Velvet Exposure

The flyer had been stuck under the windshield wiper of my minivan for three days before I finally pulled it out. I thought it was another church fundraiser, maybe a lost dog notice. Instead, it was a neon pink square with black letters that seemed to pulse in the afternoon sun. *AMATEUR STRIP CONTEST. $1000 CASH PRIZE. FRIDAY NIGHTS. NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY.*

I crumpled it and shoved it into my pocket. Then I got into the driver's seat and sat there for a long time with my hands on the wheel, the engine off, the heat building inside the car until my blouse stuck to the small of my back. Through the windshield I could see the sign for the Piggly Wiggly where I'd just bought two gallons of milk and a family pack of chicken thighs. The world looked exactly the same as it had five minutes ago. The same asphalt. The same shopping carts corralled by the door. The same teenager in a red vest pushing a line of them back inside. But something had shifted, some small gear deep in my chest had clicked forward one tooth, and I couldn't get it to click back.

I drove home the long way, past the elementary school and the Baptist church and the row of brick houses with their postage-stamp lawns and American flags. My husband's truck was in the driveway when I pulled in. He was home early from the hardware store. I could see him through the kitchen window, standing at the counter with a beer, watching the small television we kept on top of the refrigerator. He didn't turn when I came through the door.

"Get the milk?" he asked.

"Mm-hmm."

I put the groceries away and went upstairs to change. In the bathroom mirror I looked at myself the way I usually did, quickly, without lingering. Thirty-six years old. Brown hair that had been the same shoulder-length bob for a decade. A face that was still pretty in a way that had stopped being interesting to anyone, including me. I unbuttoned my blouse and stood there in my bra, a beige thing with thick straps and no wire, and I thought about the flyer in my pocket. A thousand dollars. That was two months of the electric bill. That was the deductible on the roof repair we'd been putting off since spring.

I didn't think about the other part. Not then.

The bar was called The Silver Spur, which should have told me everything I needed to know. It sat on the county line, just past the last soybean field, a long low building with a gravel lot and a sign shaped like a horseshoe that flickered even when it wasn't supposed to. I'd driven past it a hundred times on my way to the outlet mall and never once considered stopping. It was the kind of place where women went missing, my mother would have said. But my mother had been dead for six years, and I was beginning to suspect that most of what she'd told me was less about keeping me safe and more about keeping me small.

I didn't tell Dale where I was going. That was the first lie, and it was so easy it scared me. I said I was meeting Karen from church for coffee, and he nodded without looking up from his phone. He'd been doing that a lot lately, nodding without looking up. We'd been married for fourteen years, and somewhere in there we'd stopped seeing each other. Not in a dramatic way. There was no affair, no big fight. Just a slow erosion, like a riverbank, until one day you realize the water is running right through what used to be solid ground.

The Silver Spur on a Thursday night was almost empty. A few men at the bar, a couple playing pool in the back. The bartender was a woman with gray-streaked hair and arms that looked like they could throw a man through a window. She looked me up and down when I sat down, and I felt every inch of my khaki pants and sensible flats.

"First time?" she asked.

I must have looked confused, because she nodded at the flyer I'd set on the bar without meaning to. I'd been carrying it around for a week, folding and unfolding it until the creases were soft as cloth.

"Contest's Friday," she said. "Sign-up sheet's by the door. You want a drink?"

I ordered a gin and tonic, which I'd never had before in my life. It tasted like pine needles and regret, but I drank it anyway. The woman's name was Roz, and she owned the place. She'd been running it for twenty-two years, she said, ever since her husband died and left her with a mortgage and a bad reputation. She didn't ask why I was there. She just kept wiping down the bar and talking, like I was any other customer, like women in khaki pants walked in every day with a crumpled flyer and a look on their face like they were about to jump off a cliff.

"You know what the prize is for?" she asked.

"Money."

"Money, sure. But mostly it's for the girls who do it. They come in here thinking they're gonna be embarrassed, and they leave feeling like they own the goddamn world. You ever feel like you own the world?"

I laughed. It came out bitter, and I didn't mean it to. "I feel like I'm renting it," I said. "And the rent's due."

Roz nodded like that made perfect sense. She poured herself a shot of whiskey and drank it in one swallow, then went to serve the men at the end of the bar. I sat there with my drink and my flyer and the low hum of the jukebox, and I thought about Dale. I thought about the way he used to look at me when we were first married, like I was something he couldn't believe he'd gotten. I thought about the way he looked at me now, which was mostly not at all. I thought about the thousand dollars, and the roof, and the electric bill, and all the other things that had become the entire architecture of our life together.

And then I thought about something else. Something I hadn't let myself think about in years.

I signed the sheet before I left. The pen was attached to the clipboard with a string, and my hand shook a little when I wrote my name. *Lila Mayfield.* It looked strange there, surrounded by the names of women I didn't know. Amber. Destiny. Krystal with a K. I was the only one who'd written a last name. I almost scratched it out, but Roz caught my eye from across the room and raised her glass, and I left it.

The week that followed was the longest of my life. I went to work at the dental office where I'd been a receptionist for eleven years, and I smiled at patients and scheduled appointments and answered the phone in my best professional voice. I made meatloaf and did laundry and helped our daughter with her algebra homework. I sat next to Dale on the couch and watched crime shows, and every night I lay awake in the dark and thought about Friday.

I didn't have anything to wear. That was the first practical problem. I went to the mall on my lunch break and stood in front of a lingerie store for ten minutes before I could make myself go in. The girl behind the counter was maybe twenty-two, with a nose ring and purple hair, and she didn't blink when I told her what I needed. She just led me to a rack in the back and started pulling things off hangers.

"What's the occasion?" she asked.

I almost lied. I almost said anniversary, or date night, or something normal. But she was looking at me with such open curiosity, and I was so tired of lying, even about small things.

"I'm in a contest," I said. "At a bar. A strip contest."

She didn't laugh. She didn't even look surprised. She just nodded and held up a black lace bodysuit with a plunging neckline.

"This," she said. "Trust me. It'll make you feel like a different person."

I bought it. I also bought a pair of heels that were higher than anything I'd worn since my wedding, and a robe that was technically meant for a hotel bathroom but would work well enough as a cover-up. I hid the bag in the trunk of my car, under a blanket and a bag of road salt left over from winter. Dale never looked in the trunk. He never looked at much of anything anymore.

On Friday afternoon I told him I was going to a movie with Karen. He was in the garage, tinkering with the lawnmower, and he just waved a hand without turning around. I went upstairs and took a shower. I shaved my legs and under my arms, and then I stood in front of the mirror and looked at myself for a long time. Really looked. The stretch marks on my stomach from carrying our daughter. The slight sag of my breasts. The lines around my eyes that had appeared overnight, or so it seemed. I wasn't young anymore. I wasn't even sure I was pretty. But there was something there, something I'd forgotten. A flicker. A pulse. The woman in the mirror looked back at me like she knew a secret.

I put on the bodysuit and the heels and the robe, and I covered it all with a long coat that I'd had since college. I kissed Dale on the cheek on my way out. He smelled like gasoline and sweat, and he didn't look up.

The Silver Spur was packed. I'd never seen so many cars in the gravel lot, and the line to get in stretched around the side of the building. I almost turned around. I almost got back in my minivan and drove home and forgot the whole thing. But then I saw Roz at the door, checking names off a list, and she saw me too. She didn't smile. She just nodded, once, like she'd known I'd come.

The backstage area was really just a storage room with a mirror taped to the wall and a rack of costumes that smelled like sweat and cheap perfume. There were six of us. Amber was a single mother who worked at the Waffle House and had done this three times before. Destiny was a college student who seemed nervous enough to vomit. Krystal with a K was a hairdresser with fake nails and a laugh that filled the room. The other two didn't talk much. They just sat in the corner and smoked cigarettes, even though there was a sign on the wall that said NO SMOKING.

I sat on a folding chair and tried to breathe. My heart was beating so fast I could feel it in my teeth. I thought about Dale, sitting at home on the couch, watching crime shows. I thought about our daughter, at a sleepover at her friend's house. I thought about the thousand dollars, which suddenly seemed like the least important thing in the world.

"You okay?" Amber asked. She was putting on false eyelashes with the precision of a surgeon.

"I don't know," I said.

"That's normal. First time?"

I nodded.

"Just remember," she said, "they're all here to see you. Not the other way around. You're the one with the power. They're just a bunch of sad men in a bar."

I thought about that. I thought about power, and what it meant, and whether I'd ever really had any. I'd spent my whole life being good. Being quiet. Being the kind of woman who didn't make a scene. I'd married a man who wanted a wife, not a partner. I'd raised a daughter who thought I was boring. I'd gone to church every Sunday and volunteered at the bake sale and never once, not once, had I done anything that might make someone look at me twice.

Until now.

The announcer's voice boomed through the wall, muffled but unmistakable. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Silver Spur's annual amateur strip contest! Tonight we've got six beautiful ladies who are gonna bare it all for your entertainment and for a chance at a thousand dollars in cash!"

The crowd cheered. I could hear them stomping their feet, whistling, shouting. My hands were shaking so badly I had to sit on them.

"First up," the announcer said, "let's give a big hand for Amber!"

Amber winked at me and pushed through the curtain. The crowd roared. I could hear her heels on the stage, the thump of the bass, the catcalls. I closed my eyes and tried to remember why I was here. The money. The roof. The electric bill. But those reasons felt thin now, like paper. The real reason was something else. Something I couldn't name.

"Next up," the announcer said, "we've got a newcomer to the stage. Let's hear it for Lila!"

My legs didn't want to move. My body was screaming at me to run, to hide, to go back to the life I knew. But something else was screaming louder. Something that had been buried for a long time. I stood up. I took off my robe. And I walked through the curtain.

The lights were blinding. I couldn't see anything beyond the first row, just a sea of dark shapes and the glint of glasses. The music was loud, some song I didn't recognize, all bass and drums. I stood there for a moment, frozen, and then I heard a voice from the crowd. A single voice, cutting through the noise.

"Lila?"

I knew that voice. I'd been hearing it for fourteen years. I squinted into the lights, and there he was. Third row, center. Dale. My husband. Sitting with a group of men I didn't recognize, a beer in his hand, his mouth open, his face a mask of shock.

He wasn't supposed to be here. He was supposed to be at home. He was supposed to be watching crime shows. But there he was, in the flesh, watching me.

And I realized, in that moment, that I had a choice. I could run. I could cover myself and flee and pretend this had never happened. Or I could stay. I could stand there and let him see me, really see me, for the first time in years.

I stayed.

The music pulsed through me. I closed my eyes and moved, not thinking, just feeling. I let my hips sway and my hands drift over my body, and I heard the crowd respond. Whistles. Cheers. A chant of my name. I opened my eyes and looked at Dale. He was still staring, but something had changed in his face. The shock was still there, but underneath it was something else. Something I hadn't seen in a long time.

Desire.

I unhooked the bodysuit. I let it fall. And the crowd went wild.

I didn't win the thousand dollars. That went to Krystal with a K, who did something with a chair that I'm still not sure was legal. But I didn't care. I walked off that stage feeling like I'd won something better. Something I couldn't put a price on.

Dale was waiting for me by the back door. He didn't say anything at first. He just looked at me, his eyes traveling over my body in a way that made my skin tingle. Then he took off his jacket and wrapped it around my shoulders.

"We should talk," he said.

I nodded. "Yeah. We should."

We walked out into the gravel lot, under a sky full of stars, and I felt something I hadn't felt in years. Hope. It was fragile and small, but it was there. And for the first time in a long time, I didn't know what was going to happen next.

That was the best part.