Chapter 13: High Stakes & Higher Heels
The green room in Vegas was a monument to faded glamour, all peach velour and mirrored walls veined with age. The scent of old cigarette smoke, deep in the upholstery, fought with the sharp, green aroma of the blunt making its slow, ceremonial round among the dancers. Anaijiah stood apart, a still point in the pre-show rustle, methodically rolling her neck. The crystal-encrusted bodysuit was heavier than the leather one, a hundred thousand cold, sharp points against her skin, catching the overhead fluorescents and throwing fractured light onto the water-stained ceiling.
Beyond the wall of windows, the Strip was a neurological map of greed and want, blinking in the early evening haze.
Nevaieh leaned against the doorframe, a sentry in black denim. Her eyes tracked the room, missing nothing. They lingered on Anaijiah, on the deliberate focus of her breathing, then snapped to a movement by the coffee machine. A stagehand, a guy with a clipboard and sleeves rolled up over tattooed forearms, was refilling a paper cup. His eyes kept drifting to Anaijiah. He said something to a grip, nodded, then made his way over.
“Hey. You were incredible in the tech run. The way you hold that last pose? Gives me chills.”
Anaijiah offered a distracted, professional smile, her mind still tracing the new choreography in the air before her. “Thanks. The crew here is great.”
“Yeah, we try.” He shifted his weight, edging a little closer. “Listen, I get off at two. Some of us are hitting a spot downtown that actually plays good music. No cover for artists.” He grinned. “If you’re looking for a real Vegas experience after the fake one.”
Nevaieh pushed off the doorframe. The movement was smooth, liquid, but the intent in it was tectonic. She didn’t walk; she flowed across the scuffed carpet until she was standing just behind the man’s shoulder, close enough for him to feel the displacement of air.
He turned, his smile faltering at the sight of her. Her expression was neutral, but her eyes were black ice.
Before a word could be uttered, a snap echoed in the room. Sharp, definitive.
Kayla stood by the catering table, a celery stick in one hand. She’d snapped the fingers of her other hand. Her gaze was fixed on Nevaieh, a warning and an amusement in one.
“Focus,” Kayla said, her voice cutting through the sudden silence. She jerked her chin toward the other side of the room where Chris was lounging on a sofa, counting a stack of bills. “Your main event is over there having a moral crisis about his wallet.”
Chris looked up, hearing his name. He fanned the bills. “It’s not a crisis. It’s a conviction.” His eyes found Anaijiah. “Fifty thousand dollars. In cash. Right here. Says you can’t land the aerial corkscrew in the second act wearing the Lucite heels. Says you chicken out and go flat-footed.”
The room froze. The blunt hung in mid-air between two dancers. The stagehand blinked, forgotten, and wisely slipped away.
Nevaieh’s attention broke from where the man had been, fully redirecting to Chris. A slow, incredulous breath left her. “You’re betting against your own show?”
“I’m investing in drama,” Chris corrected, placid. “It’s a Vegas tradition. So? What’s it gonna be, A? Pay up now and admit you’re taking the safe way, or prove me a pauper.”
Anaijiah looked at the money. It was a stupid, gaudy stack. It was also, she knew, about something else. It was about the harness wires in the dark theatre, about the clean new marks on the stage, about the whisper that she might be getting tired. Chris was reading the room, and he’d placed a bet on her pride.
A dangerous smile touched her lips. It wasn’t the performer’s smile. It was the one from the dressing room, the one that knew the value of solid ground because it had just been pulled from the sky.
She didn’t look at Nevaieh. She didn’t look at Kayla.
She walked to the table, the crystals on her suit whispering like a cascade of fallen stars. She placed her palms flat on the velour.
“You brought cash to my green room,” she said, her voice low. “That’s disrespectful.”
Chris’s eyebrow lifted. “Is it?”
“It’s clutter.” She swept her gaze across the dancers, the band members filtering in. “Everyone. Wallets out. Phones. Whatever’s in your pockets. If he wants to make it a thing, we make it a thing.”
For a beat, there was nothing. Then Nevaieh reached into her back pocket, pulled out a folded knot of bills, and tossed it onto Chris’s stack. “Two hundred. She sticks the landing.”
It was a match to tinder.
A roar went up. Bills flew—fives, twenties, a flutter of ones. A dancer threw a pair of silver hoop earrings. The bassist tossed his watch. It became a cacophony of clinking metal and fluttering paper, a heap of faith and foolishness piling on the table.
Kayla watched, crunching her celery, the camera in her other hand now pointed at the growing pile. “This is going in the doc,” she said to no one in particular. “The fiscal landscape of modern performance art.”
Chris looked at the mountain of valuables, then back at Anaijiah, his grin widening. “Pressure’s on, superstar.”
Anaijiah straightened up, rolling her shoulders. The crystals threw light like sparks. “The only pressure I feel is from this suit. It’s tacky as hell.”
Laughter erupted, breaking the tension. The stage manager’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Places in five. Act one beginners, please.”
The room exploded into motion, dancers grabbing final sips of water, adjusting costumes. Nevaieh closed the distance to Anaijiah, her hand coming to rest on the small of her back, right where the crystals gave way to skin. Her touch was a brand, a reminder.
“The heels are seven inches,” Nevaieh murmured into her ear. “The wire is ten gauge. The math is in your favor if you don’t think about it.”
“I’m not thinking,” Anaijiah said, her eyes on the door that led to the wings, to the dark and the waiting crowd. “I’m cashing a check.”
She turned, following the stream of bodies out. The pile of money and trinkets glimmered under the lights, a monument to the moment. Chris lingered, scooping it all into a duffel bag with a chuckle.
Nevaieh and Kayla fell into step behind Anaijiah, a twin shadow and a chronicler.
“You know he’s going to keep that bag,” Kayla said.
“He won’t,” Nevaieh replied, her voice certain. “He’ll give it all back. He just wanted to see if she’d look at it.”
They pushed through the heavy door into the controlled chaos of the wings. The air changed—cool, dusty, alive with the palpable energy of three thousand people breathing on the other side of the curtain. The deep thrum of the pre-show music vibrated through the floorboards.
Anaijiah took her place in the darkness, finding her first mark by feel. She could hear the rustle of the audience, a living, murmuring creature. Out there, in a sea of faces, was the stagehand from the green room. The man from the last city. The ones from the cities before. They all blurred into a single, anonymous hunger.
Here, in the dark, it was just the wire, the heels, and the bet.
The house lights began to dip. The murmur swelled into anticipatory silence, then shattered into screams as the first explosive chord hit and the curtain rose on a wall of light.
Anaijiah stopped breathing. Then she stepped into it.
Then she stepped into it.
Then she stepped into it.
The light was a physical thing, a white-hot wall that vaporized the dark and left only heat and color and sound. It baked the crystals on her skin into tiny suns. For a heartbeat, she was blind, just a silhouette against the roar. Then her vision resolved into a sea of outstretched phones, a galaxy of tiny recording stars.
She let the noise wash over her, through her. She owned the silence at its center.
“SIN CITYYYYY!” she screamed, and the two words were a detonation.
The crowd’s response was a concussive wave that hit her in the chest, a second heartbeat. She could feel the old velvet of the seats vibrating. She took the mic from its stand with a slow, deliberate swipe, her hips finding the first simmering thump of the intro beat. She scanned the front rows, a queen surveying her territory.
“So,” she said, her voice a low, carrying purr amplified into a god’s whisper. “Are y’all ready to turn the fuck up in this bitch?”
The shriek was unanimous, tearing through the ornate ceiling. The beat dropped. It wasn’t a melody; it was a fault line, a sub-bass quake that shook dust from the rafters. Her body reacted before thought. The wire went taut. The stage vanished beneath her.
The aerial corkscrew was a violent, beautiful negation of physics. The Lucite heels, those seven-inch liabilities, became the axis point of her spin. She tucked, a compact explosion of glitter and muscle, and the world became a screaming blur of light and darkness. The wire sung a high, stressed note in her ear. She untucked, legs snapping down, heels aiming for the stage like targeting lasers.
She landed. A perfect, resonating crack of heel on wood, timed precisely with the second bass hit. Solid. Grounded. Unshakable.
The silence lasted a fraction of a second, the crowd collectively swallowing its breath. Then the arena truly erupted. She stood in the epicenter, arm raised, not a wobble, not a tremble. In the wings, Nevaieh let out a sharp, explosive breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Her clenched fist slowly uncurled.
Chris, watching from the monitor near the sound board, threw his head back and laughed. He slapped the console. “Fifty thousand dollars well lost!” he shouted to no one, digging into the duffel at his feet.
On stage, Anaijiah was already moving, the flip just a punctuation mark on the first sentence of the night. The dancers swarmed around her, a kinetic storm of sequins and sweat. She was a conductor, a nucleus, every flick of her wrist summoning a new surge of energy from the crowd. The crystals were now weapons, scattering lasers with every precise hit.
During a formation shift, as she spun past the downstage wing, she locked eyes with Nevaieh. It was just a flash. Nevaieh gave a single, slow nod. The corner of her mouth twitched. Paycheck cashed.
The show became a sustained act of possession. Anaijiah poured every suppressed scream from the green room, every ache from the jet, every doubt from the mirror into the performance. She wasn’t singing to them; she was firing her essence into the crowd like a prism, breaking it into colors they could absorb. She could taste their collective breath, feel their pulse in the floorboards.
During the bridge of a sweeter, slower track, she walked to the edge of the stage, the music softening. She dropped to her knees, mic clutched loosely. “Y’all making a girl feel at home,” she said, her voice raw and real, no amplification trickery. A guy in the front row, eyes wide, simply mouthed oh my god back at her.
She winked at him. “I know, right?”
The laugh that rippled through the audience was warm, intimate. Then she rose, and the music rose with her, building back into a thunderous crescendo. She turned, catching a different sight in the opposite wing. Kayla was there, the small camera not even at her eye, just held low, recording the spectacle from the shadows. Observing the archaeology of the victory she’d predicted.
The final number was a marathon. Her lungs burned, and the bodysuit felt like a second skin of salt and effort. The final pose was the one the stagehand had mentioned, the one that gave him chills. She held it as the last note shivered into silence, drenched in light and applause, a statue of exhaustion and triumph.
The curtain fell. The wall of sound became muffled, then a persistent, demanding roar. For a second, in the sudden dimness of the wings, she swayed. A stagehand reached out to steady her. She waved him off, grabbing a towel from a nearby table instead, draping it over her head as she sucked in the dusty, private air.
Nevaieh was there instantly, a solid presence at her elbow, guiding her through the congratulatory chaos back towards the green room. Dancers patted her sweaty back, voices yelling “You killed it!” into the din.
Back in the peach velour tomb, the atmosphere was pure catharsis. The blunt was re-lit. Someone had cracked a bottle of champagne, spraying it over the pile of returned bets on the table, making the cash and jewelry gleam wetly. Chris stood by the pile, grinning.
“Your winnings, champ,” he said, gesturing to the sodden heap. “Might want to hang dry that two hundred, Nevaieh.”
Nevaieh just shook her head, guiding Anaijiah to a chair. Kayla followed them in, lowering her camera. “The flip wasn’t even the best part,” she said, popping a piece of melon from the catering tray. “It was the wink. That’s the doc’s opening shot.”
Anaijiah peeled the towel from her head, her ginger curls plastered to her forehead. Her body was a universe of specific pains. The harness bruises, the ache in her ankle from the landing, the pleasant tremor in her thighs. She looked at the sparkling, wet mess on the table, the physical proof of a doubt conquered.
Chris fished his original stack from the pile, remarkably dry, and walked over. He dropped it in her lap. “For real. A bet’s a bet. Buy something stupid with it.”
She looked up at him, the adrenaline leaching away, leaving a profound weariness. “The only stupid thing I want right now is a bath. In silence.”
“The hotel suite has a tub bigger than this room,” a voice said from the doorway. Nayah stood there, having flown in for the show, dressed in a neon green bodysuit that hurt the eyes. “I already ordered, like, eighteen bath bombs. The Instagram stories are gonna be therapeutic.”
The group laughed, the sound easy now. The door to the hallway opened, and a production assistant leaned in. “Sixty-minute turnaround for the meet-and-greet VIPs. Just a heads up.”
The collective groan was theatrical. Anaijiah leaned her head back against the velour, closing her eyes. Another performance. A different costume. She felt Nevaieh’s hands on her shoulders, thumbs pressing into the knotted muscles at the base of her neck.
“One more face to wear,” Nevaieh murmured, her voice for Anaijiah alone. “Then the bath. Then the bed.”
“Then the next city,” Anaijiah whispered back, the cycle already turning, relentless and familiar. She opened her eyes and looked at the money in her lap, then at the sparkling, soaked pile on the table. The victory was tangible, messy, and already fading. She pushed herself up. The crystals, dull now with sweat, clicked softly as she moved towards the shower, leaving a trail of glittering footprints on the floor.
The crystals, dull now with sweat, clicked softly as she moved towards the shower, leaving a trail of glittering footprints on the floor. The shower was a merciless blast of hot needles, stinging the fresh harness burns on her ribs and washing the glittering sweat into a grey vortex at her feet. She stood there long after the water ran clear, her forehead pressed to the cool tiles, listening to the distant party laugh through the wall.
The meet-and-greet was a gallery of bright, demanding smiles. She signed arms, phones, and one man’s bald head, her own smile a fixed, pleasant mask. Her hand ached. “That flip!” people breathed, their eyes wide with borrowed adrenaline. She nodded, said “Thank you for coming,” and felt the hollow echo of the words in her dry throat.
“Last one,” a handler murmured, guiding forward a trembling teenager. The girl didn’t speak, just held out a Sharpie and turned, pointing to her shoulder blade. Anaijiah signed her name over the girl’s t-shirt. When the girl turned back, tears were cutting through her glitter eyeshadow. That, finally, punctured the haze. Anaijiah pulled her into a quick, hard hug. “You’re good,” she whispered. The girl sobbed once, nodded fiercely, and was ushered away.
Back in the suite, Nayah’s bath bombs had turned the water a toxic, glowing blue. It smelled like a synthetic candy store. Anaijiah sank into it anyway, the heat penetrating the deep ache in her joints. Nevaieh sat on the closed toilet lid, scrolling through security footage of the venue exits on her phone. “Clean getaway tomorrow,” she said. “5 AM. Again.”
“I’m starting to hate the sun,” Anaijiah mumbled, her voice muffled by the water at her chin.
“It’s not personal. It just exposes the moving parts.” Nevaieh put her phone down. “Chris left the actual fifty. It’s in your bag. He also left a note that says ‘For something stupid.’ I think the bath bomb qualifies.”
A weak laugh bubbled out of Anaijiah. It hurt her stomach muscles. She slid under the blue water, holding her breath, letting the world become a silent, chemical burn.
Morning was a betrayal.
It wasn’t the alarm. It was the simple, excruciating act of trying to turn over. A white-hot seam of pain lit up from her lower back, radiated down her left leg, and locked her sacrum in a vice of clenched muscle. She gasped, a short, sharp sound that wasn’t a word.
Nevaieh was already awake, leaning over her. “Where?”
“Everywhere. My back. It’s… stuck.” Anaijiah’s voice was thin with panic. The pain was so absolute it felt structural, as if her skeleton had been reassembled incorrectly overnight.
“Okay. Don’t move.” Nevaieh’s hands were clinical, assessing. She pressed gently near Anaijiah’s spine. Anaijiah flinched, a full-body spasm. “Right. That’s the aerial flip saying hello. And the heels. And probably the ten-hour flight before that.” She sat back on her heels. “We’re not moving today. I’ll call Nicole.”
The call was brief. Nevaieh’s side was flat directives. “She’s grounded. No travel. The three-day rest block starts now, day one. We need a professional.”
Within the hour, Nicole herself was at the suite door, her expression one of pragmatic concern. She took one look at Anaijiah, who was marooned on the bed, propped up by every pillow, and gave a single, curt nod. “The Vegas landing pad. I’ve seen it before. The wire decelerates you, but those landing shocks travel right up the spine. You’re not the first.” She pulled out her phone. “I’m sending someone. His name is Leo. He travels with UFC fighters. He doesn’t speak much. He will hurt you. You will thank him.”
Leo arrived just after noon. He was a compact man in his fifties with forearms like knotted rope and a calm, placid silence. He set up a portable table in the living area, laid out oils, and nodded to Nevaieh. “Bring her.”
Getting from the bed to the table was a humiliating, slow-motion odyssey. Anaijiah bit down on her lip, tears of frustration and pain welling in her eyes as Nevaieh basically carried her. “This is pathetic,” Anaijiah hissed.
“It’s biology,” Nevaieh corrected, lowering her onto the table. “You asked it to do something absurd. It’s itemizing the bill.”
Leo’s hands were like heated stone. He started at her feet, his thumbs finding depressions and ridges of bone and sinew she didn’t know existed. The pain was immediate and clarifying. “The heels,” he stated, his voice a low rumble. He worked up her calves, which were hard as sculpted marble. “Jump storage. All tension. No release.”
When he reached her lower back, Anaijiah saw stars. A choked cry escaped her. Nevaieh, who had been standing watch by the window, crossed the room and wordlessly slid her hand under Anaijiah’s, their fingers interlocking. Leo pressed into the knot of furious muscle alongside her spine. “This is the culprit,” he said, almost to himself. “It’s guarding the joint. We have to convince it to stand down.”
For ninety minutes, he worked with a brutal, precise patience. He used elbows, forearms, the full weight of his body. The pain cycled between sharp, shocking jabs and a deep, ominous ache that felt like it was unspooling something vital. Slowly, imperceptibly at first, the vice began to loosen. The white-hot wire of pain running down her leg retracted, inch by agonizing inch.
“Inflamed,” Leo said finally, wiping his hands on a towel. “Not injured. But it will be if you move tomorrow. Tomorrow, more work. Day after, movement. Slow.” He packed his kit. “Hydrate. Sleep. No bending. No sitting for long. Stand or lie down.”
After he left, Anaijiah lay on the table, feeling like a wrung-out rag. The pain was now a manageable, deep throb. She could breathe. Nevaieh helped her back to bed, this time the journey less harrowing.
“Feel human?” Nevaieh asked, arranging the pillows.
“I feel like a project that got reassessed mid-construction.” Anaijiah closed her eyes. The silence of the suite, absent of urgency or travel itineraries, was a foreign texture. “Three days.”
“Three days,” Nevaieh confirmed. She pulled a chair close to the bed. “Kayla texted. Wants to know if the doc can film ‘the corporeal consequences of art.’ I told her she could film the ceiling. It’s very interesting.”
A real smile, the first of the day, touched Anaijiah’s mouth. “Let her in. She can watch me learn to walk again.”
“Maybe tomorrow.” Nevaieh leaned back, stretching her own legs out. The afternoon sun slanted across the garish carpet. “For today, just be the project. No construction. Just… site assessment.”
Anaijiah listened to the distant whine of a hotel vacuum in the hall. She traced the familiar cracks in the stucco ceiling with her eyes. The relentless momentum that had carried her from city to city, from wing to stage to green room, had finally hit a wall. Her own body. It wasn’t a enemy, she realized. It was the most truthful collaborator she had, and it had just handed her a hard, non-negotiable invoice.
She pulled the stack of Chris’s fifty thousand dollars from the nightstand. She fanned the bills, the papery sound loud in the quiet room. She looked at Nevaieh.
“Order the most expensive room service steak they have,” she said. “And a bottle of that wine that tastes like expensive dirt. That’s my stupid thing.”
Nevaieh took the money, her own smile finally surfacing. “Now you’re talking.”