Bad Girls Read online

  She picked up the giant can of Elnett and misted her hair with it, the chemical tang of hairspray adding to all the other odours in the dressing room: nail-varnish remover, sweat, body spray, perfume, and traces of cigarette and dope smoke – it was illegal to smoke in here, but sometimes the girls just couldn’t wait to run down the back stairs to the side door to the alley. While the hair-spray was still fresh, Skye scooped a handful of gold glitter out of her jar, held her fist as high as she could over her head, and opened it, turning on her toes at the same time so the gold dust landed evenly on her hair, sticking to the hairspray: the final touch.

  ‘You love your glitter dust, baby doll,’ Maria, the house mom, said from her cosy nest in her battered old armchair. ‘How much do you blow on that stuff every week?’

  ‘Hey, better on my hair than up my nose!’ Skye retorted, which caused Jada, pulling on a leather bra at the other side of the dressing room, to crack up with laughter.

  ‘Right,’ she commented. ‘Like it’s one or the other.’

  Skye grinned at Maria over her shoulder. Hired by the management to run the dressing room and keep a lid on trouble, Maria was always there, refereeing conflicts, pouring oil on the waters, eternally ready with a needle and thread for rips in costumes. Often house moms in strip clubs were ex-dancers themselves, but tiny, wizened Maria had never been that glamorous. She’d been a costume maker for years, till her eyes got too strained. Now she sat, every day from noon until closing, in her big armchair, a piece of knitting on her lap, and a big mug of coffee, laced with something stronger, on a table at her side, and though her eyesight wasn’t up to sewing on sequins for hours on end, she never missed a thing that went on in her dressing room.

  ‘It’s gonna be a good night,’ Jada said, lifting her surgically enhanced breasts one after the other and settling them into the bra cups. ‘There’s a real buzz out there. I can smell it.’

  ‘All you can smell right now is hairspray, honey,’ Maria cackled, as Skye pulled on a gold G-string and wriggled into two shiny gold stretch tubes, one barely covering her breasts, the other doing the same for her bottom. ‘Skye, honey, you wanna coffee before you start work?’

  ‘Sure,’ Skye said, taking a polystyrene cup from the wobbly stack on the table.

  Maria reached for a Thermos and poured Skye a cup.

  ‘You wanna top-up?’ she asked, winking.

  This was a special favour, and you couldn’t say no. Maria was already pulling a bottle from its hiding place down by the side of her chair. Skye perched on a battered chair, too ripped up to be used in the club any longer, as Maria laced the coffee with Kahlúa.

  ‘Hits the spot, huh?’ Maria said, as Skye took her first sip.

  How many times had Skye heard Maria say that? Thousands, probably. How many nights had she sat here, drinking coffee, coming up or coming down, listening to the girls chatter and bitch and fight?

  ‘Hit me too, Maria,’ Jada said, a six-foot Amazon with pale mocha skin in her black leather bra and panties, and black spike heels, coming over with a cup of her own.

  ‘Girl, you look like a porn warrior,’ Skye giggled.

  Jada threw her hip sideways and clenched a fist, posing hard. ‘I will lap dance the fuck out of you!’ she said menacingly.

  Skye finished her coffee and stood up, whooping to get herself into the zone.

  ‘OK!’ she said, throwing her cup into the trash. ‘Let’s go and take those suckers out there for everything they’ve got!’

  ‘From your mouth to God’s ear,’ Jada said devoutly.

  They looked at themselves for a moment in the mirror.

  ‘We are so going for different markets,’ Jada giggled, towering over her friend.

  Skye was the archetypal American blonde, with rounded cheeks and a pouty pink mouth; she had the full, lush features of a teenager, or the baby doll for which Maria had nicknamed her. But her figure was pure Barbie, with implausible breasts and a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth, wide-eyed, innocent stare that had patrons of the club reaching for their wallets in reflex.

  Jada was the opposite to Skye in every way: breathtaking, tall and imposing, with narrow hips and swimmer’s shoulders. Her cheekbones were a sculptural miracle, and her mouth was so wide and full she didn’t like to smile too much; she called it the grin that ate her face.

  ‘Better that way,’ Maria said drily. ‘You got a shot at staying friends.’

  Skye grinned, acknowledging the truth of this.

  ‘Come on, girlfriend!’ she said, grabbing Jada’s hand, winking at Maria over her shoulder. ‘Time to empty out some wallets!’

  The main floor of the Midnight Lounge was already half full at six in the evening. In a couple of hours, it would be packed. And Skye and Jada, striding in through the double doors at the back of the club, the bouncer stationed there nodding at them as they made their entrance, were the queens of the club. Even though there were girls gyrating on the poles, writhing on the lit-up stage, all the men’s heads turned at the sight of the dark Amazon and her blonde little baby-doll friend.

  Skye wiggled up to the bar in her four-inch-high Lucite heels and flashed a smile at the bartender.

  ‘Set us up, honey,’ she said. And, turning to the guy on the stool beside her, who was goggling at the sight of her: ‘What’s your name, sexy?’

  After a lot of throat-clearing, he managed to get out:‘Marvin,’ his eyes flickering between her boobs and her face as if he didn’t know which he wanted to focus on.

  ‘Well, Marvin honey, ever heard of buying two beautiful girls a drink or three?’ she said.

  Marvin was already fumbling for his wallet. He looked like most guys who came into the Midnight Lounge: white, forty-something, in a suit, with an office drone haircut. Faceless, instantly forgettable.

  ‘You want some Kamikazes too?’ the bartender asked him, and although he was working on a beer, Marvin nodded enthusiastically, only too keen to join the girls.

  Men, Skye thought, rolling her eyes. If I said, ‘Jump,’ he wouldn’t even wait to ask, ‘How high?’ He’d just do it first and ask questions later. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

  Skye shot a quick, practised glance round the club. Plenty of fish here. And plenty of them were staring in her direction, at her small round arse covered, barely, in a narrow strip of gold stretch Lycra. She’d make thousands tonight. She could smell the money in the air. The Saturday night shift, six p.m. to four a.m.: ten hours’ work at maybe a grand an hour, if she worked everyone just right. God knew why men wanted to blow their paycheque on her when they could get laid for a fraction of the notes they so eagerly stuffed in her bra, but she certainly wasn’t complaining.

  The Kamikazes were set up now: tequila, triple sec and lime, with a champagne float from a freshly opened bottle, the Midnight Lounge version of an old-school classic. The champagne, of course, made them way more expensive. And that was exactly the point.

  ‘One in each hand,’ Skye told Marvin, ‘you ready?’

  He nodded, wide-eyed, unable to talk – unable, almost, to breathe with excitement.

  This is why they spend the big bucks, Skye thought. They tell themselves we’re actually hanging out with them because we want to. Finally, the cheerleaders who snubbed them in high school are listening to their jokes and laughing like they’re funny. Right now, all over Manhattan, guys are buying girls twenty-dollar drinks and kidding themselves the girls are hanging out with them for their conversation, when the girls are in it for the free Cosmos and hitting on the bartender behind their date’s back. At least here we’re honest about it.

  She smiled at the thought, a chipmunk-cute, cheek-dimpling, white-teeth-flashing smile that was so dazzling it nearly made Marvin drop his shot glasses.

  ‘One!’ Jada said, and they all sunk their first. ‘Two!’ she called, and the second set of empty glasses clinked down on the bar.

  ‘Whoo!’ Skye wiped her mouth.‘Now, we have a glass of champagne.’ She looked seductively at M
arvin.‘And then, you and me go have some fun, what do you say? You up for that, Marvin? You man enough to have some fun with me?’

  She picked up his tie and ran her fingers up and down it, slowly, mimicking what he’d like her to be doing to a part of his anatomy, her glossy mouth slightly open, her pink tongue sliding out to touch her upper lip briefly.

  Just briefly. If he came in his pants right now, that would turn off the money tap, which was the last thing she wanted.

  Marvin’s eyes were bugging out like a cartoon character’s.

  ‘You want a lap dance, don’t you, honey?’ she whispered to him.

  He was so paralysed with excitement he could barely nod in assent.

  Jada handed Skye two glasses of house champagne, and Marvin took one, staring, hypnotized, at Skye. He wore a wedding ring, natch. Pretty much every client at the Midnight Lounge was married. They came here to spend a fortune that they probably needed for the mortgage on their nice house in the suburbs on some fantasy girl with gold dust in her hair.

  Sorry, Mrs Marvin, Skye thought ruefully. Bet he’s got a photo of you in that wallet. But hey, maybe this works for you. Maybe this way he doesn’t bother you so much for stuff you don’t want to do.

  The bartender was swiping Marvin’s card for the drinks. Now, Skye, still caressing his tie, gave it a flirtatious little pull, enough to have him jumping off the bar stool and following her.

  ‘I think we want the private room, don’t we, Marvin honey?’ she cooed. ‘You’ve got a big –’ she winked – ‘wallet you’re just dying to show me, haven’t you?’

  Fish in a barrel. Really.

  Jada had already attracted a little guy whose eyes were on a level with her tits, one of her regulars, who was staring up at her as worshipfully as if she were a dominatrix. She glanced at Skye over his head and shrugged. Skye knew exactly what Jada was saying. You had to know your market. Jada would be lap dancing Mini-Mes all evening. Her signature move was slapping their faces when they were all worked up. They begged for it sometimes, Jada had told her.

  Skye weaved her way across the club floor, glass of champagne in one hand, Marvin’s tie in the other. She picked a route between the tables, showing herself off to maximum effect. One of the Midnight Lounge’s top pole dancers, Oksana, was wreathing herself round the central pole, and as Skye passed half the guys at least turned away from Oksana’s contortions to watch Skye’s cute little ass wiggle its way past them. Skye cast coy, eyes-up-under-lashes glances at as many as she could. Partly because she was touting for business, partly just to get Oksana pissy: there was no love lost between them.

  The look Oksana shot Skye dripped poison. Which is rich, considering the shit she’s tried to pull on me in her time! Skye thought crossly.

  Hair bleached so blonde it was like straw, skin tanned satsuma orange, everything about Oksana was fake, from her stick-on nails to her pencilled-in brows to her coloured lenses. She’d tread over her mother’s dead body to beat another girl to a fifty-buck note.

  Screw her. By the time Skye had navigated between the smoked-glass tables, every man who gawked at her wished devoutly that they were in Marvin’s shoes. Skye practically never liked the guys she danced for, but it was still a major turn-on to know that she was desired so much that men would gasp and groan as she walked by.

  Like you said, Mom. I’ll worry when they stop leching after me.

  ‘Private dance, DeVaughan,’ she cooed at the big bouncer, who was posted at the door to the back room.

  ‘No probs, babe,’ he said, holding open the door and looking significantly at Marvin, who was so overcome by excitement that it took him much longer than it should have done to slide a twenty into DeVaughan’s huge hand.

  Skye took her hand off Marvin’s tie and touched her fingernails to her palm so quickly that he didn’t even notice. It was a signal to DeVaughan, who acknowledged it with an equally swift nod.

  Five minutes, is what the hand signal meant. Five fingers, snapping open and closed. This one’s not going to take any time at all.

  Skye had been bang on. As it were. She exited the room barely five minutes later, back into the pounding music and pulsating stage lights of the main club, her smile at DeVaughan positively demure.

  ‘Give him a few seconds,’ she said, and DeVaughan nodded in absolute understanding.

  Skye wasn’t a hooker. Her bits didn’t touch the men’s bits without layers of clothing between them. That was her rule, though some skanks, she was sure, did more, even at the Midnight Lounge, which was pretty damn upscale. Those Russian girls, with their cold, dead eyes, would do anything for money. But Skye had her standards. She’d dance for the guys, she’d turn them on, she’d grind as much as they wanted, and they could touch themselves, sure: but they weren’t allowed to get their things out. That would be crossing the line Skye had set for herself years ago, when she started in this business.

  ’Cause that’s not really what they’re after, she told herself.

  It had seemed weird, at first, and sometimes it still did; her clients could get laid for a great deal less than they paid for Skye’s services.

  It’s the fantasy of picking up a hot chick in a club and getting a little alone time with her. That’s what they’re paying for. She shrugged. Whatever floats their boats.

  ‘Skye! Baby!’

  The man calling her name was loud enough to be heard even over the pumping bass line of Def Leppard’s ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’, one of the most tired anthems of exotic dancers all over the world. Skye flicked her eyes to the stage: yup, Oksana was up there, wiggling her skinny arse.

  I know you’re a huge attention-whore, but you better get down off that pole and onto some laps if you want to make any money tonight, Skye thought nastily as she crossed to the table where Lew James, the guy who’d just called her name, was sitting.

  Lew was an old client: he never paid her much himself, but he often brought in guys who spent like it was going out of style, and he always hooked her up with them. Lew was a journalist, if you could call it that, on one of the main gossip weeklies, the National Investigator. He went through trash cans and tapped phone lines and pulled all kinds of sordid crap so that Skye and millions like her could read about the secrets stars were desperate to keep hidden.

  Lew liked showing that he was on first-name terms with the prettiest blonde in the whole of the Midnight Lounge. And if Lew got the Lounge name-checked in the Investigator, he drank on the house the next time he was in. Judging by the two bottles of champagne on Lew’s table and his air of smugness, Paulie, the manager, was comping Lew tonight.

  Skye sat down next to him, despite the fact that he was patting his lap invitingly. You had to make guys work for it.

  ‘Hey, honey,’ she cooed. ‘Pour me a glass, won’t you? And introduce me to your sexy friend!’ She smiled at the other man at the table. ‘I’m Skye. Pleasure to meet you. Sorry about Lew, he lost his manners dumpster-diving.’

  ‘I told you she was a firecracker!’ Lew crowed, quite unoffended.

  A small, ferret-faced man, Lew was too rattily dressed to have made it past the Lounge’s door staff if he hadn’t worked for the Investigator. His friend, though, was in the classic chinos-and-polo shirt combo worn by every off-duty businessman in America.

  ‘I’m Kevin Sanders,’ he said, reaching across the table to shake her hand. ‘And the pleasure’s all mine.’ He was much bigger than Lew, and much fitter, with a shaved head, wire-framed glasses, and the kind of tan you didn’t get naturally in New York in the springtime. ‘I work with Lew. I’m the LA bureau chief of the Investigator.’

  Skye widened her eyes in fake fascination.

  ‘So that’s where you got that great tan! LA!’ she said, leaning forward to run one manicured fingernail along his forearm. ‘Is it all over?’

  He choked on his drink – vodka and tonic it looked like. Smart guy, Skye thought. This champagne’s pretty crappy. I mean, I like it, but what do I know? She’d noticed that the cla
ssy clients ordered the champagne for the girls and something else for themselves.

  ‘Cute,’ Kevin Sanders observed, without answering her question. ‘Tell me a bit about yourself, Skye.’

  Oh crap, Skye thought. I hate when they pull the ‘I want to get to know you’ routine. It’s so lame.

  ‘College dropout, no idea what I wanted to do, but I make a hell of a lot more here than working in an office,’ she said, sipping some more champagne. ‘I can dance a bit, but not good enough for Broadway. Can’t carry a tune and I’m not tall enough to be a Rockette. So here I am! I’ll do it for a few more years while I figure out what I want to do next. But I’m having a ball. It’s like a party every night!’

  She flashed her best smile again, having trotted out the practised spiel she used for all the guys who asked her that kind of dumb question. He’s got five minutes more, she calculated. Ten, tops. Then, if he doesn’t want a dance, I move on.

  ‘And what were you majoring in at college?’ Kevin Sanders asked.

  It was Skye’s turn to gulp on her champagne. Is this guy for real? She shot a glance at Lew, but he nodded at her, telling her to answer the question.

  ‘Acting and creative writing,’ she admitted. ‘I thought I’d maybe be the next Jennifer Aniston or Sophie Kinsella. But college wasn’t for me.’

  She was embarrassed now, pissed off with this guy for pointing out the distance between her dreams and her reality. And no way is he spending any money on me. Skye’s instincts were very well honed by now. He’s not gay, but I’m not his type, either. Clock’s ticking . . . Finishing off the champagne, she jumped up, still smiling. Being an exotic dancer was kind of like being a pageant contestant – you had to keep flashing your pearly whites.

  ‘I’m gonna hit the stage now, guys,’ she said. ‘Pleasure talking to you, Kevin! Lew, honey . . .’ She blew him a kiss.