Maya

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.

The music started low. A pulse, not a scream. Something with a bass line that lived in the hips.

I put my hand on the pole. Cool. I didn’t spin. I didn’t have a trick, and I didn’t pretend.

I stepped in until the pole was between my thighs and rolled my hips like a lap was already there. Dress off one shoulder. Then the other. I let it fall and didn’t rush the naked. The metal was cool against my chest. The grind wasn’t. It sat low in my stomach, slow, the kind of move you do if the lap is lucky and you already know it. My mouth opened. I didn’t fake the sound.

Vela said, “Again. Slower. You’re rushing the part they pay for.”

So I slowed. The suit was at the edge of the light. No drink. Watching like he might buy the room. I looked at him and kept looking. Knee bent, back arched, I rode the pole on a breath and didn’t give him anywhere else to put his eyes. My thighs gripped the steel. I rolled forward, slow, like I was taking something in. Back. Forward again. My nipples were hard under the black and I didn’t cover them. There was a wet spot I could have hidden. I let him find it.

His hand moved on his thigh. He didn’t mean to. I smiled, small, and rolled harder. I pressed my chest to the pole and arched until my hair touched the floor, and when I came up I was still on him. Only him. My lips parted. My hips circled. I fucked the air between us and made it his.

He looked down first. That was the beat. Not the pole. I had made him ...