Chap Five

They are back at the booth. Isabella holds the door open for Sash to enter. “Don’t look so worried”, she says. “You know how to dance, don’t you?”

“Yes”, Sash says.

“And you know how to take your clothes off?”

“Yes”, Sash says again, this time with a nervous smile.

“Then you’ll be fine. Look”, she says, lifting Sash’s chin with her index finger. “You’re a beautiful girl, the customers are going to love you. If you do what they ask, you’ll be making millions in no time.”

“Do what they ask?” Sash says, suddenly worried. “I thought this was just dancing.”

“This is a bespoke service”, Isabella informs her, “and part of that service is dancing. The rest is what you do after you’ve undressed yourself. I thought you knew that, honey. I thought that’s why you were here.”

Isabella holds onto the pole, one leg wrapped around the other. She is elegant and beautifully poised, the lines of her dress framing her perfectly. 

“The client knows what is an acceptable thing to ask for, and an acceptable thing to expect, so there really is nothing to worry about.”

“I have to make myself come?” Sash asks, the words so hot on her lips they have to be said. Her innocence makes Isabella giggle a little. She puts her hands on her shoulders.

“Just do what they ask”, Isabella says evenly. “Most of the time they just like to be able to control you. You know, put you into different positions like a little doll. Remember, you won’t be able to see them. As far as you’re concerned, you’re just at home in front of the mirror.”

“Dante never said-.”

“Well that doesn’t surprise me”, Isabella says. “Look, if you want to change your mind, you can always back out now. Course if you do that, you won’t get the five hundred dollars the client is offering to pay for your service. That’s a hell of a lot of money to do something fun.”

“Who is he?” Sash asks.

“Someone very important”, Isabella says. In the soft light from above, her glitter shines. “Someone Dante trusts you with.” 

Dante takes the short journey across the city in his private, chauffeur driven Maybach Exelero. Wonderland was the first club he opened, and although it could do with a complete refurbishment, holds very special importance for him. He has a regular, repeat client base, and some of the best dancers in the city. Membership is not cheap and it’s also completely exclusive. This club has a one in, one out policy, in which new memberships only opens up if someone dies or leaves, and that doesn’t happen often. It’s a perfect place for his stepsister to begin her training, training in which Dante intends to take a very hands on role indeed.

He watches the city swim by through the plate glass, bullet proof window, the horizon crisping sunset colors of red and yellow ochres, bleeding them into the bruised darkness of the approaching night, wondering how it was he was given this second opportunity.

On the street outside a corner convenience store, a dog tied to a lamppost barks at nothing, a little further on a girl struggles up a hill on her bike and a bird swoops to collect the discarded remains of a sandwich, left hours earlier on the stairs at the entrance to the town hall. 

While Sash closes the door on her new world, and moves carefully from pole to chair and back again, her semi-naked body twisted into elegant poses, never once forgotten from her years in dance class, Isabella greets him. She kisses him lightly on each cheek, takes his coat and smooths the suit out across his shoulders.

“She’s quite something”, she says.

“I told you, didn’t I?” Dante responds. “How is she?”

“She’s about as nervous as I was when I first started.”

“Well then she’ll do just fine, won’t she?”

“Can I get you anything?” Isabella asks.

“No, thank you”, Dante says. “I have everything that I need. Just make sure everyone else is catered for.”

“I always do.”

“That’s why you’re here”, Dante says.

“She’s in number eight. I thought that might suit her.”

“I think it’ll suit her just fine.”

She’s sat when he enters, waiting patiently, the door opening so silently she is unaware of it. Dante closes in on the glass.

He stands there casually with his hands in his pockets, taking a moment to admire his stepsister, before he intends to make his presence known.

 It’s been a long time since he’s been able to do this, since he’s been able to look at her without her knowing she’s being looked at, and he wants to take advantage of it for as long as he can.

On the raised stage, in hot pants and a tight white vest top that hugs the contours of her body, his stepsister looks like she’s being exhibited.

To him, she looks like the visual representation of a long held dream, better even then he remembers her.

She uncrosses her legs and sits forward slightly, as though suddenly realizing she may no longer be alone.

“Is there anyone there?” she asks. “hello?”

She gets up and goes to the mirror, trying as best as she can to look through the glass again, still unable to see anything on the other side.

Dante goes to the leather seat. He stretches his legs and makes himself comfortable.

He watches his sister peer out through the glass, one hand above her, the other rested on her hip. On the table is a microphone, which he taps twice. Inside the booth, Sash jumps in fright.

“Hello”, Sash says again, looking up to the speakers. “Are you there?”

“Dance for me”, Dante says, the sound system designed to distort his voice.

“Ok”, Sash says, nerves creaking through her.

“Dance for me”, the distorted voice says again. “Don’t be shy.”

Music begins to crackle through the speakers. Sash has no idea where it comes from, but soon it begins to wash over her, the slow hypnotic beats almost impossible not to move to.

She begins to swing her hips, tap her toes to the rhythm, close her eyes and lose herself in it. The only thing she ever wanted to do when she was a kid was dance.

She couldn’t stop it, like she had a natural rhythm that ran through her and an even more natural urge to move with it. She couldn’t stop it even if she wanted to.

She danced all the way through high school and college, in any and every discipline she could get her hands on, and when she graduated, she did a pole and lap dancing class one evening for fun, sticking with it for almost a year because she loved the exercise and discipline.

One drunken evening in her bedroom, desperate to show Dante just a tease of what she had learned in her classes, was where this all started. Her a dumb, inexperienced eighteen year old virgin, eager to impress and hopelessly in love, and him twenty, already on the way to earning a fortune, and completely out of her league.

Now, repeating the moves she was so keen to show him the first time around, she’s not the only one who has the memory come back to her.

Dante can see she is nervous. He can see she is self-conscious and awkward, much like she was the first time she danced for him.

She had a tendency to go red when she was embarrassed, and Dante liked to tease her about it, until she had to hide her face and wait until it had gone back to its normal color.

She always complained to him and begged him to leave her alone, but secretly she liked the attention.

Moving with the beats now, Sash stretches her body, angling her neck from side to side, lifting her T-shirt to expose her belly, twisting and turning, pivoting around the small space to the evocative music, perfectly aware of the size of the area she’s confined to, and manipulating it perfectly.