Read Boston Avant-Garde 4: Encore for Free Online Page B

tips.”
    The image made Suri chuckle despite her gloomy mood. “I don’t think this crowd would go for classical music.”
    Lizzie stood and dropped her robe. Suri couldn’t help but admire her friend’s cocoa skin, lush curves, and full double-D-cup breasts. Cultural definitions of beauty be damned, Lizzie’s fuller figure raked in as much or more in tips than Suri’s narrower hips and C-cup chest.
    “Honestly.” Lizzie grabbed a pair of star-shaped pasties to put underneath her white “schoolgirl” top. “I don’t think they’d give a shit what you played if you were naked. But I digress. You were telling me what happened.”
    Suri gave up on the idea of distracting Lizzie. The woman had a one-track mind. “We were playing a wedding, and the groom tried to come on to me during the reception.”
    “That’s disgusting!”
    “When they confronted him about it, the bride accused me of throwing myself at him.” Suri wished she could block out the lingering humiliation riding her after the incident. Inside Asylum, she was on familiar ground. There was a tenuous balance of power between the ones on stage and the ones paying to see the show. Outside the club, it was a whole different experience. She felt as though she’d been stripped bare in front of strangers so they could judge her based on their narrow-minded principles.
    Lizzie wrinkled her nose and tied the shirttails of her top just below her breasts. “You told her the truth, right?”
    “Yes.” Suri flashed back to the derision on the bride’s face. “He told her I was a stripper.”
    “Wait. He identified you?” Lizzie’s peals of laughter made no sense. Was she laughing at Suri’s embarrassment?
    Suri turned back to the mirror to put the final touches on her makeup. “I didn’t think it was funny. My friend Leslie is still waiting for me to explain the scene. I don’t even know what to tell her. She doesn’t know I moonlight as a stripper, and she still calls me Jen.”
    Lizzie propped one hand on her hip and struck a pose chock-full of the devil-may-care attitude that made her a favorite on stage. “Forget all that. Sweetie, that douche bag told his new bride at their wedding reception that he’d been hanging out in strip clubs and probably cheating on her. How is any of that your fault?”
    It wasn’t her fault. That really had nothing to do with it. It was about being exactly what the asshole had said. Suri was a stripper. She took her clothes off for money. She could justify it any way she wanted. She could even enjoy the uninhibited feeling of dancing, but at the end of the day, she wasn’t sure what was worse. Either she was insecure and the club was exploiting her, or she was taking advantage of lonely losers who paid a few extra bucks to touch her tits and have her grind her ass against their crotches.
    “That’s what has you moping around like the world is ending?” Lizzie stepped into her red plaid skirt and fiddled with the pleats.
    “Not just that.”
    “You’re a beautiful dancer, Suri. You like doing it. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”
    Why did it sound so reasonable when Lizzie said it?
    “Well, what else?”
    It was harder to say than Suri had expected. “I was depressed last night and maybe a little drunk, and I sort of slept with a couple of guys while I was here at the club.”
    “Come on, sweetie, your life must be pretty boring if you think that’s bad.” Lizzie crossed her arms as if waiting to be impressed.
    Suri wondered how much shock it would take to impress her more adventurous friend. “Two guys at the same time.”
    “Oh, definitely not boring but still not awful.”
    “I slept with Dante and Jericho.”
    “Well that’s kind of awkward.”
    * * * *
    “She called me a cheap whore.”
    Dante sat back in his chair, wishing he could return to the paperwork scattered on his desktop. He stifled the urge to stab his fingers through his hair. The only way to effectively deal with his