Verboten

2.

Most of the girls have perfected their burlesque performances; slowly peeling off layer after layer and choosing just how much of their bodies to expose. Every girl here looks forward to their weekly evening when it's their individual and uninterrupted stage time because every girl here wants to be purchased to entertain a man for the night. They make great money, more so than most hard-working men and they love to brag about the sexual encounters they had the following day while they're putting makeup on backstage.

Every girl is expected to perform with the group each evening just before closing time as a last-ditch effort for purchase. The energy and bustle of the saloon varies depending on what time of the year it is; winters tend to be slower and summers are almost always packed to the gills as travel becomes easier when the weather warms up.

You tend to stay veiled in the back of the group on stage at the close of each evening, keeping your chin tucked down and your gaze pointed to the floor. Your father tells you that you're easily the most beautiful girl that works for him, but you rarely are bought on days that aren't your exclusive stage night because you're skilled at acting uninterested and remaining in the gray.

That's why your father schedules your dreaded stage night on Fridays - the busiest day of the week - and although your performance isn't nearly as sexy as most of the other ladies here, one look at your face and your exposed chest and arms, your shiny hair and your alluring mouth and a man is claiming you before you've even climbed off of the platform.

A memory flashes behind your eyelids of the evening prior, the older man who bought you and who had terrible personal hygiene. The older man whose teeth were brown with plaque and reeked of body odor and chewing tobacco. The older man who requested his cock in your mouth and who ejaculated on your chest. The older man who fell asleep as you swiped all of his cash from his dresser before you spit on the floor and slinked out so that you could spend the next ten minutes scrubbing your teeth in your washbasin, refusing to look at yourself in the mirror.

You've never actually seen a dime of any of your profits, your father handles the exchange of money between all of the men who purchase you and says he's putting it aside for your future but you know better. You know that a woman has little to no clout and a woman with no cash to her name is worth less than nothing.

You know that your father is doing everything in his power to keep you helpless and working for him because of how much extra income you bring him. You know that he's spending every cent on the bar and keeping anything that happens to be left over for himself, so when the opportunity arises to hook some cash from a man who is passed out drunk, you almost always take it.

Sometimes you get lucky with stolen jewelry, a knife or a watch that you bring to the general store to trade for lavish soaps, books or caramels and peppermints but for the most part, you keep all of your stolen earnings in a masked tin tea caddy underneath your bed for the day when you feel brave enough to run off and never look back.

The customers at your tables are occupied by the lights and skin on the stage and you take this chance to disappear for five minutes. You glance around for your father and when you find him sitting by the stage, fully engulfed in the show, you slip out of the saloon as quietly as possible before stepping out into the late summer air. You breathe in a deep and cleansing breath before stepping forward to rub the nose of a tall, black mustang tied to the railing.

You coo and smooth your thumb over the white ribbon on her forehead, scratching behind her ears and rubbing her silken coat. She's beautiful and clean, well-loved and cared for. The saddle on her back is made of elegant ebony leather, worn but not tattered, the stirrups a handsome brass and her horseshoes a polished, shiny steel. Whoever owns this horse loves her to death and appears to be wealthy. Considering you don't recognize her, you draw the conclusion that she belongs to someone from out of town.