He looked at me. “Now, go do your job. Schmooze with the money. And be ready to dance in about a half hour. Down to nothing tonight.” And he walked.
Dom fumed beside me, and I just breathed for a moment, steeling myself for the explosion I was sure was about to occur. But he was so good; he contained himself, only dropping his arm from behind me to snag my hand and give me a squeeze, letting me know he’d be watching, making sure I was okay. God, I was so glad he was there. This night sucked already.
I schmoozed as ordered and performed my feature as required. When I went to redress in the miniscule baby doll and G-string, they were not to be found. I ended up walking through the living room for the next couple of hours in my stilettos alone, fielding grabby hands and coked-up, drunken, overly stimulated men who thought they were entitled to handle my ass.
At some point, Mr. Ronn and Dom both disappeared from the room. I had no idea if they had left the house altogether or if they were just out of the party scene for a break of some sort. I kept an eye out for them, but the minutes passed and Dom’s absence felt too close to abandonment, though I knew in my mind that he could not have been happy with the separation, either. We were here to do jobs. I kept that going in my mind like a mantra.
There had to be something—anything—here at the house that would prove a tie between Mr. F and the porno lot, Joey Ronn’s porno empire, and the death of my sister. I had no idea what I was looking for, but there had to be something here.
Find an in. Find something. Find anything. Find it. Find it. Find it.
Finally begging out of the party rooms to use the washroom to “freshen up,” I escaped more wandering hands and slipped out.
All of my previous attempts to explore the house had been doused by the watchful eyes of Mr. F and by unwelcome attentions from random tuxes. It was past midnight now, and the general atmosphere had shifted somewhat. Those who were only here to schmooze and snicker had mostly left the scene, and it was only the serious partiers who maintained the space. By this time, they were all so seriously fucked-up on coke and booze that I was able to slip past notice; I didn’t see Mr. F among them. I went up the ginormous main stairwell, fake stumbling as if I was fucked-up, too.
God, there had to have been at least eight rooms up there. I went down the gallery wall to the left, figuring I’d start on one end and work my way through.
Not surprisingly, the bedroom I started in was occupied by one of my fellow dancers and an older (gray-haired and rather flabby) man without a tux, going at it like monkeys on the bed. All righty, then. I had barely taken in the room, my only impressions being the large open space and the heaving and grunting on the queen-sized bed. Without even having entered the room, I shut the door and moved on.
The door across the hall revealed a bathroom as big as my bedroom, and I took the opportunity to finally get some self-coverage. In a moment of what I considered brilliant scheming, I turned on the shower, gratefully unfettered my feet from the evil stilettos, and slipped in. I quickly rinsed my body and hair, luxuriating for a few moments in the hot water, but forced myself to turn it off and keep to my plan. I grabbed a fluffy white bath towel and wrapped myself in it. Another to towel-dry my hair, and ta-da—the shower would justify the towel cover-up, and I felt a whole lot better about wandering around naked. The towel was way better than nothing.
Continuing my explorations with stiletto straps in hand, the next door down the hall revealed another bedroom, also occupied, this time by two men. The fourth door was just a linen closet; the fifth, another bedroom. This one was not occupied and held the basics you’d expect in a guest room. I skittled inside, shut the door quietly behind me, and hurriedly poked into the huge wardrobe, which featured a large flat-screen and some assorted technology, in addition to spaces for hanging and folded clothes. There were also a few interior drawers, hiding nothing of much interest. Giving up on the wardrobe, I turned to the desk under a window. It featured only one slim central drawer, hiding pens and paperclips and your typical desk refuse. Another dud room.
Moving on, I cracked open the door to scan the hallway for bodies and saw no one. I made it to the next room in line: another bedroom. Jeez, they were all copies of one another. I was getting the gist of the decorating genius behind this house. Rich and uninspired. Central bed, bare-bones bedside tables, and lamps. Central large wardrobe, each featuring the flat-screen and miscellaneous tech. This room had no desk but offered a low chest of drawers in its place.
One drawer offered an assortment of dildos and sex toys of the sort Christian Grey might approve. I fumbled through the stuff, not really wanting to touch it, not having known where the stuff had been, but knowing that I must be thorough in my search if I intended to find anything useful. This drawer was the most incriminating thing I’d found so far; I’d have been derelict had I shut it without a thorough search. But I did feel weird searching somebody else’s sex drawer. It was a little distasteful. My face was probably a bit scrunched up as I looked.