His Dancer, His Chains novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Booth Three
Rafferty refuses to touch her, pays four thousand for one song and knows she has a sister she never mentioned; Monday she pays the deposit, and Tuesday the elevator opens on him at his desk.
I stayed on my feet.
"How do you know my name?" I said.
"The manager read it off your application and told me while I paid."
The man in the booth set his glass on the table.
"He said you were new and you needed tonight."
His voice was low and even, and it did not match the room.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have. My name is Rafferty."
He did not offer a last name, and he did not offer a hand.
Up close he was maybe thirty-five, with black hair and dark blue eyes.
His nose had been broken once and set straight.
His suit cost more than my sister's whole deposit, and I hated him a little for it.
"You were in the middle of the men who laughed," I said.
His jaw moved.
"Yes."
"They bet on her. I heard them through the curtain."
"They did," he said. "I sat there. I should have stood up."
I did not know what to do with a man who said that, so I looked at the floor.
"I paid for a private dance," he said. "You don't have to give it."
"The money is yours either way. I'll tell the guard you did."
"I don't take money for nothing."
"I'm not asking you to take it for nothing."
"Then what are you asking?"
"Nothing, Cora. The girl before you couldn't look anyone in the eye."
"You looked at the room. That's why I asked for you."
I should have walked out.
I knew what he was, a stranger with money in a dark booth.
I knew what the envelope in my bag was for.
But I had three days, and I could count.
"Sit back," I said. "Hands on the cushion."
He sat back.
He put his hands flat on the cushion on either side of him, and he left them there.
The music came through the wall, slow and heavy, and I let it in.
I started with my shoulders.
I had never done this for one person.
It was harder than the stage, because I could see his face.
He watched only me, and he did not look away once.
My dress came off the way I had practiced in the hospital bathroom, one strap and then the other.
His breath changed.
It was the only part of him that moved.
I came closer, until my knee touched the seat between his.
He did not lift a finger.
His eyes went down my body once, slowly, and came back up to my face.
Heat ran through me from my stomach to my thighs.
It surprised me so much that I almost lost the beat.
I leaned over him, and my hair fell across his collar.
He smelled of soap and cold air.
"You can touch me," I said, and I did not know why I said it.
"No," he said.
His voice was rough now.
"Not like this. Not when you're doing it for the money."
"Then why did you pay?"
"I wanted to see one person in this building be good at something she didn't want to do."
It was not a flattering thing to say.
It was also true, and I stopped moving for a second, and then I finished the song.
When it ended he did not clap and he did not reach for me.
He stood up, straightened his cuffs, and counted four thousand dollars out of a money clip onto the table.
"The house takes nothing from this," he said. "I told the manager."
I looked at the pile.
"Four thousand for one song?"
"It's the booth rate."
"No, it isn't."
"It is tonight." He put the clip away.
"Take it, Cora. Your sister needs a surgeon more than you need your pride."
My whole body went cold.
"I never told you I had a sister."
For the first time his face changed.
"The manager said," he began, and then he shut his mouth and looked at the curtain.
Neither of us spoke.
Out in the main room the music had changed, and someone laughed far away.
"I'm going to leave now," he said. "Don't follow me."
"I wasn't going to."
"Good."
He went out through the curtain, and he did not look back.
I stood in the booth in my underwear with my heart still pounding.
Then I picked up every bill.
By closing time the stage tips had come to twenty-three hundred.
I totaled all of it in the bathroom, checking twice.
The advance, the tips and the booth money came to a little over ten thousand dollars.
I walked out into the cold at three in the morning with the cash inside my coat and my legs shaking.
On Monday at nine I put the deposit on the financial officer's desk.
She verified the stack, and her mouth opened and closed.
"I'll book the operating room today," she said.
I signed, and I did not cry until the elevator doors shut.
Then my phone buzzed in my coat.
It was the temp agency.
"Placement confirmed. Gage Group, 40th floor, executive office. Report at 8:00 tomorrow."
I read the name twice.
The next morning I rode the elevator up in my only good blazer.
The doors opened on a glass hallway.
At the far end, a man in a charcoal suit looked up from a desk.
It was Rafferty.
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