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touch her. Touching was against the law, but some of these clubs didn’t give a damn. A lap dance could become a hand job for a few dollars more, and a guy with fifty bucks could probably find somebody willing to do just about anything he could think up.
    Brandi wasn’t down for all that. She was a dancer and she was good at it. By the time she was sixteen, men were throwing five-dollar bills at her and she was able to move up to a classier place that had a tiny, dimly lit private room for anything more serious than a lap dance. At the new club, there was a small stage with a ramp that ran out into the audience and a gleaming silver pole. Brandi had no experience with pole dancing, but one of the other girls showed her the basics and told her to improvise.
    “What you worried about?” she said. “With the body you got, all you gotta do is grin and shake that ass.”
    Brandi liked the pole and she got good at it. She would slither and slide around it, loving the cool feel of the metal between her thighs and the whoops of the men watching as she slowly turned herself upside down, spread her legs wide, and
shook that ass
for all it was worth. That’s when men started throwing tens, but Brandi still wanted more. Neighborhood clubs were fine, but she wanted access to the places where the celebrities and athletes went to party. Where you might see Ludacris or Usher or Sleepy Brown at a table down front. Where Ray Lewis might pull up in a stretch limo the night before the Super Bowl, or Allen Iverson might stop in when the Sixers came to town.
    Brandi was looking for the big time, and as soon as she turned eighteen, she found it. A club near the airport put out the word that they needed experienced dancers and she went over to check it out. Their setup impressed her. A large main floor had tables for fifty or sixty people, two stages, and a bar that could easily accommodate twenty or thirty more. The DJ booth was a tiny cubicle of light with an amazing array of machines that made sure the music kept
bangin’,
and the dancers could even change in a clean, well-lit dressing room with mirrors everywhere. Brandi had worked at one place where the dancers had to just go into the bathroom, take off their street clothes, and get to work. That made her feel cheap. This made her feel classy.
    At her interview, the manager, a tall, thin black man who had a nervous habit of looking over his shoulder every few minutes, made it clear that none of the dancers were required to have sex with customers, but that sometimes they had some very special people coming through who took a liking to one dancer or another. In those cases, the manager would discreetly let the girl know what was up and she was free to take the customer to the VIP room and work out an arrangement that was mutually satisfactory. On those occasions, the girls who said yes to these special requests were expected to kick back 25 percent of what they made to the manager and keep the rest.
    “We have standard rates,” he said, showing Brandi the lushly appointed VIP room with its leather couches and deep-pile carpeting. In the corner was a pole like the ones downstairs. “One of the other girls will tell you how much for whatever it is you do extra.”
    “I do that,” Brandi said, pointing at the pole.
    “That’s not extra,” the manager said. “Every other bitch on the block can work a pole.”
    “Can they work it good enough to make you come just by watching?”
    He stopped and looked at her. She didn’t blink.
    “Show me,” he said, flopping down in the chair closest to the pole and hitting a switch that filled the room with the sound of Lil’ John and the East Side Boys. Brandi dropped her purse, kicked off her boots, and slid her jeans down over her hips. She had deliberately worn a bright red G-string for this audition, and under her tight white T-shirt, her breasts were bare.
    The manager watched her with a bored expression. He had seen so many naked women,