was practicing a new move. But I was surprised to see Vic sitting at the bar alone, waiting so he could walk me out and lock up behind us.

When he saw me, he did a double take and almost choked on the whiskey coke he was finishing.

“Woah,” he sputtered as he set the drink back on the bar and eyed my new look like I was an alien walking out of a UFO. I’m not sure what it was about me that was so different to him. Afterall, he’d seen me dance in this get-up before. And the hair was new, but I had a dozen wigs that were better quality than this one. Maybe it was something in me, a change he scented like a wolf catching the smell of its pack. Or maybe I just looked hot that night. Who the hell knows.

Vic looked down at the shoes he’d seen Ruby wearing earlier. “Those are nice,” he said. “You want to…”

“Have a drink?” I said quickly. “With you? Sure.”

I could talk about what happened next if you wanted to hear it, but honestly, it’s an old and boring story. You already know how we sat there drinking, me smiling, him trying to think of things to say that wouldn’t sound stupid. We danced around it for an agonizingly long time, both of us nervous but knowing that something inevitable was going to happen that night. Then, I held his hand as I led him up the stairs and into the VIP lounge. I turned on my favorite sad and slow Concrete Blonde song, Mexican Moon, and put on a show for him, enjoying the way time was standing so still and yet moving so fast for us all at once. And of course, there was no touching in VIP. At least, not until I wanted there to be. And then there was plenty.

What surprised me about the whole thing is that he was gentle with me, and sweet. Honestly, I hadn’t known exactly what to expect, not after everything I’d seen from him and what he’d said to Ruby about her husband. Had he really put people into Lake Erie before? Later, as I lay in the afterglow beside him, I tried to picture him doing it. There he was, standing on the deck of a little boat floating on dark water, cigarette poised between his lips as he tossed something human-shaped off the side and into the sea. Sure, I guess he might do that, but only to someone who really deserved it.

But there was a part of me that remembered what I’d seen that night in VIP, the black shadow, the otherworldly eyes of something seeing me from another time and place… By this time, I had all but convinced myself it had been a dream, a hallucination after trauma. Vic was weird and maybe even a little dangerous if you were on his bad side. But there was nothing supernatural about that wickedness. Was there?