Page 5 of The Unraveling

There’s a sudden wave of applause and catcalls.

“Now, I know you could all look at my beautiful tits—I mean face—all night long, but of course, I’m a generous soul, so I’ll be sharing the stage this evening with some absolute babes tonight. And every once in a while”—she directs her eye contact over toward our group—“I’m able to convince my friends to come up and strut what their mamas wish they’d never given them. David, any interest tonight?”

She puts on a pouty face as a spotlight soars over to David.

He smiles. He loves the attention, I know he does, but he acts demure.

“I’m with my friends,” he says, elbow on the bar, giving her that kind of self-impressed smile that means he simply needs to be begged.

“Oh, he’s with his friends,” she says, pouting even more, and even stomping her foot as she bats her eyelashes on the crowd. “What do we think, is that a good excuse?”

Everyone starts to boo, and the emcee grins at David.

“You’re so bad,” he says to her.

“Come on, Davey, one little dance.”

He looks at me. “I’ll do it if she does it with me.”

The emcee’s heavily blackened eyelashes flit to me. “Do we have another dancer in the house this evening?”

Heat rises fast in my cheeks as the spotlight moves onto me, too.

I almost spit out my cocktail. “What?”

“Come on, babe, let’s show them what real dancers do,” says David.

“What real dancers do? What is this, Step Up?”

“Come on!” He starts to pull at me.

“Dav—” I look at the stage area. “No. No way. Ballet is not cabaret.”

“Oh my god, do it!” says Jane.

“You have to,” says Artie. “Do it for the experience.”

Artie’s a writer, so he writes everything off as being for the experience, no matter how negative it is.

“Hey there, handsome,” says David.

I roll my eyes. Artie, who is also open to any kind of experience, gives a flirtatious flick of his perfectly groomed hair to David.

“You can dangle your beautiful friend in front of me all you want,” says David, winking at Artie over my shoulder, “but you can’t distract me. We’re dancing.”

I let out an exasperated sigh and say, “This is ridiculous.”

David takes this as a relent, and says, “We’ll do it!”

The room cheers, dumbly, though they have no idea—just like I don’t have any idea—what is about to happen.

David goes off to whisper something to the hostess. She grins and nods, turning the Rolex on his wrist toward her. I turn completely from the whole scene.

Jordan turns to me. “You don’t have to do it,” he says.

I swig from my Sazerac and look up to the ceiling.

“All right, ladies and sluts, in the boudoir tonight we have a few special guests. David Thornton, a dancer with the North American Ballet in New York City.” She pauses and claps long manicured fingers along with all the catcalls and whooping from the audience. “Don’t worry, he’s a proper Englishman. Well, sort of—he’s from South London.”

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