I got the shakes just like Andrej. Right under my skin.
“Got it,” I said, just to have something to say.
“Upstairs,” Andrej whispered, and now he almost seemed to be pleading with me.
Another short sentence came from the mystery man, who had his hands in his pockets and hadn’t moved. This time his voice sounded like whiskey, and I don’t speak Russian, but I somehow knew what was said. I mean... ‘problem’ in Russian is ‘problem’ with a Russian accent, so it wasn’t that hard to figure out.
He said, “Is there a problem?”
“Nyet.” Andrej said, his eyes still on mine. “Natalie will go get into costume. She will be ready in five minute.”
This last bit definitely happened in English, because Andrej said it more for me than for the mystery man. In other words, Natalie would get into her costume and be ready in five minutes, or else.
I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. But it was a pretty easy calculation, kind of like a Mack truck headed at you: if the ‘or else’ is something that made a guy like Andrej nervous, well... you better get out of the way.
So I got into a costume—the only one I could find in five minutes—and got into the private room to give this guy the first dance of my life.
Aprivatedance.
Two problems presented themselves right away, of course: one, I wasn’t a dancer, and two, I didn’t want to be.
And three: everyone in Kitty Bang Bang knew what ‘private dance’ meant, and I was no virgin, but I wasn’t into that.
There was also this problem: This guy, whoever he was, was just about the scariest person I’d ever seen in my life. He wasn’t especially big, though there was definitely some hard muscle behind his purple shirt. It was just... his eyes were dark, which is to say, they were blue, but they weredark—the kind of eyes that had a lot going on behind them and I just knew it wasn’t good. His jaw was square and covered in a stubble that looked as sharp as his gaze, and his mouth—plump lips, perfectly sculpted—was resting in an expression that was... well, unsmiling.
In like, a serial killer sort of way.
Good-looking serial killer way, but still scary as hell.
His hair was dark, almost black, and if he weren’t so scary and his arms weren’t so bulky, he would have looked like a model. There was a tattoo on his neck, and I could see some ink under his cuff.
It set my stomach on ‘cold’ right away.
He was sitting when I came in. Eyes on me like a predator: unflinching, unsparing, hungry in an ‘eat-you-for-dinner’ kind of a way. At the same time, I had a thought go through my mind, right through my brain, down my spine, and right to my pussy, where it throbbed: I could almost feel what that sharp stubble would be like against my inner thigh.
I realized that I was in a very bad situation.
I reached this moment of clarity too late. The door had just clicked behind me, and I had my hand on the handle. I turned it, while doing my best impression of a real stripper for Mystery Man.
But Andrej must have known I’d chicken out. The door was locked.
Mystery Man looked impatient.
Well, I thought. It was a good run. The realization washed slowly over me: of course things would have ended like this when I worked as a waitress at a Russian mafia-owned strip joint.
I was a lot of things, but above all I was a realist.
So I decided to get on with my life by getting out of that roomwithmy life. If this guy was going to try to serial-killer me, I wouldn’t make it easy for him.
“What’s your name, tiger?” I said, throwing myself into my role. At that moment, I had a thought flit through my head: why had this guy asked forme, of all people?
His face didn’t move. He just blinked slowly, tilted his chin, and leaned back in his chair. His mouth didn’t smile, but for some reason he gave the impression of being very cruelly amused by what I had just said.
Sort of like a cat with a mouse.
Well, that didn’t take long. I was out of strategies. This guy didn’t really seem interested in me in a stripper kind of way, which was bad news.
I looked at the door with desperation, and then back at the guy. “You speak English?” I asked, dropping my stripper act.
