Bought and Sold. Megan Stephens

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СКАЧАТЬ I too young to work in a bar?’ I asked him. ‘I was expecting it to be a café. Don’t you have to be 18 to work somewhere like this?’

      ‘No, it’s fine,’ Jak assured me. ‘He knows how old you are, but you look old enough, so it’s okay. Don’t worry.’

      It seemed like an odd way to conduct a job interview; but as I had never had one before, I didn’t have any experience to judge it by. And at least the man hadn’t taken one look at me and said ‘No’.

      We went inside and Jak ordered drinks – whisky for himself and Mergim and a coke for me. It was still quite early in the evening and the only other people in the bar were four men and two semi-naked girls pole-dancing on a small wooden stage in the centre of the room. None of them seemed to be taking much notice of each other.

      We must have been sitting there for about half an hour when a man came and joined us. He spoke very good English and after he had ordered another round of drinks, he introduced himself to me as the manager of the bar. Then he asked me some questions, including, oddly I thought, ‘Do you like dancing?’

      ‘Yes,’ I told him, remembering almost wistfully for a moment the dance routines my friend and I used to make up and practise in her garden when we were young. ‘But I’ve never danced like … that.’ I glanced at the two topless girls and felt the heat of a blush suffusing my cheeks.

      ‘Oh, it’s easy,’ the manager said. ‘And don’t worry, you won’t have to do what they’re doing. You’ll just do some basic stuff.’

      I wasn’t sure what he meant by ‘basic stuff’. In any case, there was no way I would dance almost naked in a bar. Even the prospect of doing it fully clothed made me feel sick with embarrassed anxiety.

      ‘Well, the job’s yours if you want it,’ the manager told me. ‘I’ll leave the three of you to talk it over.’

      ‘I would be much too nervous to dance in front of people,’ I told Jak as soon as the man had gone.

      ‘You’re going to be brilliant at it,’ Jak said, as if it was already a done deal. ‘There’s no need for you to be nervous: they’ll show you exactly what to do. You’ll be fine. You’re so beautiful.’

      I knew what pole-dancing was, of course. I didn’t think it was ‘wrong’ in any way, just weird, and I didn’t for one moment link it to sex. Sometimes, I wonder how anyone of almost 15 years old could have been as naïve as I was. I could be stubborn when I had decided I wanted to do something – which was why I had clashed with Mum so often before we left England. In reality, though, I had no self-confidence. And as there was no way I was going to start arguing with Jak and Mergim and then have to tell the manager of the bar that I wasn’t going to take the job, I agreed.

      ‘You won’t have to do it for long,’ Jak said quietly. ‘The money’s so good we’ll have enough for my mum’s operation in no time.’

      Suddenly I felt like a hero and I knew everything really was going to be okay.

      The next morning, Jak took me back to the bar and left me there with the two girls – one Russian, the other African – who were going to teach me to dance in a way that was very different from the dancing I used to do with my friend in her garden back in England! Both girls seemed very confident, although I wondered later if they had been acting, the way I was going to learn to do.

      I danced that evening in a dimly lit corner of the bar dressed in an outfit that was really little more than fancy underwear, but that at least covered my boobs. After just a few minutes, another girl took my place. So, although the whole thing was hugely embarrassing, it was mercifully brief and not nearly as bad as it could have been.

      The next day, when Jak dropped me at the bar again, the manager said he needed to talk to me. I followed him through a door behind the bar and into a small office, where I stood twisting my fingers nervously as he told me, ‘I had complaints about you from customers last night. They pay to see girls dancing topless and if they don’t get what they’ve paid for, I risk being prosecuted for false advertising. You’re going to have to dance like the other girls tonight.’

      Whether or not what he said was actually true, I felt immediately guilty, as though I had done something wilfully and selfishly wrong. Then I imagined standing on the stage exposing my very flat chest to a roomful of men and I burst into tears.

      ‘I can’t do it,’ I snivelled. ‘And in any case, my boyfriend wouldn’t want me to.’

      ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll speak to him. He’ll be fine with it, I know he will.’ He patted my shoulder as if he thought I would be reassured by what he was saying. It was clear that our discussion was now over and I left the room feeling as though I had just been lured into a trap. I was pretty sure Jak wouldn’t want me to dance topless in a bar; my overriding concern, however, was the thought of how incredibly humiliating it would be for me.

      It turned out that I was wrong about Jak. When I saw him in the bar later that day, he had already spoken to the manager and said that he was okay with the idea of my dancing semi-naked in front of a room full of drunken, lecherous men.

      ‘It will only be for a short time,’ he reassured me. ‘I don’t really want you to stay here and do that. So I’m going to find you another job.’

      I tried to tell myself that I was overreacting and that, in the greater scheme of things, getting my kit off was a small sacrifice to make so that Jak’s mother’s could have the cancer treatment she needed. Jak wasn’t doing any gardening jobs now, but he had worked long hours before we came to Athens, for considerably less money than I would be earning. And when I really thought about it, I couldn’t justify looking forward to the future we were going to have together while making a fuss about doing something that would help bring it a little bit closer.

      Jak stayed at the bar that night, drinking whisky while I danced topless for men whose faces I avoided looking at. And when the manager gave me the 80 euros I had earned, Jak held out his hand and said, ‘Why don’t you give that to me? I’ll look after it for you.’

      For the next few nights, Jak and Mergim dropped me off at the bar and then went to a café in a nearby square to wait for me to finish work. When they came back to pick me up, I handed all the money I had earned to Jak. One night, when I kept some of it back because there was something I wanted to buy, his anger really shocked me – until I thought about it and realised I was being selfish and that it was only fair he should take it all, to pay for the food we ate and to save for our future. It was hard-earned money though, because I hated every minute of every night I danced at the bar, and I could never look at the faces of the men who were looking at me.

      I had been working there for almost two weeks when Jak told me, ‘We’ve got a meeting tomorrow about another job.’

      ‘Oh, that’s great,’ I said, feeling as though I had breathed out after holding my breath for just a bit too long. ‘What is the job?’

      ‘Wait and see,’ Jak said.

      The next morning, he seemed distracted and barely spoke to me. When I asked him if there was something wrong, he said, ‘No. It’s okay. Everything’s fine.’ But he was still quiet and uncommunicative in the taxi that took us to a burger bar in the city centre. Jak led the way up the stairs to the second floor, where the only other customer was a large, overweight man who waved when he saw Jak and then beckoned us over to his table. As we walked towards him, Jak said, ‘This is your new boss. He’s French and his name’s СКАЧАТЬ