Who: Marta, Anaïs, Lyra What: An audition Where: The Vega When: I don't even know any more. Recently? Warnings/Rating: Some dancing and nudity
Blush red, blood red, plush velvet plumped pillows like parted lips, booths like black teeth behind the crimson, skirting the edges of the space. The room’s walls seemed to beat when snagged on the corners of eyes, an illusion? Perhaps. Coming in, going out, as a heart’s chambers in occupational tandem, they moved. The ceilings were high, but everything felt warm and close, strangely erotic behind the glittering sheen of class. The bar was empty during the day. It stood shining, awaiting the night, bottles of green glass, of whiskeys dark, all filtering the dim overhead lights into odd prisms of approximate circles, oblong and thick around circumference. There were no windows to indicate existence outside, such was the atmosphere of insulation. It was a physical experience, a strange rebirth, bringing in only those deemed worthy of sins.
Anaïs sat in front of the beat gold of the stage that lolled out from the wall like a tongue painted black. It wore a circlet of twisted iron, curled just so to bring the eyes to the jewels of dancers, of women in gathered skirts. Chandeliers hung low and a second level split off.
On her tuffet of red, dressed in a crushed velvet dress flaring and falling above milk-pale knees (mid-thigh), an ugly beaded necklace, chunky, crude, with a heavy cross weighing it down (a prize she’d obviously found on a sidewalk, scuffed), and loosely tied floral combat boots backed in white, she sat in front of that stage and she waited. Her hair was pulled back and pinned, but with tendrils falling around sweet face from lack of care. She wore no makeup, and the washed-out dollop of cream in the veins of the club did not belong. The girl—Marta—would find her easily enough. Anaïs bit her thumbnail and waited.
Marta had no clue what to expect. She hadn’t been anticipating any actual response from bitching in the weird book, but she’d come away with a shit ton of people replying, and an audition for what sounded like a new job. Weird, fucked up, but not something she was going to turn up her nose at.
It didn’t stop her from being a little nervous though. She hadn’t even needed to audition for her current job (and it was likely a good thing that she didn’t at that point, before she’d really learned anything about how to move onstage). She’d walked in, told the bartender that she needed a job and assured him that she was over 18 (she was pretty sure), and they’d thrown her onstage for the afternoon crowd - the ones that didn’t much care what the girls did, or even really how they looked, as long as there was some T&A being shown onstage. A little terrified, she’d made it through her first shift without incident and had kept going back since. Each night she got a little better, and when the other dancers showed her a few things on the pole, she caught those easily enough as well. She hadn’t lied to the strange “Lyra” in the book - she wasn’t bad, but she didn’t figure she was the best either. Not like some other dancers she knew, who thought they were the best in the city. Right. Dancing in a little shit-hole that only locals visited. But Marta knew that she could keep a beat, enough slink to work the moves, and a whole duffle bag of clothing that was too tiny and too sheer to be decent for anyplace but onstage.
It left her a little confused as to what to wear to the Vega, to cross the city in the middle of the day, with locals and tourists alike clogging transit and corners. The weather had at least turned gorgeous, if not a little windy, and the short black skirt she’d decided on caught the breeze to lift and show the tops of her stockings more often than not. The cropped hoodie kept any chill away from her skin, though she wasn’t wearing more than a sheer bra underneath it. In the bag she had slung over one shoulder (too small to be a duffle, too big to be a purse), she’d shoved a pair of stage shoes, leaving her in a pair of chunky heeled, knee-high boots to carry her to the club. Too much eyeliner, hair loose, she was never going to be more prepared as she pushed her way through the club’s door (even if she had no idea what exactly this audition was going to entail).
The Vega was everything that her club was not, and she admittedly stared around herself with wide eyes at first. The decorating was richer than most things she was used to, cleaner by far than any club in the part of town where she lived and worked. And for the briefest second, she felt too young and too vulnerable, and nearly turned right back around to step into the Vegas sunshine.
But then there was a guy (bartender, her mind supplied) wandering by with a case that clinked like full bottles as he walked, and he jerked his chin to the side, farther into the club. “Anaïs is in there, kiddo,” he said as he passed, leaving Marta to stare after him for a moment before following his directions. A few more steps, and the room opened up into an even more opulent space, and her mouth parted open just a bit as she stared. It took barely a second for the stage itself to catch her eye, and yeah, that was a stage. It made her steps stutter, the thought of climbing up on it alone, but in the next second she did her best to square her shoulders and work her way closer toward it.
It took another long moment for the woman to catch her attention, overshadowed by the space itself, and her steps stopped when she did. She stared for a minute, taking in her appearance, and then swallowed. “Anaïs?” she tried, figuring that her guess had a good chance of being right.
Eyes a honeyed brown, so light, a trap of amber, picked up from the pristine floor to settle on the approaching girl. Small, wrapped in gothic black torn, in heavy boots and heavy eyeliner, Marta. She was pretty, a dark butterfly with wings stuck still in the silk of her still-warm cocoon. She lacked the sugary fragility that caught breath in Anaïs’ throat, but was not unsatisfactory. Her thick lines were reminiscent of a very young Lyra. - However, whatever conclusions were drawn, if any, whatever thoughts combed through, if any, were invisible on Anaïs’ inscrutable face. She was a passive canvas stretched tight, a softness in the constricting red of the room, something one might call a smile poised on perfectly pink lips. Her eyes fluttered back down demurely and she looked at her hands as she spoke. Her voice was quiet and girlish, the accent a pretty picture of New Orleans French and the flat sands of Vegas, and when she spoke, you could almost hear her heart beating.
“Bonjour.” Her head tipped and strands brushed across cheeks. Her fingers laced and sat in her lap. There were some papers on the table next to her, a manila folder closed over forms. To the side was a seashell in beach orange, apparently carried in. “I am glad you found me. I will ask you some questions, yes? Then I would like to see you, then you will dance.”
However submissive Anaïs’ tone, she wasn’t asking questions nor suggesting. The soft lips hid teeth. She smiled gently and never looked up.
Marta found herself nodding even before Anaïs was done talking, heavy, high-heeled boots closing the distance between them. She was relying on Anaïs to let her know how this all was supposed to go, hoping that she didn’t make too big of an idiot of herself. She figured it would be obvious soon enough that she didn’t know what she was doing, so best to throw it out there right away. “Never done this before, so just… you fucking let me know what sort of shit you need me to do, okay?” The cursing felt almost blasphemous in the face of a woman who seemed all sorts of soft at first glance, but Marta fell back on it in absence of anything else that made sense.
Being asked questions made sense, she supposed. And being asked to dance. While she may not have needed to prove herself for her current job, she had no doubt that it was standard for a place as nice as the one she found herself in. Even if this wasn’t where she was going to be working (if she even qualified for the job), she had to assume that a place even slightly connected to the Vega was going to be a step up for her. “Okay,” she finally replied, standing near to where Anaïs was sitting. She didn’t know if she should sit too, so she just stood there, weight on one booted foot and with her bag slung over her shoulder. “Um. Ask away, I guess.”
The crude sounds of the curse words, the catch of syllables in clacking white teeth and the unveiling of cracks in black veneer, didn’t seem to penetrate the moon-dust expanse of the woman on the chair. Anaïs had no reaction, her eyes remained downcast. There was no reassurance either. She continued to smile a soft turn of lips, all politeness and feminine inhibition, and gestured toward the cushioned chair opposite with slim fingers. She took careful note of the nervousness apparent, of the movement of bones in socket and the skim of youthful skin painted so many beautiful colors, allowing it to begin answering questions she had not yet, and may never, ask.
Once Marta sat, Anaïs drew her gaze upward in the slow bloom of wood sorrel and goldenrod. One hand smoothed a roll in the velvet dress and the other laid flat and innocuous on the bloodshot eye of the table.
“I will ask you questions, and you answer them once I’m done with the asking, yes?” A dip of the head. The tumble of a curl. An inoffensive smile. Words methodical. “How old are you? Do you use any illicit substances or drugs? If so, do you have an addiction to any of them? Do you have a partner? If so, will they be an issue? How long have you been dancing? Is your schedule flexible? Do you have a preference for shifts? Are you a punctual employee?”
It was hard not to fidget at the steady, pale gaze she found herself under, but Marta did her best. She was glad to ease herself down into the nearby chair, though, sliding her bag off her shoulder and letting it drop to the floor at her feet. It slumped in a pile of fabric, formed loosely around the pair of stilettos inside. The cushion of the chair sank beneath her, cradling her within an embrace that was far softer than most furniture she was used to.
And then the questions started.
They came in an accented wave, and she did her best to follow them. She waited until the flood slowed, and then tried to answer them all. In order. The cursing faded to nearly nothing as she focused on actual answers. But she skipped the first. “Um. I use stuff sometimes, but it’s never anything too bad. I’m not addicted to anything. I’m not seeing anyone.” That was accompanied by a disbelieving laugh - her actually partnering with someone for more than a few fucks. “It’s not an issue. I’ve been dancing for, um… a while. Right around a year. I don’t care about shifts - I’m covering just about all of them right now.” She trailed off to a stop, forgetting if there was anything else. Taking a breath, she did her best to prepare herself for the next wave to come.
Anaïs listened with a certain innate poise. She was not especially ladylike in thought or dress, certainly not all the time. Often she chose nothing more than overalls and a bra, but there was no doubt that there was an aspect to her that was all frilled femininity, even without the modern additions of makeup and acrylic nails. Her eyes stayed on Marta, fringed in white-gold lashes that met once during the entirety of the girl’s response. She smiled just so, the fallen petal of a rose still soft. She wrote nothing down.
“How old are you?” She repeated in the exact tone as before with the same dip of head and the same tumble of curl. Anaïs tucked hair behind her ear. “Are you a punctual employee?”
Marta felt that somehow she was failing at the questions, unable to determine how Anaïs was feeling from the lack of reaction to her answers. She did her best to shove the nerves aside, lift one corner of her mouth in an uncertain little smile, and crossed her legs, nearly blocking her body with the chunky, knee-high boots.
“I’m pretty punctual, yeah. I mean, I’ve been late a few times, but shit happens, right? I don’t make a habit of it. I don’t like having to run right up onstage, so I’m usually there before I have to go on.” Her foot bobbed in the air, nervous, quick jerks as she worked up to the last answer. “I’m around nineteen?” She tried to get it to come out as a statement, but it climbed up at the end, forcing a question where she didn’t want it. “Somewhere around there.” Another pause, and she forced herself to look at the woman across from her, even if her gaze did linger on the pale halo of hair instead of meeting the strange amber eyes. She took a sharp breath to steady herself and forced out the next words before she could lose courage. “I don’t have any ID. Or any paperwork or anything. I get paid in cash right now, and I dunno if that’s possible here, but there. Now you know.” She tumbled to a stop and held her breath, waiting for a reaction.
The question apparent in Marta’s answer, the up and up of a balloon released into blue sky with fear that it would meet the sun, was not lost on Anaïs, but no ripples moved outward from the epicenter of impact. There were no reverberations vibrating in pupils that stood in huge eigengrau against golden backdrop. She nodded and the girl kept talking in staccato, a burst of nerves rimed with words, and then again, with eyes trained on Anaïs like a dare, like she was something to be feared, something more than a pretty woman with hair that matched her eyes and a smile full of sweetness.
That piqued her interest.
“I see,” she said, shuffling papers then back into the manila folder. She smiled brighter, though it proved to be more of an enigma than the simple gazing. She spoke politely. “Please choose a song of your liking and dance for me on the stage. I’ll give you a few moments to change. There is a jack in the back to plug your phone in, if you’d like.”
The lack of reaction nearly derailed Marta, her thoughts and expectations, and it took another moment for her to catch up with the conversation, the fact that the audition was continuing. She blinked once, eyes wide in their too-dark makeup mask, but then she was nodding and forcing herself up out of the soft chair. “Right,” she murmured, mostly to herself as she grabbed up her bag again and looked over her shoulder toward the side of the stage, searching for stairs or some obvious way to get backstage, and nodded when she found the staircase, half hidden in the ruddy shadows at the edge of the room. “Okay,” she continued, words to fill the silence and reassure herself, and gave Anaïs a brief nod before heading in back.
Maybe her hands shook when she zipped down the tall boots, air cool on her calves, stockings nearly damp after having walked from the bus stop. It made her shiver as she padded flat-footed around the space, searching for the promised jack into the sound system. It didn’t take too awfully long for it to reveal itself, and she slipped into her shoes as she queued up something with a good beat by the Pussycat Dolls. It was maybe cliche, maybe a little too much trashiness for the sort of space she was about to dance in, but she at least knew that she could work with it. She’d danced to it before, and likely would again, and she figured it was probably her best choice at the moment. With a double-check that it would only play the one song, not slipping into something embarrassing as soon as it was done, Marta pressed play and headed out onstage on heels that added more inches to her height than should have been possible.
The stage itself, the view from it, was worlds away from her usual stage. A little bit higher, a lot better-lit, her audience a possibly disinterested sphinx of a woman that she wanted to impress, instead of the usual tit-hungry men she usually danced for. But the desire to impress made her sharper, more on, and she pulled from someplace deep to find an intensity and a flirtatiousness she didn’t usually need. The hoodie unzipped, her hips moving with the music, and she put what she had into the dancing.
The doors were not flung open dramatically. The doors at the back of the Vega were made for entrances and exits, the cool, bluish mist of dry ice and fog when it was called for, to creep up the edges of the stage and the melodramatics that made the onlookers draw closer together, in a shiver of anticipation. But the doors to the back, to the staircase that led up to the more mundane beyond, they swung quietly and the woman who slid between the rows like smoke did not call attention to herself either, even if the soft, clinging black and the matte red lips said perhaps she did on occasion. The little mouse who was to be Anaïs’s pet writhed on stage as if she were used to men who leaned forward, who put hands along the milk of her skin and who traced all that ink down to where it began and where it ended. She did not look quite so much like a mouse on stage, but she had not yet opened her mouth - Lyra’s fingers caught against Anaïs’s shoulder, cool white on warm cream, a touch as much a greeting as it was a warning and she folded herself into the chair beside her, anticipation for new entertainment.
The Vega’s dancers were feathers and tightly-laced corsets, they knew to reveal less was to promise something more from the imagination and an imagination was a woman’s weapon, for a man never knew what he could dream of until she placed it there. The little mouse, whose hips moved with the pulsatingly dreary beat of what was music but suited itself to plain clubs with plastic underfoot and over-priced beer served at the bar, moved as if she had promise; Lyra leaned her chin against Anaïs’s shoulder, put lips to ear, ”Qu’est-que tu pense?” Can she dance or can’t she? Indulgence, the nutcracker placed in the hands of the sugarplum girl to crack-crack-crack, or to break, as she liked.
She could imagine the bands of red and purple light shoring on blotted, sticky floor, shaking underfoot as bass fissured cement foundation deep underneath, lower and lower than the girls could go, somewhere where it would collapse years later and take everyone with it. Bats came down crashing down in the arms of black trees, screaming all the way. On the stage, Marta’s nerves seemed to calm. She moved to the music with an erotic wildness that seemed natural when paired with the sinewy whistle of the music she’d chosen.
Anaïs did not start at the fingers on the velvet of her shoulder. Instead, her eyes flickered sideways like a candle’s flame, and she smiled softly. Her attention returned to Marta, the little girl in the boots of Kong. Lyra may not have approved of the choice, but it mattered little.
“She is nervous,” the woman said without indication if she was answering the question or stating for clarity. Yellow eyes stayed on Marta. The music began to wane, its pulse growing faint as its blood was let by the cruelty of medieval time. Anaïs sat forward and beckoned Marta to the edge of the stage with one hand in the air. “Come.”
The moments between music were the worst onstage. At the club, the songs bled one into the next, overlapping basslines, so that there was never a silent moment for anyone’s thoughts to rush back in - dancers or customers. In the silence, she was merely an almost-naked girl on a big, bright stage, and she put her hands on her hips simply for something to do with them. She tried to ignore the way she wanted to fold arms over her stomach to hide behind or to slip them behind her back, fingers wrapped around elbows. Both would betray the nerves that still lingered, so she dug her fingers into the curve of hipbone and hoped that her audience didn’t notice the way her fingertips made her skin go pale white and darker red.
The appearance of the other woman was unexpected, but there had been two names on the journals - she supposed it made sense for there to be two people here. And it was no huge leap of logic to figure this second figure, half-absorbed into the shadows - to be Lyra. Under two pairs of scrutinizing eyes, she tipped her chin up with a sliver of bravado that she pulled from somewhere deep inside, and she gave herself over to their gazes.
The command was nearly impossible to refuse, and the click of spike heel against stage was loud in the silence as she stepped forward, nearer to the footlights. They were warm on her skin, lighting more obviously the contrast between milk-pale and inked-dark, glinting on the silver bar through one nipple, and she looked past them with a slight squint to watch the women watching her. “I know the song’s probably not what you do here.” It was the beginning to a strange sort of apology, for sullying the opulent space with a song made for a simpler sort of club. But she forced herself silent, to not apologize for herself and who she was. Either they’d take her or they wouldn’t. There was still audition left - she wasn’t going to guess at their decision just yet.
Music blew itself out to nothing and the stage swallowed the dregs whole, greedy in darkness. No, it was not the song for the women here, who undulated rather than gyrated, who were suggestion rather than promises, who were lit incandescent by attention, by the searching spotlight of a stage. She was young, Anaïs’s little mouse, young and the tattoos writhed up her arms with a permanence that made her look even younger, crawling like ink, like blood on snow. Lyra’s smile was a sliver, a shiver, a narrow wisp drawn close like cloud around a moon and the hand on the soft velvet of Anaïs’s shoulder uncurled, a finger at a time until the palm was free and bare and her hands folded together in front of her.
“No,” she said, thoughtfully. A single word, quiet but it carried in the heavy stillness of the club, the empty stage and the velvet swagged at its sides. No, it was not the kind played here but it pulsed like a heartbeat, like desire, like the songs they did play and the calm green gaze slid up Marta from heels to the tip of her head, slowly and leisurely and with the careful, feline-smile of a woman hiding behind a fan. “It is not. Are you nervous?” There was no indication whether there was a right answer, nor a wrong one. Lyra was calm, the sweetly dangerous kind, metal on the back of the tongue, blooming like night flowers. “Or is it that you want?”
Anaïs watched Marta, dragged her own eyes up cool skin with like the kiss of water hemlock, the color of lovage but with the danger of poison poised in pupils. She smiled as Lyra spoke, the moon of a nail softly grazing her bottom lip. She considered the woman before her, the kohl around the eyes—the eyes that betrayed a lack of steel the jut of jaw insinuated.
“Lyra—” The milk gold of a hand indicated the dark woman near Anaïs. “—will choose a song now and you will dance to that, oui? Then we will nearly be done.”
Marta stood still on the stage, nearly helpless to move under Lyra’s intense gaze. Between her and Anaïs, Marta felt herself shiver and pucker, hair stand on end, skin raise into goosebumps. They were an intensity that she was unused to, fully lit and a different sort of hunger from half-drunk, lonely men. The slow journey of green eyes along her body was nearly a physical sensation, and she expected to feel the press of cool fingers somewhere even though neither of the women had moved from their seats in the audience.
“Both,” she managed to whisper, her own gaze caught in green that pulled the words from her. She lacked in that moment the sort of obscenity-laden bluster that she usually wrapped around herself. She hadn’t quite realized until that very moment how much she was hoping for this audition to be a success, to pull her out of her current club, even if it wasn’t to place her onto the exact stage on which she currently stood. There wasn’t much hope of moving up for her, into something better, but this might be something good. “I’ve never had to audition before,” she confessed, to her own mild surprise that she would be so honest. “And I want a new job.” That part was said with more conviction, and her chin inched back up again from where it had taken the smallest of shy dips toward her chest.
Her attention was captured by Anaïs again, the soft voice an effectively baited lure. It was a simple enough question, but she somehow felt that there might be a wrong answer. That she may have already responded wrong to something that she wasn’t even aware of. But she had to try. She couldn’t walk out before they told her to, not when there might still be the dimmest flicker of a chance. So she nodded. She ignored the growing part of her that said “oh shit, I don’t belong here”, and she nodded. “Okay.”
No, no steel to the mouse and Lyra’s smile was a shiver of the knife laid softly flat with the bite of the blade turned out toward the stage and a look that lingered, black mirth blooming at its edges. No steel to the woman on stage, who showed the tangled knots that were the twisted rut of old wounds. And knots could be unwound. The cool flat of one white hand pressed against Anaïs’s wrist, and Lyra twisted in the space beside the table, the watery flow of silk and the heavy press of sweetness against the air, dying flowers, choking beneath smoke and her movement toward the back of the room was soundless.
The Vega was grand, she was decadent, she was grand dame who knew how to host the parties no longer seen - but the equipment was sleek and efficient, and the spotlights came on, one by one, milky-white and icy-blue until they wove across the stage like ribbons. The music began, a heavy, blowsy thing, brass and then a woman singing like making love - the kind of music that rocked through the Vega like the audience was ready for it. Let the mouse make of it what she would. Lyra’s voice carried from the back of the room; “All my girls audition,” she said as if it were nothing, “How am I to set a fee if I do not know what I sell?” She was at Anaïs’s side, a glance of fingers over the curve of waist. “Or would you command a price without looking first?” The green gaze was steady, close-to-skin.
The music blossomed out of nowhere, but the beat of it was a throb that echoed around within Marta’s thin ribcage. It was half a world away from what she’d put on the speakers, and she again shoved away the thoughts of being awkwardly mismatched with the club around her. The spotlights were both too bright on their own, and emphasized the too-dark of the shadows, but she saw the way they wove across the stage, and she slipped into one of dark shapes.
“No,” she said, voice coming from the gloom before she stepped into one of the blue ribbons, the color of it making her dark hair into something even blacker. “I don’t expect-” She paused her words but not her actions, the slink of her legs carrying her to another shadow where her voice carried stronger toward the audience. “I don’t command. I just walked in one day. They charge at the door. The men decide if I’m worth them giving me more.” With that shred of honesty, she slipped into the light again, this one white and pulling out the lines of ink on her skin. The thrum bled more into her dancing, the beat of it guiding her movements, and she suddenly wished that she was still wearing clothes so that she could take them off to this. As a compromise, her hands traced along her skin, nails polished a chipped ebony tracing over her stomach, across a hip as she turned. She stayed in the spotlights, moving with the music, trying to hide the way her breath still caught on the turns toward their gazes.
The mismatch of girl and venue was perhaps not so stark as Marta felt, she was not jagged shrapnel caught bloody in a garden of Queen Anne’s lace, she was no juxtaposition that jarred the mind from its crucible. There was a darkness to her that the Vega sipped up like honey, a similarity in saturation of spirit. Anaïs could see it, just as she saw the tension underneath religious iconography grafted to skin and the softness of sweat that halo’d the woman on stage as she met the music midway and danced. The cotton-soft twirl of hair was fixed once more behind ear, there was a tip of chin to listen to the exchange, the smokiness of conversation Anaïs didn’t care to follow. She sat back in her chair and watched.
The music pumped through the veins of the Vega. Anaïs found the biology of movement and the magic of blood as it moved in circulation was breathtaking. She laced her fingers in her lap and smiled.
There was incandescence - quiet but oh, aching light that poured itself from hip to head to the part of thighs, an intricate, intimate spotlight of the girls themselves when they danced for others and they danced for themselves. Mouse moved as if perhaps she’d found it, as if the great grand dame of the Vega were stirred to settle around her, black velvet darkness tightening like a lover’s caress, as if the rock of her hip were timeless enough to be found wanting (oh she was wanting and would be wanted; men liked what they could pull apart, dolls for dreams and fantasy, the lace of ink across sparse, milky flesh and that was different from most of her girls - Lyra watched, her face impassive, the unblinking green unsmiling). Where Anaïs yielded, was honeyed tea and soft, curled lips, sweet as a mother to take a hand, lead a girl from the spotlight and slap her cleanly for doing wrong, Lyra sat beyond the white-clean kiss of the light where the shadows gathered like a drawn curtain.
“Stop.” Her hand raised, the music’s threads warped, the delicate puppet who danced on-stage, whose breath heaved, whose skin was sweat-skim-glistened, the command to motionlessness, until she swayed in her strings once more, command now certain. “Men don’t decide worth, Mouse. They will take what they can for as little as they can.” One white finger quirked. “Come here.”
The music had wrapped around Marta as she moved, and when the single-worded command cut through the melody, she stumbled a little to a halt. Eyes that had been half-open and lost in another world opened wide again and looked out into the gloom of the audience. She could easily identify each woman just by their voices, sweet French vowels and something entirely different, and she knew who was commanding her now. She forced her hands to hang loose at her sides, not twisting together or hiding behind her back, and she waited.
Her mouth opened to reply, to insist that maybe it worked differently at Vega, but that where she worked, the cash went directly from worn wallets into whatever scrap of clothing she still wore. The thought of setting a price didn’t make sense to her - though she had to admit that she had no idea how a club such as the Vega actually worked. Auditions and prices and a million other things, she was certain. But she kept her eyes as focused as she could on the figures in the audience, and responded almost instantly at the pale crook of finger and the next quiet command. It seemed more than just a simple request to stand at the edge of the stage.
The stairs to the stage were off to the side, a detour that would take more time than Marta wanted to give. So she simply found a section of stage that didn’t house a well of footlights, sat on the edge, and eased herself down with the surprising power of her slim arms. Her toes almost didn’t touch the ground before she needed to let go, and she dropped the last inches with a soft thump as she landed. She wound past tables then, steps sure in her heels, and stopped in front of the two women, eyes still adjusting to the lack of spotlights. She stood in panties, heels, and stockings, but looked at the two of them as if there was nothing strange about being almost naked in front of them.
Nakedness was nothing. You could stand in the best, the thickest, the most substantial of clothes and be nothing to the woman who stood with her lips curled around a smile like a secret, who beckoned like she knew command like a friend. Nakedness, the baring of flesh, it was a promise rather than promise fulfilled, a possibility rather than the deliberate execution. Lyra commanded and the music ceased; a small button on a remote carried in one palm, a concealment as clean as a stage trick. It ceased and silence settled over the shoulders of Anaïs’s Mouse, Anaïs quietly sat and Lyra, Lyra strung taut as violin strings, stood tall on soft, white feet.
The Mouse did not speak; she was quiet as if she were learning that it was easier for your thoughts to be assumed than confirmed and that, that made Lyra smile around the lesson as if it were bitter and sugar at once. She was a tall woman but reed-thin, the poise of a dancer in her own straight back and the creamy milk of her own skin covered in draperies, thin and gauzy black. She looked as if she had stepped off the Vega’s stage, as if it were an oyster yawning wide for a pearl and Marta permitted instead of cradled, held close but forever temporary. Lyra lifted her hand, set cool fingers against Marta’s chin and tipped it upward without permission, studied her profile with the thoughtful calm and the green eyes scrutinizing rather than kind. It was a casual kind of touch that slid to collarbone, the little push of her hand that said turn, better than words, that slid over her with the considered, careful look of a woman who had seen enough bareness to make it nothing - and then Lyra’s gaze caught upward, sought Marta’s eyes for the briefest of moments and the smile was shared, conspiratorial for the briefest of moments, warm - enough to make it more than an articulation of study, a piece of jewelry to be purchased for a fine lady such as the Vega. Enough to make it naked, in front of them. Lyra’s eyes dragged lazily over the swirls of ink,
“Novel,” she said, with the flattened vowels of the accent that clung like shadows to corners, “Don’t you think?” She was looking toward Anaïs.
The dreamy, soft-edged quality, like the frittering frame of primitive cinematography, that draped itself around the woman who sat still before the stage presented Anaïs as innocuous. She was more than conscious of how demure smiles and modesty made her appear. Perhaps Marta thought she was to respond to Lyra’s commands before Anaïs’ own. It mattered little. She would be taught in time that there was no room for misappraisal at the Vega.
Sharpness returned to golden irises, a strange constriction, the filing of Baltic beauty trapping something too slow to escape its wrath, when Lyra turned dark attention from the girl on stage to the woman at the table, manila folder open in hand, light-tipped ballpoint pen scratching cryptic notes on the eerie veinal blue of loose paper. There was the sea-slowness of a smile, a lift of light eyebrows, and Anaïs looked to Marta. She nodded with syrupy slowness.
The gross sexuality of undulation, of dancing high above, held no appeal for her. There was a beauty of bodily complexity, but not much else. It was crude in a way that lacked the earthiness, the iron of blood or the delicacy of lace. Nakedness did not offend Anaïs, however. She was as unbothered as Lyra and her blond eyelashes never batted. Not once.
“Oui. Very pretty with the hair,” she complimented with breezy sincerity. Her eyes found Marta’s. “You will sit?”
Marta was unsettlingly uncertain of how to react to the two women. It was true that she didn't know who was "in charge", who was more likely to assure that she was given a new job, who she should be playing to. If there even was one over the other. So she let herself be turned, looked over like potential merchandise, let her chin be tipped up and met the forest glint of Lyra's gaze. Their closer study - nearer and more intimate now that she was off the stage - was nearly too intense to handle, especially when they spoke about her as if she wasn't even there. At the first question that wasn't meant for her, her eyes slipped away from Lyra's and caught on the scratch-covered paper within the mysterious folder in Anaïs' possession. She wondered, for just a moment, what those inked letters said - notes about her or simply passing thoughts that weren't meant to be forgotten?
She kept her eyes on Anaïs, somehow just as captivating as Lyra, her attention wanting to rend itself to split between the two of them. She was suddenly very much aware of how much a fly in spider's web she was, and though the thought came, she would never admit to wondering if her current job was at least safer than to get tied up with these two women. But then she was being nodded at, told to sit (and though it tipped up at the end, she was aware of how much it was not a question). She nodded again, a shiver taking up residence at the base of her spine, and though there was only a scrap of fabric between her and the chair, she eased down onto it again, the same one she'd sat in earlier. Palms together, her hands trapped themselves between close-pressed knees, and she blinked in anticipation of what came next.
They were paired dolls, tied up with scarlet ribbons, reward for little girl whose hands had gone grasping. The woman who was spilled ink and shadows, secrets taken form, leaned a little closer to milk and honey, to the tigress curled in soft, nubbed velvet into the chair and one hand splayed across her shoulder, a joining that tied them back together as effortlessly as those ribbons. Lyra’s gaze was cat-quick and laughing, the green glint of her eyes was hard as jade, even as her fingers touched the pulse-point in Anaïs’s neck, the thready, rhythmic beat of blood through veins (two girls, hands linked together) absent music.
“If we offer,” and it was we squeezed through like lemon, acidic-sweet, “You a place, it will be trial first. You can do as you like beyond the club, but in the club, you are untouchable, you are no-one’s. You can fuck the girls, you can fuck the men, but you must not bring it with you,” the rhythm was like winter, frost drawing in, “Not on your shift, not when you watch the others, and you will want to watch the others. You will do as we ask, as she asks,” and the cant of Lyra’s head caught Anaïs, prim-proper, docile-sweet and perfect, “Or you will be done.” It was clear done carried more finality than mere firing. Lyra’s hand, heavy with cool silver rings, patted Marta’s cheek, surprisingly soft.
“You will learn, you will do well.”
Anaïs smiled softly. The rimed white of Lyra’s hand settled on her shoulder, light as snow, fingers reaching as spires of ice from sky to ground, and there was no flinch, no reaction outside of the sweetness of a Victorian smile, the kiss of a spring flower to the dark days of the past.—Marta sat stricken on the plump red tongue of the chair nearby, a slip of fear beginning to take form in the blackness of her pupils. It would grow and like a monster, it would climb free, but for now, she was a girl feeling exposed and a little nervous. Anaïs had no jacket to offer, so she did not.
Lyra moved to pat Marta’s cheek. The women worked in tandem, as seasons do, and whatever push was given, there was also the pull, whatever heat, there was coolness, distance and claustrophobia, hardness and softness, give and take.
“You will be paid a living wage. You may accept whatever tips you are offered, but as they are not necessary to survive, they are not mandatory for patrons to give, nor entirely customary.” Anaïs was quiet a moment. “You may not drink, unless you hold your alcohol well. You are here to dance, oui?”
Another switch of attention, and Marta found herself nodding at Lyra's conditions, even as she stared at the women's interactions with each other. There was something there that made her stare and shiver, but she forced her mind back to the words being spoken. She wasn't quite sure what being "untouchable" entailed, but she'd figure it out. She'd say yes and somehow make it work, whatever it meant. If it gave her chance for a better job, a safer, nicer place to work, she would try. "Yeah," she replied softly, "I'll do it. If you give me a chance." It was soft but sincere, moreso than just about anything she'd said in too long, no shred of sass to it at all.
And then Lyra's hand was soft and delicate on her cheek, and she felt her eyes slipping closed in response to it, almost against her will. It wasn't anything she meant to do, wasn't anything she anticipated, but the gentle touch was nearly intimate, and she responded without thought before blinking her eyes back open again and straightening her spine. Pretending that she hadn't almost sank into the touch, she turned her gaze quickly to Anaïs and focused intensely on the important things being said. She didn't know what a "living wage" was either, yet another thing to add to the list of things that were confusing her, but she nodded as if it all made sense. The lack of tips was worrying, bringing thoughts of trying to scrape together enough cash for food and to keep her roommates off her back about rent. But she'd figure it out. Somehow. "Yeah, exactly. Just to dance." And if she sounded a little uncertain, she tried to pretend otherwise.
Sphinx-impassivity as the girl who had stood on stage and stripped herself clear of clothing like an onion shedding its skin, an apple self-coring in one long, endless round of peel - shivered, the tiny, downy hairs on her skin glancing upward, like pointed soldiers. Lyra’s fingertips were a skim, a trickle of cold water across the cheek; she’d seen, she’d noticed and the smile was something slid along her sleeve to Anaïs, something small and imperfect and impossible, the scarf up the magician’s cuff. “Just to dance,” Lyra repeated softly, mockingly, and she drifted further, unmoored flotsam in the wide, dark sea of the Vega silent once again. She bent, kissed Anaïs’s cheek just once - the scent of dying opium and soft, leathery soap.
“You can keep her, if you want her,” she said with a glancing look over her shoulder at the girl pinioned in the chair, held fast by fear and doubt. A smile, cool as undisturbed water. “Your little dancer.”
“Magnifique.” Anaïs tipped her cheek into the kiss and allowed her eyes to gleam like a rising sun, unfolding in luminosity across the landscape of the girl on the chair. Lyra took her leave in a swish of silk and a toss of inky hair, the Lady of the Lake disappearing beneath the strange calm of mystic waters. The demure woman still at the table stood and extended a fine, soft hand toward Marta. “You will come in early on Sunday to the Bella. It is not far. Come at five and I will have papers for you. I will need the birthdate you use and your full name.”
There was no tone of finality, none of the magician’s retreating flair or beat on the gong. There was the simple fluttering of butterfly wings and the audition was over.
Marta continued to watch the play between the two women, all while trying to figure out still what was happening. Lyra slipped away, but Anaïs remained, gold eyes on her in a way that was no less captivating than green. But the words - as soft and accented as they were from each woman - the words confirmed that she'd done something right. She had a place.
She watched the new extended hand, wondering of it would touch her as well, wondering if it was common, if the touches were always so soft and intimate. She knew what it was like to be touched, groped, pinched and shoved, but never anything quite so gently intimate. Nothing that lifted the prickled goosebumps along her skin. But there was no contact, just more quiet orders, and though she was still tipping past the equilibrium of balanced understand of the situation, Marta couldn't stop the smile.
"Yeah? It was okay then?" She was eager and too young, and she knew it the moment the words had escaped, chasing them quickly with a clearing of her throat, though the smile didn't quite disappear. "Okay. Yeah, I'll be there." Her smile faded a bit at the mention of her birthdate, but she nodded. She had a fake ID that she could use if nothing else. She'd figure it out. It deserved a repetition: "I'll be there."