His Dancer, His Chains novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Deposit
Cora learns she has three days to find $10,000 for Pippa's surgery, takes the stage at the Gilded Room, and hears a stranger in the VIP booth say her real name.
The financial officer slid the estimate across her desk and tapped the bottom line with a pen.
"We need ten thousand dollars before we can book the operating room," she said.
"Surgery is Thursday. Without the deposit, the slot goes to the next patient."
I had already read the number twice in the hallway.
"My sister's heart valve is failing," I said. "She is twenty. She can't wait for the next slot."
"I understand, Ms. Pownall. I do. The rule comes from billing, not from me."
She said it kindly, and that made it worse.
I walked back to the cardiac ward with the folder pressed against my chest.
Pippa was propped up on two pillows, braiding the end of her hair and watching a cooking show with the sound off.
"You look like someone cancelled Christmas," she said.
"Billing wants a form signed. That's all."
"Cora."
"That's all, Pip. Eat your Jell-O."
She ate the Jell-O, and I sat in the plastic chair and did the numbers in my head again.
I had four hundred and ten dollars in checking.
My temp agency paid every second Friday, and the next check was nine days away.
The bank had turned down my loan application that morning in one polite sentence.
Pippa's friends from community college had put sixty-two dollars into a fund online, and I had cried in the stairwell about it.
I had the weekend waitressing job, the diner on Fifth, and nothing else to sell.
At six, a woman I worked with at the diner stuck her head into the room with a bag of fries for Pippa.
She hugged me hard and whispered in my ear.
"The Gilded Room on Delancey. They pay cash the same night."
"Ask for the manager, and don't tell anyone I told you."
I did not ask what the job was.
I knew what the Gilded Room was.
Pippa fell asleep at eight with the cooking show still going.
I kissed her forehead and took my good black dress out of my bag.
Then I went to find a bathroom with a lock.
I looked at myself in the mirror for a long time.
So I went.
The club was a brick building with a gold door and a guard who looked at my shoes before he looked at me.
"Auditions?" he said.
"Yes."
"Name?"
"Wren," I said, because it was my grandmother's middle name and I could stand to hear it.
He pointed me through a hallway full of mirrors.
The manager was a heavy man in a velvet vest who looked up from a ledger when I knocked.
"Cora, hon," he said. "Come in. You're on after the blonde."
I stopped in the doorway.
"I only gave my stage name at the door."
"Door guy tells me everything." He smiled and waved a hand at the room.
"Sit. Relax. First night, everybody shakes."
He opened his top drawer and took out a bank envelope that was already counted and sealed.
"This is your advance. Four thousand, against tonight's tips. You'll make the rest by close. I can tell you need it."
I had not told him a number, a reason or anything else about myself.
I looked at the envelope, and I thought of the operating room slot going to a stranger.
I thought: he runs a club, he sees ten girls a night, and he has learned to read a face.
"Thank you," I said, and I took it.
"The rules are simple. You keep your underwear on until the third song. No touching from the floor."
"The VIP booths are for the managers' guests, and nobody grabs you in there. If anyone does, I'll take care of it."
"What will I dance to?"
"Whatever you walk out to, hon."
The blonde came off stage with her face blank and her arms full of bills.
She did not look at me.
From the curtain I had watched her set through a gap.
A booth of men in suits slapped the table and laughed.
A black-haired man in the middle of them laughed with the rest.
The guard held the curtain, and the music started low.
I walked out into a blue light that took my whole body at once.
I could not see the room.
I could see the pole, the floor, and the edges of faces.
I had never in my life been looked at by so many people on purpose.
My hands were shaking, and I made them move anyway.
I thought of Pippa asleep with the sound off, and my hips found the beat before my head did.
The first bills landed at my feet in the second song.
By the third, I had stopped hearing my own breath.
The curtain to the VIP section stood open at the back of the room.
The men in suits were gone, and one man sat alone in the middle booth with a glass he wasn't drinking.
He was watching me and not smiling.
When the song ended, the guard came up the side steps and spoke into my ear.
"Booth three asked for you. Private dance. He's paid in advance."
"I don't do private."
"He asked for you by name."
"By stage name?"
The guard shook his head.
Then I walked down the steps and through the curtain, and the man in the booth stood up.
"Cora Pownall," he said. "Sit down. I'm not going to touch you."
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