as I sip through the little slot.
“So?” I ask in a purr.
Kiki is pure drama. It's only Monday, so we have the entire week to build up to a crescendo. Mondays are usually sedate, so I brace myself. I have thirty minutes until my next client arrives to be tortured into wellness. Kiki smirks, sets down her tea, and moves to the pole. I give a furtive glance around the gym, hoping no one comes in.
“Got a…” She wraps around the pole and slides down it seductively, letting her butt cheeks split as she wiggles and bounces at the bottom. She springs up, the front of her hoohah a hairsbreadth from the cool metal. “Ginormous tip this weekend from a richie!”
She thrusts forward, wrapping one slender leg around the pole, and I groan. She does a little mock-hump against it and grins at me.
Kiki is so inappropriate I could die. But she's my drug and I'm hers. We fit together because we're so different. She's an exotic dancer who's also a senior at Northwestern State.
She makes great money, and she also does serious gym time, packing in an hour six days a week. It's important to not look too striated, Kiki claims. No “guy-look.” Just tits, ass, and curves with definition. I designed the workout for her because I’m intimately familiar with the human body. I didn't set out to be, but life had other plans.
The sins of the past become the direction of our future.
Kiki pouts, leaves the pole, and saunters toward me. “You're no fun.”
I roll my eyes. “Okay... I know I've got to ask the burning question or we'll get nowhere.”
She perks up. “You got it, sister.”
“Who was it?”
Kiki always takes stock of clients. Men think they know so much, but women could rule the world if we came together. I sigh. Kiki notices regulars, high tippers, newcomers and flags the creeps. She's scary uncanny. I came to watch a set at the prestigious strip club, Black Rose, and went away shocked.
Shocked by the clientele, shocked that Kiki could dance that well for such a short time, and shocked by the moolah.
“The owner,” Kiki whispers as if we have a secret.
I shrug. “So?”
“It's Jared-effing-McKenna, baby!” Kiki is offended by my deliberate ignorance. Her brows rise to her hairline, and her dark eyes are wide with clear disdain.
Mine are steady with indifference.
The wheels of my memory spin. Oh yes. Jared McKenna. The Jared McKenna. Greek god. Adonis incarnate. Hercules. Playboy, womanizer, money mogul.
I slowly nod. Let's add “strip club owner” to the repertoire. I remember the detail of why he has so much money and want to forget as soon as I do.
Kiki pouts and tears off the lid of her tea. “Anywho... he was with someone, and his pal tipped me big time.” She sips her cooling tea, gazing at me with “cat that ate the canary” eyes.
“Okay, the foreplay is killing me. How much?” I take a small slurp of tea, and she tells me. The tea sprays out of my mouth, and Kiki grins at my klutzy-ass move.
“Five hundred dollars!?” I choke some more, and tea dribbles down my chin.
“It's okay, baby... it is a mind-blower. I mean,” her hands go to her ample chest in patent disbelief, “my nipples got hard and he didn't even touch me,” she says sincerely and I burst out laughing. My headache is gone for the moment, my Monday morning lethargy lifting.
Five hundred bucks is an assload of cash, especially for one night of dancing half naked. It's more than I take home every week. Just one tip. My schooling is done, my career path set partly because of circumstance. Kiki is high on drama, but doesn't always say things without a purpose and I narrow my eyes at her.
“Spill it,” I demand.
Kiki's lips twitch and she chucks her empty cup in the trash. “This type of gig could be the thing to get you out of that dump in downtown.”
I scowl. I like my downtown dump.
“Faren!” she wails.
I shush her before Sue comes in thinking someone died. Of course, with all the sounds of torment she's heard since I began working here last year, nothing should faze her.
Kiki relents and switches to a softer tone. “You could own something. Something nice.”
I know this. I've been to her condo overlooking Pike Place and Puget Sound. Her view of downtown is magnificent. And expensive. It had to set her back five hundred K. I rent my death trap for nine