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Preview from chapter one
Maya
Chapter One
The Audition
The ad said prestige and discretion. It did not say pole. I said the word anyway, in the elevator, so I wouldn’t choke on it upstairs.
Tuition was due in nine days. The woman at the bursar’s office had already smiled the smile that means we both know you don’t have it. I already knew the girl with the better shoes left early on Thursdays. Not a friend. Just the one who never stayed for the second hour and came back on Fridays with her nails done and her notes half-finished. I had asked her once, in the hall, where she went. She had looked at my shoes, not my face, and said she had a job that paid better than the campus one. That was three weeks ago. Tonight the bursar email was open on my phone and I was not answering it. She watched me not answer it. Then she said, “If you’re strong and you can dance, the Iris is hiring.” She went back to her own phone.
The Iris sat on top of the most expensive hotel in the city. The hotel pretended not to know what was upstairs. Black glass. A man at a desk who didn’t ask my major. He asked if I could hear a beat. I said yes. He pressed a button and the elevator opened to a floor that wasn’t on the panel I’d seen. I noticed. He noticed me noticing.
“Stage floor,” he said. Like there were others.
I rode up with my heart in my throat and my hands steady, which felt like lying with my body.
The room was dark in the right way. Mirror on one wall. Pole in the center, lit from below like it mattered. A woman named Vela stood near the mirror like she’d invented calm and was waiting for the patent.
“Maya,” she said, reading the card. “First name is enough on the floor. Song is yours. Three minutes. If you think, you’ll miss it. Don’t perform at us. Perform at the money.”
I had worn a black dress I could step out of and heels I could actually walk in. Under it, nothing fancy. A simple set — black, the good one, the one I saved for nights that were supposed to become stories. Vela nodded at it like it would do. Then she sat down and crossed her legs and became the audience.