daze and worked it.
Use what you got had always been her philosophy, but using the sex angle had felt like selling out her new self—the woman who got ahead with her brains, not her body.
The idea made her head hurt. Or maybe it was the French braid that she’d pulled so tight her scalp ached. She’d changed into more casual clothes, but had forgotten to let down her hair.
Or maybe it was her reaction to Mayor Mike’s lust. She’d felt an answering response that had turned her insides to liquid.
Ridiculous. The man was her boss. Completely off-limits, even if she had time for sex. Which she hadn’t since she started school.
“So what have you been up to?” Jasmine asked.
Besides seducing the mayor into hiring me? “Not much. I unpacked, did some housework, fed the pets.” They’d scored free rent in exchange for doing light housekeeping, watering the plants and taking care of the owners’ two cats, freshwater fish tank and a terrarium of turtles and lizards.
“I gave the chuckwalla some meal worms.”
“Gross.” Jasmine scrunched up her nose.
“Everybody has to eat. Though I don’t get the Huffmans. Why spend so much on creatures that couldn’t care less?” The Huffmans had bought piles of toys and elaborate hideout towers for their two cats. The fish tank was jammed with plastic plants, a castle and tunnels, and the lizards and turtles had a tiny creek, decorative boulders and miniature hollow logs in their terrarium. The care instructions filled two typed pages.
“I’m sure the animals love them back,” Jasmine said.
“With brains the size of kiwi seeds? How much love can there be?”
Jasmine shrugged. “The cats are affectionate.”
“When there’s food involved, sure.” Though Autumn respected a cat’s self-sufficiency. If you took care of your own needs, you never got disappointed. “How about you? You’re here for the read-through, right? And did you get Sabrina to camp okay?”
“Yes. She made a friend right away. The girl brought the same Bratz doll to camp.”
“That’s a relief.” Autumn worried about Sabrina, who was eleven, pretty and bright, but fought a weight problem, social awkwardness and puberty, which had her giddy with joy one minute, steamrolled by depression the next.
Jasmine tended to gloss over Sabrina’s troubles, but Autumn connected with Sabrina—they shared a sense of isolation—and she listened in, advised where she could and felt good that Sabrina saved up her tales of triumph and agony for “Auntie Autumn.” Autumn loved that. It made her feel like family. Jasmine said Autumn was Sabrina’s aunt of the heart, as opposed to her real aunts who were too flaky and selfish to be much support to their niece. Or their sister, for that matter.
“Camp will be good for her,” Autumn said. “Fresh air, physical activity, new friends.” Summer camp had been one of Jasmine’s more sensible ideas. She had a tendency to overspend on Sabrina, though the budget Autumn had helped her with had encouraged her to be more thrifty. Jasmine thanked Autumn over and over for the college savings account that was slowly building.
Jasmine leaned on Autumn for financial advice, support at work and help with Sabrina, but she held her hands to her ears whenever it came to romantic issues.
This latest was the worst. Mark Fields got a walking-into-walls crush on Jasmine after seeing her perform a few months ago. Two short visits and some phone calls later and Jasmine had declared him Mr. Forever.
This worried the hell out of Autumn. Jasmine fell in love too fast and the breakups devastated her. She’d spend days in bed sobbing, blackout curtains in place, leaving poor Sabrina to fend for herself. Autumn always felt so helpless when her friend suffered. And she wanted to kick the shit out of the scumbags who caused it. Each time, Jasmine made Autumn swear: Never let me do that again. I mean it this time.
Easier said than done. Jasmine was too much of a romantic. Why couldn’t she just accept lust for what it was and not dress it up in a ball gown of love and parade it around?
During the month in Copper Corners, Autumn hoped to help Jasmine ease back into reality—the way you gently guided a sleepwalker back to bed—before things went bad. She worried about Sabrina, who did not need another father figure to disappear as soon as the affair cooled. Which it likely would.
“You have time for dinner?” Autumn asked her.
“Dinner? Uh, well I—” Jasmine blushed “—I’m kind of waiting for Mark. He plays the town founder, Josiah Bremmer. It’s the lead. So he’s got to be here for the reading.”
“Oh. Sure.”
“You don’t mind,” Jasmine said. “Really?”
“I’ll grab something at the diner. I want to make it an early night anyway. Maybe I’ll study.” Now that she’d forced Mike to give her the job, the jitters had started up. Working for Copper Corners would not be as simple as tracking the receipts at the strip club for Duke. She would be accountable for the entire town’s finances. There were budgets to wrangle and Lydia’s complex software to figure out.
She didn’t dare screw up. She needed the mayor’s recommendation for her class and her résumé. Plus, she’d practically strong-armed him into hiring her. Her pride was at stake.
“How’s this going?” she asked Jasmine, nodding toward the lit stage, where people stood talking, scripts in hand. Two young guys banged away on a rickety-looking covered wagon, while two girls painted saguaro cactus onto a backdrop of a pink-and-orange desert sunset.
“They’re waiting for Mark to start.” Jasmine sighed like an obsessed fan.
“It looks fun.” Autumn loved the feel of the theater—the bright-white lights, the black-painted stage, the smells of wood and linen and paint and pancake makeup. She’d discovered the glory of it when she got a part in a high school musical, but that was an old story that had ended all wrong.
She felt similarly when she performed in the three-woman burlesque revue with Jasmine, who did their costumes, and Nevada Neru, their choreographer. The revue had opened last year to rave reviews and had drawn steady crowds all season. She loved the excitement, the magic, the rapt faces of the audience. When she performed she felt so alive.
She enjoyed the revue better than straight stripping, she’d concluded, because they were a team and their dances were more complex and told a story.
“There’s the director, Sheila,” Jasmine said, pointing to a blond woman who was gesturing dramatically as she talked to the actors on stage. “She wants to meet you.”
“You didn’t tell her, did you?”
“That you’re a stripper? No. I promised I wouldn’t.”
“Good. And no telling Mark, either.” Autumn had been off the night Mark saw the revue, so, if Jasmine kept her promise, Autumn could remain incognito while she was here.
“You’re safe,” Jasmine said in a stage whisper. “No one knows that inside the chest of an ordinary accountant beats the heart of a man-killing pole dancer.”
